City of Secrets

Ravenswood Academy

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Ravenswood Academy

Ravenswood Academy

The Ravenswood Academy is a coed, non-profit boarding school located in the countryside on the outskirts of Ann Arbor, Michigan. The school was founded in 1929, and is a small, combined middle-school and college-preparatory high school with 46 acres of land. The school has had a fluctuating enrollment between 60 and roughly 100 over the last 20 years.

The school has had financial problems for over thirty years. In the last few years, the academy has suffered declining enrollment, and some speculated that the school was on the verge of closing. The school still faces the challenge of a lack of "legacy" students (students whose parent(s) also attended Ravenswood), but its critical shortfall in charitable giving has been resolved (at least for the time being) by a sizable anonymous donation in 2007.

Few know the school's actual purpose as a training academy for superhumans and other heroes. The fact that the cave complex beneath the school serves as a base for the New Champions is an even more closely guarded secret.

History

Ravenswood Academy was originally founded in 1929 under the name Washtenaw School, and was a small, but relatively prestigious private boarding school. Attendance slowly declined and the school was on the verge of closing its doors when it was purchased in 1958 by the heiress to the Galis fortune, Alexis Ackerman (Miss Victory).

Alexis had her own plans for the school, to transform the school into an academy for superpowered young people and other would-be heroes. In addition to the usual curriculum, the academy would teach its students discipline, control and proper values and ethics. Alexis gave the school its unusual name as a shared joke with/on Nightraven, and placed him in charge of the development and day-to-day management of the school. Although his duties as a government superhero kept him from being as active in the school as Nightraven, Galis also appointed Captain Freedom to help manage the school.

The school went through a particularly tumultous period beginning in the mid- to late-sixties as the U.S. escalated its troop deployments in South Vietnam. Captain Freedom, struggling vainly to hold together his team of costumed heroes, the Justice Squadron, despite members' serious differences over the war, also continued to butt heads with Nightraven.

Although they had always had an antogonistic relationship, they had specific tensions surrounding the school. For example, Nightraven suggested that Captain Freedom's close relationship to the government endangered the school and its students. Nightraven went so far as to accuse the Captain of leaking information about the school and its students to elements in the Department of Defense and the Department of Superpowered and Paranormal Activities.

During an argument in 1968 the two came to blows when Nightraven essentialy accused Captain Freedom of being duped by those in the government who wished to use the school as a training center for a new generation of Cold War super-soldiers. After leaving the academy grounds that night, Captain Freedom never spoke to Nightraven again and severed all ties to the academy.

Next-Gen

Not all the students at the academy are supers, and of those who are, only a handful take part in active superheroic activity on a regular basis. This small group has come to be called the Next-Gen.

The latest incarnation of the Next-Gen group was renamed the Watch, and became the official superteam of Millenium City under the auspices of Sen. Maxwell's (Captain Freedom) Special Talents and Abilities Team (STAT) program. This has done little to settle the bad blood between Nightraven and Captain Freedom. With the murder of Cyclone by Gamma, the Watch has disbanded.

Faculty

Because of Nightraven's status in the superheroic community, he has been able to furnish the school with a rotating faculty of former heroes, who have practical experience with the kind of situations that heroes-in-training may someday face. There are, however, some "tenured" superheroic faculty.

Although the New Champions use the school as a base of operations, they have not at this time established themselves as formal faculty at the school.

Alan Wilson. Formerly the late seventies speedster Hot Rod, Nightraven recruited Wilson from a flophouse and dried him out from a decade-long barbituates addiction. He can still run at incredible speeds when necessary, but now serves as the academy's physical education instructor.

Doctor Destiny. Teaches courses on mysticism and the occult from time to time; can be convinced to tutor those very few students who possess some mystical ability (as he did Seven, for example).

Bowman II. Although he lived in the Oregon after his retirement, Thomas Quinn spent a few weeks every summer sharing insight from his quarter-century career as a costumed crime fighter and visiting with Nightraven.

Doctor Silverback. Guest lectures on topics in science and technology.