[quote][@Alfhedil] Hi! [color=7ea7d8]Students attend the school for eight years[/color]. So 1st years to 8th years. A student's time at the school essentially starts once their gift manifests, so a late bloomer whose gift manifests when they are 19, would start as a 19-year-old first year and wouldn't graduate until their 8th year as a 26-year-old (this is rare, of course). Your year isn't determined by your age, but when your gift appears, since that marks your mandatory enrollment in the academy. However, it is very rare for someone's gift to manifest so late, but it does happen. Similarly, someone's gift may manifest well before puberty, but again, both cases are extremely rare and someone whose gift manifests as a baby, for example, would be sent somewhere else. [color=7ea7d8]For this RP, a character's age should be between 13-20. Generally, you will find most 1st-4th years within the 13-16 age range, while 5th-8th years are generally within the 16-20 age range, though this is not a hard and fast rule, just the norm for most students.
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Excellent, that works pretty well with both ideas I had in mind and gives me a bit of a better idea on how to work things.

[quote]Both of your character concepts would work; I think it's moreso a matter of which one you would find more interesting to write about as the story unfolds. :) Your gift concept sounds interesting, probably an Astra, though I don't exactly get how it works exactly. But that's kind of the point of Astras right? Their powers aren't usually cut and dry. lol  I love creative power concepts anyways, so once you write it out in more detail, I'm sure it'll be great.  Seems like a character who would absolutely take the Apprenticeship and Support class so they can apprentice for/or provide support to the Artificing and Magi-Tech Advancements Professor.

Anyways, that was a lot. Hope I answered your questions. 

Cheers!
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Okay so, with a bit more thonking involved and reworking some old ideas for the same character, the idea I'm leaning more towards is this. Sixth or Seventh year at most, but right around 20 either way and someone quite specialized in artifice due to her mentor. Workshopping an NPC here, a rather old man who's been around the Academy for #awhile and for a brief time fought in the 72 Year Liberation Wars as [i][b]Tyren the Boneweaver[/b][/i] for his combination of in-depth medical and artifice knowledge, but he's not really inclined to speak about those times simply referring to how he helped put people back together after the war. He's basically teaching Corrine(Just the first name for now for convenience lol) everything he knows about artifice and doing his best to steer her down the path of building and repairing, though she's not even near his level yet. There's more to the relationship between the two, but most I'll say for now is that it was Tyren who brought her to the Academy after putting her back together from a rather traumatic event.

And on the other end of the character, aside from her skill with artifice and love for making her own replacement parts, I was leaning towards the idea of her being older for a bit of a theme I like for this one in particular. That idea being that she's got a bit of a reputation for heroics and taking on rather dangerous missions through the portals. All sorts of rumors about how she's done this and that, how each trip through the portal is some epic saga. In truth, she's an absolute disaster and is winging it. Which is why she's more artifice than person at this point and to those who really know her feel she's more of a bad luck charm than anything. Like, she's almost a magnet for bad stuff lol. But hey, she makes it work [i]somehow[/i].

[quote=@Aeolian]magical guns do exist[/quote]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/raeZbAD.png[/img]

This is excellent, as I was going to rock a bit of a arcane/magitech gunslinger vibe with Corrine lmao. Also discord is pretty convenient, just to add in from above.