Let The Games Begin

[magicademymods]

February Event and Intro Log Orientation Week/Magic Mayhem The campus of Diatu Magicademy stretches out before you, confused and chaotic and surging with energy. Where are you headed? To your dorm or suite, to get settled? Maybe you need some food now? Wherever you head off to as your first stop, you have to deal with the snow. Helpful or proud students are passing out various magical remedies to get you where you need to be -- umbrellas with a nasty tendency to dump snow directly onto other people nearby, an iron tube that projects fire but appears to have no off switch, snowshoes that keep you slightly too high off the snow and thus provide no friction for stopping... Familiar Follies Familiars do not harass or harm each other as a rule -- but that doesn't mean they have no pecking order, and the week of Orientation finds them all jockeying for status and position as suits them. This can take the form of pranks, displays, competitions, or simple physical assertiveness towards each other. The goal is simply to be seen as superior by the student body. New wizards especially may find themselves surprised at this behavior of their familiars... 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 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.) Furthermore, they request to perform a few spells on you for testing purposes. It is, quite regrettably, possible that if you consent to this testing, you will come away with a temporary side effect -- a slight change of hair color, traveling two steps for every one you take, one hand moving about a second behind the arm it should be attached to, or being ridden by a penguin. No need to worry, these changes won't last more than a day! Wonders Await Diatu Magicademy is open to you in all its glory. Have fun!

Comments

Research

[stillnewatthis]

[Orisa is pretty easy to identify as one of the Sundered, thanks to being a massive hippotaur robot -- but a one-limbed one at the moment, as her left hand presses against what a human would call a temple as if she is in thought.]

I suppose I did. Have you seen a fusion driver arm around here? Their spells caused it to go missing.

[idealistic]

[ Lloyd has seen robots before, he's more than familiar with them. talking robots? he's seen his fair share of them.

talking robots asking him where its arm went? can't say he's met any of those. ]

A who-the-what arm?

[stillnewatthis]

It is like my left arm. [Which she helpfully lifts to show it off. It is unmistakably an arm.] But rather than a forearm, it ends in a fusion driver.

[idealistic]

Whoa…!

[ he still has no idea what a fusion driver is, but he also can't deny that's a really cool-looking arm!

in fact, all of whatever-this-is looks freakin' awesome! ] I didn't see anything around here like that-- but I can help you look, if you want!

[stillnewatthis]

I would very much appreciate it. I do not like missing my arm.

[And yet somehow she still seems so cheerful about it all. Orisa is, at heart, fairly bright and warm.]

[idealistic]

I don't think anyone likes having their arm go missing.

[ Lloyd certainly doesn't. he looks around their immediate vicinity, checking to see if such a thing was nearby. ] So what does a "fusion…" whatever do?

[stillnewatthis]

[No sign of anything obvious -- and it WOULD be obvious. Orisa begins to pace down the hall, looking about for it.] It relies on a microfusion generator to generate charged particles, which it then expels.

[idealistic]

I have no idea what any of that means.

[ Lloyd follows behind the robot, still looking around for the arm in case the thing ended up missing it somehow. ]

But it sounds cool! So it's like a cannon? [ he knows about cannons. ]

[stillnewatthis]

It is not so large or explosive. It overwhelms by volume rather the force of each individual projectile. [Sustained fire is her specialty, after all.]

[idealistic]

[ . . .

what. ]

I still have no idea what that means.

[stillnewatthis]

Instead of one or a few powerful projectiles, it fires a near-constant stream of smaller one.

[Better?]

[idealistic]

[ !! he thinks he's got the gist of it this time! ]

So it's like a laser!

[ he knows lasers! ]

[stillnewatthis]

A laser is a steady beam of light. The fusion driver emits discrete packeted particles. But perhaps it is a close comparison.

[idealistic]

[ .................

he nearly asks what the difference is before deciding otherwise. ]

Well, whatever. [ back to the search! ] Just gotta look for something that looks like your arm… but a cannon.

[ sounds easy enough. ]

[stillnewatthis]

The color scheme should be distinctive! May I ask you to look underneath things? It is difficult for me to gain such a perspective.

[Considering her size and build -- yeaaah.]

It is not small, so it is not going to be under something that is also small. But a bench or table is possible.

[idealistic]

[ looks like an arm but is actually a cannon, and is colored like her (its?) arm. sounds easy enough for him!

he turns back at the weird request, and realizes that… yeah, she's not exactly built for crouching. a bit of low-level searching isn't going to kill him. ]

Yeah, no problem. You search high, and I'll look low.

--Hey, you think it'd make any sort of noise even while it's… you know. [ he makes a slashing motion near his own arm, by the elbow. ]

[stillnewatthis]

I should hope not! Since it is a weapon, any noises it makes would not be good to hear!

[The last thing they need is a fusion driver firing blindly from some obscure location! People could get badly, badly hurt!]

[idealistic]

[ OKAY YEAH THAT'S A GOOD POINT. ]

R-right! Yeah, noise is bad, gotcha!

[ he's just gonna keep looking around for that under benches and stuff, k thanks. ]

[stillnewatthis]

Oh dear.

[Orisa points upwards, where a particularly large and bulky cannon lies on top of a chandelier, all lit with magic and looking impressive.]

This is a problem.