The Gaming Den

Sunset Academy High
A campaign style for After Sundown

What happens when a minor is attacked by a vampire or werewolf and survives, or stumbles into another realm and trades their soul or heart for magical power, or creates a mystical elixir or discovers a demonic artifact or their past life?

It’s almost like it’s a metaphor or something…
Combine adolescent hormones, a sense of the confusion as to what you are far beyond the confusion of puberty, a desire to prove oneself to the world, the poor judgment and decisions of youth, and phenomenal supernatural powers, and you have in front of you a serious danger to the Vow of Silence.
While all children must contend with mysterious changes and incomprehensible urges, there’s a big difference between wanting to ravish the person you’ve been friends with for years who’s suddenly attractive, and wanting to eat her liver. “Normal” kids may have to see a therapist because their uncle touched them in bad places, but the children this game deals with need the special counseling which can only come from another person who was ambushed in a dark alley and left to die of exposure after being nearly exsanguinated, or surrounded by grinning imps who hunger for their flesh and are damned intent on taking it. Normal kids may be distressed by the strange new physical properties of their bodies, but at least every other person of their sex they know is going through generally the same thing. The kid who wakes up in the ICU with vestigial wings and retractable fangs definitely isn’t going to find someone to talk to about it in the next bed over.

Oh, and as a style thing that’s admittedly a bit lame, but still fun, the person who runs a game of Sunset Academy is called the Headmaster/mistress.

A Problem For Which The Time Has Come
The potential problem of supernatural youths was a negligible one in past eras. Between superstitious peasants, the tradition of misdirection, and humanity living either in remote villages or disease and crime ridden cities, the indiscretions of monstrous youth were easily waved away.
But everything changed when the Enlightenment came. It shattered superstition, cleaned up the cities, and expanded the networks of trade on which news travels. After that came the Industrial Revolution, and populations of all sentient sorts exploded, human and monster, old and young alike. A few supernatural robber barons, who had the brilliant idea of turning orphans to crew their factories cheaply and unending, alone ballooned the number of children running around with terrifying features and inhuman desires.
Institutionalization

The Syndicates were finally forced to confront the problem. They recognized that children were, more and more, being educated in public or private institutions, surrounded by mortal peers, rather than through tutors, mentors and parents in isolated settings. They recognized that so many were arising, for a myriad of reasons, that something like the mortal institutionalized education model was becoming the best way to handle this. Though they were loath to do it, even the fairly forward thinking World Crime League and Cauchemar Communes, they founded the first school for the sole instruction of supernatural youths.

The first such school was founded in England, and was derisively called St. Melanie’s, referring to an… instructional Nosferatu shadow-mage of the covenant who was finally hurtled to the lowest echelons of the Covenant through the heavy application of flaming potassium laced wooden clubs in a storm with extreme prejudice by Daevas who were tired of having all their secrets known and held over them. Now there are a good number more such schools, each with their own names, but collectively, they are commonly known as Sunset Academies.

These schools mirror mortal public education in many ways, but differ in some key areas. First, while there are enough monstrous youths to mandate such a system, there are still far fewer than mortal children, and so each school serves a far greater area, and will typically teach all grade levels in one institution, rather than having separate institutions for each. This is as much for the simple fact that apparent age does not correlate to mental development in supernaturals, too, as for reasons of population. It is just as likely, if not more so, that a Strigoi who appears to be four years old is on par with a High School senior in knowledge and maturity, as they might be to a mortal four year old. Only a few particularly large geopolitical areas have more than one such school, though often they have one official school, and one or two offshoots. A graduating class in a given year might be as small as a few hundred.
Secondly, the schools are a strange mix of private and public institutions. They are funded through a joint effort of the Syndicates, with some amount of private donations from “altruistic” (ie, very secretively scheming) supernaturals, as well as having their own methods of raising funds (though these are less bake sales and more “there’s troglodyte pariah a few miles away, no one will miss him, and he is said to have loads of valuables. We will be taking student volunteers to go kill him and take his stuff.”).

A Place Where No One Knows Your Name
A unique problem for the children who attend Sunset Academies is a very real displacement, infrequently experienced by their mortal peers, and even less frequently experienced by their elders.
Entire classrooms can be filled with a year’s new kids. School years don’t have a definite beginning—because a minor could be mauled by a werewolf any time of year and warrant immediate placement in the nearest Sunset Academy. Nor do they have definite endings—because it’s more important that students make abiding by the Vow of Silence second nature than that they learn to do complex math calculations by a certain point.
Faculty members have no reason to care how a student feels about spending ten years at the school. They have every reason to care that the young vampire they’re responsible to the societies for won’t go out and tell some codependent, short-sighted, self-centered teenage girl with daddy issues that they’re a vampire and then show her by catching a truck in front of her family and friends.
That said the academies are unlikely to actually keep a student for ten years unless they have an influential parent or sire. Students who don’t start showing some willingness to adhere to the Vow within at longest a couple years are often placed in suicide squads which are maintained by cults and societies, allowed no freedom, and only deployed when 90% casualties are certain, and then with close monitoring.
Faculty members attempt to keep the students from killing each other, or dying on Funding Trips, but there’s only so much they can do. Instruction at Sunset Academy is essentially year round, and advancement is handled purely through instructor recommendation, and not just for these reasons, but also, again, because physical and chronological age are largely meaningless to the supernatural.

Reading, Writing, Reanimation
Sunset Academy are more than continuation schools for supernaturally dangerous youth, and more than institutions that teach novice supernatural how to use their powers. They serve both purposes, as well as having the side benefit of welding together something approaching the typical high school social experience with supernatural society. It is entirely normal (for a given value of the word) for a Sunset Academy student to go from Algebra II to Pyromancy 101 in the same day, and then have a History of the Vow final later that afternoon.
That said, most gamers already went through math, science and literature in high school, and will be more interested in what goes on in Potions or Divination class. Also, when you’re a shark-mawed chthonic horror, there’s only so much you’re going to have use geometric proofs in later life, and the world doesn’t get infested with demons if you screw them up. As such, Sunset Academy games should focus more on the classes which cater to the supernatural part of supernatural youths which afford more interesting scenarios, just as the Academies do in-world. A given mundane subject receives only about a quarter of the time which a mortal school would devote to the same subject, while classes in general are taught throughout the day, with most of the time being given to more esoteric subjects.

Casketball and Fearleading
An interesting thing happens when you take people from everything they know, and things that were a big part of their life--they try to recreate them, albeit often with changes, intentional or no, based on their new circumstances.
When the Sunset Academies were first created, they served purely as institutions for teaching young supernaturals about their powers and impressing upon them the importance of maintaining the Vow of Silence. This left the students with a lot of free time, which they often used to pursue old interests--chess, poetry, football, and the like.
As time went on, the students started asking for, in some schools, or establishing, in others, leagues, meets, and all the other aspects of student clubs and teams. They even began to form student councils to take their requests and demands to the faculty, often electing charismatic students with socially-oriented sorceries as president. Some academies tried to suppress these councils, seeing them as arrogant and presumptuous, but the wider response was that these councils were valuable tools for letting students learn about the politics they would soon find very central to and overshadowing of their lives.
The students of modern Sunset Academies have imported cliques, sports teams, yearbooks, clubs, cheerleading, pep rallies and dances wholesale, but these things were imported in much the same way that coke or pepsi is imported to another country--with changes and additions to match the local pallet.
Much like After Sundown shows the passions and rages of all men, but writ large in bold red letters, the struggles of high school are all present in Sunset Academies, added to the struggles of boarding schools, but the drama is over-amped and raw like the drama of an Italian opera on the live stage.

Inspirations
There's actually a surprising number of "supernatural kids in school" works. Perhaps the two best known works are Harry Potter and Monster High (an argument could be made that Monster University beats out Monster High, but those are more "weird beasties" than monsters, regardless of the name). It's generational, though. X Men is the same concept, just a different explanation for the abilities.

The primary inspirations for Sunset Academy are, appropriately enough, Harry Potter, X Men, and Monster High. Indeed, the setting was inspired by the fact that the majority of Monster High characters can be made in AS with little to no problem.

Other promising looking works which handle the concept are All Ghouls School, Rosario + Vampire, Wandering Monster High School, and the Something Positive story arch "Homecoming of Elemental Awful."

Character Creation
Characters in Sunset Academy games are, as a rule, young, and thus typically have slightly smaller numbers than the characters in a typical After Sundown game. The number of supernatural powers they have can vary depending on the style of game the group wants, but Sunset Academy characters never begin with personal or cult powers. Backgrounds are typically school focused, often representing clubs and classes, but nothing requires them to be.

In general there are three ways to handle Sunset Academy games in so far as powers are concerned. It depends on what you want from a game about young supernaturals in school.

The New Kid(s): One way to handle Sunset Academy games is for young supernaturals to have only the most basic powers of their type. As they grow in experience, they develop their remaining powers, and they typically are required to take a class on being what they are. Vampire students take Vampirism 101, Lycanthropes take Lycanthropy 101, etc. They will also have a mentor for their specific subtype. Sunset Academies employ at least a couple advisors of each subtype they have students of.

The Hardest Thing to Learn is Control: Young supernaturals may gain their full suite of powers upon their transformation just like characters in a normal After Sundown game, but have no control over them, or only control the most basic powers. Stressful situations can cause characters in these games to suddenly manifest one of their powers. Characters in this style of game are required to take classes meant to teach them control, but these classes tend to be more cosmopolitan than the “Supernatural Type 101” courses of The New Kids, and Academies tend to make do with professors acting as advisors for students of their type, rather than hiring specialized advisors.

All the Options at a Fraction of the Power: After Sundown posits that every supernatural has a suite of eight powers. Your group may decide that having fewer than eight powers makes your character feel like less of a monster, and erratic powers are disruptive to play in a way that makes the game less fun. In this game style, characters start with their full suite of powers, and can control them normally, but their powers are undeveloped and weak. Characters in this game have a cap on power net hits equal to their Edge score, and very frequently do everything they can to increase their Edge scores over the course of the game in pursuit of power and influence.

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Sunset Academy Characters: Characters in a Sunset Academy game are almost invariably Origin Story characters. They have been recently turned, but they do generally start the game having been changed into supernatural beings. They have only the barest introduction into supernatural society, literally starting the game by being introduced to their new school having only had the opportunity to read a very basic primer on what was hidden from them up to just about a month ago.

Attributes: All of a character’s attributes start at 1. The player then prioritizes their Physical, Mental, and Social attributes, distributing 1 point to one pair, 3 points to another pair and 5 points to the last pair. Then they get 2 additional points that they can place anywhere they want. An individual attribute cannot be higher than 5 on character creation. Luminaries begin the game with an Edge of 3.

Active Skills: A character’s Active Skills start at zero. The player then prioritizes their Physical, Social, and Technical skills, distributing 10 points to one set, 15 points to the next set, and 20 points to the last set. Then they get 4 points they can place anywhere they want. An individual skill cannot be higher than 4 on character creation.
The character then chooses two skill specializations. Remember that they also gain a specialization for each Technical skill they have trained.

Backgrounds: A character starts with 24 points of Backgrounds. No Background can start higher than rating 5. It’s important to note that characters are new to supernatural society. Backgrounds are going to be generally mundane, usually scholastic or extracurricular pursuits, though it’s possible that they had a previous interest in something that they thought was mythological and found to be real. Leviathans, Animates, and possibly Transhumans or Witches may have been raised in a setting that allows them to start with a greater familiarity with the supernatural world, if not society.

Resources: A character begins play with three points of Resources. It is unusual for a character to have more than one point of a given resource, and they should generally not possess Destinies or Secrets. With a good story and the agreement of everyone at the table, a character may take on up to a three point obligation for a resource of equal value.

Motivations: As supernatural beings, characters have both Master Passions and Driving Passions, and will generally have Ethical Taboos. It’s important to remember that the characters are teenagers at oldest, and so will typically have Driving Passions and goals which are at best foolish or immature, and may have Ethical Taboos which are inconsistent, poorly reasoned, or flat out stupid. They’re kids, albeit kids who can throw fireballs and summon storms, but that’s kind of the point of being a kid, it’s expected for them to have those ideas kicking around.

Advantages and Disadvantages: Characters can have Advantages and Disadvantages, but the number of the one should equal the number of the other.

Magical Transformation: Characters have a number of powers based on the style of game the group has agreed upon:

• In The New Kids, characters have only the Core Discipline powers and one Basic power of their splat.
• In The Hardest Thing to Learn is Control, characters have their full suite of splat powers, but stress can cause powers to activate. In effect, characters in this game type are more prone to their Master Passions, and have two such passions.
• In All the Options at a Fraction of the Power, characters have their full suite of splat powers, and no less control than a typical After Sundown character, but cannot achieve numbers of net successes on a power roll greater than their edge score.

At the group’s option, characters may start the game as normal kids and roleplay their transformation events. Due to how boring this would be if drawn out, it’s suggested to not take more than a single session, two at most, to handle these preludes, and to set them during summer break, so that players don’t have to roleplay sitting through classes they have already taken or are taking.

Alternatively, the group may choose to take the roles of characters with a bit more experience at a Sunset Academy, about a month or so, during which time they have found their new supernatural interests, and may more easily and commonly have Backgrounds which are not mundane, but still take the form of scholarly or extracurricular pursuits, such as Deathball or Potions.

Backgrounds
Backgrounds in Sunset Academy function identically to After Sundown Background skills, but are frequently more school or teen culture oriented. Also, it’s a bit easier to quantify what Background Skill levels mean.
When a Background is an academic subject, numbers generally correlate to the grade the character received or is likely to receive in the corresponding class:
1 point: Exploratory/Audited Course—the character is vaguely interested, but just checking things out.
2 points: D—the character may be interested, but other things get in the way. Maybe they just suck at remembering homework.
3 points: C—the character is adept at the subject, and interested, but doesn’t rise above expectations.
4 points: B—the character is commonly found studying the subject, and attacks homework for the course immediately.
5 points: A—the character is an overachiever, and their friends hate them a little bit for it, until their Pyromancy extra credit saves their lives on the Dreamlands field trip. They will frequently spend all their free time reading up on the subject, even when they’ve already read the book enough for every paragraph to be highlighted.

Sounds pretty cool, would give a try 7.5/10

Still working on it, it'll probably be more fluff than mechanics. I'm debating on how much to compromise the horror setting stuff in favour of the high school setting. Same questions as when we talk about wizard schools.

I was thinking just now, this could give a use for those Black-eyed kids I'd made. Its cool though, I'd been thinking of how to do an after sundown x-men.
I'd started on a short story about a freshman in college who basically turns himself into a necromancer, but of course one (or more) of the covenants had thought of that a long time ago. So at every school there's a "scout" basically who picks up students wanting to "publish" their findings on x, y, or z supernatural type.
My thought process being that, well if the tech side of A.S. is accessible in any way luminary people working on experiments in certain fields might stumble across, Icarids, Frankenstiens, Androids, and Necromancers with "relative" frequency as supernaturals go, so the covenants have an answer for that naturally.
The high school version has a lot of traction too though, as we have things like "teen titans", and x-men etc.
Really cool overall though, one of my favorite things about After Sundown was the amount of "pop culture" that can be fit into it, and figuring out HOW they can be fit into it.

Well, off the top of my head, only one of the Monster High characters presents much of an issue when she's ported over to AS-- the vampire character basically never gets to use her powers because she doesn't drink blood. Unless the group's ok with saying that she has a vegan blood-like elixir that works close enough.

Which actually brings up a really important point. While there are certainly going to be aspects of horror to a Sunset Academy game, that's really not the main theme of the game. The main themes of the game are the same themes any high school game would have, just amped up to 11 because you have lots of super powers and little supervision. Sunset Academy is about existential angst, but it's a much more relateable existential angst that everyone's actually been through-the angst of bad puberty metaphors and trying to find yourself because you're suddenly an "adult" (or you think you are because you've started wanting to hump things and shaving)

Mild note: a lot of powers (mostly the Universals) don't even roll dice and are plenty monstrous and/or disruptive depending on what you mean by disruptive. In other words: just capping hits with Edge isn't going to quite do what you want necessarily.

Thanks, I'll have to revisit that. As it is, when I was writing up the erratic control one I realized I was just describing a passion frenzy.

One thing I'd recommend you think about: The actual purpose of schools. Ostensibly the purpose of schools is to teach valuable academic skills to children so that we can assume that everyone past a certain age (barring those who failed to get degrees) will know how to do certain things. But it's hardly a secret that no one remembers how to do 80% of the stuff they learned in Algebra. I'm like four years out of high school and I couldn't even tell you what classes I took in my freshman year, let alone what they actually taught me. Actual high schools have two purposes: Keeping kids off the street in a society that's no longer willing to put them in factories for 12 hours a day, and getting them into the habit of doing lots of work on a deadline while also proving that they are capable of doing so. And the second one is actually more the realm of universities (which is also where, depending on the major, you also see the emergence of more actually useful skills being taught). Education past the fifth grade doesn't teach you much of anything that you'll actually be expected to know in life.

Monsters have a certain set of things they're expected to do, but it's got bugger all to do with hitting deadlines. Monsters need to know what the Masquerade is about, and they need to demonstrate an ability to adhere to it. Those who can't need to be caught before they cause an actual Masquerade problem, and if they can't be reformed they have to be got rid of, because unlike regular high schools an 80% graduation rate is not good enough. You need 100% of your graduates to be willing to maintain the Masquerade. You can afford to slip up a little bit on the other accepted rules of supernatural society. It is not a big deal if one of your graduates spurns the syndicates and their coterie politics so long as they don't break the Masquerade, because if they offend the Makhzen that is the Makhzen's problem and the local prince can sort it out on his own.

The upshot of this is that learning control is absolutely vital and monster kids who can't seem to be taught disappear in the middle of the night sooner or later (all this being dependent on control actually being a thing you need to learn, of course) and there are strict regulations on when and how you can use your powers that exist not because they are actually Masquerade threats at all, but simply as a test on the monster kids' ability to hold back on using their powers at inappropriate times. If there is no usage of powers outside the classroom and a monster kid ends up using Celerity to get to class anyway, that's not a Masquerade threat on its own, but if you let him graduate he's probably going to be sloppy about his powers and cause semi-regular Masquerade leaks. Of course, you won't be punished if you don't get caught and monster kids really want to use their powers outside of class, but that actually only reinforces the lessons being learned: Be discreet with your powers so that other people don't notice. For this reason, staff who become aware of powers use only through the use of their own supernatural abilities will probably not bother busting those responsible unless they're feeling vindictive.

Monster youth also absolutely need to be warehoused even more than mortal teens, again for Masquerade reasons. The ideal academy is remote as possible, and that means academies that are boarding schools are certainly preferred. Academies that actually exist in other worlds are the best option so long as they can be supplied and the standards of living meet the faculty's requirements. Which means for a significant number of monsters kids, high school is literally Hell.

Oh yeah, definitely. Hell, there will be headmasters who are two thousand years old and have a perspective of "I didn't learn to read or do more than basic arithmetic until I was 300 years old, it's more important for students to be beaten into adherence to our laws."

The games will be primarily about the "here's what you need to know about supernatural" and the "alright fine, go beat each other senseless on the fields, just don't fucking break the masquerade" parts of being a student. Clubs, student council and sport teams that exist because the academies had a bunch of students coming from mundane high schools and wanting those things and they basically don't care what students do so long as they learn their shit and don't kill too many of each other.

Absurdly Powerful Student Council, Corporal Punishment, School Clubs Are Serious Business and Boarding School of Horrors will be in full effect.

Maybe some academies are in Hell, but the majority are probably in remote locations in the mundane world, or in Maya, where the dangers are generally going to be less active. Even in Maya, the occasional giant animal or chimera can be diverted or fought off, and the beasts will generally learn that the school grounds aren't worth the trouble, where as the Dark Reflection is filled with sapient threats who will plot and scheme and present threats which can be a lot harder to detect.

That's true, but the threats in Hell can also be negotiated with, and you've got to do something with those students who don't seem to be grokking the whole "Masquerade" thing. Getting 20% of the students for free is potentially a lot more lucrative than maybe getting all of them or maybe getting snuffed depending on how the siege goes.

In my mind, the thing they do with the students not getting it is use them as cannon fodder on class trips.

Depends on who their parents and friends are....

Well, true, but in general these kids don't have parents in the traditional sense, having been taking away from any living family upon being transformed, and even if a given masquerade under achiever has powerful friends, generally the teachers are still more powerful.

It strikes me as odd that there'd be a high attrition rate. Supernaturals are frequently pretty sturdy, and the faculty members would be quite capable of suppressing fights. There'd only be fatalities if they just don't give a shit, raising the question of why they're at the academy to begin with instead of a supernatural who actually cares.

I'm kind of thinking one part the faculty don't give enough of a shit, one part emulating battle school anime stuff (Kill La Kill comes to mind most readily).

On the other hand, even apart from credulity or verisimilitude, saying that faculty don't care enough to suppress fights is removing possible antagonists, and possibly interesting antagonists to boot.

While a beginning character certainly won't be able to step up to their Pyromancy teacher, the asymmetric nature of supernatural power growth means that there's no reason some students couldn't eventually be on par with their instructors.

Even with that said, there's the point raised by Cham--given that these schools are supposed to be teaching adherence to the Vow of Silence, 80% graduation rates doesn't cut it. They need every student who leaves a Sunset Academy has to have proven that they will maintain the Vow of Silence, and if they haven't, then the academy needs to either hold them as students until they do prove that, or they need to be removed as possible threats to the masquerade.

Leviathan, at least, often have Leviathan relatives.

One thing I'd note is that you could easily and drastically change up the expected operating procedures just by writing up blurbs about what happens when the institution is ran entirely by particular cults. For example, if you want to run anime battle school style then the Black Hand could be an obvious fit for your faculty. After all, they're an organization of assassins who firmly believe that bloody minded conviction is the only quality worthy of being called a virtue. The Seven Master Killers thus have no objections whatsoever if the head of the student council gets into brutal fist fights with the treasurer and justifies his actions by citing Nietzsche and Giant Frog. Meanwhile, the Stellar Oracles more easily fit into a kinder, gentler game given that they're already leftovers from a WoD meets Sailor Moon project Frank once tinkered with.

That's a good idea. I was thinking more of having schools run by different societies, but cults is a better idea, and the two can exist hand in hand.

Radiant- Good point. Animates have creators too, though it's likely that they're more rare unless animates can actually physically and mentally mature. Even if they can, most creators would probably create mature animates by preference (and if they don't, their motives need to be examined, especially if they're androids....). Transhumans may come from lineages, or lycanthropes vaguely incest-rapey clans.

I'm still working on the concept, since it started with "Hey, all these characters of this doll line can be made in AS!"

Characters probably won't find themselves becoming part of cults a lot (though there's nothing preventing that), and cults will likely be "soft replaced" by cliques (meaning that they take the place, but cults won't be entirely absent). A good number of cliques will probably be at least similar to cults, if not "Cult Jr.," such as the Burnouts being a bunch of druggies and trouble-making rebels.

Animates might not physically mature, but I think they could mentally mature and gain more control of their powers.

If nothing else, Celerity would be awesome for gaming.

Did some of rewriting of the first post to reflect points raised since it's posting.

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Themes of Sunset Academy
After Sundown is a game in which you play people who have become monsters in the world of horror movies fighting against bigger monsters.
Sunset Academy is a game in which you play a young monster, transformed when you’re no older than high school aged, who is taken from everything they know and tossed into an entirely new world
Sunset Academy deals with themes of confusion, personal changes, culture shock, and cut throat high school politics. It partially dispenses with the horror themes, in favour of playing up the themes of the high school seen through a lens darkly.
The challenges of life at a Sunset Academy range from asking the cute daeva in the girl’s hall to the spring formal, to boning up for your Dark World’s Histories final, to asking the Khaibit chick who hangs around in the restroom smoking hashish to hook you up with the heart of a true warrior for your Supernatural Combat exams, to evading or bending to the will of the omnipotent student council which is trying to find or fabricate proof that you were behind the exsanguination murder of a cheerleader from the mortal school two counties over.

Geographically Based Methods of Education
While it may be more realistic to make Sunset Academies match the mundane high schools they are geographically closest too, it is the intent of the author that they are an amalgam of school experiences from across the globe—boarding school practices from regency era England, powerful student councils from Japanese anime, and cliques from American high schools all have a place in Sunset Academies. It’s all about what makes a better story.

Player/Referee Game Ownership Certificate
If you feel that your game is better served by characters going home to their leviathan parents, Luminary maker or vampire sire at the end of the day, that’s your choice--as is the decision to not play with anything else presented. No one’s going to come around to your place and club you into playing with everything.

High School Hell
The Sunset Academies were instituted in a nearly unprecedented communal effort by the Syndicates. This is not to say that the syndicates saw eye to eye on how supernatural youths should be managed, just that there needed to be some institution to actually do it. Sunset Academies differ greatly from one another, and academies within a day’s travel of each other may have little in common beyond purpose if a syndicate border falls between them.
In addition to academies run by each syndicate, the cults also frequently run syndicates. Some run academies on behalf the syndicates, while others have been granted (or won) the ability to maintain their own academies. Rules, customs, punishments, and even schedules can and will all differ between academies run by different factions. Academies run by the same faction are generally similar enough, but will still differ based on the tendencies of their headmaster.
Beyond the factions’ control of the academies, students will seldom, if ever, have any direct dealings with or influence from the syndicates or cults, and, indeed, are considered something more on the order of property of these organizations than members. The faction which controls a given academy lays out the basic requirements, and perhaps an agenda, but it is an extraordinary student who ever feels their direct touch in their lives, rather than the filtered touch of a syndicate or cult generally directing administration.
As such, while students more in the know with Supernatural society may have an inkling of which syndicate or cult they wish to join, the organizations of the student body are far more important to their lives. Because of this, supernatural organizations look a good bit different in a Sunset Academy game. Bands are just as important as in After Sundown, and represent the ad hoc groups of close friends that form in school, often the mostly-consistent core of a larger group. Syndicates and Cults influence the game in the control of academies, but in play are functionally replaced by Cliques and Clubs (with sport teams treated as specialized clubs within a specific clique).
Academies
Every syndicate and cult will shape the academies under its control to resemble itself. As such, it is usually possible to immediately distinguish a WCL academy from a Covenant academy, or a Daziban academy from a Stellar Oracle academy.
There are a handful of Independent academies, such as the abysmally dreary St. Porcrugose’s School of Esoteric Arts in Scotland, which are not directly influenced by a given cult or syndicate so much as they are by a single or group of wealthy patrons, but they are rare, and will frequently show similarities to academies run by the syndicate or cult to which their patrons belong besides.
Academy rivalries are frequent, feeding on both rivalries between the syndicates and cults which operate them and on the normal teen hyper focus on “us versus them” mentalities. As opposed to the syndicates attitude of non-harassment, walking onto the campus of another academy without a good reason (ie, team or club meet) could well get you attacked, depending on the relationship between your academy and the other. Even going to social functions at another academy, such as dances, could be a life and limb risk. While such strong and violent rivalries are dying out in the mundane world’s schools, the resilience of supernatural keeps such social dynamics alive.
Between faculties, such rivalries are much more peaceful, if they’re acknowledged at all. While it’s possible that two grown vampires of the oldest and most respected academies might rise to spilling blood over a rivalry, most faculty members leave the rivalry to be fought in the more restrained arena of academy performance.
Academies have one purpose, though they pursue that purpose with disparate philosophies. While mundane teachers, especially those in high schools or colleges, will frequently say they are preparing their students for “the real world,” the faculty of Sunset Academies well and truly are preparing their charges to survive in the “real” world, where the proud nail of the defiant vampire is hammered down by a righteous-hearted priest or slayer. Sunset academies were founded to prevent the follies of youth from bringing down all of supernatural society by providing the youthful a protected crèche in which to make those follies and teach them the consequences of such follies without their full sting.
The academies serve a secondary purpose of educating the young supernatural about the larger supernatural multiverse they have become a part of, and so hopefully prevent or at least slow the glutting of the Dark Reflection’s demons or the Gloom’s void on inexperienced vampires and leviathans.
Finally, societies opposed to the supernatural syndicates frequently see youths as easy targets, and the academies inoculate their charges against and protect them from the schemes of the King with Three Shadows and the Marduk Society, as well as others who would see the destruction of the Syndicates and their world of darkness.
Makhzen Academies
Makhzen academies are characterized by their tendency to be run as if they were training squires and pages to join a court. They inflict long hours of labour, long hours of quiet study, and interminable lectures upon their charges, and when they have uniforms at all, they are frequently chitins or tabards over simple shirts and slacks, and not uncommonly made by the students themselves. They teach their charges, typically called Squires, that loyalty to Supernatural society, and the Makhzen syndicate above all, are paramount to the preservation of the supernatural world. A squire who has been chosen by an instructor to be an assistant is called a Page.
Cauchemar Communes Academies
The vast majority of syndicate controlled academies are controlled by the Cauchemar Communes. They were, in fact, the first syndicate to espouse the idea of adopting the mortal instructional institute to manage the growing problem of supernatural youths. Cauchemar academies are like nothing so much as extensive liberal arts and technology campuses, hidden in guarded and warded skyscrapers or the Mayan shallows of sprawling city parks. On the rare occasion that a uniform is proscribed, it is a combination of fashionable pieces and accessories which can only be described as “hip,” and variation and customization is encouraged under the guise of tolerance. Students are taught that creative use of the advancements of human society is the best hope for supernaturals to remain hidden and safe.
Covenant Academies
Covenant academies are the most common mental picture conjured when a supernatural thinks of a Sunset Academy—dour, severe schools patterned off of private Catholic boarding schools, named after saints and packed with students in plaid skirts or black slacks with white blouses and dress shirts and ties bearing the school crest, all tossed with leering gargoyles and horror movie imagery, and not unfamiliar with the concepts of corporal punishment and teacher-student fraternization. Covenant academies are the ones perhaps most strongly tied to their operating syndicate-students at Covenant academies are collectively called the Flock, and individually sheep, not even derisively, just matter-of-factly, headmasters wear masks when interacting with students (though their identities are known to non-students), and students are required to attend a weekly service, not to be indoctrinated in anything specific, but specifically to deprive them of how ever much time the headmaster feels like talking for, and often used to chastise the students on their latest collective failing.
World Crime League Academies
Due to the Asian and nautical influences in the World Crime League’s culture, WCL controlled academies most closely resemble Japanese high schools, sailor seifukus and all, with some even being criminal naval academies. They tend to focus on teaching their charges much more practical skills than other schools which attempt to at least vaguely resemble mundane high schools. Whereas most Sunset Academies continue instruction in arithmetic and language skills in addition to the new information of managing budding new powers and maintaining the Vow of Silence, WCL academies tend to teach combat, fencing stolen goods, covert entry and the like in addition to mastering sorceries and maintaining the vow. WCL academies veer wildly between rigid hierarchies and egalitarian criminal enterprises.

So, do the Marduks Society, the King with Three Shadows and the Shattered Empire just not teach students at all? As a two sentence summary:

Marduks: A Xaiver academy style super-school for "gifted youth" that attempts to "correct" and "reform" those rare children who stumble onto the supernatural. Teaches Murdak's ancient magics and the importance of destroying all unnatural and unholy magics.
King: Unlike other Sunset academies, the Shadow Schools take on the non-supernatural children of various wealthy or influential mortals, replacing them during the summer and winter vacations with goblin changelings. The actual children never go home, but rather become slaves to the King once their "education" is complete.
Empire: Zhou Dynasty style Imperial Academies teaching the Six Arts of Rites, Music, Archery, Charioteering, Calligraphy and Mathematics. Even ancient troglodytes and wraith emperors need to educate their children, after all.

I actually hadn't considered the antagonist organizations yet. I need to do short write ups for the cult-run academies as well, but at the same time, I need to figure out how many academies there should be. Two to three academies for Europe would probably work (and are probably the Covenant's St. Porcrugose's, the Cauchemar's Académie des Portées Glorieux and the Makhzen's Shtorm Svetlost'), I could see there being either a single Asian academy, or several, one of which should probably be operated by the WCL, if not all of them. A few peppered throughout Africa would make sense, though I can't help but think the South African one is operated by the WCL. I'm thinking there is a South American, United States, and Canadian academy, possibly two US academies.

I'm not sure whether ThunderdomeAustralia should get their own academy, or ship their kids off somewhere else.

Actually, it occurs to me that, since St. Porcugose's is a taking the piss expy of Hogwarts, there's probably a british school that isn't shit, operated by a cult.

A squire who has been chosen by an instructor to be an assistant is called a Page

I just want to mention that the terminology here is backwards; page was the step in training for knighthood prior to becoming a squire.