Ban Ard Academy

Ban Ard Academy, otherwise called Ban Ard Sorcerer's School or Ban Ard School, is a prestigious university educating male students in magic, as well as one of the two main seats of Brotherhood of Sorcerers since the fall of Mirthe during Falka's rebellion. Located just outside the city walls of Ban Ard in Kaedwen, its facilities are placed in what used to be an Aen Seidhe palace.
Though the school has an exceptional education system, people like Margarita Laux-Antille may consider its female counterpart, Aretuza, to be more highly esteemed due to its students having better results during comparisons.
==Description==
For the sake of prestige and security, the school is situated outside the city walls in an abandoned elven palace complex, surrounded by a forest to the left of the road to Badger Ravine as well as its own walls. The northern tower is quite prominent and reinforced. This location was chosen so that it would be easier to study the ruins of an ancient elven tomb in the forest's depths.
And indeed, the academy boasts a carefully-maintained garden in a wild style that flows seamlessly into the true wilderness. Students are assigned their space in the dormitory, where alcoholic beverages are prohibited but smuggled nonetheless. 
==School life==
Boys from all social strata are recruited; both the "leftover" sons of nobility, as well as orphans and foundlings found in city gutters or villages, often sick and weak. The tuition and other fees charged here don't differ from ones charged by Aretuza, where the annual fees cost up to 1,200 Novigrad crowns. The two institutions set the price together. The academy has unlimited credit in the Cianfanelli Bank and accepts tuition payments from Vivaldi Bank accounts.
Once enrolled, the students are to obey elder sorcerers throughout their education, can't leave until obtaining the title of fourth-degree master, and are subjected to a strict order. Arguably though, the order is less strict than that at Aretuza. At any rate, many adepts, especially those gathered off the streets, can't stand it and get kicked out of the academy. Students themselves are still mostly easy going, so much so that the Vice-Chancellor Mardin of Rakverelin suggested more severe rules. One of the rules restricts spell usage beyond classroom. Violating it merits a temporary anti-magic field put on the student.
Occassionally, Ban Ard Academy and Oxenfurt Academy engage in exchange programs.
==Expulsion==
Highborn adepts who, despite having passed the entrance exams, turn out to be too lazy or insufficiently intelligent in the course of their studies, often find a place in armies, navies or police squadrons throughout the Northern Kingdoms. Even the least talented have potential in politics. Lower class members expelled from school are less lucky. For them, often the only alternative to a life of crime or wandering is to find a sorcerer-protector who, in exchange for various favors, can continue their magical education. All sorts of men are also recruited by the Kaedwen secret service, agents of which eagerly await rejects just outside the Academy.
==Curriculum and research==
The education lasts 12 years. First, the Giambattista and Bekker tests determine magical branches best suited for each adept. The entire entry examination is structured to be a strict selection to winnow out hopeless cases. The subjects taught are many, including meteorological magic, pyrokinesis, tyromancy and necromancy, the last one being distinct as the Brotherhood firmly banned it elsewhere. Indeed, one praised necromantic feat was accomplished by Perignon who, still a 5th grade apprentice, reanimated an entire cemetery and send it to war. Profound studies of necromancy aside, the academy has boundaries. Delving too deep into the forbidden art earns one expulsion as exemplified by the infamous Azar Javed.
Like Rissberg staff, the learned men of Ban Ard dabbled in experiments. In older days, the Academy, aside from tutoring the Sources with potential, experimented on some to explore their unique capabilities. After the Sources became rare, both sorcery universities switched to just schooling and controlling. When lycanthropy was uncovered in Eberhartt of Rivia, a 4th-grader, his masters began using him as a test guinea pig until he fled. The yellow archespore, an offshoot of the vicious plant, is also widely reckoned to have been cultivated here.
==History==
The first organized school of magic that trained both sorcerers and sorceresses was located at Mirthe, and was followed by a school for girls founded by Klara Larissa de Winter in Aretuza on Thanedd Island. A school for boys was founded by Gerhart of Aelle some time later in an abandoned elven palace complex near the city of Ban Ard. Following the scorching of Mirthe by Falka's troops, the surviving male staff of Mirthe moved to Ban Ard around the 1150s.
After Gerhart died during the Thanedd Coup, the position of the academy's rector was transferred to Dorregaray.
Following disastrous blunders of highly positioned mages, the witch hunts ensued between and . During the first year, Aretuza was outright closed, many novices arrested to be burned at the stake. After helping the sorcerers and sorceresses led by Triss Merigold in Novigrad escape, Sigismund Dijkstra pointed out that those in Ban Ard and other towns still remained endangered.
==Faculty and staff==
==Alumni and rejects==
==Notes==
*In the English translation of , both Northern magic schools are located on Thanedd Island. However, this was a mistranslation, and the original Polish edition states that the male one is located in Ban Ard, and the female one in Aretuza.
==Footnotes==
==References==
pl:Akademia w Ban Ard
ru: Академия Бан Ард
cs:Akademie Ban Ard
Category:Schools