Synopsis: Struck with tragedy, medical student (Name) is down on her luck and in need of a better job. Looking for fast money, she attends an interview for a job at a local club. Unfortuantely, she finds herself tangled in the web of the crime organization Bonten with no clean way out.
Professor Blanchard ends up calling an emergency faculty meeting to discuss the matter of Night Raven College being cursed.
It's... really strange, actually? You, Leona, and Grim are all included in the discussion, but sort of compartmentalized off to one side of the faculty room. Which is a very pretty, airy room with wide balconies that overlook parts of the school and a ton of bird and squirrel houses lined up by the windows.
You leave Ortho Bunny with Minajael, who says something about getting his house 'ready in case of need', while Ioannes offers to go explain to the Aurarium housewarden and let Chenya know what's going on too.
Suri, the tiger, and Hamlet, the horse, both sort of turn up at some point and linger outside the faculty room. No one seems to mind or even particularly take note of this. You got as much word out to as many NRC guys as you could on the way over, even everybody still cursed. Hopefully they'll manage to find Vil, and Vil will be able to figure things out with more information at hand.
Somehow Cater manages to respond first to your school-wide message with a thumb's up emoji, even though as far as you know his current body doesn't even have thumbs.
It seems like every professor in the school is present, while Ambrose LXIII sits behind his desk and listens seriously to Blanchard's pretty thorough explanation of the problem, the curse, and the possible theories you've all come up with for how to handle it. He makes his point with the book from his hometown, and even shows some of the video on your phone.
He asked you to send it to him, but you don't really think the guys would appreciate footage of them being giant monsters and weird contraptions just sitting in the hands of an RSA professor.
Leona is sleeping in the chair next to you. It's a pretty squashy armchair so that's honestly less surprising than the fact that he agreed to come along to the meeting in the first place. Grim is sitting on your other side, equally bewildered at the school faculty having a serious conversation about crisis response and community obligations in front of you.
"I don't think a mainland response team could get here in a timely fashion, especially not with the unpredictable and inclement weather off of the other side of the island," a professor you haven't even met yet is saying.
"I'm inclined to agree with Beauregard," Goodglen says. "We can handle this ourselves with very little risk to our own students, so long as we proceed deliberately and take basic precautions."
"The odds of the curse rebounding onto us aren't zero, we do have to consider the safety of our own school and students, not to mention the rest of the island," your Swordsmanship and Dancing instructor interjects, but it sounds more like he's just emphasizing the point than trying to start an argument.
"This sort of curse is rarely fatal. Even in the case of a rebound, we'd have plenty of time to pursue solutions," Blanchard points out. "But the clock is already ticking for Night Raven College."
Nobody's raised their voice or accused anyone of being a self-serving parasite since the discussion started.
You're not even really sure what your presence is supposed to amount to, since nobody's even suggested that you ought to repay your debt to the school by figuring out a solution, here's a mop and bucket, try not to get anyone killed etc etc...?
"I'm sick of sittin' here! I wanna go find Ortho!" Grim complains, folding his arms and glowering from his own chair.
This earns you both some sympathetic glances.
"Yes indeed," Ambrose says. "While we debate, we must not forget that Night Raven College and her students are actively suffering the burdens of a curse. My attempts to contact Headmage Crowley have gone unanswered. We cannot rule out that the students are currently suffering without even the reassurance of his unaffected guidance."
...Seriously?
"Oh no. Without the guiding light of our headmage, however will the others cope?" you quip.
Somehow the sympathetic looks just increase.
"Poor dears," Goodglen tuts. "They must be so frightened!"
"We can't currently even ensure that the rose is safely sequestered, or that the students will be able to locate their missing peers. Some of whom might be vital to resolving the curse," Blanchard barrels along, curling a hand into a fist and gesturing emphatically at the others, before turning to Ambrose.
"Headmage, I believe we can assist in a number of ways. Indeed, I believe that outside aid is currently our sister college's best hope at resolving the situation, and we are the ones best positioned to provide it. I hope you will forgive me for suggesting we impose upon our own students, but I don't believe we can handle this without them," he says.
Wow, he sounds pretty fired up.
Ambrose ponders for a moment, but then nods.
"Royal Sword Academy isn't only an institution for learning the technicalities of our subjects. It is also a place for molding future generations into the guiding lights of the world," he says. "We can hardly achieve such an end by encouraging our students to cower fearfully while others suffer. Indeed, that would be antithetical to the uniting principles of our Radiant Seven, who were ever and all known for their compassion."
Blanchard's posture eases in relief.
"Yes, I agree," he says.
There are murmurs of agreement all around, it seems. Only a few professors still look like they're still nursing some reservations.
Well, if Royal Sword Academy needed help, you suppose Crowley would leap at the chance to do it even if only to hold it over their heads for as long as possible. It'd be another sort of victory to claim.
But you get the feeling that's really not what they're doing here. They really do seem concerned with helping, unpretentiously.
It's... nice.
There will still undoubtedly be strings, because there always are even when people are nice. But it's still pretty great. Some of the heaviness of the situation is easing from your shoulders, just a bit.
"Very well," Ambrose decides. You think you missed some more talk in the midst of your quiet revelation. "Professor Blanchard, I'll leave the cursebreaking strategy in your hands. You have full permission to conscript whoever is necessary and willing, I trust you'll use it wisely."
Blanchard ducks his head.
"I'll do my best, Headmage. Thank you."
"No need for that! We're all agreed, after all," Ambrose insists, folding his hands. "While you organize things, I shall attempt to contact some field experts off the island. Better to do it now and hope they might still arrive in time to help, should things go further astray."
Professor Goodglen leans forward.
"I believe I should assist as well, Headmage. After listening to Beauregard's assessment of the curse, I think there's an option for breaking it that we can pursue right here at the school, with the help of a few tricks of the enchantment trade," he says, snapping his fingers for emphasis and letting off a little cloud of sparkles. "I'll need to borrow our Night Raven guests for the matter, however."
He looks over towards you.
You gesture at yourself and Grim and Leona, and he nods his head.
"You want us to help from here?" you check, and when he nods again, reluctance pulls at you.
"No way!" Grim protests. "We gotta get to Night Raven College and rescue our friends!"
"I'm with Grim. We should go help in person, you never know when an extra set of hands can make all the difference. I'm sure Prince Leona would agree if he wasn't too exhausted from his ordeal to weigh in," you say.
Prince Leona opens one eye a slit to glare at you, but doesn't 'wake up' enough to argue.
"Oh dear, what a difficult conundrum. The urge to fly to the side of your beloved companions must be overwhelming by now!" the flight instructor sympathizes, with feeling.
"Never said they were beloved..." Grim grumbles.
"But you can do much more to help from here, and you're the only ones who might be able to do it," Goodglen tells you.
"Besides," Blanchard cuts in. He shares a glance with Goodglen. "What will you be able to do at the school, even if you go? The students inside NRC are already doing everything they can from that end to break the curse, and the students we take with us should be upperclassmen who can help in getting past the wards, and if necessary help recreate the 'angry villagers storming the castle' scenario from the legend. Where would either of you fit into that?"
"The Great Grim can wreck anything! I'll smash those wards! Lemme at 'em!" Grim argues.
"He does kinda have an unparalleled capacity for destruction," you say.
Goodglen shakes his head.
"Brute force isn't the best way to untangle a thorny mess like this. No, no, what we need is strategy and sound thinking! You absolutely must trust me!"
"We don't! We don't trust any of you guys! We didn't even wanna be here!" Grim counters.
The RSA faculty all look very concerned at that response.
You hesitate, sigh, and then reach over and pat Grim's shoulder.
"Let's at least hear him out," you suggest. "We don't know what he wants to try yet. If it will fix the curse, that's the most important part."
"But--"
"Come on, Grim. They've offered to help us. The least we can do is listen to them about how."
Grim looks like he wants to argue more. But then he just makes a disgruntled huff, folds his forearms, and turns his head away. You pat him again, reassuringly.
Which is how you end up moving to Goodglen's office from the faculty room, Leona awake and surly about it, listening to the exuberant professor talk about planning a party. For some deeply unclear reason.
"You see," Goodglen announces, pulling boxes off of the shelves beside his desk and producing what seem to be binders full of party planning elements, as well as some massive silver and white tome that looks very magical and advanced. "If we're dealing with sympathetic resonance, I have several working theories on how magic-by-proxy can be made to work! Forgive me, but this is just the sort of situation that's perfect for testing it. I wrote a paper on it, oh, two hundred years ago, but between one thing and another it fell to the wayside and I've able to revisit the study. Oh where did I put the... ahaha, there you are! Thought you could get away from me, did you?"
He says this to what looks, to your admittedly untrained eye, to be a jar full of blue butterflies made of sparkles. It had rolled under his desk.
Grim, sitting beside you, looks deeply unimpressed. The expression on Leona's face isn't much different.
"I'm sorry, Professor, I'm not sure I'm following you...?" you say.
Goodglen heaves another box onto his desk.
"Not to worry, not to worry, I should explain things a little more clearly," he says. He produces a very beautiful hand-carved crystal chess set from one of the boxes, and with a gesture and a little flare of magic, has them all set up.
He points to the black pieces.
"So this is Night Raven College, who are currently suffering from a curse. Based on all the information we have, it's not a direct curse, but some sort of recreation, which means either it must be resolved through the true cure or through reenactment," he explains. Then he lifts two pieces up from the board--king and queen--and pockets them, before producing a vial of purple glittery powder, and sprinkling it over the rest.
The remaining pieces glow with an eerie purple light.
"There, that's the curse," he says.
"Now, according to Blanchard's theory--which I will say, does fit well with my own writings on proxy resonance magic and the mysteries of magical backlash and echo effects--the key to breaking the curse is for the afflicted to unlock the correct actions that will satisfy it. Fairly standard, though sometimes contested as an assumption in academic circles," Goodglen carries on, and the black chess pieces on the board march into a chaotic arrangement.
"We know all that. Is there a point to this little show?" Leona asks.
"Yes, yes, for such a lackadaisical fellow you're quite impatient, aren't you?" Goodglen tuts.
He gestures again, and the white crystal pieces start to move, also interspersing throughout the board.
You mouth the word 'lackadaisical' to Leona, bemused.
"So now we will send in the most suitable volunteers we can muster up to try and assist in this effort. Reenacting situations to see what, if any, might break the curse!"
The chess pieces twirl and whirl around, more like dancers than combatants. It is, if nothing else, kind of neat to look at.
"But then there's you!" Goodglen declares, placing the black king and queen, unaffected by the purple curse glitter, just off to the side of the board.
"I'm the big cool piece," Grim whispers to you.
"That one's the major liability, so yeah," Leona tells him, which earns him a glare.
"Now, you have not been in the radius of the curse. But you are Night Raven pieces, in a sense," Goodglen continues, ignoring the peanut gallery. "There is a connection there! Sympathy, resonance! An avenue we can exploit, although we will have to set up certain elements to try and convince the curse, particularly at range, that this connection exists. It will depend on the receptiveness of the magic. Given the conditions, however, I can't imagine it would fail, the curse is only enclosed to the degree that it has been because of external restrictions. If anything, the magic should be eager to find another outlet."
"So... because we're Night Raven College students, you think you could spread the curse to us?" you ask, warily.
"No no no, that would be far too dangerous! No, we only need to resonate you with it, if it spreads even further goodness that would be awful. That's why you should never do this sort of thing without the help of an expert," Goodglen tells you, gesturing emphatically with both hands. "Dear me, spread the curse, whatever are they teaching at other schools these days..."
Leona snorts.
"Not much difference between resonating with a curse and catching it," he says.
"Of course there is! Dispelling the former will be much simpler, any number of faculty members could do it and simply end the whole attempt without putting anyone at risk," Goodglen argues.
You think you're catching on a bit.
"So you want us to seem like we're part of the curse, so that we can enact scenarios from here without the complications of actually being under the curse and its restrictions?" you guess.
Goodglen beams.
"Just so, just so! Gold star!" he praises. He pulls a blue vial of sparkles out and then a red vial, sprinkling them lightly over the black king and queen. The resulting effect is an only slightly different purple from the rest.
Then the king and queen, off the board, also begin to dance around each other. A couple of the white crystal pieces also veer off of the board to join them.
"The main features of the curse, or at least of breaking it, are the two key players. The beauty, and the beast."
As the king and queen dance, the 'curse' effect sparks and flares. Then it snaps, fading into sparkles. A ripple effect spreads to all the other black chess pieces on the board, and the purple miasma there also cracks and turns into sparkles.
A beauty, and a beast...
It's like you feel the light go on inside your own brain. Comprehension dawns, beautiful in its obvious simplicity.
"Oh!" you exclaim. "We have a beauty and a beast right here!"
Goodglen smiles and nods at you encouragingly.
You reach out and pick up the black king and queen, excited at the prospect that this could actually work.
"Leona's extremely beautiful, and Grim's a dire beast! That's genius! All we need to do is get you guys to act out some of the scenes from Professor Blanchard's book while Professor Goodglen fools the curse, and it could free everyone!"
Okay you're actually into this idea now! You put the pieces down and meet everyone's gazes.
I'd appreciate it if you reblogged this post! I almost fell for that shit!
A Tumblr user called me saying they reported my account by accident and I needed to call a Tumblr support on Discord: Jarell Perry (this Tumblr user account was already hacked, now I know that)
Then I called this guy on Discord. I was desperate cause in the "warning" said my account would be blocked in 24 hours. But the whole conversation was REALLY strange, even more when he gave me, OUT OF NOWHERE, his "certificate":
Here is the "certificate":
He asked, then, for me to change my email and I was like "what kind of support would ask this crap?"
Besides my suspicions, TWO things saved me to fall for this shit:
>>> Another Tumblr Warning: I decided to search a little more and found ONE, ONE POST ABOUT IT ON TUMBLR, by @stuffymcstuffsworldthesecond (here is the link, please check it too and repost).
>>> The original person that called me was hacked: I even went a little further and searched the tumblr user on Google (I needed to contact them some other way to confirm the message) and, guess what, they have an Instagram account AND A NEW TUMBLR ACCOUNT, cause the first one was HACKED!! THE ONE THAT WAS TALKING WITH ME!!! (Here is the post explaining it, also consider to follow this artist, their art is amazing! The NEW and SAFE account is @cypher-030)
THEN, I reported both the scammers and blocked them! Apparently, the hacked Tumblr account that called me is already banned at the time I write this warning! But must be more of them!
EVERYONE, DON'T FALL FOR THIS! If this happened with you, it would mean a lot if you reblogged!
Also, my followers: I will NEVER send a message about anything like this for you on private! I almost NEVER talk on private, I just talk on comments, asks and hashtag reblogs! Please please, know that!
I will mention all my moots here cause I think this whole scam warning is REALLY important!
I want everyone to be aware of a “fake report” scam. A user will contact you or ask you to message because they “can’t message you for some reason”. They’ll say they were scammed by a similar looking account and they reported you, as did their friends. They’ll say they are very sorry and present you with an image about the “community guidelines violations”. They’ll give you a contact person for resolution. It’s a scam. Report the message as a scam. Block the user immediately.
This ain’t my first rodeo with scammers. I’m Gen X and suspicious as hell. Be careful out there.
Tumblr users be careful out there. There is a scam going around right now where users will try to contact you and say that they have falsely reported your account. They will then proceed to tell you to contact a "support" person on discord. Doing this will just move the scamming process along, and they will have your email changed and more.
I'm glad I decided to search the name up first, and read some posts about these scams.
Please be careful, if problems arise don't contact any random "support" but rather Tumblr's official support: https://www.tumblr.com/support
Post that helped me become aware of this scam: Reddit Post
