A part of our students are arriving during breakfast. Outrageous. We’ve tossed a coin. Thomas is still eating. Damn. It turns out that with the draft reinstituted, somebody protested that this means that gender equality is violated, which it is, but that the constitution says what it says, so we are getting a group a group of female, socially disadvantaged high school leavers from Berlin. The criteria of their selection was being good at mathematics and art in school.
That is not entirely wrong. Obviously rituals are drawings, so art is a component. But you design something. You cannot give a ritualistic problem and point to the one solution. You cannot even predict that a ritual will have a desired effect. You can do a mathematical analysis of equivalency to another ritual. That is why they could write a game. Even that allows you only to show that rituals are equivalent, if they work, and not that they work and the algorithm is ony semidecidable. Ritualism is closest to circuit design or programming, if you get away from the idea of one arrow of execution.
That is a very long winded way to say that I am not happy. If we are unlucky we will have to teach remedial mathematics. And I am not a teacher. I am sending them to get their supplies and rely on Ulrike and Thomas to settle them down.
P: Eighteen year old girls. From Berlin-Neukölln.
U: You were once eighteen.
P: But not from Neukölln
U: Stop looking for excuses for having failed before you have even begun
P: I am no teacher
U: How long ago is it that you were no wizard?
Soldiers are toting in two large crates. The bus driver approaches me, holding a CD cover in one hand and a paperclip holder in the other „You have to sign for the software“
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Dejan is a genius. Getting the students to set up the equipment is allowing him to look at girls being made to work, Ulrike to take notes on their behavior, Thomas to set up the server and me to probe myself. I have to stop thinking of it so. I will call it „magomechanically assisted navel gazing“. Much better, isn’t it? Thomas was outright eager to leave me idle when I told him that I have found a method to make abilities stronger.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
Let’s start with an the help entry for usage.
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Ability: [Joy of sustained Fire] (Gun)
Special Attack (missile, drain, boon, bane, unholy)
Cost: variable - low with conjured weapons and ammunition, moderate with conjured weapons and other munitions, high with other weapons
Effect: After a threshold of consecutive missile attacks inflict [Victim of a sadistic killer] on the target and [Sadistic killer] on the user. Only works on targets with blood or sap.
[Victim of a sadistic killer] (affliction, unholy): Once for each bleeding wound caused by user or an ally of the user with a missile weapon or periodically while suffering [Bleeding] drain mana and stamina. This effect must be cleansed before [Bleeding] can be cleansed.
[Serial killer] (boon, bane, unholy): Gather drains from sufferers of [Victim of a sadistic killer]. For each of them dieing gain a small healing effect. Attacks by sufferers of [Victim of a sadistic killer] do not trigger retaliatory effects. Damage incured by karmic effects triggered by attacks on sufferers of [Victim of a sadistic killer] is increased.
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That is a sobering read. And a mistake. It shows me the first ability I used. I need to change my approach. I am going for meditation as a topic. That gets me a video named „Instructional video #1“. In the words of a character my mistake reminded me of: That is a bingo.
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We are meeting in the laundry room again. If they have listening devices that work with multiple machines in the loud part of their cycle we are doomed anyway. Our ears have become better at picking up soft sounds among loud sounds, too.
That is the second communication idea Thomas has come up with. The first is a signalling system based on aura and emotions. He has picked four basic emotions
* disgust (toilet)
* lust (Gal Gadot in bikini)
* delight (playing with a cat)
* sadness (dead friends)
That gives us 4 x 3 x 3 combinations if we stick with three emotions in a row. He has made a list of code words.
But it is not fit for conversations.
T: What do you have to show?
P: We have to learn meditation. I have gotten instructions.
To this day I regret that the instructions said that your eyes have to be closed. I so would have liked to see the facial expression Ulrike and Dejan showed as they walked in on us sitting in a lotus position with eyes closed and naked upper bodies and no shoes facing each other on top of washing machines.