Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-23.122.201.219-20140126015203/@comment-29832152-20160902053925

70.106.140.138 wrote: Or maybe it was the Augur that protected the College from the Great Collapse.

Also, the Augur was able to do with Restoration Magic what most mages use Necromancy to do: Become immortal, or at least ageless. Actually, I think the College simply has a lot of really powerful wards placed around it so that one bright spark mage with too much power and too little brains doesn't blow into an adjacent plane. Remember, they don't really have much supervision when it comes to experiments. If you're going to let people just try whatever magic they want and you want to keep your upright structures upright, brick and mortar ain't gonna cut it.

In answer to what he is, he's a cool visual effect and a plot device to explain how we know where to go once we find the Eye of Magnus, since no one in the College proper has any idea what the thing even is.