melodiesofeternity | Event || Worldwide Tourists

Event || Worldwide Tourists

Who: All New Arrivals and Curti Center Staff
When: April 15th-30th
Where: All over Vaikuntha, starting outside of the airship hanger
What: Ganeshan, the resident Job Expert, will be taking the new arrivals around the the various Guilds so they can collect their chosen Job Asterisks as noted in their applications.
Warnings/Notes: Guild prompts can be found here

Enter the Master

[Each new arrival's iMog buzzes with a message instructing them to gather for a worldwide adventure to obtain the power of Vaikuntha. If they follow the invitation's instructions, they will arrive at outside of the airship hanger on the morning of the 15th, with their meager belongings packed.

An Enterprise-Class airship, the Ragnarok, hovers outside of the Curti Center. There is a flash of light on the top of the ship.]

"WELCOME!"

[A figure, minuscule at this distance, launches itself off of the ship and hurtles toward the ground. As he draws closer to the ground, he starts to flip, landing with a flourish. An armored figure, sans helm, turns his toothy Zora grin to the crowd. With a shimmer, his armor transforms into a white mage's robe, and he sends a rush of wind through the crowd for dramatic effect.]

"I AM GANESHAN, THE JOB MASTER! GYA HA HA HA! TODAY, YOUR LIVES WILL CHANGE FOREVER."

[Ganeshan shimmers again, ruthlessly abusing the Chemist's Modifier skill to once again shift Job Classes so he can lower the airship's loading dock with a wave of his hand.]

"I BELIEVE THAT EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU HAS THE ABILITY TO MASTER THE JOB CLASSES. SOME OF YOU MAY MASTER MANY, OTHERS WILL PURSUE THE PERFECT MASTERY OF JUST ONE. BUT EITHER WAY, YOU'LL BE INCREDIBLE!"

[Ganeshan gives everyone a big thumbs-up. The out-worlders who are not scared off by this booming speech can feel free to enter the airship and prepare for their ride around the world. Hopefully some of the Curti Center's newest hires can serve as ~~non-crazy~~ less exuberant tour guides for the new arrivals.]

Around the World

[The Ragnarok will be stopping at every major city in Vaikuntha, with the exception of those cut off by the Imperial border closing. Characters can create top levels to respond to the Guild prompts and explore the cities themselves as the ship makes its stops. Each Guild provides information sessions, free food and trinkets for potential applicants, and once you're ready to receive your Asterisk, all you have to do is take some introductory lessons and fill out forms. Characters can receive up to two asterisks. Time to get to know your new world!

Questions for Ganeshan can be directed to the Ganeshan top level post.]

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"Now that's kind of a long story." A very long story, if Connie wanted to go into details, but she got the feeling she'd already confused Hunk enough for one day.

"So, you know that magic lion I mentioned earlier? A little while after I met Steven, a movie that we both really wanted to see came out, but the theater was too far away for us to walk there, and we didn't have a ride. Steven then introduced me to Lion--yes, that's actually his name, don't question it--so we could ride him there.

"Turns out that the lion could both walk on water and teleport, so, um. That was a thing that happened. We ended up in this weird, secret rebel armory. After messing around a little bit, we activated this... drone? Training robot? I think? And ended up running, or, erm, warping away to the actual movie theater.

"The robot followed us through the warp tunnel, though, and tore up the scenery a little bit--I had ash and pieces of rubble stuck in my hair for days afterwards--before Lion started glowing, and Steven drew this massive sword belonging to his mom out of his mane. It was... kinda like tennis after that, actually, which was good because I'm actually pretty good at tennis. We reflected its weird energy balls back into its mouth thing.

"Did that make any sense at all?"

"Yeah, it made sense." Though Hunk kind of wished it didn't, so he could gloss over everything instead of lining up his questions. But as those thoughts came together, he decided to counter.

"My Lion, I call him Yellow. He's awesome, and can materialize armor, giant metal claws, and a shoulder-mounted laser cannon out of thin air. And he can't teleport," though Hunk found himself thrilled at the notion, "but he can use wormholes and fly fast enough to break orbit!"

He didn't feel the need to say that pulling a sword out of a lion's mane didn't sound that odd by comparison. Now that his Lion-based riposte was complete, he veered into his questions.

"Did tennis transfer over to swordplay? Why didn't anyone else try to do something about this robot, like a cop? And if you pulled the sword out of the lion, then is it a lion or a sheath?"

Connie's eyes begin shining when Hunk begins describing his own magic lion. Yellow sounded cool. No, not cool, amazing. No, no, no, fantastic. If Lion had actually been with her at that moment and Steven didn't let slip that he probably got his powers by being zombified by Rose, she would've been tempted to test for more hidden powers of the feline.

"Well, um, the Armory was pretty far away from any civilization. Like, at all," Connie explains. "It's apparently a few hours trek away from the nearest warp pad, too, which is the... normal, non-Lion means of transport for the Crystal Gems, and once we got to the movie theater, the robot only blew things up for a few minutes before we got things under control.

"As for the sheath question, well, it's more like... hm. The sword has an actual sheath, there was actually some big drama about that when they found it, but..." Connie struggles to come up with an analogy for Lion's mane, "Do you know what a bag of holding is? Lion's mane is a prettier version of that. Steven even keeps his bike in there."

Edited 2018-04-30 14:50 (UTC)

Hunk gasps, and quite loudly at that, at the mention of a bag of holding. Forget the Armory's isolation, there's bigger topic-fish to fry, and this Paladin is grinning ear to ear.

"Wait wait wait, your world had successful teleportation of organic matter and pocket dimensional spaces?" Some of the goofiness in his demeanor has faded away by this point, and one of Hunk's hands reaches back into his backpack, rooting around awkwardly.

"Do... you know how it worked? Or are they ancient secrets, lost to time?"

Connie definitely wasn't the expert on this, but at least she had some theories. "Well, as far as I can tell the Warp sends you into an extradimensional space that compresses distance by a fair amount," she explains. "The column is mostly there to keep you from being frozen, since it's basically just void outside of the blue light. As for the extradimensional spaces... I honestly have no clue. Physics and logic probably just threw in the towel as soon as magical tears started resurrecting people and turning them pink."

"So definitely ancient secrets, got it." Hunk sighs, disappointed. Having a teleporter array would've made Team Voltron's lives a lot easier, plus they were even further on the cutting-edge of science that space lions. Oh, well...

"Pink? Not like some kind of zombie green? Or sinister purple?" He sounds wholly unimpressed. If you're resurrecting people into different colors, they should look like zombies! But if those tears are magic, then...

"Isn't any magic just science you don't have the theories behind?"

"I mean, if they have a pocket dimension inside their hair that's shared with other dead-ees, I'm pretty sure that you can just throw most zombie rules out the window," Connie says. She almost gave up on logic entirely when Steven shared exactly how he ended up getting home.

"...that's why I chose Magitek Knight, honestly." Connie sighs. "Sure, blowing things up is fun and all, but I just wouldn't be able to function as a Black Mage without knowing exactly how and why the magic works. At least with this asterisk, it's primarily just applied science that can even be improved and better understood though experimentation."

"But... hm..." Hunk makes a face, furrows his brow, and looks half-about to continue his thought two separate times before the words finally manifest.

"Even magic has rules. My world had stuff that seemed like magic, but..." He pauses again. This is a deeply complicated subject, and he's clearly trying to condense it. "...they called it Alchemy. It had rules, and could be learned." With a crazy spirit quest adventure blocked to all but a chosen few, but still.

"You probably just didn't find the right person to ask about pocket dimensions and pink zombies. Someone had to know!" He laughs, and then shakes his head. "I bet some of those Black Mages are eccentric eggheads. I mean, they can use dolls."

That wasn't her point, though. She knew that through the power of an asterisk and through performing certain actions, she could get results. It was the lack of a why performing gesticulations and yelling "Fire!" at the top of your lungs created a fireball that continued to infuriate her. "Yes, magic has rules, but they're completely and utterly inscrutable! It's a black box! You do X, Y happens. At least with magitek the fundamental rules lose some of their opacity through experimentation, you know which runes do what and can potentially ascertain why they do that thing through experimentation, and anyways, most of it is rooted in conventional science that just use crystals as a power source," Connie argues.

"...good point about the dolls, though. Why does anyone use them? They're just plain creepy."

Edited 2018-05-09 18:58 (UTC)

"Some of the dolls are cute!" He smiles, but then shrugs. Different strokes. "The rules are inscrutable because you don't know where to learn. One of my friends went on an ancient, forgotten pilgrimage to a spiritual promised land to learn the rules behind her weird magic." He says this with a mix of baffled derision and childish wonder. Sure, it's cool, but it was still just a lot to comprehend. They had to navigate by cave poetry.

"But there are whole guilds for the magic here. There's history." He laughs, a hint of sarcasm nearly drowned out by whimsy. "One of them's even called the Scholar! You just have to figure out who to ask."

It was almost annoying how right Hunk was being. Connie was used to being the rational one. "Alright, alright. I guess I'll at least make an effort, although I doubt it'll get me anywhere considering how even the Tactician guild just gave me 'don't think about it and just use the spells' as an answer."

She sighs and shakes her head. "The Scholar's guild might be a bit more useful, I suppose. Who knows, they might just be not bothering to explain it to me because I'm a kid and there's no way I could grasp the intricate nuances of magic." Connie says that last part with no small amount of bitterness in her voice.

"Well, Tacticians need to know the practice, not the history, of course their guild wouldn't be helpful. Scholars and..." He pauses, scratching at his chin. "Summoners. Their Eidolons are important enough to get temples, so their guild might know more." And then Hunk nods sagely, before glancing at Connie and sizing her up.

"And you're not gonna get anywhere if you don't think you can. If you show them you want to learn, they probably won't care about your age." He chuckles, and shrugs his shoulders. "How old even are you, anyway?"

Maybe, but Connie somehow doubted it. Her only experience in that sort of thing was in convincing an alien that didn't have the capacity to process how short a human lifespan really was in comparison to her own, but who knows? Perhaps she could convince someone to actually talk to her.

Well, hopefully Hunk wouldn't judge her. "Thirteen. I'm, um, thirteen years old," Connie says.

"Y'know..." Hunk gives her a snarky look, weighted more with humor than condescension. His tone, on the other hand, is akin to a disappointed older sibling. "Whatever happened to being all like," and then he lowers his voice, making it particularly gravelly and edgy, "My age doesn't matter?"

Then Hunk starts coughing from the strain on his throat, but he shrugs it off after a few gasping breaths that devolve into self-deprecating laughter. "But if it makes you feel any better, one of my friends is fif... teen... I think? And she's a defender of the universe, a brilliant hacker, and she kicks a ton of butt."

Connie snickers. Hunk may have a point. "Okay, okay, I miiight be a bit touchy about that. Comes with having a smother for a mother, you know? 'You can't do that, you're too young!'" As good of a mom Priyanka was, she was also... overbearing. And overprotective. A lot of undesirable "overs" really. At least Connie could thank Priayanka for her academic successes.

Hunk's description of his friend does pique Connie's interest. "Really? Did she also pilot one of the lion-mecha?"

"Well, your mom's not here, so you can do whatever you want." And then he pauses, his eyes going wide, as he follows up. "As long as it's not illegal." But at the mention of his good pal Pidge, Hunk just started grinning. No snark, no jokes, just enthusiasm.

"Yep! The green one has a shield, normal lasers, a plant laser, and she hacked a cloaking device into it. It's no big deal." The way he says it though, implies that it's no big deal for her. "Also she uses a little shocky-dagger grappling-hook thing. It's a lot more versatile than my giant gun."

Okay, that did sound pretty impressive. Not just pretty impressive, as a matter of fact, but amazing. "That sounds awesome! What kind of adventures did you guys have? A plant laser? What did it do?" She'll continue incessantly peppering Hunk with questions about his time as a Defender of the Universe, smiling throughout.

(( Sounds good to me! We can either assume she asked a bunch of questions and got a flood of answers, or asked a bunch of questions and got promised a list of answers over the Mognet. Whichever you think would be more doable. No need to decide anytime soon, and we can always discuss the specs of what she did/didn't learn as it's relevant to future tags.

Also for regain and tracking purposes, this thread was 15 tags for Connie and 14 for Hunk. ))

((First makes sense for me!))

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Event || Worldwide Tourists

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Probably end the thread here? Sorry, need to start focusing on OUaD

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