The Underschool doesn't get referenced often. Magister Aspen knows very little about it and has a lot of other stuff on their mind.

As for monsters, there's a few places to look for those. Perhaps she'd like to read this Bestiary page, which lists creatures such as the Rat (edible in a pinch; full of useful body parts), Croa (a crop-devouring pest of a flightless purple bird, but also full of useful body parts), Gremlin (a pest that appears in cluttered places), and Ooze (a pest that appears in grimy places).

...it's a pretty sparse bestiary.

Actually it almost looks like Magister Aspen was interrupted in the middle of writing it, because the next line after Ooze starts "Medd" and then trails off.

That's maybe concerning. She's concerned. Wonder what happened to Magister Aspen, honestly. Probably nothing good.

Regardless, she's going to keep supervising further training. They need to get good enough to face the Underschool before they can finish the tower, and they need to get the other girls apprenticed before they'll stop be bottlenecked on Sable's time for nearly everything.

Is there anything on what the fog is or where it came from?

Notes on the Fog include:

- We don't know what it is
- We don't know where it came from
- Magister Rowan remembers a time before the fog; Magister Aspen does not, and is kind of having trouble imagining it, actually
- It's very spooky. Sometimes it laughs. Magister Rowan maintains that it's unnatural for the weather to laugh and Magister Aspen, despite having known no other weather, agrees.

The more Sable learns about the Fog, the less she likes it. The previous magisters were correct, weather shouldn't laugh.

Are there any snippets hinting at how research desks are constructed?

The main page on Research Desks is Magister Rowan's thorough if occasionally confusing description of how to build one. Mg. Aspen's margin notes help clear up at least some of it. The material ingredients are just wood and metal, but if you add up the time estimates of all the steps it looks like it takes four solid hours to build, and one of those margin notes helpfully suggests getting a good night's sleep first because certain subcomponents can explode if you empower them incorrectly.

That's something for the morning then. How are her darlings doing in terms of control training, and how late in the day is it?

It's early afternoon, and progress has been slow and steady since her last check-in. Second, third, and fourth elements are making the transition from consistent stable casting to casting with intent, and primary elements are making slow progress from casting with basic intent to somewhat more complex forms. Anyone with a noticeable affinity for Air could definitely shrink and carry an object safely by now, and even the least Air-inclined of all of them will probably be getting there by this time tomorrow.

She's gonna keep supervising training for the rest of the day, until it's time to check on the fog and push it back again.

Training is a bit repetitive, but she doesn't mind. They're learning magic! Plus, this way they can all pitch in with lots of stuff tomorrow!

The fog hasn't been creeping much closer during the day; it seems it makes most of its gains overnight. It's definitely not even close to threatening to swallow up the tower yet, though that might change if she neglected it for long enough.

The description of the Repel Fog ritual warns that the farther out the fog gets, the more the ritual needs to be bolstered with additional steps, ingredients, and participants to achieve the same distance when pushing it back anew. It has recommendations about which ingredients to add in what order with what procedures depending on how many additional mages are helping to cast the ritual and whether they're Initiates, Apprentices, or Magisters. (Mg. Aspen helpfully clarifies that an Initiate should be well-practiced with channeling unformed magic at a Learning Stone before they try aiming it at the Mana Font.)