Remove ads

Harry Potter and the Scabbard of Excalibur [AU]

Reader mode
We really should've gone to the inner circle straight up with the Animagus transformation business tbh, but that's on me for editing that part out due to a misunderstanding with Birdsie I suppose.

...Not that I'm willing to give it up!

[X] Be Forthright
-[X] Bring up your Patronus as a way for you to protect yourself from the Dementors and to prove that you can help them with their investigation.

[X] Pick Nothing

I think that gnosis bonus is bad since we aren't active enough for it to be useful and I'd rather just go behind Peter's back and learn to be an animagus from the inner circle if we decide to go that route at all tbh.

Come to think of it, what do you think would be the benefits of not selecting any of the three options presented to us?
 
Last edited:
[X] Be Forthright
-[X] Bring up your Patronus as a way for you to protect yourself from the Dementors and to prove that you can help them with their investigation.

[X] Find your own mentor from the Inner Circle Network

[X] Singing Sunlight Remit

[X] Pick Nothing

I kinda enjoy Apocryphal as a narrative device, so..
 
Last edited:
_brightwing said:
[X] Be Forthright
-[X] Bring up your Patronus as a way for you to protect yourself from the Dementors and to prove that you can help them with their investigation.

[X] Singing Sunlight Remit

[X] Pick Nothing

I kinda enjoy Apocryphal as a narrative device, so..
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Do you disagree with Geist's analysis of being an Animagus? Given Harry has no special learning boost to the process, it could take much of the year. Wouldn't the time be better spent mastering other skills, taking other classes?


[X] Be Forthright
[X] Singing Sunlight Remit
 
Last edited:
13thBee said:
Do you disagree with Geist's analysis of being an Animagus? Given Harry has no special learning boost to the process, it could take much of the year. Wouldn't the time be better spent mastering other skills, taking other classes?


[X] Be Forthright
[X] Magic Boost
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Why do you want the magic boost? 0.75 gnosis isn't much and a 10% bonus for two turns when thread activity is this low is negligible
 
13thBee said:
Do you disagree with Geist's analysis of being an Animagus? Given Harry has no special learning boost to the process, it could take much of the year. Wouldn't the time be better spent mastering other skills, taking other classes?


[X] Be Forthright
[X] Magic Boost
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Geist hasn't always been right in his musings though. He has been wrong before, we should go with our instincts - we're privy to meta knowledge he isn't. And we spent 25 Gnosis on it, we shouldn't give up midway..

Remember features of the animal carry over to our human form too. The reason I am so invested in the Phoenix is to see if there's any unique interaction with Everlasting attainment. It should be easier to unlock it, if nothing else now that we have a phoenix spirit.

The free teleportation to maneuver around Hogwarts is definitely worth it. It's like getting one of the best perks of Griffindor Champion. Next time we're in an overwhelming fight scene.. we could just leave and get backup? This lets us explore the world out of Hogwarts early too without having to invest on a Tris apparition or something.

Flying mastery is a good bonus too. Broomsticks can be stolen away or destroyed and would have to be carried around. I would hate nothing more than making Harry practice flying when we can spend time on other things. I suspected the immortality is conditional, but anything is fine really.

There's the mystique of being a Phoenix too. Did you guys forget about the Phoenix song? It would go hand in hand with our Lord Hufflepuff when we're fighting with armies or something later.

Edit: As for the wanded magic limitation - shifting between forms is fairly easy. After teleportation we can just shift back as required. And if we were flying using a broomstick we wouldn't be able to focus on casting spells anyways.

Edit:Edit: Having lifesaving healing tears on command is useful af because we won't always be carrying around potions in the next life and death emergency.. so the black market buying thing doesn't really pan out.
 
Last edited:
Nobody134 said:
Why do you want the magic boost? 0.75 gnosis isn't much and a 10% bonus for two turns when thread activity is this low is negligible
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's not a large amount, but I also value the other two options as pretty low (the Apocryphal Curse is there to challenge us and the Animagus option just gets us one out of two signatures to open up the possibility of early Animagus (which itself I don't value highly).

Every bit of gnosis adds up, and gnosis now could be better than us spending less effort to unlock Animagus well over a year from now (assuming the thread decides to go that route and it's not wasted).

That having been said, _Brightwing makes some good points about how within Hogwarts in particular, being a Phoenix Animagus could be particularly helpful. So now I don't think any of the options is particularly better/worse than the others.
 
13thBee said:
It's not a large amount, but I also value the other two options as pretty low (the Apocryphal Curse is there to challenge us and the Animagus option just gets us one out of two signatures to open up the possibility of early Animagus (which itself I don't value highly).

Every bit of gnosis adds up, and gnosis now could be better than us spending less effort to unlock Animagus well over a year from now (assuming the thread decides to go that route and it's not wasted).

That having been said, _Brightwing makes some good points about how within Hogwarts in particular, being a Phoenix Animagus could be particularly helpful. So now I don't think any of the options is particularly better/worse than the others.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The apocryphal curse is actually a huge risk to be taking each and every year, and holding off on it for one year will give us an entire year to just grind our skills and improve our abilities without any worries.
 
I don't get why you guys want to do this all official-like when the better option is to go to the inner circle and ask for some illegal, and more importantly undocumented, guidance.
 
Nobody134 said:
I don't get why you guys want to do this all official-like when the better option is to go to the inner circle and ask for some illegal, and more importantly undocumented, guidance.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Just in-case we don't manage to get a tutor for some reason who's willing to risk an Azkaban sentencing for teaching us. If we find one, good. If we don't though I don't want additional delays over it. Honestly, I'd prefer to learn this ourselves even without Geist's assistance. There's got to be some form of DA option we could take, probably.
 
_brightwing said:
Just in-case we don't manage to get a tutor for some reason who's willing to risk an Azkaban sentencing for teaching us. If we find one, good. If we don't though I don't want additional delays over it. Honestly, I'd prefer to learn this ourselves even without Geist's assistance. There's got to be some form of DA option we could take, probably.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Inner circle loyalty is a thing, so I personally wouldn't discount it.
I am also not sure how much I like learning the Animagus transformation in such a public setting - it would rob us of a lot of advantages, chief of which would be just leaving the castle as we please (everyone will know that we can do that)
 
I hope Pick Nothing takes traction, but if it doesn't I'm resigned to go Sunlight over it. Like we could get a permit, and still decide not to attend the official classes and get the phoenix secretly. Even if the phoenix is registered, if we have to look it in a meta perspective, it could be to introduce a limiting factor to phoenix travel whenever we wished.

The limiting factor to learning ourselves would be it taking longer.. The inner circle route would probably take a good social roll - they'd still need to be convinced to take the risk and assess if we're putting ourselves in harm's way - they'd be loyal to look after our welfare too unless we can convince them of our competence.

Either way, I really want that phoenix before the next big fight. And sink our next Tris to something useful like Alchemy or Eternal Patronus..
 
We;re barely passing our non-Astronomy courses and you lunatics want to make this poor child study the animagus transformation too?
 
JOEbob said:
barely passing our non-Astronomy courses
knocking Astronomy/Astrology out of the park.
yes. these two statements are consistent. the context of the latter being brought up, though, not so much.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Ah, I misread her then.

We are doing well on our studies though regardless, though it does make me wonder how on earth are we going to handle taking electives...
 
Phoenixes either got nerfed hard in this AU, or Gheist doesn't know what he's talking about. The first would be odd, considering this story tends to overpower canonical stuff rather than the opposite, so I'm confused about why exactly Gheist thinks this.
 
Nobody134 said:
Again, I really do not understand why you guys are voting for the signature.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

We could have Harry learn an incredibly difficult spell that mimics phoenix travel, find a way to defeat aging through dark magic or otherwise, somehow, even though it's something only two people have achieved, and Gheist can't help because his tongue's been bound. We could get him to buy phoenix tears on the black market, without connections, for enormous amounts of money, and then hope the vial doesn't break at an inconvenient moment, or that he might need more after he uses his very expensive, very limited supply. Or, we could get him to learn to become an animagus. Gheist, being a retired dark lord, doesn't need to be a phoenix. He takes his minions and their wealth for granted. If he isn't carrying twenty emergency vials of tears among other ingredients in his personal pocket dimension then something's gone very, very wrong, and if he can already do everything else a phoenix can, then why does he need to be one? Steering Harry away from that seems a very myopic view, to me.
 
Lightwavers said:
We could have Harry learn an incredibly difficult spell that mimics phoenix travel, find a way to defeat aging through dark magic or otherwise, somehow, even though it's something only two people have achieved, and Gheist can't help because his tongue's been bound. We could get him to buy phoenix tears on the black market, without connections, for enormous amounts of money, and then hope the vial doesn't break at an inconvenient moment, or that he might need more after he uses his very expensive, very limited supply. Or, we could get him to learn to become an animagus. Gheist, being a retired dark lord, doesn't need to be a phoenix. He takes his minions and their wealth for granted. If he isn't carrying twenty emergency vials of tears among other ingredients in his personal pocket dimension then something's gone very, very wrong, and if he can already do everything else a phoenix can, then why does he need to be one? Steering Harry away from that seems a very myopic view, to me.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yes, but why go through the standard method and have our animagus form be public knowledge and rob us of the advantages of having such an ability be kept hidden instead of just going to the inner circle and asking for help from someone there?

Between getting permission and waiting for next year to come, that is the much longer path to accomplish the same goal.

I should perhaps clarify that the original idea was to approach the inner circle and not Peter, and it was never the original intention to go through the legal avenues to learn how to transform, but Birdsie volunteered heavily misleading information on discord:

" @Birdsie In my suggested plan, if studying under someone about animagi would constitute as "study even more" then would it be okay for us to just search for an Animagus mentor that won't tattle on us?

Birdsie - Pettigrew"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

He says that he wouldn't give us any OOC information and answer from Harry's point of view, and that it's my fault for assuming otherwise, but notice how I did not ask him for such information to begin with (I did not ask him who such an instructor might be, but simply if such an action would constitute as "study even more" as specified in the previous turn, and if it would, then would it be fine for us to just find such an instructor among the inner circle) and he basically willingly volunteered a lie under the guise of Harry's POV.

Frankly the only reason I'm not angrier with him is that he is going through a medical condition and I assume that he isn't at his best or sharpest at the moment, and I can't imagine that the drugs are helping.

Otherwise, becoming a known Animagus eliminates many of the advantages of such a transformation (being able to leave the castle discreetly, having an ace in the hole in the case of a capture for a quick escape, surprise fire magic etc) and the rewards (being recognized as a phoenix animagus for some clout) are largely negligible.
 
Last edited:
Geist should be proud. Harry's finally fished up a goal for himself, and for all its flashiness it's one that neatly avoids the path of least resistance that wizards generally favor.

The question isn't 'is being an Animagus good' or 'is being an Animagus better than being a slightly better wizard in general', the question is: 'how can I make being an Animagus better than it has any right to be?' Because that, combined with hard work and ingenuity? Is how you do things no one else thinks are possible.

True ambition is not for mere excellence, but for salient achievement. To not only go further, but to go to worthwhile places, to see and do things that others could not have, and to return richer for the doing. To seize and claim for one's own is reserved for the truly ambitious; without which, one cannot be called a lord.

It is said that hubris is a coward's word: the mark of one who fears the dark. But, tempered by true ambition?

It makes you a Dark Lord worthy of the name.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top