She would have If she new, but she doesn't. She knows past details very well and she's clearly kept on top of the rumor mill, but ultimately I don't think she's as connected as she pretends to be, not yet anyway. I think she's the child of somebody who has access to the Scholomance registry and was tutored on background information on a few dozen people here precisely for this moment, so she can build the connections she needs to maintain the illusion. Odds are she can't make heads or tails of Aine and was pulling the classic pretend to know things to get someone to confirm your suspicions routine
[x] Read a book
-[x] An Introduction to Contracts, Peacemaking, and Diplomacy
[x] Read a book
-[x] Italian to English Dictionary
I'd like to finish up learning about contracts, since after we're done I think that enforcement based self defence should be our next focus. Also, now that we've started learning Italian I think that any spellbooks we request might end up being in Italian, so delaying the asking to work on our Italian doesn't seem like a bad idea.
Our current In Progress skills and projects are:
Glass Cutter (30/75)
Italian (40/400)
Artifice Project: Power Sink (92/320)
Alchemy Project: Food Poisoning Cure (21/50 x 6)
Glass Cutter and the Food Poisoning Cure will likely happen in the next relevant class, and staying in her room is less dangerous than going to a lab or workshop (for the Power Sink) on her own.
Not for this action, but soon, a spell that lets us make items more resistant may be good for making our clothing last, and getting our violin to a state we feel safe taking it to creative writing class. Music seems to be something that may help us develop.
[x] Read a book
-[x] An Introduction to Contracts, Peacemaking, and Diplomacy
[x] Read a book
-[x] Italian to English Dictionary
I'd like to finish up learning about contracts, since after we're done I think that enforcement based self defence should be our next focus. Also, now that we've started learning Italian I think that any spellbooks we request might end up being in Italian, so delaying the asking to work on our Italian doesn't seem like a bad idea.
Our current In Progress skills and projects are:
Glass Cutter (30/75)
Italian (40/400)
Artifice Project: Power Sink (92/320)
Alchemy Project: Food Poisoning Cure (21/50 x 6)
Glass Cutter and the Food Poisoning Cure will likely happen in the next relevant class, and staying in her room is less dangerous than going to a lab or workshop (for the Power Sink) on her own.
Good news is that once we finish the poison cure we'll have a week or so off, because how it works is that if you get your assignment done early, and aren't looking to do extra credit, then you either start on a personal project (if you have any talent/interests) in the area... or you start studying like mad during the new free Study Space you have.
So if we can complete the Alchemy quickly enough, we could have an extra hour or two of studying... which we'll probably need if we want to keep up with the Italian.
...oh golly, we're going to have to start Finnish tomorrow. That's going to be something of a struggle... which is why we should make good progress on Italian so we can have more time for Finnish when we inevitably fall behind. So yeah, would vote for the main option, but it's also winning, so!
...oh golly, we're going to have to start Finnish tomorrow. That's going to be something of a struggle... which is why we should make good progress on Italian so we can have more time for Finnish when we inevitably fall behind. So yeah, would vote for the main option, but it's also winning, so!
Yeah finnish is going to eat up a lot of work periods. Probably need to take a second semester to fully master.
I know it's early, but assuming we manage to master Italian over the course of our next 25 lessons & some out of class studying, we can switch it to Mandarin and drop 2 shop classes to grab spanish or german for trading options with our current associates.
Yeah finnish is going to eat up a lot of work periods. Probably need to take a second semester to fully master.
I know it's early, but assuming we manage to master Italian over the course of our next 25 lessons & some out of class studying, we can switch it to Mandarin and drop 2 shop classes to grab spanish or german for trading options with our current associates.
I mean, there's no way we master Italian in a year. This is just Italian 1, I think? I guess it depends on how it all works. I'd have to double-check, but I know that many languages are multi-year things.
That said, Spanish would be a good third pick for new languages, since it's a VERY common language.
Spanish, English, Mandarin... I think there might be a fourth? Are the big worldwide ones. If we learn Italian as well, it should help with Spanish maybe?
I mean, there's no way we master Italian in a year. This is just Italian 1, I think? I guess it depends on how it all works. I'd have to double-check, but I know that many languages are multi-year things.
That said, Spanish would be a good third pick for new languages, since it's a VERY common language.
Spanish, English, Mandarin... I think there might be a fourth? Are the big worldwide ones. If we learn Italian as well, it should help with Spanish maybe?
We'll have to wait and see how cost scales between levels of mastery. If your right about the cost it might be more worthwhile to simply add another slot to finish and adjust our schedule for 3 slots of our 3rd pick.
Agreed, and Aine is making some solid inroads with Sofie so she'll probably be more than fair when offering up trades.
We'll have to wait and see how cost scales between levels of mastery. If your right about the cost it might be more worthwhile to simply add another slot to finish and adjust our schedule for 3 slots of our 3rd pick.
Agreed, and Aine is making some solid inroads with Sofie so she'll probably be more than fair when offering up trades.
Five languages is probably enough on our plate right now, if we have time to learn Mandarian we could, but it shouldn't be a priority, especially if we're going to go into Creative Writing as a greater focus than Languages.
Five languages is probably enough on our plate right now, if we have time to learn Mandarian we could, but it shouldn't be a priority, especially if we're going to go into Creative Writing as a greater focus than Languages.
Actually looking at the schedule finnish is a double class on wensday, so it has the same amount as Italian overall. Maybe we should hold off on classes for a third language for now. It's only year one afterall. Instead we could swap finnish into our Monday's and Friday's shop and take a double creative writing where finnish is now to really crank out some new spells.
Yeah, I think that 2 new languages in a year is enough, especially since Aine is way behind in survival skills that other kids woud have been drilled on.
In addition to spells to stop mals from eating her, a ward for her bedroom, and spells to detect non chemical based food contaminants, there's also quality of life stuff.
[x] Read a book
-[x] An Introduction to Contracts, Peacemaking, and Diplomacy
[x] Read a book
-[x] Italian to English Dictionary
It feels weird going from selecting my courses for school next semester in real life to a quest discussing the advantages and disadvantages of certain courses in a dark fantasy school
[x] Read a book
-[x] An Introduction to Contracts, Peacemaking, and Diplomacy
[x] Read a book
-[x] Italian to English Dictionary
You hurry off into your room as soon as you're done returning your tray to the bus station, wishing Sofia and Liam a good night as you leave the table. You still find it more than a little bit odd that the way that you "clean" dishes here is by setting them on a conveyor belt leading to a roaring fire, but it's hardly the weirdest thing that you have to deal with here.
Once you're finished and you're back in your room, you feel the tension that you didn't even know that you were carrying melt away. Today wasn't quite as stressful as yesterday was, it's hard to beat getting attacked by a monster in the middle of class as far as bad days go, but it was certainly a lot. Ending the day by getting harassed by a stranger definitely didn't help matters.
You take a deep breath and let it out. You honestly want to do nothing more than flop down on your bed and rest, but you know that that isn't an option. You're already so far behind even the worst student here that just catching up to them is no more than a distant fantasy. One that you will, nevertheless, have to fulfill if you want to survive and go home someday. So you'll just have to follow your mother's favorite saying, "If you have time to rest, you have time to practice."
The thought does make you look towards your violin and you briefly consider following the advice literally. It's been a while since you've played, and you don't want to get rusty, after all. But you shake your head and discard the thought. You have more important things that you have to focus on right now.
You grab the contracts book from where you left it and skip past the spell that you've already learned. You decide, since you're not working on a time limit, to settle in for the long haul here, no skimming. The Standard Contracting Spell is one of the few things that you can really bring to the table that nobody else can, so might as well learn how to use it properly.
As you read through the pages, most of which seem to be dedicated to ego-stroking about how great and important the organization that produced this book is, you find yourself regretting your commitment to reading every word of the text instead of just looking for the parts that are actually useful, but you keep going anyway. It does turn out that, contrary to your worst fears and expectations, there are a few useful tidbits buried here and there between the massive displays of arrogance, even if they do paint a rather cynical picture of the world with lines like, 'You must always assume that whoever you are negotiating with is trying to cheat you,' and, 'When negotiating with a known party, always be certain what lines they are willing to cross. If they are willing to kill or do worse, to an enemy, they will generally not have any issue doing the same to a neutral party that displeases them (See Book of Excluded Persons for specific examples and treatises on how to avoid such tragedies in the future.)'
You, obviously, do not have access to that book, but the realization that there are apparently enough examples of contracting turning violent to fill an entire book with them does force you to accept that these excerpts are probably sound advice rather than a needlessly cynical way of looking at things. As much as you don't like it, you can accept it, you did work in the music industry, after all.
You continue reading the book, accepting the useful, if depressing nuggets of advice that you find nestled between arrogant declarations of the reader's superiority until, finally, you reach a section titled, 'A Guide to Personal Usage.'
You go through the section, reading slowly and closely, determined to absorb as much as you can from what the book has to teach you. Unfortunately, this section is similarly cynical to the preceding passages, though it does lack the palpable arrogance and condescension leaping from the pages, so it is still a marked improvement. Rather than focusing on what you should be doing, it instead details all the little tells, tricks, and schemes that people will try to use against you in a negotiation. While you suppose that you could simply use some of those tricks yourself, though the idea of trying to outright cheat someone does make you a bit uncomfortable, large swathes of the text are dedicated to trying to tell if someone is lying or trying to hide something from you.
Still, you can't deny that the advice seems sound, even if you think that you're going to be trying your best to negotiate in good faith, rather than trying to fleece your fellow students for as much as you can get out of them, which seems to be what the book assumes you'll be doing.
You can't help but think back to that first contract you made with Jingfei and wonder if there was anything that you missed back then that you might have caught now. You don't think that there was anything particularly off about that deal, but it has been a full day since then, and you're well aware that your memory is fallible.
And that just sends you off to thinking about your ill-fated attempt to make Leah and Jingfei get along, which you find raising all sorts of doubts about both of them, even if you'd like to believe that they're genuine, as opposed to the very negative inferences that they seem to have made about each other. But if Leah was right about Jingfei's motives, then wouldn't it make sense if she tried to cheat you somehow?
You sigh, the whole thing is a mess that you can, and probably will, have to deal with tomorrow. Besides, the bell for curfew already rang, so it's not like you could try and do anything about it right now. You push the thoughts away and walk over to the giant hole in your room which you're certain that you will never get used to. You hold the contracts book out and over the edge, and you get goosebumps as you look into the vast, unending, nothingness. You drop the book in and, just like when you lost the Unofficial Guide, you can't help but watch and listen for any sign of where it went. Nothing presents itself as it disappears into the inky darkness and you shudder at the lack of response.
You do your level best to ignore your feelings about the void and head back over to the table, pulling out your Italian-English dictionary. You quickly find yourself struggling to know what you should be studying without the worksheets that the Scholomance provided in class, but you eventually settle in and do your best to focus on basic vocabulary for the rest of the night; conjugations and other bits of grammar will have to wait.
You also realize that studying in your room means that you don't have the school whispering phrases into your ear every minute or so and you find yourself feeling rather conflicted about that. On the one hand, the whispering was definitely creepy, on the other, it does mean that you have to just make your best guess as to how you're supposed to pronounce any given word. You suppose that, eventually, you'll get enough of a handle on the language to figure out pronunciation from spelling alone, but it is rather inconvenient at the moment.
By the time you start to feel yourself nodding off; you really wish you had a clock, watch, or any other way of telling what time it was, you close your dictionary and leave it on the table for later before crawling into your uncomfortable bed for the night.
As you drift off to sleep, your thoughts turn back to the issue of Leah. You know you have to do something, but you're not really sure what. You could just leave it, even if she does turn out to be an opportunist that just wants to use you, it's like Carmen said, that means she's invested in keeping you alive. But, at the same time, you're not sure you want to just be someone else's tool. And, of course, there's always the possibility that Jingfei wildly misjudged her. And if Leah's assessment of Jingfei is correct, and she intentionally let you get hurt to make you feel more positive towards her… You don't think that's something you could accept.
You sigh and try to think about anything else, eventually resorting to humming yourself to sleep to the tune of one of the first songs that you wrote yourself. It was absolutely dreadful and it never saw any sort of formal production, but still, revisiting it always brings a smile to your face.
☆☆☆
You wake up to the sounds of footfall outside your room and you know exactly where you are. For the first time since you've arrived at the Scholomance, there's no confusion, no desperate need to believe that you're back at home or staying in some crappy motel room for the night. You know that you're stuck here, and it seems that your brain has given up on trying to convince itself otherwise.
You pull yourself out of bed and feel your back crack as you stretch. You rub it to try and soothe the aches and pains you're starting to develop from the rock-hard mattress and idly wonder if there's some way you could get a better one, or at least some extra pillows. A half-second's thought tells you that the answer is probably no, but you do consider checking the storeroom at some point. You doubt a mattress could even fit in that tiny room, but pillows seem like they could reasonably show up in there.
You slip out into the hallway, doing your best not to think about how you've missed your cosmetics routine for three days and nights in a row. If your mother could see you right now she'd throw a fit. Your newest spell may mean that you're at least not covered in layers of dirt, dust, and grime, but even just running your hand through your hair reveals a ton of tangles, knots, and split ends that you wouldn't have been allowed to even go out in public with back home.
You sigh and console yourself that it's not like everyone else is doing better. In the sea of students surrounding you, there's not a single person who doesn't have messy hair, stains of unknown origin dotting their clothes, or blemishes starting to form on their skin. Even the enclavers, though they do look somewhat better, seem experiencing a bit of wear and tear, even if the only visible difference so far is their increasingly wrinkled outfits.
A small part of you feels kind of nice, not having to worry about keeping up appearances at all times, but you know that that's not the kind of attitude that you should keep up, so you do your best to bury it.
You make your way to homeroom, sit down, and then wait in awkward silence for the half-hour to be over and done with. Leah tries to start a conversation with you, but there's enough of an awkward air between you that it peters off into nothing relatively quickly. You can't really come up with anything to say either, and Carmen certainly isn't going to be the one keeping a conversation afloat. So you're all left sitting there, watching the clock and anxiously waiting for it to strike eight-thirty.
At least having Leah and Carmen around at all meant that Aiden stayed in his own corner of the room, schmoozing the French Enclavers as far as you could tell.
As the clock finally ticks away to just a few seconds before the bell rings, you cover your ears with your hands, drawing a brief, confused look from Carmen and Leah before they understand and do the same. It doesn't really help, the horrible shrieking noise is just as unpleasant as always, but putting in some kind of effort does at least make you feel a bit better about it.
As you get up, Leah stops you by asking, "Are you going to be joining Carmen and me for breakfast today?" She's wearing a stiff smile on her face, the sort that you've mentally marked as "fake" whenever you see them. But you don't really get the sense that she's hiding anger or frustration like she does so often when you see that smile on her, but more the feeling that she's… Nervous? Maybe even scared about what your answer will be. You get a similar sense from Carmen, but that's just to be expected.
You no longer suffer the -10 from your Trusting trait in the context of creating contracts with the Standard Contracting Spell.
You have gained the trait, Empathetic: In addition to your already impressive social skills, you've noticed that you're quite good at guessing what people are feeling based on their tone and body language, even when they try to hide it. Gain +10 to any rolls dedicated to gauging another person's emotional response to something.
There's only a moment of hesitation before you give your answer:
[] You refuse to go to breakfast with them and try to find another group to go with
-[] Write in who
[] You agree and don't bring up any issues that you might be having right now
[] You agree but emphasize that you have to talk about what you overheard
Read: An Introduction to Contracts, Peacemaking, and Diplomacy
DC: 40/60/80
Bonuses: +10 (No Time Pressure)
Roll: 1d100(68) +10 = 78!Success!
Well, that was productive. It's funny how Ãine keeps getting traits related to keeping her calm and passing social checks and reading others intensions. She's gonna be a hell of a Magical Lawyer/Negotiator at this rate.
Aine told Jingfei that Leah was suspicious of her failure to warn Aine about the glasss in the sandwich. The two got into an argument and Jingfei revealed her own misgivings about Leah's motives, which Aine overheard. Aine later confided in Carmen about said overheard argument, to which Carmen said it sounds reasonable and within expectation, and begged Aine not to leave their trial alliance thingy. I'd say it's all a big misunderstanding caused by shitty enclave society self-interest standards.
We should probably just clear the air, but I'm willing to hear others opinions before I vote.
[X] You agree and don't bring up any issues that you might be having right now
In all honesty, I don't think there's much value in giving too much credence to Jingfei's warning. Áine was already keeping one eye open with Leah, and her talents seem to lean toward figuring people out, but honestly if Leah was trying to be some kind of mastermind using Áine as a pawn she's terrible at it. Plus, Leah has too much low-key blackmail to piss her off on a whim.
Because let's be real, there no polite way to say "Are you trying to turn me into your goon" and Jingfei might have intentionally given the warning to alienate Áine from Leah in order to make her more vulnerable to all kinds of stuff.
Just give it some time rather than making accusations based on the word of somebody we just met - if we need to sever ties, we can do so when the blackmail has aged into uselessness - people are going to find 'she knows nothing about magic' a harder sell when Áine has been using magic visibly for weeks or months and is a tough target with other friends.
Appearance: A short, dark-skinned girl with curly, brown hair tied up in pigtails.
Affinity: ???
Known Spells: ???
Relationship: You don't know her too well, but she's been friendly and seems to have taken it upon herself to help you adapt to your new life at the Scholomance.
Appearance: A tall, well-built boy with pale skin and short, blonde hair.
Affinity: ???
Known Spells: ???
Relationship: You're first and so far only meeting didn't exactly go well, considering that he berated you into having a panic attack under the assumption you were digging into his past. You don't particularly want to see him again and you can't imagine he does either.
Appearance: A heavy-set girl with tan skin and black hair cut into a short bob.
Affinity: ???, stated by Leah to be useless for survival unless the user is willing to go down an "unfortunate" path.
Known Spells:
Echo, Echo, Echo: Allows the caster to map out a space by releasing a sound wave and contructing a mental map based on what it hits.
Relationship: She's perpetually downcast and convinced of how unlikely she is to survive, but she seems nice enough and you feel that could befriend her.
Appearance: A thin boy with short, messy, dark hair.
Affinity: ???
Known Spells: ???
Relationship: You've only met him once but the meeting basically boiled down to him trying to pump you for information on your background, something which Leah remains insistent you should keep to yourself. Not exactly a great first impression, but you wouldn't necessarily be opposed to knowing him better.
Appearance: A thin girl with pale skin and short, straight, black hair.
Affinity: ???
Known Spells:
Unknown Stone-Shaping Spell: A spell that seems to give Jingfei the ability to finely control and sculpt stone.
Relationship: She seems nice and helpful, and was willing to help you learn the mend-and-make spell. On the other hand, she also seems to have figured out your background because of a careless remark on your part, which is potentially problematic.
Appearance: A dark-skinned boy with short hair.
Affinity: ???
Known Spells: ???
Relationship: He seems a bit intense, but you wouldn't really say he was particularly unpleasant, even if he did decide to grill you about your choices for no apparent reason. Still, you wouldn't be opposed to getting to know him further.
Appearance: A pale, light-skinned girl with strawberry-blonde hair.
Affinity: ???
Known Spells:
Unknown Bone-Shaping Spell: She was able to pull bone-knitting needles from her arms with this spell, though you don't know it's full capabilities. You do know, however that you would rather not see it again.
Relationship: You've only met her once and in that time she proved to be largely anti-social and demonstrated a talent for magic you can only describe as off-putting. While you wouldn't really say you have anything against her, you also have no real desire to attempt to get to know her better.
The girl gives an oddly captivating smile and, in lightly accented English, says, "Izumi Higashi, and, if I'm correct," She points to Sofia, Liam, and you in that order, "Sofia Hatzis, Liam O'Flaherty, and Áine Dunleavy."
I don't either, but the way Leah's acting, I'm a little worried Carmen might have snitched to her. She's oddly nervous about Aine agreeing to sit with her. Something she'd have no reason for unless she was worried Aine was inclined to mistrust her.
I'm pretty sure both Jingfei and Leah are well intentioned and simply conditioned by the magical society to assume no one is well intentioned. I'd say the only reason Jingfei didn't manage to warn Aine about the glass was she was distracted processing how terribly ignorant Aine was at the time.
