May Event and Intro Log

[magicademymods]

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.

Comments

[treno_nobleman]

Research On the Sundered

[This isn't exactly what he thought it would be. Physical samples from him, he will decline, as he knows what was done to create him and he Will Not see that done with him in this place. But here he is anyway, having finally consented to the school's research program. And now he's left with the rather uncomfortable prospect of talking about his world with someone else who may or may not have previously met him in this world.]

[Still, he can work his way around the worst parts. No one said anything about having to tell everything, only honest answers.]

What should I tell you about my world?

[Might as well get this over with.]

[unswervingcompanion]

Hendrik had seen the silver-haired man around but had never had a chance to converse with him. He had his hands full with keeping the Luminary in his line of sight or at least keeping close tabs on him.

So this time, the knight decided he would just sit down and listen. It was odd to see others willing to discuss their worlds, but maybe this was some sort of way to get to know the people they were pretty much trapped with.

"I would start by asking your name before we got into a discussion about your world."

[treno_nobleman]

He looked up, momentarily distracted with how he was going to approach this. The end of his tail curled daintily about his feet under the table if only to keep his companion from stomping on it during their conversation. Inside, he was already uncomfortable enough with this as it was.

But a name. A name was simple. He nodded. "One name to begin the evening. Mine is Kuja. And yours?" He lifted a hand in a brief gesture to the man before setting it back in his lap.

[unswervingcompanion]

The knight nodded to the other man. "My name is Hendrik." And that was simple enough but then again, so was he so it worked quite well.

But he thought about what he was going to ask, unsure though as to how to ask it without seeming to pry.

"Is your world anything such as this one?"

[treno_nobleman]

He nodded again, offering a pleasant enough smile for however long it might last. This didn't have to be as much as his mind wanted to make it out to be. They were only required to talk about the worlds from which they hailed, nothing more or less.

But if it turned to paths more personal, the crystal would know. The color would change. It went both ways, but how would the crystal know? He eyed it briefly, considering a test.

"Yes and no." An easy enough question. He didn't have to turn it into an intentional lie this time, so he followed through with it. "Where I am from, Gaia, magic is learned for the purposes of healing and defense and offense. There are few in betweens. There are also no complex words or phrases or objects of focus needed to employ a spell. They are simply there at a call, in some people."

He shifted in his seat, getting a little more comfortable with this. "Then there is the land and the people, of course. We were much more diverse. People were different shapes and sizes, some covered in fur and feathers, others like you and me." A soft sigh. "There is so much to that question. Perhaps, if you could ask something a little more specific? I know not where all to go with that, but I could talk to you for days and not cover it all."

[unswervingcompanion]

The knight listened. This was easier for him to learn than having to do this by a book. Stories fascinated him and he'd spent hours listening to Jasper. He could learn anything easier with a person telling the story instead of through binding and parchment.

But after Kuja had finished about the spells, Hendrik nodded. "That is the way that magic works in my world as well." And by no means did the man think that this would be a one-sided conversation. Stories were meant to be shared after all.

And as the other man wanted something more specific he nodded, realizing. "I apologize. Then I should ask what life was like specifically for you since that is what you would be more familiar with."

Hendrik sat up straight and didn't move much at all. He didn't want to make any moves that might seem threatening or alarming as this other man did not know him at all. So he gave and showed respect.

[treno_nobleman]

Already, he had a few questions in mind to ask the man once he was finished with his own answering. How long that would go on, he wasn't sure. The rules for the interview were only such that they needed to ask and answer honestly, though to what true purpose, he couldn't say. Curious, he thought, that the people conducting the experiment thought the Sundered might have similarities in their worlds. Had they not already noticed some similarities in their own world and those of the Sundered?

He could think on that all day, and had. This wasn't like before, with Chaos and then with Spiritus, where the world was barren until a memory triggered an illusion of someone's home. Those had been... interesting experiences.

He sat in kind, upright and proper as was his manner, fingers loosely intertwined on the table in front of him. "I'll tell you of how I lived until the last few months of my time in my world." Those were times he was not proud of. In retrospect, he wasn't proud of much, but it was the least damning of his story. "I owned an auction house in one of the larger cities often frequented by nobility and the wealthy. Many of the items for sale were ones I had purchased myself or found in my research that no longer had any use to me, but I spent much of my time overseeing a secondary business with small operations all throughout the continent. The city where my auctions ran was a hub of activity for many a royal, so you can imagine how word spread with the way they gossip." Really, it was all they ever did. He hated it, but it had its uses.

"To be frank, it was horribly boring, but the parties were a necessity. Make an appearance here, speak with someone there. Soon enough, I was one of the wealthiest men in the nation."

He had been watching the crystal in his peripheral vision. No change yet, and he hadn't expected there to be. He had not yet tested it. Perhaps with the next question. "Is that a fair answer?"

[unswervingcompanion]

Hendrik was fascinated. In his mind's eye, he saw the things that the man was describing and how much of a hub of activity all of this must have been. So he nodded as Kuja explained, wishing he could see this.

And that was the first time that he noticed the crystal. He had no idea how long it had been sitting there or how long he had not seen it. And he also wondered why it was there. But that didn't matter so much as making sure that he paid attention to his host.

But after the other was done speaking, Hendrik nodded again. "That is a fair answer. It must have been something to have such wealth amassed from your idea." That was his backhanded attempt at a compliment, not knowing if such a thing could be taken well by this man. After all, they didn't know each other.

Hendrik continued to sit straight because that was how he was taught to sit. Long meetings of royals such as Kuja was describing required proper etiquette and patience, especially from the commander of the Royal army. He had to set the example to which he most certainly did.

[treno_nobleman]

He hadn't yet had a chance to test the crystal, but that time would come. He was in no particular hurry. "It was satisfying and allowed me a comfortable life, but it served its purpose and that was what mattered."

What that purpose was, he didn't want to say, and with no questions to follow that up, Kuja nodded and gestured to Hendrik. "Not for lack of another subject, but since we are here to compare worlds, I'd like to pose the same question to you now. What was life like for you in your world?"

Oh, they could go like this for hours, and a part of him was genuinely curious as to what they might have in common besides that they had been dragged into this place without a say in the matter.

[unswervingcompanion]

He nodded to the explanation and that the lifestyle served its purpose. Hendrik knew all about that.

And when he was asked about his world, he saw no reason to at least speak about himself and what he'd gone through.

"Back home I was a knight of Heliodor and commander of His Majesty's armies. I lived my life out serving his Majesty and taking care of my men."

His head lowered slightly. "But then our world was plunged into darkness and I arrived here." The knight wasn't going into who the Luminary was or what his purpose was.

[treno_nobleman]

There was a similarity, he thought, though it could have been any number of worlds that had knights and kings and armies. It was a parallel to be drawn, but one too vague to mean anything, to him anyway. They weren't conducting this interview of each other for his own research, but even he had taken a small interest in it no less.

But that darkness seemed to resonate with him. Hadn't his own world seen something like it before he was drawn away by Chaos? Hadn't Spiritus's world seen something similar before he was drawn here? So he pressed lightly. "A darkness? Of the world threatening sort, perhaps?"

[unswervingcompanion]

He nodded. "Is that something that you are familiar with as well?" If Kuja was familiar with that, could that mean his world was under attack by Mordegon too? Was it possible that Mordegon could traverse worlds?

All of this thinking and over thinking was giving the knight a headache. But he wanted to know more of what Kuja knew of this. Mayhaps somehow together they could solve this riddle that plagued both of their worlds.

[treno_nobleman]

Now they toed a subject Kuja had been trying to avoid ever since the first god took him from Gaia. He hadn't been pleased to find himself under a new master, but at the time, without his memories, he hadn't known why. As they came back, he grew less and less inclined to fight for Chaos, but it wasn't the god that turned on him, it had been his own, unwilling, similarly deposed allies.

"Yes. The worlds I knew came under threat from a man named Garland, and one of them was ultimately destroyed." A half truth. Still, a glow off to the side caught his attention; he looked over and saw the crystal had begun to shimmer accusingly with a bright red color, as they had been told it would. So it worked. Under the table, his tail tip twitched in agitation as he debated what to say next.

[unswervingcompanion]

Garland...that name didn't sound familiar to Hendrik at all. But while Kuja was speaking, he still tried to search his memory banks of anyone that Jasper had read to him about with all of those books his former friend had in his possession.

His head shook again as nothing turned up in his mind. The knight's eyes then noted the crystal changing color, but didn't mention it because he was still working on what he'd heard. Mordegon and Garland were not the same names or even close.

"You had said worlds. How many have you been to?"

[treno_nobleman]

Unaware of what went on in the man's head, Kuja turned his gaze away from the crystal to watch Hendrik instead, sure he would say something about the lie that had been detected. His glance flicked over to the researchers; they whispered to one another, and one looked at him, but looked away again and wrote something down on her papers. But Hendrik said nothing, and Kuja let that bullet slide past on its way into oblivion, quietly relieved.

"Four in all. There were two I knew first, what you might call my home worlds, and then the two that the gods Chaos and Spiritus brought me to, for their own purposes." The illusions of their home worlds as battlefields weren't significant enough to merit mentioning with regard to Hendrik's question, so Kuja took another switch. "What of you? Have you seen other worlds?"

[unswervingcompanion]

"That is amazing." And Hendrik really is amazed, this man isn't one to lie. That was his former friend Jasper who lied, but that man wasn't here.

Mental images raced through Hendrik's head as Kuja mentioned the other names, still for some reason straining to hear Mordegon's name come up during the conversation. But it hadn't and that was that he supposed.

But when the tables turned again and it was his turn to answer, Hendrik didn't hesitate. "I have only been to two. This one is my second world." And it did seem weird to say such a thing, but it was true. What you see is what you get with this knight.

[treno_nobleman]

Thinking back on his first exploratory mission to Gaia, it had been all business, all about the end goal. He had taken an interest in the world around him, secreted away to consider in the minutes before his sleep. Being pulled away to Chaos's heel, and later to Spiritus's had been no joyous time, and he hadn't enjoyed the company he was bundled with, but away from them, he might have liked to wander and see what the illusions from other worlds would show him. Factories spewing green smoke, cities that seemed to be made of crystal, vast fields of flowers he had never before seen.

So maybe it was amazing, in a way, to have been to more than one world. As frustrating as those experiences had been for him, it hadn't been all bad, and even the parts that had, he knew few others who could claim to have set foot off their own world. The Sundered he knew here numbered but a small handful compared to the thousands who lived still on Gaia.

"This must have been quite a shock to you. I assure you, it gets no better." He lifted a hand as if to wave it away. "It is always a shock to close your eyes, feel that odd, ethereal rush, like a current too strong to swim against, and look up again to find you are not where you once were."

[unswervingcompanion]

The only thing that Hendrik had been grateful for upon first arriving was seeing that his oath sworn charge was here and unharmed. After that, the knight tried to settle into his studies, but he couldn't figure out the rhyme or reason for being here.

Then he met others and learned that there were those that were way worse off than dealing with another world, even if that seemed hard to fathom at first. But it was a reminder to Hendrik that when he'd gone around collecting survivors after the World Tree fell that there were others always less fortunate and the same went for when he was a knight of Heliodor.

"I had not the time to consider what it would mean to be in another world." This was admitted with a shake of the head. "And though most would return, I have found that others would stay here." Because here things were better for them.

[treno_nobleman]

Kuja's eyes tick downward for the briefest, telling moment. From the start, he had had his own agenda in this place. It wasn't a matter of if he would meet that end, only when, and he was determined to see it through. But beyond it, return to Gaia hadn't been a question on his mind. The where never mattered, only the what. So he thought.

"Will you return home, then? Once this is all over, and assuming the delightful people in authority here can help we Sundered to work out what went wrong and send us back, will you choose to go home?"

It wasn't quite on the interview list of approved questions, but it piques his curiosity, and he has a passing interest in what this man wants to do. And it makes the interviewers squirm, which he is delighted to see.

[paradoxical_personality]

"What is the primary export crop of the nation you are from?" Look, Hel knows her question is lame but she could only ask the same question to the other volunteers so many times. It usually ended up being a question about what species inhabited the area.

[treno_nobleman]

Oh? That might seem like an easy question at first, but Kuja will have to wonder over that one. The words are pretty specific, but it's a little harder to answer something like that about a place when he isn't from any one nation. Or even from any one world, really.

"A fascinating query, but one I fear I may not be able to properly answer. I am from many places, spread out over two worlds, Terra and Gaia, and I don't consider any one place my home. There is a palace in a desert that I call mine on Gaia that claimed no land which could be cultivated. On Terra, there was little in the way of living flora, and certainly none to export. But within each city in Gaia, there were, of course, many resources that the people took advantage of in trade and barter. I could tell you about any of them."

[paradoxical_personality]

It's honestly not a question she could answer easily either. Helheim didn't really dabble in export crops, it just housed the souls of the deceased.

Hel listened quietly as Kuja went through his explanation occasionally shooting a look to the researcher recording notes on this. Fruitless. This information couldn't be all that useful for their aims, so it was a wonder why they were attempting it. "I have traveled throughout the realms in my world as well; Helheim, Alfheim, Midgard, Asgard- most of them." Flipping a hand as she omitted some of the realms. ".. but only one of them is my home."

"That's alright, I'll take your word for it." So- what else could they talk about. "You call this palace yours, but do you actually own it or is it just abandoned?"

[treno_nobleman]

He'd wondered at the nature of her question from the start, though it was unique. No one had approached him with something so apart from his own personal experience, but really, what did she know of him? For all she could know, he was a well to do farmer from his world.

The thought almost made him smile. It could be true, in the right light. Wouldn't that be something?

She seemed to come to the same conclusion about her query and he nodded, accepting the new questioning. It always came back to the personal, and he thought it would get even more so from there. "It was once a relic from Terra that I found and claimed as my own. A perfect place, really, hidden underground in a land so hostile few ever dared to attempt a visit."

The crystal, true to the researchers' word, remained dull and quiet. He had been telling the truth, after all.

[paradoxical_personality]

Well, based on appearance alone Hel wouldn't have taken him for a farmer but appearances could be deceiving. She was just tired of bandying about the same questions and answers in each session. It was tedious. The idea that the researchers hadn't even prepared a survey themselves was ridiculous.

What exactly was it that he tended to farm?

Unfortunately, there seemed to be little room to deviate from the pattern, unless she came up with something even more random than the first. "Abandoned then." Not that there was really anything wrong with that. If no one else still had a use for it there was no harm in re-purposing it. "So if it is so hostile an environment, what brought you to it in the first place?"

[treno_nobleman]

They seemed to be getting somewhere with the interview now, though her question still lingered in the mundane. And personal. He could have protested, but he endured it nonetheless. These people understood the magic used to bring them to this world only so much as they knew how to use it and little else, and he had found fascinating items of interest in the most unsuspecting places. So, he humored her.

"It almost guaranteed my solitude." He thought it should be obvious, but she didn't know him. "I prefer to be left alone now and then, and the palace was a perfect resort for me."

It also granted him a measure of privacy for his own research, but he didn't have to admit that. Before she could follow up, he decided to add a question of his own, seeking similarities they had been instructed to try and find with each other. "Are there places like that in your world?"