August Event Log

[magicademymods]

August Event Log Speed of Lightning, Roar of Thunder The latest rage in Diatu: portable lightning generators! These little spheres, compact enough to be held in the hand, can launch a miniature bolt of electricity out with flair and pizzazz and surprisingly nonlethal effects. Getting zapped is like getting bit by a horsefly, not much worse. Naturally, all sorts of sports and pastimes have grown up overnight. The new sports of Lightning Tag, Lightningball, and Zap Each Other With Lightning Till Someone Collapses Because We're Tough Guys Dammit routinely break out on campus, while people who think they're funny can't go ten seconds without bolting someone's posterior. So what's your role in this? Eager participant? Sportsman? Buttzapper? Or is your idea totally new and wild? And Break the Laws That They Should Fear A rash of thefts plagues Anastara and the Magicademy both. Nothing huge, nothing heavy -- little things, like food, jewelry, trinkets and knickknacks... because the perpetrators are rats. Large and obviously clever rats, who have somehow wormed their way through defensive enchantments and mundane security both with the fearsome tenacity of their species. Look around at just the right time, and you might spot a rat scrambling for the safety of the caverns, something clutched in its jaws. Maybe something of yours? The Cry Goes Up Both Far and Near Finals draw ever-closer, and right about now students start realizing that maybe they don't understand this or that; maybe they could do with some outside material; maybe a second viewpoint would come in handy. Thus this week brings the Diatu Book Exchange! Outside of the Great Hall, students of all sorts brings books they no longer need and exchange them for books they do. The Book Exchange goes past merely scholarly works, though; time has grown it to encompass books of all sorts, from genre fiction and unlikely stories about seemingly ordinary kids attending an engineering boarding school to comics to philosophical works and more. Come to trade, browse, or lust -- there's something here for everyone! Research on the SUNDERDOG! (Sunderdog!) SUNDERDOG! (Sunderdog!) The research team has learned one important thing: Conflict is the key. The Codification of Sundering is the door. Somehow, of late, something has changed the nature of Sundering magic. They do not know why or how, but the very existence of the concept of Sundering magic now causes summoning anomalies that focus on other worlds, resulting in the transport of the Sundered here. This is, well, bad. The Codifications should not be slipping, not unless something has the power to completely overwhelm the entirety of human thought and will... To test theory more deeply, this month's Research has the Sundered locked in a room with another Sundered, a pair of chairs, and nothing else. The goal is to observe the warp and weft of magic around them with minimal interference from any other source save perhaps each other. So who did you get shut in with, and how long can you just sit and talk without going crazy?

Comments

[marchmadness]

But then why would it have brought us here?

There are people here who've always been here, though, aren't there? Hmm... That's different from Wonderland.

[bearshermark]

[Eleven shrugged with a slight smile] That was the question.

But I think we were all sent or drawn here for a reason.

[marchmadness]

Oh. It was the question, wasn't it? Terribly sorry for asking it again. [What a waste of crucial time!]

A reason... But the reason isn't loneliness. Now this is a puzzle - or do you already have the answer?

[bearshermark]

[He shakes his head]

I think I know the reason I'm here, but I'm sure everyone else's are different.

[marchmadness]

Ah, I see!

[He leans in to whisper:]

Is it a secret reason?

[bearshermark]

[Eleven smiles, lips twitching in a near laugh]

No, it isn't. [His smile fades a little] I'd actually already lost my power before I came here. I believe it's Yggdrasil's will that I regain it before I return.

[marchmadness]

Yug- Um... Come again?

[He's trying to piece the meaning together from context, but that might be hard even for someone without Madness...]

[bearshermark]

Yggdrasil.

[It takes a moment to recall that not everyone has a World Tree]

It's the source of all life in Erdrea- a great tree that floats above the world.

[marchmadness]

[A floating tree doesn't register as odd to March, but the 'source of all life' part confuses him.]

So, everything in your world grows on this tree?

[bearshermark]

[Eleven flashes a grin]

No. ..Well, sort of.

[He shifts and sighs shortly]

Every life is a leaf on one of Her branches. Every time a new bud blooms, a child is born on Erdrea. And when they die, their leaf falls.