Magic Under Construction: TOMU 2-16

[alexandraerin]

Started: 5/19/2011
Status: In Progress:
Word Count: ~3200
Hours Writing: 4



[4 hours]

Lunch in the Arch was pretty decent, all things considered. I couldn't say if I liked it better than the old place or not. The food was better quality and less institution-y, but... well, maybe I couldn't say what I liked about the old dining hall's food that even made it a contender, but I'd spent a lot of time figuring out what among its offerings I could enjoy eating. Maybe it was just a matter of emotional investment and comforting familiarity.

After lunch I followed Ian outside and we sat on some steps while he strummed his lute. I didn't say anything. Not so much for fear of distracting him... to some extent, he played better with a little distraction than when he was super focused on what he was doing. But he played best when he felt like no one was paying any attention to him. Luckily for the sake of any future he might have as a performer, being in a "stage" situation that sufficiently separated him from the crowd seemed to work. Once he got going, he was in a world of his own.

He wasn't exactly playing a song, more just trying things out. Watching the little contortions his face made as he fiddled around was kind of fun and weirdly hot. He twisted his lips, and bit them. At one point he stuck out the tip of his tongue. He squinted, and glared at nothing in particular.

If we'd had unlimited free time than he likely would have either got comfortable enough with what he was doing to start busting out actual songs or grown frustrated and given up, but sadly neither one of us was finished with classes for the day so he had to pack it up before too long.

Though I still had to go to Coach Callahan's fighting class afterwards, my next class was my last new one of the semester... the only remaining unknown quantity. I felt kind of ambivalent about it. There were classes that I needed to take and classes that I wanted to take... a lot of the time I could find a class that fell into both categories. While not every class I'd taken was something I'd classify as "fun", most of my classes so far had at least not been unpleasant.

An Applied Enchantment major required six credit hours in crafting. It was a sensible requirement. I understood the reasoning behind it. In the old days, enchanting had generally been a solo operation, plus an apprentice or two. Most enchanters had made or at least added some personal flourishes to the items they enchanted. During the rise of industrial enchanting, there had been an early movement away from that, with a lot of magic swords made by taking ready-made weapons produced using the fastest techniques available and slapping enchantments on them.

It pretty quickly became apparent that the old way... the crafting-based approach... had existed for a reason. Simply put, it's easier to enchant something that you had a hand in making, and the results are better.

This is one of the reasons why there will always be so many more lower level magic weapons and things. It's not just that a weaker magic item is exponentially more easy to make in terms of enchantment skill and magical power... it's that producing base items that will accommodate higher levels of enchantment is that much more difficult, as well.

So I understood why I was required to have a minimum of two regular-sized crafting courses, but the selection that was available had not excited me at all. They were also more expensive than regular classes, with all of them having either a hefty lab fee or requiring the purchase of tools and materials or both.

I didn't want to shell out a ton of coins to make wooden cabinets or armor or something that wouldn't really apply to anything I did outside of class. So I'd gone for something that was a little more general-purpose and a little less hands-on and material-oriented, an aesthetics of product design class. It counted as a crafting class but if I'd read the course description right, the emphasis was on "design" more so than "product"... I'd have to produce something for a final project, but not every day would be spent working with actual physical materials and turning out something tangible.

The class was listed under Glamour and Design, and it took me to a building I'd never been in, a low, rambling building of brick and glass that housed the Domestic Arts program as well. A few people thatI only vaguely recognized as being some of Two's friends said hi as I wandered the winding hallways looking for the right room.

Everything about the building seemed to have been designed with a touch of whimsy, or what an architect thinks is whimsical. The doors were all slightly slanted. The walls were mostly irregularly alternating panels of brushed metal and variously sized and colored tiles. A big hallway ran along the outside of the building, with the exterior wall being a bunch of little glass panes in a metal framework that cast weird shadows on the floor and gave me the feeling of being caged. I wasn't sure what the point of the corridor was as it didn't seem to have any doors branching off from it at all, but by the time I noticed that I'd been going down it for some time, following hanging signs that assured me I was going the right way.

The signs were made of sheets of metal with the corners cut off and the letters punched out. They weren't at all easy to read... the only reasonable explanation for their existence was that somebody had spent a lot of money having stencils made and then ran out of funds before they could produce the finished signs.

The hallway did eventually end, and conveniently took me right almost to the entrance of my classroom, which I could now see was about twenty feet to the left of the sign that had directed me to go right when I first entered the building.

My completely justified dislike of the building evaporated somewhat when I stepped through the stupid sideways-leaning doorway and saw the room I'd be in for the semester. It was a high-ceilinged room, spacious and well-lit... qualities I didn't necessarily look for in a class room but that I noticed in this one. There a bunch of widely spaced semi-circular desks, each of which had an abundance of clear space, an adjustable lamp, and an inset crystal ball.

Even though I'd headed out pretty early, there was already a good number of students in the room when I got there. I assumed that they'd had classes in the building before and were wise to its ways.

It was only when that thought went through my head that it occurred to me that there could be a downside to taking a class that was technically a Glamour and Design class, that being the number of people I knew from Harlowe who were glam majors and who I would rather avoid. Well, okay, that number was two: Mariel, Puddy's semi-off-and-on girlfriend, and Ms. Suzune Hoshinotama... better known as Sooni, my semi-off-and-on self-proclaimed rival and fabulous star of the TV show in her head.

Like an ifrit summoned at the sound of its name, Sooni popped up in my field of vision as soon as I thought of her. She had cut her hair at some point over the summer. The lack of cathedral-style piles of braids atop her head made her fox ears stand out more, but also made it more apparent that they were in fact her ears and not an outrageous fashion accessory.

Along with the bushy tail that protruded from a slit up the back of her skirts and her shiny black eyes, the ears marked her as a member of the kitsu caste of yokai. Her habitually bronzed skin... she tanned even in the winter, using alchemical preparations... was hairless and smooth, unlike the nekoyokai, feline "friends" her parents had bought for her.

Somewhat ironically, her everyday clothing had slowly shifted towards western conventions as her costume design business had taken off. Her skirts were still pretty short... and still separated in the back to accommodate both the tail and anyone who wondered what color and how small her underwear was... but they looked less like something that would be found in an imported comic book and more like the sorts of skirts that Magisterian girls wore. Her tops looked less blousey and more... shirty. Her outfits tended to be in less attention-grabbing colors, as today when she was wearing basic black.

The only part of her typical ensemble that remained were the big clunky wooden sandals. They had been a gift from her mother, and she was reluctant to give them up for anything more fashionable or less suited to use as a blunt instrument.

She had a bunch of people turned around at their desks talking to her. I felt weirdly torn between saying hi and hoping she didn't notice me. I'd spent a lot of time trying to duck her attention, but I'd also grown accustomed to it.

I decided to leave it up to fate, since my experience was that fate would pretty much have its own way regardless. I picked a still empty station not too close to her and took a look around the room. There was no sign of Mariel, but in looking for the sylph I spotted someone else from last year's crop of Harlowe fifth floor girls: Twyla.

She was fairly easy to overlook: not thin, not chubby enough to register as anything but sort of normal-ish to me. Hair blonde, but not alarmingly or alchemically so. The two little horns that stuck out of her forehead weren't even terribly noticeable from behind when her head was down. If I hadn't glanced past her right as she happened to be looking up, I might not have spotted that she was in the class at all.

I was surprised to see her. There were a number of differnet majors I could see benefiting from a design class, but the last I had heard she was studying Divination. Of course, the last I'd heard had been just before the start of the fall semester the year before. I knew how much could change in one year.

It was also possible that she was just taking the class for fun, like I did history classes. She would probably be good at it... I had witnessed Twyla's remarkable skill with forming images in the ether.

I realized that I was staring at her and that I wasn't the only one who was doing so. I decided to study my syllabus instead.

The instructor's name was only listed as Professor Stone. No first name, or possibly no last name. In light of Steff's aside about which races can be considered monoliths, I wondered if the instructor wasn't from one of the earthier elemental races... though that would be a bit like expecting a human to be called "flesh".

My other guess was a dwarf who'd had part of his name transliterated into Pax for convenience... there were plenty of Steins to be found among the dwarven clans. Though as I understood it, it was a bit of a faux pas to use a clan name as a personal name.

The only thing I could tell for certain from the name was that the professor wasn't very likely to be a human. Based on the accuracy of my previous guesses along that line, I was almost surprised when he showed up and he wasn't.

It was hard to say just what race he was, though. He was a small figure... slightly taller and broader than a gnome, but short and narrow for a dwarf. His chin was bearded, but it was a curly little goatee and not the full-on dwarven apron look. Given my acquaintance with Hazel and her dwarven boyfriend Andreas, I might have pegged him as a mix of the two, but honestly he seemed to be a little svelte for either. When I said he was broad for a gnome, I meant big across the shoulders... he looked pretty lean, which seemed to be the opposite of the gnomish tendency.

But of course there were exceptions, and anyway it wasn't as though it should matter what proportion of which races had gone into the making of Professor Stone. I couldn't help but try to sort him into the proper boxes when I saw him, but that didn't make the exercise necessary or productive.

"Hello!" he said. "I am Professor Stone. To answer the question that's on everybody's mind: yes, I do have a little dwarf in me. Though, from the point of view of my father, she was in fact a pretty big dwarf. This is aesthetics of product design. I know some of you from Glamour and Design classes. I suspect most of the rest of you are either Armoury or Applied Enchantment majors, though this class can be rewarding for anyone who wishes to produce things that are as beautiful as they are useful. I thought we'd begin today by taking a look at some examples."

He clapped his hands, and a bunch of objects appeared at the front of the room. The larger ones... like a gilt-edged full-length mirror and something that looked like a miniature waterfall set in a stone arch... were free-standing. The others, which included shiny weapons and elaborately designed staves as well as garments and art objects, had also manifested with shelves, hooks, and brackets as needed.

The point of the display was obviously to grab the class's attention, and he had mine. I wasn't so much captivated with the appearance or seeming value of the items as I was with the amount of magic that must have gone into setting it up.

They had seemed to appear from nowhere. If that was the case, it was more likely they really were coming from nowhere... like the things that Amaranth put away... than they had been teleported in, because of the sheer amount of power and precision that would have been needed. Illusions would have taken less power but considerable skill, as the results were not only perfectly designed but expertly positioned, and the trigger that would have been set up for them would have taken a lot of care.

The most likely explanation was that they had always been there but had been invisible. That meant that the objects were real, or at least not illusory fakes. Then I considered that illusions could have been prepared and then turned invisible... that would have been less tricky than setting up several complex illusions to be triggered all at once.

"While this class centers aesthetics as its subject," Professor Stone continued as I tried to analyze his trick, "it is specifically the aesthetics of product design that we will concern ourselves with. Now in a sense, a painting or a sculpture may be considered a 'product' if it's made to be sold, but we will not be focusing on beauty and art for their own sakes. Let us look at the examples on the front of the room."

He strode up to the sword.

"This is an unenchanted prototype of the coronation sword used by Magisterion IX, made by Clan Schwertgriff, swordmakers by imperial appointment. Note well: this is not, technically speaking, a replica. The actual sword used in his elevation is a replica of this one. The ladies of Schwertgriff are unique among dwarven clans in favoring the sword, and like every blade they turn out, it is a work of art.

He waved his hand at the sword, and it floated up out of its brackets and turned in the air to hover point down beside him. He pointed to its features.

"Observe the silvery blade," he said. "Pure platinum. Unenchanted platinum is not, in fact, an idea material for making a blade. That's why most Schwertgriff weapons are made from mithriled steel, but it was considered inappropriate to make an official weapon for a human ruler using alloys of the dwarven sacred metal. This honor they reserved only for Magisterion I, XI, and most recently XIII.

"This is the only non-functional item I'll be showing you, and it's only non-functional in terms of having an inferior blade. The balance is perfect. The salamander-skin handgrip is comfortable. The jewels on the crosspiece are inset so as to be protected from the brunt of any trauma. The sword that this one was mother to was never in fact intended to be used in combat... though it would have attested to the skills of its makers if it had been... but when dwarves are asked to make a weapon, they make a weapon.

"Incidentally, this weapon is on loan to us by very special arrangement. Some of the products I'm exhibiting will remain on display as inspirational examples throughout the semester, but this one must be returned in seven days. I'm also afraid that I cannot allow you to handle it, though you may inspect it at your leisure while it remains in our keeping."

He snapped his fingers and a soft blue glow briefly surrounded the sword then disappeared. He went to the next item on the wall, a small square box with some kind of scene set into its side in a mosaic of gem-like tiles. He pointed at it and the top opened, and a haunting lullaby began to play.

"This music box is of elven make," he said, going to the next item on the wall. "It is not, in fact, bejeweled as it looks... rather, the wood has been given a high polish with certain alchemical varnishes. It looks like the scene is made out of individual pieces because of a 'leaf' aesthetic that shows up cyclically in elven crafting circles. I recommend close inspection to get the full effect."

[]

"This is the television box from my private study," he said. "It not made by me, but it comes from an age when every such device was individually crafted. I like it so much that I craft one or two new ones in the style every year. If I ever retire from teaching, it will become my full-time hobby.

"Because of the, ah, frugal nature of educational institutions, you can find examples of older TVs throughout the campus. Harlowe Hall used to be home to an exquisite if somewhat poorly maintained specimen, until it was destroyed by a squabble among careless students last autumn."

I resisted the urge to look at Sooni, who I hoped was resisting the urge to look at me. I doubted she felt guilty about her role in destroying the outdated TV in the fifth floor girls' lounge, which I had to say had not really been all that exquisite.


[3.5 hours]

Lunch in the Arch was pretty decent, all things considered. I couldn't say if I liked it better than the old place or not. The food was better quality and less institution-y, but... well, maybe I couldn't say what I liked about the old dining hall's food that even made it a contender, but I'd spent a lot of time figuring out what among its offerings I could enjoy eating. Maybe it was just a matter of emotional investment and comforting familiarity.

After lunch I followed Ian outside and we sat on some steps while he strummed his lute. I didn't say anything. Not so much for fear of distracting him... to some extent, he played better with a little distraction than when he was super focused on what he was doing. But he played best when he felt like no one was paying any attention to him. Luckily for the sake of any future he might have as a performer, being in a "stage" situation that sufficiently separated him from the crowd seemed to work. Once he got going, he was in a world of his own.

He wasn't exactly playing a song, more just trying things out. Watching the little contortions his face made as he fiddled around was kind of fun and weirdly hot. He twisted his lips, and bit them. At one point he stuck out the tip of his tongue. He squinted, and glared at nothing in particular.

If we'd had unlimited free time than he likely would have either got comfortable enough with what he was doing to start busting out actual songs or grown frustrated and given up, but sadly neither one of us was finished with classes for the day so he had to pack it up before too long.

Though I still had to go to Coach Callahan's fighting class afterwards, my next class was my last new one of the semester... the only remaining unknown quantity. I felt kind of ambivalent about it. There were classes that I needed to take and classes that I wanted to take... a lot of the time I could find a class that fell into both categories. While not every class I'd taken was something I'd classify as "fun", most of my classes so far had at least not been unpleasant.

An Applied Enchantment major required six credit hours in crafting. It was a sensible requirement. I understood the reasoning behind it. In the old days, enchanting had generally been a solo operation, plus an apprentice or two. Most enchanters had made or at least added some personal flourishes to the items they enchanted. During the rise of industrial enchanting, there had been an early movement away from that, with a lot of magic swords made by taking ready-made weapons produced using the fastest techniques available and slapping enchantments on them.

It pretty quickly became apparent that the old way... the crafting-based approach... had existed for a reason. Simply put, it's easier to enchant something that you had a hand in making, and the results are better.

This is one of the reasons why there will always be so many more lower level magic weapons and things. It's not just that a weaker magic item is exponentially more easy to make in terms of enchantment skill and magical power... it's that producing base items that will accommodate higher levels of enchantment is that much more difficult, as well.

So I understood why I was required to have a minimum of two regular-sized crafting courses, but the selection that was available had not excited me at all. They were also more expensive than regular classes, with all of them having either a hefty lab fee or requiring the purchase of tools and materials or both.

I didn't want to shell out a ton of coins to make wooden cabinets or armor or something that wouldn't really apply to anything I did outside of class. So I'd gone for something that was a little more general-purpose and a little less hands-on and material-oriented, an aesthetics of product design class. It counted as a crafting class but if I'd read the course description right, the emphasis was on "design" more so than "product"... I'd have to produce something for a final project, but not every day would be spent working with actual physical materials and turning out something tangible.

The class was listed under Glamour and Design, and it took me to a building I'd never been in, a low, rambling building of brick and glass that housed the Domestic Arts program as well. A few people thatI only vaguely recognized as being some of Two's friends said hi as I wandered the winding hallways looking for the right room.

Everything about the building seemed to have been designed with a touch of whimsy, or what an architect thinks is whimsical. The doors were all slightly slanted. The walls were mostly irregularly alternating panels of brushed metal and variously sized and colored tiles. A big hallway ran along the outside of the building, with the exterior wall being a bunch of little glass panes in a metal framework that cast weird shadows on the floor and gave me the feeling of being caged. I wasn't sure what the point of the corridor was as it didn't seem to have any doors branching off from it at all, but by the time I noticed that I'd been going down it for some time, following hanging signs that assured me I was going the right way.

The signs were made of sheets of metal with the corners cut off and the letters punched out. They weren't at all easy to read... the only reasonable explanation for their existence was that somebody had spent a lot of money having stencils made and then ran out of funds before they could produce the finished signs.

The hallway did eventually end, and conveniently took me right almost to the entrance of my classroom, which I could now see was about twenty feet to the left of the sign that had directed me to go right when I first entered the building.

My completely justified dislike of the building evaporated somewhat when I stepped through the stupid sideways-leaning doorway and saw the room I'd be in for the semester. It was a high-ceilinged room, spacious and well-lit... qualities I didn't necessarily look for in a class room but that I noticed in this one. There a bunch of widely spaced semi-circular desks, each of which had an abundance of clear space, an adjustable lamp, and an inset crystal ball.

Even though I'd headed out pretty early, there was already a good number of students in the room when I got there. I assumed that they'd had classes in the building before and were wise to its ways.

It was only when that thought went through my head that it occurred to me that there could be a downside to taking a class that was technically a Glamour and Design class, that being the number of people I knew from Harlowe who were glam majors and who I would rather avoid. Well, okay, that number was two: Mariel, Puddy's semi-off-and-on girlfriend, and Ms. Suzune Hoshinotama... better known as Sooni, my semi-off-and-on self-proclaimed rival and fabulous star of the TV show in her head.

Like an ifrit summoned at the sound of its name, Sooni popped up in my field of vision as soon as I thought of her. She had cut her hair at some point over the summer. The lack of cathedral-style piles of braids atop her head made her fox ears stand out more, but also made it more apparent that they were in fact her ears and not an outrageous fashion accessory.

Along with the bushy tail that protruded from a slit up the back of her skirts and her shiny black eyes, the ears marked her as a member of the kitsu caste of yokai. Her habitually bronzed skin... she tanned even in the winter, using alchemical preparations... was hairless and smooth, unlike the nekoyokai, feline "friends" her parents had bought for her.

Somewhat ironically, her everyday clothing had slowly shifted towards western conventions as her costume design business had taken off. Her skirts were still pretty short... and still separated in the back to accommodate both the tail and anyone who wondered what color and how small her underwear was... but they looked less like something that would be found in an imported comic book and more like the sorts of skirts that Magisterian girls wore. Her tops looked less blousey and more... shirty. Her outfits tended to be in less attention-grabbing colors, as today when she was wearing basic black.

The only part of her typical ensemble that remained were the big clunky wooden sandals. They had been a gift from her mother, and she was reluctant to give them up for anything more fashionable or less suited to use as a blunt instrument.

I felt weirdly torn between saying hi and hoping she didn't notice me. I'd spent a lot of time trying to duck her attention, but I'd also grown accustomed to it.

[]


The instructor's name was only listed as Professor Stone. No first name, or possibly no last name. In light of Steff's aside about which races can be considered monoliths, I wondered if the instructor wasn't from one of the earthier elemental races... though that would be a bit like expecting a human to be called "flesh".

My other guess was a dwarf who'd had part of his name transliterated into Pax for convenience... there were plenty of Steins to be found among the dwarven clans. Though as I understood it, it was a bit of a faux pas to use a clan name as a personal name.

The only thing I could tell for certain from the name was that the professor wasn't very likely to be a human. Based on the accuracy of my previous guesses along that line, I was almost surprised when he showed up and he wasn't.

It was hard to say just what race he was, though. He was a small figure... slightly taller and broader than a gnome, but short and narrow for a dwarf. His chin was bearded, but it was a curly little goatee and not the full-on dwarven apron look. Given my acquaintance with Hazel and her dwarven boyfriend Andreas, I might have pegged him as a mix of the two, but honestly he seemed to be a little svelte for either. When I said he was broad for a gnome, I meant big across the shoulders... he looked pretty lean, which seemed to be the opposite of the gnomish tendency.

But of course there were exceptions, and anyway it wasn't as though it should matter what proportion of which races had gone into the making of Professor Stone. I couldn't help but try to sort him into the proper boxes when I saw him, but that didn't make the exercise necessary or productive.

"Hello!" he said. "I am Professor Stone. To answer the question that's on everybody's mind: yes, I do have a little dwarf in me. Though, from the point of view of my father, she was in fact a pretty big dwarf. This is aesthetics of product design. I know some of you from Glamour and Design classes. I suspect most of the rest of you are either Armoury or Applied Enchantment majors, though this class can be rewarding for anyone who wishes to produce things that are as beautiful as they are useful."

[]

"While this class centers aesthetics as its concern, it is specifically the aesthetics of product design... now, in a sense, a painting or a sculpture may be considered a 'product' if it's made to be sold, but we will not be focusing on beauty and art for their own sakes. Let us look at the examples on the front of the room," he said. He strode up to the sword. "This is an unenchanted prototype of the coronation sword used by Magisterion IX, made by Clan Schwertgriff, swordmakers by imperial appointment. Note well: this is not, technically speaking, a replica. The actual sword used in his elevation is a replica of this one. The Schwertgriff ladies are unique among dwarven clans in favoring the sword, and like every blade they turn out, it is a work of art.

He waved his hand at the sword, and it floated up out of its brackets and turned in the air to hover point down beside him. He pointed to its features.

"Observe the silvery blade," he said. "Pure platinum. Unenchanted platinum is not, in fact, an idea material for making a blade. That's why most Schwertgriff weapons are made from mithriled steel, but it was considered inappropriate to make an official weapon for a human ruler using alloys of the dwarven sacred metal. This honor they reserved only for Magisterion I, XI, and most recently XIII.

"This is the only non-functional item I'll be showing you, and it's only non-functional in terms of having an inferior blade. The balance is perfect. The salamander-skin handgrip is comfortable. The jewels on the crosspiece are inset so as to be protected from the brunt of any trauma. The sword that this one was mother to was never in fact intended to be used in combat... though it would have attested to the skills of its makers if it had been... but when dwarves are asked to make a weapon, they make a weapon.

"Incidentally, this weapon is on loan to us courtesy of my mother, and so I'm afraid I cannot allow you to handle it, though you may inspect it at your leisure."

He snapped his fingers and a soft blue glow briefly surrounded the sword then disappeared. He went to the next item on the wall, a small square box with some kind of scene set into its side in a mosaic of gemstone tiles. He pointed at it and the top opened, and a haunting lullaby began to play.

"This music box is of elven make," he said, going to the next item on the wall. "It is not, in fact, bejeweled as it looks... rather, the wood has been given a high polish with certain alchemical varnishes. It looks like the scene is made out of individual pieces because of a 'leaf' aesthetic that shows up cyclically in elven crafting circles. I recommend close inspection to get the full effect."

[]

"This is the television box from my private study," he said. "It was made in an age when every such device was individually crafted. I like it so much that I craft one or two new ones in the style every year. If I ever retire from teaching, it will become my full-time hobby.

"Because of the, ah, frugal nature of educational institutions, you can find examples of older TVs throughout the campus. Harlowe Hall used to be home to an exquisite if somewhat poorly maintained specimen, until it was destroyed by a squabble among careless students last autumn."

I resisted the urge to look at Sooni, who I hoped was resisting the urge to look at me. I doubted she felt guilty about her role in destroying the outdated TV in the fifth floor girls' lounge, which I had to say had not really been all that exquisite.


[3 hours]

Lunch in the Arch was pretty decent, all things considered. I couldn't say if I liked it better than the old place or not. The food was better quality and less institution-y, but... well, maybe I couldn't say what I liked about the old dining hall's food that even made it a contender, but I'd spent a lot of time figuring out what among its offerings I could enjoy eating. Maybe it was just a matter of emotional investment and comforting familiarity.

After lunch I followed Ian outside and we sat on some steps while he strummed his lute. I didn't say anything. Not so much for fear of distracting him... to some extent, he played better with a little distraction than when he was super focused on what he was doing. But he played best when he felt like no one was paying any attention to him. Luckily for the sake of any future he might have as a performer, being in a "stage" situation that sufficiently separated him from the crowd seemed to work. Once he got going, he was in a world of his own.

He wasn't exactly playing a song, more just trying things out. Watching the little contortions his face made as he fiddled around was kind of fun and weirdly hot. He twisted his lips, and bit them. At one point he stuck out the tip of his tongue. He squinted, and glared at nothing in particular.

[]

My next class was my last remaining new one. I felt kind of ambivalent about it. There were classes that I needed to take and classes that I wanted to take. A lot of the time I could find a class that fell into both categories. While not every class I'd taken was something I'd classify as "fun", most of my classes so far had at least not been unpleasant.

An Applied Enchantment major required six credit hours in crafting. It was a sensible requirement. I understood the reasoning behind it. In the old days, enchanting had generally been a solo operation, plus an apprentice or two. Most enchanters had made or at least added some personal flourishes to the items they enchanted. During the rise of industrial enchanting, there had been an early movement away from that, with a lot of magic swords made by taking ready-made weapons produced using the fastest techniques available and slapping enchantments on them.

It pretty quickly became apparent that the old way... the crafting-based approach... had existed for a reason. Simply put, it's easier to enchant something that you had a hand in making, and the results are better.

This is one of the reasons why there will always be so many more lower level magic weapons and things. It's not just that a weaker magic item is exponentially more easy to make in terms of enchantment skill and magical power... it's that producing base items that will accommodate higher levels of enchantment is that much more difficult, as well.

So I understood why I was required to have a minimum of two regular-sized crafting courses, but the selection that was available had not excited me at all. They were also more expensive than regular classes, with all of them having either a hefty lab fee or requiring the purchase of tools and materials or both.

I didn't want to shell out a ton of coins to make wooden cabinets or armor or something that wouldn't really apply to anything I did outside of class. So I'd gone for something that was a little more general-purpose and a little less hands-on and material-oriented, an aesthetics of product design class. It counted as a crafting class but if I'd read the course description right, the emphasis was on "design" more so than "product"... I'd have to produce something for a final project, but not every day would be spent working with actual physical materials and turning out something tangible.

The class was listed under Glamour and Design, and it took me to a building I'd never been in, a low, rambling building of brick and glass that housed the Domestic Arts program as well. A few people thatI only vaguely recognized as being some of Two's friends said hi as I wandered the winding hallways looking for the right room.

Everything about the building seemed to have been designed with a touch of whimsy, or what an architect thinks is whimsical. The doors were all slightly slanted. The walls were mostly irregularly alternating panels of brushed metal and variously sized and colored tiles. A big hallway ran along the outside of the building, with the exterior wall being a bunch of little glass panes in a metal framework that cast weird shadows on the floor and gave me the feeling of being caged. I wasn't sure what the point of the corridor was as it didn't seem to have any doors branching off from it at all, but by the time I noticed that I'd been going down it for some time, following hanging signs that assured me I was going the right way.

The signs were made of sheets of metal with the corners cut off and the letters punched out. They weren't at all easy to read... the only reasonable explanation for their existence was that somebody had spent a lot of money having stencils made and then ran out of funds before they could produce the finished signs.

The hallway did eventually end, and conveniently took me right almost to the entrance of my classroom, which I could now see was about twenty feet to the left of the sign that had directed me to go right when I first entered the building.

My completely justified dislike of the building evaporated somewhat when I stepped through the stupid sideways-leaning doorway and saw the room I'd be in for the semester. It was a high-ceilinged room, spacious and well-lit... qualities I didn't necessarily look for in a class room but that I noticed in this one. There a bunch of widely spaced semi-circular desks, each of which had an abundance of clear space, an adjustable lamp, and an inset crystal ball.

Even though I'd headed out pretty early, there was already a good number of students in the room when I got there. I assumed that they'd had classes in the building before and were wise to its ways.

It was only when that thought went through my head that it occurred to me that there could be a downside to taking a class that was technically a Glamour and Design class, that being the number of people I knew from Harlowe who were glam majors and who I would rather avoid. Well, okay, that number was two: Mariel, Puddy's semi-off-and-on girlfriend, and Ms. Suzune Hoshinotama... better known as Sooni, my semi-off-and-on self-proclaimed rival and fabulous star of the TV show in her head.

Like an ifrit summoned at the sound of its name, Sooni popped up in my field of vision as soon as I thought of her. She had cut her hair at some point over the summer. The lack of cathedral-style piles of braids atop her head made her fox ears stand out more, but also made it more apparent that they were in fact her ears and not an outrageous fashion accessory.

The instructor's name was only listed as Professor Stone. No first name, or possibly no last name. In light of Steff's aside about which races can be considered monoliths, I wondered if the instructor wasn't from one of the earthier elemental races... though that would be a bit like expecting a human to be called "flesh".

My other guess was a dwarf who'd had part of his name transliterated into Pax for convenience... there were plenty of Steins to be found among the dwarven clans. Though as I understood it, it was a bit of a faux pas to use a clan name as a personal name.

The only thing I could tell for certain from the name was that the professor wasn't very likely to be a human. Based on the accuracy of my previous guesses along that line, I was almost surprised when he showed up and he wasn't.

It was hard to say just what race he was, though. He was a small figure... slightly taller and broader than a gnome, but short and narrow for a dwarf. His chin was bearded, but it was a curly little goatee and not the full-on dwarven apron look. Given my acquaintance with Hazel and her dwarven boyfriend Andreas, I might have pegged him as a mix of the two, but honestly he seemed to be a little svelte for either. When I said he was broad for a gnome, I meant big across the shoulders... he looked pretty lean, which seemed to be the opposite of the gnomish tendency.

But of course there were exceptions, and anyway it wasn't as though it should matter what proportion of which races had gone into the making of Professor Stone. I couldn't help but try to sort him into the proper boxes when I saw him, but that didn't make the exercise necessary or productive.

"Hello!" he said. "I am Professor Stone. To answer the question that's on everybody's mind: yes, I do have a little dwarf in me. Though, from the point of view of my father, she was in fact a pretty big dwarf. This is aesthetics of product design. I know some of you from Glamour and Design classes. I suspect most of the rest of you are either Armoury or Applied Enchantment majors, though this class can be rewarding for anyone who wishes to produce things that are as beautiful as they are useful."

[]

"While this class centers aesthetics as its concern, it is specifically the aesthetics of product design... now, in a sense, a painting or a sculpture may be considered a 'product' if it's made to be sold, but we will not be focusing on beauty and art for their own sakes. Let us look at the examples on the front of the room," he said. He strode up to the sword. "This is an unenchanted prototype of the coronation sword used by Magisterion IX, made by Clan Schwertgriff, swordmakers by imperial appointment. Note well: this is not, technically speaking, a replica. The actual sword used in his elevation is a replica of this one. The Schwertgriff ladies are unique among dwarven clans in favoring the sword, and like every blade they turn out, it is a work of art.

He waved his hand at the sword, and it floated up out of its brackets and turned in the air to hover point down beside him. He pointed to its features.

"Observe the silvery blade," he said. "Pure platinum. Unenchanted platinum is not, in fact, an idea material for making a blade. That's why most Schwertgriff weapons are made from mithriled steel, but it was considered inappropriate to make an official weapon for a human ruler using alloys of the dwarven sacred metal. This honor they reserved only for Magisterion I, XI, and most recently XIII.

"This is the only non-functional item I'll be showing you, and it's only non-functional in terms of having an inferior blade. The balance is perfect. The salamander-skin handgrip is comfortable. The jewels on the crosspiece are inset so as to be protected from the brunt of any trauma. The sword that this one was mother to was never in fact intended to be used in combat... though it would have attested to the skills of its makers if it had been... but when dwarves are asked to make a weapon, they make a weapon.

"Incidentally, this weapon is on loan to us courtesy of my mother, and so I'm afraid I cannot allow you to handle it, though you may inspect it at your leisure."

He snapped his fingers and a soft blue glow briefly surrounded the sword then disappeared. He went to the next item on the wall, a small square box with some kind of scene set into its side in a mosaic of gemstone tiles. He pointed at it and the top opened, and a haunting lullaby began to play.

"This music box is of elven make," he said, going to the next item on the wall. "It is not, in fact, bejeweled as it looks... rather, the wood has been given a high polish with certain alchemical varnishes. It looks like the scene is made out of individual pieces because of a 'leaf' aesthetic that shows up cyclically in elven crafting circles. I recommend close inspection to get the full effect."

[]

"This is the television box from my private study," he said. "It was made in an age when every such device was individually crafted. I like it so much that I craft one or two new ones in the style every year. If I ever retire from teaching, it will become my full-time hobby.

"Because of the, ah, frugal nature of educational institutions, you can find examples of older TVs throughout the campus. Harlowe Hall used to be home to an exquisite if somewhat poorly maintained specimen, until it was destroyed by a squabble among careless students last autumn."

I resisted the urge to look at Sooni, who I hoped was resisting the urge to look at me. I doubted she felt guilty about her role in destroying the outdated TV in the fifth floor girls' lounge, which I had to say had not really been all that exquisite.


[2.5 hours]

Lunch in the Arch was pretty decent, all things considered. I couldn't say if I liked it better than the old place or not. The food was better quality and less institution-y, but... well, maybe I couldn't say what I liked about the old dining hall's food that even made it a contender, but I'd spent a lot of time figuring out what among its offerings I could enjoy eating. Maybe it was just a matter of emotional investment and comforting familiarity.

After lunch I followed Ian outside and we sat on some steps while he strummed his lute. I didn't say anything. Not so much for fear of distracting him... to some extent, he played better with a little distraction than when he was super focused on what he was doing. But he played best when he felt like no one was paying any attention to him. Luckily for the sake of any future he might have as a performer, being in a "stage" situation that sufficiently separated him from the crowd seemed to work. Once he got going, he was in a world of his own.

He wasn't exactly playing a song, more just trying things out. Watching the little contortions his face made as he fiddled around was kind of fun and weirdly hot. He twisted his lips, and bit them. At one point he stuck out the tip of his tongue. He squinted, and glared at nothing in particular.

[]

My next class was my last remaining new one. I felt kind of ambivalent about it. There were classes that I needed to take and classes that I wanted to take. A lot of the time I could find a class that fell into both categories. While not every class I'd taken was something I'd classify as "fun", most of my classes so far had at least not been unpleasant.

An Applied Enchantment major required six credit hours in crafting. It was a sensible requirement. I understood the reasoning behind it. In the old days, enchanting had generally been a solo operation, plus an apprentice or two. Most enchanters had made or at least added some personal flourishes to the items they enchanted. During the rise of industrial enchanting, there had been an early movement away from that, with a lot of magic swords made by taking ready-made weapons produced using the fastest techniques available and slapping enchantments on them.

It pretty quickly became apparent that the old way... the crafting-based approach... had existed for a reason. Simply put, it's easier to enchant something that you had a hand in making, and the results are better.

This is one of the reasons why there will always be so many more lower level magic weapons and things. It's not just that a weaker magic item is exponentially more easy to make in terms of enchantment skill and magical power... it's that producing base items that will accommodate higher levels of enchantment is that much more difficult, as well.

So I understood why I was required to have a minimum of two regular-sized crafting courses, but the selection that was available had not excited me at all. They were also more expensive than regular classes, with all of them having either a hefty lab fee or requiring the purchase of tools and materials or both.

I didn't want to shell out a ton of coins to make wooden cabinets or armor or something that wouldn't really apply to anything I did outside of class. So I'd gone for something that was a little more general-purpose and a little less hands-on and material-oriented, an aesthetics of product design class. It counted as a crafting class but if I'd read the course description right, the emphasis was on "design" more so than "product"... I'd have to produce something for a final project, but not every day would be spent working with actual physical materials and turning out something tangible.

The class was listed under Glamour and Design, and it took me to a building I'd never been in, a low, rambling building of brick and glass that housed the Domestic Arts program as well. A few people thatI only vaguely recognized as being some of Two's friends said hi as I wandered the winding hallways looking for the right room.

Everything about the building seemed to have been designed with a touch of whimsy, or what an architect thinks is whimsical. The doors were all slightly slanted. The walls were mostly irregularly alternating panels of brushed metal and variously sized and colored tiles. A big hallway ran along the outside of the building, with the exterior wall being a bunch of little glass panes in a metal framework that cast weird shadows on the floor and gave me the feeling of being caged. I wasn't sure what the point of the corridor was as it didn't seem to have any doors branching off from it at all, but by the time I noticed that I'd been going down it for some time, following hanging signs that assured me I was going the right way.

The signs were made of sheets of metal with the corners cut off and the letters punched out. They weren't at all easy to read... the only reasonable explanation for their existence was that somebody had spent a lot of money having stencils made and then ran out of funds before they could produce the finished signs.

The hallway did eventually end, and conveniently took me right almost to the entrance of my classroom, which I could now see was about twenty feet to the left of the sign that had directed me to go right when I first entered the building.

[]

The instructor's name was only listed as Professor Stone. No first name, or possibly no last name. In light of Steff's aside about which races can be considered monoliths, I wondered if the instructor wasn't from one of the earthier elemental races... though that would be a bit like expecting a human to be called "flesh".

My other guess was a dwarf who'd had part of his name transliterated into Pax for convenience... there were plenty of Steins to be found among the dwarven clans. Though as I understood it, it was a bit of a faux pas to use a clan name as a personal name.

The only thing I could tell for certain from the name was that the professor wasn't very likely to be a human. Based on the accuracy of my previous guesses along that line, I was almost surprised when he showed up and he wasn't.

It was hard to say just what race he was, though. He was a small figure... slightly taller and broader than a gnome, but short and narrow for a dwarf. His chin was bearded, but it was a curly little goatee and not the full-on dwarven apron look. Given my acquaintance with Hazel and her dwarven boyfriend Andreas, I might have pegged him as a mix of the two, but honestly he seemed to be a little svelte for either. When I said he was broad for a gnome, I meant big across the shoulders... he looked pretty lean, which seemed to be the opposite of the gnomish tendency.

But of course there were exceptions, and anyway it wasn't as though it should matter what proportion of which races had gone into the making of Professor Stone. I couldn't help but try to sort him into the proper boxes when I saw him, but that didn't make the exercise necessary or productive.

"Hello!" he said. "I am Professor Stone. To answer the question that's on everybody's mind: yes, I do have a little dwarf in me. Though, from the point of view of my father, she was in fact a pretty big dwarf. This is aesthetics of product design. I know some of you from Glamour and Design classes. I suspect most of the rest of you are either Armoury or Applied Enchantment majors, though this class can be rewarding for anyone who wishes to produce things that are as beautiful as they are useful."

[]

"While this class centers aesthetics as its concern, it is specifically the aesthetics of product design... now, in a sense, a painting or a sculpture may be considered a 'product' if it's made to be sold, but we will not be focusing on beauty and art for their own sakes. Let us look at the examples on the front of the room," he said. He strode up to the sword. "This is an unenchanted prototype of the coronation sword used by Magisterion IX, made by Clan Schwertgriff, swordmakers by imperial appointment. Note well: this is not, technically speaking, a replica. The actual sword used in his elevation is a replica of this one. The Schwertgriff ladies are unique among dwarven clans in favoring the sword, and like every blade they turn out, it is a work of art.

He waved his hand at the sword, and it floated up out of its brackets and turned in the air to hover point down beside him. He pointed to its features.

"Observe the silvery blade," he said. "Pure platinum. Unenchanted platinum is not, in fact, an idea material for making a blade. That's why most Schwertgriff weapons are made from mithriled steel, but it was considered inappropriate to make an official weapon for a human ruler using alloys of the dwarven sacred metal. This honor they reserved only for Magisterion I, XI, and most recently XIII.

"This is the only non-functional item I'll be showing you, and it's only non-functional in terms of having an inferior blade. The balance is perfect. The salamander-skin handgrip is comfortable. The jewels on the crosspiece are inset so as to be protected from the brunt of any trauma. The sword that this one was mother to was never in fact intended to be used in combat... though it would have attested to the skills of its makers if it had been... but when dwarves are asked to make a weapon, they make a weapon.

"Incidentally, this weapon is on loan to us courtesy of my mother, and so I'm afraid I cannot allow you to handle it, though you may inspect it at your leisure."

He snapped his fingers and a soft blue glow briefly surrounded the sword then disappeared. He went to the next item on the wall, a small square box with some kind of scene set into its side in a mosaic of gemstone tiles. He pointed at it and the top opened, and a haunting lullaby began to play.

"This music box is of elven make," he said, going to the next item on the wall. "It is not, in fact, bejeweled as it looks... rather, the wood has been given a high polish with certain alchemical varnishes. It looks like the scene is made out of individual pieces because of a 'leaf' aesthetic that shows up cyclically in elven crafting circles. I recommend close inspection to get the full effect."

[]

"This is the television box from my private study," he said. "It was made in an age when every such device was individually crafted. I like it so much that I craft one or two new ones in the style every year. If I ever retire from teaching, it will become my full-time hobby.

"Because of the, ah, frugal nature of educational institutions, you can find examples of older TVs throughout the campus. Harlowe Hall used to be home to an exquisite if somewhat poorly maintained specimen, until it was destroyed by a squabble among careless students last autumn."

I resisted the urge to look at Sooni, who I hoped was resisting the urge to look at me. I doubted she felt guilty about her role in destroying the outdated TV in the fifth floor girls' lounge, which I had to say had not really been all that exquisite.


[2 hours in. Still very fragmentary. I'm writing what's strongest in my head. Got a good start on the chapter, at least.]

Lunch in the Arch was pretty decent, all things considered. I couldn't say if I liked it better than the old place or not. The food was better quality and less institution-y, but... well, maybe I couldn't say what I liked about the old dining hall's food that even made it a contender, but I'd spent a lot of time figuring out what among its offerings I could enjoy eating. Maybe it was just a matter of emotional investment and comforting familiarity.

After lunch I followed Ian outside and we sat on some steps while he strummed his lute. I didn't say anything. Not so much for fear of distracting him... to some extent, he played better with a little distraction than when he was super focused on what he was doing. But he played best when he felt like no one was paying any attention to him. Luckily for the sake of any future he might have as a performer, being in a "stage" situation that sufficiently separated him from the crowd seemed to work. Once he got going, he was in a world of his own.

He wasn't exactly playing a song, more just trying things out. Watching the little contortions his face made as he fiddled around was kind of fun and weirdly hot. He twisted his lips, and bit them. At one point he stuck out the tip of his tongue. He squinted, and glared at nothing in particular.

[]

My next class was my last remaining new one. I felt kind of ambivalent about it. There were classes that I needed to take and classes that I wanted to take. A lot of the time I could find a class that fell into both categories. While not every class I'd taken was something I'd classify as "fun", most of my classes so far had at least not been unpleasant.

An Applied Enchantment major required six credit hours in crafting. It was a sensible requirement. I understood the reasoning behind it. In the old days, enchanting had generally been a solo operation, plus an apprentice or two. Most enchanters had made or at least added some flourishes to the items they enchanted. During the rise of industrial enchanting, there had been an early movement away from that, with a lot of magic swords made by taking ready-made weapons produced using the fastest techniques available and slapping enchantments on them.

It pretty quickly became apparent that the old way... the crafting-based approach... had existed for a reason. Simply put, it's easier to enchant something that you had a hand in making, and the results are better.

This is one of the reasons why there will always be so many more lower level magic weapons and things. It's not just that a weaker magic item is exponentially more easy to make in terms of enchantment skill and magical power... it's that producing base items that will accommodate higher levels of enchantment is that much more difficult, as well.

So I understood why I was required to have a minimum of two regular-sized crafting courses, but the selection that was available had not excited me at all. They were also more expensive than regular classes, with all of them having either a hefty lab fee or requiring the purchase of tools and materials or both.

I didn't want to shell out a ton of coins to make wooden cabinets or armor or something that wouldn't really apply to anything I did outside of class. So I'd gone for something that was a little more general-purpose and a little less hands-on and material-oriented, an aesthetics of product design class. It counted as a crafting class but if I'd read the course description right, the emphasis was on "design" more so than "product"... I'd have to produce something for a final project but not every day would be spent working with actual physical materials and turning out something tangible.

[]

The instructor's name was only given as Professor Stone. No first name, or possibly no last name. In light of Steff's aside about which races can be considered monoliths, I wondered if the instructor wasn't from one of the earthier elemental races... though that would be a bit like expecting a human to be called "flesh".

My other guess had been a dwarf who'd had part of his name transliterated into Pax for convenience... there were plenty of Steins to be found among the dwarven clans. Though as I understood it, it was a bit of a faux pas to use a clan name as a personal name.

[]

"Hello!" he said. "I am Professor Stone. To answer the question that's on everybody's mind: yes, I do have a little dwarf in me. Though, from the point of view of my father, she was in fact a pretty big dwarf. This is aesthetics of product design. I know some of you from Glamour and Design classes. I suspect most of the rest of you are either Armoury or Applied Enchantment majors, though this class can be rewarding for anyone who wishes to produce things that are as beautiful as they are useful."

[]

"While this class centers aesthetics as its concern, it is specifically the aesthetics of product design... now, in a sense, a painting or a sculpture may be considered a 'product' if it's made to be sold, but we will not be focusing on beauty and art for their own sakes. Let us look at the examples on the front of the room," he said. He strode up to the sword. "This is an unenchanted prototype of the coronation sword used by Magisterion IX, made by Clan Schwertgriff, swordmakers by imperial appointment. Note well: this is not, technically speaking, a replica. The actual sword used in his elevation is a replica of this one. The Schwertgriff ladies are unique among dwarven clans in favoring the sword, and like every blade they turn out, it is a work of art.

He waved his hand at the sword, and it floated up out of its brackets and turned in the air to hover point down beside him. He pointed to its features.

"Observe the silvery blade," he said. "Pure platinum. Unenchanted platinum is not, in fact, an idea material for making a blade. That's why most Schwertgriff weapons are made from mithriled steel, but it was considered inappropriate to make an official weapon for a human ruler using alloys of the dwarven sacred metal. This honor they reserved only for Magisterion I, XI, and most recently XIII.

"This is the only non-functional item I'll be showing you, and it's only non-functional in terms of having an inferior blade. The balance is perfect. The salamander-skin handgrip is comfortable. The jewels on the crosspiece are inset so as to be protected from the brunt of any trauma. The sword that this one was mother to was never in fact intended to be used in combat... though it would have attested to the skills of its makers if it had been... but when dwarves are asked to make a weapon, they make a weapon.

"Incidentally, this weapon is on loan to us courtesy of my mother, and so I'm afraid I cannot allow you to handle it, though you may inspect it at your leisure."

He snapped his fingers and a soft blue glow briefly surrounded the sword then disappeared. He went to the next item on the wall, a small square box with some kind of scene set into its side in a mosaic of gemstone tiles. He pointed at it and the top opened, and a haunting lullaby began to play.

"This music box is of elven make," he said, going to the next item on the wall. "It is not, in fact, bejeweled as it looks... rather, the wood has been given a high polish with certain alchemical varnishes. It looks like the scene is made out of individual pieces because of a 'leaf' aesthetic that shows up cyclically in elven crafting circles. I recommend close inspection to get the full effect."

[]

"This is the television box from my private study," he said. "It was made in an age when every such device was individually crafted. I like it so much that I craft one or two new ones in the style every year. If I ever retire from teaching, it will become my full-time hobby.

"Because of the, ah, frugal nature of educational institutions, you can find examples of older TVs throughout the campus. Harlowe Hall used to be home to an exquisite if somewhat poorly maintained specimen, until it was destroyed by a squabble among careless students last autumn."

I resisted the urge to look at Sooni, who I hoped was resisting the urge to look at me. I doubted she felt guilty about her role in destroying the outdated TV in the fifth floor girls' lounge, which I had to say had not really been all that exquisite.


[At 1.5 hours... jumping around a bit.]

Lunch in the Arch was pretty decent, all things considered. I couldn't say if I liked it better than the old place or not. The food was better quality and less institution-y, but... well, maybe I couldn't say what I liked about the old dining hall's food that even made it a contender, but I'd spent a lot of time figuring out what among its offerings I could enjoy eating. Maybe it was just a matter of emotional investment and comforting familiarity.

After lunch I followed Ian outside and we sat on some steps while he strummed his lute. I didn't say anything. Not so much for fear of distracting him... to some extent, he played better with a little distraction than when he was super focused on what he was doing. But he played best when he felt like no one was paying any attention to him. Luckily for the sake of any future he might have as a performer, being in a "stage" situation that sufficiently separated him from the crowd seemed to work. Once he got going, he was in a world of his own.

He wasn't exactly playing a song, more just trying things out. Watching the little contortions his face made as he fiddled around was kind of fun and weirdly hot. He twisted his lips, and bit them. At one point he stuck out the tip of his tongue. He squinted, and glared at nothing in particular.

[]

My next class was my last remaining new one. I felt kind of ambivalent about it. There were classes that I needed to take and classes that I wanted to take. A lot of the time I could find a class that fell into both categories. While not every class I'd taken was something I'd classify as "fun", most of my classes so far had at least not been unpleasant.

An Applied Enchantment major required six credit hours in crafting. It was a sensible requirement. I understood the reasoning behind it. In the old days, enchanting had generally been a solo operation, plus an apprentice or two. Most enchanters had made or at least added some flourishes to the items they enchanted. During the rise of industrial enchanting, there had been an early movement away from that, with a lot of magic swords made by taking ready-made weapons produced using the fastest techniques available and slapping enchantments on them.

It pretty quickly became apparent that the old way... the crafting-based approach... had existed for a reason. Simply put, it's easier to enchant something that you had a hand in making, and the results are better.

This is one of the reasons why there will always be so many more lower level magic weapons and things. It's not just that a weaker magic item is exponentially more easy to make in terms of enchantment skill and magical power... it's that producing base items that will accommodate higher levels of enchantment is that much more difficult, as well.

So I understood why I was required to have a minimum of two regular-sized crafting courses, but the selection that was available had not excited me at all. They were also more expensive than regular classes, with all of them having either a hefty lab fee or requiring the purchase of tools and materials or both.

I didn't want to shell out a ton of coins to make wooden cabinets or armor or something that wouldn't really apply to anything I did outside of class. So I'd gone for something that was a little more general-purpose and a little less hands-on and material-oriented, an aesthetics of product design class. It counted as a crafting class but if I'd read the course description right, the emphasis was on "design" more so than "product"... I'd have to produce something for a final project but not every day would be spent working with actual physical materials and turning out something tangible.

[]

The instructor's name was only given as Professor Stone. No first name, or possibly no last name. In light of Steff's aside about which races can be considered monoliths, I wondered if the instructor wasn't from one of the earthier elemental races... though that would be a bit like expecting a human to be called "flesh".

My other guess had been a dwarf who'd had part of his name transliterated into Pax for convenience... there were plenty of Steins to be found among the dwarven clans. Though as I understood it, it was a bit of a faux pas to use a clan name as a personal name.

[]

"Hello!" he said. "I am Professor Stone. To answer the question that's on everybody's mind: yes, I do have a little dwarf in me. Though, from the point of view of my father, she was in fact a pretty big dwarf. This is aesthetics of product design. I know some of you from Glamour and Design classes. I suspect most of the rest of you are either Armoury or Applied Enchantment majors, though this class can be rewarding for anyone who wishes to produce things that are as beautiful as they are useful."

[]

"Let us look at the examples on the front of the room," he said. He strode up to the sword. "This is an unenchanted prototype of the coronation sword used by Magisterion IX, made by Clan Schwertgriff, swordmakers by imperial appointment. Note well: this is not, technically speaking, a replica. The actual sword used in his elevation is a replica of this one. The Schwertgriff ladies are unique among dwarven clans in favoring the sword, and like every blade they turn out, it is a work of art.

He waved his hand at the sword, and it floated up out of its brackets and turned in the air to hover point down beside him. He pointed to its features.

"Observe the silvery blade," he said. "Pure platinum. Unenchanted platinum is not, in fact, an idea material for making a blade. That's why most Schwertgriff weapons are made from mithriled steel, but it was considered inappropriate to make an official weapon for a human ruler using alloys of the dwarven sacred metal. This honor they reserved only for Magisterion I, XI, and most recently XIII.

"This is the only non-functional item I'll be showing you, and it's only non-functional in terms of having an inferior blade. The balance is perfect. The salamander-skin handgrip is comfortable. The jewels on the crosspiece are inset so as to be protected from the brunt of any trauma. The sword that this one was mother to was never in fact intended to be used in combat... though it would have attested to the skills of its makers if it had been... but when dwarves are asked to make a weapon, they make a weapon."


[1 hour in. Next hour I'm going to go ahead and jump into the class cutting the preamble.]

Lunch in the Arch was pretty decent, all things considered. I couldn't say if I liked it better than the old place or not. The food was better quality and less institution-y, but... well, maybe I couldn't say what I liked about the old dining hall's food that even made it a contender, but I'd spent a lot of time figuring out what among its offerings I could enjoy eating. Maybe it was just a matter of emotional investment and comforting familiarity.

After lunch I followed Ian outside and we sat on some steps while he strummed his lute. I didn't say anything. Not so much for fear of distracting him... to some extent, he played better with a little distraction than when he was super focused on what he was doing. But he played best when he felt like no one was paying any attention to him. Luckily for the sake of any future he might have as a performer, being in a "stage" situation that sufficiently separated him from the crowd seemed to work. Once he got going, he was in a world of his own.

He wasn't exactly playing a song, more just trying things out. Watching the little contortions his face made as he fiddled around was kind of fun and weirdly hot. He twisted his lips, and bit them. At one point he stuck out the tip of his tongue. He squinted, and glared at nothing in particular.

[]

My next class was my last remaining new one. I felt kind of ambivalent about it. There were classes that I needed to take and classes that I wanted to take. A lot of the time I could find a class that fell into both categories. While not every class I'd taken was something I'd classify as "fun", most of my classes so far had at least not been unpleasant.

An Applied Enchantment major required six credit hours in crafting. It was a sensible requirement. I understood the reasoning behind it. In the old days, enchanting had generally been a solo operation, plus an apprentice or two. Most enchanters had made or at least added some flourishes to the items they enchanted. During the rise of industrial enchanting, there had been an early movement away from that, with a lot of magic swords made by taking ready-made weapons produced using the fastest techniques available and slapping enchantments on them.

It pretty quickly became apparent that the old way... the crafting-based approach... had existed for a reason. Simply put, it's easier to enchant something that you had a hand in making, and the results are better.

This is one of the reasons why there will always be so many more lower level magic weapons and things. It's not just that a weaker magic item is exponentially more easy to make in terms of enchantment skill and magical power... it's that producing base items that will accommodate higher levels of enchantment is that much more difficult, as well.

So I understood why I was required to have a minimum of two regular-sized crafting courses, but the selection that was available had not excited me at all. They were also more expensive than regular classes, with all of them having either a hefty lab fee or requiring the purchase of tools and materials or both.

I didn't want to shell out a ton of coins to make wooden cabinets or armor or something that wouldn't really apply to anything I did outside of class. So I'd gone for something that was a little more general-purpose and a little less hands-on and material-oriented, an aesthetics of product design class. It counted as a crafting class but if I'd read the course description right, the emphasis was on "design" more so than "product"... I'd have to produce something for a final project but not every day would be spent working with actual physical materials and turning out something tangible.


[Beginning - half hour writing.]

Lunch in the Arch was pretty decent, all things considered. I couldn't say if I liked it better than the old place or not. The food was better quality and less institution-y, but... well, maybe I couldn't say what I liked about the old dining hall's food that even made it a contender, but I'd spent a lot of time figuring out what among its offerings I could enjoy eating. Maybe it was just a matter of emotional investment and comforting familiarity.

After lunch I followed Ian outside and we sat on some steps while he strummed his lute. I didn't say anything. Not so much for fear of distracting him... to some extent, he played better with a little distraction than when he was super focused on what he was doing. But he played best when he felt like no one was paying any attention to him. Luckily for the sake of any future he might have as a performer, being in a "stage" situation that sufficiently separated him from the crowd seemed to work. Once he got going, he was in a world of his own.

He wasn't exactly playing a song, more just trying things out. Watching the little contortions his face made as he fiddled around was kind of fun and weirdly hot. He twisted his lips, and bit them. At one point he stuck out the tip of his tongue. He squinted, and glared at nothing in particular.

[]

My next class was my last remaining new one. I felt kind of ambivalent about it. There were classes that I needed to take and classes that I wanted to take. A lot of the time I could find a class that fell into both categories. While not every class I'd taken was something I'd classify as "fun", most of my classes so far had at least not been unpleasant.

An Applied Enchantment major required six credit hours in crafting. It was a sensible requirement. I understood the reasoning behind it. In the old days, enchanting had generally been a solo operation, plus an apprentice or two. Most enchanters had made or at least added some flourishes to the items they enchanted. During the rise of industrial enchanting, there had been an early movement away from that, with a lot of magic swords made by taking ready-made weapons produced using the fastest techniques available and slapping enchantments on them.

It pretty quickly became apparent that the old way... the crafting-based approach... had existed for a reason. Simply put, it's easier to enchant something that you had a hand in making, and the results are better.

This is one of the reasons why there will always be so many more lower level magic weapons and things. It's not just that a weaker magic item is exponentially more easy to make in terms of enchantment skill and magical power.