Inside the Firewalls

Chapter 4

Congratulations on making it into the Discordian Castle!

This section will take you through the different channels and forums that are on the server. 

The Owlery 

This is the announcement thread from all professors. They will update with announcements that include the entire Discordian Castle body. This was mostly used for the MSG schedule posts in the past, and will continue to be updated with the MSG schedules as long as students find them useful. While you cannot actively participate in the channel further than reacting with emojis to current posts, it’s best to make sure this channel is unmuted so you do not miss any important announcement that comes through.

Howler Support 

If you are still having tech trouble on the server, you can come here to create a Howler ticket to ask for support. After creating a Howler, a staff member will private message you to help. This might take up to 24 hours, so be patient. The channel is public, even though you cannot participate in the channel further than creating a Howler by clicking the button. So you could mute this channel if you wish not to get (rare) updates of others creating Howlers.

The Great Hall 

It’s the Great Hall!

You can enter this channel and talk with other staff and students from the whole server. Pop in and say hi once you are officially set up. This channel is open to free talk (within the guidelines, obviously) and mingling with students from every house. It’s also best that if you are planning on discussing specific course material or assignments, to free this chatroom by taking the topic to its designated classroom. 

Common Rooms 

After selecting the House icon from the Welcoming Feast channel, you will gain access to your House common room channel. Pop in and say hello! And if you are a Ravenclaw, feel safe knowing that you do not have to answer a riddle to gain access every day. But you might see a Bronze Knocker Riddle once a week to keep up engagement and conversation in a pursuit for knowledge!

The Library 

In this new addition, a channel has been created to be a nice place to listen to music and study your HiH class materials with other students. Professor Kwan has added music bots for listening to music while studying, and you can join others to listen to the same music and study together.

The Triwizard Tunes (jockey bot) will only take music from specific music apps. These are mostly Spotify, with others like Apple Music, Tidal, and Deezer. Having memberships to these apps will help in the channel, but it is not necessary. 

You can use commands such as:

• !claimownership (This will allow you to run the channel music if you aren’t the first one in the channel and the previous owner has left the chat.)

• !play and then type out the song you’d like to play, you can also drop the song link from any of the approved music playing apps to play that one specifically. Anyone can add songs to the playlist at any time, but only the owner can edit the playlist.

• Anyone can use the !queue to see the playlist queue, and the !lyrics to get the lyric information for the current song.

• The owner can also use !pause and !resume to stop and continue the music playing. If the music has been paused or stopped for 5 minutes, the bot leaves and the queue is gone.

• The owner can also use !skip, !previous, and !shuffle (at the end of the playlist) to skip around songs on the playlist. While still ironing out some bugs, the !skip option will force a vote for all listeners to agree to skip a specific song. 

• The owner can also use !remove to delete any song from the playlist.

• Anyone at any time can also use the !help command to pull up a list of other commands to use. As stated in the guide forum of the channel by Headmistress Oshiro, some of these commands will not work for students anyway. 

Staff Rooms

There are a handful of channels for Staff members too, like the PA room, Prefects Bathroom, Filch's Office (for staff use of the Filch Bot), and a Professor's lounge. You will not have access to these if you are only a student, obviously, as you can only access them with the proper titles. But it's nice to know that the walls extend further than what is immediately seen, or to be included in, if any students are accepted for other roles. 

Classrooms

Here is the main stuff! There are thirteen channels for each popular course. Every classroom will be broken down into several different forums based on year (or topic of the course, in the case of Divination, which is separated by types of divinatory methods rather than years). This is where you can go to talk about the course content. You will not be able to get answers for test questions, but the course staff will help you assess the questions so you can answer them confidently yourself. 

There are some courses, like Charms, Alchemy, and CoMC, that will have an extra classroom forum for extra engagement in the course. CoMC has a pets thread where staff members can post pet pictures (as a student, you will have to DM a staff member to add it for you, as you will not be able to post pictures yourself). Charms and Alchemy have lesson games where you can use the lesson content to complete the activities and earn yourself Points!

Don’t forget to click the follow button (at the top of the page) for both the classroom’s announcement forums and the Year you are currently learning. This will help you keep up-to-date on any info the professors announce or other engagement in the course material, too. By following the forums, you will get the proper notifications of new posts, otherwise, you might miss important information.

As of May 2025, there are only Classroom forums for

• Alchemy (Y2-6),
• Ancient Runes (Y2-4+[meaning year 4 and above are set together into one forum])
• Ancient Studies (but has no years, nor much engagement)
• Astronomy (Y1-3, and is run by Prof. Draekon and HS Velinea Nite instead of Prof. Plumb)
• Arithmancy (for its only Y6 and math assistance)
• Charms (Y1-7)
• Care of Magical Creatures (Y2-4+)
• DADA (Y1-4+)
• Divination (set by divinatory methods instead of Years) 
• FLY (for its only Y1, and is run by Prof. Kwan instead of Madam Fox)
• Herbology (Y1-5)
• History of Magic (Y1-4+)
• Potions (Y1-4+)

As you can tell from this list, Transfiguration class isn't available in the Discordian Halls. Many other classes are managed by other Professors, too. This is mainly because many Professors aren't available on Discord. When HiH Professors resign or cannot provide the extra responsibility to the classrooms, they get dealt with otherwise.  There are also a few more higher courses not involved in the Discordian Castle, and that may be because of limited involvement in the HiH course. As we see with Ancient Studies and Arithmancy, there is not enough engagement for these courses to be necessary here. So other higher courses like Muggle Studies and Magical Art are also not available. If you need assistance for any of these courses, you can still Owl the Professors or team members through HiH. Otherwise, you can ask your questions in other channels like your Common Room or the Great Hall. Someone should have an answer for you. 

Additional Notes: 

The Discordian Castle does have its own House Cup as a separate point system. This will not affect your HiH House Points. Staff will be giving points based on quality conversation and engagement in any channel. Unfortunately, students cannot view personal scores until they have been given points, and cannot view the scoreboard until a Professor announces them (usually randomly in the great hall, but can be requested). 

The Dobby (athix bot) is an activity bot to engage with in any channel. You can use commands such as 

• /minesweeper (for a quick game), 

• /last letter (for a fun word game), 

• /tictactoe (for the quick game with the bot), 

• /8ball (for randomly generated answer to your questions), 

• and /truth or /dare to ask other students

Currently, this bot can not be used by anyone other than Professors. But you can request a game from a Professor in the meantime. 

The Filch (dyno bot) is exclusively for administration purposes. You may see it in any server or when a staff member issues warnings or strikes. Unlike the retired groundskeeper Mr. Filch, the bot will not threaten to hang you by your toes or throw you into the dungeons. It’s still best to keep your interaction with it to a minimum, though.

And there you have it, witches and wizards! The Discordian Castle is a great place to get in touch with other students and staff, where the HiH site doesn't meet expectations. Many new students join each week! As of May 2025, the server has reached 300 members! And I hope to see you there.