Remedial Survival: A Scholomance Quest
- Thread starter Alchemist767676
- Start date
-
- Tags
- magic school quest open voting
- Location
- Canada
[X] Next to Cynthia, Who's seated in the front row and looks a bit… odd. She has the same bright and cheerful grin as she did when you first met, but it's now coupled with deep bags under her eyes, and an outfit absolutely covered in dirt stains from head to toe.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Next to Cynthia, Who's seated in the front row and looks a bit… odd. She has the same bright and cheerful grin as she did when you first met, but it's now coupled with deep bags under her eyes, and an outfit absolutely covered in dirt stains from head to toe.
We could go to our (or her) room, put on her stuff and use the spell, then give them back. "Our clothes" needn't be what we came into the school with.
"Laundromat" sounds like a useful service for us to offer.
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[X] Next to Oliver, who's almost directly in the center of the room, managing to look bored as he waits for class to start.
Laundry service isn't a bad idea (especially since we have no way to store mana, and little else to use it on), but we're not exactly going to do that in the middle of class.
Laundry service isn't a bad idea (especially since we have no way to store mana, and little else to use it on), but we're not exactly going to do that in the middle of class.
ZubScore
Unfathomable
- Pronouns
- Male
[X] Next to Cynthia, Who's seated in the front row and looks a bit… odd. She has the same bright and cheerful grin as she did when you first met, but it's now coupled with deep bags under her eyes, and an outfit absolutely covered in dirt stains from head to toe.
She seems nice but in a bit of a rough patch. Let's keep breaking the mold. Offer her some help.
She seems nice but in a bit of a rough patch. Let's keep breaking the mold. Offer her some help.
- Location
- Poland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Next to Cynthia, Who's seated in the front row and looks a bit… odd. She has the same bright and cheerful grin as she did when you first met, but it's now coupled with deep bags under her eyes, and an outfit absolutely covered in dirt stains from head to toe.
- Pronouns
- Reader
Barely, largely because a good hundreds or two die each year, and probably by using lab to make nutrition supplements to keep them healthy and functional to compensate for the lean diet as they grow older.
I'm pretty sure it's a mix of having little thats good to mix them in, a raw egg being something rough for a teenage girl to eat purely Ra, and the worry that they might not be regular eggs or contain something nasty serving as incentive to just leave them be.
@Alchemist767676 I think the Character Page needs Italian updated.
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Vote Closed
- Location
- Bloomington, IN
For the record, this is absolutely something you could do! The spell you made is very efficient compared to other, similar spells, on account of the crit and it landing within your affinity, and the layering idea someone else mentioned works too.
Thanks for catching that, I'll get that fixed up before posting.
Anyway, finally ready to start on the next update, so vote is closing now in favor of sitting by Oliver.
By layering you mean wear multiple layers of clothing from different people?
Modern History
- Location
- Bloomington, IN
[x] Next to Oliver, who's almost directly in the center of the room, managing to look bored as he waits for class to start.
While it was a close choice between the two, you eventually shrug and head in Oliver's direction. While you could give more solid reasons for the decision if you really thought it through, you can't deny that it's really just because there's something about Cynthia's smile that ever so slightly gives you the creeps. You almost went over to check on her, because it seems off in a way that you can't quite put your finger on, but you wind up deciding to play it safe and leave the odd feeling unremarked upon.
You walk up to the boy and notice that he still doesn't seem to be fully recovered from his little accident in the lab. He's changed into a new shirt that hides the bruises on his arms and doesn't have any soot stains covering it, but you can pick out small tufts of hair that are still blackened from flames. You find yourself idly wondering if your cleaning spell would help with that, or if that sort of singing would count more as damage than filth for the spell's purposes. You suppose it doesn't really matter all that much; you don't think that you can even use the spell on people besides yourself; but it would probably be a good idea to try and get a better read on what, precisely, the spell you made can actually do.
You're pretty sure that that's something that you should focus on, but also that this isn't really the appropriate time for it, so you push those thoughts away for later.
"Excuse me?" You ask, drawing Oliver's attention. He looks faintly terrified as he turns your way, dropping the pencil he was fiddling with before you arrived. Once he gets a good look at you, however, the fear drains from his face and he manages to put on a mostly convincing smile.
"Áine, right?" He asks.
You smile back and reply, "Ah, you remember me, how nice. And you're Oliver, if I recall correctly, that is."
His smile widens slightly and he answers, "Yep. You need a seat?" He gestures to the seat next to him. "There's nothing under there, I checked before sitting down."
"Definitely the smart way to do things," You say, shooting him another smile before adding, "Thank you," and taking the seat he gestured towards.
As you get situated at your desk, taking out your supplies and doing your best to get as comfortable as reasonably possible considering the quality of furniture that the Scholomance seems to favor, you say, "I suppose I'm lucky you weren't waiting for anybody, huh?"
Oliver gives a slightly nervous chuckle. "Oh, not really. I don't have a lot of friends here, and any I do aren't going to be taking this class."
"Oh," you say, doing an admirable job of hiding any nervousness that you might be feeling. "Why is that?" You find yourself hoping that you haven't somehow blundered into some kind of trap by taking this class.
Oliver shrugs, his face reddening slightly for some reason. "Oh, you know, it's kind of a blow-off class. If you care about your transcript here looking good, it's really not the kind of class you should take. A bit risky too, the school will punish you if you try to stack your schedule too lightly…" He grimaces a bit as he finishes, like he bit into something foul and is regretting every life choice that led him to this point.
"And I take it the school decided that you did just that," You guess.
Oliver sighs and says, "Yeah. Advanced calculus."
"Oh, I don't suppose that you happen to be good at math?" You ask.
"Nope," Oliver answers with a pained smile. "But I've got to pass, so I will. Definitely not going to manage anything more than that, but that's okay, right?"
It takes you a brief moment to realize that he's actually asking you, not just posing a rhetorical question. Once you do, you hastily reply, "Of course, I'm in the blow-off class too, after all." Come to think of it, for an easy class that only people who don't care what their record looks like take, this class sure is packed. You shrug and chalk it up to a cultural thing you don't know enough to identify. Besides, barely passing was all your parents asked of you when it came to schoolwork, so you hardly have any room to judge anyone else for not striving to do well in their classes.
"Yeah, right, that's good," Oliver says to himself, his cheeks reddening slightly.
A few moments pass between you in silence before you think to ask, "So, my last history class was sort of… Interrupted. Any idea what I should expect here?
Oliver scowled. "Oh, yeah. Let's just say that every complaint that your parents made about their history classes was spot on.
"Oh, really?" You ask, hoping you get a more detailed answer out of him than a reference to common knowledge that you have no way of knowing.
"Oh, yeah. I had English History on Monday, and the projector was so bad that I got a migraine trying to focus on the screen, and I had to focus on the screen to try and make sense of how muffled the sound was. Honestly, not a hundred percent sure that I got a few of the names right. That's probably a few points off on the exams…" Oliver drifts off, his tone making it sound like losing those few points is some kind of profound failing on his part.
"Well, I'm sure that you could find something in the library to double-check your notes," You say with an encouraging smile.
"Oh, it doesn't matter," Oliver says, the depressed tone to his voice putting his flippant words to lie. "I just have to pass. There's no point in doing anything more." There's a sort of brittle sadness to the voice that you can't for the life of you imagine the origin of. You also don't think that you're close enough to him to really ask about it, so you suppose that will just have to remain a mystery, for now at least.
You tuck those thoughts away in the back of your mind when the classroom lights suddenly go out and you're plunged into darkness for almost a minute before the old-fashioned film projector in the center of the classroom stirs to life.
You immediately understand what Oliver was complaining about. It takes the better part of a minute for the image on the board to resolve into anything resembling coherency, during which that audio that should be accompanying the video plays at an oddly high pitch, to the point that you can almost feel the headache that it's nurturing.
You look at Oliver and find that he has a pained expression on his face. "Oh, wow, this is worse. How is this worse?"
You swallow and do your level best to focus on the film in front of you. The image may cut out every five seconds, plunging you back into darkness before it returns, and the audio may be physically painful to listen to, but you just have to get through this class and it will all be over. Just as you think this, a sharp pop sound resounds through the classroom and, suddenly, the audio is being played loud enough that you're barely able to stop yourself from covering your ears with your hands in a desperate attempt to block it out. You feel a slight twinge of horror at the realization that you're going to be stuck here for a full three hours.
Still, you grit your teeth and bear it. Complaining will get you nowhere in life, and giving up is never an option. You look over your shoulder to see if anyone else has decided to just leave and see that, while just about everyone seems to be in various states of discomfort or frustration, nobody's actually gotten up and left. Well, everyone except Cynthia, that is, who's simply watching the video with that same smile on her face, not even taking notes, but not reacting to the assault on her ears either.
You turn back to the lecture and brace yourself to make the best of the next three hours. You recognize the problem with this strategy almost immediately. As it turns out, Modern History is built on the assumption that you know at least the broad strokes of a lot of other bits and pieces of history and culture that would be common knowledge to the average wizard child. Being that you are not, in fact, the average wizard child, you find yourself lost almost immediately.
"-Following the reclamation and resurgence of the Shanghai Enclave, Domina Lavinia Ford of Seattle made immediate overtures to the fledgling power in hopes of-"
You cringe as another loud pop sounds off, this one cutting the audio back to an almost inaudible whisper that, while definitely less painful than before, still forces you to strain your hearing to make out anything being said. You do your best to write down what you can make out, but between you missing half of what's being said and the unfamiliar terminology being casually thrown around, it might as well be in another language for all the good it does you. You have no idea what "reclaiming" an enclave would entail, what a "domina" is, or what kind of relationships enclaves have with each other in general, much less what these "overtures" would entail.
You're not certain if your consternation is showing on your face, you hope not if this class is supposed to be as easy as Oliver suggested, or if he's just having as much trouble dealing with the sound as you are, but Oliver leans over and whispers to you, "Hey, you want to trade off taking notes?"
"What do you mean?" You ask.
"One of us focuses on the video while the other writes down what they got from the part they were focusing on, then we swap back and forth doing this until we're done. After class is over, we copy each other's work." He drifts off for a moment before adding, "It's supposed to be a good way to compensate for…" He cringes as another pop goes off and the audio levels out to something more reasonable, but also starts to speed up to the point it overtakes and desyncs with the video. "That."
You don't even hesitate before nodding. You'll probably only have a vague understanding of what you're writing down, but you should at least be able to have more notes, some of which will presumably be good. At least you hope so, you'll feel bad about mooching off of Oliver's work if they aren't.
This winds up being the state of the next three hours and, if nothing else, you do think you get at least a general grasp of what the video lecture is actually about, if only in bits and pieces. You miss large stretches of the story while you're focusing on getting your own notes down, as well as the brief occasions where the audio cuts out all together and you're left trying to decipher the blurry visuals displayed on the board, but you at least manage to gather that the Shanghai enclave, which was apparently lost, was somehow brought back, and the lecture was basically dedicated to how all of the established enclaves reacted to that.
There's a bunch of unfamiliar terminology thrown around, like "mawmouth" and "enclave war;" which you gather is somehow different from a regular war. Whether that's just cultural chauvinism leading wizards to treat everything they do as special and different, or if there's actually some sort of tangible difference is not made clear to you. But still, even if you don't quite understand half of what you wrote down, you at least feel confident that your notes are, at the very least, serviceable, which is more than you can confidently say you would have accomplished if you were doing this on your own.
The video finally, mercifully, comes to an end with a shrill burst of static that sees nearly everyone in the classroom cry out in pain. It's loud enough that you almost miss the equally loud and obnoxious bell signaling the end of class.
On the whole, you would say this was still better than your previous history class. You at least managed to absorb some of the material, and your life was never in danger at any point over the course of the lesson. Still, this may have been the most unpleasant class that you've had so far. You find yourself hoping that the issues with the equipment are going to turn out to be a one-time thing, rather than something you'll have to deal with for three hours every week for the entire semester. Oliver did say that this class was worse than usual, so you can at least hope that History of the Scholomance will be better when you're actually able to sit through an entire class.
Oliver gets up from his seat with a sour look on his face. He seems hesitant to say anything, but he eventually manages to get out, "Do you want to swap notes at lunch?" He seems to regret his words the second they're out of his mouth, though you can't really see any reason why.
He has a faint look of panic in his eyes as he hastily adds, "If you don't already have plans that is. We can do it later if you want! Or I can drop my notes off at your room if meeting up is too inconvenient." He bites his lip nervously as he waits for an answer.
You blink a few times before saying, "Of course. Best to get our notes squared away now, while it's still fresh in our memory, right?"
"Yes, of course," Oliver continues, seeming nervous and not entirely happy that you've agreed. He hesitates for a moment before adding, "Um, sorry if my notes aren't great. You know how the equipment was and everything."
You give a pained smile and reply, "Yes, I certainly do." And if he decides to press you on why your notes aren't great, that's the answer you'll give him.
"Ah, good. That's good," Oliver finishes with a nervous laugh.
You have no idea what's gotten into him. He might have seemed a bit anxious at the start of class, but he definitely wasn't anything like this. Now he seems like he's on the verge of panicking and making a run for it at the first opportunity.
You briefly consider the idea that he might be planning something against you and is worried that he'll get caught. However, you discard that idea almost immediately. Even if you hadn't just made a commitment earlier that morning to not assume the worst of people without reason… Well, it sounds mean to think it, but Oliver just doesn't seem like he'd be competent enough to pull off some kind of nefarious plot against you, between his passivity in Italian and his air of having given up at excelling in his classes, certainly not one he would have had to come up with in the time between you sitting down next to him and the end of the lecture.
So, you decide to disregard his strange nervousness, give him a smile, and say, "Well then, let's get going, don't want to miss out on any of the good seats, right?"
"Yeah, right," Oliver says, managing to force a weak smile onto his face.
The two of you leave the classroom, each nursing your own headaches from dealing with the absolutely nightmarish sensory experience you've just gone through. As you do, you try to work out a functional plan for what you're doing after lunch. Your schoolwork and studies are starting to pile up and you realize that there's only so much you can do to keep up with it, especially with chores starting up next week. You're not certain how much of a time crunch you're going to be under, but you're certain that you're going to have to start budgeting your time carefully, starting soon.
You have gained the trait: No Context. As you've come to realize during your first full history class, there are certain baseline assumptions about what a student is going to know before taking even a basic course. You do not have this knowledge and that will stymie your ability to comprehend the material going forward. You get -10 to rolls dedicated to advancing your progress in history classes.
What will you do with your free period after lunch?:
[] Work on a Shop Project
-[] Artifice Project: Power Sink (92/320)
[] Work on a Lab Project
-[] Alchemy Project: Food Poisoning Cure (21/50 x 6)
[] Study for a Class
-[] Italian (133/400)
-[] Algebra (99/200)
[] Request a new spell
-[] Write-In Request
[] Try to find somebody to talk to:
-[] Leah
-[] Carmen
-[] Jingfei
-[] Sofia
-[] Kamalu
-[] Oliver
-[] Liam
-[] Cynthia
[] Build Mana
-[] Exercising
-[] Climbing Stairs Alone
[] Visit the Library
-[] Ask [WRITE IN] to accompany you
[] Visit the Stockroom
-[] Ask [WRITE IN] to accompany you
Social: Oliver:
DC: 60/80/100
Bonuses: +10 (Child Star) +10 (Pretty) +5 (Well-Mannered) + 10 (Good First Impression)
Roll: 1d100(94) + 25 = 119!Full Success!
Focus on Class:
DC: 40/60/80
Bonuses: +10 (Study Partners) -10 (Standard Scholomance Projector) = 0
Roll(54) = 54!Minor Success!
Study: Modern History
Progress: 0/400
Bonuses: -10 (Faulty Equipment) -10 (Child Star) +10 (Study Partner)
Roll(4) -10 = 0/200
Study: Modern History
Progress: 0/400
Bonuses: -10 (Faulty Equipment) -10 (No Context) -10 (Child Star) +10 (Study Partner)
Roll(95) -20 = 75/200
Emotional Read: Oliver:
DC: 40/60/80
Bonuses: +10 (Child Star) +10 (Empathetic)
Roll(34) +20 = 55!Minor Success!
DC: 60/80/100
Bonuses: +10 (Child Star) +10 (Pretty) +5 (Well-Mannered) + 10 (Good First Impression)
Roll: 1d100(94) + 25 = 119!Full Success!
Focus on Class:
DC: 40/60/80
Bonuses: +10 (Study Partners) -10 (Standard Scholomance Projector) = 0
Roll(54) = 54!Minor Success!
Study: Modern History
Progress: 0/400
Bonuses: -10 (Faulty Equipment) -10 (Child Star) +10 (Study Partner)
Roll(4) -10 = 0/200
Study: Modern History
Progress: 0/400
Bonuses: -10 (Faulty Equipment) -10 (No Context) -10 (Child Star) +10 (Study Partner)
Roll(95) -20 = 75/200
Emotional Read: Oliver:
DC: 40/60/80
Bonuses: +10 (Child Star) +10 (Empathetic)
Roll(34) +20 = 55!Minor Success!
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[] Work on a Shop Project
-[] Artifice Project: Power Sink (92/320)
[] Work on a Lab Project
-[] Alchemy Project: Food Poisoning Cure (21/50 x 6)
One of these, whichever one is safer.
-[] Artifice Project: Power Sink (92/320)
[] Work on a Lab Project
-[] Alchemy Project: Food Poisoning Cure (21/50 x 6)
One of these, whichever one is safer.
Yikes.
Yeah, that explains it.
@Alchemist767676
Will this be cured by reaching 400/400 Modern History?
- Pronouns
- Reader
I think Lab. Our remaining 6 classes in shop before we get our 2nd assignment should cover the remaining progress, but 3 classes in Lab is definitely not enough to complete
the 279 progress we need to complete 6 vials of anti food poison.
[X] Work on a Lab Project
-[X] Alchemy Project: Food Poisoning Cure (21/50 x 6)
- Location
- Canada
[X] Work on a Lab Project
-[X] Alchemy Project: Food Poisoning Cure (21/50 x 6)
Yeah, this one seems like the trickier project... unless we pick up a relevant bonus after finishing the first of the six. Even so, free time in Lab sounds useful enough, and we could stand to have more of these.
-[X] Alchemy Project: Food Poisoning Cure (21/50 x 6)
Yeah, this one seems like the trickier project... unless we pick up a relevant bonus after finishing the first of the six. Even so, free time in Lab sounds useful enough, and we could stand to have more of these.
[X] Work on a Lab Project
-[X] Alchemy Project: Food Poisoning Cure (21/50 x 6)
-[X] Alchemy Project: Food Poisoning Cure (21/50 x 6)
ClawClawBite
Mad Engineering!
- Location
- Seattle, WA
[X] Request a new spell
-[x] Something that will protect or repair our violin so we can use it in dangerous places.
Our one special skill is our music, and the sooner we can leverage that, the better. Step one of that is being able to use it without risk of permanent loss.
-[x] Something that will protect or repair our violin so we can use it in dangerous places.
Our one special skill is our music, and the sooner we can leverage that, the better. Step one of that is being able to use it without risk of permanent loss.