Long Game 96: KKC in the Modern Age

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

Slightly less than one day before the game begins. We're looking for at least one more player.

[Szeth_Pancakes]

I’m going camping for a week in two and a half weeks—is that longer than you’re expecting the game to run?

[Kasimir]

8 hours ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

I’m going camping for a week in two and a half weeks—is that longer than you’re expecting the game to run?

Not them, but I'll note I'm expected to miss over a week in KKC around the second half of August as I'm going to have to go on duty and all people who have done that duty post with more seniority have told me to expect to not have energy for anything else. If I'm lucky, my duty posting is later than that, in early September. I've made plans to mitigate and El and Wilson seem ok with what'll happen in that week. But fundamentally you also have to ask yourself what you are comfortable with committing to.

[Szeth_Pancakes]

Well, since you only have 11 players, I think I’ll join, if it’s okay that I won’t be able to play from Aug. 12 - Aug. 18.

[Pejidot]

Can I get a link to the spec doc when it starts?

[STINK]

I know a guy who knows a guy who knows someone else that helped make the rules probably so I think I'm qualified enough to maybe not read the ruleset for the first like 8 hours of the game 

RP and everything else to come later since a certain someone told me this game started in like a week smh

I won't be able to play if I die so just throwing that out there in advance cheers

[little wilson]

Signups are closed!

[little wilson]

The game will officially start in a little less than 24 hours. El is touching up some stuff on the site and while we don't need the site to start, it would be nice to get the player spreadsheets and everything sent out in the initial GM PM. Additionally, we haven't received submissions from all the players yet, so for anyone who hasn't sent something in, you've got a 24 hour (ish) reprieve to throw something together! Please get those in before the game starts, as once the first day goes up, there's no changing your base stats.

[little wilson]

Term 1, Month 1

The game has begun! PMs are being sent out so be on the lookout for yours. We'll have player pages out hopefully before the end of the first turn, but El is still working on those. Feel free to submit orders for EP and/or visiting Imre next month in your GM PMs until we get the player pages out.

This turn will end Saturday, the 29th at 7:00 AM Mountain time, for a 12 hour rollover. (This length of rollover will almost certainly be reduced for all following turns, but we're keeping it at 12 hours for the first one).

 

Player List

1. Matrim's Dice - Ruh
2. Kasimir - Commoner
3. The Known Novel - Noble
4. Steeldancer - Commoner
5. JNV - Ruh
6. Wonko the Sane - Commoner
7. Archer - Noble
8. Drake Marshall - Commoner
9. Ashbringer - Commoner
10. TJ - Commoner
11. Araris Valerian - Ruh
12. Szeth Pancakes - Noble
13. Stink - Commoner
14. Sart - Commoner

[Steeldancer]

Steel, the wandering bard, walked into the bar. 

On his back, he had slung a large string instrument of unusual make. 

Sitting down, the barkeep walked over. "Your usual, please" he asked. 

As he waited for his drink, he glanced around. With school about to start, he had figured there'd be a few more people. But apparently not. 

Regardless, he'd probably still try and do some songs later. If he could figure out what was going on with a minimal amount of effort. 

[Kasimir]

i. under pressure

Admissions were nerve-wracking. Always were. Every term, students clustered about, trying to jostle and trade for a more favourable tile. Not for the first time, Kevan had found himself wondering about who had designed the admissions system. Requiring Admissions be handled by the Masters, drawing random tiles from a cloth bag, and then allowing students to sell off and trade their slots...

It didn't really seem like the basis for a functioning system to him. And indeed, all they had was a dysfunctional, chaotic mess as E'lir and Re'lar and El'the and students milled about, trying to sell half the clothes off their back, favours, and just about everything under the sun for a tile of their choice.

This term, it was more nerve-wracking than most. Though he always fretted. It was one thing, being smart enough to be admitted to the university. But then there were expectation. The ones you had of yourself, even if others didn't really have all that much of you. He ground his teeth together and stuck his hands into his clothes pockets to keep from interlacing his fingers together and wringing his hands about. Fidgeting. Trying not to wonder what could be keeping the Masters so long.

They'd asked him to leave the room as he conferred. Master Anders had winked. Knowing one of the Masters, at least, had his back, made Kevan feel less afraid. But he was still fighting the urge to pace, to listen to the voices he could dimly hear as they argued and conferred in the room beyond.

 Nobles, their families could afford to pay, whatever their tuition was. He'd already begun to feel the weight of his tuition, pressing down on him. Everyone knew how the University worked: you needed intelligence, or wealth. The more of one you had, the less of the other you needed. 

He tried. Oh, he tried. Had dreams of becoming an artificer, almost. The image of the old Aturan roads in Thales's A Traveller's History of the old Aturan Empire danced back into his mind. The drawing of the Aturan roads, still standing after the might of the old empire had faded into so much dust. What would it be like, Kevan had asked himself, time and again, to build something that endured, that made the world just that bit better, like the ancient Aturan roads, still used by traders even in places where there was only a distant memory of empire.

In the Fishery though, all of that fell apart. He struggled on the projects, broke things. Then there was the fire, and the rumour that Master Artificer was just going to ban him from the Fishery for life. He struggled with Sympathy classes, because his grades in Artificery were slipping, and before he knew it, his tuition and the pressure of studying felt like the weight of a mountain, pressing down on him.

One last roll of the dice, Kevan thought. If they didn't listen...if they didn't care...he didn't know what he would do. 

Well, he would have to leave, wouldn't he? He'd tried, and he'd failed, and he knew he wasn't cut out for Artificery, and maybe there was some power in that. The thought was...difficult to bear, though. He didn't like failing. Didn't like the waiting, either. 

His pacing ground to a halt as the door opened.

Master Anders beckoned.

He didn't look—grim. 

Then another part of Kevan realised that Master Anders was smiling, the way he did whenever a student raised a particularly perceptive point in class.

His knees threatened to give way, and his breath crashed back into him in a rush.

Edited July 28, 2023 by Kasimir

[Archer]

45 minutes ago, little wilson said:

 Feel free to submit orders for EP and/or visiting Imre next month 

mm yes I definitely know what these are

I'm making a group PM called Actions Anonymous that's going to be a support group for people who are okay playing open handed if it means getting to strategize with other players in a meaningful way. Full disclosure, I haven't read the long rules yet, but I hope to sometime. :P. Message me if you want in and are okay sharing most of your starting information.

*

Jincs watched a bard walk into a bar. Bards were notorious for leaving their money unsecured, often times in boxes or hats at their feet. Jincs had never done a crime before, but they were eager to try. 

They instinctively checked their own cloak to make sure they hadn't been pickpocketed themselves. Fortunately, no one seemed interested in swiping a couple of drabs and a cheque. 

"Quite surprising we still use paper to transfer funds these days, huh!" they remarked, making eye contact with a passing student. The student lengthened their stride to get past them quicker. "Books will be our downfall! I can send you my video lecture on the subject..."

With a sigh, Jincs stepped inside. The dive had too many menus for their taste. "Beer please. Regular? And large. Actually, extra large. And have you considered using QR code links instead of these?" 

[Wonko the Sane]

Even amidst the hustle and bustle of the starting term, the carriage drew eyes as it rolled across the bridge and into the University. It wasn't the carriage itself -- after all, it was hardly unheard of for long-distance students to arrive in such vehicles; though the student inside was definitely less wealthy than most of those. Nor was it the unusual decoration, though the midnight-black coloring and bright, jagged lightning-bolt crest on the side were certainly striking. Instead, what caught the gaze of dozens of passersby were the horses.

They were dead.

Two enormous skeletal stallions, bones picked clean and polished to a mirror finish, at last came to a halt in front of the admissions building. They stood unnervingly still, suddenly inanimate, as the carriage door opened to reveal a young woman of perhaps nineteen, dressed in a slim black gown, her sleek black hair done up neatly with a crimson bow. She stepped out onto the cobbles, and the now-empty carriage immediately started off again. Immediately, a pair of tall, straight-backed men -- each bearing a crossbow and wearing scabbarded sword -- approached the girl and appeared to exchanged words with her. She smiled curtsied, and gestured towards the admissions office. The armed pair fell into step to either side of her as they made their way into the building.

The bewildered onlookers took a while to get their wits back together; few in the crowd seemed to have any idea what had just happened. Gradually, though, an explanation made its way from mouth to mouth; a single, whispered word, spoken with the same quavering cadence associated with words like Skindancer, or Chandrian:

"Resterford."

------------

7 minutes ago, Archer said:

mm yes I definitely know what these are

I'm making a group PM called Actions Anonymous that's going to be a support group for people who are okay playing open handed if it means getting to strategize with other players in a meaningful way. Full disclosure, I haven't read the long rules yet, but I hope to sometime. :P. Message me if you want in and are okay sharing most of your starting information.

The rules really aren't that bad. Long, but not too complicated. Honestly the abridged version in the original post covers nearly everything major. I'm definitely not good with just straight up reporting my entire cycle to you (seriously, what are you expecting?), but I can probably answer any basic questions you have. For starters, EP is how you get role powers; in this game everyone starts without a role, but can earn them by studying in various subjects at school. EP is the resource you use to do that studying. Imre is the place where you can buy items, among a couple other things; to go there, you have to state it in your GM PM the turn before you go.

[Kasimir]

51 minutes ago, Archer said:

I'm making a group PM called Actions Anonymous that's going to be a support group for people who are okay playing open handed if it means getting to strategize with other players in a meaningful way. Full disclosure, I haven't read the long rules yet, but I hope to sometime. :P. Message me if you want in and are okay sharing most of your starting information.

[OOC: Declaring my utter lack of interest  I'm here to live my uni sim dream life that I can't IRL because I graduated and I can't PhD, to my utter sorrow.]

38 minutes ago, Wonko the Sane said:

The rules really aren't that bad. Long, but not too complicated.

[Slightly Less OOC but Still OOC: Says you >:P I reject the oppression of the rules! I am here to learn, and my GPA will stay perfect! I need to go to grad school, not engage in extracurriculars!]

ii. relief

Kevan struggled to keep any expression of relief from his face. Not now, he thought. But that smile felt like the light at the end of a very long tunnel. Like a snapped-off plank that a drowning man might cling to.

You couldn't help but feel inadequate, when you kept on struggling, and the tuition fees only kept piling on. When you kept treading water. When other students, noble or otherwise, seemed to breeze through the tasks Master Artificer set them without much difficulty. He was a disappointment, and he knew it. "Master Artificer's Despair," he'd said with a laugh to Soren and Valerra that day, after the fire, and you could say those words, and own them, because the alternative was to have them cast at you, but it broke your heart, and ground its heel on the dust of your childish dreams, anyway.

Sometimes, you had to accept you couldn't get what you wanted.

Maybe, if he was minded to be poetic, Kevan might've said that was the last step, the last falling away from childhood: Admissions last term, when he listened to the Masters pronounce a tuition that was so extravagantly high he could no longer hold to the pretense that everything was fine, if he just worked harder, did away with more sleep, if he did more anything, if he was better, stronger, smarter, just more than what he was, he would graduate with his guilder and be an artificer.

And if he mixed the rain with piss, it would become delicious candy.

If he was minded to be poetic, he could have written an essay about how his boyhood ended, that day, in the corridor 

But he wasn't especially so minded, and it seemed a rather dramatic reaction to events that, if you thought about it, was perfectly normal in the Arcanum. Less than a quarter left each year with their guilders. No one wrote stories about the ones who left, or the ones who were left.

He followed Master Anders back into the room, a respectful step behind. But still, he felt the relief, bursting within him like the sun through clouds at dawn.

"Kevan, son of Jair," the Chancellor began. "You've brought before us a rather unconventional proposition."

"I know," Kevan said. "As I've set out in my proposal, Masters, the register in the Archives demonstrates at least two others: Ethas Saverant, and Mira, daughter of Helas. It cannot therefore be strictly-speaking, said to be unprecedented."

Master Alys's mouth quirked. "Well then," said the Master Archivist. "How long did it take you to uncover that, E'lir Kevan?"

"Several months, searching through the student rolls. The Chancellor's office fortunately keeps thorough documentation of all decisions made, and I concede the point that it was a sufficiently unconventional decision that the Chancellor of the time found it worth noting."

Master Anders raised a hand and was acknowledged. "I call for a formal vote on the motion at hand."

The Chancellor nodded, a wry twist to his lip, a slant to his gaze. There was an exchange there: Kevan didn't know what to make of it. Perhaps Master Anders would explain, subsequently. Perhaps not.

"E'lir Kevan to be re-admitted to the University on a clean-slate basis. All in favour?"

He knew, and still he could barely bring himself to breathe as he raked his gaze across the length of the table. Master Alchemist abstained; Master Anders had his hand up, he counted—

A single abstention.

A single one. That was all.

His breath caught in his throat and stayed caught. He could not believe it. Both Ethas and Mira had taken a quorum of six.

Master Artificer met his gaze and shrugged.

"Motion passed," the Chancellor said. "Welcome to the University, E'lir Kevan."

There was that hint of irony, there, and not all that buried.

"Thank you, Masters," Kevan said. "I swear I won't give you cause to regret this."

He meant every word.

"E'lir Kevan?" Master Artificer said. He turned to Chancellor. "I want what I'm about to say struck from the record."

"Really," Master Alys began, aggrieved.

"Sustained," said the Chancellor.

"E'lir Kevan. Tehlu knows I've many a student with more talent and who puts in much less work than you do. But please, on your mother's life, for the sake of my sanity, never, ever set foot into my Fishery again."

"I think I can manage that, Master," Kevan replied. "And—" Foolish impulse, that. "—I'm sorry."

Sorry that it turned out this way. Sorry that—he had wanted, but hadn't been enough.

Master Artificer shrugged. "You are not the first to find out the Artificer's path is not yours. Perhaps you will do better with Anders, eh?"

He could breathe again, and he felt lighter than he had in months. Maybe two years.

"I certainly think so," Master Anders said, and Kevan swore, there and then, never to disappoint him.

Edited to add: [OOC: Oh yeah tbh I'm not really keen on Operation Daybreak anymore and the M'Hael says he understands if I can't carry it out as it takes more planning than I really wanna bring to bear in my nice, chill, RPful uni sim game but if anyone's interested, HMU, as I'll definitely need help to succeed.]

Edited July 28, 2023 by Kasimir

[DrakeMarshall]

"We will be doing some extractions in this course, naturally. By the end of this course, at a bare minimum you should be able to perform a competent principle extraction from pure instances of the five fundamental elements, the four humours, and the three primes. Sit down, sit down," the speaker gestured insistently towards the front row of the classroom, the only place left with empty seats. "We've already started."

Boots echoed across the large lecture hall.

"Now, as I was saying, alchemy is a fickle subject. You have to respect it. If you remember nothing else from your time here, I hope you remember that. If you give alchemy the respect it deserves, you'll find that it's a singularly powerful and adaptable discipline. If you aren't willing to do that, well then get out. The door's right there. Alchemy is dangerous, and when it turns sour, you're in for an extended trip to the medica if you're lucky."

Percyl yawned, resting his head on his desk near the back of the lecture hall. The words washed over him. He stared insensibly at the blackboard, which still only contained two lines scrawled in messy chalk:

ALC102 : Introductory Reaction of Principles

Master Conach

Conach was not a Master of the Arcanum in the usual sense, but he insisted on being called as such. "Informal modes of address may have been fine for you up until now, but this is the University. I'm not your private tutor. It is proper to refer to your teachers as Master," he had informed them.

Mentally, Percyl shrugged.

He browsed the feed on his phone. The school was making announcements about... Skindancers. Fae. Demons. There were always stories and scares over Skindancers at the University, it was practically traditional by now. Almost a hazing ritual for new E'lir. But that was interesting. The University itself was endorsing the rumors. Maybe it was for real this time? That would be excitingly unprecedented! The Fae were generally understood to exist, but little else, not for certain. They were a world apart from the Four Corners.

[The Unknown Ajah]

All you guys doing 1,000,000 word roleplays over hear, meanwhile I'm bashing my head against the wall just trying to get 200 words a day.

Also: Archer for phishing, though I may take you up on your offer.

@little wilson, @Elbereth, I cannot vote the same person with both votes, correct?

Not that I will most likely. I rarely vote once, voting twice just seems like overkill.

Edit: Should note, it is impossible to vote Kas this game as we cannot vote insane people.

Edited July 28, 2023 by The Known Novel

[Kasimir]

iii. aturan roads

There were old Aturan roads everywhere in Yll. Warm, sunkissed Yll, where the rolling hills met the glittering jewel-blue waters of the Centhe Sea, and—Kevan supposed—where the Aturan Empire had come, all those centuries ago, and laid down their roads and other trappings of empire, and the story knots faded away into memory. His grandmother (you had a complex web of relations in Yllish grammar; you always took joint ownership because most relations were reciprocal, when acknowledged, and even when they weren't) had the memory still; he'd learned a little, before he started fidgeting, looking to the horizon and the slice of old road in the distance.

No surprise, in her eyes, he'd come to the University; he was more than half-foreign, the way the Yllish reckoned it. (You could be Yllish and still foreign: relations were reciprocal and when the old Aturan Empire had Yll in its clenched-fist grip, Yll, too, left its mark on the empire—but that is less talked about, less remembered, for all they keep the language in parts, and the forgetting covers the distant past in Yll, anything before the empire, even story knots, and their young grow up dreaming not of sheep but the University, of the city, of old Aturan roads, and life beyond the fire-burned hills and the necklace of the Centhe, tightly wound about Yll, enough you could choke, enough they were Yllish and Not-Yllish, not the way their foremothers would have reckoned it.)

He had played on the old slice of road when he was a boy, poking at the hard grey substance—concrete, the schoolmaster had explained; he hadn't a guilder, but he'd stories of the University aplenty, and doled out his lessons generously—the old Aturans were masters of construction, in a way they hadn't been able to replicate, for all the pride of the University. Other roads were made of packed dirt, or stone, and needed rebuilding, and then there were the shepherd-lances, when you had to traverse quickly, and he'd learned the knack, a simple child's game, springing from the lance, but there was always the call of the road, the knowledge long-forgotten to most like the story-knots, and a far more compelling mystery.

Roads that endured, long after the empire had fallen. Had placed a mark on Yll, forever, and people used the roads, for all they didn't speak well of the empire. They kept to them, and traders used them, rather than the dirt-and-stone roads.

You could hate the empire, if you were one of those traditionalists. But you couldn't deny what empire had done to Yll (reciprocal, always reciprocal, even if you thought it wasn't, it was baked into the grammar, having a relationship to anything or with anything changed both of you, communally.)

He had a knack for study. He knew this. The story-knots weren't compelling. The loop of roads, slicing through the shadow of the rolling hills was. And he'd a knack for the things the schoolmaster taught: mathematics, geometry, chemistry, fragments of artificing—fragments of what he'd learned at the University, drank in enough to know he had to go to the source, in the end.

He left, following the curve of the old Aturan road to the Reft, called by the roads, called by the song of knowledge long forgotten that someone had to care about (and the Yllish story-knots could stay forgotten; they were half-Yllish and half-Not Yllish, his grandmother had lamented, centuries gone and no one was interested in remembering, in rediscovering what they hadn't been allowed to remember. The price you paid when you were a vassal of empire.)

He never looked back.

1 hour ago, The Known Novel said:

All you guys doing 1,000,000 word roleplays over hear, meanwhile I'm bashing my head against the wall just trying to get 200 words a day.

[OOC: As I said, I'm here for my nice, chill RPful uni sim game  I am damn well going to RP for all I can, I have a plot arc for Kevan and believe I can keep up with this. I really miss UG, what can I say?]

[Slightly Less OOC: That GPA won't keep itself high! I'm here to study, not to get distracted!]

Edited July 28, 2023 by Kasimir
Wrong conjugation

[Mat]

I’m here, kind of. Not fully for another 40ish hours, and I actually mean that this time, it won’t be like when I say I’m busy, I’m actually busy

I’ll do Archer’s job for him

Mat

On a different note, I’m finally village, so that’s cool >>

RP will be once I get home.

Edit: I have just discovered that the turn ends in 40ish hours. I guess I’ll find time to take the vote off before then, but I won’t promise it’ll end up somewhere else.

Edited July 28, 2023 by Matrim's Dice

[The Unknown Ajah]

My name is Cavothee, pronounced nearly the same as "Kvothe." Names are important as they tell you a great deal about a person. I've had more names than anyone has a right to. My mother called me Sparkless. Which, depending on her tone, could mean several things.

The first implication is obvious if you've ever met my mother. She is a cruel woman, and I was always a slow spoken child. If I had been born in a harsher land, I might have been cast out as mentally unfit. Now, that softness has remained, but is concealed by my large unruly beard, like rust spreading on iron. I look more a mad scientist than a simpleton.

The next implementation was surely unintended, but I have had a talent for precision since my early years. This allows me to forge metal and shape sygaldry while creating nearly no sparks.

The last, well, when the name of fire came to my lips, Flame came without spark or sound, and so what was once a cruel nickname became a badge pride.

Cavothee paused. That last part wasn't strictly true. Should he erase it? No, he decided, leave it in. By the time his autobiography was released to the world, it would be true. If only he could get the Master Namer to actually teach him. He sighed, then picked up his pen to keep writing.

~

I think I'm going to enjoy writing this character very much. The Kvothe obsessed blacksmith who's determined to learn Naming (and/)or go insane trying. 

[Wonko the Sane]

@Kasimir, I hate to have to be the the one to point this out, but it’s actually Aturan, not Arturan. 

[DrakeMarshall]

"Let's try a practical example, shall we?"

Percyl fixed his attention back on the front of the lecture hall. Conach pulled the stopper off of a flask and muttered a binding. A globe of dark silvery liquid ponderously rose out of the flask and suspended itself in mid-air. Percyl made a noise of appreciation. That must've been a tricky bit of sympathy to pull off.

"Can anyone tell me what this is? Show of hands."

Percyl didn't know.

"Mercury?" a student timidly blurted out.

"No, not quite. But fair guess. I wouldn't store mercury like that. This is a regulus," Conach stated, as if this explained everything. "Do you know what a regulus is?"

No answer.

"A regulus is the distilled principle of a metal, in this case, iron, rendered in liquid form. When properly prepared, like this one has been, it will react with anything it touches. Let me show you."

Conach picked up a lump of something from his cart, which seemed burdened down with more alchemical paraphernilia than he could reasonably need for this lecture.

"This is mere sympathists wax. I can crush it, fold it, mould it however I wish."

Conach kneaded the wax by hand for several seconds before shaping it into a ring.

"But when we expose it to the regulus..."

The liquid seemed to soak into the ring, staining it with a metallic sheen.

"The principles shift and the wax becomes metallic. Now, it's quite impossible to sculpt or bend."

Conach made a show of trying to pull the ring apart with both hands, to no avail.

"It's safe to touch, now. All the regulus has been consumed by the reaction. If it hadn't, if any regulus of iron got on your skin, a part of your flesh would transmute to iron, depending on how much you came into contact with and for how long. Safety is paramount when dealing with such a compound. Can anybody guess how one would safely store and handle regulus of iron?"

Percyl's hand shot up. Conach made eye contact.

"Yes? Speak up."

"What about gold? Can you turn something into gold that way?"

Conach frowned.

"Technically, yes, to answer your question. To achieve enough regulus of gold to do such a thing, you would need at least as much gold as you hoped to create by principle transmutation, likely quite a bit more, due to impurities. You'd lose money doing that, if that's why you're asking."

That didn't sound very useful, Percyl thought.

"Is there anything that can transmute what it touches without being consumed in the process?"

[Kasimir]

Just now, Wonko the Sane said:

@Kasimir, I hate to have to be the the one to point this out, but it’s actually Aturan, not Arturan. 

[Slightly Less OOC: Strictly-speaking, if you hate to do it, would you really do it?

So do you hate to do it, or do you mean it as a figure of speech?

If you mean it as a figure of speech, what is it precisely supposed to mean?

If you mean something, shouldn't you come right out and say it rather than dabble in linguistic ambiguity?

And thanks, I think I read too much WoT lately  ]

[The Unknown Ajah]

1 minute ago, Kasimir said:

And thanks, I think I read too much WoT lately  ]

Same honestly. Trudged through a Crown of Swords, so I'm officially halfway through. 

[Ashbringer]

20 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

"Is there anything that can transmute what it touches without being consumed in the process?"

Issal's head perked up. "I think that would be called a disaster," he said suddenly. There were a few giggles in the attending students, but Issal just shook his head and kept going. "If something like that existed, it would transmute anything it touched unless it was properly treated, so if any got out it could consume a lot. Especially if whatever it transmutes keeps the same property. That's a grey scenario."

The professor - Master? El-the? he wasn't entirely sure - gave a side glance, but Issal thought he saw something besides irritation in his eyes, which would have been a first. But, best not to push his luck, so Issal stuffed his head down into his notes.

Gold. Of course someone else would ask about gold, it's the first thing that anyone needs. There were already enough people grumbling about tuition, and he had a feeling his pockets would be feeling light shortly. But it was still... he thought he'd done well in his early studies, but maybe he was just mimicking everyone else.

Of course, this talk of essences and regulus was new to him. His training was limited to draughts and potions, and the occasional phial of acid. So he just gave a shrug to the questioning student and wrote.

Edited July 28, 2023 by Ashbringer
shoot

[Kasimir]

59 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

[Slightly Less OOC: Strictly-speaking, if you hate to do it, would you really do it?

So do you hate to do it, or do you mean it as a figure of speech?

If you mean it as a figure of speech, what is it precisely supposed to mean?

If you mean something, shouldn't you come right out and say it rather than dabble in linguistic ambiguity?

And thanks, I think I read too much WoT lately  ]

[OOC: Oh and to be clear, I'm messing around / taking the piss and appreciate the fix, hence the slightly-less OOC  ]

56 minutes ago, The Known Novel said:

Same honestly. Trudged through a Crown of Swords, so I'm officially halfway through. 

[OOC: I've stopped partway through Path of Daggers as it's a slog, but am mostly on Arkady Martine's books, then Drake made a rec I need to look up.]

Edited to add:

iv. beer and friends

“Well, I’ll give you this,” Valerra said, “You sure know how to pick your fights.”

“Pick them?” Soren scoffed. “Every single one of them except Master Alchemist voted in favour of readmitting him as an E’lir on a clean-slate basis. If the Masters were this nice to me in Admissions, I’d actually have slept like a baby the last span instead of fretting myself halfway to the Crockery. I swear, I wake up at night muttering the names of the five catalytic bindings. Zairen is this close to throttling me to an inch of my life, I swear it.” He named the other E’lir he shared rooms with.

“I’m surprised Master Artificer did,” Kevan said. He remembered those kind eyes, the request to have the following words struck from the record. A bear of a man, surprisingly deft and gentle when he handled his tools, and his eyes were kind. But in the ensuing months, he’d taken on the status of a giant, a terror, as Kevan continuously made mistakes and botched projects in the Fishery. 

Much of it was in his head, Valerra kept telling him that. Kevan knew that. But it didn’t take away the fear each time he made a mistake, each time he expected Master Artificer to lose his patience and to yell at him. Or the deeper, more primal fear: that he had disappointed the master, or that he was this close to watching his dream crumble before his eyes like the dirt roads, or this close to being expelled from the University, even though he knew they didn’t expel students, not for being awful at classes.

No, they simply raised your tuition to an unbearably high amount.

All of this passed through his head. But what he said was, “I didn’t expect him to be so kind,” and really, he meant all of them. All the Masters, who had voted, even Master Herkimer, when Kevan hadn’t been remotely interested in Naming.

(Really, he thought they’d spent a bit too much time glorifying the Arcanum, and a bit too little time recognising the other subjects mattered, too. Maybe that was why his appeal had struck a chord with a few Masters, though he privately suspected some of it was Master Anders’s support. At any rate, he’d accepted there was a very high chance it would have backfired; made the Masters angry.)

Well, that would be a lie. He thought the metaphysics of Naming was fascinating, but metaphysics and epistemology and naming and reference all came together in a tangled knot, if you read any proper commentary on Chalmers or Dennett, and then you understood why it was so difficult to untangle. But he hadn’t come to the University, chasing at the wind. He’d come to learn the craft of good roads.

And now here he was, a readmitted E’lir in Master Anders’s charge, and somehow, it felt like a new beginning. 

“Whyever wouldn’t he be?” Valerra asked, confused.

Because he didn’t deserve it, Kevan wanted to say, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you said at the Spinning Vane, not even to friends, and not when the night was still young.

Soren made an impatient noise. “Enough talking about Admissions,” he said. “I have had enough of this Admissions nonsense; we all survived, our E’lir here definitely got what he wanted and isn’t returning to his island to twiddle his thumbs so I consider that an absolute win. We are going to drink ourselves utterly stone-blind and enjoy being young and alive for once.” He stared darkly at Kevan. “No Yllish fruit drinks. We are going for proper, fine, dark scutten, drink of the kings of Cealdim.”

“You can have your scutten,” Valerra said, “I’m sticking with my Bredon beer.”

“Heretic!”

“Utter barbarian!”

Kevan sighed and rested his forehead against the scarred and pitted wood of the bar. The argument seemed to recede into the noise of the pub, along with the merry wild tune of the pipes, the sort meant to be played indoors by a warm hearth.

He hadn’t expected kindness. But sometimes, the world gave you more than you expected to have received, more than you thought you deserved.

A second chance. Bredon beer, and friends.

Edited July 28, 2023 by Kasimir