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A few in game questions


Adrian
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@Legate of Mineta: 1. Would it be legal in the Empire of Man for people to collaborate with people from outside the Empire of Man in suppressing Gates magic inside and outside the Empire of Man if said people from outside the Empire of Man were to make it clear that they are devout followers of a religion not the new religion?

2. Would it be legal in the Empire of Man for people to collaborate with people from outside the Empire of Man in suppressing Gates magic inside and outside the Empire of Man if said people from outside the Empire of Man were to make it clear that they are devout followers of a religion not the new religion who oppose sporadic efforts by their religion's clergy to venerate dragons?

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Rhi;

"In the case of 1, if the foreign religion wasn't deemed subversive (i.e., inherently hostile to the idea of Temple authority - and refusing to pay taxes and duty fees) and didn't seem particularly draconic, it probably wouldn't be illegal. There wouldn't be official cooperation, but there certainly might be links forged between individuals interested in the same goals.

In the case of 2, if the foreign religion has periodic flirtations with dragon-worship, all bets are off.  It might not be illegal to accept the adherents' help in a crisis, but it would go a long way toward discrediting your efforts and would almost certainly subject you to investigations.  It would not be well advised."

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  • 3 weeks later...

2) Is it planed that we see the new Professor that join at the end of The Topiary Garden as actual teach in year 3 or later? (I don't think we see her in Y2 because of bureaucratic err game engine reasons)

6 hours ago, Good Coyote said:

The description of Professor Storey's desk mentions "with Professor Storey's rumored past, perhaps it's best not to get caught." What rumors would a first year student have heard?

(this one may have been asked before, but it's not coming up with the search.)

I suspect it is because of the Marchant family as their sons all got into Morvidus and where all troublemakers with Philippe the youngest and most tame one.

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6 hours ago, Schwarzbart said:

The Topiary Garden was considered such a case till the player finish this adventure. At last from my understanding.

True, but that turned out to be something completely different in the end (at least if I remember that adventure correctly it was more "kidnapping" than "choosing to leave"). That said...

10 hours ago, Legate of Mineta said:

M;

The answer is definitely yes.

Could you elaborate?

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Metis;

For you:

"It's not common, but it's happened plenty of times over the centuries.

In fact, a big part of why student access to the Imperial Reserve is restricted is the most notorious cause for spontaneous departure: Satyric abduction (though the Satyrs themselves would say it was Satyric fellowship).  Roughly every twenty or thirty years (most recently in 1644) an older student will fall in with one of the great Satyric revels and adopt the lifestyle - sometimes they're encountered again years later, in many cases as powerful wizards in their own right, and sometimes they just vanish into the wild.  Somehow, the Satyrs and/or something else in the Reserve tend to block any Astrological attempts to track the kids down.

Other students have cracked under the pressure of their studies, usually compounded by hostile relationships with their Regents, and still others have stumbled into magical opportunities or disasters that didn't allow for bureaucratic niceties. 

One rather famous example of the latter: in 1483, a Hedi student named Conselo Jax discovered a homeless woman who was actually the partially Mastered Countess of Breuve; he freed her from her state on a Monday night and ten days later was the flag-carrier on her campaign to retake her homeland, his face hidden behind a mask of rubies and alabaster.  The school had no idea where Conselo was until about six months later, when it came out that he had been adopted as the countess's heir, had changed his name to Selus de Breuve, and had taken up residence at the Floating Court on the river Bres."

GC and Schwarzbart, I just sent yours- I missed them the first time. :)

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OK, GC:

"1.  Mostly complaints and horror stories from second years happy to have a impressionable audience.  The most frequently told tale would’ve been that of the entire first-year class, three years before, who had given detention on the second day of studies and forced to trim a good chunk of the Morvidus green with fingernail clippers.  (Someone had pranked Storey and the kids had refused to divulge the prankster’s identity.)"

Schwarbart:

"2.  [Redacted]"
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Rhi;

"The Beatrix situation is a little bit complicated.  Durand de Thiomines and most of the Vernin kids know exactly what her standing is, because they would - the lords of Wetgen are not politically inconsequential in Staade, and in the northeast more generally, and Beatrix is likely to be a countess one day - and she doesn't exactly deny it if any other kids ask if she's of noble blood, though she's vague about it.

Still, nobody really treats her like a noble, she's not in Vernin, and half the time she's covered in mud and grass stains.  If you asked someone like Herbert Downes, he'd probably guess that she was some poor, weird knight's daughter.

[Redacted]

I should add that Everwine is probably somewhat in awe of Beatrix - Wetgen isn't too far from where he's from - and Louise may even have met her once or twice in passing before they came to the Academy."

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1. How much authority/autonomy/control/etc. do the various neighbourhoods of Mineta have over themselves? Do they have mayors that act as mayors (at least to some extend), do they have a Golden Council figurehead/bureaucrat that handles day-to-day affairs and nothing more, are all neighbourhoods directly controlled by the council, what's the score?

2. How would the Academagia react if it turned out that, say, there's a random out of the way room room in it somewhere in which there's an old spirit who's happy to talk shop about Gates/Mastery? Would the faculty immediately do large-scale aura testing, would they only target students who are at all likely to ever be in that general area, would they say anything about it at all, etc.?

3. Is soybeans/tofu as a plant-based meat substitute (spoiler: this is my modded Minecraft knowledge talking moreso than anything else, so if that question makes absolutely no sense...) known in Mineta, even if it isn't grown there? If not is there anything else similar, either known about or told legends about?

Edited by Metis
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M;

Thought I sent the response, but I see I did not!

"The bureaucratic purpose of each neighborhood/district is to call up a set number of troops (as a percentage of their population) to support the Guards in case of invasion - draconic or otherwise.  Unsurprisingly, in Frontino that tends to mean hiring mercenaries; in the Undergate it's oldest sons and daughters.

The central political figure in every district, therefore, is the Censor - or the keeper of the local census.  He or she, and his or her office, is responsible for keeping track of the numbers of citizens, where they can be found (very loosely), and an account of their general fitness and living conditions.  If the people of Undergate are going to have a problem mobilizing in case of attack because, say, the wells are contaminated and the water is bad, it's the obligation of the Censor to report it to both the Guard and the Major Council (not the Golden Council, which is more elevated) so that they can come up with a solution.  The Censor can't pass laws unilaterally or anything, but in matters of public health (whether that pertains to disease or to rioting) they can issue Edicts that apply for thirty days at a time (though they can be overriden by the Captain or the Council).

Note that candidates for a censorship are usually nominated from inside the neighborhood, and the Captain signs off - but the final choice is almost always the Captain's.

Now, there are special cases.  Frontino has an elected mayor who also serves as Censor; the Captain can call for an audit of the mayor's work, but he can't legally refuse to accept the mayor himself or herself.  (At least, that's Frontino's collective position, and the Captain has never challenged it.)  The docks don't have a mayor, but it's the tradition that the guilds select a Censorial Council of five rather than a single individual, with a simple majority needed to authorize major decisions.

2.  They would seal the room and do some general astrology to see, broadly, if any catastrophe was going to arise because of its existence.  If the answer was yes, Orso would do a more thorough off-the-record investigation.  But it’s definitely one of those deals where the school would keep things quiet if they could.
 
3.  There’s a lot of chickpea use among people looking for plant-based protein, and there’s a subspecies of mandrake that can be induced to taste a lot like meat (though it also causes hallucinations if improperly prepared).  As for soy/tofu - it does exist, but it’s extremely rare."
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1. How odd would it be for someone to not know/believe that magic exists, assuming they were born and raised in the most isolated, backwater farming community the former Empire's territory has to offer?

2. Does the Academagia ever get exchange students, even if only temporarily? I know guest speakers/lecturers are a thing, but does the same go for students?

Edited by Metis
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M;

1) Very rare: "Such people are geographically isolated, but certainly have heard of magic from stories. They don't really know what it looks like.  There may well be local experience with people who say that they can do magic, like wizards in the old tales - bring rain, etc. - and are either believed or not, but these folks aren't really doing anything an Academy student would consider magically meaningful."

2) "Visiting/exchange students, from inside Elumia and beyond, are indeed a thing.  They're usually hosted by a College rather than the Academy itself, and they're generally free to take any class they like (pending successful completion of a qualifying exam) rather than just the line-up of what a "regular" student of their year would usually take.

That said, there's no question of them being able to graduate from the Academy, and there aren't really deals where schools around the world reciprocally respect one another's "course credits" or what have you.  If a student at the Contu school spends a year taking classes at the Academy as a guest of College Durand, there's no guarantee that any of that effort will count towards earning one's Journeying Papers.  The good news is that their home schools generally agree that they aren't truant under this scheme - they won't be expelled for non-attendance, and their places won't be given away - and the kids are often permitted to take some kind of proficiency tests when they get home to get them out of classes that would be pointlessly repetitive."

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@Legate of Mineta: Kazus's family (whose name I forget) represent a fascinating fantasy version of the Barmakids (may their sufferings dwindle!) - a powerful family using its hereditary power and knowledge to adjust to a new legal order in a controlled way (as the Barmakids did when Buddhism became illegal in Balkh). But did anything similar happen with Gates mages? I can imagine, for example, that many alchemists or natural philosophers might be very interested in notes by gates mages about previous (but not continued) trips and deeds in other universes.

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Rhi;

"The only answer we can give is that it's entirely possible, but there's not a lot of credible, publicly available documentation that would prove links between specific theories/treatises and trans-planar research.  Particularly in matters of governance and social organization, where everything modern is intentionally tracked back into a broad haze of "oh, that goes all the way back to the New Gods and/or the early Temples and/or the old days of Mineta."

[Redacted]

One discipline that does genuinely seem to be informed by Gates experience is what one would broadly call magical architecture.  Avila's first great tower (and therefore, indirectly, a lot of the modern Avila and Vernin campuses) is thought to have been based on a deserted structure in an otherworldly wasteland visited in the 320s by the twins Aelia and Aelius Re (or Rep, in some writings)."

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