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

Isaac Douglas

February 25, 2016 12:33 PM
Isaac had not been best pleased to hear that the third challenge required clothes they didn’t mind ruining, as not ruining his clothes or any of his other things was generally pretty high on his priority list. He didn’t know if it was just how he was or if it was something to do with his mother being born poor, but he despised dirt and tried to avoid it where he could, especially at school. At home, at least, he had some things which people had given to him which he didn’t like and didn’t really care much about, but he had to be selective when packing for school, and since he had dropped Care of Magical Creatures, he didn’t have a reason to select things meant only to be worn in the dirt.

Luckily, the elves had failed to completely remove some potion stains from one of his older sets of robes earlier in the year and he had kept that set for those lessons. He donned those robes for the challenge and thanked them for their impending sacrifice as he joined the rest of Team Twelve in the Gardens.

He looked over Two, Three, and Five when Xavier pointed them out as the People To Beat. Team Three could be dismissed as freak chance – Isaac wasn’t even going to replace ‘hit me with a Bludger’ with ‘did better in a flight challenge than I did’ on his List of Reasons To Rather Dislike John Umland over it – but Two and Five had done very well last time, too, and as far as Isaac was concerned, Team Five was the real team to beat. Somehow. His own team had, after all, dropped a place in the rankings last time instead of rising anywhere at all, and while Five had, too, they were still enough above Twelve that Isaac thought his team would need a freak twist of fate of its own to beat them. Five looked pretty unimpressive on paper, but in practice, they were…formidable.

They were, unfortunately, also a team he thought the challenge Xavier described was going to favor, mostly for the reasons why Isaac had thought they looked unimpressive on paper to begin with. Clark Dill was Team Twelve’s last, best hope for redemption, as he was a) taller than most full-grown men, b) presumably reasonably strong, as Seekers were athletic fellows and the guy was in Archery Club besides, and c) was a combination of cheerful and crazy, which Isaac thought should translate well into ideas for and willingness to create art.

“Okay,” he said to the team, hoping he could bluff a little and make it less obvious that he didn’t really know what to do. “I’d say the key to doing well is to do as much as we – reasonably – can and take care that it’s not too close to anyone else’s design.” He thought back over everything he’d heard Xavier say. “He never said we had to gather all the materials in one go, so going back and forth should give us chances to see what everyone else is doing and try to make sure we've got at least something in ours that they don't.” He wished he had mastered the Supersensory Charm enough to hear the other teams planning, as that would have saved them a lot of time, but he thought he would have just been overwhelmed by the din of everyone plotting and gotten a migraine even if he had been confident with the charm. “Does anyone have ideas to begin working on that they’d like the group to hear before we start anything else, though?”
16 Isaac Douglas One last chance for glory, Team Twelve. 273 Isaac Douglas 0 5

Clark Dill

February 25, 2016 3:16 PM
Fifth place was still top five, but Clark felt team twelve could do better. First place might be out of reach at this point, but rising two ranks into third place would at least get them a medal had this been a competition that gave out medals. (Clark realized suddenly that he had no idea if the winners would receive anything at all aside from the prestige of winning, but that wasn't really the point.) Anyway, the bronze was in reach, even if it was entirely metaphorical. And Clark wanted it.

He eyed up the competition when Mr. Xavier pointed them out. If he had his way at least of of them was going to fall from glory. He assumed it probably wouldn't be team two as the Teppenpaw Head of House explained the objectives. Team two was lead by the president of the art club and this was an art contest.

Maybe team three then. That had Jamie Park on it. Clark felt bad for John needing to deal with that guy. And as brilliant as John was, Clark didn't think art was one of his fortes.

Of course, it wasn't really one of Clark's either. He'd been in the art club last year, as part of his attempt to be a well rounded candidate for Prefect, but he'd dropped it this year to concentrate on his other responsibilities. Most of his creations had come out . . . very geometric anyway.

Which wasn't to say he didn't have creative ideas.

"We could made a scaled model of the Sonora grounds," he suggested. Science club had done some surveys of the land so he felt he could manage an accurate degree of detail in such a project. "Or recreate the maze from the last challenge and put a sleigh of presents next to river in the center. Or maybe the Sonora crest made out of colored stones, but that is kind of boring... any other ideas?"

1 Clark Dill Our Glory Days 277 Clark Dill 0 5

Makenzie Newell

February 25, 2016 3:56 PM
Her team was in the top five. In normal circumstances, she might have been happy with that. After all, it was, in essence, exactly what she strived to achieve in life: enough success to be note-worthy without over-exerting herself and appearing too good at anything. Fifth place, just squeaking into the top third, was a perfect execution of that. Of course, most of it was thanks to the boys on her team, eager things that they were, as Makenzie had done little to help thus far aside from going with the flow. She was not an exceptional teammate, but she was a moderate asset.

But this time, being in fifth displeased her. “Araceli’s” team was only in ninth. Makenzie did not feel inclined to beat Team Fifteen in any regard. In her cushy life of little disarray (or at least in comparison to Delphine and Araceli’s lives, which had been turned upside down, with Delphine now living to prove herself--except not herself, because it was Araceli’s self--to the world), Makenzie was able to glance around her and realize definitively that as things were, she had enough. She was well respected and liked by her peers, or at least as far as she could tell, and had no one to prove anything to except maybe Dustin, who still occasionally tooled about behind her to check up on her. Her life was pretty simple, really, for as much burden as she felt. Delphine’s was not.

The redhead had no intentions of sabotaging her team if not only because it would be too obvious if she tried, but she certainly hoped Delphine’s team did better. And the odds were good for that, She felt. Nobody on her team, to her knowledge, was particularly artsy, and while she could not be certain about Delphine’s, she was with Duncan Brockert, who was a bit strange, and strangeness and artisticness often ran together. Makenzie was hopeful.

She listened to the ideas put forth by Isaac and Clark. The two had really taken charge of this whole thing, which she hoped didn’t bother Eleanor, although as a pureblood lady of society, she was probably used to men taking the brunt of the leadership roles. It always went that way. “I’m not sure I remember enough details of the maze to really recreate it,” she commented on Clark’s idea, “but I do like the idea of representing both of the other challenges. Anything maze-like would probably work well enough. So if we do that and try to use original parts, we should be in great shape.”
12 Makenzie Newell I don't think I'd go that far. 291 Makenzie Newell 0 5

Tasha DuBois

March 10, 2016 6:52 AM
Although Tasha was seriously looking forward to summer vacation when she'd see her parents again and get to go on vacation in some exotic country where the food was a bit less mainstream American-granted, she didn't always get mainstream American food so it had actually been a bit different for her but she missed eating things that were different and looked forward to her parents sending her some ostrich jerky and foreign snacks-she was going to be sad when the Challenges were over. They'd been a lot of fun and she really liked her teammates, most of whom were older than her but she felt closer to them than her own classmates.

Tasha walked down to the Gardens the morning of the final Challenge. Unlike a lot of pureblood girls, she actually had appropriate clothing because a lot of times, her parents would take advantage of educational opportunities in foreign countries, like going on a safari or to an archaeological site. One couldn't wear fancy lacy dresses for that.

The instructions required them to make a sculpture from natural materials found in the garden. That sounded like a lot of fun. Tasha was no master sculptor, having chosen to focus more on playing an instrument than visual arts but certainly she'd had art tutors as well.

She nodded along at Isaac's idea. "That makes perfect sense." The first year agreed. Certainly, they wanted theirs to be different. Then Clark gave his suggestions, which Tasha had to admit always seemed to be a bit....grand. More than what could possibly be done. He always seemed to want to do something overly complex. She considered herself to be relatively creative but was a bit more realistic about things. "Can we maybe simplify it just a little? I mean, we should do something unique but we're more likely to finish it and create a quality project if we don't take on too much."

Tasha strongly felt taking on too much was not the best idea in life. At best, it lead to results that weren't as good, as would be the case here. At worst, it could drive a person insane. That was why she tried to only focus on a few things and was not a magnificent artist. There was no reason to put herself out so much when it just wasn't healthy. Not that she thought this activity would be unhealthy so much. Today it was more about achieving a reasonable goal and hopefully moving up a few spots.
11 Tasha DuBois I'm too young to peak already. 323 Tasha DuBois 0 5

Isaac Douglas

March 10, 2016 1:52 PM
Clark had ideas, Makenzie’s objections were mild and reasonable and aimed toward compromise, and no-one pointed out that Isaac had just stated the obvious and never actually contributed any useful ideas or information to the group at all. Miss DuBois even praised his little speech, something which almost threw him off his stride altogether. So far, this challenge was going far, far better than Isaac had thought it would. He might just escape this day with his dignity intact. If they could pull off Clark’s crazy schemes, he might even escape this day at the head of a team with a respectable ranking….

The happy fantasy of everyone at home ignoring the golden girls completely in order to talk about how proud they were of his fearless leadership dissolved, though, as Natasha spoke up again. Reasonable, but he wondered for a moment about her Sorting. Who ever heard of an Aladren who didn’t think that quality-or-quantity was a false paradigm and that he or she was the person who could provide outrageous amounts of both at the drop of a hat? He’d thought a touch of megalomania was a prerequisite for getting into the House. Even his uncle Geoffrey, the least objectionable one he knew personally, worked tirelessly toward discovering something completely new in potions, some theory or new potion he could ‘make his name’ on. Maybe she was like Uncle Geoff, one of those people whose ambition confined itself to a neat part of her life and left her free to behave reasonably in the rest of her time. Either way, she had to be answered.

“You have good points,” said Isaac, looking between Makenzie and Tasha both. “We could build the models smaller – easier to hide what we’re doing from the other teams anyway – and then use engorgement charms at the end. We’d just have to make sure to start that part early enough to leave ourselves time to make adjustments to keep everything more or less to scale, and to clear up any detail problems that became obvious at a larger size. I don’t think they’re looking for absolute perfection, though – if they were, wouldn’t this just be a magic challenge? If it looks too spot-on, we might lose points for not adhering to the ‘use natural materials’ part of the challenge appropriately.”

That part was almost painful for Isaac to say. He liked things sharp, clean, orderly, and perfect, and especially when it took only a very little more, or even less, effort than sloppiness did. He had loathed estimation problems in his mathematics lessons before school - he'd known how to add and subtract, so why would he not just do that instead of getting it wrong on purpose? One of his other lessons before school, though, had been that there were times when it was appropriate to not reach that standard. Isaac disliked nature because it was rough around the edges and grew into places it wasn’t supposed to be, but Xavier wasn’t Isaac and Xavier was the guy whose opinions, in this one place and on this one day, mattered. It had to be taken into account.
16 Isaac Douglas It happens, though. 273 Isaac Douglas 0 5