How to Blow Things Up: Class 6 Period 2

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

As handwavily advised, the class met in the Danger Shop.  Aly was waiting for them there, tossing a clay ball from hand to hand.

"Morning everybody," she said with a grin as the class assembled.  "Today we're talking about magical explosives.  I have a few here and then a few of your classmates have agreed to demonstrate their abilities."

"First, however, I want to let you know that together with Deadpool's Mercenary class and Yondaime's Ninhaing class, we're going to go on a camp out over the weekend to play with what we've all learned and generally have a good time.  I'll have more information for you later today or tomorrow, but it's something I hope everyone will have fun with."

She held up the clay globe she'd been tossing around.  "This is blazebalm.  It's a magical explosive from my world.  Upon contact with air or water, it'll immediately explode.  Thus the clay protection.  It's a fairly strong explosive, not quite on the category of, say, C4, but stronger than your typical grenade."  Aly turned and tossed it into a wooden trunk.  About a second later, the box exploded in a fireball of trunk.  "You can also trigger the blazebalm with magic if you have the Gift.  We blew up a city's ports with it once."  She grinned.  "Good stuff."

Aly moved over to another shelf, this one filled with clay pots.  "Over here, we have a slightly different type of explosive.  This one's referred to as sorcerer's fire.  It's a bit similar to this world's napalm only made with magic and much, much more volatile.  These pots are spelling to keep it from igniting, but any bit that comes out of the pot - or spills - or leaks through a crack will automatically catch on fire and set anything it touches on fire as well.  Clothes, skin, stone, wood, anything.  Which, as you can imagine makes it a very dangerous if deadly weapon."

"And finally a few of your classmates have volunteered to show a few different ways they've learned to create explosions and - ah - chaos.  But I'm going to let them speak for themselves on that one.  You can all try these two out, continue to be careful with them.  We're in the Danger Shop, but these are still weapons.  After that, find a partner or two and see what you think about the magical explosives.  Better?  Worse?  Completely unfair?"

[OOC: My abject apologies for getting this up so late.  I was unexpectedly away for a bit of the morning and then my brain wouldn't cooperate.  'Sorcercer's fire' is 'wizardfire' from Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.  Please wait for the OCD is up.  Thank you SO MUCH to Zuko, Rikku, and Ronan for volunteering to demonstrate!  *squishes all three of you*]

Comments

Sign In

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

Like it was the second to last time. *sniff*

Re: Sign In

[morpherboy.livejournal.com]

Marco

Re: Sign In

[thebluespirit.livejournal.com]

Zuko

Questions or Notes on Lecture

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

Questions on the explosives, comments, questions on the camping trip.

Re: Questions or Notes on Lecture

[walks-two-paths.livejournal.com]

Camping with explosions? Oh dear gods, this should be interesting.

Re: Questions or Notes on Lecture

[girlzippo.livejournal.com]

Mindful of last week's mistakes, Charlie took notes through the whole lecture, paying very careful attention.

Rikku's Demonstration

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

...but wait for her to do her thing.

Re: Rikku's Demonstration

[the_merriest]

Rikku cracked her knuckles. "Hiya! I, uh, I'm here to show off what I do. It's not that hard, it's more you gotta remember things and be sciencey about it. Lemme explain."

She pointed to the table in front of her, where stones, powders and flasks were lying scattered around. "Fiends drop all kinds of neat things. But fiends evaporate when they die, and some of their goodies go with 'em, so you've gotta steal first." Rikku held up a few different items. "Most people leave these on the ground. They don't know that this Bomb Core here? It's a Fire explosive. Or this one here, the Anartic Wind, does a little ice damage. And Sleeping Powder can make your monster take a nap."

"Where the real fun starts is when you figure out that you can mix 'em all up." Rikku bounced a little on her toes. "You've gotta be careful, and the result's not always what you'd expect, if you're just taking two things and mashing them up. Sometimes it's not even an explosion."

On cue, Aly and Jude (who was crashing class for the day to watch) came forward. "If you take that Bomb Core, and you mix it with a healing potion? What you get is this." Rikku knelt down onto the ground and shook both items together in her hand. After a few seconds, she jumped up and tossed the mixture directly overhead.

It rained down in droplets, and as it reached them, made a zinging noise. Four colored orbs - one blue, one white, one red, and one yellow - now circled each of them.

"That's called a Nul-All," she explained. "It works on you and whoever's on your side. If you were to cast a big scary Fire spell on Aly right now? That red glowy ball-thing would absorb it, all of it, and then disappear. There's one for each element."

She nodded to the two of them, grinning. "Okay! You guys can sit down. Those will wear off in, like, a couple hours, or I can take them off. But they're kinda pretty, you know?"

She rubbed her hands excitedly. "Now, the good stuff. Magic where I'm from is based in elements, and that can be good, 'cause some fiends are really strong in one element, which means they're really weak in its opposite. So if you've got some Fire monsters ..." three Puroboros appeared floating behind her, "... like these guys, you really wanna lay into them with Ice. So if you take that Antarctic Wind, and mix in some Sleeping Powder?"

Again she crouched down. This time, the liquid broke out into a mist overhead, and a large ice crystal formed around each bomb's body, then shattered. That repeated three times, and then two of the fiends disappeared. The one left had a black cloud over his eyes and green bubbles drifting upwards.

"Lots of damage," she said proudly. "And if they're still alive, status effects. Like, right now, this guy can't see you at all, and he got poisoned. So what it doesn't kill, it certainly cripples."

She nodded. "Okay. Elemental magic is good, particularly against elementally-based enemies? But really, non-elemental is way better. If I had mixed up an Abaddon Flame on those guys - which is kinda the same deal, but with Fire instead of Ice? - I'd be in big trouble. Fire magic heals them."

"So, non-elemental. Way harder to pull off. But we get ourselves some fiends ..." this time, a Puroboros, a Chimera Brain and a Sahagin appeared, "... and we take this grenade - mild damage, nothing shabby - then mix in an Amulet - which won't do anything if you just throw it, but you can use them for armor upgrades - and we whip ourselves up a Tallboy."

The mixture landed near the Sahagin, and a moment later, there was a black cloud of smoke and a very loud BOOM! When the smoke cleared, all of the fiends had evaporated.

"Good for what ails ya! There are all kinds of combinations you can get, from waves of explosions to ones with side effects like the poison thing. You just have to know what you're doing, or not mind the results if you're gonna guess."

"It's an Al Bhed thing," she grinned. "Any questions?"


(mod was with permission, thanks to both muns!)

Re: Rikku's Demonstration

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

Aly couldn't help beaming as she watched Rikku demonstrate. The girl was crazy like pie and also awesome.

"Thank you so much, Rikku," she said, watching the little balls circle her. "That was excellent."

Re: Rikku's Demonstration

[solowhistler.livejournal.com]

Abigail was trying not to stare at Rikku, but...so much energy! In such a small package! And we're not talking about the orbs!

Re: Rikku's Demonstration

[dude-its-jude.livejournal.com]

"Dude! I have moons!"

Zuko's Demonstration

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

Second Verse, Same as the First.

Re: Zuko's Demonstration

[thebluespirit.livejournal.com]

Speak for themselves? Yeah, not happening. Besides, firebending was pretty obvious to grasp once you saw it.

"This is firebending," Zuko said, stepping in front of class. There were plenty of targets around and Zuko was very much in the mood to create as much chaos as he could.

His stance was wide and he drew in a deep breath, obviously concentrating on what he was going to do. Then with a growl, he stepped forward and punched the air, sending a flame towards a wooden crate which almost immediately incinerated. Twisting around, he kicked another flame towards a wooden wall that caught fire. Zuko however wasn't finished as he turned towards a stone building this time and using both hands he created a flame which he increased until he sent a large ball towards the wall, the impact knocking a hole in it.

As finishing touch, Zuko jumped up and using his feet he sent another burst towards a cabbage cart. The burst was long and powerful enough that the cart was knocked over while it burnt down.

Nostrils flaring, Zuko turned around to face the other students. "Questions?"

Re: Zuko's Demonstration

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

Aly watched Zuko carefully throughout the demonstration, picking up on his mood as much as appreciating his abilities.

"Excellent," she said afterwards. "Thank you very much."

Re: Zuko's Demonstration

[girlzippo.livejournal.com]

Charlie gulped, anxiety rising as she watched, but figured this would be the best chance she'd have to ask. "Can you set fire to anything? At all? Or are some things too dense, or too hard to catch fire?"

Ronan's Demonstration

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

Third Verse, Same as the First.

Re: Ronan's Demonstration -- Callahan's Unfavorable Instigation

[not_in_the_book]

With the Danger Shop having been changed to the configuration Ronan had handwavily discussed with Aly prior to class, Ronan found himself in front of his classmates, standing in an approximation of the Crossings.

"Some friends of mine were on a mission to this planet, back where I come from," he started, "and encountered some mercenaries who had arrived to take over this place, the most important worldgating center in the Milky Way -- my Milky Way, at least, your milage may vary." Ronan grinned. "At any rate, these mercenaries, the Tawalf," and here they appeared from around a corner, steering a large laser cannon into position to fire against the class, "brought out some fairly heavy artillery. It got to the point where my friends thought they'd need to self-destruct the Crossings -- until my friend Nita Callahan came up with a solution."

A quick mental check with the Knowledge laid out the safety specs in Ronan's head -- he had nothing to worry about, the Danger Room could handle the explosion. So he grinned, and started speaking the words of the spell.

At first, there was no visible effect, and the Tawalf continued setting up the weapon, targeting the class behind the Danger Room provided forcefield -- a mimic of the one that had protected Nita and Sker'ret the first time around. And then Ronan stopped speaking, turned around, and grinned.

"The laser weapon operates on a fusion reaction," he said. "I just damped down the reaction, making the magnetic bottle it's kept in step down to match the new, lower level." The power core of the laser started to visibly glow. The Tawalf started to visibly worry. "When I released the fusion reaction, let it return to normal, the magnetic bottle couldn't handle the full power, meaning..." He trailed off as the forcefield went opaque, but it wouldn't have mattered if he'd stayed speaking as the rumbling roar from outside of it would have drowned him out; the floor beneath the class rocked. A few moments later, the forcefield returned to transparency, and visible where the laser had been 'was a billowing cloud of smoke and dust, slowly dispersing. There were no Tawalf to be seen.'

"Ladies and gentlemen," Ronan said, his grin wide. "Callahan's Unfavorable Instigation."

--
(Quoted line from p. 297, Wizards at War hardcover edition, Diane Duane.)

Experiment...

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

With blazebalm and sorcerer's fire.

As usual, feel free to mod your environment, etc.

Discuss the Differences/Similarities

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

So...are magical explosives better/worse than their chemical counterparts? What are the drawbacks, would they be unethical to use in a world without magic?

Re: Discuss the Differences/Similarities

[girlzippo.livejournal.com]

Charlie was just holding one of the blazebalm balls now, and considering what she'd been thinking about back when they were working with the grenades; that she could possibly set these things off with her telekinesis pretty easily, if she attempted it.

She wasn't about to.

"I don't know about unethical," she said slowly. "But possibly, I don't know, not wise? Because people would start investigating this new type of explosive, once they saw it in action."

Talk to Aly

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

For she is here.

Re: Talk to Aly

[the_merriest]

Rikku had the strangest feeling that she wanted to tell Aly something and was forgetting. Maybe the excitement of showing off explosives kept pushing it out of her mind?

Finally just as she was leaving class, it clicked, and she bounced up to Aly excitedly. "The lockpicks!" she said, then flailed a little. "They totally saved my butt! Like, already!"

OOC

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

There'll be more information coming as soon as I make a filter for all the characters, but basically they'll be leaving Friday after the afternoon activity and getting back Sunday afternoonish. Camping, explosions, and nature. What could be better?

Ping in here, if you could, if your character won't be able to go for some reason.

Re: OOC

[cantgetnorelief.livejournal.com]

Not that he ICly knows it yet, but Anders has birthday stuff going on this weekend, so . . .

Re: OOC

[dude-its-jude.livejournal.com]

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII'M HENRY THE EIGHTH I AM, HENRY THE EIGHTH I AM I AM.

Thanks. It will now be stuck in my head forever.