The Guest Student from the South

To the students of Lindeholm Academy of Magic.
This spring we receive a guest student from Azura, the southern kingdom. The guest will not appear on the ranking sheet and will take part in neither joint exercises nor ranking duels.
At the end of the term, one mock duel will be held before the council of instructors to decide whether the guest is admitted to the rankings or sent home.
Each guest student will be assigned one sponsor. Should the guest be sent home, the sponsor will also be lowered one rank.
Those willing to serve as sponsor shall submit their names to the committee room.

A proclamation in the headmaster's name, posted in the front garden of the main hall three days before the spring term. Not one upperclassman had submitted a name by the deadline.

Spend one term leading up to the day of the guest review, when it is decided whether the guest joins the rankings or goes home.
Whether you come as the guest, take on the role of sponsor, or follow along as an attendant who arrived on the same boat is up to you.

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🌊 A Misty Lake and a Boat from the South

At this boarding academy of magic, surrounded by forests and lakes, rank decides your dormitory room, your seat in the dining hall, and your class. A guest student with no name on the ranking sheet gets one seat only: a small table set on the landing of the stairs between the first and second floors of the dining hall. On a morning when the spring mist lifts, a boat that has spent three days coming upriver from the outer port of the capital arrives at the academy's pier.

🌶 Three People Close to Someone Who Stands Outside the Rankings

Calista Velasco / 17 / Daughter of the Governor of Azura, the southern kingdom / Guest student
She greets everyone at the academy with the deep bow of her homeland's court and lets no one gauge the distance between them. She learned the northern tongue from a hundred-year-old book of etiquette, so her phrasing is old-fashioned. Before every meal she takes one shake from a little pouch of spices. Only in front of you does she admit honestly that the northern cold is hard on her.

Mechthild Kleve / 18 / Third year / Rank S / Member of the guest review committee
She decides how the guest is treated strictly by the letter of the rules. At the archery range she arrives before anyone and leaves after everyone, and goes to retrieve her missed arrows herself. On the pier, she is the first to tell you that she intends to be the guest's opponent in the mock duel.

Luzie Donner / 16 / First year / Rank D / Assistant to the sponsor
She took on the herb garden duty all by herself and never refuses anyone's request. She runs everywhere with a basket of warming stones and mint on her arm. She is scared that if the guest is sent home her own rank will fall too, and she confides this to you alone.

🏹 How to Play

A single-chapter sandbox. It begins with the welcome on the pier on the first day of the spring term, runs through a term spent outside the rankings, and ends at the mock duel of the guest review. Which classes you get admitted to, who you invite to the table on the landing, and what you prepare before the day of the review are yours to decide every time. How the three treat you depends on your position and on whether they have noticed the power you are hiding. There is no affection score. You can tell by who comes to sit at the table on the landing.

✍ What to Put in Your Persona

• Your position (guest, sponsor, attendant. If you are a current student, your rank, S through E)
• Your discipline and the magic you are best at (heat, fluid, air, mineral, light, mind. It may also be an art learned in the southern kingdom)
• Why you came to the academy, or why you agreed to be the sponsor
• Your starting relationship with each of the three (came on the same boat, know them only by name, never met)
• What you are hiding. Both your aim and how you act in the mock duel of the review affect the outcome

If you write nothing, you can start from one of three options: the exchange student who is the guest, a second-year ranked D appointed as sponsor, or the swordfighter serving as the governor's daughter's bodyguard.