diatuooc | Test Drive #1

Test Drive #1

The Airship There

By carriage or coach, spellwagon or ship, perhaps even on the wings of magic, the Sundered heed the call to gather at the Tenzin High Dock of Vulbaria. On this, the appointed day, a great passenger airship sits in the dock, the seals of the six Houses fluttering from flagpoles along her length and her wooden planks atremble as if it is eager to be off. At last, the gangplank descends, and the Hand of Diatu opens her doors to the Sundered so they can take their first step on the path towards protection and salvation.

Inside, you may choose from long comfortable couches, broad circular tables surrounded by straight-backed, cushioned chairs, or viewing seats at the glass front of the ship. Sundered who need special accommodations are quickly provided for, ensuring everyone travels in comfort. Trays drift through the air periodically, offering snacks and drinks to the passengers.

This may be the first chance you've had to truly relax since being swept to this strange world. Certainly it is the first chance you've had to meet your fellow Sundered. As the airship lifts gracefully off from the High Dock, your journey to Diatu begins. Excited? Nervous? Simply angry? Or perhaps searching among the crowd here for a familiar face or some sign of hope?

Rain, Rain...

Welcome to Diatu Magicademy. It's raining.

Seriously raining. One of those downpours that feels like a curtain has dropped on you, that soaks to the bone within a second of stepping into it. Obviously, this won't do, and a civic-minded cluster of Purifeul students has taken it upon themselves to solve this problem. No sooner do you step through the gates then you practically run into a giant and complex runic diagram being drawn out with long staffs by several students, all of them speaking seeming nonsense about derivatives, limits, and equations. Magic! In action right before your eyes!

And yet, just as their mathemagics wind towards the center of the diagram and they all make their final stroke -- one student slashes his line off on a weird tangent, speaking an equation that sounds nothing at all like what his fellows utter. The spell completes... weirdly, as the students look in horror at each other. The temperature abruptly drops seventy degrees, and a cold wind begins to blow.

Welcome to Diatu Magicademy. Please get out of the blizzard before you freeze.

Thaumaturgy 101

After some fifteen minutes of grumbling from Professor Loshakle, followed by half an hour of theory and basics, the grouchy old man finally gets to drawing a magical symbol on the board. "This is straight out of Fundamental Principles of Wizarding," he says, writing Sense Magic next to the symbol. "As is everything you'll learn here. I'll emphasize yet again, you MUST know the name of the spell and the proper gestures. You can't simply wave your wand in any old pattern and say any old words. That isn't how it works," he says, glaring around the class as if daring someone to question him.

But he gives no one the opportunity, instead producing a wand and making the gesture to trace the symbol he'd drawn in midair. "Sense Magic," he intones, and the air and his wand both shimmer.

"Now. You all try." Just like that. What the Professor doesn't mention is that this spell can produce some very interesting results if the symbol is off, or the timing...

Bala-inlota Practice

Bala-inlota is the main interaction the Magicademies have with each other -- the sport of wizards! Two teams take the field, with the goal of heaving a ball through their opponent's hoop. The rules primarily revolve around not inflicting lethal injury, because bala-inlota is a free-for-all at best, where each team relies on both physical and magical might to win the day.

You kind of wish someone had told you this BEFORE you got hauled onto the field so the coach could see if you've got what it takes.

Now half a dozen players are charging down the field at your ragtag group of semi-willing recruits, while another half-dozen are preparing spells that you've been absolutely assured aren't as nasty as the ones deployed in actual play. On your side: the ball, your wits, your physical ability, and maybe three classes's worth of magical education.

On the upside, magic is pretty good at healing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Traveling around on an airship back in his own proper world had left him completely jaded. Any wonder or magnificence in the vehicles had faded once he'd had to hold it together through brute strength, and paid for maintenance costs.

In that respect, the amazement in the elf's (? She looks like an elf, anyway) eyes startles him for a second before his cynicism unclenches just a little. Really, if you weren't an adventurer, and even then particularly lucky of one, airships were a pretty special thing to encounter, weren't they?

"There are a few possibilities," he said, interjecting himself as gently as he could, "but in this case I'm inclined to believe it's powerful magical levitation or the next best thing to it."

Slowly she turned to see who it was that was speaking to her, her eyes blinking lazily as the former Princess was still caught in a daze of excitement and splendor.

"Magic?", she questioned. "There's.. There's magic powerful enough to make such a behemoth float?"

Her somewhat sheltered life and inability to perform magic left her all-too-easily impressed by such feats. She could only imagine that such spells were mundane or easily placed if they were being used to transport individuals in such a casual manner.

"What would be the, did you say, "next best thing to it"?"

"Well," Roy said, "one possibility is that they're using a fusion of magical and technological developments. I'm a little more used to airships like that so I don't think that's the case, actually. Another possibility is that the magic itself isn't levitating the ship, but is acting in a way that causes it to float -- like conjuring a very light gas, or manipulating air somehow. It's also possible that magic is actually altering gravity for the purpose of the ship's hull alone..."

But he shrugged, leaving it at those scenarios. "But the practical result is all the same -- an airship."

Test Drive #1

The Airship There

Re: The Airship There

no subject