Group RP Luminous (The Actual Campaign Featuring Convoluted Magic)

(@WavePearl I'll actually cut it a bit earlier than that so your characters have a bit more time to check out the following.)

@Jupjami

"Oh, hey, Wakeng!" Jared waved at him. "The Masters are going to be giving talks and demonstration of their magic - with free audience questioning, too. It's kind of like a convention."

"It would be a good chance to learn what you want to specialize in," Trav added. "Or learn more about what you're already interested in."

"You want to come with us? We'll be checking out the Alchemist stage first." Jared offered.

@SAF @122 Generation @WavePearl

The preparations seemed to be coming to a close - everything was set up, Cira had put up glowing signs and symbols around each stand, and the Masters had each stepped onto a stage of their own. Crowds began to form around the front of each of the stages, the eight spread out in a symmetrical fashion with four on each side of the rectangular square.

The northern side of the square held Harvin's stage as he stepped up to the front, clearing his throat to project his voice. Cira sat back at a table on hers, the "BARD MASTER HERE" sign hovering over a large table of drinks in cups.

Training dummies littered the stage of what were labeled as the Battlemage and Duelist spots, with a woman in blue and a taller individual in purple both drawing weapons at their combined stand - a sword and a staff.

On the southern side of the square, the green-dressed individual under Terraforming readied what had to be hydrokinesis, and a pair of gauzy curtains covered the Summoning stage, where the silhouette of a woman floating in the air could be seen.

A flashy glass statue of a mantis with a human head could be spotted at the Transmutation stage. Finally, the Vitality panel... seemed to be run by a small group of Gilded rather than one, none of which were Alfred.

The announcement time wasn't to arrive for another hour and a half - plenty of time to check out whatever spellcasting schools they wanted, as the convention had begun.


(@ID Zeta has post priority in the next two posts)

 

@ID Zeta
The two Masters pretended to only just notice the crowd, stepping forwards to meet them - the shorter woman surfing forwards on a floating spear, whilst the taller person stepped through a shimmering violet portal - bringing them right up to face the cheers of the crowd.

"Hello to all recent initiates of the Jinguang Guild!" cheered the shorter woman. "I'm your Battlemage Master Penelope, and today I have Duelist Idra Wei with me to demonstrate Luminous combat! I hope you're all excited!"

"Once the demonstration is over, we will be accepting questions from the crowd." Idra added. "Any and all questions are allowed."

"Everyone ready?!" Penelope asked the crowd again, smile wide as her bluish Luminous phased into existence behind her head. Idra did the same, theirs floating above the palm of their hand, and they backed to two separate sides of the stage.

@122 Generation
The gauzy curtains were soon drawn apart by... clouds? No, they were too human-shaped to be clouds, but given the gaseous, ghostly appearance, it was hard to tell. As they gave way, the woman from inside became visible. Her raven hair and pearly pink robes, illuminated by her Luminous, seemed too long to be convenient, were it not for the cloud she sat on.

It carried her to the front of the stage, where she then stepped down and raised a hand. The wispy soldiers behind her stopped what they were doing and formed a neat line to either side of her, posing behind their creator.

"Morning," she said. "You may call me Sirènne Yun, Summoning Master of the Jinguang Guild. I'm sure many of you have questions as to what just happened, so over the next few minutes, allow me to explain."

@SAF @Jupjami
Harvin came onstage soon enough to polite applause from the crowd, his appearance only slightly disheveled. A desk of various glowing liquids sat to his right, as did some more regular-looking ones - a reddish ink, black powder, water, and so on.

"Good morning everyone," he said, voice just about loud enough for everyone to hear. "Uh, I am the Alchemist Master Dr Jerof, but you can call me Mr Harvin. Today I'm here to represent my school of magic."

He gestured to the bottles to his side. "For most of you recent Jinguang initiates, you are likely familiar with some of these spells - during your initiation quests, you should have been provided a few of these. Most of those were my handiwork, in fact."

"All of you should be familiar with the smoke signal we used. Today, I'm going to demonstrate how it was created." He gestured to some of the reddish components, his Luminous materializing next to them. "It all begins with picking out components that are suitable for the spell you want to cast - in this case, it would be a smoke spell, so I have here a basic gunpowder, wood ash, and water mixture, and this infused extract with a fire spell."

"Now all that needs to happen next is to add them in the right ratio over my Luminous, which should infuse the required magic, and..."

As he reached for the two bottles filled with red and black liquids, Elio could see something... off about the little ball of light next to Harvin, its glow sputtering for a moment, just before Harvin was about to pour the liquids. Despite what little he knew about Luminous, there was just a sense of unease about the thing.

Wakeng could see it better - a sickly static, like lightning, sparked across the surface of the orb, just before the reaction was about to take place...

(Rolled for Elio and Wakeng - 11, 15)

@WavePearl

(Heads up - next post will come very shortly.)

 

@SAF @WavePearl
The light was really just his Luminous, required for any spell - including the glyphs and concoctions that the Alchemist school dealt with. But as far as even Elio knew, no Luminous, not even a damaged one, would sputter like that, would it? Or anything like the little shadowy spark, darting over it and right into-

Kanaru was right to walk away.

The spell exploded moments later in a cloud of pulsating green-grey. Screams and gasps broke out in the crowd, the liquid and bottles falling to the ground as Harvin himself stumbled back from the shining smoke in front of him, eyes wide behind his glasses.

Where the potion should be lay a glowing mass - the same color as Harvin's Luminous - sizzling on the stage. To the horror of the crowd around, it, the mass began to rise, almost taking shape, and-

"MAKE WAY!"

The crowd parted to either side for a surge of water leaping overhead, a tidal wave arcing over land. It slammed into the glowing object, the entire thing dissipating into little flecks of light, pulverized by the sheer force alone.

As the water ebbed into the pavement, the muscled silhouette of the Terraforming Master revealed itself from above it. Once they made sure there was no trace of the broken spell, they offered a hand to Harvin, and said something so quiet only he could hear it. Something that seemed to crush his spirit further than the failed demonstration already had.

"...Thank you, Master Marlen." With that, Harvin turned back to the crowd - at least what was left of it, as most people had backed away to other stands - several following Marlen away. "I'm so sorry. It-it never did that in any of my runs. Is anyone hurt?"

@122 Generation @Jupjami @ID Zeta (sorry for double pings but this post needed to be shortly after the first)

 

@WavePearl
As Kanaru began wandering in a strange direction, a familiar voice interrupted her thoughts - as if it itself had implanted in her mind. Hey! Free drinks at the Bard table. Come over.

@122 Generation
The woman onstage, if she was shaken by the previous events, showed little more than a flicker of her eyes. With slow, sweeping movements, she commanded one of the smoky masses around her to stand fowards and line itself up with the glow of her Luminous.

"This is a Luminous Construct. It works much like any other spell, but the Construct can act on its own. Of course, it won't do anything I didn't command it to do, but if I were to do this..."

She flicked a finger, and the hazes began to brawl amongst each other, swirling and slashing the air to little effect. Have you tried punching a cloud? That was an approximation of what they were capable of doing to themselves. It looked like a sad sight, until one kicked another into perfectly split halves, and were it anything but a human-shaped fog, well, an imaginative mind could handle that part.

"They'll keep doing that until I tell them to stop, or dissipate them. Or if someone destroys them. They can't do anything else unless I'm actively puppeteering, really. Don't feel bad! They're not alive, after all." Sirènne let out a lilting giggle to shudders from the audience. "Just spells. They fight and serve me. My cloud down here carries things. So on. One purpose, one mind - mine. Or yours, once you learn to do what I can."

@Jupjami @SAF
At this point, most of the crowd had gone - leaving the two and a few straggling bystanders standing around Harvin. All left of them were the whispers of Dr Fueya's name echoing around his abject failure.

He looked equally shaky as Elio at this point, addressing his and Wakeng's reassurances with a sigh of what really wasn't relief yet. "I've never observed anything like that. Rest assured... only mostly assured, but... it shouldn't happen again. If I could just-"

His sentence broke off turned back to the stage, mostly broken from the wave from earlier. If that wasn't enough, it looked like most his materials had been spilled or smashed in the result, too. With a sigh, he removed the only survivors - a pair of test tubes containing the exact components from earlier - and in an almost impulsive move, brought his Luminous to let the reaction happen, with a few gasps from who was probably just Trav because nobody else was watching at this rate.

@ID Zeta
As soon as their eyes locked, Penelope sprung into the air, the sword from earlier floating beneath her heels and sending her flying - past the portals Idra had already began darting to and fro from, firing starry projectiles back at the light ball trailing behind their opponent's ponytail.

"IN ANY CASTERS' BATTLE..." the Battlemage Master yelled in between twirling various enchanted shields and weapons between her arms, blocking and redirecting the bullets that came her way. "ONCE YOUR LUMINOUS IS ACTIVE, IT ABSORBS MOST OF THE DAMAGE YOU TAKE. YOU CAN STILL BE HURT BUT NOT AS EASILY. IT'S LIKE DRAWING YOUR SWORD AND DONNING YOUR ARMOR, SO IT'S BETTER TO AIM FOR YOUR OPPONENT'S LUMINOUS TOO."

She leaped off the blade, sending it slashing through Idra - to little effect on their physical body, if their slight wince was any indicator. As the fight continued, Penelope continued to yell explanations. "BUT YOUR LUMINOUS CAN ONLY TAKE SO MUCH. IF IT TAKES ENOUGH DAMAGE, IT WILL BE DESTROYED TEMPORARILY - AND THE ABSORBED DAMAGE WILL MAKE YOU PASS OUT-"

A well-timed bolt from Idra sent her crashing to the ground, rolling to the side to catch one of her spears - and her breath. Idea warped down next to her, taking center stage. "She is fine. We will not be demonstrating the passing out part. Penelope, take five. I'll handle questions."


(Long post! Yeah this is probably how it's gonna be. Ando's part is specifically last because the bit about Luminous combat applies to everyone. If you don't learn it at this point, your characters will have this drilled into you during training, so just pick that up OOC.)