Duality

Congrats, @~C. Discord~! I've never made your acquaintance before but I'm already regretting not doing so. I doubt @Helianthus could've made a better choice. But wait... another Discord? Do we get to watch your epic showdown with @Randimaxis?

Whoa, congrats, @Passion! Great to hear you're getting back into the srs bzns hoss once again! I'm quite certain you'll do amazingly in the position, as long as those illicit coin transfers of yours never get picked up by the accountancy department. don't forget mine

@Passion @Buck Testa @Denim&Venom @dragon4111 @reader8363 @Mentis Soliloquy @Arid_Blitz Just an update: I am actually working on my post, despite what all outward signs may indicate. It's a fairly deep one lore-wise, though, so it might not be up for a few days yet. Trying to hop on the flashback bandwagon without plagiarising Buck's snazzy style too much. Also, I added a list of all characters and users currently in this roleplay to the OP. It might prove useful to anyone else who's starting to lose track of a few of the less prolific players.

Very well spoken. Commendations, my good sir. Wasn't the Holy Spirit rather than the Father technically responsible for inspiring the prophets and King David and so forth to write Biblical poetry? Come to think of it, that adds an interesting recursion to the fact that the early church near-exclusively used OT words set to music for their hymns - the Holy Spirit filled them to sing the words that the Holy Spirit originally inspired. God's certainly not doing nothing at the moment, that's for sure. I've heard He takes rather an active interest in the happenings of our lives. I did ask my pastor this question a while back, and, echoing some of what you've said, he thought that the answer was because the true and perfected purpose of music itself - the reason it was created in the first place -, is to worship God. Since the other two Persons of the Godhead ultimately sing to glorify God the Father due to the humbler roles They have taken up for our sake (at least pre-eternity, at any rate), God the Father simply has no-one else to worship with His undoubtedly out-of-this-world singing voice, and thus does not do it, since the alternatives are using song for a reason other than that which it was created for (which is somewhat outside of His character) or worshipping Himself directly (which is also somewhat outside of His character). What are your thoughts there?

Yes, misa. According to your wishes, misa. Let us take as evident that God takes particular pleasure from song and it holds a profound place among the many and varied wonders He has created. Now, Jesus is recorded as singing several times (Matthew 26:30, Hebrews 2:12) and the direct result of being filled with the Holy Spirit is singing (Ephesians 5:18-19), but it is never said of God the Father that He sings, directly or indirectly (the word translated 'singing' in Zephaniah 3:17 is better rendered 'shouts of joy' rather than any inherently musical exultation). Why do you think this is so?

I don't know anything much about Black Canary, Shriek, or Black Bolt, but I think I get the picture. This seems like a fairly reasonable portfolio of abilities, given that her power levels aren't particularly high overall, but the Mach 1 attack thing doesn't seem to make much sense - her abilities otherwise pertain to vibrations as opposed to moving things at speeds comparable to that of sound. Additionally, on the subject of making sense, the whole 'passing through things by vibrating really fast' is the sort of patent nonsense that only mainstream comic franchises and new-age spiritualism can make people believe. With those two abilities trimmed, I'll be quite happy to approve the character amendment, providing you save her powering-up sequence only for times of direst need as you have already implied. As regards the duelling-rune-containment-matrix crippling power threshold, though, let it suffice to say 'plenty'. I had a similar idea in mind, but I scrapped it because I didn't like the idea of either humans or Pelajae having bonus species-based magic. It's too easy for that to turn into a weird balancing issue, plus Pelajae already arguably have an edge on humans in combat due to their teeth and claws and so forth. Or the way that predates even paperwork: dealing with interpersonal problems without fighting someone. Don't worry, though, the school is pretty resourceful; they should have things sorted out soonish. It will be slightly more robust than that, I hope. The place was designed to accommodate prodigious master mages inadvertently detonating the structure of reality, after all. It's well-secured too, due to the critical discoveries that are often made within its walls; barring extenuating circumstances, the main facility isn't accessible to anyone lower than Year 3 (with even them mostly employed as lab assistants), and only university graduates (post-Year 4) and teachers following promising lines of research get to use the equipment in the High Energy Magic Building for their experiments (so if you want any of your teachers to have free access to the HEMB you'll have to think up a convincing reason for it). Poor Druantia and Ley are likely only to see the inside by way of 'field trip' or one-off visit by invitation for a good few years yet.

Oh, yeah, sorry, should've been more clear. I meant that my post would be mostly based inside one of the wards of the infirmary. Closest Duality would get to Ghalan would perhaps be a little wave on the way out as she goes to her dorm to get some nurse-prescribed rest. What sort of powers are you thinking of? While I am relatively open for possible future power-up plot twists, another person as powerful as Dru is a probable no-go; one's quite sufficient. Cool your guns, y'all, you're forgetting that admin has to sign off on all duels because they're the ones with veto. No way they're signing off on any duel involving Ghalan this soon after his involvement with the decimation of the last one, even if it wasn't specifically his fault. In fact, they're not likely to let anyone duel anyone else until the hall has been at least partially rebuilt, except perhaps under exceptional circumstances (to be specified when and if they ever come about). And if someone tries to fight someone else without admin approval, it'll be treated like what it is - staff/students physically attacking people on school grounds. The main plus side of using magic for duelling is that one can defend oneself without necessarily getting injured in the process (blocking hand-on-hand attacks causes bruising at very minimum). The university wants its staff/students intact and in good health, hence why they have a panel of staff on hand to make sure nobody is truly hurt during their sanctioned duels. Duly noted. I wouldn't wish cellphone RPing on anyone. That's a good idea. Inside each teacher's dorm there's a door that's linked directly to a corresponding door within their own home, so it's just like another room added to their house. I might just nick that off you for implementation, albeit with a proportionate dose of security spells. Why leave it to the government? Universities engage in that sort of research quite often themselves, so I wouldn't put it past the place to have its own world-class R&D magic-testing wing. I know Duality for one would have plenty to keep herself occupied with in a place like that.

I'm planning to post soonish, but my post is going to be Duality-centric and set just about exclusively in the infirmary, so it won't further the RP towards dinnertime or anything. The main people who the dinner bell is waiting on are @Denim&Venom, @reader8363, and @Passion, but their progress towards getting the hall sealed off seems to have stalled or something. Addressing those three, do you want me to handwave the hall sealed with an NPC so we can proceed to dinner or are you okay with arranging it IC?

Gabriel Lazel was one of the mages responsible for sealing away the realm, but it was sealed away before the University was formed (while he was a 'young man', according to the intro), so it was between approximately 25 and 30 years before the events of the RP. However, it wasn't an invasion, per se, but the daemon realm itself was starting to seep into this set of dimensions, causing dangerous spatiotemporal anomalies and letting various of the realm's inhabitants through at certain points (hence why the mages had to seal it away in its totality). The realm isn't hell, either, it's another plane of existence with some equally otherworldly occupants, named after what they were most reminiscent of to humanity - whether or not the name they've been given is accurate is not known. On that note, no major religious text actually refers to demons living in hell, Dante's Inferno just made the idea famous. Bear in mind that the government still keeps a fair bit of information regarding the daemon-realm impingement under wraps due to its sensitive nature (for example, data about how some of the 'weak points' in our reality behaved could be implemented by mages to replicate such a weak point). Mainstream science calling daemons 'exotic forms of life' and the daemon realm 'at least some of the additional dimensions mandated by string theory', various new-age spiritualists calling them 'the transcended ones' and their realm 'a higher plane of existence', and theists calling the whole affair 'proof'. As with many great scientific discoveries, different people have different interpretations and few consider it reason to change their stance. The Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Arabic words for 'man', 'mankind', etc., used in the original texts can refer to either Pelajae or humans in this universe, due to the difference in historical contexts between our universe and the RP's one. The physiological status of Adam, Eve, Jesus, and other historical figures are not known, although there's always going to be the occasional racial-purity group who believes that they all belonged to the 'better' race. Consider your question tactfully circumvented.

It's a lot like the X-Men world, I'm thinking, since there are actually very few mutants relative to 'normal' people in that universe. About enough mutants/mages on Earth to fill a powerful international school, an alternative faction or two, and a few governmental shoes to boot, while still having a small number of them living independently of any major organisation. Mutants were a small enough minority to be kept hidden for a good long while by the Xavier guy and co., while still being powerful enough that they caused some serious political controversy when they came to light. Fortunately for the mages in this world, though, they came out from hiding to save the world from the encroaching daemon realm, so the government and public are significantly more inclined to trust them in general than they are in the X-Men world.

If there's no plot-oriented reason for him to have it, I would prefer a retcon, if that's okay with you.

I... don't watch any others? *quickly runs away while you're still paralysed in horror* Definitely the latter. Thinking that science holds all the answers to life's mysteries is called 'scientism', and is considered a widespread and pervasive form of fundamentalism by a lot of major scientists today. Science is the process of forming theories, testing them, and amending them as necessary to fit your results, and thus by definition cannot give the answers to any of life's mysteries that cannot be properly and repeatably experimented on. Just a bit. Jesus Christ. Can't think of anyone better to take after.

Yep, I have, but if Ghalan was powerful enough to use such a weapon, he'd be utterly OP, unless you have a specific idea (and explanation) for some sort of special link that he has to this particular rod and nothing else to enable him to use his powers more effectively on it. Bear in mind that no government is going to give exclusive control over a tactical space weapon to any single individual, let alone a janitor with a short temper (no offence).

If he can yank random giant rods out of orbit with his powers, he can also yank anything of less than the rod's mass out of orbit. There's no reason his powers would affect tungsten any more than, say, satellite materials. On a similar note, 'orbit' is several miles above the Earth's surface, which would imply he can strongly affect things with his magic from miles away. If this rod is large enough to survive reentry into the atmosphere and still hit the ground hard it would be just about suicidal anyway. This theoretical rod would hit the ground at more than five miles per second - its actual weight does not change this number. An asteroid from the asteroid belt would hit the ground at less than that speed, in fact, due to its less streamlined shape slowing it down more as it passes through the atmosphere. Also, if he's capable of pulling asteroids out of the asteroid belt that would imply that he can affect things with his magic from 350 million kilometres away, which is an exceedingly large number of miles and far further away than anything on, under, or above the face of the entire Earth.

Wasn't Zeus the name of the 'long rod' you mentioned he had in place orbiting the Earth? If you want to implement a giant doohickey in space that enables Ghalan to smash people with either the rod itself or gravity waves from said rod (whichever is the case), then we need to talk about how he got it up there, plus possibly what makes it not-OP.

Actually, the University is the only one of its kind. A global hub of magic, so to speak, hence the vast array of curious characters who frequent its corridors. Would that affect your estimated number of mages?

That does make sense; I always suspected that my numbers were somewhat implausibly small. How many do you estimate there should realistically be? I can edit the intro.

Approximately one in a million (which works out to about seven or eight thousand worldwide, give or take). It's stated in the RP's intro. Judging from the cross-section of the university's populace represented by our characters, which I would consider a fairly reliable indicator for this question, it's about a half-and-half Pelajae-human divide overall, so not really much of a difference in how either of them are treated by the other. Pelajae and humans have coexisted for thousands of years, too, as per the intro, so I can't imagine much of a culture divide there with how they treat their mages.

The university would most definitely keep a tight rein on that sort of bigotry, though; it has its own public image to uphold. To extend your firearm analogy, consider the American gun control debate. One side has guns almost by definition, and the other side has no guns almost by definition. Each side is quite aware of the other side's gun-possession status, but protest marches and public decries and online flame wars are still free and frequent, since the full force of the law prevents anyone on the one side from actually pointing a gun at anyone on the other side, let alone using it. If anyone uses their magic to threaten or injure someone with no magic (in cases other than self-defence), they'll end up in null-magic cuffs faster than they can say 'abracadabra'. Bear in mind that the government employs a fair few mages itself, its existing weapon capacities aren't entirely useless against magic-wielders anyway, and mages are a tiny and legally controversial minority and would thus be wise to step on as few political toes as possible.

Or to avoid getting publicly shamed online in a veritable firestorm of retaliation from untold thousands of magic-equality keyboard warriors. Ain't no powers that can shield you against that. The best one I can think of at the moment that doesn't sound overtly patronising is the term 'Arthurs' (in the sense of contrasting the non-magical King Arthur to the famously magical Merlin), but some further thought might be in order.