A few in game questions

[Schwarzbart]

So Clockpunk is no thing at all in Academagia?

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

It is, just not a specific academy associated with it.

[Metis]

What complications could there be, socially and otherwise, if a student's parents were found guilty of assassinating said student's younger sibling for being an uncontrollable problem? The student's relationship with both parents and sibling beforehand being distant at best.

...Asking for a friend. Totally .

[Rhialto]

On 7/5/2017 at 10:12 PM, Rhialto said:

1. I am aware of the disabled Vernin student and her gorilla.

@Legate of Mineta: 1. What is this student's name? Finding a random event is so difficult for me.

2. What is her familiar's name?

3. How common are gorillas in Mineta?

4. Does the Vernin Student with disabilities have cerebral palsy? If not, why can she not walk?

[Rhialto]

On 5/4/2023 at 7:39 PM, Rhialto said:

@Legate of Mineta: 1. What is this student's name? Finding a random event is so difficult for me.

2. What is her familiar's name?

3. How common are gorillas in Mineta?

4. Does the Vernin Student with disabilities have cerebral palsy? If not, why can she not walk?

@Legate of Mineta:

5. Would it be fair to say that Zoe or her family have been targetted by medical quacks trying to cure her and her mother?

[Metis]

6. Can't believe I'm about to ask this question, but how easily can an average human tell the difference between male and female pixies?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi & M;

1-4: "Will have to dig around in the archives. Gorillas are very rare, though.  Not thought to be mythical, exactly, but they tend to appear in stories as temple guardians in remote tropical locations: symbols of ancient wisdom along with physical power."

5: "They've been targeted, yes; Zoe's parents haven't taken the bait, as far as she knows.  Dad was a student of the Scholarch Triphalo, and Triphalo was an exponent of a philosophical system that owes a certain amount to old-school Skepticism - in magical practice, it means testing every thesis you possibly can with Negation techniques (magical or logical) until it either breaks or is proven true; he would probably die of shame if he let himself be taken in.

Zoe herself is perhaps more desperate to hope, and more vulnerable.  (If also maybe more likely to find a magical answer in the end.)"

6: "Why... why do you want to know?

Nah, fair question!  Assuming they're willing to be seen in the first place, it's usually not too hard to signify what appear to be gender distinctions.  Admittedly, a lot of them are distinctions by design rather than biological characteristics: feminine pixies tend to favor very long, free-flowing hair and skirts, while masculine pixies go for topknots or hats and trousers.  Many seem, physically, to be essentially preadolescent (not that they are, but they're lithe with relatively subtle secondary sexual characteristics), but some you can tell at glance do have what we'd call adult characteristics.

Unless it's all glamour.  ;-)"

[Schwarzbart]

Quote

it means testing every thesis you possibly can with Negation techniques (magical or logical) until it either breaks or is proven true

is this something we will learn when combining Dialectic and Negation magic?

Edit: A funny question, what happening usually when 2 Dialectic master making a public discussion  assisted with glamour magic?

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

"It's actually a big part of why Dialectic is part of the Durand core curriculum!

And the real dialectic masters scorn using Glamour in debates; if you can't win by the power of pure logic, they say, why bother?"

[Metis]

I think you missed my latest two PMs, Legate .

[Legate of Mineta]

M;

No, have not! Just haven't received an answer.

[Schwarzbart]

Any word on the class list of Y2? Be it the one that other student had during our Y1 or the one we will have in Y2.

Edit: in the unexpected case that you got the OK to post at last a partial list please put it in a new topic

[Legate of Mineta]

None to be released yet, unfortunately!

[Rhialto]

On 5/22/2023 at 10:46 AM, Legate of Mineta said:

Rhi & M;

1-4: "Will have to dig around in the archives. Gorillas are very rare, though.  Not thought to be mythical, exactly, but they tend to appear in stories as temple guardians in remote tropical locations: symbols of ancient wisdom along with physical power."

5: "They've been targeted, yes; Zoe's parents haven't taken the bait, as far as she knows.  Dad was a student of the Scholarch Triphalo, and Triphalo was an exponent of a philosophical system that owes a certain amount to old-school Skepticism - in magical practice, it means testing every thesis you possibly can with Negation techniques (magical or logical) until it either breaks or is proven true; he would probably die of shame if he let himself be taken in.

Zoe herself is perhaps more desperate to hope, and more vulnerable.  (If also maybe more likely to find a magical answer in the end.)"

1. Any luck in seeking answers in the Archives?

2. How does applying negation magic to a thesis reveal it to be true or false? Does it reveal to the caster the thesis's flaws? I know that it is magic, but magic has definitive effects in all other areas of this setting, and I am curious what the effects are here.

3. Is there some type of legendary or fictional or real book associated with forbidden magic in the public consciousness in the Empire of Man, akin to the Necronomicon or Liber juratus Honorii?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

1) No, not yet.

The rest, I'll forward!

Edit: 

"2.  It mostly applies to the study of magical effects, particularly in Incantation.  You can observe a magically created fireball, describe it, and hypothesize about the actual nature of what you're seeing - A single super-heated particle at the center of the effect?  A sphere of raw magical chaos with physical presentation akin to fire at certain temperatures?  A glamour with explosive properties triggered by the breach of a magical horizon? - but it can require really fine Negation work to determine whether what you think you see is what's actually going on.

 

3.  It's the Liber Nuntii Draconis - which probably isn't real, though some of the more flamboyant dragon cults like to say that it is.

 

There've obviously been a great many books that speak authoritatively about subjects that are illegal in the present day: standouts are the Books of the Gemstone Gates, The Principles of Direction, and The Little Book of Cradle Songs (which is much, much worse than you'd think)."

[Rhialto]

3 hours ago, Legate of Mineta said:

"2.  It mostly applies to the study of magical effects, particularly in Incantation.  You can observe a magically created fireball, describe it, and hypothesize about the actual nature of what you're seeing - A single super-heated particle at the center of the effect?  A sphere of raw magical chaos with physical presentation akin to fire at certain temperatures?  A glamour with explosive properties triggered by the breach of a magical horizon? - but it can require really fine Negation work to determine whether what you think you see is what's actually going on.

So Negation can serve as an equivalent to the True Seeing Spell from Dungeons and Dragons and can be used upon the mind also? Is that the correct understanding?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

Negation could be used on the mind, yes, although this would be classified as Mastery.

[Rhialto]

10 hours ago, Legate of Mineta said:

Rhi;

Negation could be used on the mind, yes, although this would be classified as Mastery.

OK, but if negation is used upon a thesis, negation can reveal flaws in the thesis, correct? I assume that the signs of the thesis's weakness which the spell would create for the caster would be rather difficult to understand unless 1 were knowing dialectic, right?

[Schwarzbart]

Are there non magical encryptions for texts that let someone without actual knowledge of the specific magic school have it look like some common topic, like bad jokes etc.

While someone with at last some actual understanding in the right magic school, realize that there should actual some encrypted text behind it. 

Edit:

2) Is there a clockpunk club in Academagia we can join?

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

"1)  Indeed. Cryptography goes all the way back to the time Dragons ruled - and you can still occasionally stumble upon cyphers used by Ecarla Agnetti in her time as Legate tucked into books in the Restricted Section of the Venalicium.

2)  There has occasionally been a "Silver Principality Club" over the last twenty or thirty years that was into clockworks, but Professor Alazzo has it officially on the books as of year one.  It might be due for revival if enough students are interested, though."

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: 1. Is studying Bassan with extreme intensity considered suspicious in the Empire of Man, as evidence either of Gates magic or of sympathy for the Oursukis?

2. Does the Schohanwicht actively seek out the latest Bassan-language research about Gates magic from the Oursuki Empire? Is such research being produced?

[Metis]

3. Broadly speaking, how are vampires seen by common people? Mythical creatures who might not exist, curious mysteries who might or might not be the death of you, abominations that must be cleansed in fire, somewhere in between?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi & M;

"1.  Not really.  Trade with the southerners is frowned upon, but it can be lucrative.  An interest in Gates wouldn't be most people's first assumption.

2.  Yes, Schohaniwicht does actively seek out the latest Bassan-language Gates research, but it's famously strange stuff.  Saisyne and the lands beyond have been presumed to be subject to repeated interventions by extra-planar beings not widely known in the old Empire (thanks, no doubt, to the benevolence of the Gods), and their movements - and perhaps their ongoing interest - makes Gates magic even less predictable down there than it is in and around Mineta. Of course, some scholars pre-Ban argued instead that modern practitioners just don't have the same skills the old masters did.

3.  Mineta still has enchanted streetlights that turn red in the presence of the undead, and it’s understood that that was a response to a genuinely mortal threat in its day; it’s not just an affectation.  People are generally afraid of vampires, reflexively.

That said, most people in the city are probably a lot more complacent than their ancestors were, and this is the kind of threat that has a romantic allure for some.

There are also secluded places in the world that say the Dragons hated ancient proto-vampires more than anything - hard to detect, resisted Mastery, could even turn human slaves against their proper masters.  It’s probably not true, given that modern vampire “bloodlines” don’t seem to go back anywhere near that far, but it’s vaguely credible and it lends a kind of mythological dignity."

 

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Was Isabeau's birth and/or infancy reported upon in the news? I am thinking about how Edgar Allan Poe was known to readers of newspapers in his infancy because his mother was the famous actress Eliza Poe.

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

"Sort of.  It might've been mentioned in passing in an article about the theatrical offerings of a season in one of the more established newspapers/newsbooks, but it wouldn't have gotten an entire piece of its own.

That said, the big theaters themselves released weekly "stage rags" as publicity.  (The "rag" was a reflection of the poor quality of the paper.)  They're odd things - they're sort of like sheet music for popular songs, but the original lyrics have been swapped out with cheeky synopses of the plays currently in rotation, along with allusions to the lives of the more famous actors and writers.  They would be handed out on streetcorners for free, and people would go home and sing the damn songs for laughs, and would become involved with the doings of the theater at an almost participatory level.  It's niche, but it's actually fun.

So Isabeau's birth was most prominently publicized by a song called "The Golden Fox and Kit," written in about two hours and set to the music of a perenially popular ballad called "The Ever Roaming Lad."  It had a lot of gleeful speculation about who the father was, but since Isabeau's mom had a hand in the writing all the suggestions were misdirections."