Lore question: Bard Colleges

[kittenfish]

As the headline states I'm wondering about bard colleges. I've tried to google but searching sourcebooks I can't find has proven a bit difficult.

If anyone knows or is more talented than me at turning up information like this I'm wondering:

• What colleges exist at this time, 1352?
  Where are they?
  Which specialize and if so in what?

Thanks in advance to anyone who helps answer this!

[Maecius]

Definitely a tough question, since there's not a ton of lore on it and our server's timeline isn't exactly in line with the standard Forgotten Realms timeline.

This forum link has a lot of the research already worked out, though:

http://frc.proboards.com/thread/6435/ba ... ges-realms

The official Candlekeep forums have some more thoughts and sources:

http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3837

Finally, here's an in-depth look at a bard college that doesn't actually exist yet for our timeline, but can provide you an idea of how they sort of work:

http://www.realmshelps.net/faerun/cities/newolamn.shtml

Naturally, there's also nothing stopping players from organizing a Sword Coast bard college either. In fact, a few players were trying to do just that early last year.