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

[mithrarin]

If what they say is true, conflict is what brings us here. We're all... centers of it, I guess? Something about us, or our worlds...

[marchmadness]

Well, now, that can't be right...

Or could it?

[Few Wonderlanders loathe conflict the way March does, after all. It's often full of such - usually more petty than serious, but all the same.]

Well, all the same, I don't appreciate the connotation. Personally.

[mithrarin]

Can you tell me if it's wrong, though? [Dust would rather no one ever suffered himself -- but that isn't a realistic world, and so, he has to fight. One way or the other.]

[marchmadness]

I'm not sure. You say it might be our worlds that are the source of conflict, not ourselves? In that case... Wonderland certainly isn't peaceful, not throughout.

[mithrarin]

That might be enough. If you're there, you're a part of it -- one way or the other. Every war needs its innocents, after all.

[marchmadness]

I don't know, war seems a bit of an extreme term for what goes on in Wonderland...

[But the way the boy talks has him concerned.]

What must it be like where you're from, I wonder?

[mithrarin]

Recovering from a brutal war of extermination. I wouldn't call it pleasant.

[Not that Dust ever makes eye contact, but he looks away nonetheless. What can you say, at a time like this?]

[marchmadness]

No, I'd call it dreadful, you poor thing.

[mithrarin]

I'm not the poor thing. I could fight. The people who couldn't are the ones who deserve sympathy.

[marchmadness]

Anyone involved in something so gruesome deserves sympathy.

You're a soldier, though, then?

[mithrarin]

No, not really. A warrior, but not part of an army. I was fighting against one, actually.

[marchmadness]

[That seems to catch March's interest, and he leans in.]

Fighting against an army, eh? Perhaps a foul-tempered tyrant was leading them?

[mithrarin]

General Gaius was actually pretty even-tempered... for a genocidal warlord.

[marchmadness]

Oh, well, some of them are, I'm sure. [He shrugs.] You can't bunch them all together. Silly me.

[mithrarin]

It would have been easier if he was mad. People who fly off the handle are dangerous, but people who can be perfectly controlled in the middle of a fight are much much worse.

[marchmadness]

I wouldn't know. I haven't met many controlled people where I live, not for a long time.

[Alices, sometimes, but there had been a dry spell before he'd come her. Cheshire Cat could be composed, to a degree, but he was still entirely mad.]

[mithrarin]

I can't say that sounds much better. [If everyone is crazy... it sounds like a world of monsters.]

[marchmadness]

Goodness, why not? Wonderland is a... [He chuckles.] Well, a wonderful place, in every sense. It's just takes some time to adjust to it, is all.

[mithrarin]

I'm... not too fond of that much craziness, is all.