[center][h1][color=orangered]Seishun Academy of Swords[/color][/h1] The Seishun Academy of Swords, a prestigious academy dedicated solely to training new generations of swordsmiths in the art of forging swords. A rich, 400 year old history, carefully raising and crafting master sword-smiths since the very start of it all. The Academy does not have a very strict curriculum. Mostly the students are free to create swords as they please. However, there is pressure from various sources outside of the school for its students to excel. Various events in the surrounding city require swords for display, and anything less than a masterpiece would bring shame to the school. To hunt monsters in the nearby forest to obtain advanced crafting materials will require a well made sword to make up for a general lack of expertise. Dealing with pressures from family and peers as well is just another part of the curriculum. Whether or not it shows in the swords you make is up to your skill and will to succeed. Do you have what it takes to become the best swordsmith in the world?[/center] [hr] [center][h1]Intro[/h1][/center] Seishun Academy of Swords is an RP about forging swords. The academy issues challenges every so often to create certain swords for certain purposes and the students can also forge swords in their spare time to increase their skill. Base materials are provided by the academy but rarer metals and things like gemstones must be acquired either by gaining credit from certain faculty staff via the challenges or by finding them yourself in the Field. In the Field you can find monsters as well as raw materials to make alloys for advanced crafting. Slaying monsters can also give you monster materials to create swords from, and additionally higher level raw materials might sometimes be guarded by monsters. Mounting a Field Expedition can be quite dangerous for inexperienced students. Supplies will need to be taken on longer expeditions and increasing sword quality is a must for higher risk expeditions. Expeditions do not have to be taken alone but the Academy doesn't regulate the distribution of whatever is found by the students on an Expedition. Excess swords can be sold on the market for a tidy profit. Students will have to bring their swords to the market themselves, and the market owner will set up a stall for them. If their swords sell quite well, then there is a chance people will request swords specifically from them. Selling swords will be one of the only other ways to gain materials via getting money and buying new materials. [center][h2]Character Sheet[/h2][/center] [b]Name:[/b] Self Explanatory [b]Age:[/b] 13-18, unrealistic as that is [b]Appearance:[/b] Preferably an anime picture, but I'm not going to be picky [b]Bio:[/b] Personality and History, can be separate sections for both if you prefer [b]Specialty:[/b] Specialties in terms of smithing. Feel free to add any misc ones like washing stains out of clothes. That'd be a pretty sought after skill, actually. [hr] [center][h1]Tech[/h1][/center] [list] [*][hider=Posting] [center][h2]Post limit[/h2][/center] When a post limit is issued on a challenge it means that students will have a limited amount of posts in order to complete the forging of a sword in a challenge. Not every challenge will have a post limit but it may be imposed in order to keep posts flowing well. A limit of [u]2 combined banter or smithing actions[/u] are allowed per post before you have to wrap it up. Banter actions include asking someone for advice, going over to another student's workshop to steal ideas, or something along those lines. Conversations unless collaborated will take their own individual posts. A smithing action is any single action during the smithing process such as smelting the metals, or hammering the sword etc. Be comprehensive with your questions, and be exhaustive with your insults. Aim to get something with every line in order to maximize your time. [/hider] [*][hider=Sword Crafting] [center][h2]Sword Crafting(NEW!)[/h2][/center] In order to create a sword, [u]10 units[/u] of combined material must be used in order to forge the blade. Other metallic parts such as the handle can be included in the 10 unit cost depending. Embellishments such as gold trim or chains and whatnot won't usually even take up one unit of material but still need to be mentioned as taking something. Creating a scabbard takes [u]5 units[/u] of any particular material which includes its embellishments, depending on how overboard you want to go with the decorations. [/hider] [/list] [hr] [center][h1]Materials[/h1][/center] Materials currently known/available. Most materials will only be provided by the academy during challenges, the rest you'll have to order in game or find out in the field. [hider=Tier 0] Tier 0 materials are the basest materials a student will ever use. Things like Iron and Copper, relatively very low level materials which a smith of Seishun Academy wouldn't normally use unless there was a specific order for it. [list] [*][color=darkslategray]Iron:[/color] The most basic material, mid way in everything. Often a baseline, there's not much to say about this material. Due to the lack of special features means that to be used at a high level practically requires using a lot of iron to make an extremely heavy blade. There's not many other angles that you can really go for with Iron. [*][color=darkolivegreen]Copper:[/color] Another base material, but unlike Iron it has special features. Copper conducts magical energies quite well, and combined with a low melting point it makes for one of the easier materials to create magical swords with. That being said, copper swords generally have low durability which makes the material ill-suited for anything not a pure magical sword. Out of the tier 0 metals, Copper is the one most commonly used in higher level advanced crafts because it mixes well with other materials. [*][color=dimgray]Steel:[/color] Steel was first created by directly adding coals into molten iron during the forging process. Doing so increases the durability of Iron exponentially, however it makes it more brittle. Where as taking a strike with an iron sword would have dented it before, Steel will hold, making it a harder material to work with. While technically being a higher tier than iron, Steel belongs in the tier 0 category because of its incompatibility with advanced crafts. There's not many things a steel sword can do that some other sword can't do better. [/list] [/hider] [hider=Tier 1] [list] [*][color=silver]Silver:[/color] Silver is a light-weight material normally not suited to creating swords. Its durability is fairly questionable, but it conducts magic well and is well suited to making Exorcist blades for dealing with spirits. In general, Silver is a good medium for spirits and spiritual energies, but swords created using Silver are generally weak. [*][color=darkgoldenrod]Bronze[/color] Bronze is created by mixing Copper and Tin together. Bronze swords have an equal level of magic conductivity with Copper but are more durable. This does mean however that bronze can't be further mixed with something else due to already being an alloy. Bronze is commonly used to create ceremonial swords over copper as it is just a better material overall. [*][color=gold]Gold:[/color] Gold's magical conductivity is amongst the best of any material. However, it makes for a terrible material to make a whole sword with. Gold swords bend very easily and aren't reliable in the slightest. Creating a sword entirely out of gold even if it's a magic sword is heavily impractical. It is mainly used in ornaments and is very expensive to purchase because of how difficult it is to get a substantial amount of gold. [*][color=forestgreen]Tamahagane:[/color] Tamahagane is created by placing iron sand in a clay furnace and adding charcoal during the forging process in order to give it hardness. To create a blade using Tamahagane is a complex process involving folding together several layers of metal to create a thin, but strong blade. Mostly suited for creating eastern style swords, its full potential is realized when creating a Katana or a Jian. When creating a Tamahagane sword, the most important component is its core. The edge can be made of different metals but the core must be Tamahagane as it doesn't make too good of an edge without its core. [/list][/hider] [hider=Tier 2] [list] [*][color=black]Black Steel:[/color] Black Steel can be considered the final evolution of Iron. Black Steel is created using 100% purity steel and 100% purity coal in a 9-1 steel-coal ratio in order to strengthen the steel to the maximum without compromising the durability. What results is the extremely hard Black Steel which has the greatest durability out of any material Tier 2 and below. Even though the production of Black Steel costs exponentially more than normal steel, compared to higher tier materials it is still a much cheaper alternative, and can even be forged yourself if you get your hands on the right materials. [*][color=Slateblue]Cobalt:[/color] Cobalt is a blue metal which has the ability to hit spirits, similarly to Silver. Where the two materials differ is that Cobalt only has the ability to [i]hit[/i] spirits, while Silver has many more applications on the spiritual realm. Cobalt does not have the natural affinity for exorcism Silver does, and it is not suited for hosting spirits either. It does however make for a far better sword material being decently strong and still relatively light. [*][color=aquamarine]Mithril:[/color] Mithril is a light, almost glowing material, and the most difficult to work with amongst the tier 2 materials. It has good magical conductivity and good durability, making it generally just a good material. It can act as a conduit for spirits, like with Silver, and generally has more 'room' than silver does. Mithril is procured from special veins deep inside the earth, very rarely it can be found in aboveground caves as well. As a result, Mithril is very expensive and hard to obtain in large quantities. And while Mithril is just generally good, it can not be a specialist material. It serves a purpose as one of the best base materials but it serves little else. [/list][/hider] [hr] [center][h1][color=yellow]Current Challenge - God Sword Creation[/color][/h1][/center] There is a certain tree in Seishun Academy that has been around for something close to a century. It used to bloom beautiful cherry blossoms year-round but only when there were very few people to see it. Very few students knew the real reason the Sakura tree had lasted for so long; but with the announcement of this new challenge issued to the entire student body, everyone had found out the true reason for the tree's strange nature. The Sakura Tree was hosting a God. Not a very powerful or old one by any means, but still [i]a[/i] god all the same. When this fact had been initially found out, there were plans to seal off access to the tree, but the God itself expressed that it wanted to see how the world was. Time passed, many faces came and went, but now the tree was dying. It couldn't hold the power of a god forever, and the principal has finally managed to convince it to move hosts. This challenge is a schoolwide challenge aimed at the best swordsmiths to create a God Sword for the God to reside in. The winner of the challenge will be decided by the God itself as well as Kasumi, the spiritual realm instructor. The challenge will begin with all of the students standing in front of the tree which has been ritually prepared for the ceremony, complete with an altar in front ready to accept a sword. A stockpile of metals to be used is also there. The only materials that can be used are the ones from the stockpile as part of the challenge. The list of metals are as follows: [list] [*][color=darkslategray]Iron[/color] - [s]30 units[/s] 13 [*][color=darkolivegreen]Copper[/color] - [s]30 units[/s] 17 [*][color=dimgray]Steel[/color] - [s]30 units[/s] 10 [*][color=darkgoldenrod]Bronze[/color] - [s]20 units[/s] 11 [*][color=gold]Gold[/color] - [s]20 units[/s] 11 [*][color=forestgreen]Tamahagane[/color](NEW!) - [s]20 units[/s] 1 [*][color=aquamarine]Mithril[/color] - [s]15 units[/s] 10 [*][color=black]Black Steel[/color] - [s]15 units[/s] 0 [/list] The Winner of the Challenge is given the right to be able to talk to the God on occasion. Even though it won't be able to directly intervene with anything, it is a good informant that has been gathering information on Seishun Academy for almost a century. The God will appear only to the person who smithed the God Sword unless there is some kind of emergency.