Test Drive Redux #2

[magicademymods]

Test Drive Redux #2

All test drive threads are canon. Characters on the TDM who do not app are considered to have been sent home promptly. Current characters may use TDM prompts in the communities, but we ask that only prospective characters top-level here.

Welcome to Diatu (I Like Swords)

Just like that, you're here.

A helpful staffperson quickly and efficiently explains the situation, hands you a pamphlet for further reading. She tells you what House you belong to (you're pretty sure you just imagined the sound of rolling dice) and just what that means. If you want a slice of pie, you get that. If you want a hug, you get that too. If you want to sing a song about your new circumstances and what it means for your personal growth and development, she's pretty good with Fantastics so you can do that too. If you desperately want to punch someone... there's a straw dummy with a sign hanging from it that reads VENT AGGRESSION HERE.

And with all that out of the way, you're taken outside, to the first glimpse of the radiant blue sky above the floating island of Ascelion, and the magnificent buildings and grounds of Diatu Magicademy. Your new home, for now. Welcome.

A Day In The Life

The sun is bright, the temperature is absolutely gorgeous, clouds keep drifting directly through the island and engulfing people, the trees are changing color and shape in ways both lovely and Lovecraftian... summer yields to fall 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 demon of storms, accidentally summoned by a student trying to do his Sundering homework, roams the grounds both inside and out. It conjures personal, localized storms over students, refusing to let up until they sign over their immortal souls. Clever negotiators can bargain it down to half a sandwich, but many choose to just fight back. Luckily, the demon isn't terribly strong, but the forces of weather are indeed at its command (in a 4x4x9 area).

Someone spilled a smarts potion on one of Headmaster Birony's Thinking Spells, and now a giant ethereal brain roams the campus, furiously seizing students with telekinetic powers and demanding they debate on a variety of philsophical topics. Can a god truly be concerned with humanity? Which Curriculum of magic is the strongest and most important? What is best in life? It thirsts to learn and understand! On the other hand, if you bore it too much it might leave for no raisin.

An entire wing of the Library of Starchime is closed! Though this is incredibly inconvenient to all concerned, the librarians shoo students away with warnings that a Fantastics spell has gotten stuck on 'psychological torment' and they are busy trying to find an emotionally healthy and well-adjusted wizard to go in and dispel it. Since that likely won't happen before the heat death of the universe, many students determined to access the study material they need go in regardless, citing campus bylaw 515(b) ("Just let them be stupid, we can't stop them" ~introduced: Prf. Loshakle, approved: 5-3, reference section 2(a)-(f), "Corpse Disposal (student)".) Are you among the brave, or at least the kind that really care about their grade?

Scavenger Hunt!

A mysterious message circulates on the BBS: a list of strange and obscure items, like "a three-headed snake" or "the essence of sunlight" -- the sort of baffling semi-metaphorical crap you'd expect from this hack fantasy setting, if you're inclined to take a cynical view that makes us cry. The instructions say to simply gather all of these items, then present them to Professor Ire; he will reward all who participate.

If you think to actually ask Professor Ire if he is in fact on board with this, he says he is, but gives you a bag of candy because you exhibited independent thought and proper skepticism in the face of... well, here he just waves vaguely at Diatu in general, trusting you know what he means. If his reward for sensible thinking is that good, the one for the actual scavenger hunt must be incredible, right?

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.)