Ravendorp School of Political & Military Science
Through its proud, though somewhat turbulent history, the Ravendorp School of Political & Military Science has trained the finest men and women from across the land in the arts of warfare, political backstabbing, and occasionally literal backstabbing. None can deny the School’s venerability, but it is up to you to decide whether its core educational pillars make it famous or infamous.Maximilian Hoherberg Von Zottehal The Ravendorp School of Political & Military Science proudly boasts that it is the oldest educational institution in the whole of the continent of Turoza, a boast that is genuinely agreed to be true, if only because Zhisbon will not reveal any information about their Academies of Arcanology, even the date of their founding. For centuries, the School has been educating first the nobles of the Kingdom of Reinhart and following its collapse the rulers of the numerous baronies, earldoms dukedoms etc., in the arts of warfare and about the political battleground. Military and politics are not the only subjects that the School offers, and the school has been known to accept faculty with all kinds of different areas of expertise, including at one point an expert on the amphibious creatures he had found living in one very specific cave in the Underdark. Creatures which later turned out to be figments of the man’s imagination brought on by the stress of being lost deep below the ground. That hiring blunder was, however a blip in what has generally been a fairly distinguished track record in academia and pedagogy. In recent years the School has established itself as the foremost historical institute in Turoza, thanks to the recruiting of the brilliant, Maximilian Hoherberg Von Zottehal to the faculty. The School does, however, have a lingering problem brought on by the students that are attracted to it, namely that cooping together a large group of young, often hot-headed, people who primarily come from the different micro nations of the Mountain Principalities that are constantly at each other’s’ throats does engender a bit too much of a culture of competition, especially when the core modules are trying to train them how best to bet their opponents on the battlefield and debate floor. Duelling is an ever present problem amongst the student body and every year it claims the lives of several students, further fuelling the political discontent that has been burning in the Felsspitze Mountains for years on end.
Structure
The School is overseen by the Master, who takes overall charge of the running of the institution and who is elected for a 10 year term by the other assembled members of faculty, during which time they are the ultimate decision making power. Election to the position of Master is open to anyone who is a full member of faculty at the School, which has resulted in election of some very young Masters in the past, who were able to secure the support necessary for election through bribery and occasionally corruption. The Master also sits in the Senate of Ravendorp, as the School’s representative to protect its interests.
Below the Master sit the Faculty, and below them the Junior Faculty. Admittance to the Junior Faculty is purely based on a candidates’ ability to demonstrate that they are sufficiently knowledgeable about a subject that the School wishes to teach to a panel of other faculty. Beyond this, no formal qualifications are needed, a fact which causes the School’s main rival, the Royal College of Social, Scientific, Historical and Philosophical Studies, to sneer no end at Ravendorp’s strange system of election to the faculty. Junior Faculty have to be in position for five years, after which they are automatically elected to being full Faculty, in which they stay for life, unless they do something that brings disrepute to the School.
Public Agenda
The primary agenda for the School has not changed since its founding in 60S.E., namely the education of the Kingdom of Reinhart’s promising young men and women, to ensure the continued strength and prosperity of the kingdom through the passing on of military and political knowledge and nous. Even though the Kingdom of Reinhart no longer exists, the School still attempts to stay true to its founding principal, even if it means educating the future rulers of the Mountain Principalities’ various micro nations to kill, outsmart or trick one another.
Assets
All of the buildings that comprise the School’s campus in the city of Ravendorp are the property of the School, as opposed to the state. This network of buildings includes accommodation for students and faculty, teaching rooms and the largest and most well-appointed library in the north of Turoza. The School also boasts a significantly large collection of antique and modern arms and armour, many of which have various enchantments placed upon them. This collection is partly a teaching collection as part of the core military education modules all students in the School must undergo, but is also a research collection for the various strands of military and world history that are researched there. In addition, the School has a large and well provisioned coffer from which it can draw funds, thanks partly to the tradition amongst the rulers of the various micro nations that make up the Mountain Principalities to leave a bequest to the School upon their deaths.
Military
The School does not maintain its own military or paramilitary force, but the School has very strong connections with the city of Ravendorp’s military, who act as a police force for the School in return for having their officers be educated for free. Predominantly this revolves around extricating the School’s students from bar fights, and breaking up the numerous duels that the students are prone to challenging one another to. The rather disruptive reputation of their students means that the School has invested in its own jail cells within its campus, where the city guard can easily dump any students that have caused misdemeanours, rather than letting them take their chances in the city’s main prison.
Founding Date
60S.E.
Type
Educational, University
Parent Organization
Location
Notable Members
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