Howdy, Folks,
Valerie Hunt, your intrepid girl reporter here, reporting for the Roanoke Glass. Welcome back to column four of my series: World of the Wise: The Dormitories of Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts.
Come journey across Roanoke Academy campus with me!
Rumors abound, Roanoke peeps! This Fearless Reporter Girl will get to the bottom of them!
Our next dorm is De Vere Hall. You would think that the solid warders, silent behind their thick walls and slit windows, would not be the source of many rumors. And yet…
Have you heard that Squirrel Fabian, that handsome and stalwart blond warder of De Vere, has fallen head over heels for statuesque and golden-haired Hope O’Keefe? Rumor has it she likes him, too! They fell for each other at the Year of the Dragon Ball.
Will Hope be the first of the seven O’Keefe sisters to snag a serious boyfriend? One could not do better than hunky Cyril Fabian!
(Yes, Squirrel has a real name. So do Panther, Bobcat, and Kitten—though if you don’t know the rest, I’m not telling! Also, some say that the oldest O’Keefe, Temperance, is dating singer Marble Moth’s son, Marble Moth Jr.)
We all know Master Warder Nighthawk is a member of the Lenni Lenape Tribe of the Wise who still lives in the Hudson Highlands, but not everyone knows that his grandchildren are the children of a kitsune. Freshman Kris Serenity Wright has been seen with fox ears peeking out of her pink hair, and her older sister Glaive Verity has been spotted with a bushy white-tipped tail. No one has spotted fox ears or tails on upperclassman Dirk Fortitude, but we might just not be sharp-eyed enough. There are said to be two younger children as well: Scimitar Prudence and Wakasashi Justice. Nothing yet is known about them.
Enough gossip. Here we go!
De Vere Hall is named for Elizabethan sorcerer, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. About now, you are probably asking: Who’s this dork I’ve never heard of? Why did he get a dorm named after him?
Among the Unwary (that’s those of us, like me, who grew up unaware that there was magic in the world), there is a theory that Edward de Vere wrote a series of plays that were then brought to the public under the name of William Shakespeare. The argument goes: De Vere was a known poet. A lord might not want his name associated with the theater. The plays include lots of information that a person of Shakespeare’s background would not have known or references to places that de Vere visited but Shakespeare did not.
Your intrepid Reporter Girl investigated. After all, what’s the point of a class called True History if it can’t answer historical puzzles, right? Here’s what I found:
Turns out, Shakespeare and de Vere were friends. The Earl of Oxford would answer questions for the playwright about the places he visited. He also used sorcery—jumping and the few glasses that existed back then—to take William Shakespeare to visit Italy, which is why a number of plays are set there.
You heard it hear officially, Roanoke peeps! William Shakespeare wrote the plays, but Edward de Vere got the dorm named after him.
De Vere Hall, the northernmost of the eastern dormitories, is the farthest off the beaten path. Surrounded by hemlocks, the dour building with its arrow-slit windows is the home of those studying Enochean magic—Warding and Obscuration. (Please note: Enochean magic, as taught at Roanoke, is not the same as the diluted version of John Dee’s teaching that has occasionally made it into the mundane world. Unwary folk like me get confused about this.)
De Vere is warded, and students must pass short tests, showing their knowledge of the art of warding in order to enter and leave the building. These tests consist of heavy doors that are always closed. Each door has three pictures carved into them—of three different fey or monsters. A rope hangs from the door, and an object hangs from the rope—a stone with a hole in it, a daisy chain, a red thread. That kind of thing. You have to touch the object to the correct picture to open the door.
Students report that if you don’t know your wardings, that’s it for you. Students have been said to starve to death, just in the last decade, stuck between two of the fire doors, unable to remember the correct combination to get out. My classmate, Wulfgang Starkadder, however, pointed out: “If they starved to death rather than trying all of three options, they were too dumb to live, and the dorm did the rest of us a favor.”
De Vere students are also the ones who help staff the Watch Tower. The Watch Tower is the domain of Master Warder Nighthawk, who maintains the wards of the school and keeps the Unwary—and a lot of baddies—from seeing the school. The Watch Tower is located a tenth of a mile north of De Vere Hall, in the hemlock forest. It maintains the Wards and Obscurations protecting the academy. The Disenchanting Chamber, used for undoing undesirable spells, is on the first floor of this tower..
Future Careers: Obviously, the two main careers that come out of De Vere are warders and obscurers. Both of these are booming career areas in the World of the Wise. The Wisecraft alone hires a boatload of warders and obscurers. They have an entire obscuration department—which I hear is a bit at odds with the Agents, as one is trying to reveal the truth and the other is trying to conceal things.
Every Town of the Wise, every hidden country, every secret sorcery estate needs obscurers to set up their obscuration lanterns to hide them from prying eyes. They also need warders to make sure that supernatural bad guys and monsters don’t work on their property.
Notable Alumni: Cain March, the Grand Inquisitor of the Wisecraft himself lived in De Vere Hall when he was a student. His wife, Cassandra Galatine March, the only conjured human being to ever become real, attended Roanoke for college. She was said to be the best obscuration student who ever attended the school.
Other notable alumni include Bastien Drücher, the Master Warder of the Parliament of the Wise, who attended Roanoke Academy’s upper school before transferring for college to the Prester John’s Academy of Warding, the most prestigious warding school in the world. He also taught for some years at the Geneva Academy of Warding and Obscuration and served as the Master Warder of Switzerland for some years before his current position.
Master Warder Drücher has a seventeen-year-old daughter who is a world-champion competitive folk dancer. Rumor has it that Elizabette Drücher, known to her closest intimates as Liesl, may come to Roanoke as a college freshman next fall.
Are you also a fan of De Vere’s friend, William Shakespeare? You might enjoy this sequel to his play The Tempest. Described as Shakespeare meets Dante, the Prospero’s Children series is fun and full of magic.
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Miranda, daughter of the magician Prospero from Shakespeare’s Tempest, lives in the modern age. Upon discovering that her father has gone missing, she must discover the location of her other siblings and convince them to save their father, before the Three Shadowed Ones destroy the Family Prospero. She is accompanied by her company gumshoe, an airy spirit stuck in a body that looks a bit like Humphrey Bogart. Humor, mystery, wonder.