A few in game questions

[Schwarzbart]

Are there any well known clockwork that present a dance or theatre show?

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

From the Team:

"One of the more famous is built into a pavilion at the town hall of Höchstädt-on-the-Buranau in Zoedorf, and it's called "the Dance of the Silver Princes" after a local romantic saga.  It has 144 automated dancers (though the majority just bob up and down; only 48 have more complicated patterns), and it runs continuously for just under a month in any given year - from the night of the Festival of Lanterns to Juvenalia.  It's about sixty-five years old.

If you know the story, you can make out details - the burgomeister being hauled away after failing to poison the youngest prince (who's dancing with his fiancee, freshly restored from her time as a white deer), the party of traveling scholars from the Academy stealing food from the grand feasting table, and the two hunters who had thought they were long-lost siblings discovering that it was actually safe to marry."

[Schwarzbart]

Is geography a planed class in a later year of Academagia? If so for what year is it planed?

[Legate of Mineta]

Yep, but not in Y2.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Have any Gates or Mastery Mages framed innocent people as Gates or Mastery mages in order to have them killed?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

If they have, it would certainly be [Redacted]. But fuel for nightmares, of course.

[Schwarzbart]

Given that the player is already framed in year 1 by other students that (s)he using forbidden magic, I'm sure there gate and master mages that learned how to shift the blame for their magic to innocent humans.

[Rhialto]

1 hour ago, Schwarzbart said:

Given that the player is already framed in year 1 by other students that (s)he using forbidden magic

Is this an adventure, or just a random event?

[Schwarzbart]

Think it is in a random event but it is to long ago that I had it so don't pin me on it.

[Metis]

I know the RE you're referring to, though I'm not able to find it. I was able to find Random Event Rumor 17, which has the PC accused of learning a "secret—and illegal for our age—levitation spell", so that's kinda close, I guess?

[Schwarzbart]

It is Random Event Student - Grainne

[Metis]

That's the one. It even includes a bit of Gates-assisted framing, for what it's worth .

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Do any teachers or other staff ever consult with the quiet girl about students whom they want to know about?

[Legate of Mineta]

No...not in Y1 at any rate.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: If a student at the Academagia were to be known to have written a work whose tragic twist would be that a sympathetic and otherwise virtuous character, in order to avert friends' deaths, had engaged in Gates Magic in a successful effort to save friends, would such a student get in trouble?

[Legate of Mineta]

Generally, yes, they would be in trouble.

"If Honors wrote a story like that, passed it around the Durand dorm, and didn't dwell in great depth on actual Gates practice...

"Oh, Reynaldo!  I shall summon a spirit to see thee safe, though it be my end!"

... it would be pretty much fine.  Briardi might feel obligated to confiscate it, but Honors wouldn't be in trouble and Briardi might even share it with Sido and Orso when nobody was looking.

If Girars (as an example of a kid with a more fractious relationship with authority figures) wrote the same story and Professor Storey got a hold of it, Girars might be stuck "volunteering" to clean a local temple for a few weeks.  Not so much because he was seen as a threat as because Storey would fear that if he did something like that in the outside world, he could end up in real trouble.

Which brings us to worse-case scenarios: if an Academy student tried to sell a story outside the school that seemed to be justifying Gates use, the Guard might well be called in.

And if a student tried to sell a story outside the school that not only seemed to be justifying Gates use but which also seemed to demonstrate real knowledge of Gates practices and phemes (even if it was just convincingly invented from scratch), the Guards, at the very least, would be involved- and probably more than that.

It would certainly raise questions about how a Student might have learned such things..."

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Would students at the Academagia get in trouble if, in efforts to locate secret practitioners of gates magic for exposure, they were to pretend to be interested in gates magic in an effort to lure suspected aspiring gates mages into the open?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

Yep.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Are pangolins known about within the Empire of Man?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

"Effectively not. They have been encountered before (in fact, about a century ago, an Academy student named Wulfreda Templesmith had one as a familiar), but it's entirely possible that no one in Mineta has ever seen a living one.

Professor Pachait once came across as stuffed one that was on display with a traveling carnival, but since they refused to sell it to him and he couldn't successfully steal it it's not available for student reference."

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Are there any documents that are like the real "Voynich Manuscript" - seeming to be written in a real language but unable to be understood by expert examiners? If so, do mages ascribe such texts with certain properties (or think that they are associated with illegal magic)?

[Legate of Mineta]

"Part of the Venalicium's restricted collection is an object called the Albanetti Stone.  It was discovered about a hundred fifty years ago, as an ancient (and strange) vinyard in Porziana was plowed over to prepare for a new canal; astrologers think it was buried seven or eight hundred years before that.

It's sandstone, about sixteen feet (with a Minetan foot equal to about 30 cm) long, five feet wide, and three feet deep.  Both the "top" and "bottom" sides are covered in engraved script - one side using familiar Renaglian letters, the other using something else entirely.  Neither side has been deciphered, even with astrological help.

The vinyard in question was a site of documented Gates activity about 600 years ago - well after the point at which the stone was buried, but still conspicuously close enough to make people worry.  Granted, most scholars believe it was an elaborate hoax, but there's a vocal minority that claims it's some kind of study of a Draconic language, or something from another kind of existence altogether."

[Schwarzbart]

At what year are we allowed to study this Albanetti Stone?

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

"In theory, you could do it in second year, but you'd need explicit written permission from Professor Briardi or Orso.  Getting that permission probably wouldn't entail an easy skill check - Briardi is very cautious and Orso hates writing anything explicitly."

[Schwarzbart]

"you'd need a explicit written permission from Professor Briardi or Orso" that sound like an interesting new concept for Y2

Is this related to the changes of the Favor system?