The St.-Germain School is a Project SANDMAN-funded non-traditional educational facility for students from the ages of six to eighteen located on land at the Sand Flats on the southwestern lower slopes of Mount Shasta. It is a roughly 15-minute drive from the center of the town of Mt. Shasta, up the winding dirt road known as Siskiyou County Road A10. On this site prior to the construction and opening of the St.-Germain School in February 1974 were lodges, cabins, and other buildings abandoned during the failure of the Mount Shasta Ski Bowl in the 1960s. SANDMAN engineers worked over December 1973 through January 1974 to build an administration building, schoolhouse, and bunks for the first class of a dozen or so students.

Administration (Rank 3)

The school's head administrator is Mary-Lynn Turner. She handles school records, business administration, accreditation, and social/marketing outreach to the alternative schooling/"New Age" community.

Faculty (Rank 2)

Full-time faculty consists of Mitch Hort and three other state-accredited instructors who teach mundane subjects along with ecology and other topics in a freestyle, holistic approach. Mitch Hort's instructional purview is philosophy and metaphysics, with the hope that one or more students will arrive at an Illuminated State (see GURPS Powers: The Weird, p. 7). Visiting faculty include noted metaphysical thinker Alan Watts, Zen Master Jiyu Kennett, and psychotherapist and science fiction author Genevieve Abeille.

Students (Rank 1)

The first class of a dozen students was drawn from SANDMAN's Indigo Program, the students recruited for Andrija Puharich's "Space Kids" program in Ossining, New York, as well as a handful of students recruited via alternative and New Age education networks in California. They range in age from 8 to 14.

Workers (Rank 0)

The School requires a small group of 4 to 6 workers to prepare meals, clean the buildings, attend to the gardens and live animals, etc.

Facilities

The facilities, while fairly barebones, do include a life science lab, a photography and video lab, and a stable for horses.

Timeline

• November 1973: Mitch Hort conceives of school as a way to help the kids from the now-shuttered Indigo Program and/or usurp the memetic predominance of the Ascended Master/Comte de St. Germain memeplex around Mount Shasta.

• December 1973: Project SANDMAN approves initial budget of $250,000 to build school facilities, hire staff, and kickstart student recruitment.

• January 1974: Mitch and Mary-Lynn move to the mountain in the depths of a cold Shasta winter. Faculty are recruited, first non-SANDMAN-related students are interviewed, Jocasta terminates Andrija Puharich's "Space Kids" program at Ossining, SANDMAN-adjunct kids are debriefed, non-SANDMAN Space Kids are encouraged to consider sending their kids to the St.-Germain School. Most do.

• February 1974: Classes begin. Former Indigo Child code-named "Hotel," nicknamed Hilton at Granite Peak during his training, emerges as a top candidate for Illumination.

• April 1974: Ambrose Bierce appears on the mountain; Hilton and Mitch find him. He, along with several other Illuminated as well as elements of the core of the old Bohemians, gravitate to the school. Ambrose dies and is buried some way away from the campus.