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 on the Sundered

[hotheadwarmheart]

"Which I'm guessing you can't actually do here any more than the rest of us can use our normal powers, am I right?", Lea asked.

Re: Research on the Sundered

[grim_heaper]

He shrugged. "Don't know. Never tried. Why would I need to add that headache when I have all I need to subtract the lot of you right here?" he asked, tapping his pin.

Re: Research on the Sundered

[hotheadwarmheart]

Lea shrugged. "I dunno," he said. "I mean if I could grow wings, I'd do it just because it'd look cool. And assuming they actually worked and weren't just decorative, so I could fly. I got to fly before in Neverland, and it was amazing."

Re: Research on the Sundered

[grim_heaper]

Sho shrugged, though now he was considering it. "After a while it about equals to walking."

Re: Research on the Sundered

[hotheadwarmheart]

"Then you've obviously never flown like you can in Neverland," Lea said. "Cause that beats walking by a long shot. Gotta watch out for pirates if you're near the shore, though; they can be a bit trigger happy, and math zombie or not, I imagine getting hit by a cannonball would still suck."

Re: Research on the Sundered

[grim_heaper]

He laughed. "Like I zetta care. My health points near infinity!"

Re: Research on the Sundered

[hotheadwarmheart]

"Doesn't mean getting hit by a cannonball will hurt any less," Lea said. "And having a lot of HP just means that you'll still be around to get hit by more of them." All in all, this sort of discussion probably wasn't what the researchers had had in mind. But it was revealing something about their worlds, at least.

Re: Research on the Sundered

[grim_heaper]

He shrugged. "They have to survive long enough to hit me a second time."

Re: Research on the Sundered

[hotheadwarmheart]

"They're annoyingly persistent...", Lea said, his tone indicating that he spoke from personal experience. "And used to aiming for flying targets. Though I guess it would depend on how fast you could get from wherever you were, to wherever their ship was."

Re: Research on the Sundered

[grim_heaper]

"Yeah, but pretty sure Dub Rhino could take them out before I got anywhere near. What's the fun of being a Reaper without Noise to send to erase zeros that annoy the factor out of you?"

Re: Research on the Sundered

[hotheadwarmheart]

"OK, first? You're assuming that your ability to do that would be any more functional in my world than it is here," he said. "For someone who likes math so much, you'd think you'd have a better grasp of when the odds were against something happening."

"And second? Even assuming you could actually summon these 'Noise' instead of just making a lot of it trying, our world still has completely different magical laws than yours. How do you know that this Rhino thing would even listen to you instead of just going off and doing its own thing?"

Re: Research on the Sundered

[grim_heaper]

"What fun is death without some allowance for variables?"

Re: Research on the Sundered

[hotheadwarmheart]

"Personally I don't find death that much fun period," Lea said. The Ice Creamatorium was an exception, but it only had the trappings of death; actual death was a whole different thing.

Re: Research on the Sundered

[grim_heaper]

"Better than being Erased, and since no one is going to zetta zap us back to life. might as well find fun where you can."

Re: Research on the Sundered

[hotheadwarmheart]

"...", Lea was silent for a moment, trying to determine if this guy was serious. The crystal wasn't going off, so apparently he was. "Wait a minute... You mean you actually think that we're all dead here? All of us, including the locals?"

Re: Research on the Sundered

[grim_heaper]

"The whole zetta UG. Yep." He seemed almost amused by that.

Re: Research on the Sundered

[hotheadwarmheart]

"Well I hate to burst your weird, mathematical bubble, but you're wrong," Lea said. "I'm very much alive. I'm breathing, I've got a pulse, the whole deal. And I'm fairly sure the same is true for the rest of us."

Re: Research on the Sundered

[grim_heaper]

He shook his head. "So zetta sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all. "But the RG's got a resonance any reaper can feel in his bones. This place has zero. Thing is? in the UG? Being dead feels just like being alive. That's why the factoring hectopascals are so zetta scared of the Noise."

Re: Research on the Sundered

[hotheadwarmheart]

"OK, one? I have yet to meet anyone here who's mentioned being scared of these 'Noise'," Lea said. "Two, what the heck do 'RG' and 'UG' mean? And three? I'm pretty sure you're just making up at least some of these math terms you keep using as insults."

Re: Research on the Sundered

[grim_heaper]

"One. Most people couldn't identify Noise if it erased their partner in front of them. That's the failure of the zero reapers here. Two. RG, you factoring hectopascal, means real ground. Where the living live. The UG is the Underground, where the dead hangout. Places like this. You have to be a pretty zetta strong Reaper to vibrate into the RG."

He grinned. "And Three? Zetta. A number equal to ten to the twenty first power. Yoctograms, so people like you, is a number equalinging ten to the negative twenty fourth power. Putting you on the subatomic level. Tetrahedra are shapes. Betting even a factoring hectopascal like you know what those are. As for SOH Cah TOA and the rest? I have a class, attend it and you might add to your limited knowledge of math."

Re: Research on the Sundered

[hotheadwarmheart]

"Well how can anybody be scared of them if they don't know what they are?", Lea said. "I mean given the way you're going on about how tough they are they'd probably be pretty obvious if there were any around, and I sure haven't seen any."

"And why in the heck would I want to subject myself to your class?", he said. "Having to learn math on top of being insulted and threatened? No thanks."

Re: Research on the Sundered (equalinging ? Ow.)

[grim_heaper]

"You zeroes have player pins? Nope. Didn't think so. So you can only tell when they subtract people. Know anyone who had been here that you just can't find anymore?" he asked with a grin. He didn't have clue one Lea was connected to Sora, but had his own reasons for thinking that the Noise had erased Sora. And was glad of it. "And don't complain you have zero knowledge if you make zero effort."