diatuooc | Test Drive #9

Test Drive #9

It's Treeson Then

Fall is here, and the Magicademy campus is an absurd place. The trees are readying themselves for winter, but they're changing not just color, but shapes and even sizes. Some trees launch seeds across the campus in paper-airplane-shaped leaves, while others aggressively attempt to weed out smaller competitors for their resources by dropping leaves the size of credenzas on anything nearby. A few trees burst into flame, which is apparently a totally normal thing for them, and a couple of them just wander around looking for a warmer place to plant themselves. One of them is upside-down, roots waving feebly in the air, but if we're being honest the tree hadn't planned for things to go this way.

You'd better dodge and duck, enspell your way out of this mess... or hope you have good friends who'll pull that giant lead-weight leaf off you or extinguish your britches.

Did You Ever Hear The Tragedy of Bala-Inlota the Game?

Every time a bala-inlota game comes to the Magicademy campus, interest in the game surges among the student population. Pickup games break out between classes, while Captain Lominia prowls the grounds, hunting decent players to press-gang into formal tryouts.

So here you are, stuck in the middle of a game that is almost literally anything goes, and the few rules of which mostly cover who wins and who loses in the event of total planetary omnicide. Some burly guy is coming for a tackle, while behind him another wizard waves a wand furiously to put up some sort of spell. Victory rests in your hands, as does the continuing cohesion of your skeleton. The only way out is teamwork!

I Halve the High Ground

"Oops," says Headmaster Birony, who then wanders off.

Left behind is a poor student atop a large pillar of earth stretching twenty feet into the air. There is no easy way down, either. Destroy the pillar and they fall. Leaping is dangerous without a lot of spellwork cushioning. And it's so narrow climbing up is precarious as well.

Are you the one stuck? Or are you down below, realizing that if you can save your poor fellow student from this crisis, you'll almost certainly earn some Colormarch points for your House?

I AM the Standard Prompt

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

[It's Treeson Then]

[Simba was looking for a warmer place to go take a quick nap near. He loved being outside, but the weather has gotten a lot chillier... and cats hated being cold. However, an exploding tree of fire is definitely not the "warm place" he was looking for.]

Whoa, whoa, hey!

[Another one erupts, and Simba shuffles back - just in time for a giant heavy leaf to fall on top of him. No matter how many muffled, tiny roars or wiggling he does, he just can't crawl out from under it.]

[Standard Prompt]

[Speaking of fire, Simba managed to set something on fire. Some poor student's chair from the looks of it. He was... trying to make a book float. He's not sure how he got the two mixed up so badly.

Can a lion look sheepish? He offers a nervous grin.]

Eheh... whoops?

[ It takes someone else pointing out that he's on fire for Aziraphale, or as he's introducing himself these days Mr. Fell, to react. He leaps from his chair, eyes wide with alarm, and he pats at his pant-leg until the small flame goes out. The chair he gives up for a lost cause because the despair over his clothes is more pressing. He has priorities. ]

My poor trousers!

[Simba winces. Wow did he get that spell wrong.]

Sorry... um... it doesn't look that bad?

[Actually it does. RIP Aziraphale's trousers.]

Test Drive #9

Simba | That Disney movie about lions I guess

really? I thought he was an aristocat

everybody wants to be a cat