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

[shiningkindness]

She frowned. "Stats?"

[gender_neutral]

"It's alright to say it is a plus three to charisma or something, we do that all the time in this comic."

[shiningkindness]

"...what comic?"

[gender_neutral]

V's eyes rolled. Not another one. "This comic. The one we are in right now."

[shiningkindness]

She tilted her head a bit. "What makes you say that we're in a comic?"

I love characters who are meta aware, okay?

[gender_neutral]

V pointed. "The fourth wall over there, for one. Knowledge of the fundamental nature of existence for another. Further, we once obtained the diamonds we needed for a resurrection spell by Miss Starshine going back into the character info page to take the gem she had been posing with during her introduction. What baffles me is how more people here do not realize the fundamental premise that we are in a work of fiction. I am starting to suspect a correlation between that misconception and the malformation fo your faces, specifically the eyes which are the same size as one another and the odd shape between them."

Pffft

[shiningkindness]

She frowned a bit, because somewhere in there she couldn't help feeling that she was just insulted.

"...Okay...but even if we are in a comic, so what?"

Whole comic is like that. "I miss when we used to just make fairly obvious jokes about the rules."

[gender_neutral]

"So I was just saying that you can refrain from wasting pages of iller with all the flowery descriptive explanations of the practical applications of the artifacts and for simplicity sake tell me instead the attribute and skill modifiers it bestows upon the wearer."

Sounds interesting XD

[shiningkindness]

"I don't...really know any of that. That isn't how things worked back in my world. I can tell you that this geode let me transform, and it gave me the power to talk to animals. But that's about it."

[gender_neutral]

V looked pained for a moment. "Very well, if you will allow me to study the artifact, I am certain that I can ascertain its stats with minimal study."

[shiningkindness]

Fluttershy hesitated, playing with the geode on its chain.

"How would you study it?"

She didn't really mind V looking at it, as long as the other student didn't try taking it apart or anything.

[gender_neutral]

"I would attempt to regain my sensory abilities, like Identify Magic Item and Spellcraft. Might even take twenty on appraisal."

[shiningkindness]

"How long would that take?"

[gender_neutral]

"With all my powers, maybe an hour. Possibly as much as a day if I need to write a new spell for it and then trance to ready it. Here? Could be as much as a few days or a week in the library."

[shiningkindness]

"Hmm...well, we might want to wait a bit anyway. The geode's magic doesn't work here anyway."

Plus, she didn't like the idea of not having her geode for longer than a few hours.

[gender_neutral]

"Perhaps we could create a zone in which it could." A zone in which any original magics could work. Now that would be a fascinating and productive use of school materials.

[shiningkindness]

She frowned thoughtfully. "We'd have to figure out how to even do that first."

[gender_neutral]

"Well yes, but that is itself a worthwhile endeavour."

[shiningkindness]

"Yes, I suppose that's true," she said with a nod. "Though considering the trouble that even the natives here have with figuring out how we even got here, who knows how long that would take?"

[gender_neutral]

"There are a multitude of factors to work as circumstance modifiers to our attempts that they do not have. Everything that ranges from our other viewpoints, the fact that we have already been dragged through this transition, our knowledge of how our own powers are meant to work, and perhaps the masterwork of bonuses, desperation. Quite simply put, it matters more to us than it does to them to solve it. Besides, the main quests are never finished by NPCs unless you've really ticked off the GM. No one is going to be able to solve it but us."

[shiningkindness]

She frowned a bit. "Maybe, but we're still limited to their magic in order to figure it out. So we still need more of an understanding of how that works before we're able to do anything more."

[gender_neutral]

"We are only so limited as we allow ourselves to be, outside of a railroad plot. I have already regained a small amount of my own magic from home, after all."

[shiningkindness]

"Really? The only way I'm able to talk to animals like I do back home is using spells and magic here. And even then, I haven't been able to figure it out completely yet."

[gender_neutral]

"Really. I can show you some cantrips, if you wish."

[shiningkindness]

"Um...okay?"

She had no idea what a cantrip was, but if it could help with her magic, she wouldn't mind giving it a try.