The Magus University Superdraft

[DShomshak]

Eh, it's not over yet. And Seigfried and Roy might fit well with my plan for next year.

 

I'll probably be a bit late in posting my final pick. It's Father Brown night on my local PBS station, so writing must wait until after that.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Psybolt]

Fencing Instructor:  Inigo Montoya

 

 

 

Option:  Student (Incoming Freshman):  Grogu

 

 

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Distinguishing landmark: Kitchen Stadium!

 

Dean Brown is a strong believer in the power of competition. "Taste the relish to be found in competition - in having put forth the best within you." To that end, he has created Kitchen Stadium, an intimidatingly cavernous luxury facility to contain the institute's legendary intramural culinary competitions. With the magical resources at hand, the students can truly indulge their comestible eldritch visions. They still talk about the great battle between the gingerbread golems and the calamari militia! 

 

[Old Man]

46 minutes ago, Psybolt said:

Fencing Instructor:  Inigo Montoya

 

 

 

Option:  Student (Incoming Freshman):  Grogu

 

 

Sniped!

[DShomshak]

Option: Mystic Cosmology

 

Modern Hermetics accept that the real, physical, Sun, Moon and planets seen in the sky are not actually carried about the Earth on crystal spheres. Mystically, however, each celestial body remains linked to a dimension of supernatural power. Whether you view these dimensions as a ladder from Earth to the stars, or as a set of concentric spheres, makes no difference for practical magic. Hermetics now call these celestial realms by the Hebrew names of the celestial bodies. Heading outward or upward from Earth, they are:

 

* Levanah, the Sphere of the Moon;

* Kokab, the Sphere of Mercury;

* Nogah, the Sphere of Venus;

* Shemesh, the Sphere of the Sun;

* Madim, the Sphere of Mars;

* Tzedeq, the Sphere of Jupiter;

* Shabatai, the Sphere of Saturn; and

* Masloth, the Sphere of the Fixed Stars and, especially, the Zodiac.

 

[EDIT: Or so claimed Aleister Crowley in his book 777.]

 

Sufficiently powerful mages can visit these realms — and must do so in order to gain supernatural tokens of passage from the dimension’s Archon, or ruling spirit. Only mages who collect tokens from all seven planetary Archons can ascend to Masloth and go beyond it to the Godhead.

 

Each realm appears to visitors as a world with people of its own. Some are more Earthlike than others. Tzedeq, for instance, is a world of fierce winds and layered cloud-decks, wracked with storm, in which sky islands drift like bubbles in a river. Fortunately, visitors from Earth grow wings; and Hermetics find their blasting rods turned extra-blasty, as this visiting grad student finds:

 

https://www.deviantart.com/whiteraven90/art/The-Conductor-874673763

 

Students at the Paolini Academy also do not need to rely exclusively on their own magic. The Academy is housed in a Renaissance Italianate villa with four short towers at each corner. The attic floor of the fourth tower is one big room with a silver magic circle inlaid in the floor and all the substances and symbols of the Moon placed around it. This circle can translate any halfway-competent mage to Levanah. The stairs continue up beyond where the roof should be to six further chambers, each holding magical gates to the other planetary realms from Kokab to Shabatai.

 

Students are not supposed to make unauthorized visits to other dimensions — but of course they do. Not everyone makes it back, since there are no corresponding magic circles in the celestial realms. These realms are also quite dangerous. Magister Paolini doesn’t try too hard to block students from ill-planned jaunts to other worlds: Thus does the low end of the grading curve weed itself from the student body.

 

Today sees an authorized expedition to Madim, the Sphere of Mars. The inhabitants of Madim have their own peculiar technology, allegedly from the ancient past of their world. Repairs to an important facility are proving beyond the competence of its caretakers, so they sent a mystic plea for aid to the Academy. Magister Paolini, in turn, asked the Department of Magitechnology for a suitable engineer, and Professor Heterodyne was more than happy to volunteer. The three members of the expedition gather at the Gateway Chamber to Mars…

 

“Bethany will get us there and back,” Professor Heterodyne explained to her protegée. Behind the two women, their toolboxes hovered on whirring helicopter blades. Witchcraft, meanwhile, lit iron braziers chased with images of bears and wolves, and added pinches of pepper and cinnamon. “Mars is fun. I’ve been there before, you’ll like it.”

 

“I’m looking forward to it, Professor,” Jordan said, “The Nine Rays technology sounds fascinating. Except that when I asked Bob for reference materials about Madim he got this sort of far off look in his eye sockets and asked if I would take pictures since he couldn’t come along. Which made me kind of nervous. Because Bob. And the bestiary I checked out seemed mostly to be predators. I suppose that makes sense for Mars, planet of war and all that, but still. And lust. Violent lust. Which brings me again to Bob. Do Martians really all dress that way? It seems… kind of… S&M.”

 

“Well, yes,” Professor Heterodyne said. “There’s lots of fighting, and it’s usually to the death. Passions tend to become absolute on Mars. Total love or loyalty, total hatred or treachery. Everything up to 11, as Ripper Giles puts it. But people also fight fair. Amazingly fair, really. We’ll probably get in a few fights, maybe an actual battle, but we’re Sparks and mages, we can handle it. And while men tend to be a bit… old fashioned… in how they treat women, some of them can be very nice and appreciate strong, capable women. Right, Bethany?”

 

Witchcraft blushed as she gestured them into the circle. “Yawn to pop your ears,” she said. “It makes the dimensional transit less disorienting.” The two engineers’ toolboxes flew after them into the center of the diagram. Witchcraft carried her own satchel of tools. She brandished a steel dagger and said five words of no Earthly tongue.

 

The room dissolved in a storm of crimson sparks. Jordan felt herself drawn upward at tremendous, impossible speed. For a split second, she glimpsed the stars around a rapidly receding Earth. Then the crimson sparks swirled around her again. She swayed as she found herself standing on level sand, dizzy, and almost fell. She felt much lighter, too. Jordan glanced over at the other two women. Her jaw dropped. Then she looked down at herself.

 

“Really?” she demanded. “We have to go around like this, too?” The three of them wore only wisps of silk and some jewelry.

 

Witchcraft gave an embarrassed shrug. “It’s the rules of the world,” she said. The dimensional transfer makes you fit in.”

 

Professor Heterodyne smirked. “Part of the rules is that if you’ve got it, flaunt it. And that you’ve got it. In this world — to use Ripper’ phrasing again — everyone is buff and hot. Including you, so enjoy it! I did, on my earlier visit. And you, Bethany…?”

 

Witchcraft blushed again. “I’d rather not talk about it. Why don’t you practice walking in the lower gravity, Jordan, while I conjure us some thoats. I think we’re still several miles from the air factory, and I’d rather not walk, or draw too much attention by flying.”

 

Jordan looked down at herself. Her waist did seem narrower; her hips and bust, fuller. She looked and felt toned, like a swimsuit model. And dressed in nothing more than one, too. It was all very embarrassing while also being… she wasn’t sure what. She told herself to concentrate on learning to walk without falling over or — she soon found — catapulting herself head over heels 10 meters through the air.

 

A few minutes later, they rode the six-legged thoats over the red Martian desert. Their toolboxes hummed behind them, a welcome reminder of normality in this alien world. Professor Heterodyne asked, perhaps a little too casually, Jordan thought, “That red Martian bandit chief we encountered last time? With the shoulders? It’s a big world, I don’t suppose there’s really much chance we’d meet him again?”

 

Witchcraft sighed and rolled her eyes. “I’d say it’s a near certainty. That’s also the rules. And I guarantee, he’s not forgotten you.” She paused, then added to Jordan: “Oh, and in case it didn’t come up in your preparation? The people here don’t call their world ‘Madim.’ That’s just an Earth name. They call it ‘Barsoom.’”

 

[Spoilered for cheesecake, just in case.]

Spoiler

 

Dean Shomshak

(Apologies if I’ve written Agatha Heterodyne badly. I’m not familiar with the character. It’s also been a few decades since I saw Real Genius.)

[Bazza]

Will make final picks tomorrow. 

[Cancer]

Will done mine as soon as I finish the emergency hard drive backup. 

 

OK, that's done.

 

Last picks for the Department of Modern Urban Magics.

 

Option 5:  The Mystical Mire

 

 

Among a copse of trees right off campus, not far from the Delta Tau Chi house, there's a pool.  It is obviously unnatural, with a level that does not change with the season or in response to weather.  "The Mire" is clearly something out of some experimenter's lab ... viscous, a translucent yellow-green fluid that is murky enough that details usually cannot be discerned through more than a foot or so of it.  But, by night there are a few sources of light scattered within the Mire, which brighten up quickly from nothing so they cast weak, suggestive shadows around the Mire, then fade away over half a minute or so, and they move.  

 

The Mire is magical in origin, though indistinct enough that who made it and how isn't obvious.  FWIW, there are people who have claimed to be responsible, and all of them are generally taken to be lying.  There are also people who have explicitly denied any responsibility, and there are suspicions that more than one of them are lying also, though opinions vary about who the liars are.  Whomever the guilty (?) parties may be, the Department of Modern Urban Magics seems to have a maliciously obfuscated opinion about the Mire's origins.  *Officially*, of course, they are not to blame.  But local law enforcement officials seem unable to find the place, even though barely-able-to-stagger inebriated undergraduates get there unerringly, so there's a bit more than the usual town-versus-gown tension between local off-campus authorities and the M.U.M. Department.

 

(It may be that inebriation is the key; no one seems to be fully in command of their faculties while at the Mire.  There are some interesting suggestions that clear-headedness, a dedication to strict moral principles and obedience to the letter of the law, and (especially) an intent to impose all these upon other sentients around you ... are exclusionary keys: if an entity has all those, then they cannot find the Mire.  But if you can slip her a couple of glasses of spiked punch first, even Sister Prissy Clenchedbottom can get there and partake of the relaxed, convival atmosphere.  Importantly, it seems that there has never been an episode of malicious violence, or even injury more serious than a black eye or a twisted ankle, at the site.)

 

No matter the season or weather, the fluid in the pool is comfortably warm, and if a bather is by themselves, it is a pleasant relaxing sensation.  But with another in the pool ....  The bottom is? becomes? slick enough that one cannot stand securely on the bottom of the pool.  This is made worse by occasional prods and pinches that have no clear source, but cause a bather to jump suddenly, and usually jump toward another bather if others happen to be in the pool.  Though almost odorless, vapors off the pool diminish the bathers' reason temporarily, augmenting the baser impulses, and seeming to enhance the sensations on the skin immersed in the liquid, and both bathers tend to slip and go momentarily submerged ... and blame the other for their pratfall and nostrils full of greenish goo ... And the wrestling match ensues ... and the slick fluid tends to ease the slippage of garments off the bathers as they thrash against each other ....

 

 

 

 

Option 6: MUD WRASSLIN'!!!!!

 

 

In the Mire.  Often.  Great popularity.  Nothing more need be said, though the match where Sister Prissy Clenchedbottom and Professor Prudie Grundy had it out in a no-garments-left-intact slogwrassle is stuff of legend.  Hey, who's got the wine?

 

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

42 minutes ago, Cancer said:

Sister Prissy Clenchedbottom

 

I'm pretty sure she was my elementary math teacher. 

[Cancer]

Probably one of those old stodges in Bazza's department now.

[Bazza]

Nope. Saw her hanging around the Astronomy department. 

[Bazza]

Option 5: Location of Advanced Academy of Qualitative Mathematical Physics & Geometry: "The Upside Down".

Directions: From Florence, take the funnel to the first circle of Inferno until you reach Lucy's back...keep walking straight.  (bottom paragraph of page 56

 

Option 6: Alumus: Pavel Florensky, polymath, renaissance man, gatekeeper of The Upside Down 

 

Below pages of below 1922 maths paper on an interpretation of imaginary numbers will interest Dean and the Paolini Institute as it mentions Dante-Ptolomy cosmology commensurate as a unilateral Reimann surface & Einstein's theory of relativity. 

The Upside Down, is real! 

 

 

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Ok, finally getting caught up. 

 

Final option pick: Head of Competition, Merlin!

 

Competition is an essential part of any student’s development. Here at Magus U., we have a variety of intercollegiate and intramural contests for students to engage in. From Pokémon to Blood Bowl to kitchen competitions to, ahem, mud wrasslin’. Your student is sure to find an extracurricular activity to stimulate their growth. We only have one rule here: “Rule four, no cheating.” Welcome to Magus University!

 

-Merlin, from a speech for the marketing department 

 
 

[Cancer]

So we kept Rule 4 rather than Rule 4.Q ("Don't get caught cheatin'.")?  Ah well.

[death tribble]

i have been trying to think what should be my last option. And now I have it.

 

The University sponsors several students with a special scholarship grant which was the brainchild of Dr Destroyer for the Destruction faculty. It is equally applicable to the rocket side of things. It amuses the good doctor no end that the university has not put a stop to it or queried it.

The name of the the fund is the Wernher Von Braun Grant.

 

[DShomshak]

Why would the university query it? Werner von Braun was an exemplar of what a Magus should be. If his politics seemed flexible, his loyalty was to his Art. And he saw his Great Work completed: humans, in space, even on another world. He stormed Heaven; if not in his own person and not alone, he made it happen. A wonder for the ages, achieved through skill and knowledge beyond the reach of common men.

 

Dare with determined will to burst the portals

Past which in terror others fain would steal!

Now is the time, through deeds, to show that mortals

The calm sublimity of gods can feel...

-- Goethe, Faust

 

Exalt thyself: be more than man,

Be saint or be magician,

And where the burning Sword awaits

Defy the old seraphic ban.

-- Clark Ashton Smith Dominium in Excelsis

 

Dean Shomshak

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Again, thank you all for participating in this one. It's been a while for me, and I ran into a lot of trouble in the final week having to set up a new computer at home (twice!) and one at work. 

 

Please fill out your rosters if you have any open slots still out there. Go over the rosters to make sure I got all your picks, too.  🧙‍♂️

[death tribble]

Got all mine.

We are really waiting on Assault.

[Old Man]

The Greater Chickamauga College of Magical Healing

 

Option #5: Guidance Counselor: Deadpool

 

“Life is an endless series of trainwrecks with only brief commercial-like breaks of happiness.”

 

 

 

 

Option #6: Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid: Beetlejuice

 

“I’ll do anything to get your business. Hell, I’ll possess myself if I gotta. I’ve got demons running all through me.”

 

 

 

[L. Marcus]

... No-one picked John Dee? Or Emmanuel Swedenborg? Not even Dean?

 

Maybe I should've participated.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Yes. You should have. 

[Old Man]

38 minutes ago, L. Marcus said:

... No-one picked John Dee? Or Emmanuel Swedenborg? Not even Dean?

 

Maybe I should've participated.

 

Better late than never.

[L. Marcus]

Neh, too much on my plate right now.

[Cancer]

Like that stops any of the rest of us?!?

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

In the words of my mother at the Vegas buffet, "There's too much on your plate!"

[Old Man]

6 minutes ago, L. Marcus said:

Neh, too much on my plate right now.

 

Avoiding what's on my plate is the entire reason I'm here!