In the year 2012, a mysterious illness began to sweep the globe. In its wake, those who survived it were left with immensely powerful supernatural abilities.
As the number of people capable of wielding magic powers increased, they began to organize and seize control of the course of history. Using their powers to travel between parallel universes, these mages forge empires of a scale never before seen. And at the center of it all is the Academy, a neutral institution founded for mages to share their knowledge with each other.
Mages struggle against each other to impose their will upon the multiverse, but there is one threat that unites them all together. In recent months, mysterious entities have appeared. These entities wield power far greater than any one mage, and they seem determined to annihilate all of humanity. The mages will have to set aside their differences in order to beat them. The fate of the multiverse depends on it.
Hello everyone! Ascendant is officially a month old, but man it doesn't feel like it. There's been so much going on that it feels like it's been longer sometimes. To help everyone stay on the same page, we're compiling a list of incursions that finished over the past month and putting some in character impressions along with it in the form of a report card. It'll be posted in the next post and you can assume that everything in it is known by anyone that cares enough to read the report card ICly. We'll be doing this every month, so if you're having trouble keeping up with all the incursions hopefully this will help!
There's no changes being made this month, so carry on as you have been. It's been great having you all and I hope you're enjoying the site as much as we are.
Every month, a sheet of paper is posted in the Academy's main thoroughfare leading from the Hall of Portals. It's presumably placed there by a staff member, though no one has ever caught the culprit in the act. The sheet's title indicates that it's meant as a "report card" of sorts, evaluating the performance of the mages active in the regions connected to the Academy (even those mages who want nothing to do with the Academy itself). It's not clear what, if any, significance these grades actually have. The only thing known for sure is that someone is keeping track of mage conflicts, and that person seems to want to encourage said conflicts to grow even greater.
Class report card of June 1st, Year 1
This has been a wonderful month, hasn't it? Buildings demolished, grudges formed, friendships threatened... But you students still have a long way to go! Instead of a building, why not demolish a city? Instead of a grudge, why not a lifelong blood feud? And why bother with friendships in the first place? Anyway, keep up the good work!
In the meantime, here are the evaluations of your class projects.
The Italian peninsula was largely controlled by stable, prosperous republics during the early renaissance, but you wouldn't know it by looking at our Florence of 1448 now! Following a fight between mages that resulted in astounding collateral damage to prominent Florentine architecture, the former ruling class are keeping their heads down and doing as they're told as though worried about being zapped by Jupiter himself. And it's hilarious! Their new mage royalty currently just seems to be interested in using the place as one big magic laboratory, but you can expect things to get more interesting once the neighboring city-states take notice of the electric overlord in their midst - especially if other mages decide to lend them some help. In the meantime, the data on mage population distributions sure is interesting, isn't it?
The only thing worse than a rulebreaker is a cowardly rulebreaker! A bunch of students trespassing in the restricted areas stumbled across each other, but they barely fought at all - even when a nearby staff member helpfully offered a convenient misunderstanding to kick things off! Don't you students know that the restricted areas are restricted for a reason? Just imagine if some more malicious students ran across the radioactive materials and nerve agents we left lying around there. If they used those materials to wreak havoc on the multiverse, you know who to blame: the other students who looked the other way while the rules were broken!
This project started when a student took issue with the whole "torture captives to death for superstitious purposes" thing that was happening in one of the portal cities, but the real stars of the show are the students who didn't give a damn about it as long as they could make the city belong to them - the same students, in fact, that left such an impact on Florence earlier in the month! It was a great fight with plenty of magic attacks flung in all directions, even between so-called "allies," but there was just one problem: even with all the other mages driven out of the city, the victors have been too busy managing Florence to properly make use of the place! But it'll probably be fine - either the victors will solidify their hold over the city soon, or someone else will come along to claim it for themselves. Good luck, students!