Test Drive #1

[magicademymods]

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.

Comments

Peridot | Steven Universe

[logdates]

The Airship There

Peridot isn't sure what she thinks about this new idea of magic. After all, Gem abilities are things humans would consider magic, but that's not the word she'd use for any of it. She'll have to see how this plays out before she can make any decisions, though. Being taken away from her newfound home and friends is something that brings up mixed feelings, as well, and with all that uncertainty, Peridot is uncharacteristically subdued for most of the trip.

After a while, though, she takes out her tape recorder, hits the red button, and begins to speak.

"Log date... 7 16 2," she starts, continuing - after brief hesitation - with the date from back on Earth. "I'm on something called an airship, and the name is misleading. You'd think it was similar to a spaceship, but this is far less advanced than I had hoped."



Thaumaturgy 101

Peridot tends to act confident in her abilities, but she also tends to be stubborn. Being a student feels somehow inherently insulting, even if she did agree to this. Fortunately, this stubbornness provides a good cover for her uncertainties. What if she's really bad at magic? The concern holds her back, leaving her gnawing on her wand as the others in class set to work.

Then she seems to realize what she's doing with the wand, and she makes a disgruntled sound as she drops it on her desk. "What am I doing?" she sighs.

Thaumaturgy

[bridge_princess]

"Chewing on a stick," came the unsolicited reply from someone seated just to the right and behind the gemstone. Her hair was a ruffled, dirty blonde and she was barely making good on the dress codes of this place, clearly not caring a great deal about her appearance. What was the point? Everyone was better looking than her, so no need to stick out.

She was just as nervous about failing at magic as Peridot was. She was awful at the wielding of power, and used to only very limited, very specific things that trash like her could do, so she was in a surly, grumpy mood. But, then again, that wasn't really anything new. So, here she was, doing her best to make a good impression by stating the blatantly obvious.

[logdates]

The word "No" escapes Peridot's mouth before she really thinks about it, and certainly before she looked back to see the sloppily-dressed human who'd answered her.

"Well, I guess I am. But that's not what I meant!" she grumbles, crossing her arms over her chest. What she was actually inquiring was what was she even doing there, but Peridot was entirely unwilling to voice this worry to a stranger.

[bridge_princess]

Parsee might have been a human being, once, but that was a long time ago. Of course, the only visibly obvious sign of it was the pointed and elongated ears she had, poking out from her blonde tresses. "Well, if you're going to ask a stupid question, you're going to get a stupid answer," she muttered, raising an eyebrow and looking down at the green skinned person levelly, her tone nice and dry. "Might as well say what you meant in the first place, since you went and opened your mouth."

[logdates]

Peridot's frown became an outright sneer as she regarded Parsee more closely. Stupid? That was a ridiculous claim; she was a Periot, after all. Logic and intellect were important parts of her ability to carry out her usual objectives.

"I don't have anything to say to you" she said simply, matching a glare to her sneer. Clearly, making new friends was going to come as easily to her here as it had on Earth. Which was to say not easily at all.

[bridge_princess]

Parsee grunted and her head whipped to the side when the woman sneered at her. Was she looking down at her? Well, it wasn't like she was wrong to do that was it? Anyone in this class had at least a thimble full of magical talent and she didn't have any place in here, regardless of what they'd told her to get her to come here.

"Think you're better than me, eh? That confidence ticks me off," she muttered, glaring at her out of the corner of her eye. "Makes me jealous." Ugh, everything made her jealous.

[logdates]

Peridot's sour expression breaks for a moment, replaced with one that walked a line between baffled and pleasantly surprised. She had effectively come across as confident? It wasn't always an act, but here, in this strange place and situation, it largely was.

"I think the obvious solution to that would be for you to be confident, too."

[bridge_princess]

So, she was still talking to her, was she? Parsee harumphed and narrowed her gaze as she regarded the strange looking, short little gemstone for a moment. "Confidence would require me to be good at something," she said, snorting. She waved her hand with wand caught between her fingers. The gestures were as sloppy as her clothing. "Sense magic." Her tone was as blase and non-committal as she could manage. It was almost like she was intentionally sabotaging the spell.

A second later, her hair was on end, a puff of smoke going everywhere and there were flowers sprouting from the tip of her wand. Her face was as non-plussed as before. "See?" Not that she expected Peridot to do a lot better, though. Chewing on your wand couldn't be good for making it work properly.

[logdates]

Peridot watches, indeed unimpressed, as Parsee puts what sure seemed like minimal effort into her spellwork. She considers her classmate's words, before finally stating in a very dry tone, "I think you're pretty good at being difficult."

Still, she isn't ready to try the spell herself. Though she does pick up her wand, she simply spins it between her fingers, considering if it'll be more embarrassing to not try or to fail.

The Airship There

[greatcleavage]

"Misleading?" That much he'd caught, as he turned in his seat to glance at the -- earth genasi? Probably -- curiously. "It's a ship that flies through the air. It's fairly literal, I think."

Even if her home plane (Prime Material or otherwise) didn't have them, he couldn't understand how the name didn't fit.

[logdates]

Peridot cast a sideways look in the other's direction. "This isn't a ship. And if is one, it's a pathetic one."

Having never seen or heard of a ship that wasn't a spaceship, this made perfect sense to her, and so she stated that as if the obviousness of it pained her.

[greatcleavage]

...

"I have to admit I'm not certain what you're expecting." The cultural gap couldn't be more obviously huge here.

[logdates]

"You know," Peridot sighed, "a real ship. They don't fly with magic. They fly with technology."

[greatcleavage]

"Around here, the reverse is true," Roy said with a mild shrug. "Machinery has clearly taken a back seat to magic, unsurprisingly. Isn't the point that it works?"

[logdates]

"Nnno," Peridot said, pointedly, after a brief and baffled pause. "The point is that it could work better."

Probably. She was pretty sure that science and technology had to be more effective than all of this magic stuff.

[greatcleavage]

"In what way could it work better?" The only thing Roy figured could be directly improved was speed, and even that came with certain inconveniences on the passengers and crew.

[logdates]

"That depends on how efficient magic is as an energy source. I can't imagine it's all that efficient, though, I mean... This stuff is more about being showy, isn't it?"

The Airship

[shiningkindness]

It really wasn't any of her business, but the comment was just enough of a distraction from her freaking out that she took the chance, overcoming even her usual shyness to speak.

"A-Actually...it's modeled more after a...ship on the water than a spaceship."

[logdates]

Peridot looked at the human - probably? - with clear confusion, alongside a hint of annoyance. "There are waterships? Is that an Earth thing?"

[shiningkindness]

"I...guess so? Though I suppose there could be other places that have waterships." She was almost tempted to pull out her phone, but remembered at the last second that there was probably no wi-fi here.

"At least back home where I'm from, there are all sorts of boats and ships for the water. I'm not sure if any of them are quite this big, though."

[logdates]

"Hmm." Peridot considered this. Water obviously had important uses for organic life, and so finding a way to move on and through it was actually pretty clever - or maybe it was just such a necessity, she thought, that even humans could come up with it. "Well, I'm sure if there were bodies of water on Homeworld, there would be waterships there, too," she decided, her tone haughty - though in the back of her mind, she couldn't help thinking that she was already lousy at being a Crystal Gem. Still... Just because she could see the value of Earth, and liked a handful of its inhabitants... She didn't have to turn into Rose Quartz or anything.

[shiningkindness]

Her words confirm Fluttershy's suspicions that Peridot was probably not from Earth, and she couldn't help feeling more curious. "So there isn't any water where you came from?"

[logdates]

"No," Peridot responded. It probably could have been left at that, but even if she had defected from the Diamond Authority's side and could never go back to Homeworld again... She couldn't help feeling proud of her home. She relished the chance to talk about it, even smiling a little. "There's no organic life on Homeworld; nothing that needs water. Everything is highly efficient like that."

[shiningkindness]

Most people would probably question whether Peridot was really from a different world or not. However, considering what Fluttershy had been through, the idea of different worlds didn't really affect her.

"Oh wow, really? So what is everything made of, if there isn't organic life?"

[logdates]

"Life on Homeworld is created. It's a highly complicated process, but if I have to dumb it down, I'd say... You inject a rock with life. And the results are, clearly, amazing," she concluded with a smirk.