Mod Account for Diatu Magicademy ([personal profile] magicademymods) wrote in [community profile] diatu2019-05-03 01:19 pm
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May Event and Intro Log


May Event and Intro Log



DAWN OF THE FIRST DAY



May I Have This Dance?


    Though Diatu Magicademy has its share of social events, few capture the attention of the student body quite like the Twilight Ball -- that magical once-a-year dance that crosses the change of day into night and is given over entirely to the dance itself. The focus is not on political visitors, rival schools, local government, or hitting up alumni for money; it is entirely about the pleasure that comes from accompanying a charming and attractive person onto the dance floor and cutting the proverbial rug.

    It is entirely possible the Twilight Ball is beloved because the general student body is aggressively amorous, but no one admits that out loud.

    With the dance on the horizon, the mission of the day becomes finding a partner -- or asking the prettiest or nicest or most tsundere to the ball before anyone else does. The Sundered are particularly popular by virtue of being new, so students may find themselves fending off invitations or even crowds of people interested in being seen on their arms. Even the younger Sundered have a few people in their age group who'd like to pretend they're just as adult as the older students.

    To avoid the mob, one strategy is to find someone else in dire straits and agree to be their date, thus giving both of you protection now and then. Another, stranger, vastly more unorthodox strategy is to actually ask someone out legitimately... if you've got the guts.

    (The third strategy is to go with Headmaster Birony, who has been occasionally heard to bemoan loudly and publicly that she has nobody, HINT HINT. But who could possibly be THAT desperate?)


Love Is In The Water


    Love potions are absolutely, positively, one hundred percent forbidden, on the grounds they tread far too close to the supremely black Curriculum of Dictation. This ultimate and unforgiving ban is every bit as effective as Anastara's rules limiting the speed of carts in the street to a horse's walk.

    So, yes, there's love potion in the water. Someone spilled an entire bucket in the river. These things happen. Luckily, as diluted as it is, the potion doesn't reach the levels of obsessive compulsion that the worst of them can; a person drinking a unfortunate draught instead simply finds themselves attracted in a weird and sharp sort of way to the first person they lay their eyes on, for a period of about thirty minutes.

    Diatu Magicademy is an inclusive and progressive institution, and consequently these potions affect and can target all manner of beings, from ducks and wolf-shifters to robots and dragons. They are pretty convenient about failing to bring about really skeevy pairings, though, so don't worry about being Hot For Professor.


Special Delivery (aka the Least Embarrassing Prompt, which is a sad state of affairs)


    A quick, easy, profitable way to make some money this time of year is by delivering messages, packages, parcels, and treats to students who've caught the eye of another. Whether anonymous or gloriously identified, small token of esteem or bristling bundles of roses and chocolates, the population of the Magicademy takes particular delight in letting others know their feelings. Not always positive feelings, either -- glitter-bomb rejections have only recently begun to diminish in popularity, being replaced by Pie-To-The-Face spells.

    An enterprising student who adds their own spin to this hallowed ceremony of delivery can make bank; singing and performance are popular ways to enhance a message among Valhudor students, and a recent trend finds quartets delivering acapella harmonies to the recipients of love notes. But simple note hauling can still be worth your while... so long as you don't find yourself delivering a creepy confession from a weirdo to one of your dear friends. What are the odds of that happening, though?


Research On the Sundered


    With the arrival of the Sundered come those wizards engaged in research on their presence here, now set to investigate what brought them here and how to get them home. All newly-arrived Sundered students are asked to meet with representatives of the research team, to introduce themselves and relate what they will of their homes. In addition, the team requests samples of blood, hair, and skin -- carefully magically collected, and the researchers will sign in the presence of the Sundered a Glyphed contract that forbids them from using the samples for a purpose they know will be harmful. (They quite understand your reasons to be suspicious of this collection! And they will not compel anyone who refuses even given these conditions.)

    This month, however, the research team informs its applicants that there is no magic being performed. Instead, they ask you to participate in partnered interviews, in which two Sundered compare their worlds and ask each other questions while the researchers take notes. They explain that they wish to find commonalities and differences between worlds, in the hopes that this will help them identify a larger pattern in how the Sundered were brought here.

    How is this bad enough to merit earning a reward this month? As it happens, the researchers who sit with the pair have an Intimation Crystal, which shines red every time someone speaks to deceive in its presence.
    Lie or omit information or cover with half-truths and the interviewer will ask you to go back and try again -- and they encourage you to speak on everything you can. You might end up venturing into dark or unpleasant territory in these interviews...




DAWN OF THE SECOND DAY



Welp, This Happened


    A quiet weekend morning is abruptly quiet no longer.

    With a tumultuous shuddering and an eerie, whistling roar, the first tendril of a far mightier being surges out of a wall on campus, venturing into the cloud-shadowed outdoors for the first time in its existence in this plane. Then, like a cloak shrugged off, the outbuilding it emerged from rises up only to crash to the ground as the Sundered creature rises up to claim it glory.

    It is a nightmare, a horror. A terrible, indescribable thing as large as a small building —a shapeless agglutination of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of light. For some inexplicable reason, it is colored in bands of purple, black, and gold, and several parts of it sprout white feathers.

    That's the bad news.

    The bad news is that this existential threat to reality does not go unnoticed, nor unchallenged. Mere moment after the Sundered creature makes it presence known, a cold wind begins to blow. The temperature abruptly drops thirty degrees, leaving those around in a clammy and miserable chill that feels like they've passed their whole body through one of the ghosts of Makerion Keep. This estimation is not too far wrong, for the pale off-white dragon that emerges from the clouds above is translucent and ethereal, save for the shining eyes of coldest blue that fix on the beast like pinpoints of fire.

    What a ghost dragon is doing here is anyone's guess, but when it opens its jaw to unleash a withering cone of necrotic energy at the Sundered creature, it demonstrates plainly that it will not brook this interloper on its domain.

    In other words, Diatu Magicademy is now home to a kaiju fight. That's the bad news.

    The BAD news is that both these creatures are, by their very nature, incredibly resistant to magic. So even as the professors spill out and split duties of getting students to safety and fending them off, the two beasts barely notice the arcane energy flashing through the air as they begin vigorously brawling.

    Thank goodness this is a weekend, or else you'd all have some serious trouble getting to class on time.


Wonders Await?


    Diatu Magicademy is open to you in all its glory. But maybe you should deal with that mess first? We're just saying.
afterthemoon: (6)

[personal profile] afterthemoon 2019-05-04 07:56 pm (UTC)(link)
"...My World is divided into many smaller worlds, and the average person usually lives their life unaware that any world other than their own exists.

Those who are aware of the existence of these worlds are either tasked with keeping the peace among them... or are the ones disrupting the peace.

Isa tries to sound detached from the information he's telling Lena, as if he wasn't directly involved with what he's discussing. But the fact that he's even able to tell her this gives away that he was involved.
outofyourshadow: (67)

[personal profile] outofyourshadow 2019-05-05 01:21 pm (UTC)(link)
She definitely noticed that, and tilted her head as she looked at him curiously.

"So...if you know about those different worlds, which one do you fall under?"
afterthemoon: (6mMqeTG)

[personal profile] afterthemoon 2019-05-05 02:13 pm (UTC)(link)
"The second group..."

He looks up at Lena, a steely look in his eyes.

"... Understand that I'm not the person I used to be. There are things I've done in my past that I'd like to put behind me."
outofyourshadow: (04)

[personal profile] outofyourshadow 2019-05-07 08:47 am (UTC)(link)
Holding his gaze for a moment, she then shrugged.

"Hey, I'm not really one to judge," she replied, and despite the casual tone, there was sincerity in her words. "Everyone makes mistakes."
afterthemoon: (2)

[personal profile] afterthemoon 2019-05-22 06:09 pm (UTC)(link)
A "mistake"? If only it were something as simple as that.

"That's a bit of an understatement, if you ask me..."

But, maybe it's for the best that they don't elaborate on it at the moment.

"It's your turn now, what's your world like."
outofyourshadow: (17)

[personal profile] outofyourshadow 2019-05-23 11:28 am (UTC)(link)
That was exactly what she was going to call it, because she'd made life choices that were just as bad and it was just easier dealing with them this way.

"It's pretty standard, I guess," she replied with a shrug. "There's magic and weird things, but most people don't realize they exist."
afterthemoon: (6)

[personal profile] afterthemoon 2019-05-24 08:18 pm (UTC)(link)
"But you do, so how'd you learn about it."
outofyourshadow: (03)

[personal profile] outofyourshadow 2019-05-25 12:00 pm (UTC)(link)
"I...might have had a bit of experience with it," she replied slowly, hoping to just leave it at that. Unfortunately, the researchers' crystal began to glow, prompting them to ask her to elaborate.

"Ugh, fine. My...aunt is a witch who deals with dark magic. Satisfied?"

Judging by the crystal continuing to glow, they weren't.
afterthemoon: (2)

[personal profile] afterthemoon 2019-06-04 01:27 pm (UTC)(link)
Isa simply looks at the researchers skeptically. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't press the issue. But...

"I don't know what the researchers plan on doing with this information, but I'll keep anything you say here just between the two of us."
outofyourshadow: (10)

[personal profile] outofyourshadow 2019-06-05 10:58 am (UTC)(link)
She was glaring daggers at the researchers, and while it wasn't quite a look that could kill, it might be one that would seriously maim if she could.

But after a moment, her clenched fists relaxed, and a different expression crossed her face as she glanced away.

"...The witch, my 'aunt'...is actually my creator. When her body was sealed away by her enemy, she used the last of her dark magic to make me from her shadow in order to get revenge on him."
afterthemoon: (KH3-620377)

[personal profile] afterthemoon 2019-06-05 04:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Isa doesn't reply right away. He just let's Lena's words sink in, as he considers the best way to approach this.

Maybe if he offers some common ground.

"I know what it's like, being used by someone like that...

When I was a teenager, I had my heart torn from my body by a man who used me as a pawn in his bid for power..."
outofyourshadow: (31)

[personal profile] outofyourshadow 2019-06-08 02:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Lena was silent for a moment to take that in. Then she snickered, but it's more a sound of exhaustion than actual amusement.

"It really bites, huh?" There were probably better ways to say that, but she was feeling a bit jaded and drained about people using others for their own benefit.