Difference between revisions of "School: Ohtori Academy"

Latest revision as of 16:16, 9 November 2024

Ohtori Academy was founded by the Ohtori Group in the early 1900s on Southern Cross Island. The Academy was built out of a number of smaller schools acquired by the Group, but all of those are now just parts of the Ohtori machine. Based on principles of elegance, nobility and talent, Ohtori Academy is considered an elite institution for elite people. As it boasts a healthy, even aggressive, scholarship program, students from the middle classes and up are perfectly capable of attending, but the best-known students are for the most part very wealthy, very powerful, and very dangerous. That density of wealthy students gives Ohtori a disproportionate influence, with businesses lining up around the block to win the favor of future magnates.

Ohtori Academy's emphasis on personal greatness gives it a number of eccentricities. Its sports programs eschew 'commoner' activities for gentleman's sports; while Juuban practices lacrosse and Infinity's as likely as not to field an ultimate frisbee team to a regional event, Ohtori's top coaches teach combat sports like fencing and boxing, and refined athletics like basketball and rugby. Similarly, Ohtori expects all of its students to obtain a broad education, bulwarking its wide-based general program with after-school arts programs. Unlike Infinity, it offers little in the way of specialty programs; Ohtori expects excellence in everything, from everyone.

By far the most unique feature of the school, however, is Ohtori Academy's enormously powerful student council. A powerful student government has been a part of the Ohtori Group's dream since the foundation of the school, and the student council has long wielded very wide powers. In the modern Ohtori that power has expanded to the point the students wield sometimes more authority than the staff.

Although an informal rule, it is widely known among students that those who oppose the student council quickly find themselves expelled, and by the same token, working with the council provides enormous benefits. Nominally, the student council's task is to protect the interests of the student body, but the current council often seems more interested in its own...

The student council is broken into two parts: The actual Student Council itself, which governs the junior and senior high schools; and the Guardians, a smaller, somewhat more idiosyncratic body which protects the interests of the elementary school students. The youthful Guardians are easily the more idealistic, and although technically they govern different spheres, there are plenty of rumors about the Guardians and Student Council coming to blows over one or the other overreaching their authority.

Ohtori, being a home for elites and nobles, is inevitably rife with intrigue. The Student Council, and a select few other students, wear a rose signet they guard jealously; some say there are others around campus who wear a strange golden mask. People in black suits who won't talk to anyone, businessmen of world-class companies who come by seemingly much too often. Ohtori is a hub of mysterious agendas and transformative people, and the rumors about those many agendas are myriad.

Unbeknownst to the normal students but nakedly obvious to those with the sight, Ohtori is a veritable goldmine of mystic power. Where Infinity's very foundations were designed to leash the World Tree's power, and Juuban draws strange people to it like a magnet, Ohtori Academy's grounds are rife with the seals and signs of ancient evil. The island is so thick with ancient powers of the soul that emotion on the island runs thicker - passions higher, obsessions hotter, loves more powerful and hates more virulent.

Perhaps that should have been the first sign of the doom that lives on Southern Cross Island, but it is far from the only. The clock in the library ticks on, but not to anything so pedestrian as tomorrow; the mine in the hills leads down, but what is the light at the bottom? Witches, Orphans and Noise throng across the island, drawn to a rich stew of emotion, and in turn thickening that miasma of obsession. Above it all, the Castle Where Eternity Dwells looms invisible and insubstantial over the island - a silent harbinger of the coming revolution of the world.

History

Long ago, in another Age, there was the Land of Fuuka - a shining island of light and wonder. In that place, the Obsidian Lord held court over his kingdom; a demon king of phenomenal power, sealed away by the power of the Silver Crystal. To placate him, and to serve as entertainment for the masses, once in three hundred years the HiME Festival was held, where those chosen by the King's power would battle for supremacy, the King's hand in marriage - and the honor of a single miraculous wish from their new groom. It was one such wish that allowed the release of Metallia, bringing about the fall of the Silver Millennium.

Amid the ruins of the Serenity Dynasty, the Silver Queen's bindings shattered, and at last the Obsidian Lord was free. Summoning to his side the spirits and powers of his innumerable brides past, the Obsidian Lord called forth the beacon of his omnipotence, the HiME Star. With the Senshi fallen and the Earth Court sundered, the few surviving HiME themselves were forced to rise to the challenge, binding the King to Fuuka, and using great magic to seal the island away; then giving their lives to hurl the HiME Star far into space, where Serenity's final wishes ensured it would once again wander, lost.

The Age turned, as ages do; but the new world would not be safe forever. Clow Reed wouldn't break the Earth's seals for hundreds of years, but another force found its way across the stars, an alien race seeking respite from the destruction of their world by their own hubris. Crashing to Earth, the power that their science could barely contain blew through the seals hiding the Land of Fuuka from the world; when people arrived to investigate, the visitors begged for the aid of magic to seal away the accursed legacy they had created, and together, they settled what would become Southern Cross Island - and buried yet another terrible secret beneath its hills.

The greatest seal broken, the HiME Star veered toward Earth anew, beginning yet again the ancient Festival - more savage now, without the Silver Queen's bindings to soften the Obsidian Lord's ravenous malice. But the Earth was lucky, for the Obsidian Lord's new bride was cunning and brave, and found a way to cast him back to sleep and send the Star hurtling back into space. On the site of the island, before vanishing into history, she founded an academy that became the moniker for the whole island: Southern Cross.

More recently, Southern Cross Academy and several other Island schools were acquired by the wealthy Ohtori family, and the whole collection of schools renamed after its new masters. Patterning the new curriculum after Western academies and building toward a future of excellence, Ohtori became known for its harsh studies but sterling graduates. Building on that tradition of superiority, the Ohtori student council was given phenomenal power, and faculty allowed to override them only rarely. In time, a young prodigy in the elementary school campus, with bright eyes and a powerful insight, even convinced the Family to create the elementary section its own body, to protect the hearts and interests of the younger students: The Guardians.

In the last few years, the present head of the Ohtori house has fallen ill. The position of president of Ohtori Academy - de facto master of the grounds - has fallen to his daughter's fiance, Akio. Akio is perhaps the most hands-off president the school has ever seen, leaving things largely to the respective principals and student bodies of the various schools; however, when Akio speaks, every student listens.

Student Body

This list can be edited by players to add their characters and NPCs to their appropriate grade. Feel free to add your name as a link to your character page!

Student Council

Among the significant adults of Ohtori's staff, Elementary School Principal Tsukasa Amakawa and Middle/High School Principal Mashiro Kazahana report directly to the headmaster of the overall academy; the Ohtori clan patriarch is presently very ill, however, and so the acting headmaster is Akio Ohtori, the fiance of the Ohtori heiress. Akio engages his duties extremely rarely, but when he does, his word is absolute.

However, Ohtori is notable for its especially powerful student body. This is an old tradition, and it is one of the few things Akio Ohtori has involved himself directly in maintaining. The Middle and High School Student Councils in particular wields nearly absolute authority, even able to overrule Principal Kazahana if they wish to... although that might be more the fact that the faculty lives in elemental terror of Juri Arisugawa. Indeed, there is a policy - informal and yet absolute - permitting the council to unilaterally expel students who defy their will (although often the Guardians of the Elementary School involve themselves when this clause is enacted).

It is entirely common for positions to be made up and eliminated by the Councils as necessary. While there are occasionally elections, Ohtori isn't exactly a bastion of democracy, and councilors are often summarily replaced by siblings (or rivals!) if they become mysteriously unable to perform their duties.

If you'd like to join the Student Council (new characters can easily be retconned in), please contact the Staff on-game.

Clubs

Owing to its venerable history, Ohtori's clubs are often especially formal and tradition-heavy. Many observe their own small holidays on especially significant dates, such as the anniversary of the club's founding. Clubs of the same and different types often engage in intrigue against one another, to their own ends or simply for pleasure.

This list may be edited by any player who wishes to note the on-camera existence of their club. There are many other clubs at Ohtori not listed here because they don't currently have any player characters in them.

Uniforms

Ohtori Academy's yellow-themed uniforms may be found here.

For more information, please see: Schools, Organization: Ends of the World, Theme