October Training

[godsoffortune]

Who: Everyone
What: Information and Training
When: September 4th
Where: Meeting Hall, the Far Shore
Summary: Training and informational sessions for newly arrived gods and shinki



In anticipation of the latest round of new arrivals, Heaven has partnered with the new gods and shinki to organize a very helpful informational reception.

It seems Bishamon's temple is unavailable this week due to business, although she has generously allowed a number of her shinki to go on with their usual tasks of passing out pamphlets and assisting the newcomers to settle in.

Gods and shinki arriving at heaven's meeting hall are, should they allow it, guided kindly towards a traditional-style dojo and banquet hall towards the back of the meeting hall itself. The gods and shinki are free to take their time during this day to learn about the details of their new life from Amaterasu's shinki or from the many veteran new god and shinki volunteers.




God Training

Newly arrived gods are escorted into a banquet hall for an informational meeting covering the basics of proper god behavior, although the minor deity conducting the meeting is in too much of a rush to take questions afterwards. They are encouraged to discuss the information with each other and ask questions of more experienced gods, as well as instructed to guide their new shinki appropriately.

Shinki Training

Various volunteers are stationed around the dojo, passing out helpful informational pamphlets. There are many shinki, including Bishamon's and Amaterasu's, who will be more than happy to train in using the borderline as well as offering a lecture on the basics of what is expected of a shinki and the importance of teamwork with other shinki and with gods. Shinki are encouraged to work together to practice what they've learned and discuss their perspectives.

The garden is available for borderline practice, and a few of the last training's slightly tattered crayon-drawn borderline targets have been brought back out and pinned to bales of straw to make a practice area. One of Amaterasu's shinki is drawing replacements with a large inked calligraphy brush. His targets are simple but elegant, but somehow, before they make it over to the target bales, they're ending up crayon-scribbled into much brighter colors. Maybe it's the child shinki who are in charge of putting them up? They do seem to be giggling a lot, and Amaterasu's artist shinki is looking more and more annoyed...

Physical Training

The dojo is stocked with a wide variety of practice weapons, traditional and modern, to offer some practice opportunity to gods who, for example, find themselves with a sword shinki but are at risk of cutting off their own toes. It's also useful for veteran new gods wishing to train with their current partner shinki.

There's an additional task that the hosts are more than willing to ask for help with. The Meeting Hall seems to be suffering an invasion of cute soot sprites. Although they're harmless little spirits, they leave smears of ash and soot wherever they go, and the shinki are running themselves ragged trying to keep the hardwood floors and white walls clean! They're handing out cleaning rags and flyswatters to squash the soot sprites flat and scrub the resulting smears away -- and, for the softhearted, butterfly nets: although they implore anyone with a net to be sure they let the soot sprites out again far, far away.

Rest and Refreshments

The meeting hall's facilities are less modernized than Bishamon's: there are rainwater barrels set out by the dojo with fresh towels for hardworking gods and shinki to wash their face and hands. The water is ice cold, so it's very refreshing, too-- brr!

By lunchtime, the banquet hall where the gods' informational session was held has been cleaned out and re-set with cushions to sit on around long, low tables. Gods and shinki who come inside for lunch will be served a plain but hearty meal, with soup, rice, fish and pickled vegetables to refresh them for the afternoon's training.

The hall will stay open even after the lunches and tables have been cleared away, so that those who want a quieter space to talk with their new partners can find somewhere in the room. Hopefully the occasional stampede of soot sprites won't be too distracting.

In Summary:

• Get all the information you can handle
• Veteran new gods and shinki are welcome to volunteer showing the ropes
• Get in some training
• Help catch soot sprite pests
• Spectate if you want
• Have fun~

Comments

[kokuyoyo]

And what if those not in power can't use magic?

[Chikusa knows a lot of shinki magic, for one thing, but he knows he's not in the common majority there. And, when it's only really three spells...]

[letteropener]

Everypony can use magic. You're thinking of spellcasting, the way a unicorn does -- specifically patterning mental energy, then converting it to magical energy. That's one form of magic, yes, but it's a very shallow sort. The truest, deepest magics are powerful ones, and anyone can use them.

[She knows perfectly well he's NOT going to like where this is going.]

[kokuyoyo]

[Oh, he is absolutely not going to like where this ends up, but he is, thus far, unaware and looking interested. None of the books he's found in the library have talked about this yet...]

What?

[letteropener]

Well, the greatest magic of all is friendship.

[And there it is.]

[kokuyoyo]

[....]

[He's turning and leaving.]

[Just straight up shuffling away.]

[...Okay, no, that's a lie, he comes back for another cookie, and stares sulkily at Celestia as if she's actually put raisins in them.]

[letteropener]

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it isn't true, I'm afraid.

[kokuyoyo]

It doesn't make sense.... It sounds like just a dumb fairy tale...

[He's not even removing the cookie out of his mouth for this.]

[letteropener]

In your time in the Far Shore, have you truly seen friendship accomplish nothing magical? Sometime that nothing else could have done?

[kokuyoyo]

...No?

[the fuck is a friend even-]

[letteropener]

Really, not at all? [Celestia is slightly skeptical but mostly bemused, offering over another cookie.] Well, these things don't happen overnight.

[kokuyoyo]

[...Well, he guesses he'll take the cookie.]

Magic based on friendship....?

[letteropener]

Friendship is magic.

[The distinction is fine, but critical.]

[kokuyoyo]

[ANNOYED NOISE. Low, and under his breath, but it's there.]

That doesn't make sense.

[letteropener]

Why do you say that? [She isn't challenging him, not directly. Merely asking.]

[kokuyoyo]

It's not a relationship like between a god and their shinki.... It doesn't seem to do anything.

You talk about miraculous things happening but.... What does that even mean...

[letteropener]

We were talking about how those with power they use irresponsibly cannot stand, were we not? Well, to use Equestria as an example... when I was kidnapped by Nightmare Moon, who wished to plunge the whole world into eternal night, a group of six ponies set out to stop her plans. If they had not possessed the magic of friendship, they would have failed, but because they did, they succeeded in defeating her.

[kokuyoyo]

[ANNOYED NOISES CONTINUE]

But how.

[letteropener]

[A flick of Celestia's head, a flash of her horn -- and suddenly one cookie held in the grip of her telekinesis becomes two.]

Was that magic?

[kokuyoyo]

....Yes...

[Except he's eyeing her like he's expecting a trick somehow.]

[letteropener]

So creating something out of nothing is magic... as is creating more of a thing already, out of nothing?

[kokuyoyo]

[Oh fuck this, he knows where this is going-]

Physically.

[letteropener]

If I create or increase kinetic energy, is that not magic? Or is that not physical enough?

[kokuyoyo]

....I'm pretty sure there's scientific semantics involved there....

[That feels true, anyway, but he's a chemist poison expert, not a physicist.]

[letteropener]

Scientifically we can define magic simply as either the creation of 'something' from 'nothing', or the amplification of an existing force. The two are essentially identical and both inadequate to the description, since you cannot have literally nothing to begin with, and amplifying something requires the creation of additional amounts of that something to add on to it.

[Celestia may be a magic pony princess, but she is also a teacher and a magical scientist.]

[kokuyoyo]

.....It still sounds dumb.

[Chikusa "still actually a teenager underneath it all" Kakimoto.]