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

may i have this song? answer: hell no

[pawper]

Eh?

[She raises both hands in a conciliatory sort of gesture, wide-eyed and innocent.]

Oh....no! No, um, I'm here to practice, too. [Only one of her hands is empty; the other holds a simple panpipe, carved delicately from wood and brass.] My instructor said I needed it. Why would I ask you for relationship advice?

[....Wait, was that a rude thing to say? Hmm.]

I mean, he feels the same way

[perfectenn]

Maybe it was, but it’s little compared to the rudeness he’s already faced. Tenn gives a huff under his breath, frustrations abating at being spared yet another Q&A session. He’s no longer glaring as he gazes up at her... though a small frown persists at being faced with a girl who towers over him. (This is not a thing that ever happened in Japan.)

"I would like to know the same. I suspect being in Valhudor has something to do with it." His rising fame and street performances have more to do with it, but he's not going to publicize that. Instead, his attention moves to the panpipe with lightened interest.

"It's a good choice." Simple and easy to care for. But her wording gives him pause. "You say your instructor recommended it. Have you played one before?"

[pawper]

She blinks down at him, the gesture as reflexive as breathing. So used to being the tallest one in the room that the height difference no longer registers as anything but normal.

"It was a lot smaller, but yeah. I used to play a set of flutes like this when I was a kid."

She turns the instrument over in her hands, tracing the polished length of it with her thumb. Though far from ornate and, while not cheaply made, hardly the stuff of which bank accounts are emptied, Lys couldn't help but feel unworthy of it. The version from her childhood had been a humble piece, whittled from aspen and cured with beeswax; the intermittent work of a loving father that took an entire winter to complete.

"I'm not in Valhudor myself—" just in case his eyes were actually glass marbles and thus incapable of taking in the Aer et Calculum colors of her uniform "—so I figured knowing how to whistle and snap my fingers was gonna be enough to get a passing grade in Fantastics."

A philosophical shrug.

"Turns out the spells I gotta learn are a lot more complex than that, so....here I am!"

[perfectenn]

"I see." Sensible, that. "Snapping fingers and whistling has its place. Subtle casting is a fine technique. And Fantastics practitioners will not always have access to their instruments, so it's important to have a back-up." Much the same as those students who can cast with a fork at the dinner table – but he’s sure her Thaumaturgy classmates will cover that lesson for her.

"Panpipes are easy to carry and do not require the maintenance of a stringed instrument." He’s no expert on woodwind instruments, but judging by the size, the range should be good. "And the range will allow you variety. Do you know where to find the appropriate music sheets for it in the library?"

[pawper]

She listens attentively to every word, nodding in all the right places. Visibly grateful for his input, too aware of her inexperience and inadequacy (both real and imagined) to be anything but willing, even eager to learn.

"There was a violin and a lute for me to try, even a drum, but....eh, I was better on the pipes." To demonstrate, Lys plays a few quick jaunty notes. Offers a sheepish sort of smile once she finishes, remembering her fumbling attempts to coax even the simplest tune out of the violin, and the lute, and the drum. Plus half a dozen others. The less said about those, she figures, the better. "Sounds like I lucked out, then!"

When he mentions the library, however, she flinches. An undramatic, yet unmistakable reaction: jaw clenching, smile vanishing, scrawny frame freezing up like a startled cat. Then the look fades, there and gone within the space of a breath.

"Music sheets? Ah, I've passed by that section a few times, but I'm not familiar with it. So far I've been learning by doing.....listening to other people perform, then playing it back. Stuff like that."

Playing things by ear, if one pardoned the pun.

[perfectenn]

And Tenn listens politely, his frown fading with approval. She has good breath control, even on the high notes. Clearly, she put effort into playing even as a child and remembers the technique. And most importantly, still enjoys the instrument.

But then his studied confidence falters in a blink. That was the last reaction he expected. Tenn scans over the words in his mind, making sure the suggestion wasn’t out of place. No, there wasn’t anything amiss; the instructors would’ve asked the same. If she doesn’t know how to read music, he could understand some reluctance, even embarrassment. But was that shock… or was that fear?

Tenn quickly schools his expression into a smile. No reason to agitate further. He watches her face as he replies, "There are illustrated guides available for those who haven't yet learned to read music."

[pawper]

The lingering tension shadowing her face and the ridge of her shoulders — and yes, it smacks of fear now that he's looking more closely, not shock — suddenly vanishes, flowing out of her like blood down a drain. Illustrations. Pictures. Something visual and easy to follow. Yes, she could handle those just fine. Though in truth, what little she's seen of music sheets has yet to inspire more than the usual passing twinge of anxiety that rose up whenever something even tangentially academic was involved, because they were precisely that: visual. Shapes on paper, clean and straightforward.

A shame they were stowed away in the library somewhere, surrounded by books that, when she walked their aisles, seemed to surround her in turn, heavy and thick and somehow mutely accusing. But Lys could handle that, too.

"Really? Gee, that's awfully handy. Where I come from, you'd have to learn that skill from a master. Same with writing it."

She plays another few notes, but more quietly this time, and with a certain air of self-comfort. It's not a tune that can be found in any Fantastics lesson.

"I'll....definitely swing by and pick up a few in a little while." A beat. "My name's Lys, by the way!"

[perfectenn]

Ah, so that was it? Though it leaves the question of why. No, he won’t press the issue now. The rest is up to her.

"It was not a common skill where I’m from, either." He admits. "My parents were professionals in the music industry, so I learned earlier than most." That detail comes out more easily than he expected, but he reminds himself there's no reason to hide that information here. And it may help her feel more at ease, knowing that this has not been an expected skill from all the Sundered. In fact, music here required intensive study even for him due to the unique magic-based system.

The melody is received with appreciation, driving concern from his mind with the pleasant thought that music itself will be familiar anywhere he goes. She feels the same, it seems.

"Pleased to meet you, Lys. I’m Tenn." Then gesturing with a hand towards the library, he adds, "The guides will be on the third bookcase of the woodwind section, clearly labeled. It’s a small collection, but it will suffice to get you started."