World's End Academy

[X] Weird

Manipulating students… doesn't feel right. You're not angry, it did work, but something about it just constantly niggles at you for the rest of the day. Maybe it's how it's at odds with the vague idea of a study hall you had. Maybe it's how you don't think you ever fully looked at the teacher. Maybe the feeling will resolve into something else eventually.

Or you could just not go back, not like it's essential.

One thing you are more certain about is the fact that you'd much prefer another straightforward class. It doesn't seem like too much to ask to have a teacher just be a straight shooter. But then again, for Farsight, maybe it is. You know your own prophetic visions have always been rather mysterious, and the reputation of the discipline is of smoke and crystals and mysterious old women. But as you walk into a boxy classroom with higher quality furniture than most and no real distinguishing characteristics beyond that, that part at least doesn't seem probable.

As you wait patiently at your desk, the classroom door slams open, and a small black-haired woman trailing smoke stomps in. The smoke does not come from a censer of any kind but instead is trailed by the cigar she looks to be almost biting in half, her forked cat tails twitching behind her in frustration.

"Alright I gotta do the start of term horseshit, so hold on to your stupid pointy hats, kids," she says almost immediately as she reaches her desk, opens a drawer, and pulls out a bottle of scotch she immediately takes a swig from.

"The first thing you gotta know is that Farsight sucks. It's completely useless. EVERY other school of magic can kill somebody, work miracles, and just generally kind of turn you into the legendary badass with access to the fulcrum of the world. When all Farsight will ever get you is information."

This isn't an act, everything you can see is wholeheartedly telling you that she is being entirely honest. A stunned silence washes over the class.

"The second thing you gotta know about Farsight is that it's insanely powerful. The ability to know the secrets of not just other people but the gods themselves is an incredible source of leverage. With even a simple farsight spell, you -could- turn the tide of wars from the shadows, even if your own role in doing so will never be known."

She sighs, and ash pours out over her desk.

"The third thing you gotta know is that Farsight S U C K S. Being a strategic asset is more useful than being a tactical one, but you are a strategic asset where every other kind of wizard is -both-. And -everybody- is prepared for you. No monster capable of posing a genuine country-level threat is going to store their plans in a format human senses can breach. No invading army is going to have bases you can break into. The ultimate effect of Farseers on global politics in the modern day is taxing everybody's fucking budget by making them build defenses against us. But we keep trainin' em because that's STILL technically productive."

"If any of you brats want to take the magic binding ritual, I highly recommend dropping Farsight entirely if you don't plan on making it your specialty. It comes with the extra convenience of me never having to see your asses again," She sits down, leaning back in a chair with a hole cut in the back for her tail, and leaning back, balancing on it as she kicks her feet up, clawed toes emerging from sandals.

"As for the rest of you, here are the benefits, no bullshit: magic whispers secrets in your ear and it's easy to avoid danger not specifically out to get you. You can abuse nonmagical infrastructure in a manner so subtle that the goody four shoes on the faculty will not be able to justify your execution. You can determine the success of any plan before actually undertaking it. That's my personal favorite. I've not wasted a MINUTE of my time in 10 years, it's all party baby."

"So if you want to be a useless fuck who's good at making money and staying out of trouble, then by all means glue your fat asses to my nice chairs and enjoy the benefits of knowing for a fact how much bullshit you can pull before you get fired. In the meantime, I'm going to continue getting drunk while accepting questions. Specifically, you, you, you, and you." She points to four students other than you. "You're the ones with good questions today. Go ahead. Also, first chance for anybody who wants, to fuck off without any grade penalty or whatever they end up asking me for."

There is a stream of people leaving the classroom most shuffling off dejected having heard that Farsight would not be living up to their dreams, while the singled-out students look increasingly awkward but ask their questions anyway.

"Um, isn't Farsight… more -mystical- than other magic?" a shy girl asks, wincing as she hears how stupid the question sounds.

"Kinda!" the teacher answers immediately, "The Sight axis of magic has the least clear rules and its applications are at once narrow and flexible, what you can affect is very limited, but how you can affect it is not. However, TEACHING is not mystical. At all. Ever. So. Booze. Next one."

"But aren't visions usually unclear?" a bespectacled boy with narrowed eyes asks.

"No. Visions are clear as hell. Most Farseers just have no idea what they're actually seeing. Imagine somebody who didn't know you suddenly watched exactly and only the most emotionally fraught 15 seconds of your life." She briefly pauses, then smirks at the reddening faces, "Embarrassing, right? But also, for most of you, they would have -no idea- what is going on. People who get visions - which, by the way, is about as related to the study of farsight as being an undead type monster is to necromancy - famously resort to sounding fae and authoritative because the alternative is learning geography and psychology for years each. They're passing the burden of understanding on to youuuuu…"

"Wait, were not visions the main thing of Farsight?" a cranky-looking and possibly very old dwarf asks.

"They're the FAMOUS thing. I mentioned Farsight sucks, right? Some people just naturally have the gift of prophecy, and without this gift seeing into the future is RARE, rare and IMMENSELY difficult. This college mostly teaches mortal magic, and I can't say I've ever had cause to disagree with the assumption that seeing the future is exclusively the domain of the divine. Technically, it is -possible- to gain the gift of prophecy later in life, and fully 17% of those studying Farsight can expect to receive at least one vision in their life, all the way up to 32% if they reach True Magic level."

"...So… what are you actually going to be teaching us?" The last one asks, a tired-looking and extremely pale elf.

"Great question! Well, I don't want to commit to a WHOLE lot before I'm done with the 'chasing off the uncommitted' part, and 'Combat Farsight' in the second year covers most of the spells useful for generalist wizards, but I can still teach you the easiest spell in the whole school so you can see how it feels. No complaining about the name."

The professor punches the wall and a long, rolled-up parchment drops down covered in instructions for a spell apparently called 'Heebie Jeebie'. The messy, scrawled handwriting is a little tricky to read, and some students have to get up and look closer at tiny writing scrawled in the margins under their own names.

[Studiousness Roll: 100. Complete success.]
Wait, that isn't right?

[Otherworldly Awareness triggers, Insight Roll: Rolling 2d100 and taking the lowest, 84, 15 15+30= 45 Breakpoints: 45/90]

[Studiousness Roll Re-examined: Rolling 2d100 and taking the highest, Visions of Failure spell bonus applied, 6, 87. 87+13=100 You felt fate hiccup.]

You can feel it, the way your eyes should have just flowed off the page, how you would have been jostled at just the wrong moment to lose your place and confuse one part of the spell's structure with another. The things that should have happened and yet they didn't.

You stare at the teacher, your newly and not entirely willingly learned spell going off.

[Spell Learned: Heebie Jeebie
School: Farsight
Cost: 1 Mana per day.
Provides a passive sensation of doom that reacts to intent directed towards you by living minds within about fifty feet. Notoriously unreliable and uncomfortable. Reacts only to strong intents and reacts to all intents equally. In your case, a sensation like being immersed in something very cold.]

At the end of a long week, you kind of want to relax with somebody safe before jumping into the social battlefield. Unfortunately, you don't know of anybody safe yet, so you settle for using the energy you barely still have to get to know your roommates to see if they fit the bill. Also, they haven't stabbed you in your sleep yet, tend to wake you up in time for classes, have given you at least three sausages, and keep inviting you to things, so it isn't as though you don't have reasons.

Getting up at the crack of dawn is a bit of a pain, and it's made only slightly better by the fact that it is something you wanted to do. Beatriz had said to meet her at the dorm's rooftop so she could explain without waking Ada. The open window letting in the early morning breeze gives you a quite obvious hint as to how she went up there, and it is early enough that there probably isn't anyone else who would be up and about looking at your dorm's walls. Still, Beatriz herself would be keeping an eye out for you, so while you float your way up to the roof you ape the actions a normal person would take to climb. As you near the top, a hand reaches down and you grasp onto it as Beatriz 'helps' you up over the ledge.

"Didn't expect you to take that way Macabre," She says with a smile "and your nails aren't even mussed, you've got more experience than you look, don't you? Actually, wait, never assume, before we start I have to ask you one thing. What do you know of Kharian?"

"Not much." You answer honestly.

"It is the unkindest place of the kindest people, where every moment there might be some terror from the skies above, the waters around, or the frozen ground below your feet. But it is home, so we fight, and we fight for our neighbors, and our neighbors fight for us, from the moment we can sharpen an icicle."

"So you do this to keep a part of your home with you?"

"Ha! It never occurred to me not to do it. But I like that explanation better" She pauses to hand you one of the swords that she had brought up. "When you wield a sword long enough, it becomes a part of you. It is a tool, and it is you, and it is neither. I heard something similar about magic before coming here, and I am interested if it feels the same."

Beatriz closes her eyes and slowly brings her massive sword between her eyes, focusing before managing to materialize a few translucent thin sticks in the area in front of her. Even with the minimized surface area, she looks a little green at putting out so much managlass with so little experience, but she smiles at the addition of 'training targets' before beckoning you to have at them.

"I am thinking this is not so false for Verity, and not so true for Illusions, I am unsure if I want to test out all the classes or only switch the ones I don't like while figuring this out. They say also that the two roads of the sword are knowing yourself and knowing your opponent, perhaps I should take Farsight and Soulsight instead."

You pause a moment to envision Beatriz in the Farsight class [before offering your opinion? Write-in if so.] But you both have plenty of time.


[Trait Discovered: 'Sword Nerd' - Beatriz views the world through a bladed lens, and whether that makes her practical or very silly depends on how much swording needs to be going on at the moment]
[Skill Discovered: Combat Training]
[Background Discovered: Kharian Patriot]


When Ada gets her turn, it takes far less initiative and far more patience.

"You! Skinny one, with tired eyes, why did you not say hello to me in 'Adulting Class' or whatever name they settled on?" Your attempts to meet with Ada are rather aggressively facilitated by her apparent attempts to meet with you, and you answer with plain honesty: You had no idea she was in the class.

Her eyes briefly narrow, but you very specifically did not use the word 'short' so she eventually settles for a different complaint. "This is fair. Circles are a poor way to seat a class. I went to complain to the teacher afterward and only found a barrier around the class area! Now I have even greater complaints. But I will not inflict them on you."

You seize your chance to make conversation in the lull, "So, you don't like the class as much? How were your others?"

"Bah! It was my best class. Exactly what I was looking for. Already I learned a spell so useful I could have made an entire clock of gold if I knew it a decade ago. Look." Ada pulls out a very shiny silver pocketwatch and immediately makes a trio of needles from managlass, sliding them gently into its grooves before popping open the back and pushing against a few gears, scraping a tiny bit of buildup off a small coil before shutting it again.

"Their so-called 'weak' spell is only delicate. Delicate is good! The only technology that is not delicate is weaponry, and that is only after a long and delicate process of taking all the delicacy out of it."

The word delicate already sounds a little weird to you. It has deli in it, and a lot of food carts outside your dorm advertise delicacies. You wonder if fragility and food are very connected for humans.

"It's impressive that you learned it so fast, though! I didn't manage it right away, I mean, I got the idea, it just didn't come out."

"Then you learned it too! You should just be more aggressive. Instead of trying to do it, just do it. Here, catch!" Ada tosses you something small, and you reflexively catch it.

It appears to be a toy of some sort? A small, brass bird rather stylized, with wings furled in and a beak cut short so it almost looks like an egg. As you look it over, it starts emitting loud peeps and you nearly drop it in shock.

PEEP PEEP PEEP

"That is your problem now," Ada says with a smirk.

PEEP PEEP PEEP

"Very expensive, don't break or lose it."

PEEP PEEP PEEP

"I made it for my husband, years ago, so he would never forget lunch, it peeps at lunchtime every day, as long as you wind it once a week."

PEEP PEEP

"You turn it off by poking its back with a fork. There are four holes, you see, I didn't want him,"

PEEP

"Ignoring it."

The peeps are echoing in your head in a way you now know for sure was calculated to be irritating, and Ada smirks at you as you turn it over to look for the opening.

"Do you have a fork?" you ask.

"No," Ada says, smile only widening.

"Is there a method other than a fork?" you ask again.

"No," she repeats.

You look at the device, wondering briefly if she already hates you as the beeps fill your head, before you start to get genuinely angry. The holes are RIGHT THERE. You press your hands against them tightly, trying to shut it off, thinking you'll just phase through the material…

When you realize you can't actually phase through whatever this is made out of.

Of all the asinine coincidences! How could she possibly have magic material just to annoy you with? You slam your fist into the bird… and it shuts off, the managlass fork in your hand collapsing to splinters, having been cast, served its purpose, and broken in one smooth motion.

Ada smiles, and takes the bird back from you, "Don't ask to do things, just do them."

You briefly consider whether it's worth swearing to get her goat back sometime.

[Ada trait discovered: Confrontational - some people go right for the throat, Ada thinks that's just limiting your attack options.]
[Ada skill discovered: Clockmaker]
[Spell Learning Completed Managlass]

Charisma DC 30 52+20=72

You mostly just say 'hi' to people and engage in conversations that come your way for the first week, being polite, but, as far as you can tell, not leaving much of an impression. You wanted to devote as much attention to classes as possible at least until your first weekend and opportunity to unwind and dedicate more -effort- to socializing.

Something clearly went horribly wrong, however. As early as Wednesday you're noticing people looking at you, some of them… dissecting. And no sooner have you learned it than you discover that the Heebie Jeebie spell goes off for you constantly. You become increasingly worried that people are starting to figure you out, but every time you touch your chest or quail away to hide behind somebody else, you see that your disguise is intact and they just seem to get more interested.

At least there's very little malice on their faces, just… something. Something you really haven't seen much in the swamps.

It's not until your social day that you finally work it out. A drop box at the front of your dorm has a removable nameplate for you this semester, and provides a spot for you to receive mail.

And it is -stuffed-. Pink parchments, some kind of… greyish shadowy papyrus… even a slate.

You almost faint when the first person blatantly calls you 'Obviously hot.'

Then it slowly dawns on you.

People really like you. In, like, the mammalian way.

It's going to take you some time to figure out how to parse this information. I mean why would you even be popular in the first place? You come across as either independently aloof or really shy depending on how closely people are looking. You're skittish as hell and have wild reactions when people do actually throw you off. You're always polite, but almost never lead the conversation. Even visually, your 'human' body is waifish and thin with skin that is both smoother and paler than anybody you've ever seen. And everything beyond that surface level is just a deliberate mystery.

Where the hell did they find 'attractive' in that?

Well, it's almost definitely probably better than the alternative and does leave you with a lot of options for your social scene debut. A lot a lot. Hmm…

[Choose ONE, the club invitations will be available as turn options for the next couple of turns.]

[ ] The Apprentice's Troupe
A shadowy paper tells you that the pre-eminent dramatists, which you're assuming means 'hammy performing arts aficionados', of the academy are looking for market district natives who can really wear a mask. You're not sure what that means. Looks like if nothing else, they have an entire theater in the market district they've made a deal for free reign of, and it's fairly popular.

[ ] Gakton of the Ripple's Art Show.
An exhibition into the dwarven arts as influenced by the artistic movements of the other civilized races, aimed at promoting fellowship between students regardless of origins. It's much more of an event than an organization, so it would probably be least taken as a show of allegiance, but the sample works don't exactly look amazing.

[ ] The Pyromancy Society
Apparently magic 'affinity' for fire is at least common enough for them to have their own club, as some extremely overeager students are inviting you to join their 'training squad' for fire specialists. Usually, they require demonstrated proficiency with three fire-based lesser magics at a minimum, but apparently, an archmage looking approvingly at you counts… excessively… and they don't expect trouble getting you up to speed.

[ ] Constance Brinet's Open Picnic in the Vivomancer's Gardens.
A third annual event, open and welcoming for all new students to the academy, but you seem to have received a personal invitation. It's on the most expensive and least magical-looking paper, but the razor-sharp formality of the letter doesn't leave a lot of room for implications.

[ ] The Order of the Unknown
A very pompous letter on completely normal parchment invites you to solve all the mysteries of the academy, the first of which appears to be 'what mysteries does the academy even have.' The return address is from the library district, but they promise they have members 'all over'. Despite the grandiosity, they kind of seem like a bunch of dorks whose actual hobbies at the moment appear to consist of dungeon delving and gossiping about powerful wizards. Though their letter is the most overall pleasant of the bunch.

[ ] Princess Tizia of Ordherz's High Tea
A tea party done in the Herzian style hosted by one of their princesses who has joined the academy for her first year of studies. The invitation is incredibly impersonal and you're not even sure if you're supposed to attend or if this is here by mistake or as a prank. From what little you know of Herzian politics, there's a 50% chance this letter is a trap meant to doom you if you respond pleasantly, and a 50% chance this letter is a trap meant to doom you if you ignore it.

[ ] The Expedition of Yori sf. cn. fb.
According to the invitation, during the break between terms, Yori was a member of a Wave Elf expedition to the distant underwater land of Yai-kano and has brought back many of its wonders for the viewing pleasures of his fellow students.

[ ] The Mage's Macaw
The student-run newspaper of the World's End Academy, currently they are looking for junior reporters. It is part way between a club and a job that promises access to various events and compensation for your time, but you'd be dedicating social time to pursuing people with goals in mind and at others' behest.