House of the Moth

Maison de la Mothe, now known as The House of the Moth, is a now-defunct wizarding school in Detroit, founded and run by the prominent de la Mothe wizarding family.

Founding
Detroit was founded in 1701 as an attempt by Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, a powerful wizard of House de la Mothe, to create an all-wizard settlement in lower Quebec. The experiment failed in 1805 when Detroit burned to the ground and was thereafter resettled by both Deficients and wizards. After this point, the de la Mothe family became very friendly with Deficients, who had effectively saved the well-being of the settlement and helped it to recover. The actual school, “La Maison de la Mothe” was founded in 1769 when Detroit was part of the Province of Quebec, and later became part of the US in 1796. After being burned to the ground along with the city in 1805, it was rebuilt as the House of the Moth following the capture of Detroit by the US in 1813 during the War of 1812.

Cataclysm
Following WWII and the vast destruction committed by Deficients, the conservative wizarding government began investing heavily in the development of new and highly-destructive magical weaponry in preparation for potential conflict with the Deficients world. House de la Mothe, who had always been seen as pro-Def integration, became persona non grata. In 1966, BAAL supposedly caught whiff of a plan by the la Mothes to reveal the existence of magic to the Deficient community. In 1967, the Detroit race riots were used as a pretext to covertly employ the “nuclear option” against the la Moths. BAAL, at that point a publicly-unrecognized and highly clandestine part of the wizarding government, carried out Operation Panacea, which effectively erased all magic in Detroit and the surrounding area (this area is known as the “Detroit Miasma”), including the House of the Moth, which is no longer a functioning school and has fallen into squalor.

Curse of the Moth
Since the Cataclysm, the de la Mothes have had problems with their magic (“the curse of the moth”) which seems to have been passed down through the family. Multiple members of the family have experienced problems executing spells. The de la Mothes have made an effort to gain a greater presence in the government, and have poured much of their fortune into MIT, especially the MAGE program. The patriarch of the family and former headmaster of the Maison is currently the acting headmaster (besides Virgil) of MIT. A de la Mothe also leads the liberal faction of the government.