I will never be able to justify the number of zeroes in front of that number in the title.  This is a bonus post; see the adjacent articles for the regularly scheduled content.  You can still join this RP by comment, open for two more players.  Catch up from the beginning here, or whatever.  This is an “urban fantasy” in an earth-like world.  The characters are students at the equivalent of a community college, for the usual reasons a person might end up there instead of a more prestigious school.  What are you doing here?  What’s your major, something mundane or something adventurous?

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At Magic Boots, the party was certainly going to burn through the night.  Yes, the prudish human conquerors of The City of Romance had set a two o’clock closing time, but the hearty revelers had literally inhuman stamina, and would simply take the party out into the streets when the bouncers shuffled them through the doors.

It felt like everybody in the building had, at some point, danced with everybody else.  Some debauched characters found dark corners to do a bit more than dance.  What sort of biz might your guy have gotten up to, and with whom?  One of the crew, or a mysterious third party altogether?  Or more than one of the above?

What of the Cortellire Hall freshmen?  Div and Racker were the biggest party animals, in their own distinct ways.  Div took the club for its intended purpose, sharing erotic energy with the masses, experiencing the release of reckless dance, drink, and drug.  Racker partook of his share, but was also getting into other kinds of hijinks, making the bouncers mad and always disappearing before the hammer came down.  At one point he surfed across the dance floor balanced on a folded “wet floor” caution sign, at another he took over the DJ booth and played a bunch of sexual groans and bellows from a soundboard.

The meatheads Tollison, Liu-gon, Markud, and Grundr all had good times and bad – one minute making time with a promising fella, the next finding out it was bad news, the next minute onto another.  Grundr was easy to lose track of at his height.  The tallest meathead was Humuk, which meant he was the easiest to keep an eye out for – and this was good, because he seemed the most out of his depth.  Still, his muscles helped.  He could hold his own when the bawdy got too ardent for his experience level.  He’d find out about himself at his own pace, tho that pace would surely be accelerated by the night’s foolishness.

Josh and Keires were the easiest to lose in the crowd and it was hard to see how they were doing, tho at some point after midnight, Keires used his elemental powers to dance above the crowd’s heads – a spectacle they appreciated.  Ilenka and Kaldonia likewise became hard to see, shorter than the main run of manly dancers.

But trouble was brewing.  The freshmen kept catching haughty looks and threatening body language from a large clique of guys.  A few wore garments or accessories that gave away the source of their solidarity – they were from The University of Romance.  Mostly human and well-off, they seemed to regard the community college kids as a contemptible vulgarian freak show.  The freshmen were holding their own, not letting the insult get out of hand, but as two o’clock drew nigh, it was harder by the minute.

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Your first night at community college, the day before your first classes – what a great time to go to a club and guarantee you’d make a terrible impression on your professors.  Magic Boots appeared before you, built into the hollowed-out facade of an old department store on The Boulevard.  Magic lights spelled the name of the business, with a pair of glowing boots beneath them that danced in an eternal animation loop.  This was an adventurer bar, full of men who travel the land getting into hijinks of sword and sorcery, and more settled guys that aspired to adventure themselves, or just liked the company.  Manly romance was entirely possible in this kinda joint (tho note: the GM will not ERP with you), and there were also a few girls or variously gendered people who liked to dance or to watch the story unfold.

Ilmardan the aspiring Illusionist had come from the dorms with a very manly cohort indeed.  The muscly young meatheads included Div the silenus party animal and grappler, Humuk the orcish sportball player, Grundr the dwarven warrior, Tollison the human sports fitness major, Liu-gon the angelic man, and Markud the leopard-headed fencer.  Div had said he didn’t want to show up til after nine, but couldn’t resist the social energy of going with the others.  They’d walked from Cortellire Hall up the hill and south several blocks to find the place, arriving at about eight.

Also along for the ride were some softer types, the roguish human Racker, the A/V nymph Keires, and one human woman, a rough-skinned waif named Ilenka.  Ilmardan expected to meet the lizard madonna Kaldonia and the feyish swordsman Josh in the crowd somewhere, but hadn’t clocked them yet.  Keires looked nervous.  Would their lack of experience cause them to get pushed around by the boisterous men within?  To what extent was being pushed around what he wanted?  Everybody should have limits.

Conversely, Racker was Mr. Cool, and Ilenka was shifty-eyed and smirking.  Div was hard to pin down, weaving out into the crowd and back multiple times, but was always very friendly when he came by.  He said, “This place is great!  Tuition well spent.  Who needs the U of R when your major is partying?”

Tollison said, “Living down to stereotypes, buddy?”

“It isn’t a stereotype.  It’s my culture to be a party animal.  You stiffs need it, don’t you?”

Keires stopped levitating, shrinking away at being pegged for a stiff.  Ilenka wrapped a supportive arm around him.  “You will not be stiff for long.”

Racker said, “This is alright.  I’m gonna find the bar.  Who wants to come with?”

The meatheads pointedly smiled at Ilmardan, who had promised to buy drinks.

Grundr said, “It only needs to be tall and thick!”

“That’s what he said,” said Ilenka.

“Hey-ooooo!,” said Div.

The building was thronging with party people, bustling past each other with intoxicants in hand, getting ready for the proper dancing to begin.  At this point it was head-bobbing at most.  The volume was gonna get cranked before long.  There was a balcony area upstairs, close to the level of the lights and glittering balls, and the downstairs was mostly dance floor, with a bar and restrooms off hidden in darkness.  Was there a kitchen as well?  A few people had snacks.

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Cortellire Hall, an ivy-encrusted old brick dormitory for students at Ward Wizard Community College of Arms.  New students were getting unpacked or familiarizing themselves with the environment.  Returning students were either not back yet or being generally shy, tho a few began to emerge for various purposes.  Everyone was too busy trying to look cool to allow the older and the younger classmen to connect, tho a few intriguing glances may have transpired.  These were, after all, mostly young people, including many aspiring adventurers, and that meant wandering hearts.

The wings of the building were segregated by gender, with women and gender weirdos on one side, men on the other.  In this kooky world men were not wallowing in laziness engendered in them by fawning preferential treatment as children, so there was something resembling gender parity in the student numbers, at least.  There were gendered stereotypes related to professions and old-fashioned heteronormative ideas that if you let the sexes mingle too much, the resultant sexy times would detonate the universe.  That only had the effect of making it easier for gay people to wallow in gayness, feeding into some other stereotypes.

But unless one was trying to get one’s gayness in gear, the middle areas of the building were the most interesting for having more variety to the student bodies.  Sometimes you just want to see all the different people, hear the different voices.  Who are all of you?  What are you doing here?

Ilmardan found himself in the most central lounge besides the foyer, which was a similar size but more recessed in the building.  Gone were the chandeliers of the room with the most need to advertise its classiness; this lounge had buzzing fluorescent lights and corkboards advertising goods and services and shows, a few desks for study, more tables for meeting or eating, and few good-sized lounge chairs and couches.  Some students were getting snacks and beverages from the vending machines.

A mixed group of young people was there, more physically diverse than Div’s jocks had been.  The green-skinned dark elf theater kid called out to him, “Lord elf, well met! Would you like break bread with the commoners here? Or stale vending machine cookies, at least.”  It seemed like genuine interest.  Dark elves were ancient enemies of light elves (for all that ancient grudges mattered in modern and civilized places), but high elves like the Erenaths were somewhat neutral in that old fiasco.

That nymph boy with curly sky blue hair was at the table as well, and that black and white terrier dogman, a cockatoo-headed woman, and two human women too dorky to seem at all threatening.  It was a table of shorties, the cockatoo woman the largest in every way and still shorter than Ilmardan if the feathers weren’t included.  Some of them were a bit nervous some kind of elven bad blood was about to flare up, others more oblivious.

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Strolling through the halls of the dormitory, checking out the fellow freshmen.  Finger guns and cool-guy nods.  Shy looks and fumbling.  Excited plans being made, tho they would surely all amount to timid testing steps into the Adult World of Collegery.  The gendered wings of the building remained mostly separate, tho there was a little overlap in the middle.  Time to figure out who wanted to be an adventurer, or a champion, or a courtesan, or just an accountant or radiologist.  This had ramifications for future romances and rivalries, so people were a little nervous as they flitted from group to group.

The adventurers were deep in the male end of the building for cultural reasons.  Some were comparing weapons and scars, some were sizing up the others in more esoteric ways.  Ilmardan could tell some of these guys were going to develop very interesting powers indeed.  At last, there were Div and Humuk, with some other meatheads down in the first floor lounge.  Wooo!  Div waved Ilmardan over with a whoop.

“Ilmardan! You’ve met Humuk. These are Grundr, Tollison, Liu-gon, and Markud. Guys, Ilmardan.”  Their expressions were reasonably cordial, but you got the distinct impression these boys would be more impressed by a guy who could bench press a luxury sedan.  Not like you wanted to make out with a leopard-headed dude anyway – that was Markud.  Div said, “I told ’em about the club.  The more the merrier, right?”

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The freshmen were at last rewarded with cheap but nice sandwiches, chips, cookies, and cola at the cafeteria.  The professor was probably supposed to be coming around to them individually, but succumbed to anxiety of her own, and slouched in a corner.  That meant some amount of freedom again to talk to whomever one desired.  Ilmardan was beginning to get the idea of this place.  Some students were from families too poor or too practical to pay for the tuition at fancier schools, some were orienting themselves toward careers that didn’t require a full four year degree, some were taking practical classes to support jobs they had elsewhere or to try branching out into something new.  But most noteworthy, some were here because they were scandalized.  Black sheep, the kids you don’t have high hopes for anymore.  Punks and dropouts.  Ilmardan saw the graffiti, the radical flyers stuck to the walls next to advertisements for concerts and art shows and dubious supplements and school events.  What kind of mess might one get into, in such a place?  What was he going to try to do with his time here, socially or academically, really?  Was this a purgatory or a slacker’s paradise?

If you’re starting to get any new ambitions, have yer guy think about ’em.  If you just want to socialize for other ends – planning the club trip or whatever – get into that.  And if you want to time skip, I’ll add more to this post to facilitate that…

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Already some cool kids were planning to indulge in the city’s night life.  The folly of youth.  Meanwhile, the tour continued into a building full of laboratories, where there was little of interest that they were allowed to see.

Josh came back to Ilmardan and Kaldonia.  “Turns out Humuk is too shy to go to clubs.  Still figuring himself out, I think.”  Kaldonia laughed quietly.

It was hard not to want an escape of some kind, a daydream to distract from the dreary reality around them.  The place looked even less interesting than the average high school – more like an office space of buzzing lights and clicking keys.

They came into another courtyard, this one adjacent to a cafeteria and featuring a heavy mechanized gate which would be used for access by utility vehicles in off hours.  It had a smattering of graffiti and a mostly occluded view of people walking by out on the street.

Ms. Selber sorted the large pack of freshmen into two concentric rings for some awkward ice breaking games.  Everyone had to say their name and answer a specified question to the closest person in the other circle, rotate, introduce themselves and answer a different question for the next.

Kaldonia was with Ilmardan for the question of “What’s your major?”

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The orientation guide continued with some basics about the neighborhood – the nearest public park with sporting facilities, directions to the largest public library in town, the hospitals, etc – before getting everybody in motion, following her with trudging little steps around the campus.  The names of the different buildings – after this and that donor or trustee – were a wash of meaninglessness to the non-humans among the freshmen.

As they walked down a long hall, where Ms. Selber mentioned some of the classes being taught, many of the freshmen talked among themselves.  Kaldonia kept on.

“What kind of music do you like, Ilmardan?  I could tell you what clubs play it.”  Why were lizard madonnas so interested in the elvenoid species, he might wonder.  The fashions didn’t hang on their bodies right.  The languages were a little off in that mouth full of uniform, sharp, curved teeth.

Some nearby humans looked judgmental about it, a hip aloofness probably inspired by the social terror of being new.  A male nymph drifted along nearby them, feet barely touching the ground, loose sky-colored curls floating around his shoulders.  He wore a stickball shirt, hipster jeans and shoes, and a little backpack over one shoulder.  There was some room to wonder, did nymphs owe their existence to the wild realms like elves, or the higher realms like giants and dwarves?

An orc jock tried not to step on any people and almost failed when a halfling got underfoot.  That little guy was some kind of raging nerdlinger.

Yup, any kind of weirdo might be in this company.

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How about you?  It’s urban fantasy.  You’re in community college instead of the big leagues, for some reason, but it’s a place where you can start learning how to chuck fireballs or wield a zweihander, so … excitements?

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The last time I tried to do a RP by Comment, I had to shut it down because I only had one player left and it wasn’t my husband, and I didn’t feel like I had the mental resources to devote to other people while my dude was having some particular issue at that time.  Lesson learned – he is not invited this time.  Also, I’m not going to post as rapidly, to save those precious mental resources for my lovin’ dude and other responsibilities.

I’m tempted to do this because it gives me something to write about when I can’t easily think of something else.  In fact, if I’m rolling slowly enough, I can easily do this at the same time as I continue my one-queued-post-per-day thing.  I’ll do my introduction post, we go a round or two of comments, and then tomorrow (assuming I have anyone playing at that time), I do a new post.

Here are the rules:

• Make up your character and introduce them in a comment on this post.
• The first three people to post are the adventuring party; nobody else is admitted unless one of those players taps out.
• You can tap out at any time, and when you do, decide whether your character lives or dies.  I’ll help RP that or either you or I can “write them out the door.”
• If you stop responding without excusing yourself I’ll write your character into a “holding pattern” for three posts, and then if you still are not there, I’ll write them out of the story.
• If you annoy me, your character dies.
• If you really annoy me, you’re also banned and blocked from commenting on my blog.
• Try to abide my two commenting rules in le sidebar: don’t use “stupid,” “crazy,” or their synonyms in comments.  Don’t be a doomer.

~~~ 🏵️ ~Next~

Twas a bright and sunny morning in The City of Romance.  Moss and vines glistened with dew, puffing in every cracked stone and trailing from every untended surface in great green boughs.  The skyscrapers strained mightily into the blue sky, surrounded by more primitive buildings in varying states of decay, by layers of highway freeway tunnel and subway, dotted with parks full of homeless people and deeper crevices still – ruins that fell beneath the notice of the modern, of those focused only on the new and the lofty.

The City of Romance was so named because of its reputation, its storied history, and because the original rulers had named it something unpronounceable in the Elfish tongue.  Now it was just another modern metropolis, inhabited mostly by humans, and ruled by a puppet regent from the neighboring human kingdom, centered in The City of Commerce.

On the highest hill of the city, where once the capitol building stood watch, the neighborhood had been overtaken by college campuses and hip boutique businesses that cater to them, and by further shady characters seeking drugs and other diversions.  You didn’t do well enough in secondary school to go straight to the fanciest of the universities, no.  Your lot in life is enrollment in the Ward Wizard Community College of Arms.

WWCCA is a good place to get a technical education, a quick and dirty primer for a job that needs special skills but not the most sophisticated and prestigious careers going.  Courses in soldiering or constabling, nursing or accounting, video editing or helicopter piloting, etc.  Alternately, you could train in the rudiments of more advanced careers, in preparation to transfer to a more prestigious college.  WWCCA produced no small amount of acolytes and adepts in the magical arts, or disciples of the more mystically oriented martial arts – paladins and great knights, rangers and more.

While the city teemed with humans, the college campuses concentrated diversity.  You might rub elbows there with the elves descended from the city’s original founders, or foreign elves and other international students.  Animal-headed people, ogres, lamias, goblins, leprechauns, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, koneira, crowten, lizard madonnas, sileni, satyrs, nymphs, and more walk those halls.  Of the schools of magic, all are represented to some extent or another in the course catalog: Elemental, Holy, Hexing, Wild, Body, Mind, Death, Binding, Drama, and Alchemy.

You and a few dozen others checked in at an office of plastic chairs and buzzing yellow lights, before being shown to an architecturally dull red brick plaza, wonderfully appointed with flowers and small trees in the planters.  Returning students wander through endlessly, while you freshman mill about, waiting for the person who will conduct your orientation.

Who are you and what did you come to learn?  First three answers below are in.  If only one person bites, fuck it, we ball.  If nobody bites within 24 hours, I guess I will not be game mastering…

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