Myrtrice eyebrows raise, "Laugh at you? You're not nearly interesting enough to laugh at.
She greets the professor without a smile, "I need to make a center of mass measurement on a large block, I was hoping there was balancing equipment, perhaps I'll have to rig something up.
I also need the densities of the marb-stone and the crystal. Do you have a look up table somewhere?
I'm also going to need to build a body capable of carrying around 1/4 the weight of the stone block."
"Of course, you can find all the properties in this encyclopedia. Mars!"
A swarm of papers floats in from a door just around the corner, presumably an office. The encyclopedia stacks itself together, and a snake-line needle with a string attached floats through the air, stitching the book into one whole.
Its pages are blank. But as you turn them the words scroll across the page. The ink seeps out from between the pages to transport itself onto the page you currently brows.
"Mars will help you find the page you are looking for." You sense a spirit. And... desperation.
"What's that?" He asks, presumably the spirit. "Er... white, not pink. I think."
The densities flow forth across the page.
"You need a balance too? Go pick one up from the back storage room."
He tosses you a smiling pair of keys. "It's by the stairs."
He turns to the students. "Now my resident biomancers... the old spirit of the tree tends to be fairly strict with his warnings. I don't know how to handle curses like these. But maybe if you apologize to the spirit, he'll give you back your normal appearance," he starts heading back toward his office.
"Especially you," he says to a girl with sprouts for hands.
The balances and so on are where he stated, although you notice that the stairs have a door at the bottom with a smiling lock. Judging by the way he dodged your last question, it seems he can't be bothered to offer you that kind of help. Press the issue?
I clip the branch, then head over to the lab to check if the marble can be used as an engram crystal
You bring up the shears to clip the branch, but you find that your fingers won't move. Odd? Some sort of spell effect?
Lowering the shears, you find them dropping out of your hand suddenly. Taking off your gloves, you find that all five of your fingers have been transmuted into white spotted mushrooms.
"It would be for constructing an articulated joint setup to be used as an auxillary engine for the entrance exam." said Octavia, looking down to the birds. "I guess I could give it back to the birds when I am done with it..."
She would pay attention to the birds as she said this. If she didn't know any better she would think that the birds could understand human speech.
"Ah... I take it you're a mechanist then? Listen, spirits are a fickle bunch. Their lives are short, and lack purpose once their primary cause has been fulfilled. If a spirit confronts you, and asks you to build a body, I advise you not to build one, because there is no telling what a spirit plans. They have nothing to lose."
The birds chirp enthusiastically.
You head over to the scrap pile, outsite the offices and a fair walk away, deep inside the surrounding gardens. Flying there saves time, till you approach the scrap pile.
Walking up to it, you trip over something. Your feet? You don't see anything.
...You wonder if it's that spirit from before. You can't sense it at all, but
something caused you to trip.
So the objects eventually do sink. I wonder if the field fills in any holes it makes quickly?
Create a hollow wooden pipe out of vine, the a wooden ball that could fit in the pipe. Circle the front in sharp tile wide enough to allow the ball to go through, then jam the pipe through the field and drop the ball into the pipe.
[d12: 11] A hollow tube weaves itself in front of you, growing up out of the ground, woven so tightly that it may as well be rigid.
You take the slingshot ball and place it through the tube after jamming it into the force field. It takes some force to jam the much wider tube into the field.
The ball inside rolls all the way through and falls out.
Let's ask the Proctor.
"If I wanted to make a rope as long as this course, plus a bit, from these very convenient vines, would that cause an issue?"
So my tentative plan is to create a wheeled vehicle, some guiding structure, and a whole heckton of rope, and literally just pull the crystal through the course. Unless I happen to find parts in the workshop! Seriously I do want to ask after parts for plan A.
The Proctor motions over to the man building tubes and slingshots.
"We're not quite short on materials. Do as you wish."
The rope will be simple to start working with so long as you don't screw up and pull the wall down with you. But it will take some time to make a very long rope and if you mess up you may have to tie it together with knots. Oh well. [You have to pass 4 rolls with your d12 and not get a 1 or 2]
[d12: 8] The first section of rope is complete, and wrapped around your arm. It trails off into a multitude of fibers, which then trail off into rough clusters of vines being pulled from the wall by invisible forces.
"Hmm. May need to add plenty of speed to it to keep it from crashing then."
Finish flying to the finish line, cross it, and head back to start along the same path. This info is good to know, since it means anything that floats will have trouble here. Keep a feeling for the course, spirits.
The most sluggish part is the finish line itself. You feel a resistance as you float past--and promptly faceplant into a force field just before the finish line. It bounces you back like a trampoline.
...So this is a closed tube. The finish line itself is blocked off by the force field. What a dirty trick! You look closer and see crackling patterns emanating from the finish line itself, whose checkered pattern glows warmly. It dims in intensity as it shoulders your gaze.
"Marcus Celer. I think I do. But it doesn't have to be that way. Why mourn death when you can celebrate life? You must have countless joyous stories to share and put in words or tones, countless memories of what has already passed to history, countless lessons to pass on to future generations! Some say life is just pointless screaming into a void, but I say it's not a void for as long as one heart keeps filling it with the sound of a heart beating to the rhythm of hope. I guess what I'm trying to say is, life goes on, and it's our job to keep it going on."
((The goal here would be to convince him to let me borrow the accordion.))
He sets the accordion down on the bench, and sighs.
"I can't argue with that. No use sticking with the past. But these emotions, those given to us by our parents, they've got o serve a purpose right? If my emotions tell me to mourn, I say mourning happens with good reason. No use in keeping that through dozens of generations otherwise."
He leans back on the bench, scratching his beard.
"My wife played this accordion. She kept the spirit that she was born from locked in a pendant. The soldiers recovered the pendant, and that spirit taught me how to play this. But it isn't working the way I thought it would," he explains, sighing at the end.
"Perhaps I ought to lay this to rest. Every note just hurts."
Author
Topic: Antinomy of the Five Spectra (IC) -- The Academy Exam (Read 17788 times)