World's End Academy

You accept the wrap with a thank you to the merchant, who smiles at you. He warns you to watch out for culture clash. Well, specifically he says "Kid, no amount of secret sauce will save you if you don't realize eating birds is religious taboo around here" but you get the deeper meaning.

The belief seems a little strange to you, and with your artificial stomach grumbling it's not about to stop you, but it's something to keep in mind for later as you march off to your very first class, shoving the remarkably convenient tube of meat into your mouth somewhat awkwardly. Fortunately for your standing with any passers-by, the eating habits of a hungry, half-asleep young adult are indistinguishable from those of an alien being who has never eaten food before.

It's a little strange to think that your first human food is taboo. The redbird wrap is delicious, the flesh is a little oily, and the sensation of the thick sauce over your palate is a very strange one when you don't naturally have anything solid there at all, but the meat is complimented well by the thick white sauce full of black flecks that sting your tongue - but in a good way. Experimentally you wipe some of the sauce off a piece of meat onto the wrap exterior, trying to taste just the bird itself to see what's so unusual about it. It's mild and juicy, but you have absolutely nothing to compare it to. You suppose in the future you'll start by comparing everything you eat to this.

There's no waste to leave behind and a quick blink of your hands, hidden in your robes of course, back to fire form cleans them up nicely, and you're ready to head fresh into the first class of your new career.

Your Magister training is held in the largest building you've ever seen - which doesn't say that much, but given that well over a hundred students are packed into just one of the building's rooms each taking one of the chairs lined along the raised rows circling the stage on the bottom level, it still -feels- very big. Nobody seems any more clear on what the class is going to be than you are, though, and wait awkwardly as the scheduled class time ticks by and nothing happens. Except, one of the students in the back checking his watch, standing up, and walking across his row.

...And then another row.

The sense of dumbfoundment is palatable, as the one standing student passes by the entire class, before getting up onto the stage and announcing himself.

"Greetings class, I am Professor Klaus Ibert. I would like to thank you for your ambitions to become magisters," the apparent professor takes a small bow, and the class stills. He still doesn't cut the image of a professor, even aside from his porcelain face, the doublet and breeches he wore could be the outfit of any peasant off the street - and was for at least a dozen students around the class.

"Before I can begin instructing you on that long process, however, I should explain to you what exactly a magister is, and why several of you will not be returning to this class. You see, every living thing has some degree of magic woven into its biology. Those whose biology is almost all magic and very little organic are what is known as monsters."

You gulp.

"But the scale goes quite a bit further than most realize. Demihumans, for example, can range between a thirty/seventy split or as high as half and half ratio of magic-based and organic-based biology."

"The reason I bring this up is because being a magister has some of the same requirements as being a wilder. While the threshold for 'innate magic' required to become a magister is much lower, it is sadly not uncommon for humans, dwarves, and even some elves to lack enough magic in their blood to even approach the natural, intuitive wielding of a wilder, and without that opportunity, there will be no hope for them in this class." He raises a single eyebrow, "Likewise, there will be no hope for the intellectually inept and lazy, but I can't glean that with a simple pass-by scan, so you'll have to wash out normally."

"Rest assured, there is no shame in being unable to intuitively channel magic. In fact, before I ask you to leave, I would like to explain what you will not be missing out on. A magister combines the structured, law-based techniques of the weaver with the innate magic control and sourcing of the wilder. Rather than being 'both' however, what it amounts to is somewhere between a weaver who can't create spells that don't align with their magic and a wilder who has to have a much greater academic understanding before casting a single thing. While a magister's spells exceed all others in power, a weaver still excels most greatly in variability, as does a wilder in quantity. There is almost nothing becoming a magister would let you do that the weaver course will not, and I strongly recommend it. That said, you, you, you, you..."

The professor points directly to over twenty people.

"Please leave, you cannot be a magister, I am sorry."

He waits for them all to leave, looking as somber as he can manage with a blemish-free tanned face and short-cropped sporty hair.

"Everybody else, I sincerely hope you CAN be a magister..."

There is a rush of air and heat as Professor Klaus spontaneously combusts, emerald green flames wrapping around him like a cocoon.

[Knowing the flow of Magic, Intuition Roll 1d100 = 89+30=119 Extreme Success]

But you're one of the few students not shocked. You immediately recognize the flames as one of the harmless and more magical varieties. Judging by the aura it's giving off, it's actually phoenix fire. You had no idea things other than phoenices could even conjure that...

As you're musing, the flames form into wings and the teacher rises up, and you realize you briefly missed the impact of his show.

"Because there are some seriously amazing tricks you can learn. Coaxing out innate powers you never knew you had, empowering spells past their limits, or even just taking your personal favorites like teleportation and mastering them to the point they're instant. This is the track for all of that. As the school's only archmage level magister I'm going to be seeing a lot of all of you, for the next few years I'll be handling at least part of every magister class... for the rest... well, that's what aides are for. Today, though, I would like to start with a few spell demonstrations that you will demonstrate back to me. This way we can get a feel for each other's magic and I can see who may need smaller lecture groups or extra attention."

After that intro, the class proper begins. Professor Klaus pulls a call and response on random students as he checks for basic spells people already know, shows them, and shows some basic techniques common to magisters. From what you gather by the end, casting a spell as a magister requires mixing both an emotional and intellectual focus. The teacher reciting an incantation bombastically gets much greater results than when the same incantation was said normally. Yet, another incantation got stronger when spoken in a bare whisper. One dwarven student tried to show off a silent spell that instead involved focusing on an elaborate geometric diagram for several seconds, which the professor then copied in the air with a trail of flames and a sweeping motion that cast it in a fraction of the time.

After showing off a handful of modifications possible to a spell, he launched into thorough detailed explanations of each one. On the basic level, it seems that basic spells have a specific matrix which acts as a foundation, that you must hold in your mind in one way or another. And that following this pushing some specific aspect of your 'self' through said matrix can allow you to build upon and shape a spell.

It's... more than a little tricky, and judging by the flow of mana in your false body as you try it, you're not sure that's helping at all. Eventually, though, the professor calls forth every student who has yet to successfully cast a spell in the style of a magister, you neglect to mention that you have never cast a spell at all, and spends a few moments with each of them moving their hands, showing the flow of energy, and conjuring little fiery diagrams that show off helpful visualization techniques or the like.

You try not to worry or to flinch as he grabs you, and try not to run when he raises his eyebrows.

"Miss, you have the strongest fire affinity I've seen since myself," he says with a smile, and you smile back in genuine relief. "I think I know just the spell."

The spell he shows you next involves simple gestures, fingers trailing through the air, and a dreamy, distant feeling to make it last longer, but you feel the magic flow as naturally as the flicker of your flames... and it works. You write in the air with your fingers, wan violet flames trailing behind. Your first casting creates no specific words, just a few loops in front of you, but everybody starts somewhere, and these simple curls are yours.

[Trait Progress: Magisterial Casting 1/4: You are now actually a magister, in that spells you cast will be done in the magister's method not just one on paper. Well... one very, very much in training.]
[Inspiration Gained: Phoenixflame Curiosity 1/???: Surely a fire spirit could do as well as a human?]

[Spell Learned:
Lightwriting:
School: Verity
Mana: 1 per minute [min 1].
Cast Time: Part of another action
Allows you to write or draw by leaving behind luminous magic in the trail of your fingers. By default, the spell leaves glittering light that can hover in the air for up to a minute. But with your personal twist, the spell currently manifests as heatless flames which emit quite a bit more light, although you may develop the spell more in time.]

You showed up to the address for the Adult Magic er Magic that is Useful for Adulthood, class in confusion, surrounded by other equally confused students. It wasn't in a classroom at all. Instead, the directions lead you to a mostly empty field. Mostly empty, because in the center of it an elven woman was sitting cross-legged. Judging by the bags under her eyes, she was equally likely to be sleeping as meditating. Or maybe her eyes just looked like that. Yours did, and it was still weird to see them.

Then a clock chimed, signaling the time class was set to start, and she opened her eyes and stood up, long, pointed ears twitching as she limbered up. "Hello class, thank you for joining me here for this special class. My name is Hana. Just Hana, unless any of you have lived about thirty years longer than I expect and wasted ten of them memorizing all the Elven titles. Some of you will get to know me better in your context as illusionists, of which I am the dean, but it is a foolish mage who only knows one kind of magic. It was actually when working on one such spell that I got the idea for this class."

She spreads her hands wide and gestures to the class, now standing in a mostly disorganized circle.

"You will hear a lot of things about magic being hard, and magic being dangerous, and magic being powerful, but one thing a lot of people forget is just how bloody CONVENIENT magic is."

She snaps her fingers, and a chair appears in front of her, ornately carved, with vine patterns spiraling around the legs and back supports, hardwood, and with a cushion tied to the center of it. She plops down without a care. "This spell was the second one I ever invented. I called it Hana's Throne. Anybody who casts this spell will instantly and immediately have a chair in the style of their choice which is perfectly contoured to their body and can be sat in comfortably for hours on end."

Her hand flexes and a wand comes to her hand before another chair appears, then another, and another, and another. "This is an echo wand. It can be used to spend stored mana to automatically and easily cast any spell you are capable of casting that you have just cast in its presence." Soon enough there's a chair for every student, and some cries of surprise as the wooden seats creak a bit before walking around, lining up in a much tidier series of broken rings around the teacher of their own accord.

"Everyone please, take a seat. There's a truth I want to share with you about magic. As long as you have enough mana and enough skill, you have everything you need for every possible situation. The trick is nobody ever really has 'enough' of either of those, but I'd like for any of you who want to to tell me what mundane thing frustrates you in your day-to-day life."

This sets off a cascade of students shouting out problems only to be met with an official spell name, back and forth.

"I hate cooking!"

"Illusion of Good Taste, minor magic, on the list for this semester."

"I hate paperwork!"

"Corvax' Compliance, minor magic, that one's actually restricted, but I get this question every year so these days I just teach it anyway."

"I want blue hair like yours!"

"Oh, well this isn't actually a spell, I'm a blossom elf, and sadly Quinn's Qualia Quirk is a third-year illusion, and even explaining why requires a lot of background. The markets should be flooded with cheap dyes from the generation course in a week or two if you just want the problem solved."

"I hate dwarves!"

"Wow! Don't! Also maybe don't share that. I think there are dwarves in this class they're just hidden behind taller people. But I'll still teach you Vanderhaul's Soporific to reduce the impact of negative instincts."

"I hate sewing!"

"Well, we can't replace sewing entirely, it's more complicated than you'd think, but if you just want to mend frayed clothes, that's on the list for week five."

[Mini-Vote: Do you pipe up with a complaint of your own?]
[ ]Write in

After the back and forth, it sounds like there's a relatively easy magical solution to an incredible amount of day-to-day problems. A realization the class seems to share as the teacher winds down. "I see many of you are thinking the same thing. Indeed, all that talk of responsibility that you'll get in every other class for a reason. If all you want to use magic for is being lazy, it's a little too easy. There's a reason why the stereotypical image of a weaver - who wasn't born with magic and learned later - is a scruffy old shut-in in a bathrobe. Doing everything with magic can be dangerously seductive. But you know what I say? There's too much nuisance in the world that doesn't -have- to be there. So what if it's lazy? Besides, it's still part of magic, we'd be going remiss if we didn't teach it. So I hope you're all geared up because that's exactly what we're going to do in this class. Pure practical instruction on a variety of simple, low magic spells that make everyday life easier."

She tilts her chair back, passing its tipping point and rising into the air rather than falling over.

"To start, we're going to spend the first few sessions making some actual desks for you to write on. Not out of wood or even anything close to my chair, no, I'm going to teach you the Managlass spell, the simplest incantation in the school of Verity. All it does is cause mana to take on a physical form. A physical form that is incredibly fragile to sudden impacts, thin, weightless, and cannot cut, puncture, nor bludgeon anything... but which still EXISTS. It's enough to make a glass for you to drink out of at a river, or a flat surface to lean against or write on. Don't worry, if you've ever cast a spell, you can probably cast this one. This used to be what we trained kids on before the academy started up."

[Studiousness Roll: 35+13=48 Breakpoints 30/50/90]

With large, luminous diagrams showing the words and finger motions to help you focus, it is easy enough to at least get in the mold of the spell, and you don't seem to be doing any worse than anybody else, but when it comes time to actually cast the spell, you don't get much besides a puff of sparkles. Maybe it's because 'being solid' is fairly new to you that it doesn't come naturally, but you keep at it for the remainder of the class for the weak, always getting a bit more sparkles and a bit more progress. The rather disorganized atmosphere lends itself well to looking around, and a large number of students though not most, you seem to be doing at least average with the spell, have already moved on to playing around with their constructs. One of them forms an oversized club to swing at a friend, and the club harmlessly dissipates into the same sparkles you get as the teacher chuckles a bit, but makes sure to give her actual commendations to the students who managed to create small models of knights in a variety of surcoats and were already arguing about them.

Well, progress is progress.

[Spell Progress: Managlass 1 of 2
School: Verity
Cost: 1 mana per square foot [min 1]
Cast Time: 1 second
Creates a shaped construct of millimeter-thick panes of solid magic. Can be shaped almost endlessly and capable of withstanding up to 300 pounds of weight if properly layered and distributed, but is incredibly fragile to sudden impact and dissipates into sparkles after about an hour.]

[X] I hate being sick!

"Don't we all? Unfortunately, curing disease is a rather advanced bit of magic, dedicated medimancers have to master either Necromancy or Vivomancy, preferably both. I can teach you the necromantic precursor to disease eradication spells, though. It's quite good for sanitizing your hands and equipment in the lab."

Hmm, less ideal than an easy cure, but sounds promising enough. You're not sure how much use you'll get out of a sanitization spell, but, then, you're not sure where disease comes from in the first place. You're -especially- not sure where it comes from for talking fireballs, so asking the professors about it could be anywhere from hilarious to cover-blowing.

---

Your options for further healing pursuit are still on your mind when you head into a classroom that doesn't look that different from your dorm's hallway where the magic safety class is held. Almost immediately, a short, scraggly man in a heavy cloak walks in.

"Hello, class. I'm Professor Coridae, and I'd like to get straight to it if possible." Huh. That was a change of pace. The professor walking into an enclosed, boxlike classroom and just immediately starts to teach. "Magical Safety is an important part of spell creation, spell research, and spellcasting in general. While most spells shared on 'the open market' in the form of scrolls are perfectly safe, and even many forgotten legends are among the safer spells of their time. Anything except the finished product tends to be rather perilous, and the only possible protection is extensive preparation. Every spell element has a stabilizing formula, every runic array a geometric pattern for the box that contains it, for every known element of magic there is..."

"What about dark magic!" A voice exclaimed, its source lost in the crowd of human students.

The professor suddenly drooped, his feathers starting to poof out. It looked rather ridiculous, given the massive mane of them around his neck and the back of his head, and it even revealed him to have a single lopsided wing stuffed in the back of his jacket.

"Please do not disrupt my class," his eyes narrowing were the only visible sign of frustration. Yet, his droning voice felt at odds with the aggressive and vindictive nature of the crows that flew over the swamp, so perhaps he only looked like one. "There are a great many things we will have to memorize this semester, and a lot of situations to test their applicability."

"But what -about- dark magic, though?" Another student piped up, this time you manage to catch them, ordinary, and average for a human.

"You do not have to worry about dark magic, neither dark magic nor its safety procedures are on any part of the curriculum until at least your third year, now to start I'd like to run a pop quiz over various elements of basic geometric theo..." Professor Coridae tried to get the class back on track and as his words settled into the class just long enough to let him think he'd be fine before an outcry from SEVERAL students at once.

"You teach dark magic?!?"

"My mom only let me come here after a promise there was nothing evil about spellcasting!"

"I KNEW YOU WERE FOOLING THE INQUISITORS!"

"Oh my god, I have to report..."

"BE SILENT!" The professor shouted, and a cone of raw force came from his words, the wall of sound cracking desks and banishing all other noise from the room. "This is a place of learning. Not one of superstition. I will explain dark magic for the IGNORANT among you and then WE WILL LEARN WHAT WE INTEND."

You think you preferred the droning voice to this cracking, forceful one, but lack the ability to lodge that complaint.

"Dark Magic is no more or less than magic which sacrifices something beyond the mana required to fuel all spells. This academy teaches according to the 'five assets' theory of dark magic, that being, that each spell can draw from Health, Wealth, Self, Past, or Future. And yes, I -see- your hateful eyebrows."

You briefly try to look up, realizing for the first time that yes you have eyebrows, and almost everybody does, but the teacher is not included.

"Magic that sacrifices wealth is -not- considered dark magic in your hateful human state, that you feel gives you the authority to judge. And it is little wonder that those in charge of a MATERIALLY WEALTHY polity would consider everything that does not draw from material wealth especially EVIL. Truly, who could understand the motivations, therefore they must be absolutely correct."

"But yes, this academy teaches the barest essentials of dark magic. We teach only those spells that sacrifice Health, which will eventually recover on its own, and Wealth, which you can very easily have MUCH TOO MUCH of for any other purpose. We also teach how to separate the assets, how to estimate their loss, and how to render dark rituals safe in the THIRD YEAR."

A sigh turns into a caw as he calms down.

"If you wish to learn about Dark Magic's ill reputation and how and why it developed, please take 'A History of Notable Mages' available as an elective for all years. In the meantime, rest assured, that nobody who uses half of dark magic is any more evil than anybody else, and the remaining half still has examples of good people in their history, the same and inverse each being as true for any other field of magical study. Dark magic is hazardous first and foremost to the caster, that and that alone is what makes it dark. It is only dangerous to everybody else because it is powerful, and there are a great many powerful spells that may be done without it. Now, I am going to pass out replicas of a book on geometric theory, you are to use these replicas in this classroom for every lecture, and today we will start with the memorization of the names of glyphs starting from page 17..."

Hm.

As the class goes on, you start to miss the outburst.

[Roll skipped: Too banal to fail]

Well, you at least feel confident that a whole semester of this will in fact teach you what it means to.

[Trait Progress:
Modern Geometry 1/15
General Math 1/6
Safe Casting (Minor) 1/15]

Study Hall is at once a more and less interesting class than you'd expected. Even at your most optimistic, you don't think you were expecting secret lore to make reading books any faster, but when the plump elf who looks closer to a janitor shuffles in and starts offering tips about coffee shops you start to suffer a sinking feeling. However, as the class goes on, you do manage to learn a few interesting things from the remarkably specific jabber going on.

[Intuition check: 1d100+30=63 Breakpoints 30/60/90]

This class is kind of a joke.
This class is -intentionally- a joke, and you are here to learn from the other students.

The teacher figuratively does not bat an eye at you and literally gives an approving wink when two of the students start talking to each other, and after catching Beatriz in the room as well you approach her for conversation.

"Hey, Macabre! You said you had Coridae for Magical Safety? How was he in his actual class?"

"Really, really boring when he's on target. But when somebody pissed him off he -really- went off, his voice got all… weird and it was hard not to listen. Why do you ask?"

Beatriz nods along before answering, "Well he got pulled, literally, into the Warmages introduction by Sir Danrick to help with a demonstration. I thought the old bird would be a show of what not to do. But when he got charged, he just like moved. All I could see was a blur and a flash of light, then the next moment Sir Danrick was on the ground with a baton to his eye like it was a stiletto. Like, that little pointy-stick for the blackboard suddenly was the deadliest weapon in the world. So do you think…?"

"He doesn't like disruptions and he's teaching Magical Safety, I don't think that one will come up on its own there." You finish the question with its answer.

"But he's not on the list for any of the combat classes," she whines.

"Well, there has to be someone else who knows what he did. You just have to find them." You shoot your best shot at a reassuring smile trying to get her to perk back up.

After that, though, she smiles at you and swings you off to another partner, then another. Three rounds of meeting people later, you realize something important: you all have different starting lines. The 'beginning' of your magical education has quite a few different foundations, and by the time you start to internalize that, the teacher admits it himself. That the true purpose of this class is to let everybody who is not sure they're ready for "proper academia" learn what they do have.

You don't remember anything specific he said, which is perhaps the point, since he stated that his first lesson was about reaching conclusions yourself, and, upon seeing students more frazzled over books and less adept on the uptake, adds that his second is that it's okay to ask for help.

You certainly feel [Write-In] about learning-through-manipulation weirdness, but fortunately, you do get something else out of the affair.

[Studiousness: Roll 1d100+13 = 86 Breakpoints 40/80/120]

Catching on to the other definition of 'training'. Apparently, mana has both a 'wave' capacity and an 'ocean' capacity. A wave is how much mana you can spend in one go, while your ocean is how much you can produce in a day [which for all studied species is negligibly different to the maximum amount you can hold as well]. Certainly puts your 2/20 reading in context. Quite a lot of students from the class asked you about 'wave training' since yours is rather high for a first year. You don't manage to learn what spell they used to figure that out when you didn't even realize you were being watched, and get to ENJOY your first sensation of a chill running down your spine, but you do follow the lesson and simply ask the professor if that's a thing you can do here.

Turns out the answer is yes, and he passes you some uncharged magic tools to 'work out' your reserves with, but between the realization that 'basic mana sight' means every person in this academy can see your inner magic at all times and the creepy twinkle in his eye making you paranoid, Farsight class cannot come soon enough.

[Study Hall visits will reveal terminology, current events, and expected academic background information with each visit. Your quest will not be undoable without them, and in fact, the fish-out-of-water approach could easily be more fun, but the option exists in-universe. Additionally, each study hall visit will provide either a Wave or Ocean increase. (Wave increases through basic training are very rare, however.)

Today's increase: +2 ocean. 2/22]