Raineh Daze

Academy Wars: Rituals and Technology in the Modern World, a Magitech School RP

<Snipped quote by Raineh Daze>

I volunteer to not fight the wrecking crew

@HereComesTheSnow

But that's the thing that makes Nerima fun! D:

Academy Wars: Rituals and Technology in the Modern World, a Magitech School RP

I say stick it in Nerima. : D

Academy Wars: Rituals and Technology in the Modern World, a Magitech School RP

I've been misled

@HereComesTheSnow

Well, I don't think it was intentionally suggested at any point? ^^;

---

Earlier, I decided to write up a few things for each type of Ritual Technology, in case people were struggling with ideas and/or what sort of weirdness is acceptable. So...

Admittedly, the first one is something of a no-go without an extremely, extremely good reason. But hey.

Divine Gears&#91;/hider

Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi

The actual Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi is rather dull: a straight sword with a blackened blade and white grip, and somewhat blunt. Having been converted into a Divine Gear, it has regained its ability to direct winds.
At its simplest, every swing of the blade can launch arcs of razor-sharp wind moving faster than most vehicles. It can also make up for its rather short range by focusing the air into a sharp vortex that creates an invisible ‘blade’ up to dozens of times larger than the Kusanagi, which can launch the same (enlarged) arcs. These abilities are shared (to a degree) amongst most Divine Gears drawing on the Kusanagi.
The weapon’s unique ability is in its ability to direct the wind, whether as simply as in myth to fan a fire or, more likely, to use the environment against an opponent. The blade can be used to direct the air into forming a full tornado or several but can also be used to affect the air on a large enough scale as to create a hurricane.

Hydro Whip

In its base state, the whip looks like worn black leather, with all the actual ritual technology concentrated in the handle. Whilst it can be used to just sting, that would be fairly useless as an actual weapon and so its resting state is significantly more controllable than training would permit (though you need to know how to use it anyway), making it useful for grappling, pulling people closer, disarming, and being Indiana Jones.
However, the whip can transform into a harder-hitting version made of extremely-flexible-but-heavy chains, losing out on the gripping potential for momentum… and the ability to grow new links to stretch out or shorten as appropriate. The chains are, naturally, tipped with a sharp metal blade to dig into enemies or cut them.
Its name comes from the whip’s third transformed state: a vibrating column of boiling water that exists as a happy medium in controllability between the first and the second forms, which can’t really grip but can saw or sear through targets.

Ritual Devices

Chiron Pact

This pact requires the pactee to tend to the injuries of those they meet, or forfeit access to its various abilities until an appropriate restitution has been made.
As a famous teacher, one of the abilities granted by this Ritual Device is better retention of information, of any sort. That is, it makes it a lot easier for the pactee to learn things, from random trivia down to perfecting muscle memory to learn a new weapon in a far shorter time than is normal. Chiron himself can teach via the Device, if he wants.
Another of the pact’s functions is to provide healing, either through being able to imbue bandages and the like with magical energy or through sticking the same energy on, say, an arrow and shooting the injured person for a more general regenerative effect. This can also be used to turn any food or drink into ‘medicine’ with a healing (and stimulative) effect.
Finally, the pact can vastly improve various attributes required for hunting: extreme agility, enhanced senses, and even a chameleon-like effect to blend in with their surroundings.
Naturally, because the pact has little in the way of direct combat applications, anyone using this ritual device has to rely on their wits and building up a library of skills to compensate.

God of Battle

This Ritual Device forms a pact with a nameless god of fighting, who therefore has quite the interest in the pactee actually getting in fights. This means that, as a downside, they’re constantly being egged on by the world’s least punishable source of peer pressure. On the upside, there’s no restrictions to getting the benefits from the pact.
The biggest boost is that the pactee receives a sort of sixth sense for danger, as well as an ever-present commentator that has centuries of combat experience, that allows them to respond even to surprise attacks or unknown styles.
Another benefit is the ability to wield any weapon as if trained in using it for years, though with no conscious knowledge of what they’re doing. It doesn’t matter if it’s a sword, bow, some bizarre multi-bladed wheel of death, or even a shield--so long as it’s an actual weapon.
Finally, the user gets an immense increase to their durability and ability to fight despite injury. Though not an offensive boost, being hard to seriously injure and able to fight on long after a normal person would have bled to death is almost as good.

Sacrifice Cauldrons&#91;/hider

Shield Remote

This remote, in its base version, requires batteries as a sacrifice--charged batteries. However, one AA battery is enough to get through a fight without problems, unless it’s heavily used with extreme settings. Aside from the hole at the bottom, it has fairly intuitive buttons and what looks like a slider.
As the name suggests, the remote creates circular or rectangular shields of blue energy, up to the size of a car. By default they just block--and can absorb a truly horrendous amount of punishment, but their protection can be weakened to set them to reflective or shocking modes as a form of offence.
Far from being fixed in place, they can be moved around until deactivated, and multiple can be linked to mirror each other's’ images--for instance, to box in an opponent or squash them. They can also be used as a bludgeon, because the force they can hit with is limited only by the charge expended.

Beastmaster’s Funnel

This Sacrifice Cauldron is extremely straightforward in its use and operation, but not the most direct way to fight someone else. A fairly large--dinner-plate sized--chrome funnel with a surprising amount of flashing lights, it takes as its sacrifices representations of various creatures, real or not. It promptly spits out an energy sphere that grows into a full-size replica (or smaller, controlled by a lever).
The user can then command and control the beast, but it’s limited to only one at a time, preventing someone from getting an army of dragons by tossing in a handful of plastic toys. A larger, more valuable sacrifice also means a longer-lasting and more durable representation.
It has a secondary use in that if a piece of meat is sacrificed instead whilst pointing at some creature, the user can control it as if it was a representation. This is not strictly relegated to mundane animals, either.
The Beastmaster’s Funnel isn’t limited to creating things that actually exist: if you feed it a teddy bear, you will promptly get a giant teddy bear to command in battle.

Academy Wars: Rituals and Technology in the Modern World, a Magitech School RP

That is the most overly long post I have ever seen to have a character open a door. Somehow even referencing the Nazis.

Apparently, someone high up in the food chain sensed some crazy talent or latent potential left to unlock in me, that I have no idea of. That's my only explanation for this one: I've been selected as a candidate to fight in the Annual Academy Tournament. These shindigs are Huge, with a capital H, to these schools. I can tell that as a relative newcomer to the system easily, so them picking a girl as green as I am even for consideration can mean, in my mind, just a couple of things:

Also, more or less everyone takes part. You're not specifically singled out.

Academy Wars: Rituals and Technology in the Modern World, a Magitech School RP

Jennifer White

Briefly, Jen had a chance to try to react to having a girl on her sword (hardly a comfortable place to stand with all the machinery on it) before some other force sent the blade careening into the ground, where it ground to a halt. The blonde was equally baffled by the sudden change in direction independent of being stood on until the watching boy apologised for his interference. The English girl was in no mood to actually prevent Ruriko from hitting him (once), given the danger if her blade had actually deflected off the floor and hit one of them purely by chance.

The training rooms were reinforced so that students could actually put their abilities to use without blowing holes in the walls; why hadn't it deflected?

It was when the teacher came in and broke the fight up that the now-standing Jen realised exactly why she hadn't removed her own ankles or something: her Gear's cutting reinforcement and the speed with which it had swung had actually created a deep gouge in the floor. Hopefully she didn't get made to pay for that or something...

Fortunately, the teacher that had shown up was one that had no reason to dislike the blonde: PE was the class she had the best attendance for and where she actually performed well. It meant that she actually had a good chance of Akira listening to her justification: "Ah... I came in to train and Yuriko started waving her sword around going on about a mock battle and I was worried she'd gone crazy. That guy accepted a duel before I could go find a teacher, though."

---

Tachibana Kaede

"I'm pretty good, but I wouldn't call myself one of the best. I guess I'll do better if I take it more seriously this time, since it's my last chance--it's really hard to get into a competitive mindset for a tournament revolving around doing your best to put someone in an inescapably fatal situation, don't you think?" the redhead ruminated, wishing that there'd be less direct combat with other people in the things. Maybe a few set up as exhibition matches, but some sort of simulated monster-hunting as the main attraction seemed more appealing and in the spirit of showing which school would be best in the event of an outbreak. It would be better than just introducing variable terrain, since you'd already removed the honourable duelling part.

She wished that people would stop being so obsessed with whether or not they could win. Of course they could win but it was an international tournament with a huge amount of competitors, doing well enough to get in the top ten was a pretty big achievement on its own. "Yeah, we can win. I think last years' winners' powerhouses graduated, so it should make for less stiff competition."

Academy Wars: Rituals and Technology in the Modern World, a Magitech School RP

Going incrementally back to my original idea for the ability; how's this look?

The nature of the god that her pact is with allows her, put simply, to link two objects together. These links take the form of ethereal red strands from one to the other. Through these links, she can cause one to take on the properties of another, whether it be temperature, mass, or even velocity. Alternatively, she can bind the fate of them together, causing changes that would have only affected one transfer to the other. This ability allows her to effectively clone objects, granting her the ability to form an arsenal should she have access to a single weapon. This is easiest to accomplish on inanimate objects, though she has had some success with linking herself with something else. Binding a target with itself has the peculiar effect of amplifying its traits in a feedback loop, which she uses to great effect to boost her own physical capabilities beyond what her body could naturally handle.

@Caasicam

Would that also amplify injuries taken?

Academy Wars: Rituals and Technology in the Modern World, a Magitech School RP

Faculty:

• Name: Dr. Sakura Saotome (Western order)
• Age: 29
• Gender: Female
• Appearance

  Seems immune to ageing, and is actually pretty huge for a Japanese woman--5'9.
• Personality: Sakura is shy and rather lacking in confidence, especially as she's not had to do any sort of teaching for a while (nor supervise people when they might set things on fire). She's unfailingly nice, though, even if easy to upset... and incredibly competitive with video games.
• Skills: Though she's out of shape, Sakura did attend a Ritual Technology school and hasn't forgotten how to employ her Divine Gear to fight, which is rather more threatening because it's been worked on and upgraded over the years, mostly by Sakura herself. Her knowledge of the science behind Ritual Technology is pretty comprehensive, and science in general. Most importantly, however, she can and will beat you at video games--explaining how her ability to use the Gear hasn't decreased.
• Equipment: A nameless glove that Sakura's uncle initially built, but has been extensively altered and customised. It's a pretty thin black-and-silver deal and looks a lot less threatening than it is--though the lenses hidden amongst the silver are a giveaway. Since she's left-handed, that's where the glove is worn.
• Abilities: As a Divine Gear that's been tinkered, upgraded, and rebuilt by an occasionally-mad scientist over the past fourteen years, the glove has quite a few abilities, customised to Sakura's preferences:
  HoloDisplay: Always on when the gear's in use, it generates a HUD-type deal over her glasses. This actually has three modes--one's basically just a personal planner and clock and another links to the Divinity Network and positions a virtual keyboard in front of Sakura. The third is the more useful one for a fight: it shows an aiming reticle where her fingers are pointing, a recharging bar, and can be set to highlight enemies in red and friends in blue, which helps with darkness. The other component of the display is basically a sidebar showing representations of different forms of shot, because...
  Finger Gun: The glove... can shoot, should Sakura start making the appropriate motions. It has numerous different firing modes, with the mana consumption for the large ones requiring a recharge before anything large can be fired. They are, unsurprisingly, modelled on various FPS guns: a standard bullet, rapid-fire machinegun, a quick but chargeable laser, an exploding orb-cum-rocket launcher... but also arcing lightning, a plasma-lookalike flamethrower mode, and a close-quarters choice that just has five bright strands from her fingers, because energy whips are handy if people get close.
  Stay-Warm Feature: The glove can keep drinks she's holding warm. Handy, that.
• Brief Backstory: Sakura was never a student at Otsuki, attending a different, older institution that actually managed to win. Upon graduation, she proved her intelligence by making her way into Todai, eventually leaving for a private research company after completing research on a cheaper Light Engine manufacturing method.
  Unfortunately, the company went bust and, after over a year of being unable to find a job, she by chance met one of Otsuki's teachers one night and found that they were looking for a science teacher. Though Sakura really didn't think herself particularly suited for a teaching position, it was better to try than nothing and she started working there shortly before the summer break.
• Position: Science Teacher, Ritual Technology repairman.

Academy Wars: Rituals and Technology in the Modern World, a Magitech School RP

Decided to contribute to the faculty.

Faculty:

• Name: Dr. Sakura Saotome (Western order)
• Age: 29
• Gender: Female
• Appearance

  Seems immune to ageing, and is actually pretty huge for a Japanese woman--5'9.
• Personality: Sakura is shy and rather lacking in confidence, especially as she's not had to do any sort of teaching for a while (nor supervise people when they might set things on fire). She's unfailingly nice, though, even if easy to upset... and incredibly competitive with video games.
• Skills: Though she's out of shape, Sakura did attend a Ritual Technology school and hasn't forgotten how to employ her Divine Gear to fight, which is rather more threatening because it's been worked on and upgraded over the years, mostly by Sakura herself. Her knowledge of the science behind Ritual Technology is pretty comprehensive, and science in general. Most importantly, however, she can and will beat you at video games--explaining how her ability to use the Gear hasn't decreased.
• Equipment: A nameless glove that Sakura's uncle initially built, but has been extensively altered and customised. It's a pretty thin black-and-silver deal and looks a lot less threatening than it is--though the lenses hidden amongst the silver are a giveaway. Since she's left-handed, that's where the glove is worn.
• Abilities: As a Divine Gear that's been tinkered, upgraded, and rebuilt by an occasionally-mad scientist over the past fourteen years, the glove has quite a few abilities, customised to Sakura's preferences:
  HoloDisplay: Always on when the gear's in use, it generates a HUD-type deal over her glasses. This actually has three modes--one's basically just a personal planner and clock and another links to the Divinity Network and positions a virtual keyboard in front of Sakura. The third is the more useful one for a fight: it shows an aiming reticle where her fingers are pointing, a recharging bar, and can be set to highlight enemies in red and friends in blue, which helps with darkness. The other component of the display is basically a sidebar showing representations of different forms of shot, because...
  Finger Gun: The glove... can shoot, should Sakura start making the appropriate motions. It has numerous different firing modes, with the mana consumption for the large ones requiring a recharge before anything large can be fired. They are, unsurprisingly, modelled on various FPS guns: a standard bullet, rapid-fire machinegun, a quick but chargeable laser, an exploding orb-cum-rocket launcher... but also arcing lightning, a plasma-lookalike flamethrower mode, and a close-quarters choice that just has five bright strands from her fingers, because energy whips are handy if people get close.
  Stay-Warm Feature: The glove can keep drinks she's holding warm. Handy, that.
• Brief Backstory: Sakura was never a student at Otsuki, attending a different, older institution that actually managed to win. Upon graduation, she proved her intelligence by making her way into Todai, eventually leaving for a private research company after completing research on a cheaper Light Engine manufacturing method.
  Unfortunately, the company went bust and, after over a year of being unable to find a job, she by chance met one of Otsuki's teachers one night and found that they were looking for a science teacher. Though Sakura really didn't think herself particularly suited for a teaching position, it was better to try than nothing and she started working there shortly before the summer break.
• Position: Science Teacher, Ritual Technology repairman.

Academy Wars: Rituals and Technology in the Modern World, a Magitech School RP

I'm a little concerned that the Ritual Device doesn't have enough capability to be used in combat.

@VitaVitaAR

That is... the roleplay's entire premise is that a combative tournament is substituting for murdering random monstrous invaders. With an ability like that and fighting skill of 'I know some self defence', you go from 'underpowered' to 'I like glorified suicide'.

I can see several ways it would be useful in combat, but none more actually... worth using than just having a really strong headbutt.

I Became a Monster, But Why?!

...It's too late for me to jump in, isn't it? Sorry, just kind of got hit by stuff and kind of couldn't figure stuff out and spent too long freaking out about getting stuff done um sorry.

@Rin

We have moved one room only. Your character has had to get used to having no bones, muscles, or differentiated tissues at all. That's a pretty big jump to make. Why would it be too late? I think someone joined yesterday... @_@