Magical Mayhem

A 217-post collection

Challenge #01558-D097: New Start

For a star to be born, there is one thing that must happen: a gaseous nebula must collapse. So collapse. Crumble. This is not your destruction. This is your birth. -- RecklessPrudence

There's a saying in the streets, It's easy to fall, harder to rise. The streets are hard, and hot, and freezing cold at the same time. It makes people that are hard, who have hot tempers and cold hearts. They grasp for anything that will get them ahead. Even if it means killing their own. It's a broiling forge in which the toughest and the hardest make a living, and the cleverest find a way out of as soon as possible.

Assuming they survive that long.

All of this, of course, was mere philosophy now that Cass was slowly bleeding to death in the gutters following a Back-Street Handshake. Or, as the rare police knew it, a quick shiv to the kidneys. At least she'd got him in the goolies before he smashed her face and took what little she had to steal. Rage burned inside her as she watched the retreating back as her thief limped away through her remaining, useful eye. Die in a fire, she thought, and was more than shocked to see the cutpurse burst into flames.

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Challenge #01553-D092: The Dunwich Power Initiative

Oh, the tears of eldritch horrors? Yeah, those are technically a renewable resource. -- RecklessPrudence

"They weigh a third of a ton each, they're pure crystal and, when struck, emit an energy that can be harnessed by a sphere of aluminium. I mean, in the 1800's, that was impossible, but now..."

"Aluminium is everywhere. I get it. So how much energy can we extract from one of these things?"

"Uh... probably about 100 terawatts per tear."

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Challenge #01544-D083: Il Pleut

They can make it rain, some perform Arcane rituals, some pray. But of course there is the old tried and true methods. -- Knitnan

There's a reason why the Affiliate College of Rainmakers is on a boat. And why the uniform contains rain coats and wellingtons. You don't collect so many Rainmakers in one place without taking precautions. It's only by the third year of attempting control that many students actually achieve it.

Though it is hard to tell without field trips.

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Challenge #01542-D081: A Painful Setback

Like most toilets in Educational facilities this one was littered in graffiti, some of it actually, (a) anatomically correct and, (b) spelled right. Someone had scrawled 'Plumbing does not define Genius or Worth!' -- Anon Guest

Those were inspirational words, but when one was battling digestive upset, plumbing certainly interfered with one's ability to learn. Taerl read arguments from other scholars, including one who repeatedly asked for proof of assorted statements. Someone else, irritated with the non-rebuttal, had scrawled, DO YOUR

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Challenge #01541-D080: Soured Gift

Wings are the symbol of mages, a manifestation of their powers. But magic isn't something easily accepted. People will do anything to be normal. -- YizukiKhons

They appear with the first use of magic, which can happen at any time following the day that a child first recognises that their own actions have consequences beyond themselves. Some say that their size indicates the mage's power. They are made of light, and it is not their size, which is illusory, but the luminosity

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Challenge #01534-D073: Wyrd Customs

"How normal is this occurrence that there's automated vocal procedures to talk about the demonic presence?" -- RecklessPrudence

This lot of magicians had graduated through technology and out the other side, never once stopping in at Global Pollution Station for a long debate about how dangerous pollution was, when you really got down to it. Shayde was impressed. Not many worlds actually noticed the long-term effects of certain technologies and decided to look at other ways to do things while the water

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Challenge #01532-D071: Unseen Flaws

"What? What is it?" "Give me a minute. I've been an idiot and I'm trying to compensate." -- RecklessPrudence

"No, no, no, no, no!" Paper snowed from its fountaining upwards. Judging by the look of things, inspiration had been going in entirely in the wrong direction. "It's all shit! It's nonsense! Rubbish! Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish..." And then Maester Kadfel fell to sobbing at her desk.

Thaldrik fielded as many pages as he could catch, and laboriously rounded up the others. Months of

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