This is by no means all the information on this world, but it is good information to know.

The Kingdom of Toreny is primarily a Magocracy—that is, the ruling class is determined by the individual’s aptitude for magic. Those that are completely unable to make use of it are seen as lower-class, the “workers” of the kingdom. If one shows any aptitude toward the use of magic, they are immediately graduated up in class, and depending on how much aptitude is displayed, they might gain certain societal benefits. The large amount of establishments in the bigger city centers cater first to magicians, second to non-magicians. If you are looking for a room at an inn and there happens to be a magician who wants to stay, you will be passed up for their convenience.

To the north of the capitol city of Pireon is Toreny Academy of The Arts Mystical, known throughout the kingdom as the school for geniuses and savants. It is said that if one chooses to attend this school, their family receives a large stipend from the academy as a sort of thank-you. Those that graduate from the academy often attend directly to the matters of state, dealing in politics, war administration, and embassy. It has been a long-standing truth that those who are born with magical ability will likely spend some of their lives at the Academy, honing their skills and gaining knowledge.

What the Academy actually stands for is slightly different than the public eye, however. The Academy is indeed a school of magical arts and the use thereof, but its true purpose is to groom its attending students to become the ruling class of the kingdom. Those that enter the school freely may have their own reasons for doing so, but the school will also actively scout out and essentially kidnap magicians who will not come willingly. If a family is found to have a child with magical aptitudes, the Academy will offer them the same stipend they offer those who come of their own will; whether the family takes it or not has no bearing on whether the academy will take their child. It is said, therefore, that there is a series of “safe houses,” where a family being followed and accosted by the Academy can leave their child for periods while the Academy loses interest eventually.

Unfortunately, a few of those safe houses are run by the Academy itself, and serve as a collecting point for young mages.

Once you have enrolled (or been enrolled) in the Academy, you are not permitted to leave its grounds until you have graduated from its programs. Depending on the type of magic at which you are adept, you will be installed into different programs:
-Magicians of the arcane variety, such as wizards, sorcerors, and bards, are enrolled in the “Ianus Professio” line, which trains them for the use of their particular art for the purpose of using them in military intelligence, population representation, local government, and perhaps even the Secret Police.
-Magicians who draw their magic not from themselves, but from a deity or other entity will be enrolled in the “Divinus Professio” line, to learn how to harness the powers granted them by their patrons for use as healers, religious leaders, ambassadors, and advisors.
-Those with very little magic of their own and simply the ability to make use of magic that is given to them at any kind of proficiency, like fighters, rangers, and monks, are enrolled in the “Phalanx” Line. These students are looked down upon by the other students because of their lack of magical ability, but they are at the same time a necessary part of the academy’s workings. They are trained in their particular specialties, sometimes as a rank and sometimes by individual masters, for the purposes of being the heavy hands of the military, the face of the police force, and personal bodyguards of the aristocracy.

Each student at the Academy is given a Star Rating, from zero to three stars. The average student is a one or two star, where those that perform exceptionally well are three star students. The Star Rating system is not based solely on academics, however—politics play a large role in how one progresses from one rank to another.

One’s Star Rating determines one’s quality of life at the academy. One star students live in double-occupancy dormitories with a central bathing area, are granted sufficient meals to keep them in good health and stamina, and are allowed a stipend of ten Toreny Silvers every week. Two star students live in single-occupancy dormitories similar to those of the one star students, are granted meals with more flavor and variety to keep them interesting, and are given five Toreny Gold Pieces per week. Three star students live in apartments with private bathing areas and central heating, are given a choice of what their meals will entail during their weeks, and are granted twenty Toreny Gold Pieces every week.

Outside of those standard ratings, there are two more ratings that are exceedingly rare. First is the Honour Student “Special Star” rating, who are given many privileges exclusive to their star rating. They are granted one hundred Toreny Gold Pieces every week, given private housing with transportation accommodations, and are often doted upon by the professors, given treats and favours. The other, of course, is the No Star rating, given to those who cause too much trouble. They are domiciled in whatever space is open enough to put them, usually in the attic of whatever house they used to live in. They are demoted from “Student” to “Student with Work Study,” made to do maintenance work on their dormitory and given only what they need to fill their bellies and keep them healthy. They are still required to attend classes, of course, and can theoretically gain star ranking again with some work and the right kind of sucking up to the right teachers.

Non-magic users cannot attain more than two stars.

 
Outside the Academy, the kingdom itself has been in an age of relative peace for some three centuries under the rule of the magician class. The King of Toreny, an Elf named Aryntas the Level-Handed, has been doing quite a job of keeping whatever tensions arise pushed down and either satisfied or eradicated. He is a benevolent king who actively holds council with the population representatives, whose job it is to listen to the needs of the people. Of course, the rulings of the king, who is himself a very powerful wizard, will always favour the magician class, but those without magic are not treated so low that it is unbearable.

Nonmagical families are afforded many of the benefits that magical families are afforded, with several restrictions. In order to travel from one city to another, the travellers must submit a request for permission to leave the city and enter their destination city, which is granted in the form of documents. Nonmagical citizens must bring with them at all times their Mark of Citizenship, which tells the city guard that they are indeed a lawful citizen of the city in which they live. Without a Mark of Citizenship, the only city nonmagicians are allowed to enter and exit freely is Hub City, a large, sprawling collection of districts on the eastern border of the kingdom near the coast. There is no official record of Hub City in the king’s recollection, as he realized the importance of such a place to the people of his kingdom.

Within Hub City, one can entreat a messenger to contact the local populist of one’s own town to request entry again. This errand is slightly pricey, as legal citizens of any proper city do well to not stay in Hub for very long, so the job of being a messenger is itself looked down upon and perhaps even dangerous. Once this has been completed, the messenger delivers to the one who lost their Mark a provisional permit to enter the city for up to three days. If within those three days the citizen cannot find their Mark or cannot obtain it back for any reason, they must return to Hub and repeat the process. This ensures that those who wish to enter main cities illegally have a harder time of it, though the process for legal citizens to return to their home is perhaps slightly difficult. Thus, many people will pierce their mark into their body. The Mark differs for each main city.

Students of the Academy have the Academy Mark, a small golden disc engraved with arcane-looking writing on both sides. Many wear it on a necklace, some have it pierced into their ears, and others make ornate jewelry out of it. The added benefit of the Academy Mark is that each one of them is enchanted with a magic that returns it to your possession if lost, turning it up in your pockets in bag, appearing between pages in one of your books, or suddenly being in your soup. It is very difficult to lose the Mark, but also very difficult to rid oneself of it.

[I thought he was dead!]
[Didn't he just sort of disappear? I heard the government picked him up for FBI work.]
[Last I heard, he was running from Mexican drug cartels...]

So I went to Japan. I am working for the Japanese Board of Education, Koriyama City district. That puts me in Fukushima prefecture, about 45 minutes south of Fukushima City. I have been here since August or so, and my official job title is "Assistant English Teacher." It means that I work at three different schools as the quirky foreigner that tries to make English fun while simultabeously grounding the students in grammar and vocabulary because the actual English teachers are relatively incompetent in English.

At present, my good friend Austin is staying with me. He came over to Japan on a huge gamble last month, using a tourist visa to gain entrance to the country. It took him less than three weeks to find a job with reasonable pay and low expenses, and so at the beginning of January he will be shipped od\ff to wherever the job places him. He has asked to remain in Fukushima, which is brave considering the American government is still up in arms about the radiation thing. Fortunately for us, Koriyama is far enough away from the plant that by living here for an entire year we are receiving basically the same amount of radiation as an extra chest x-ray.

On Mondays I have modern dance class at Musical Art Square. They teach Graham method, which is still intensely alien to my Humphrey and Weidman tastes, and I am not quite sure I like it yet. Tuesdays are Contemporary Jazz, for which I do not care much at all but am also aware that the show business in this day and age requires skill in it, sadly. Fridays and Saturdays are French/Italian ballet (which sounds like a paradox because it is), depending on the mood of the instructor. She was taught French ballet, but likes the idea of Italian ballet, so it gets mixed together a lot. She is also a firm proponent of the "Men should dance like women" school. I am not sure of how much I approve, but since it is basically the only ballet studio in the city worth looking at, I am essentially stuck here.

Austin, Stephanie (one of the other inhabitants of my apartment complex) and I have fiddled about with doing music together. I bought Austin an acoustic guitar so that we could rock out, so the violin / tenor horn / guitar combo is kind of interesting. We have learned bits of the Gerudo Valley Theme from Ocarina of Time and are considering what else to do.

Oh, but Vincent, you never post online any more! Why is that? Shut up, I am a working adult now and that sucks my time and energy up like whoa. Add to this that the internet at school is censored so that anything fun at all is blocked (I am using a proxy right now to access LJ, in fact. It is one of the proxies that the Board of Education has not yet found), and it becomes difficult to do anything, even on those particular days when I have a grand total of two classes for the whole eight hours that I spend at school. Suck it up and if you are actually interested in reading what I write, and have the patience to wait for me to write it, then I seriously respect you because I treat you guys like crap most of the time.

It is currently first period. I have two classes today, fourth and sixth. I'm going to fiddle about with my ipad for a while, I suppose. I need to write stuff up for the Dungeons and Dragons campaign I am going to start running here anyway.

Hello everyone reading this thing!

I am involved in two games right now. The first is Entanglement, a game of SPACE POLITICS and the like. It's set in a sort of multiverse-continuum-thing that encompasses all universes in fandom and whatever other universes your original characters call home. It is an OC-friendly game, and the activity check is loose and infrequent, so you can be relatively lax on your posting and still be good for attendance, as it were. We have characters from Dune, Stargate, and Warhammer 40,000 right next to characters from Spice and Wolf, Vampire: The Masquerade, and Serial Experiments Lain, with a hefty pile of original characters in there, too. Take a look, if you want:

Entanglement

The second game is based in the .hack// universe, right now in The World R:2. It's an original-character-only game, but not just ant OC will do; you must create an OC from within the bounds of The World as a game framework. There are several classes and the like to choose from, and there's everything one would need to know on the Dot Hack wiki and the rules page of the game. If you are completely new to the Dot Hack universe, it might be a bit wonky to get into, but it's a fun, if sort of slow, game. You can check it out here:

New World

Fanime Con 2011 just happened in San Jose, California.

( CLICK THIS TO READ ABOUT IT. )

[What? He went to anotherconvention? I hear he is planning on going to even more of them...]

Last Friday I got a text message from Hazel Chaz that asked what my address was, so that he could swing by to pick me up and take me to San Diego for a steampunk convention, free ride and badge.

Naturally, I gave him my address, and then proceeded to roll about, lamenting that I had none of my steampunk or Victorian-era clothes with me. Here is my con report.

( Gaslight Gathering )

This last weekend was Anime Conji in San Diego, California. It was in its second year of existence, so while it was not brand-new to the convention circuit, it was still in the infant stage. It has been labeled by Maguma and his company as "FaultCon," but I think it's better named "DisasterCon," especially regarding the Disasquerade that we went through.

Start from the beginning, Ten. Start from the beginning.

( There's an image here too. )

My characters are as follows:

entanglement_rp

incesteyes Cain Hargreaves (Godchild)
sevenapples Horo the Wise Wolf (Spice and WOlf)
itwaspoison Xoan Ambassador Sandoval (Oglaf)
pas_de_neko Mr. Cat (Princess Tutu)

Homeless

sword_and_shoes Fakir (Princess Tutu)
paper_animals Maggie Mui (Read Or Dream)
Jareth the Goblin King (on Dreamwidth and I don't know how to link that) (The Labyrinth)
brushiebrushie Miyako (Hidamari Sketch)
narumianjo Narumi Anjo (Gakuen Alice)
shinmei_ryuu Aoyama Motoko (Love Hina)
mercury_keys A.B.A (Guilty Gear)
eatyoursave MISSINGNO. (Pokemon Blue, Red, and Green)
carcrashmusume Monoko (Yume Nikki)
tsubasa_is_yume Naegino Sora (Kaleido Star)

APPARENTLY I am more affluent than I originally though.

Affluent enough to have at some point in the recent past purchased a car. A 2008 red Jeep Grand Cherokee, to be precise. Additionally, I am apparently more reckless than I had once believed, having allegedly taken this car I have never owned and driven it through a red light in a town I have never heard of, whereupon I was caught by the stoplight camera wearing a face I have never worn.

The vehicle is registered in my name, with my driver's license number, so it must be me somehow, right? Therefore I have a 450-dollar bail set on a traffic ticket that my mum received at my home address. She called me up while I was driving around earlier and was like "Did you know you own a red jeep?"

Of course, my first though regarding this was "Somehow mother bought me a cheap car and is giving it to me so she can have her truck back." This was easily disassembled by the rest of the conversation regarding the ticket, the guy in the car not even looking remotely similar to me, and the increasing realisation that this guy has probably been using my name and information for more stuff than just this car.

Tomorrow morning I get to call the courts on the telephone, which we all know is the equivalent of being in a hurry at the DMV. It will probably take like a million hours, which is lame because I planned on going in to see if they had a job for me in the morning. So much for that idea.

The only good thing I can see coming from this is the following theory: If the car is registered with my information, does that mean I own it? If so, can I report it stolen and have the courts give it to me? Can I do the same with whatever else this guy has bought with my info?

Updates to come when I have them.

I got sock-on-the-doorknobbed by my landlord last night. At some 3 PM I received a text message that I needed to be out of the house last night because some "inspectors" were coming in to look at the house.

Already there's a problem, in that I received no notice whatsoever for this night I would have to spend somewhere other than the room I had paid money to rent, but this was just the tip of the iceberg.

I was told thereafter that I needed to vacate immediately since they would be coming in an hour. The "inspectors" showed up about twenty minutes later, by the way. Landlord said they needed free reign of every room in the house until the morning.

Problem number two: There's a laptop, a hard drive, a sewing machine, and several other small items in my room that might fetch money when you steal them and sell them to someone. Here is where the water level is. The iceberg is massive under the water.

These people- get this- are Ghost Hunters. I'm being kicked out for the night because my landlord thinks the house is haunted. Now, I'm pretty sure that there's no ghost in this house, as I have yet to experience a single anomaly myself and I have been here for a month and a half now. I know where to look for stuff like ethereal apparitions and static repeaters and stuff, too- I have done this before. I have nothing but word of mouth to go by that would make me think anything about this house is even remotely paranormal.

Issue number three: where do I go, then? I live more than two hours away from my house, so that's out. I could chill in a Denny's all night, but that sucks ass, so that's out. Time to call in favours. Maguma was so gracious as to put me up for the night, so I headed up that way with all of my valuables in the back of my truck so that a team of ghost hunters can traipse about the house and look for things that are not there until 4 am, at which, by the way, my landlord sent me a text message detailing that they had gone and I was free to return at any time.

Good, good to hear.

How was your night?