Dame Adorabelle's Academy of the Magical Arts

magic school

🏫

location

820 Redbird Lane Road
Havensborough, Centralia

grades

7-12

founder

DameAdorabelle

head teacher

TheHeadmistress (obviously)

Dame Adorabelle's Academy of the Magical Arts, often shortened to Dame A's, is a magic education boarding school in Havensborough, Centralia. The academy was founded by Professor Dame Adorabelle Wallace, distinguished professor of magic studies and life partner to PrincessMeredith.

PrincessAlice, the current monarch of Centralia, has attended Dame Adorabelle's Academy for basically as long as anyone can remember.

Campus

Dame Adorabelle's Academy occupies a rather large campus in southwest Havensborough. The campus is bounded by Redbird Lane Road to the north, a large forest to the south and west, and S. Shannon Avenue to the east, across which lies a small cemetery. The campus’s official mailing address is 820 Redbird Lane Road. Mail addressed to simply 820 Redbird Lane will be delivered successfully, but the local postmistress will subtweet you on Blathr.

The campus seems to be in a perpetual state of autumn, with cool temperatures and vivid orange leaves on all the trees. Oddly, nobody seems to notice this quirk while enrolled or employed by the academy, but graduates and retired faculty have curiously recounted that every day they spent at the school, regardless of the time of year, felt like a brisk October morning.

Academic building

The focal point of the campus, and its largest building, is the academic building, where the majority of classes are held. The building itself has been around since the academy was founded, though it has been expanded many times as the student body grew. The most notable such expansion is the large lecture hall in the east wing, often used by ProfessorForneus while teaching courses with many students. Other areas of the building feature much smaller classrooms.

Perhaps the building's most notable feature is its clock tower, the tallest structure on the academy's campus. Dame Adorabelle herself claimed the clock tower was inspired by those at the PalaceOfSerenity in QueenCity, and like those towers, bells in the tower strike the Westminster Quarters to mark each quarter-hour.

Library

The second oldest building on campus, the library features a grand entrance with a prominent set of double doors, up a few stairs from the courtyard. To comply with PrincessJeanette's accessibility mandates, a wheelchair ramp was added many years ago.

Upon entering the library, one immediately faces the front desk: a workspace enclosed by a counter on all sides. The service desk seems relatively modern compared to its surroundings: a computer with a flat panel display sits on the left-hand counter, and the area is lit by overhead fluorescent lights suspended from the ceiling above.

To either side of the front desk are study tables, each flanked by one or two rows of bookshelves. The majority of the books, however, are kept on the upper floor. One can walk around the front desk to the rear of the building, where two ornately decorated staircases run up from the center to either side of the upper floor—a quiet, dimly lit area with even more stacks of books and a few more, smaller study spaces.

Dormitory Circle

adorabelles_dorms.png Dame Adorabelle's has two dormitories, West Dormitory and East Dormitory. Each dormitory building forms a rough semi-circle around a courtyard, with a smaller building containing faculty living quarters occupying the space between the dorms.

A rivalry of sorts has developed between students residing in East Dormitory and those residing in West Dormitory. West Dormitory is home to the "crazier" and more chaotic students, who love pranks, irresponsible use of magic, and general silliness. In contrast, the students of East Dormitory regard themselves as much more orderly, taking their studies seriously and holding those who flout the school rules in contempt.

Both dormitories provide single-occupant rooms with a bed, desk, dresser, and closet. Each room shares a bathroom with the adjacent room.

Administrative building

A large building in the center of campus, housing administrative facilities, including The Headmistress's main office. Princess Alice and friends once planned to break in after hours, but their plans were thwarted when, to their surprise, they found that the building has no doors or windows at night. You do not want to meet the night watchman.

The administrative building also houses the campus security department. Because Princess Alice, the head of state of Centralia, is currently enrolled, the CentraliaHonorGuard has also established a small facility in the administrative building. The nominal mission of this Honor Guard outpost is to work with campus security staff to protect the Princess, though in practice they mostly protect everyone else from the Princess.

Headmistress's Residence

The Academy's head teacher resides in the Headmistress's Residence, originally built for Dame Adorabelle herself. The house is quite modest, with the current Headmistress using only a small portion of its two stories as a living space, with the rest serving as storage for the various books and magical artifacts she's collected over the years.

Grizelda's Garden

Long ago, some young witches made a very large tree inside a small building as a prank. The school faculty, however, found that they could not "unmagic" the tree, but only convert the magic into something else. The building has long since been abandoned, and today, its empty shell sits conspicuously in the center of the campus, completely overgrown by the massive tree and various other flora. None of the current faculty or staff can remember what the building was originally used for, or how long it has been sitting in its current overgrown state. Students refer to the area as Grizelda's Garden, though nobody is quite sure who Grizelda was or why she deserves credit for the so-called "garden". Grizelda's Garden is a favorite spot for students to retreat to when they want a quiet, undisturbed place to read in the shade.

The Forest

The campus is bordered to the south and west by a massive forest, which is probably enchanted--because, let's be real, most forests are enchanted in some way or another. Students are forbidden to enter the forest without adult supervision, because for some reason every boarding school has a creepy forest nearby and every boarding school has a rule against students wandering into that forest. It's practically a requirement for running a boarding school in this day and age!

A longstanding rumor among current and former students is that the forest adjacent to Dame Adorabelle's Academy is in fact the forest where PrincessMeredith first arrived on Earth, many years before she founded Centralia. This has never been confirmed, as Meredith herself says that all Earth forests look the same to her and that "it doesn't really matter."

That Weird Staircase

Some students, and even the occasional faculty member, have reported seeing a large spiral staircase somewhere in a remote area of the school grounds. Nobody knows where it goes, though the common rumor is "I think the fencing club meets up there or something?"

The Big Yellow School Bus

Dame Adorabelle's Academy owns and operates a single big yellow school bus, used for field trips and other school outings. The bus is prominently marked with the number 871, which is kind of strange, because the school has only ever had one bus.

Princess Alice is forbidden to go near the school bus under any circumstances. This restriction was imposed due to a previous incident, which happened long enough ago that even the Princess cannot remember what happened. The police were apparently invovled, but ConstablePayne refuses to share any details with the Princess out of fear that she'll say "Wow, that's sounds cool!" and try to do it again.

Bunny, on the other hand, refuses to go near the bus because Bunny is allergic buses, which are animals, obviously.

a silly aside about buses being animals

The modern bus is the descendant of the wild omnibus beast. The legend of the double horse emerged from mistaken impressions derived from early sightings of feral pre-industrial buses, perytons, and cameleopards.

Feral buses and wild omnibuses rarely assume a purely mechanical form; it is believed that the Catbus in Hayao Miyazaki's film My Neighbor Totoro was inspired by a rare Earth-side sighting of a feral bus.2

Faculty and Staff

Dame Adorabelle Wallace

The academy's founder and first headmistress. Following a long career as a professor at Hilltop University, Dame Adorabelle, recognizing the value of teaching children with especially powerful magic how to control their powers at a young age, established her own school for students in grades 7 through 12. As headmistress, she personally oversaw Jeanette's education after Princess Meredith selected Jeanette as her successor as ruler of Centralia.

Dame Adorabelle retired long before Princess Alice enrolled at the school, now preferring to live a quiet life at her secluded rural home. No one currently involved with the school has ever met Adorabelle, so students and faculty alike recognize her primarily as the subject of the large statue in the middle of the campus's central quad.

The Headmistress

The current head teacher of the academy. She presumably has a personal name, but students and faculty all address her exclusively as "The Headmistress". Princess Alice seems to regard the Headmistress as a rival, often characterizing her as a cruel tyrant who seeks to destroy childlike whimsy, but by all accounts the Headmistress is actually quite reasonable and levelheaded, and the Princess is just kind of salty that she's not allowed to perform karaoke wherever she wants.

Miss Alisha

A young student teacher who also serves as the resident supervisor for West Dormitory. Princess Alice views Miss Alisha as a mentor figure, often turning to her for advice. Their conversations often open with Alice saying "Hey, Miss Alisha...so I did the thing you told me not to do..."

Unbeknownst to Princess Alice, Miss Alisha is actually an avatar of TheHandler, sent to watch over the Princess during her time at the academy. Somehow Alice herself never makes the connection, despite The Handler somehow always knowing details of incidents that Alice had only discussed with Miss Alisha.

Professor Forneus

An enigmatic instructor of ambiguous gender. Forneus's role as the academy's designated disciplinarian leads to frequent interactions with the Princess, whom they address only as "Alice", with no titles or honorifics. Professor Forneus is the one adult Princess Alice displays any deference towards, and it's often rumored that she is afraid of them, though she openly admits that their classes are the most fun.

Guardswoman Ravenswood

Princess Alice's personal bodyguard, a trooper of the CentraliaHonorGuard's Stellar Cavalry. Despite the Princess having been attending the academy for longer than anyone can remember, West Dormitory is not built with accommodations for her royal guards, so Ravenswood's "quarters" are simply a standard room as issued to students, including the stock bed, desk, and dresser. Ravenswood's room is adjacent to, and shares a bathroom with, Princess Alice's room. Because Princess Alice does not need to use a toilet, and often can't be bothered to shower unless she is nagged to do so, Ravenswood has informally "taken over" the shared bathroom.

Peter Pomeroy

The school's in-house security guard. Pomeroy nominally coordinates with Guardswoman Ravenswood to provide protection to the sovereign princess. In practice, Ravenswood generally lets the princess do whatever she wants, leaving actual security operations to fall to Pomeroy.

Professor Conway

The eighth-grade math instructor. Once gave Princess Alice an F on an algebra quiz after she wrote "I cannot provide this information, as it is a sensitive matter of national security" for every answer.

Ms Ketcham

The physical education instructor. Notably forbid Princess Alice to wear her heavy crown during strenuous athletic activity, especially in the swimming pool.

Students

Princess Alice

The sovereign princess herself. Despite having been a student at Dame Adorabelle's for as long as she can remember, Princess Alice somehow never progresses beyond the eighth grade--in fact, she seems not to understand that progressing through the grades is expected of students, often expressing surprise when her peers graduate from one grade to the next.

The Princess is quite infamous at the Academy for her penchant for chaotic hijinks. She was surprised to learn that Dame Adorabelle's is the only school in the world whose security department has a dedicated "Princess Mischief Task Force".

Bunn E. Pumpkin

A young kid with orange hair, topped with a little bit of green, like a pumpkin stem. Does not talk. Has a pet frog named Ptolemy who makes cute faces when things happen.

Little Opal

A young, witchy girl who likes to float gently about the campus. Is good friends with Princess Alice.

Mel

An upperclasswoman, whom even the arrogant Princess respects as a senpai. May or may not be part of the weird dueling club that uses the Weird Staircase, but if she is, it's just because she likes anime too much.

Calendar Grithbreach

A former student, said to have been involved in the "Mastodon Incident" with ProfessorForneus a long, long time ago. Calendar was a student at Dame A's many years before Princess Alice's enrollment, somehow, even though Princess Alice is noted to have been a perpetual eighth-grader for as long as anyone at the school can remember.

In the present day, Calendar roams the grounds as a ghost. This might seem to imply that Calendar died as a child on the school grounds, but we don't know that for sure--we just know that they're here and child-shaped now. Princess Alice often hangs out in the ruins on the edge of the campus casually chatting with Calendar, seemingly unaware that she's talking with a ghost and not a living fellow student.

"Big Bobby" Butterson

"Big Bobby" Butterson--not to be confused with "Bigbobby" Butterson or "Big Bobbie" Butterson, who are different kids--is a tomboyish 10th grader and, uh, aspiring entrepreneur. If you ever need any "specialized merchandise", Bobby has you covered. No, you didn't see her anywhere near Professor Forneus's supply cabinet last night; don't be ridiculous.

When not in her school uniform, Big Bobby tends to wear a flannel shirt and tattered jeans, with her long, blonde hair held back in a ponytail. She often carries around various pieces of cutting-edge technology, such as a Game Boy Color or a portable CD player. The best way to reach Big Bobby Butterson is by pager.

Professor Forneus once confiscated Big Bobby's Tamagotchi after it kept beeping in class. When Big Bobby went to retrieve it at the end of the school day, she found it had been devotedly fed and entertained and it was reporting 100% happiness.

Brick and Gunther

The "bullies" of Dame A's. They are not actually bullies and bear no ill will against their fellow students, but they've seen too many kids' shows with bully characters, and felt that someone needed to fill that role at that their school. They've been known to steal Bunny's Pokémon cards just because they feel like they're supposed to. Princess Alice attempts to stick up for Bunny, going to disproportionate measures like threatening to sic the CentraliaGuardForces on Brick and Gunther, but ultimately the day is saved by Calendar, who uses his ghostly ghostliness to spook the bullies into handing over the cards.

(The faculty often have to gently remind Princess Alice that she is a princess, not a dictator, and that threatening to turn her military on her own subjects is kind of a bad look for a head of state, even if she's like 13. It's the one time they encourage her to just tattle to the teacher instead!)

Stella and Luna

Two eighth-grade students who bear a striking resemblance to the magical girl warriors Guardian Starshine and Guardian Moonlight. That's because they're the same people. Basically everybody knows that. Except Princess Alice, for some reason? She's always talking about how disappointing it is that Stella and Luna are never around to watch Starshine and Moonlight fight the giant monsters. We don't know why nobody's told her yet.

Miscellaneous

Transportation

The majority of Dame Adorabelle's students prefer to travel to and from the academy via rail, arriving and departing from Havensborough Union Station, located only a few blocks from the campus. Princess Alice, however, feeling a constant need to be the center of attention, chooses to travel by highway, always arriving with a full royal motorcade, escorted by law enforcement and royal guards. At the center of the motorcade is the Princess herself, being chauffeured into town in her pink Cadillac convertible.

Ultimately, however, Princess Alice invariably ends up disappointed when the procession finally arrives at the school: because the other students all traveled by train, they're still congregating at the station, and the only people actually present to watch the Princess's motorcade arrive at the school gates are some extremely unimpressed grown-ups.

The Headmistress forbids Princess Alice to park her Cadillac on campus grounds, citing a longstanding school policy dating back to Adorabelle's administration that only licensed drivers may operate motor vehicles on school property.

Dress code

The official uniform of Dame Adorabelle's Academy is blue, in honor of the princess of the Mile High Kingdom, who famously rescued the princess of Centralia from loneliness, an event commemorated every year on October 26.

While academy policy mandates the standard uniform for all students, enforcement of the dress code is fairly lax, leading many students to add their own little flair to the standard uniform.

Many students choose to personalize their uniforms with small brooches. Princess Alice, for example, symbolizes her sovereignty with a brooch depicting the Centralian circle-star emblem, while Bunny has a brooch in the shape of, well, a bunny. New students wondering where to acquire brooches of their own are directed to "Big Bobby" Butterson, who sells them from a shady briefcase in a dark alley. They are, after all, technically considered contraband, and Bobby can't risk the prefects finding out! Bobby also wants to avoid any conflict with a certain cookie supply syndicate, with whom the prefects have been forced to come to an uneasy truce due to past dress code violations and fear of the turf wars getting "hot" again.

Technology

The primary online communication venue for Dame Adorabelle's students is the school's private ChirpChirp server. While the ChirpChirp messaging app can be accessed from any device, new accounts can only be registered in-person at the school's one computer lab, which is filled with beige PC towers with equally beige PC monitors and is generally considered the least enchanted room in the entire school.


CategoryLocations CategoryEducation CategoryDameAdorabelles

  1. I literally just asked Opal to name a random 2-digit number -- Millennium (1)

  2. Thank you, Sredni, for this delightful bit of nonsense. (2)

DameAdorabellesAcademy (last edited 2024-03-21 22:05:49 by CentralAvenue)