diatuooc | Test Drive #3

Test Drive #3

Lightning Crash

The weather over the floating island of Ascelion during spring months is best described as "hellacious"; its elevation puts it right among the worst of stormclouds and fuels their thunderous fire as they sweep past it and electrically scrape against its sides. Rain is frequent, but lightning is almost constant, along with thunderous rumbles that roll across the city and the open spaces of the Magicademy like waves.

But today is particularly bad. Webs of electricity crackle through the sky, jumping from cloud to cloud or grounding themselves on towers of the Magicademy angrily. None of them seem to endanger the students, but there's a first time for everything, isn't there? As titanic fury threatens to tear the sky in half, do you risk stepping into the outside? Does the infrasonic rumbling trigger fear or terror in your gut, as such deep waves are known to do? Perhaps you've learned a spell that will protect you. Or perhaps you've poorly learned a spell that may or may not protect you...

Wand Wrong Way

The rumors around campus speak of a small and musty store deep in the Merchant District, on a side road to a side road, where only those in-know go to find items that would surely draw too much notice if displayed publicly. Powdered dragon tail, eye of sphinx, swords Forged with magic-cutting spells, and most valuable of all, the Gateway Wand. Surely this legendary wand, in which the full power of Sundering hums, could get you and your friends back home.

Rumors are pretty lousy with directions, though. The Merchant District offers ample chance to get lost, to get distracted, or to stumble down the wrong alley and find hoodlums all too eager to extract "tolls" from the lost and seemingly helpless. Does your adventure become disaster? Does this rumored shop even exist?

Pantalones Giganticus

At its heart, Modification seems like the most simple of schools. What could be more simple than arithmetic? Therefore, Modification also has the steepest and most shocking learning curve of all, as it rapidly balloons to more complicated mathematical expressions, more variables in the formulae, and above all more chance for error.

So really, the mistake is an honest one. Any hurried student, probably in their third or fourth year of study, could accidentally introduce an unnecessary factor into their equation. That is probably why your pants are now sized for someone four times large than you. (Not four sizes. Four times.) Worse, this has happened to EVERYONE -- the entire population of the Magicademy, student and staff and faculty alike, are trundling around in blown-up bloomers, too-large trousers, not-conveniently-sized knickers... you get the idea.

Now the bad news: to fix the error in formula and restore your pants to normal size, someone else has to get in them with you.

Labwork

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.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"The holy hell is that?" replied Tony, who didn't have a familiar. Not yet anyhow. It was a work in progress.

"My current familiar, Willard."

"It looks like a canary that's wearing a costume," replied Tony. "Where'd you get it?"

"I was introduced to my familiar upon arrival. Were you not introduced to one yourself?"

"Also, not an it," Willard said. fluffing a bit.

"Familiar? Oh so that's what that floating thing calling itself WEDNESDAY was," Tony said.

"I put it in a suitcase."

"IN A SUITCASE?!" Willard squawked, indignant.

V suddenly had a headache that no healing spell could cure.

"It's a talking book, so ergo, it wasn't actually a thing that needed to breathe," replied Tony. "WEDNESDAY was all right with being put into a suitcase."

Willard huffed and muttered.

"Sorry, he takes the form of whatever he thinks I need him to be. Which at the moment is apparently a Familiar Rights advocate."

"He's probably taking a nap anyhow. More lazy than a book anyhow." said Tony.

"In my experience, books themselves are not generally called upon to expend effort."

"You'd be surprised on how much books have been called into question in my world," replied Tony absently.

"I would rather like to think that I would be, but having spent so much time with the halfling and the bard, I fear I may be rather immune to surprises of that nature at this point."

"Be glad you've never gotten to book burning then," replied Tony with a snort. "Well, nothing to do it but to redo this potion."

"That sounds like it is well past time to research reflection spells for book covers."

And possibly blow a few people up.

Test Drive #3

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