Test Drive Reloaded! #1

[magicademymods]

Test Drive #1



Welcome to Diatu (I Like Swords)

The Arrival Hall is all aflurry with activity! No one had expected so many Sundered to suddenly pop up, the staff find themselves desperately scrambling to keep up with the influx, and a bunch of new arrivals find themselves hanging out in the Hall lobby, waiting to be seen, sent home if possible, or counseled and prepared for student life if not. Rumors run like wildfire: some people believe they've been kidnapped by aliens, a worryingly persistent suggestion that this is a setup for a murder-tournament keeps circulating, and one or two nutcases insist that a dragon tinkered with the rules of magic and now they have to study at a magic school to survive. Pie stocks are grievously low, and thought Headmaster Birony herself appeared and began violating the rules of space and time to summon pies from the future, a second Headmaster Birony with an eyepatch, several war scars, and a wild hairdo appeared and promptly yelled at the first Headmaster for stealing her pies. A pie fight erupted. Pie stocks are even more grievously low now.

Still, here's your chance to talk to your fellow arrivals. Or aggressively attack the nearest target in an outrage (they set up a target dummy and labeled it VENT AGGRESSION HERE, and are trusting you guys on the honor system). Staff don't have time to talk, but they promise they'll get to you soon!

A Day In The Life

The sun is bright, the air is warm, a cool breeze blows across Anastara, clouds keep drifting directly through the island and engulfing people... it's summer on Ascelion, and the day is ripe for learning. Or as ripe as Diatu Magicademy ever can be -- though no one would trade the character and charm of the lively campus for some stodgy, regimented school more interested in forcing students into the mold than encouraging them to be their best, sometimes conditions in the Magicademy are a little inconvenient.

A toilet in Kedrigan Hall keeps clamping onto the butts of those who attempt to use it. Thus far, half a dozen students have been freed from its clutches by their friends, while reports of singed buttocks have increased twofold. (Yes, only twofold. Think about that for a minute.) Staff are on the lookout for a prankster rather than a commode, so as of yet the treacherous toilet has gone unpunished...

Not far away, a group of cleaning golems has occupied the promenade as part of an ongoing strike. As they possess only rudimentary intelligence, they believe this involves seizing objects from anyone who passes nearby and hurling them at a set of bowling pins. Meliandre Tomekin, Head of Groundskeeping, has set up shop across the Promenade; any student who wanders too close gets a big block of ice shoved into their hands, along with instructions to hold it still while she shows those reprobates what-for...

In the Great Hall proper, school clubs and activities have, as was inevitable, escalated competition for new students to yet another level which only isn't a war crime because it isn't part of a treaty yet: they've conscripted geese. Horrible geese, to be precise, who dispense flyers for various clubs with less subtlety than a nuclear holocaust. Some of them fight for dominance, others have teamed up to pin down innocent students and stuff leaflets down their throat, and one has a wand and is somehow casting Discovery spells?!

A Forgery!

"I tried a mass-Forging technique," the older student says, showing off the briefcase full of identical wands and a sign that says 'FOR $ALE CHEAP'. "Some of them are exactly what I intended, they self-correct runes, but the rest, well.. . I don't know, I can't tell, and I'm not really interested in finding out one by one, so... you buying?"

All sales final. No refunds. Caveat emptor. As for what the wands do, well... there's a reason he answered with an ellipsis when asked. On the other hand, maybe the effect isn't too terrible? Maybe it's even beneficial! Maybe the wand shoots out rainbows and muffins! Or maybe it just animates and strikes you vigorously about the head and shoulders...

Three Dragon War

Someone, we're not naming names, canons, or the color of eyes and the dragon to which they belong that forms said person's obsession, may or may not be indirectly responsible for the latest game craze sweeping Anastara: Three Dragon War, a collectible card game that features players as dragons, deploying spells, creatures, and Sundered against each other to destroy each and avoid the machinations of the Third Dragon. The awesome thing about the game is that the Third Dragon comes in all different forms: classic bundled-with-the-starter-pack Ire, super-rare Anastara Diatu, suspiciously-rare Cam Birony, ultra-common Large Eagull, and more. The concept of an outside force adding randomness to the battle and being manipulated in turn by cards means Three Dragon War is the hottest card game that's come along since the last card game that was the hottest that had come along came along.

Face-to-face, you find yourself in a duel over these cards and the magical images they summon. Can this untested deck come through if you believe in it? Or are statistics and probability actual things that actually happen? Dragon Battle! Jiao Long Fu!

There's One in Every Test Drive

Not every magical disaster is caused by some wayward student you don't know. Many of them are caused by you instead. To wit: you're on the spot in one of the magical labs, being called on to demonstrate a technique more advanced than others you've mastered so far. Failure is expected, and the wards should prevent any injury to others from a miscast spell. But will the sparks of your magic just sputter out and die? Or will you inadvertently mispronounce, misform, misshape, or miscalculate in a way that brings chaos to you and your lab partner?

(You could also manage to succeed in casting the spell, but that isn't very fun.)

Comments

[temptationaccomplished]

"You have no say in what I remember or don't, Alec C- Hardy, and if it's up to me, I will be carrying a piece of you through to eternity. Because this is real; the emotions are real, even if the situations have been fabricated. It all matters because I want it to matter to me."

Thank you, for making him think about forgetting, and how fragile their time and memories really were. He really does love this gloomy idiot, but sometimes he wants to shake him.

"Now, as for Anthony, you'll find they're really very alike. The main difference is that Anthony has had someone looking out for him, a brother, of sorts. For most of his life, I think the only who reliably looked out for Crowley, was Crowley."

[temptationaccomplished]

"Oh, they're nothing like the one in that Camelot-world. She was actually fightening."

And then he remembered Crowley didn't remember that little adventure in puzzle-solving with him and with Alec, and he hoped Alec was alright, wherever in the universe he had ended up. Perhaps with Ellie or that young woman with the pdf, or his daughter, or at least someone was there with him to look after him. He needed looking after. He deserved to be looked after a little, and not just because he looked after everyone else.

"Of course we'll do tests!" he laughed at Crowley's obvious annoyance, glad to be pulled from his own thoughts. "We're students, Crowley. Students take tests. And get grades. I'm sure the young men at Oxford and Cambridge and all those sorts of places take tests too. It'll be fun. ...Unless...are you afraid your magic won't be up to snuff?"

[serpentinthegarden]

He had been to Camelot in ye olden King Arthur times but he hadn't been one to hang around at the library. Crowley had been out there in the field fermenting... things... in the damp English fog. He had no reason to doubt Aziraphale's words that the librarian back in those times had indeed been fierce. She or he might even have been of the round table for all he knew.

"Of course my magic is up to snuff!"

Affronted by the idea that it would not have been, and for the moment blissfully unaware that he had been gifted a new set of unfamiliar skills, he could be as boastful as he liked.

"I'm obviously going to be top of the class. I doubt anyone else here has been using magic as much as you or I."

[scotch_egg]

"Well there's no point to that, is there?" He flinches at the slip but tries to pretend he doesn't. "Bad memories are only useful if you can learn something to them, otherwise they just fester." Though he felt he should shut up at this point before he let too much slip.

He listened to the difference, and then shook his head. It was like trying to divide by zero. It seemed like it should make sense but in the end it didn't. His mind just came up with the stark black error.

"They're not the same person. It's fine that they're not. It is how it is. Maybe some traits or the same, but it's not-- You talk about memory? If memory isn't there, it's like it never happened."

[sizedoesntmatter]

Yugi had gone to climb up just as the lightening hit thr ground. Shocked, but really relieved at getting up in time.

"I mean yeah, but you can get shocked from the water on thr ground as well. So we'd to maybe move further away whenever the lightening hit the ground and move after that."

[sizedoesntmatter]

Yugi paused on what she just said. Clones. He never would have guessed. But in his mind she is still a kid reguardless of that.

"Clone or not I still think you should just be a kid instead of a tool and at least here, maybe you'll get that chance. We can always play games."

[sciencegirl]

"Ordinarily that would be true, but I did want to buy them for research so I suppose for a con artist they've mad a grievous error in selling to someone who was counting on them to be unreliable."

She snort laughs, though to be honest a good con artist could convince her to buy something from with the challeng of 'prove how it's broken or cheap' alone. She's both an easy target and an extremely dangerous foil.

But for now she's made enough of a mess.

"I think I'm going to have to learn a lot about manufactured creatures here, whether they're automatons of some sort or biological magical entities. I need help keeping up with cleaning."

Re: OU version here for funzies

[creepyoldguy]

"Take it up with the people who summoned me here, kid."

[creepyoldguy]

Beetlejuice tilted his head with a grin, subtly giving a thumbs up to an unseen audience.

"Nah. That's a being-cursed-by-my-mom thing."

[ronstadt]

"Wow. How very Brothers Grimm of her. Sounds like a bitch."

"Back home ghosts ended up with names that fit how they looked or who they were. Maybe I'll just give you a cool Sode B nickname. ... if that'd be alright, I mean."

[creepyoldguy]

"She is!" All the cheerful agreement in the world.

Beetlejuice tilted his head again. "S'fine by me, that is my favorite letter."

[wagerofloki]

"I mean, is it a grievous error if he still made some eddies? It's just lucky your interests align with his mistake - you bought way more'n he'd hope to sell one person. The grievous error's that he can make more'n he doesn't."

Val shifted her weight from one leg to the other, looking over the mess that was made in the name of learning.

"Guess since there's no Biotechnica creatures'r Zhirafa drones here I could help ya clean up. For a couple'f those wands, maybe? Any you're willin' to part with." She didn't want them all, just a little boost to her own supply so she could make a little more cash.

that was supposed to say SIDE b, thank you phone

[ronstadt]

"It's not bad as letters go," he agreed. "So what kind of stuff do you normally do? As a ghost, I mean."

The more he knew about the guy, he figured, the more appropriate and cool his nickname could be. Right now 'Stripes' was the forerunner and that was just lame. No one wanted to be stuck with something awful, living or dead.

feel like making this game canon?

[ronstadt]

"Do you know where they're putting you, yet?" He glanced down at the robes in his hands. "I hear these things are color-coded."

[ronstadt]

Oh. ... Yeah, that makes sense. Fancy stuff. Definitely a long cry from the cribbage Nana and I used to play on the porch after the ice cream stand closed up for the night.

[he's got a particular fondness for all his memories of Nana, now ... mostly because she's the only one he can confirm was real. he tries to keep from looking a little too wistful about it, and Yugi's crack about their hair is just the trick to pull him out of his Protagonist Brood]

You know, that's a good point. Maybe if this place is the kind of school that does field trips, they should put one of us in each group. For tracking.

[ronstadt]

"Purple hair, huh? Yeah, I'll keep an eye out. That's probably not that hard to miss."

He glanced down at his shirt. "Yeah, it kinda adds a little, I guess. Little bummed, it's the only thing I've got from home now. Maybe I'll see if anyone around here knows any good laundry tricks. ... Nice to meet you. Name's Ronstadt."

[ronstadt]

[probably worse, you can't put a demon on crackers. or at least, he's never tried]

So like, a Gatsby party. Sounds good to me. What kinda tunes do you listen to?

[now they were talking. he'd had quite the vinyl collection at home, and being able to at least talk tunes with someone might make him miss it just a little less]

[ronstadt]

"Honestly, I'm almost used to it when it goes off," he said - mostly to try and make her feel a little better about thinking it wasn't pleasant to sense things.

"But I know what you mean. For about four months, I had no idea what was going on with me: I just had that awful feeling, and this terrible ringing sound in my head like an out of tune bass guitar. I went from clinic to clinic trying to get diagnosed, but everyone - even a shaman! - sent me packin'. I didn't realize what it was 'til I got to L.A. and finally started seein' things. Once that happened, it kinda died down for the most part, and it only really hits me hard when there's something big around."

That, however, made him realize something, and he tilted his head, still holding the salve pie. "Those protections ... they're really powerful for me to have not picked up on him the minute we were in the same building. I know I don't have to tell you this, but ... you're lucky to have 'em. Whoever made them for you is really good."

[phoenixwiz]

When Ronstadt mentions to him about the color coding of the robes, it actually reminds him of how Hogwarts has their students sorted into color-coded houses: red and gold, blue and bronze, yellow and black, and green and silver.

Harry then looks at the colors of his new school robes and see that it’s in silver and black, “It looks like I’m being sent to Aer et Calculum. Which house did they sent you to? This is reminding me of how my old school placed students into houses with specific colors assigned to them.”

[serpentinthegarden]

Definitely nothing that could in any way be mistaken for bebop.

[ He was just saying. ]

Anything by Queen is good. You into Jazz?

[ This being the sort of style Gatsby might have been into. ]

[ronstadt]

Oh, I love Queen! Gotta say it's a toss up for me between A Day at the Races or The Works for my favorite album, though. Innuendo? Close third.

Jazz is okay, I have to be in the right mood. I'll listen to just about anything once.

[serpentinthegarden]

I usually end up listening to a Best of tape. Anything left in my car for too long usually turns into one.

[ And that suited him perfectly well. ]

Are you some sort of DJ or just... music enthusiast?

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

"Most magic's driven by will. Even here. Old Aleister Crowley had some things right. The stronger your will, the stronger your magic. If you want something real bad, well." Isabel's flat out stating that'd make that sort of thing work. "Just not quite the same if there's no magic on your world."

"Yeah, actually, things are that kind of chaotic. It's always something," she admitted. "And it definitely could have! Diatu's got a weirdness factor of like. 8 out of 10. Sometimes it's a 10 out of 10. Depends on the day, the magic fluctuation, the phase of the moon--or moons, if the other one's around. That sort of thing. And no, I'm not shitting you here."

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

"You build robots too? That's so cool! Not that I do, but I have people in my family who do. I'm more...uh. Punchy punchy girl." But Isabel laughed at that. "At least you could put them back together!"

Isabel looked thoughtful, herself. "And it's kind of mean now to try to convince them that pitching ice blocks was fun. Or...you know. Whatever you were planning to use them for." The ice blocks. Isabel figured that it probably was not anything actually good for the golems. Not that Professor Tomekin was mean. Just. Self-absorbed, a little, like the powerful tended to get.

"I mean, the trees and grounds are usually okay for a bit unless we get something weird going on. You might be able to put some of them in rotating shifts? So some of them get a break, with the knowledge that an emergency sort of takes priority if it happens?" That seemed pretty good to her.

[ronstadt]

"Oh, hang on." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the 18-page sheaf of rolled up pages that Headmaster Birony had written him, flipping to the last page. It took a moment of squinting at the word before he decided to just take a crack at pronouncing it.

"Valhudor," he said, putting an emphasis on the 'hu' as he held the paper out to Harry. "You know magic more than I do, do you figure I said that right?"

He had a slight fear that the garish red and orange coupled with his hair would make him look like a walking bonfire, but that was just a chance he was going to have to take.