April Event and Intro Log

[magicademymods]

April Event and Intro Log Plants Off The Path Green grass and radiant flower gardens bracket all the major walks on campus, and fragrant scents fill the air all around. Note the key words "major walks" there. Move off the common paths and onto 'shortcuts' or less frequented areas of the vast campus and things are quite different. Here, the plants grow just as experience with this chaotic and often dangerous school would lead you to expect. Broad-leafed stalks stretch upwards, petals unfolding to reveal long jets of fire instead of a sensible stamen. Bushes have large toothy mouths, and viciously swallow anyone who comes near (though they are still just bushes, and the victims end up on the their other side just a few scratches worse for wear). A tree grows quills instead of needles; another sprouts paper airplanes instead of leaves. An extremely aggressive pitcher-plant wanders the pathways, mugging students at knifepoint. It's a jungle out there. Bullies, Of Course Surely a Magicademy, with many students already adults and with such an emphasis on learning and control, wouldn't have those who used their magic for such petty ends as making others suffer? Uh-huh. A pack of bullies with more spell experience than wisdom has banded together to take delight in the suffering of others. They overtly pick on the small, the meek, and those with less magical skill; they torment the larger, the bold, and the powerful in secret. Worse, they are the clever sorts of bullies, who go out of their way not to get caught and not to do anything that can't be played off or explained away. Maybe you attracted their attention by looking weak enough to pick on. Or strong enough to need to be taken down a notch. Or weird enough that you were the Other and thus lesser. Or pretty/handsome enough that you needed to look less attractive so they would look more so. They are pretty good at justifying picking on anyone, really. Are they pestering you by magical tripping or property destruction? Playing keep-away with your class books? Better be careful how you respond; their fathers might hear about it. Wind At The Docks (aka The Prompt Where You Don't Get Mugged) The winds of spring bring something of a dark pastime to Anastara -- dockwatching. Aware that a sudden blast of air can rip across the island at a moment's notice, crowds gather at the docks with the air of those expecting spectacle. All too often, they are rewarded -- in the wake of a sudden wind, airships list violently, or bump into each other, or desperately pull sails and power up their flotation cores to avoid a worse collision. Curses fly through the air, and sometimes even spells. With luck, the audience might even see a pair of vessels engage in an all-out air duel, as two captains driven by pride or vengeance refuse to back down. Now, to their credit, the assembled people aren't heartless. If a ship truly looks to be in trouble, or if it's smashed to the ground or into a dock, the people of Anastara don't hesitate to help those on board to safety or ensure that they don't go down with their ship. But mostly it's watching the chaos. It IS quite a show... 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 newly-arrived 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.) This month, the team has developed a Sundering Glyph designed to detect any influence of the magic on you. Painted on your arm, it will shine with a bright light when a Sundering effect attempts to influence you. They explain that they believe the Sundered are still subject to either the spell that brought them here or new ones, because they have detected remnants of Sundering magic in the wake of students who have mysteriously disappeared. They ask only that you report back when it lights up. Problem: when the Glyph erupts, either because of the Glyph itself or the spell it has detected... those who bear it find themselves no longer where they started. Perhaps they find themselves in a classroom late at night. Or the wrong dormitory. Or in the Great Hall in their nightshirt. Or for the utterly lowbrow amongst you, a restroom occupied by the wrong gender. Whatever the case: sorry. Wonders Await Diatu Magicademy is open to you in all its glory. Have fun! A Special Note If you thread out one or more scenes based on the confusion from "Research on the Sundered", respond to the comment on this post with a link to that thread. The results of this will be revealed next month! (It is some sort of regain this month!)

Comments

[hotheadwarmheart]

Yes, Noa will learn. Unfortunately.

As to theory vs practical debate, Lea made a thoughtful noise. "I don't know," he said. "If I wanted to do a spell with a different effect, I'd probably just go learn a new spell. That's how most people have to do it back home anyway."

"I guess the problem with me is that a lot of the lessons at the school assume that the people going there are planning to make a career out of wizardry," he said. "And I'm... really not. Here or back home. I'm mostly just interested in burning off enough magic that I don't explode, or experience whatever other horrible death they claim will happen if we don't learn to control this world's kind of magic. So I'm not really sure why I'd need to know the theoretical side of things."

[noasark]

"Hah!" Alright, that earns a bit of a laugh. "The drawbacks of the laws of reality changing on us, I see!" He's still smirking a bit and shaking his head, even as gruesome ways to screw it all up are brought forward.

"There's nothing waiting for me back in my world- so I'm fairly keen on seeing what I can do here. Some of the schools of magic seem like they could over lap- it could be interesting to see if they can, and what happens. For someone going back to where they came from, I suppose that wouldn't have a lot of use though," he acknowledges with a nod.

"It would hardly work the same after all. If it even worked."

[hotheadwarmheart]

"Yeah," Lea said. "On both counts. I've noticed a bit of that potential overlap myself, so it'd be interesting to see if you could do something with it. Who knows; maybe being from outside this world would even give you an advantage when it came to developing new kinds of magic. Give you more of an 'outside the box' viewpoint or something."

"But me? In most of my classes I'm just doing enough to scrape by, which is fine by me. I don't wanna get left behind or anything, but at the same time... well, frankly it's boring having to sit through a bunch of discussions about stuff you don't care about. I probably spend more time trying not to fall asleep and doodling in the margins of my note paper than anything else during most of the theory portions of classes."

[noasark]

"Better not get caught doing that..." he remarks dryly, giving a shrug all the same. It's hardly his business if someone chooses to do poorly. Especially if they're open about it.

"But I think I understand what you're saying at least. ....You'll probably have more time for your own thing that way too," Noa snorts. There's a fairly large gap between dedicated homework completion and 'scraping by'.

[hotheadwarmheart]

Lea chuckled slightly. "Well it wouldn't be the first time honestly," he admitted with a bit of a shrug. "I used to do the same thing back in regular school in classes I didn't like. I know it's kinda a bad habit, but as long as I'm passing the classes, I don't really see how they can make somebody write notes and stuff."

"I have started having study sessions with a friend of mine," he said, "but we don't tend to get nearly as much studying done as we probably should. They tend to turn into 'random conversation sessions' pretty quickly more often than not."

[noasark]

"I'll admit, I didn't have a very typical classroom experience..." To put it extremely lightly. "Having classmates at all is new..."

He raises a brow as Lea explains his 'study habits', falling into quiet thought for a moment.

"....Perhaps you should get another involved as well..?" Not necessarily Him, but. Someone with Focus.

[hotheadwarmheart]

"You were a homeschooled kid, huh?", Lea said. "Can't say that was really common back where I was from, but I can see how this whole thing might be extra weird to you then."

"And yeah, that might not be a bad idea honestly," he said. "I mean, not that I don't like just handing out with him and talking, but I feel a little bad calling them 'study' sessions when they're kinda anything but, you know?"

[noasark]

"Mmm. More or less. I suspect at a certain point, the 'homeschool' label can't completely apply..." Fancy Rich Tutors do that.

But hey! Noa chuckles. "Then consider it on the table. I can't say it's a firm agreement until you ask him obviously, but it it's worth doing that much."

[hotheadwarmheart]

Lea chuckled too and nodded. "I'll try and remember to ask him about it next time then," he said.

"Anyway though, in the meantime, I've gotta be getting on with what I came here for in the first place," he said. "There's some Forging materials with my name on them a few docks down."

[noasark]

"Mnh- well, good luck then," Noa decides with a nod. He's not into forging himself but...well maybe later. "I'll see you another time."

And wrapped!

[hotheadwarmheart]

"See you around," Lea said, giving Noa a wave as he turned and headed off down the docks.