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

A Quiet Moment

[whose_son_am_i]

Val hadn't been the only one doing some exploring. Loki was sure there was more to explore too, more secrets to find. He'd found a good spot earlier from which he planned to come and watch and take a break. This whole absurd situation required some thinking over.

A frown at first, when he noticed someone already up in said spot. Before deciding he didn't care, and just moved to climb up as well. Tall form settling not far away (given the perch) but not close either.

[wagerofloki]

Val eventually pulled herself out of orbit and back down to earth. She leaned forward to look down to the grounds below them and watch the few people who were out this way meander their way around the ground, but it's in this motion that she noticed someone else out of the corner of her eye and startled.

She looked at him and seemed to size him up before she uneasily settled back into her own spot. If he meant her any harm he probably would have done something already. She returned to resting her elbows on her knees and looking down over the edge of where they were perched. Eventually, she spoke up.

"This is all fucked, huh?"

[whose_son_am_i]

That brought a snort from Loki. "If I'm understanding the meaning correctly, then you understate the case." How his life had changed. Had it really been months ago that he'd been on Sakaar? And months before that, ruling Asgard in Odin's place?

[wagerofloki]

Her head perked up at the snort, and she looked at him when he spoke. He spoke in an oddly formal manner that she was just absolutely unaccustomed to. "How can it get more fucked'n closin' your eyes 'n just..." She straightened up and motioned generally before her at the grounds, the people, the world.

[whose_son_am_i]

"I can think of a few things." Not that Loki particularly cared to elaborate on his thoughts. "I have seen things across the Nine Realms and beyond, that are stranger than this."

[wagerofloki]

She was quiet as she waited for him to elaborate on what wild things he'd seen across whatever the hell the Nine Realms (what a cool name for a bar) was. When no answer came she straightened back up.

"Guess wakin' up in a strange place isn't so weird. Happened t'me a few times already." She looked to him. "So what've you seen that's fucked, then?"

[whose_son_am_i]

Loki-slanted his eyes to look at her, without turning his head. "Half of a surviving refugee population slaughtered to satisfy a madman's idea of bringing balance to the universe." Said entirely seriously, with the same serious look on his face.

[wagerofloki]

As he spoke on some hyperbolic cosmic scale of proportion, she rolled her eyes. She didn't seem to be shocking her like maybe he thought it would.

"Yeah, yeah, some fuckhead up above tryin' to crush all the people 'neath 'em." She grouched and looked down at her hands so she could pick at the skin around her nails. "What else is fuckin' new?"

[whose_son_am_i]

She might find his response interesting. Loki smiled, not entirely a nice one, but not a threatening one. "Sounds like you have experience being ground down then. Expecting more of the same here?"

[wagerofloki]

His response did make her hesitate. She hadn't been quite expecting that response. She lifted her gaze back up, but she didn't look at him.

"Be stupid not to. Setting might change, but people don't. Strong'll always try'n crush those beneath them."

[whose_son_am_i]

"Yet here we are. With strong magic within us that will cause our death if we don't learn to use it, on an entirely new world." Dry amusement in his voice. "What do you make of it, I wonder."

[wagerofloki]

She gave a small chuckle at his last comment. There was an almost nervous titter to it as if he'd caught her in something.

"Just startin' to think maybe this isn't some weird trip'r a dream."

A pause.

"Don't really know what to make'f it. Head's not really wrapped 'round all this. Magic's a thing in games where I'm from, not somethin' real. Everyone's got shit like this in 'em..." She showed her left palm, the interface jack in the heel of her hand.

She is free to pull away of course.

[whose_son_am_i]

Hmm, interesting. Loki didn't ask, just reached out a hand to grasps hers and pull it closer for a better look if he could. Studying it, before blue-green eyes looked at her. "This connects you to something, doesn't it? But I am unfamiliar beyond that. The shape of it and your words give me the clues however..."

[wagerofloki]

When he took her hand she grew very stiff and her eyes went very wide. Every muscle in her body was coiled to strike out and fight. Given where they were, that spelled a certain kind of disaster, so she simply froze instead.

Her green eyes met his blue-green and when he spoke it was as if he pulled out whatever pin was keeping her system so tight. She blinked at him but didn't otherwise break the gaze.

"Hook into computer systems. Computers, cars, apartment systems, security, vending machines. Whatever." She kinda shrugged.

[whose_son_am_i]

"I see." Loki said simply. "You don't even realize this is a kind of magic all of it's own, do you?" A slow, almost mocking smile accompanying his words. He let go of her hand.

"Where I'm from, magic and what others know as science are often intertwined in such a way as to be one and the same."

[wagerofloki]

Val blinked at him, confused by the statement. Computers, this cyberware, and associated systems - it was just normal every day everything. It was so mundane to her. She took her hand back slowly, her right hand gripping her left as if retaking a possession he was handing back to her.

"Magic? Like what they're tryin' to teach here? How's all that work into computers?" As if there wasn't any other branch of science.

[whose_son_am_i]

"At its very core it harnesses lightening--a primal force, to transmute it into power." It was that simple, but Loki wouldn't leave it there. "That is a form of magic in and of itself, but further--that these devices all talk to each other, and that you can simply plug-in any place you want, and still have access to any device connected? How do you not see that as magic?"

What was circuitry and programming but complicated weavings of spells intertwining? Signals sent through the air were plucked like strings and read by complex cantrips to be reproduced on a device. Magic.

[wagerofloki]

Val fell quiet as she considered what he said. Her brows had drawn together in concentration as she tried to come up with a counterargument (you know, on principle). It was difficult because she didn't actually know how these things worked so it kinda was like magic to her. She couldn't even begin to explain how her neural network and interface plug worked.

"But magic's s'pposed to be all," she waved her hands in a vague gesture, something she probably saw in a video game or something, "and then shit just kinda worked. Computers'n stuff aren't like that. It's not like the, uh, was it fire? You were throwing at the training dummy earlier?"

She frowned a little.

"You made that come out'f nothin'. Computers need power - not like it comes out'f nowhere like that."

[whose_son_am_i]

Ah, so she'd noticed his venting his frustration at the training dummy. "That was still just manipulation of energy, and had to come from somewhere. In this case, it was my own." Loki had also been throwing around some *serious* power earlier. (Which did very little if anything to the training dummy, to his annoyance.)

An eyebrow arched sarcastically. "How do you think your own body functions?" Wasn't there some theory or law among the midgardians about how energy was neither created nor destroyed?

"Magic like that is still simply manipulation of energy by will."

[wagerofloki]

Hard to miss him showing off in such a fantastic and flashy way. It had scared her at first, but now that they were talking she was mostly curious as to how he did that. Having those kinds of tricks up her proverbial sleeve would be really handy to keeping people off her back.

"I don't knw, I'm not the fuckers at Raven'r Rocklin makin' this shit. I give a ripper cash, they install the cyberware. That's all I know." She spoke in a tone as if she were annoyed and he'd hurt her pride: there was something else there she wasn't bringing forward. She huffed and shed the annoyance.

"Guess I don't get how a circuit board's the same as what you're sayin'. S'ppose that's what this place is for though."

[whose_son_am_i]

"A circuit board helps direct the energy and tells the computer what to do, how to connect where, yes? That is part of the 'will' of manipulating magic." Loki explained, watching her carefully. "And I suspect you know more than that."

Pausing, head tilting. "I would say you're too young to have experienced enough to make you so jaded, but life is hard and often not fair."

[wagerofloki]

He explained his thinking and she took it and decided it was worth mulling over, but the conversation was getting nowhere at this moment. It hadn't clicked fully and, while his explanation did genuinely help, she needed to just mull over it some more. She's get it, probably.

A faint look of surprise crossed her features in his confidence she probably knew more than she let on. It was the first time in a while that someone assumed that she was something more than uneducated. It didn't last long as the next thing he said hit her and she bristled. She looked to him with eyes made of daggers and her words had an edge to them as if they could have been knives.

"You don't know shit 'bout what I been through 'n you clearly don't know shit 'bout where I'm from. Can go fuck yourself if you're gonna make assumptions 'bout my life'n experience."

[whose_son_am_i]

"You are correct. I do not know you, where you're from, or what you've been through, child." Loki could match glare for glare if he wanted, but instead he still looked faintly amused. Like he'd expected such an outburst. "And yet you show the signs so easily for those who know how to read such."

[wagerofloki]

Him calling her a child got another physical reaction: the guarded anger turned into anger outright and her jaw was being clenched so tight it couldn't be comfortable (it wasn't). She made the conscious choice to move her hands so she was gripping the edge of the building rather than clenching her hands into fists. He was talking down to her and digging at her pride on purpose, that little amused expression told her that much.

"Not all'f us'r the kind that hide behind masks like some liar. Some'f us live whatcha see's whatcha get." Which, she realized as she said it, may not necessarily be the best. Even if she might agree with him she still had to argue, though. It'd become a point of protecting her own ego.

[whose_son_am_i]

"Ah, so you equate not being 'genuine' with a falsehood." Loki responded, smile turning slightly sharp. "Then is something only one or the other?" He'd been called far worse than a liar in his time.