July Event Log

[magicademymods]

July Event Log A Reading Rainbow Though the publication is ordinarily drier than dry toast Modified to be drier than dried toast, this quarter's issue of Thaumaturgy Today is all the rage around campus. The reason: a series of advances in motile spells! Easier and more powerful than those found in your standard book of spells (any grade), these spells achieve their power by specificity. One spell for lifting fruit, one for lifting laundry, one for lifting books, the list goes on. Though Professor Loshakle is deep at work writing a blistering reply criticizing every nuance of these spells, outside of his wrathful gaze the spells flourish as people practice them on everything they can. Copies of the issue are easy to get your hands on, if you want to give these new spells a whirl. On the other hand, your stuff or you yourself might fall victim to the spells of other students, whether by mistake or cruel jest. And woe betide those not human -- since no spell explains how to lift an anthropomorphic duck or a robot, for example, enterprising students are particularly eager to come up with one on their own, and there's only one way to test such things... It's Raw, You Donkey! There was an incident. Mistakes were made. Rice balls were detonated. Puddings were animated and sent on rampages. A cheesebread was found lodged in Makerion Keep, sunk to a depth of three feet in the walls. Whatever happened, and no one seems to have details... the Great Hall is closed and no food is being served. So... what're you going to eat? Several pop-up stands have emerged, as enterprising students try to cash in, but that costs money and who knows how the quality is. Headmaster Birony keeps showing up with pies, having made several savory ones that taste really good, actually, but can you really live on pie alone? (And do you really trust Headmaster Birony?) Some students have taken to the ultimate last resort: cooking. As it happens, the skills of the chef and of the aspiring mage are not exclusive in principle, but generally learning the one means little time to devote to the other. Faced with an oven or a grill, can you muster up the capability to make something edible? Or will you burn the water and turn bread back into grain, and thus have no choice but to avail yourself of pricey booth cooking or Cam-pies? Of course, the Great Hall will PROBABLY be open again soon, you might be able to last until then... The Defense Association In light of certain recent activities, like horrible monster attacks, Professors Trammel and Kith have teamed up to provide self-defense lessons to students who so desire. Purely optional, this extra class at the end of the school day promises study in shields, wards, basic attack spells, and mobility spells (because sometimes the best thing is to run like heck). Needless to say, these classes are quite the adventure! Students find themselves in dueling circles quite frequently, expected to carefully deflect each other's spells. Hopefully you've got the knack of it; the practice spells they have taught you don't cause any harm, but they sting like the dickens! Research on the Sundered Conflict. Conflict seems to be key. As near as the researchers can tell, all the Sundered lead lives that are simply not ordinary, and their experiments in conflict from last month produced results they didn't expect (as you all have learned) but that are most promising. Professor King herself has taken the lead on this experiment, and she warns anyone who volunteers that it is likely to be very dangerous, and they will be taking this very slow. They are, she explains, going to try to bridge the gap between you and the world you came from. A SMALL bridge, a proof of concept, no portal home and celebrations yet. But they hope it will work, and be the first step towards getting you back where you belong. If you agree, they get to work. Any student who undergoes this process immediately regains a power of their choice. It does not have to be on their application, and you do not have to provide proof during AC. It's here now. Only if you do not have a power to regain, you may regain an item instead. The price? For the next three days, you will be haunted by visions of your greatest enemy, your most hated foe, or the person you least wish to see in the world. Perhaps you hear their laughter in the darkness of your room at night. Perhaps you see a fellow student as them. Perhaps they are taunting you from just behind your shoulder... Whatever form it takes, for three days, you will be at their mercy. Or the mercy of your own mind's imagining them. Or perhaps a combination of the two. Who can say...?

Comments

[treno_nobleman]

He nodded, casting a glance down at his own wand held lightly, harmless, by his side. He could conjure flames, bring about ice, summon small but relatively useless objects like a bookmark or a comb, if he wanted. But they were here to do better.

"I have been learning Thaumaturgy and Discovery myself. If you've taken well to Imitation, you'll like Thaumaturgy. I hear the two are quite similar, though I've yet to dabble in it myself." There was a moment's thought, one pushed away with a look back to Yuki. "Shall we start with a demonstration, then, to gauge each other's skill?"

[areasontohope]

"That might be a good place to start." He'd listened to Kuja's words and explanation, feeling like he might be better off at least having someone to test against. After all, learning magic on one's own was all fine and dandy. But he always felt more ready when he had an opponent, even a friendly one.


So he readied his wand.

[treno_nobleman]

He nodded his assent and turned to face an empty space of the training grounds before them. Within it with a few words and a point of his wand, he conjured a plain wooden post. Nothing special, nothing significant or impressive, but a target no less.

"We can use this as part of the demonstration, to have an idea of what the other is capable of without needing to endure the spells ourselves." Then, with his other hand, he gestured toward his creation. "Please, be my guest."

[areasontohope]

He definitely had wondered exactly what they were going to do and to see a wooden pole be conjured instead of trying to beat on each other definitely helped. It was a sense of relief and a challenge that he could definitely work on.

His prayer magic still felt weak and he wondered if somehow he'd gotten sorted into the wrong school. But that wasn't going to stop the kid who was generally great at anything he tried.

And so he focused and managed to wave his wand at it to knock it down. There was some sense of satisfaction, but he felt like he was dealing with Kazuma, someone who'd been dealing with magic far longer than himself.

[treno_nobleman]

From the start, he'd never had an intention that he should face an opponent and turn his magic against them in the process. This was meant to be training, and in that they were going to need to make the threat real, but while Kuja had no qualms with getting hurt, it was the opposite that concerned him.

It felt good while it lasted, to hurt someone else. He hadn't cared before when he'd created the black mages what they felt, and in truth he hadn't wanted them to feel anything at all. They had no soul, and for a while he told himself he'd made them as such so that he wouldn't have to put up with insubordination and neither would their buyers.

But it was more than that. He knew what it was to feel something as a being made to follow orders and nothing else and to be tossed aside like so much garbage when his purpose was done. The sadist in him hadn't truly been satisfied to see another in agony, not really, just as blade of grass could not stop the tide of a raging flood. It hadn't helped, and once his eyes had been opened to the truth of his circumstances and doings, the backlash nearly destroyed him.

The wooden target fell over, snapped clean at the base, and he nodded, holding up a hand to halt any other attempts on the dummy so that he could lift it back into position and use his magic to meld the two parts back together again. "Very good. A proper use of force to push a target aside. What magic did you use just then?"