hardpity | SHEEP INBOX

...That's kidnapping...

I know that! But in our defense it was gonna be less than 24 hours of non-invasive study followed by a total memory wipe

"Was"...

[reaches over to attempt to noogie Aides]

Don't memory wipe your classmates.

It's not like it was up to me!

Your parents...? Or the organization itself?

Don't they work for your parents? That should mean you have some say too.

Not enough to override that... b-but Pegasus broke the machine for it. I think I mentioned that during the bartending game...

So many things were revealed in that game...apologies if my memory is hazy on a few. There was also so much alcohol involved.

I am now curious as to why the study, though. I thought that other than special cases like yours, Overblot was a common affliction for your world's mages; was that a false impression?

I was sober the whole time, but...we learned a lot without context. Overblot is common in makes, though, isn't it?

It's actually incredibly rare...

Is it dependent on the strength of the mage?

[y'all are prodigies at prodigy school aren't you]

[*mages not makes, autocorrect is destroying me]

...? Haven't a few of your friends had it happen to them...? It sounded kind of common.

That's why they wanted to study them so much... in the first place, even one student at NRC Overblotting during the school year almost never happens, let alone five. Overblot is like -- if you think of a fire, I guess? Think of a fire. The mage's mana pool is the wood, burning it is the magic, and the ash that's produced is the blot. In this metaphor we gotta kinda allow for the fact that when you have too much ash it turns into a monster and starts attacking people.

MOST mages don't have enough magic to generate that level of blot, and of those who do, it takes basically longterm trauma to get into a state of mind to Overblot. Like, the fault lines have to start really early for someone to snap like that.

PLUS, if someone DOES Overblot, 99 times out of 100 it's fatal. That's why the Charon squad isn't used to dealing delicately with people, because most of the time they're just there to pick up the Phantom that's left over, not an actual rational person.

So it's an anomaly that the circumstances have been created to make so many cases in one place, and that the cases have all been reverted. You are all from highly different backgrounds, as well, so it's likely something about the schoool environment that's triggering them to happen close together...

Outside authorities should likely be investigating your teachers and the grounds, along with the magical phenomena in the victims' bodies.

[nods at that last bit from Charon; he's already expressed his opinion on Aides' school enough times to feel the need to add on to that]

I can see why researching that kind of anomaly is important to understanding how to prevent Overblot from being fatal. But usually you'd want written consent from the people you want to examine first. Having cooperation will lead to better results.