At the Lodge..."That's...Not good.
I have no idea what any of that technical stuff means. I'm new here."
"Ah, but you had the air of confidence about you. Not anymore, it seems.
Perhaps you'd like a rudimentary explanation of magic? Just the basics?" His red eyes stare into yours, making them seem all the more bright.
"I have time in the evening, perhaps if you have time..."It appears his room is a few doors over to the left of this one. The three orcs are silent.
At the Forest...Go into the chapel.
You part the gates and are flanked by beds of white orchids on either side. You hear choir singing, although nothing too professional or loud. It sounds like 20-30 people at most.
There's nobody standing guard. A sign tells you to leave your shoes at the door before coming in, and there are lots of shoes set near the flower-beds, both modest ones like those on a uniform and exotic ones made of silk and other materials. You spot a pair of shoes that are bright purple.
On the walls, lined up with the flower beds, are stained-glass murals depicting astronomical bodies: The Younger Sun with its ring, the Elder Sun with its firey halo, the Tigereye which hangs just over the horizon, blazing red at night, the Wandering Moon which shines every fortnight, and the stars themselves, innumerable as they are, represented by speckled sand embedded in the glass.
At the Department of Fire...Christine nods. "I see. Well, thanks for the directions." She then heads out to the Fire building.
Go looking for the Fire building and/or the ruins of the Wind Building.
You follow the sign to the School of the Energetic Elements and locate the ruins of the old Wind building: looking almost like the carcass of a great whale, with steel ribs poking out in every direction, twisted and contorted beyond belief. The foundation has been uplifted in some areas, leaving craters large enough to swallow caravans, several meters deep.
What happened here?On the other side is the Department of Fire.
Department of Fire
The Department of Fire is a horseshoe-shaped building with a large pyramidal pyre in the center. Heatwaves rise up out of the smoldering coals, and a pleasant aroma fills the air. Surrounding the pyres are twelve obelisks capped with crystal orbs, and scorch-marks cover the circular marble stylobate around the pyre. The building itself is made of different types of rocks, some gray, others spotted with crystals brought out by the polishing of the stone. Grand pillars hold up a triangular roof, and the building itself is made of single blocks with holes cut out for circular glass windows an armspan wide and reinforced with a cross-shaped iron mesh.
Potted plants fill the space between the pillars and masonry. There are blood-red spires coverned in needles, pitch-black bushes with leaves like needles, and transparent plants made of a translucent material, soft and malleable in the wind.
A shrine to the Sky God is clearly visible on a hill to the north. You see the winged figure, his twin eagle wings on the right shoulder, and twin bat wings on the left.
At the Department of Life...Murbles gives a slightly raised eyeridge at Raioyris, but returns his wave.
Then it's towards... well, 'Academics and Instruction' sounds like exactly what she's looking for.
Head down the Academics and Instruction hall.
As soon as you pass a door, a professor comes out of the office behind you. She wears a purple robe, as seems common around professors here, emblazoned with the Folstag arms along the back in gold (a crow with a thunderbolt in one claw and an arrow in the other).
She turns around after catching you in the corner of her vision, and then steps back for a bit looking surprised. At first glance, it looks like she had been frightened, but she then greets you with a warm smile.
"Murble, is that you?"
Lift the cat on my shoulders. Can't ignore such a pretty tiny killing machine.
"You are not a bat." Dan says to the man sleeping in unusual posture, very well knowing his voice won't be heard.
Nothing useful here then, move down layer by layer, opening every door hoping to find someone teacher like who's not terribly busy.
You turn around to descend the stairs... when a low voice speaks to you from above.
"Nabul," it mutters. "My name is Dr. Nabul. Not Notabat. What are you looking for?"
Acquired cat
Inside the Natural Library...Staffs? I would rather magic be a feature of my spirit. Raioyris stands up. For now the flesh of a tree will have to suffice.
Raioyris shouts "Sha!" with apparent fury. He wills his Sha kahigan to smash down on his previous seat with clamouring force!
He then gathers the chairs legs and leaves the library. These will do.
[-][/abbrt] You muster up a force inside of you and manifest your Sha as a single fiery wing, blazing with wrath, and prepare to utterly destroy the seat next to you--
"No magic allowed in the library!" shouts a meek old man from behind a stack of books. He breaks your concentration, and the wing fades to ash.
At the Earth Department...Continue up to the second floor.
((I'll just get some perfectly safe lore while others are getting themselves half-killed reaching an improved state of magic. Yay!))
The second floor is dedicated to R.E. Sun Winthrop, a mountaineer known for his extreme antics and travels. Hailing from Jaggedsclimbe, born in 231, he crossed the Winthrop mountains (named for him posthumously) into the kingdom of the Lamarosi, a race of violent bear-man hybrids known to place impaled human heads on stakes just over the mountainpeaks. He crossed back over to Jaggedsclimbe bringing back the head of a Lamarosine (a marble statue of a bear face is marked as a replica), a journal detailing his travels, and the only Gunstone known to exist by humans. At the end of his journey, he managed to use the Gunstone to produce a thousand kilos of gunpowder in one night. Unfortunately, this had a taxing effect on his soul, and he was unable to bear the consequences. R.E. Sun Winthrop died in the morning.
The Gunstone is a magical (...presumably) artifact which has the power to produce gunpowder from nothing. It is actually housed here at the University, in a vault at the bottom of the Earth department, where trusted alchemists have been performing (fruitless) experiments on it to replicate its properties. Gunpowder was formerly a rare and treasured resource, but thanks to Winthrop's efforts, humans have been able to produce a stockpile for the ages to come. Use of the Gunstone is limited to trusted archmages, and the vault turns out about fifty kilograms of gunpowder each day.
At the Department of Time and Shadow...Find another book with explanations about the terms of magic.
You dig up a simple guide on magic and take a look at once of the diagrams in the book. It depicts a human's back from the waist up, with three invisible limbs emanating from the region of the heart, which is offset slightly to the left. These are known as
Kahigan, the word itself being a combination of the prefix Ka- and the word Higan. The alphabet used by most human nations is also called Higan, hence the letter-like appearance of the Kahigan, but the word itself literally means
soul. Ka- beans
black, so Kahigan literally means black soul, but in practice it refers to the
shadow of the soul. The Kahigan is the projection of the soul into the world, much like a shadow is a projection of a three-dimensional object onto the ground.
The first Kahigan, the leftmost one, is the
Sha Kahigan. It looks like a wing with three claws, and is able to act as a conduit for soul energy.
The second Kahigan, rising up over the head in the pose shown in the book, is the
Go Kahigan. It looks like a long tendril with two smaller projections on either side, and is used to exert force.
The third Kahigan, the rightmost, is the
Me Kahigan. It can be used to form a bridge between minds, but also plays a role in perception.
Author
Topic: Folstag University of Magic (Between Light and Shadow) (Read 54908 times)