September Event Log

[magicademymods]

September Event Log Here's One For Free Something about the fall brings out the best in cooks, chefs, and vendors across Anastara, a flurry and frenzy of cooking, experimenting, and tasting that goes miles towards filling bellies left hungry by the hard work of comfortable days and the encroaching chill of cool nights. Bread and bread-relatives in particular take center stage this year, with pretzels, hoagies, buns, and pies coming out in immense quantity. The reason? Cheap cheap grain from the Efrecka Principality, where the court wizard advanced agriculture by leaps and bounds through the simple act of blessing the rains. In fact, such is the bounty that numerous restaurants, street vendors, and stall merchants have begun offering samples to the public, under the not-at-all-alarming principle of "the first one is free". And while this technique is actually producing dividends (unlike previous tactics of "an offer you can't refuse" and "those are nice kneecaps, it'd be a shame if someone broke them because you didn't buy a knave sandwich"), no one quite accounted for the interaction of magic-infused grain and whatever weirdness courses through the Sundered. So what happens? Well, ever heard of "potion miscibility" rules? Maybe you start breathing fire or acid. Maybe you're terribly flatulent, dizzy, confused, or inexplicably forgotten by gravity. Maybe something wonderful happens and you sprout awesome wings. Maybe something terrible happens and you sprout awesome wings from your nostrils. Whatever the case, you're on an adventure now, for however long this lasts... What Do I Look Like, A Charity Case? Unlike the vast majority of students, the Sundered don't come to the school with a lot of resources and more on the way from home as needed. Though by no means does anyone look down on them for this, the Magicademy recognizes this as an unfortunate disadvantage. After all, not every Sundered is suited for gainful employment in Anastara -- some of them look like dragons, for example, and some of them have the social graces of a pie to the face, if the pie was full of poo and artificial waffles. So the Magicademy has offered to pay the Sundered a fair and decent wage for various jobs around the school. Groundskeeping, for example, has fallen behind while Meliandre Tomekin has reluctantly taken her golem servitors offline for a much needed dezanyfication. Students can earn their way by wrangling leaves and plants trying to get ready for winter. For the more prideful, pairs of Sundered can give tours of the facilities to prospective students and their families. Headmaster Birony has an opening for a test dummy, if you feel life is no longer worth living. Whatever your flavor of labor, you can find a way to make some extra dough. Or money, since the dough is probably magical and dangerous as detailed one prompt up. I Threw It On the Ground Most magic classes have reached a point in their curriculum where they address utilizing the local environment for practical and aesthetic effect in spellcasting. Discovery, for example, addresses the creation of material half-in, half-out of objects, which is easily practiced by conjuring a plant of some sort that is properly rooted. Fantastics covers illusion interactions with terrain, as well as style, so students of that art find themselves conjuring flashes and fires that erupt upwards from the ground and also appear to affect the environment. Modification concerns itself with properly accounting for environmental barriers, such as constraints posed by the floor. And Glyphics teaches how to bind these spells into fanciful objects, like glass spheres that shattered and release their spell when smashed at the feet of the wizard in question. So as part of classes, and part of homework, aspiring wizards are casting, conjuring, creating, and changing objects with dramatic gestures and waving wands, all focused on the ground in front of them. Needless to say, some results are particularly spectacular. A geyser of water? A rock the size of a building? Blinding light? Accidentally Modifying your partner's pants? The sky's the limit, and we mean that literally, because you probably don't have the magical wherewithal to achieve escape velocity yet. I'm An Adult Particularly concerned with the behavior of some of the latest Sundered, he's not pointing any fingers but he's getting a little tired of certain students coming up with wacky variants on his House's name, Professor Trammel has taken it upon himself to set up optional deportment and courtesy classes. Well, 'optional' unless you're in Gekronus Maius, since he can order you all to attend, and very, very, uncomfortably encouraged by everyone else for the other Sundered. Needless to say, much of these courses goes over poorly with the student body, but one section in particularly has an unusually strong grip: Style. No one, absolutely no one, can deny that Professor Trammel has and understands style, and he is exceptionally willing to share that benefit with you. The cut of suits, the length of dresses, the proper fit of vests, the flow of capes and cloaks, the power of iconic appearances and distinct silhouettes... he is a master of all these things, and the spells necessary to achieve them. Already, many students are going about campus looking far more snappy than ever before. Is this the time to take on a new look? Or maybe you have an old one from home you'd like to recreate? Could his advice on self-care benefit you? Or maybe you're just determined not to change... The moral of this story is... YOU CAN'T TRUST THE SYSTEM.

Comments

[sweetsummerchild03]

"Sorry, sorry!" she called again, putting the wand away and bouncing over. "I was trying to clear the leaves, but my wand is kinda sensitive."

[gunbladegrrl]

"Your wand is sensitive?" Maria repeated, looking over one forearm skeptically as she lowered it. "No offense, but... what?"

[sweetsummerchild03]

"Yeah!" She didn't seem offended in the slightest. "My wand makes wind! I just have to wave it, but even the littlest wave makes some wind blow."

She demonstrated with a flick of her hand, sending a short but noticeable breeze blowing past.

[gunbladegrrl]

Maria took a moment to process this, still having trouble adjusting her own understanding of magic, para- or otherwise, to this world's workings. When comprehension hit, she snapped her fingers and pointed at it. "Oh! It's a magic wand of its own!"

[sweetsummerchild03]

She nods. "Yeah! I mean, I think so!" Reaching back into her robes, she pulls out another wand. "This is my regular wand, and I can do other spells and stuff with it." She holds up the strange wand again. "But this one only makes wind."

[gunbladegrrl]

"You think so? You mind if I..."

Well. She wasn't exactly certain how to describe paramagic just out of nowhere in a situation where real magic practically drowned the place.

"Try something?"

[sweetsummerchild03]

"Um..." She hesitates for a moment, glancing down at her wind wand before looking up again. "I guess not. You won't break it, will you?"

[gunbladegrrl]

"Not at all! Paramagic is harmless to the original object or vessel. It might be temporarily drained, but I doubt that considering just how magical everything is here." To the point that she could start drawing Ultimas out of the frickin' commodes.

Okay, maybe it wasn't quite that extreme, but still!

[sweetsummerchild03]

Though that does put her more at ease, she's still a bit uncertain as she looks at the wand again. But eventually she nods. "Okay. So what do you need to do?"

[gunbladegrrl]

"Something not important," she said, making a few mental adjustments to swap Draw into active use -- which was very important to making this work, but not relevant to the actual question... "and then just this."

Focusing slightly on the wand, Maria analyzed what she could access from it. The process was vastly more complicated than it looked, relying on the filtering the magical energies she perceived through the part of her mind being occupied by a Guardian Force, but also very simple inasmuch as she'd been doing this for a while and was good enough at it to not need to think about it.

"Ooh, Tornado. There's definitely some powerful wind magic in that wand!"

[sweetsummerchild03]

June brightens up, standing on her toes in excitement. "Really? You already figured that out?"

[gunbladegrrl]

"Yep! Tornado is a powerful wind magic spell, so if I'm capable of Drawing it from the wand, it's a source of powerful wind magic."

This was a pretty odd conversation to be having, especially with a duck, but not the weirdest thing Maria had ever done.

[sweetsummerchild03]

June claps her hands, clearly excited. "That's really cool! Is there anything else you can learn about it?"

[gunbladegrrl]

"I definitely don't want to try using it!" Dangerous magic item that she didn't know how to control? No thank you, nuh-uh. "Let's stick with that for now."

[sweetsummerchild03]

"Oh wow. Is it really that dangerous?" She hadn't really thought about how much power it had, but...should she really be walking around with it?

[gunbladegrrl]

Maria shrugged broadly. "To do anything else I'd have to actually draw some magic out of it. Normally that's just fine, but do you really want me to guess on that?"

[sweetsummerchild03]

"Hmm...no. Not if it's too risky." As curious as she is about the wand, she doesn't want anyone to accidentally get hurt over it.

[gunbladegrrl]

"Yeah, that's the sort of thing you can only learn by experimentation, really. And this sure is the right place for it!" After all, getting caught in the crossfire was both understandable and a daily occurrence.

[sweetsummerchild03]

With a bright smile, she nods. "Yeah! I wanna learn more about it! Hopefully I can figure out how to control it so I don't keep hitting people in the face."