Community Center Class: Castletopia: A Castle For You! For You? For You!!! | Monday

[bookbeltof_love]

Despite this being a construction class, today they were in one of the community center rooms, with tables set up with plenty of graph paper, white boards, and pencils and pens (in all sorts of colours). There was also coffee, tea, and hot chocolate available to drink, should anyone want it, since it was an evening class and people had to come down to the community center for it.

Actually, the hot drinks were going to be a thing all semester because… well. They'd be building. Outside. At night.

Nina herself had an apple cider. Teacher's privilege.

An entire year ago, Nina had been anxiously staring down the barrel of her very first class and, like, now she all but bounced with anticipation. She didn't bounce too much though because she didn't want her crown to bounce right off her head. In her hand she held a wand (though she was going to call it a scepter should anyone comment on it).

She waited patiently until it looked like there wouldn't be anyone showing up and then, with a wave of her wand, shut the door. (You'd have to look super closely at the wand, but she'd added tiny silver lettering in an ancient tongue to be able to manage that feat.)

"Good evening," she said brightly. "Welcome to Castletopia!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm Queen Nina and, like, we know all of you," this was probably true, even if just from squirrels, "and we're so glad you could attend this session!!!!!!!!!!!"

Yes, yes that was the royal 'we'.

"The school board, like, was super unkeen on the idea of a coup d'état to reclaim our castle," Nina informed them all with a heavy sigh that disappeared almost the moment it showed up. "So, upon reflection, as pursuing that would lead to needless bloodshed," would it really?, "we've decided upon a new way to go forward!!!!!!!!!!!! Building our own castle!!!!!!!!!!!!

"And, of course, to build a castle we absolutely must know who will be assisting our royal person with the work!!!!!!!!!!!! Please, introduce yourselves with your proper titles------are you a Baron? An Earl?? A Marquis??? Or perchance are you a merchant???? A peasant????? Royalty from a neighbouring country??????"

What? You'd thought there wouldn't be some level of role-playing in this class? Well that was just a silly thing to expect when castles were involved.

"Once we've been informed as to who everyone is this semester, we'll begin with the very first step of the process of building our new home: designing it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[Wait for the OCD is up, up, and away!]

Comments

Re: Design a Castle!

[betterthanaplan]

"How much energy would that require?" Duke asked, getting into the mechanics of it all despite himself. "Would you be able to lay down a spell and leave it forever? Or would it require a continuous drain of some kind?"

Re: Design a Castle!

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina wiggled her hands back and forth.

"The initial outlay would probably be the worst of it," Nina admitted, though she'd have to create the spell first to see exactly. "But we've been playing with tying magic and electricity together, so there's a possibility that actual usage of it could have the power required sourced from a generator........."

Re: Design a Castle!

[betterthanaplan]

Duke nodded. "Might be safer, ultimately, than making the stairs out of something slippery. But the advantage of using something purely mechanical is that it just works using potential and kinetic energy. Other than some elbow grease flipping the switch, no outside energy source is required."

Re: Design a Castle!

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina was going to toss a marker at him for writing this stuff down.

"The board is your stage," she said, though she was certainly going to be doing a lot of writing herself. "And, like, we wish we could do one spell and have it last for all of forever but I can't do that........"

And she felt kind of bad about that, but Nina's magic just... didn't work that way.

Re: Design a Castle!

[betterthanaplan]

Duke caught the marker and headed for a spare board to start drawing up some plans for folding stairs. (He'd be making it up as he went just now, but he rebuilt and maintained his ship himself. He knew how mechanical things worked!) "Hey, at least your magic works on command at all. Mine's totally involuntary. And terrible."

Re: Design a Castle!

[bookbeltof_love]

"I don't think I know what your magic actually is," she admitted, pursing her lips as she wondered if adding a pole to slide down would be too dangerous or not.

Re: Design a Castle!

[betterthanaplan]

Poles were absolutely dangerous. But also very fun.

"It's more of a curse, really," Duke said with a shrug. "Been on my family for generations. Just . . . don't bleed around me and we'll be fine."

Re: Design a Castle!

[bookbeltof_love]

Right?! It was a conundrum.

For now, Nina was going to sketch out the tower and make notes in her own shorthand (which was a blend of a few different languages, runes, sigils, and code) about where to even begin figuring out the magic problem...

She still drew a pole down the tower too. So she wouldn't forget it was a possibility.

"That's important to know, given that this is a class where we're constructing things," she said, after thinking about that for a few moments. "Is your own blood fine???????? What happens???????"

Re: Design a Castle!

[betterthanaplan]

"My own blood is just fine," Duke said. "You know, other than trying generally to keep it inside my body where it belongs."

He wouldn't start leaking troubles every time he bled for a little while yet, after all.

He focused in close on his diagramming, not quite up to looking at her while he tried to explain his trouble. "It's, uh. I guess it kind of works like a drug on me? When I touch the blood of people with magic or powers or whatever. Like . . . a quick blast of PCP. I get all extra strong and aggressive and, uh. Vaguely homicidal." More than vaguely. But he tried his best to curb that. "Or if it's Lucifer apparently I just pass out."

Re: Design a Castle!

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina raised her eyebrows thoughtfully at that.

She wasn't too worried about him coming after her, honestly, because she was pretty sure she could take him, even amped up.

But there were people in the class who...

"How long does it last???????" she asked. "Does it depend on the amount of blood?????????"

Then, because Nina did feel bad for having to ask this in class, she added, "Sorry, like, if you don't feel up to talking about it here, I can swing by the diner this week????????? It's just, I am in charge of safety for this......."

So she did, actually, need to know.

Re: Design a Castle!

[betterthanaplan]

"No, I totally get it. And, like, I haven't really been trying to keep it a secret."

Seriously, his daemon had told Annie about it the moment they met.

"Usually it only seems to last a couple seconds. And I'm pretty good at keeping it under control. Or -- getting the fuck out of the way of anyone bleeding who I know will set it off. And you absolutely have my permission to knock me the fuck out if you see blood soak into my skin or my eyes going silver."

He was pretty sure she could take him, too.

Re: Design a Castle!

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina cast a sidelong grin at him.

"I don't think I've told you I can fight, Captain Crocker," she said, amused, but also unsurprised that he'd figured it out.

"And, like, does Dad," she tilted her head at Liam, "know?????????"

Re: Design a Castle!

[betterthanaplan]

Duke followed the tilt of her head and filed that new name for Liam away. He knew Nina had grown up without parents. He was happy she'd found someone she wanted to fill in the role for her.

"Not in an, uh, official capacity, I don't think," he said. "You realize I'm not actually going around trying to get high off blood and kill people, right?"

Re: Design a Castle!

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina giggled.

"I know," she promised. "Like, that's just not you at all!!!!!!!! I was just wondering, since he's in charge of security on the island, you know?????????? But, like, at the same time, it's not the same as having artificial blood for vampires to drink or a safe room for people to transform in......."

Re: Design a Castle!

[betterthanaplan]

"Not so much. It's pretty much just about avoidance and control." He flicked her a smile. "So, you know, all that yoga and meditation is definitely coming in handy."

Re: Design a Castle!

[bookbeltof_love]

"And you enjoy it, which makes it even better," she said, smiling his way.

She thought about that.

"Do you think that, like, it would be of use getting past a fear of fire????????"

Re: Design a Castle!

[betterthanaplan]

"Maybe?" Duke tilted his head thoughtfully, tapping his marker in the air. "Or it could at least help you sort of moderate the fear reaction, so you don't panic when you're confronted with fire."

Re: Design a Castle!

[bookbeltof_love]

"I'm okay with candles and bonfires," Nina reported, since she'd been working at this for awhile. "And, like, during the fun last month, I discovered I'm fine shooting fire at enemies."

So you'd think there wouldn't be a problem, right?

"But if any of it has a possibility of hitting me, I freak out..........."

Re: Design a Castle!

[betterthanaplan]

"I mean, that's . . . pretty understandable. Getting burned fucking sucks."

Re: Design a Castle!

[bookbeltof_love]

"Fire's the element I'm best at using in a fight," she explained, having to laugh at his matter-of-fact observation. "It's also the element I'm most able to resist. I'm pretty hard to burn."

Nina frowned a little as she doodled on the white board. She hadn't been hard enough to burn when trapped in an exploding, burning building.

"Like, if someone drops something into a fireplace to burn, I can grab it with my bare hands without getting so much as singed," she said finally. "I'd burn if I kept my hand there, but just to pick something out doesn't hurt me. Fire's usually my friend........."

Re: Design a Castle!

[betterthanaplan]

Duke nodded. "So, uh. What happened to change that?" He glanced around and offered her the same out she'd given him. "Or if you'd rather not say, here, we can talk at the diner later this week."

Re: Design a Castle!

[bookbeltof_love]

They'd started talking about it, back in September, but had gotten sidetracked by Duke's divined death.

And she hadn't really pushed too hard to say what had happened to her after that. She hadn't died and she'd gotten better and, honestly, back then he'd been... in pretty rough shape, emotionally.

"I was in a building that was lit on fire and then exploded around me," she said, her voice low, glowering at her doodle. Stupid thing.

It wasn't the doodle.

Re: Design a Castle!

[betterthanaplan]

Yeah, Duke had had . . . kind of a rough early fall. He was doing much better now, though!

He grimaced sympathetically. "Yeah, that sounds like that would do it. This back home?"

He kind of figured he would have heard if a building had exploded on the island.

Re: Design a Castle!

[bookbeltof_love]

"My world, yeah," she said, though she counted several places as 'home' these days. "Dad and I have gone back once and that........."

Nina sighed.

"That ended in fleeing the city as the mayor was assassinated and the place invaded." Fun! "My world's, uh, in the middle of a war right now......."

In case he couldn't tell!

Re: Design a Castle!

[betterthanaplan]

Duke offered her his fist. "Welcome to team 'can't go home without shit going down'." He shrugged. "I'd be happy to help you with some meditation techniques and stuff. See if that helps get the fear back under control."