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A few in game questions


Adrian
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Schwarzbart;

1) I believe it was, yes.

2) The Colleges all do have libraries, but I'll have to refer to the Team for any public details. :)

Free;

1. Polisena Briardi has her NO! face on. The Minetan Guard won't drag you away if you're wearing fey-touched jewelry, or tossing exotic glamours around.  But fey magic tends to attract the attention of the Courts, and everyone understands that that often doesn't end well.
 
Which, again, brings us back to Professor Briardi being terribly concerned.
 
2.  It has happened, and by tradition the student so honored is supposed to run to the Regent of College Hedi to arrange an escort - Glamours and diplomacy are kind of Hedi's thing, obviously, and rumors about the College's ties to one or both of the Courts go back hundreds of years.  These days, Piaxenza himself would probably then bring in Orso and Briardi, but he's still supposed to be the point of contact.
 
3.  Hello and welcome to a very old debate.  The answer that magical philosophers settled on is that apocalyptically powerful Glamours could create a completely convincing semblance of someone who had died, capable of fooling every single sense and every means of non-magical study available to man.  And that would be legal, if odd!  If, however, the entity was magically proven to have the soul of the deceased - or even a meaningful fraction of the soul, depending on which Saint's Path you follow - then the magic crossed the line into Gates, and is extremely dangerous.
 
It may seem like splitting hairs, but the thing about Gates magic (or what gets called Gates magic) is that the effects don't tend to be stable and they often spread in unexpected ways.  Glamours just break down.
 
4.  Astrological resonance tests.  They're not definitive, usually, but you can get evidence that the stars and the Gods are looking in the same directions one's dreams are.
 
5.  If spellcasting is involved, and if there's a pattern of behavior, astrologers are usually brought in - either from Avila or outside.  The fear is that there's Mastery at work; the hope is that Gods or Saints are.  Sometimes, mind you, it seems like the spells themselves just influence the mage; affinities for certain Pillars or magical aspects have a way of shaping the people who have them.
 
6.  In the Banned section of the Venalicium there are a few hints...
 
7.  Very common in aristocratic courts and extremely expensive taverns and salons, but most commoners will never taste enriched foods (unless the Minetan Guard is offering emergency supplies to stave off famine).
 
8.  Smoking isn't unheard of, obviously, but it's generally seen as a Saisyne habit, and therefore in very poor taste.  "Dragonroot," as a name, is meant to imply corruption, after all.
 
9.  Any Regent can challenge grants of Merit, and in cases where there are clear abuses Merit penalties are imposed by the Legate himself.  There have been years when relationships between the Legate and one or more Colleges allowed for real corruption within the system.
 
10.  Year one?  He'd probably send you to the library to try to find out for yourself while he skipped off to a tavern, frankly.  ;)
 
11.  Briardi does indeed have a reputation for not getting out much - and she probably told Sido (who told others) that she had absolutely no interest in romance when he first swept into the school.
 
Also worth noting in the case of the Duke of Broken Pines... well, he's a duke, and she presumably came from a merchant family.  Those sorts of relationships... well, they're not usually public, and they don't usually look a whole lot like dating.
 
12.  Really depends on the materials used and the circumstances of the enchantment.  If you're working with aurichalcum in a temple on a major ley line, you could conceivably work something that could last for centuries... if not necessarily in the ways you'd expect.
 
13.  The answer's almost certainly Hector.  Unless certain Familiars are too smart to call attention to themselves...
 
14.  Enspell could almost be taught alongside Orthography; it's very much about pure magical technique.  The general position of the Academy is that students are better off learning the basics of spellcasting first, and then learning shortcuts to drawing phemes and tonal variations to spoken components after the basics are pinned down - but an educator could certainly argue that a student who knows how to work efficiently from year one will have advantages in speed of mastery (not with a capital M) in the years to come.  Certainly, Concentration tricks can be handy all along...
 
15.  Oh, sure.  It wasn't at all uncommon in the early days.
 
It made some of the scrolls mad.
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Hmm. Thanks to the Team. :) And thanks to our Legate for asking. Can you ask them this follow up question/paragraph, pretty please? I don't think that they fully understood the question regarding the context because they don't hang out here. ;)

"Regarding my question about Orso, I was referring to my omni-disciplinarian desire to blend magic from all the pillars. Learning Spells like "Corner Sight" for example, which are fairly rare and I doubt many books in the library would have. Our Legate on the forums has told us that there is still a lot to be discovered regarding cross-pillar magic. My character has more or less mastered all the Y1 knowledge. I suppose that in itself isn't very impressive to Orso, but given that I'm talking about an unusual magical application, in a school where people usually specialize in a single Pillar,  and about which I have been told that Professor Briardi would actively seek to thwart me on, I would have thought that he might have taken at least a passing interest to point me to the correct library, and not the school's which is closed for students during the summer, right? :)

 

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Can you tell us:

1. If the Class list for Y2 is finalized yet? It would be an amazing Christmas gift... *hint* *hint*

2. How many tracks are in Y2's soundtrack, and how many of those are returning from Y1? (You don't have to say which, just how many)

3. With the ability to change College, does this mean that there are 7 permutations of each player character portrait to account for different uniforms? 2 male and 2 female per college means  means 4 x7= 28 photos in Y1, which means a fairly alarming 196 different portraits in y2, not including any for new transfer player characters?

4. For those who want to start a new game in Y2 without loading a save, how many premade characters are the Team planning on creating?

 

And a bonus question

5. Has a student ever Pretended to be a professor and successfully taught a class full of underclassmen for some time? If so, what is the longest that they ever got away with it? And what happened afterward? ;)

Edit

PS, I just Found this piece and it just screamed "Academagia" to me. If the Y2 list is already final this one should definitely find it's way into Y3!

 

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Free;

1. If the Class list for Y2 is finalized yet? It would be an amazing Christmas gift... *hint* *hint*

MMMMM-HMMMM! Well, I'll ask, but...;)

2. How many tracks are in Y2's soundtrack, and how many of those are returning from Y1? (You don't have to say which, just how many)

That's a good question. I don't think it's final yet.

3. With the ability to change College, does this mean that there are 7 permutations of each player character portrait to account for different uniforms? 2 male and 2 female per college means  means 4 x7= 28 photos in Y1, which means a fairly alarming 196 different portraits in y2, not including any for new transfer player characters?

What isadorbg wrote. :)

4. For those who want to start a new game in Y2 without loading a save, how many premade characters are the Team planning on creating?

7 + [Redacted]

5. Has a student ever Pretended to be a professor and successfully taught a class full of underclassmen for some time? If so, what is the longest that they ever got away with it? And what happened afterward? ;)

Hahaha! I will ask.

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Free;

1) "Regarding my question about Orso, I was referring to my omni-disciplinarian desire to blend magic from all the pillars. Learning Spells like "Corner Sight" for example, which are fairly rare and I doubt many books in the library would have. Our Legate on the forums has told us that there is still a lot to be discovered regarding cross-pillar magic. My character has more or less mastered all the Y1 knowledge. I suppose that in itself isn't very impressive to Orso, but given that I'm talking about an unusual magical application, in a school where people usually specialize in a single Pillar,  and about which I have been told that Professor Briardi would actively seek to thwart me on, I would have thought that he might have taken at least a passing interest to point me to the correct library, and not the school's which is closed for students during the summer, right? :)"

Orso has fond memories of a place called The Jackdaw's Landing in the Wortham Fens. Used to be a family manor, then it was deserted, then it collapsed, then a completely out-of-hand wizards' duel flooded the entire surrounding area while leaving the ruins protected by a massive bubble, then it was converted into a tavern. The old manor library remains fairly well preserved - and very handy for non-traditional magical studies - but it's also hidden, and Orso's sworn not to give away any secrets beyond the fact of its existence.

Or else he's just forgotten the trick and is covering it up.

Anyway, it's probably the first place he'd mention if pressed; first year students are reasonably unlikely to get murdered there.

2) "Has a student ever Pretended to be a professor and successfully taught a class full of underclassmen for some time? If so, what is the longest that they ever got away with it? And what happened afterward? ;)"

Sometime early in the 1619-1620 academic year, a Geometry teacher named Amelie Rugel went mad. The causes were definitely magical - though whether it was down to school politics (this was very much in the era of the Randsom-Ghiberti feud) or fey influence has never been authoritatively determined - and by all rights she should have been removed from her post. The girls of Avila, though, absolutely adored her, and decided that they would hide her condition from the Legate and the Praetexta Court and ensure that all her classes went without a hitch.

The key player in the conspiracy was a timid student named Megsin Ashwood. She hardly even spoke when wearing her own face, but she knew Geometry and could fake her teacher's exuberance and charm when Glamoured up to look like the older woman. She apparently threw up in terror before every single Geometry class, and spent half the year in the infirmary thanks to stress and eating disorders, but students who didn't know who she really was voted her teacher of the year - and when Miss Rugel returned to her senses her position was completely secure, and for the rest of her life she was allowed to believe that she did her duty to the school even when she was out of her mind.

Megsin's something of a hermit now, but Professor Badcrumble and the Avila alumnae make sure she's taken care of.

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1. Did Megsin Ashwood face legal punishment? could she have?

2. Why is there a strong association between mastery magic and sleep-walking while using magic? Was that a prank that Kazus students were known to do?

3. Speaking of pranks, have records of gates/mastery related pranks at Academagia been censored?

4. Are there any theoreticians of magic who speculate about how the pillars of magic are fundamentally artificial constructs by mages, with all or most pillars being linked to others and derived from the same Magical Source? If so, are such speculations ever used to argue for or against expanding the ban on gates/mastery?

5. Were there any mastery mages who used their skill with that pillar to rapidly and easily gain knowledge in other pillars of magic?

6. What are the policies or reactions within Academagia towards non-fey who want to study fey magic?

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For 6 it was pretty much just asked a few pages ago.

Polisena Briardi has her NO! face on. The Minetan Guard won't drag you away if you're wearing fey-touched jewelry, or tossing exotic glamours around.  But fey magic tends to attract the attention of the Courts, and everyone understands that that often doesn't end well.
 
Which, again, brings us back to Professor Briardi being terribly concerned.
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1. Is it still planed that the import tool of Y2 add the ability, lore etc. to skills that go past 11 in year 1 already? (i.e. I unlocked Glamour Methods maximum to 13 in my current game)

2. Is it still planed that the import tool of Y2 allow us to remove low level of Gate and Mastery skills from our char?

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I recall it being said that there are no "holes" in the Y1 material for either Mastery or Gates. Is this because this level of magic is considered to be fairly self intuitive?  I know you don't want to spoil on this sort of thing, but would the existence of holes in the material imply that it is impossible to learn the material by self study and intuition? Can you tell us if there are any such holes in the material of other advanced magic, as it is understood presently in setting?

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Mmh... I've seen that before. Oh wait !

 

On 18/08/2014 at 5:57 PM, freespace2dotcom said:

Legate, are there any holes in knowledge regarding any of the legal pillars, as taught by the academy? Just curious..

:D:D:P 

Btw the answer is yes kinda.

As for the reason why there is no holes in year 1 Mastery and Gates that's probably because year 1 engines was not designed to represent such things. ;) 

Oh wait you want the lore excu... hmm I mean explanation. Well it's probably has to do with with the fact that year 1 stuff is kind of basic and that documented knowledge even of the fobbiden ones (forbidden section *cough*) covers what a skill level of 10/11 entails.

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1) Will year 2 manage to display the number steps needed to improve a familiar skill?

2) Will a family happy enough if the familiar is trained in the skills they want to see in the char or will only the player skill help with that? I.e. for Family: Sports if the familiar is at level 6+ in Athletics.

3) Will Sub Skills already assigned to more the 1 skill in year 2?

4) Will items like Glamour Chain be able to placed in different item slots in year 2? (The description of this item say so but year 1 not support it). 

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