Nathan Xavier

February 19, 2016 10:45 AM
The third challenge, like its predessors, had been preceded with a notice in each common room to inform the students they were to meet in front of the main entrance into the Gardens on Saturday morning and they were advised to wear 'clothing that would not be ruined by a bit of dirt.' No other clues were given as to what the third challenge would entail.

As the groups began to gather at the designated place and time, they found fifteen platforms lined up against the outside hedge of the labyrinth and Nathan Xavier standing on the one in the center, which was marked as belonging to group eight. The platforms were about five foot square, and gave the groundskeeper an extra foot of height so he could be seen easier by those at the back of the growing crowd.

Nathan did not wait much past the advertised 9:30 start time before beginning. "Hello, and welcome to the third and final challenge. As you may have guessed based on the previous themes and the mention of dirt, today will focus on Earth. We will finish off the elements when we announce the winning group at the bonfire at the end of the year. So far, our leaders are Groups Two, Five, and Three, so congratulations to them, and those are the teams to outdo today, if you can."

He took a brief pause, mostly to catch his breath and rub his sweaty palms on his robes (the weather was very nearly perfect today, but Nathan was unused to addressing so many people at once and he felt quite hot under so many gazes). "What we'll be doing is creating an art project using natural materials you find in the Gardens. Construct your sculpture on the platform labeled with your group number. Everyone should help contribute to your team masterpiece. You may use magic to help during material gather or construction if you'd like, but it is not required. I'd appreciate it if you don't cut down whole trees, but pretty much anything you find in the labyrinth is fair game to use in your project as long as it fits on your platform. Points will be awarded by a judging panel of staff members based on creativity and aesthetic quality. No need to rush. You have all day. Find me if you have any questions or concerns. Picnic lunches will be made available at noon. Now, go forth and create!"

Terminating the sonorus charm that had been making his voice easily heard by all, he stepped down off the platform and wiped his brow with his sleeve. He was looking forward to seeing what the students came up with, but he was glad his speaking part was over.

And he hoped the kids didn't tear up his Gardens too horribly.


OOC: As before, this will be Quidditch style posting in no particular order. Each team has a 5x5 platform to build their artistic creation upon. You can use anything in the labyrinth in your project: plants, rocks, dirt, park benches, gnomes if you can get then to stay put... whatever you can get onto your platform. Enjoy!
Subthreads:
1 Nathan Xavier Challenge 3: Earth's Majesty and Nature's Beauty 28 Nathan Xavier 1 5


Chloe Jareau

February 22, 2016 2:05 PM
Chloe couldn’t believe how well her team had did on the second challenge. They had actually bumped up six spots on the team rankings. She was overjoyed by their success. This joy wasn’t because she had some desire to win or come in one of the top spots or anything like that. She was just happy to see that they had worked well together and it showed in their progress. She never came into these challenges believing that they would be number one. The majority of the team was just too young for them to really stand any chance, but they did their best and she hoped they had enjoyed their time together. Maybe she even made a reasonably decent impression on them too. She knew that sometimes people probably saw her as a bimbo and that she could be a chatterbox, but she was trying to be a better her.

This final challenged seemed to be more fun than actual work and it excited Chloe. She was having a hard time lately, harder than she really thought that she would, so doing something fun was just what she needed. She had been feeling so low about everything - her biological mother, her brother, her schoolwork, her future, her physical appearance, her lack of romance… Doing something fun was just what she needed. She wasn’t very creative and knew that some of her friends’ groups would do so much better at the challenge than her. Especially Ava and Arnold’s groups, so she felt let down in that sense. Arnold’s group was already in first place. He was definitely going to win this. Which, was good for him in a lot of ways. But she didn’t want her team to think that they didn’t have a chance either.

“Before we really get started, I wanted to say something to you all.” Chloe started. “This has been such a difficult year for me personally as well as with school and future life things.” With all the death surrounding her and the looming RATS examinations, plus graduation and figuring out her future, this year had not been very easy for her, let alone her friends. The challenges had only added to the stress of it all. “I just wanted to let you guys know how proud I am of everyone and how well we have been working together. These haven’t been easy and a lot of us had to work outside of our comfort zone, but you have done a great job.” Positive feedback was always essential, but she truly believed this was the truth with her team.

“We currently stand in 6th place. That is amazing! And with everything going on in my life and the heavy loss in my family with the death of my brother, I really didn’t want to be apart of anything. You guys brought some enjoyment back into my life and reminded me how important it is to live in the now and just enjoy life.” She smiled to her team. “So, with that in mind, I think we should just have fun with this last challenge. If anyone has any ideas on what they think we can create, I’ll give you creative director role because I am not very artistic. My only input is that we get dirty, have a mud party, and we love every minute of it.”

She wasn’t quite sure if some of the society Purebloods (she was sure Jemima and Owen were those) would even be into getting dirty, but she saw no harm in offering it up. It wasn’t like showers and clean clothes weren’t accessible to them by any means. And if none of them were really very concerned about having to be the top of the team ranking list, she didn’t see the harm of them running around and having fun while also completing the Earth challenge.

“Anyone have anything they think we should do”
6 Chloe Jareau Let's get DIIIRTY (team 13) 267 Chloe Jareau 0 5


Jemima Wolseithcrafte

February 26, 2016 10:25 PM
All they knew about the last challenge was that they needed to bring clothes that could get dirty. That didn’t tell them much, although Jemima was worried that an obstacle course might await them. Francesca’s group had had an obstacle course that they had to get through using magic. It struck her as very similar to the Defence maze they’d had for the last challenge, but if it was ground based and using more charms and Transfigurations…. Well, then it would be a bit more like the first challenge, only with more running and mud. It didn’t strike her as very original, but she was still worried it might be what was awaiting them. Or maybe some kind of fight - last team standing wins. She tried not to picture that too vividly as she set off for the gardens. She was quite good at climbing trees, after all the time she spent with Ingrid…. Perhaps she could hide out….

She actually bounced as the real nature of the challenge was revealed. Art! An art challenge! Why hadn’t they said so on the posters? It wasn’t like it would give anyone an advantage, as it wasn’t like you could get good at art in under a week. It would have saved her a lot of worry and she could have worn her art smock instead of the leggings and dress t-shirt she sported now - her art smock was an old robe of her mother’s with a bold orange and brown flower pattern that had probably been out of fashion for so long that it was now retro cool again, but Jemima had always loved it. Perhaps she would go get it at lunch time.

Her stomach felt a bit squirmy as Chloe mentioned the death of her brother, and she made sure to drop the enthusiastic grin she’d been wearing, hoping she managed this in time. It was mostly a good squirmy feeling though, as what Chloe said was really nice.

“You’ve been a really good team leader,” she smiled back at her. “I mean, it can’t have been easy for you, with...uh, everything that happened,” she felt a bit uncomfortable saying the specific thing even though Chloe just had, partly because it wasn’t a nice subject but also it somehow wasn’t hers. She didn’t want to talk about Chloe’s brother or her family things like she knew them because she didn’t and it felt weird to, “But you’ve been really supportive and nice to us. I’m glad it helped you.”

As Chloe asked for volunteers to take the reins or give ideas, she spoke up again, a little more shyly this time. Art was definitely her forte but she was still so young and it felt weird to think about being in charge of anything - she’d never directed anyone else to make art, and it wasn’t like she was amazing at it. She was, in fact, very good for her age, but that still presented a number of limitations.

“I’m quite good at art,” she offered. “I really wish he hadn’t specified sculpture though because that’s going to be really difficult to do. I don’t have a lot of experience in it but to make anything with a well-defined shape you need a framework to work with - like wire or something. Or to be able to sculpt, which is obviously far too time-consuming for us to do, and learning to do it by magic is really tricky,” whilst they might be able to blast rocks, gently crafting and tapering their shapes was a whole other set of charms, ones which people spent years at art school perfecting. “I mean, we could transfigure things to give us better base materials but it might not look very nature-y then, and I think they want the finished piece to reflect the environment and the resources we’re using. So going for a big, bold structure is probably easiest. Or maybe transfiguring something to make a frame and then covering it using natural materials... I’m better at painting than sculpting, so maybe if we found different types of mud or different flowers we could make some natural paints and get fine detail that way. Or I guess everyone’s done some design work in Transfiguration, so we can use that as well.

“Perhaps we should make a list of natural resources and of spells we can use, and then we can pick elements from each to make sure the piece is sympathetic to the materials and the environment, but also shows off and makes the best use of all the other skills we have in our group?” Whilst, now that she’d got going, she was actually pretty excited about the possibility of sort of being the leader, she didn’t want to totally take over, or make it all about art skills, which some people might not feel very comfortable with. When they had done the fashion show for the concert, it had worked well because they’d made sure there was a job for everyone, whatever their skills, and she wanted to make sure that was the case now too.
13 Jemima Wolseithcrafte Let's get creative! 304 Jemima Wolseithcrafte 0 5

Owen Brockert

February 28, 2016 1:37 AM
Lately, Owen hadn't been feeling too good. His asthma had been acting up a lot and he'd even missed a few days of class this past week. Right now, he was okay-ish, having rested a lot both so he would be able to participate in the challenges today and not let down his team and because he hadn't really felt like doing much else. Hopefully so long as he kept his inhaler nearby and this challenge wasn't physically taxing, he'd be fine.

When he heard what it was going to be, he felt more than relieved-he was actually very happy. His own artistic abilities were only all right, but they had Jemima, the best artist in the entire school on their team, even if she hadn't done much for sculpture. Owen firmly believed that the other Teppenpaw was a natural at all types of art, that she was amazing.

Of course, Owen didn't just think Jemima was amazing as an artist, he thought she was amazing in general.

"I'm glad to have had you as a team leader too." He replied to Chloe's remarks. She really had been a good one, not too pushy or bossy or obsessed with winning to the point where it took away any of the fun of the challenges. Plus, she'd been understanding about Owen's...physical issues. "And, um, I'm sorry about how your year has been." He couldn't imagine what it was like to have a sibling-aside from that Emerald had said it was noisy- let alone for that sibling to die. He imagined it would be sad though.

"The color change charm would be a useful one." Owen suggested. "And some of the materials are mud, grass, flowers....and park benches, I guess. I mean, I don't know how we'd get one of those back here, other than to maybe shrink it. Oh, shrinking and growing spells."

He was less certain as to how he could incorporate his skills or those of others. Owen's main talent was writing and this was a piece of visual art. Nor was even sure what the rest of the team's greatest talents were. "I suppose I can help with any Transfigurations though, within reason." He added. So long as he didn't have to move around too much.
11 Owen Brockert Sounds good to me. 300 Owen Brockert 0 5