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

Re: research

[hotheadwarmheart]

"That's one way of putting it, yeah," Lea said. "Members of the original Organization served Xemnas- Xehanort's Nobody- for the most part because we thought at the time that completing a false Kingdom Hearts would be the only way we could get our hearts back. And I'm not talking about Master Xehanort there, but a different, younger Xehanort, who was still somehow connected to Master Xehanort, though we're not quite sure how. And yes, that bit makes just as much sense to me as it probably does to you."

"Anyway, in the shock of the century, Xemnas lied about everything and was just using all of us who were in the first Organization. Not only was he planning to throw us all under the metaphorical bus for the sake of Master Xehanort's plan, but we didn't even need the false Kingdom Hearts to get our hearts back. Turns out, while Nobodies are born without hearts, we can develop new ones over time when we connect to others. He and Xigbar- the Organization's Number II, who it turned out was in on the whole plan with Xemnas from the start- conveniently kept that little tidbit of information from us and convinced us that any stirrings of emotion were our imaginations because having us as empty shells was more convenient for him."

Re: research

[woo_oo]

Webby is 100% in love with this story, even if some things make little or no sense.

"Did you and your allies lead a bloody coup to overthrow his rule in return for his betrayal?"

Re: research

[hotheadwarmheart]

Lea personally doesn't see much to be in love with, but like the majority of such things, it's probably a lot more fun hearing about it than it is living it.

"No," Lea said. "I abandoned the Organization when they tried to get me to kill one of my best friends. And pretty much all the other Organization members got killed off in one way or another before they ever found out what Xemnas was up to. Eventually I ended up getting killed too - or at least my Nobody, Axel, did- trying to help Sora. It was him and his friends that ended up finishing off Xemnas and the last few members of the original Organization."

Re: research

[woo_oo]

Webby looked him up and down. "So, if your Nobody dies... do you go back to normal?" Since he looked pretty alive to her.

Re: research

[hotheadwarmheart]

"If your corresponding Heartless has been taken out be someone with a Keyblade? Yes," Lea said. "If the heart is freed too, then the original person can be recompleted when the Nobody is destroyed. Not that we knew this at the time; another thing Xemnas conveniently forgot to mention."

"Anyway, I've got a question for you now," he said. "Is everybody ducks where you're from? Or are there other kinds of bird and animal people too? Because I know some ducks like you back where I'm from, but there's also sentient mice, and dogs, and chipmunks and who knows what else from their world."

Re: research

[woo_oo]

Aw, she wanted to hear more of his world! But she was polite enough to answer.

"Ducks are the majority of the population, but not everyone is one! We've got mice, dogs and chipmunks too!"

Re: research

[hotheadwarmheart]

Lea nodded. "I don't suppose you've got a king named Mickey who's a mouse do you?", he said. Because honestly, that would push it into vaguely creepy coincidence territory.

Re: research

[woo_oo]

That just made her blink with confusion. "Not that I know of... but that was awfully specific!" And weird. Very weird.

Re: research

[hotheadwarmheart]

Lea chuckled. "OK, just checking," he said. "Because back where I'm from, the world where the ducks like you come from is ruled by King Mickey Mouse and his wife, Queen Minnie. I just wanted to be sure that wasn't the case where you're from too, or it would push things from 'unusual coincidence' right into 'somewhat creepy parallel' territory."

Re: research

[woo_oo]

"Well, I can't say I've got every single King and Queen of our world memorized," maybe Huey did. "But that's a no from my end. Are they your friends?"

Re: research

[hotheadwarmheart]

OK, that wording was probably totally coincidental, but it still amused him. "Yeah," Lea said. "Well King Mickey is anyway. Less sure about Queen Minnie directly, but since I helped save her life, I'm guessing that earned me some brownie points. Donald and Goofy- their court wizard and chief knight, respectively- were a bit more suspicious at first, but since they'd actually knew first hand what I was like when I was still working for the Organization, they had reason to be. They came around eventually to though, so... yeah, I'd say that we're all friends now back home."

Re: research

[woo_oo]

"Aw, that's great!" Webby clapped her hands together, genuinely happy for him. "Nothing creates a tighter bond than fighting against the same wicked forces!"

Re: research

[hotheadwarmheart]

"You can say that again," Lea said. "You speaking from experience there, by the way, or just general observation?" He kinda hoped it was the latter given Webby's apparent age, but he couldn't really be sure.

Re: research

[woo_oo]

"Oh, I've had a lot of experience." Again, said ever so cheerfully! "We've taken down corrupt businessmen, traitorous super spies, wicked sorceresses.."

Re: research

[hotheadwarmheart]

Lea wasn't sure whether to find that impressive or alarming. Probably both, he decided. "...Look, this might sound like a dumb question, but how old are you, exactly?", he said. "I mean I know they say you should ask a lady that, but it's honestly really hard to tell, given the whole different species thing."