Tales of MU

In Which Mackenzie Is Too Quick On The Draw

After lunch, Ian hung back to talk with Amaranth, I assumed regarding the sleeping arrangements. To me, the whole point of moving to a co-ed dorm was that we wouldn’t need a bunch of planning and prior arrangement to see each other, so I still was kind of mixed on the idea that anything really needed sorting out… though on one level as long as one of thought it needed addressing, it sort of did.

My afternoon class was held in The Emily Dactyl Center For Design, a building whose layout was everything a label like “Center For Design” promised and threatened. It really epitomized the concept of form over function.

The Glamour and Design students all seemed unaccountably fond of the haphazardly labyrinthine building and its cheerfully, aggressively modern flourishes. Personally, I couldn’t stand it… I’d only been inside it once and I’d managed to get lost twice. I know the direct route to my classroom now, but I decided to show up extra early just in case… which turned out to be a good thing, as I couldn’t begin to find the right door.

An innate sense of direction is not one of my magical demon gifts, but the way everything in the building was labeled with hanging signs it didn’t seem like it should be that hard to find a single classroom. In the end, I went the long way around like I had the time before. I somehow ended up making it to the room a little bit after the class officially started.

Luckily, it didn’t seem like the professor had called the class to order yet. He was standing at the front of the room, near some of the various items he’d brought in as examples… some of them cheap, mass-produced enchanted items and others unique and bordering on artifact-level power. The temporary jewel of his collection was the unenchanted prototype of the platinum coronation sword made for Magisterion IX by the dwarves of Clan Schwertgriff… temporary because he only had it for seven days, and even that was an incredible coup.

I suspected family connections, as he’d mentioned a dwarven mother and Schwertgriff was a female clan. I doubted a historically important piece would have been lent out at all if there wasn’t some kind of blood tie in play. He wasn’t pure dwarf… he was shorter and thinner, something of a spritely figure, and I didn’t choose that word by accident… I suspected he had at least a smidgen of fae in his background, as neither gnomes nor dwarves were really predisposed towards the kinds of flashy prestidigitation he used as a teaching aid.

He and a student with auburn hair done up in pigtails were talking to each other. I thought she looked sort of familiar. That wasn’t too surprising… my circle of friends was not expansive, but unless she happened to be a freshman then we would have spent a year sharing the same campus. She might have been in one of my enchantment-related classes of semesters gone by.

For that matter, I might have just been remembering a glimpse of her during Tuesday’s class. It wasn’t like I paid a lot of attention to people around me. I was pretty sure I would have noticed the pigtails, but if she’d had her hair down the first time then maybe my brain was just telling me it had seen that face and I couldn’t place it because the hair was different.

“Professor Stone, what would happen if the sword were stolen?” the pigtailed student was asking him as I eased myself into my seat and tried to look like I hadn’t just arrived.

“You mean to the thieves?” the professor said. “I imagine they’d be awarded posthumous medals of achievement by one of the guilds. Dwarves tend to see to their own affairs, which means arranging their own security spells and meting out their own justice.”

“Whatever protective spells they put on it, it can’t be as safe here as it would be in their vaults,” she said.

“Possibly not,” he said. “But Emily is one of the most secure buildings on campus. Even litter cannot be removed from this building without permission… on the positive side, we have some of the most polite custodians you’ll ever meet.”

I wondered about that… being one of the more modern buildings, it was possible that the center had been built with more modern security concerns in mind, but I hadn’t noticed any obtrusive security fields. When passing through the fortified perimeter of the town of Enwich, many people with a degree of magical sensitivity could feel a tingle. I and my fellow “monsters” got something a bit more invasive than that. If there were security spells on “Emily”, they were a lot subtler… that could mean they were weak, but it could also mean they were more sophisticated.

“But I don’t imagine they could teleport it directly from here back to their vaults,” the student said. “And I know they can’t send their own guards on campus, because this is a men’s campus, in dwarven terms… they wouldn’t trust dwarves from a male clan with it, would they?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss what Clan Schwertgriff can or can’t and will or won’t do regarding their property, Ms. Andersen,” he said with a smile. Maybe it was the neat little beard or his general avuncular look, but he managed to sound a lot more friendly pulling out a line like that than most people could have managed. In any case, her last name didn’t ring any bells with me. “I wonder, my dear, with all the interesting objects I’ve provided… and all the history and intricacy of design behind this one… why are you so very interested in the sword’s disposition?”

“Well… I guess it’s the politics of it all,” she said. “It’s not so much the sword itself I’m interested in, so much as the, um… dynamics between clans, especially across gender lines.”

“Ah, well, I’m afraid there’s only so much light I could spread on that topic,” the professor said. “I was not raised by my mother, exactly, though there were visits. I probably have more knowledge of the intricacies of inter-clan relations than your average topdweller, but it isn’t exactly for public consumption.”

“Oh, of course,” the Andersen girl said. “Naturally.”

“We should probably be getting started, anyway… please take your seat.”

She did, throwing one last sideways glance at the sword on her way.

It was possible that Ms. Andersen’s interest was in the political nitty-gritty of how an object like the sword passed among multiple sets of borders… apart from having their own sovereign kingdoms located within Magisterian borders, the dwarven kingdoms had the interesting parts of surface world divided up on their maps between male lands, female lands, and carefully regulated mixed grounds. Any commerce conducted by dwarves required two sets of permits, one from the IRM and one by the local governing dwarven authority. The extended dwarven kingdoms and the Imperial Republic tolerated the other’s temerity in establishing a sovereign body occupying the same space as their own because they were good customers and strong allies to each other.

Not that the dwarven kingdoms were anything like a single body. It was rumored they’d even gone to war with each other, circumspectly.

So there was a lot to be curious about, when it came to things like a female-owned sword of significant historical value being held in male-controlled lands. But I had a hard time believing that Ms. Andersen’s actual interest was in the politics of it all. She’d been focused on the narrower issue of the security arrangements for the sword.

I had an even harder time figuring out what to make of that, though. The obvious answer was too obvious, and ridiculous. Even if she thought she could steal the thing, what would she do with it? Without any magic, the platinum blade might as well have been a big shiny letter opener. She couldn’t possibly find someone to buy it. The metal and jewels would be worth something as materials, but not enough to be worth the risk.

Maybe she really was interested in the sword’s security because she was interested in security, but knew how it would sound to admit that. Maybe she wanted to design security devices, or maybe she was a delving major who needed some impressive scenarios for a paper or something.

Whatever the case was, it wasn’t like I was going to find out by sitting around picking apart everything she’d said… or any other way. This wasn’t a mystery that cried out for me to solve it, it was an overheard conversation that had just happened to be the most interesting thing happening in the early moments of class.

“Hello again, everyone,” Professor Stone said to the class at large. “I hope you all have your lists from last time, as they’ll give you a bit of a ‘leg up’, creatively speaking. Today we’re going to begin the first design project, which is to take a modern product and give it something of a more elegant spin. The intention here is to incorporate elements from a more classical design without sacrificing modern utility. Now, the obvious approach here… particularly for those of you without any design experience… is to take the examples you profiled on Tuesday and meld them together, but if you find you are simply bursting with ideas you need not take that tack, or restrict yourself to the examples I’ve provided at all…”

Designing a better-looking box for a television wasn’t the sort of thing that really interested me, especially knowing that “better-looking” would be judged by a person who thought that TVs should look like the little sunken treasure chests people put in their aquariums. But I wasn’t exactly bursting with ideas, and I didn’t have much design experience. The closest I’d come to designing a product was sketching out my original character ideas for a show that had a lot of merchandise.

As much as I itched for something more interesting, it seemed safer to stay within the suggested parameters.

Despite his stated preference for doing over talking, Professor Stone turned out to not be one of the teachers who would just turn us loose and make us try to feel out what he actually wanted us to do. He laid out what he actually expected: a drawing of the product in three views, with “expansion or magnification as necessary to show important details”, accompanied with a write-up hitting the high points. He showed examples, too, projected in the air. He had a flair for illusion.

“Free-hand drawings are acceptable if they’re clean and clear. As for the writing, this is not an essay contest,” he said. “A series of dotted points will be sufficient… if you are going to make me read paragraphs, make it interesting! Give it to me as a pitch, either selling the design or a finished product. The assignment is due physically in my office or at my ethernet node by Monday. You should be able to get a decent start on this during the remainder of the period, and then more than enough time between now and then to finish it.

“Now, I will not be accepting anything today… if you think you’re finished, take it home with you and sleep on it. We’ll be using what you come up with as a springboard for a discussion of the sorts of aesthetic considerations a designer must make. With that in mind, feel free to get up and move around, look at the sample items, talk to your peers and share ideas… originality counts, but there’s nothing new under the world, as the dwarves say. It’s how you express your ideas that matters. I’ll be available to hear your ideas or help you smooth out the rough spots, of course, but there’s only one of me. Later on you’ll be working as teams, so it’s best if you get to know each other a bit now.”

There was still no mention of grading. Our assignment from Tuesday hadn’t been graded, it was a springboard for this one, which would be a springboard for the next one. At least we were being expected to turn that one in. It was kind of reassuring to be given a few practice runs when learning something new, but it was kind of disconcerting to imagine the semester as a long series of “springboards” that counted for nothing, until we were suddenly dropped into the deep end with no grades from easier, earlier assignments to buoy us up.

Still, he hadn’t said it wouldn’t be graded, so I proceeded with the assumption that it would be. I started sketching out a television box, then stopped when I realized I didn’t know what exactly I wanted to do with it. I could draw a box easily enough, but if I just drew a typical modern television and then figured out stuff to add to it, it would seem like an afterthought. Brainstorming first seemed like a better idea.

Twyla approached me while I was trying to decide if adding a classical curtain to a modern TV was just way too obvious. There was no reason to assume she was interested in my cutting-edge television designs, so I figured she was using the excuse of Stone’s invitation to talk about her troubles.

“Hi,” I said, trying to force my mouth into what I hoped was a warm and earnest smile. I even looked her more or less right in the face. There was something in her eyes that I couldn’t quite place. “Did you talk to Professor Bohd?”

At those words, the thing in her eyes spilled out over the rest of her face and became a lot more recognizable.

She was pissed.

“Yes,” she said, talking past a rigid jaw. “Yes, I certainly did.”

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Characters: Mackenzie, Twyla