Professor Mary Brooding

October 04, 2019 2:15 PM
The goal of the challenge was straightforward: survival. Of course, students would not be allowed to perish, nor really in any threat of doing so, but it did make for an exciting event.

The sprawling deserts of the Mirage Chamber were warm and inviting in many ways, despite the sand that picked up on a magical wind, and the creatures that burrowed beneath the dunes. It was far from a barren desert, but not an oasis either. It was the sort of place that someone might settle were they traveling a great distance across this place and needed to camp out for the night, or for a few days while they took time to reflect. In fact, that was the most common reason for anyone to spend such time in the Mirage Chamber, and precisely the inspiration for the challenge.

With brilliant blue days, fiery dawns and dusks, and cool black nights where every star could be seen above, even the chirping of wildlife amidst the scrubby plants indicated a certain level of tranquility. A weary traveler was as likely to find a glittering hummingbird or a lumbering tortoise as they were to find themselves.

It was also a desert full of opportunity, and there was plenty of material to be collected and used for shelter, food and water, clothes, and potions. The students were asked to do just that. Although they hadn't known exactly where or what environment they would be doing this challenge in, they had been given enough information to know that they would be facing a natural environment with only their wands and each other. The beauty of it all was that students already had it in them to tackle this sort of thing.

Herbology had long since taught them how to find and handle the flora and fauna of the desert, while Care of Magical Creatures had taught them about any other living things they might encounter. Defense Against the Dark Arts had them readied for any less pleasant engagements of either type. Potions meant they were ready to brew for themselves whatever was required for such basic survival - wound care, health care, and even some nutritional care would be possible here. Transfiguration and Charms were ceaselessly helpful in any of these sorts of tasks.

This was an opportunity for every student, whatever their skills or interests, whether they enjoyed the physical activities that went into a challenge like this or the more quiet activities that would be important for any team to work together effectively, to prove themselves. What had they learned so far? What were their abilities? What was their potential? Everyone had something they could do here, and everyone's contribution was critical.

With three hours on the clock and only their wands to help them, students were tasked with collecting materials for and producing a stable shelter of some sort, and enough food (or the means to acquire it) and drink for their entire team, as well as brewing whatever potions they felt would be helpful. Although the students would not be staying overnight or for any extended duration in their fortifications, they had been asked to prepare as if they would be and their scores would come partially from their success in that regard. It was a perfectly feasible task with teams of this size, and the goal was more about how they did it and what they did than whether they could do it at all. With the Mirage Chamber charmed to ensure that multiple teams could enter at the same time but not find each other within or alter anything for the other teams, all of the students were released at the same time.

OOC - Welcome to the challenges! These will be marked in accordance with the guidelines above. As per class posts, each team member’s best post will be scored from 1-5, with each of their other contributions receiving a point - so, getting as many members in as possible is important, but being active and vocal within your team will help too.

As per Quidditch, you do not have to stick to a given posting order.

Bonus points may be given for being extra brilliant, or if a team shows particular use of a subject area over and above what other teams do.
Subthreads:
22 Professor Mary Brooding The Second Challenge 1424 Professor Mary Brooding 1 5

Professor Mary Brooding

October 04, 2019 2:18 PM
Winston Pierce
Loren Aalto
Topaz Brockert
Malikhi Hill
Jeremy Mordue
22 Professor Mary Brooding Team 11 1424 Professor Mary Brooding 0 5

Topaz Brockert

October 17, 2019 3:16 PM
Topaz's team was in sixth . That was so not okay. Especially given her older sisters were beating her . True, she was glad it wasn't Allegra or Sapphire or Clown Lips or especially Snotti-Ness but still no, just no.

And how in Merlin's name was Ruby's team tied for second? Ruby was about as girly as they came and Jasmine Delachene was possibly even girlier and it had been a challenge where athletic ability could have come in handy. They had to have magicked their way through it. Which was the superior way to go but surely that lot had to be too afraid of breaking a nail. Plus Topaz had never been impressed with her older sister's intellectual capacity-Ruby wasn't as dumb as Sapphire or Clown Lips or Slimey or Uncle Eustace but she wasn't brilliant, not even as smart as Emerald let alone Topaz-and Jasmine seemed like she was...even dumber. Like something was missing in her brain like there was with Sapphire. Maybe she was epileptic too. Florence Newell and the little Aladrens must have carried the team.

Or they cheated. Maybe Topaz's team should find a way to cheat. Nah, Ruby was too much of a goody-two-shoes to do that.

It wasn't Topaz's fault that this had happened, she knew that. She just had to decide whose it was. The easy to blame ones would have been Loren and Slimey because they were Pecaris and not purebloods but logically it was probably Winston's fault. Or Jeremy's. Yes, Jeremy's. After all, Winston had apparently been ready to listen to her and Jeremy took off flying over the wall so therefore they all flew and missed out on bonus points.

And to make matters worse, Allegra's team was tied for seventh so even though they were behind Topaz's, they were right behind them. Which meant they were in a place to surpass them. Which was not okay.

Thank Merlin that the next Challenge was about survival and Topaz knew that her cousin was not going to handle that well. The other third year certainly did not have what it took to survive in a harsh desert environment. Or rather, any harsh environment. Topaz had personally seen to it that as while alive-she wouldn't kill a human being. Well not on purpose anyway though Snotti-Ness sometimes made her want to reconsider that stance. Or rather, often reconsider it, like all the time-Allegra was a fragile shell of a human being.

And Ruby's team was unlikely to do well either. Bugs and dirt and scorpions and snakes. They were so going down!

As for her own survival skills...well, Topaz had never had to survive things, unless one counted her current rooming situation. She was the one creating situations for others to survive! But in a real situation, she would do absolutely anything to survive. Anything . Like, as in at the expense of her teammates. Even if it meant killing a human being who wasn't Snotti-Ness on purpose. Probably Loren or Slimey first, followed by the other, followed by Jeremy. Actually, Topaz might have sacrificed Jeremy first if he wasn't a Mordue given it was his fault they placed so low.

Unfortunately, she wasn't sure if she could do that to Winston though because if she killed Winston to survive, Emerald would likely kill her . Emerald threatened to kill Topaz if she entered the seventh year's bedroom without permission so she could only imagine what her sister would do to her if she murdered Emerald's precious fiance. If Topaz didn't manage to decimate her first in that situation.

So, for her, the real challenge would be working with other people when in reality, she would see it as everyone for themselves.

This time though, they were getting those bonus points. "Okay, so fire and water are no issue whatsoever. I can do the fire one." Topaz stated. Winston and Loren should, by now, be able to do the Aguamenti charm. If not, they needed to be in that remedial program with the foreigners and Sapphire and in the case of the former, well someone who wasn't up to magical snuff did not deserve to marry her sister. While Topaz cared very little about Emerald's well being, she certainly did not want nieces and nephews who were magically incompetent. After being stupid, that was the worst thing one could be. It was embarrassing enough that her little sister was in Academic Support due to poor memory and other learning difficulties due to having untreated seizures for so long. Topaz blamed her parents, particularly her mother, for this humiliation.

" Incendio " Topaz said and a small fire flicked into existence. She continued " So we need a hut and some food and potion ingredients."
11 Topaz Brockert I will survive. 1427 Topaz Brockert 0 5

Winston Pierce

October 18, 2019 11:10 AM
Winston was winning life, having secured a betrothal to Emerald Brockert, but winning the challenges would be nice, too, if not as important to the entirety of his future. As such, he had done some research on how to survive in extreme conditions once the basic outline of the challenge had been revealed. They'd also need to work on those bonus points. He'd ignored them too much in the last challenge, intent on finishing quickly, but they had apparently made a significant enough difference that despite a very good time, his team had only ended up ranking sixth.

It was not a mistake he intended to repeat today.

He planned to use every subject he could think of a way to use to pull in those points and fly past That Teppenpaw on the scoreboard. Unfortunately, they were only allowed to bring their wands, so his checklist of what he wanted to do for each subject had to be left on his desk in Crotalus. Hopefully, he'd remember most of it.

As they began, Topaz seemed equally set on doing this quickly and efficiently. "Good," he approved. "Charms for fire and water. Once we get the shelter set up, we can make a tub to keep a water reserve in. First, let's find a place to set up. Underground might be best, as that will protect us from extreme temperatures." He had learned yesterday that this was true for both hot deserts and cold tundra, since apparently caves stayed a pretty constant temperature all the time, though getting past the permafrost would have been a little harder. "For digging, we can use use either displacement charms or wingardium leviosa to help move the sand until we have a nice burrow. Once we have a good enough hole, we can shore up the sides by transfiguring the walls to rock so we don't risk a cave in." That should be a creative use of both charms and transfiguration, he thought, and it didn't involve any of them needing to dig with a shovel.

"If anybody doesn't want to help dig, you can go out and look, using herbology to find anything we might want to have for brewing potions or eating." That gave the younger kids two options that shouldn't be too hard, though he suspected the leviosa charms would stop being very helpful after they got down past the top layer of loose sand, and from there it would be on the older kids who could cast displacement charms to do the burrowing. "Look for dittany, especially, that'll help if we get hurt or sick, so get that if you can find it, and maybe prickly pear. That's supposed to be edible."
1 Winston Pierce We all will 370 Winston Pierce 0 5

Jeremy Mordue

October 19, 2019 11:50 PM
Jeremy was scared- confused - FINE. Jeremy was fine. That was the message he had been given. He had to be fine. His… his family had said so. He wasn’t really sure what labels he was supposed to be giving people any more. Was Uncle Alexander still his uncle, now that he was living with him as if he were a parent? According to the papers, his mother was dead, so he supposed it might make sense that he had been adopted but wasn’t actually their son but… It was complicated, to say the least. And Nathaniel wasn’t there to- well, that didn’t matter. He’d never liked Nathaniel telling him what to do anyway. But Nathaniel wasn’t dead, so maybe, just maybe, he was going to reappear at some point and… Well, Nathaniel would just interfere, and decide how things should be and how everyone ought to behave, especially Jeremy. For once, he thought, he might not actually mind that…

One thing had been made clear to him, which was that he needed to not piss off Winston. That had been the case since he made it onto his team, but apparently the degree to which Winston was willing to treat them as good company was a strong indicator of how their fortunes were going to go, and - after Simon - Jeremy was the one best placed to observe and influence this. (He had not been made privy to the pervasive opinion of his family that this meant they were all doomed).

So. Challenge time, and he supposed that he had to show up and be the same person he always had been. He thought… Or he was allowed to be upset because his mother was “dead” only she wasn’t really, and it was better if he wasn’t upset? Anyway, he wasn’t. He didn’t care - she had let them all down and, well, he cared about that but that made him more angry than sad about her fake death. Anyway, challenges. They were in sixth, which wasn’t great, but was better than Sylvia and Simon. It was, weirdly, worse than Nathaniel and his team of misfits. Jeremy was rather annoyed about their poor placing. He was pretty sure Topaz was going to try and blame him somehow, because she had seemed to disagree with the way they’d wanted to do the last challenge (the way Winston had wanted to, actually but he bet she was going to try and make it his fault). As their strategy had been speed over bonus points, and many of the teams in top position had reaped plenty of the latter, it was arguable that she had a point. However, misogyny and ego were a powerful enough combination that Jeremy was quite sure she couldn’t be right, and that he and Winston had basically done an excellent job by being such good fliers, and their speed had been brilliant, and would have been enough if the teachers didn’t insist on playing favourites.

Now they were out in a desert. And Winston was suggesting digging? Winston wanted them to dig and burrow into the ground? That sounded dirty, and sweaty, akin to the work that common gardeners did. But it was Winston suggesting it. A more paranoid mind (Nathaniel’s) might have wondered whether this was a trap to lure him into ungentlemanly behaviour in order to point and laugh. Jeremy was blessed in some ways in just not being that complex.

“Great idea,” he smiled at Winston. He had been told to make sure Winston liked them, and even if it was painful to suck up and say he wanted to dig a hole in the dirt, it wasn’t like it was hard to do.
“I’ll help dig,” he volunteered. Jeremy did not stop to consider the politics of sticking by Winston vs working solo. In fact, had he done so, he probably would have reached the opposite conclusion to most of his family - yes, sticking about and making a good impression, or checking you weren’t being talked about was generally good (and thus Jeremy might have concluded it meant it was good for him too) but in his case, the most diplomatic thing was probably to remove himself from someone else’s presence so he didn’t risk making an idiot of himself. That, however, would still have been firmly on the cards. Jeremy wasn’t the best at Herbology. He hadn’t really factored in what he would be good at in his decision though. He was more concerned with what he wanted to do. He couldn’t say that digging was up there, but wandering around looking for flowers was lame, and digging was at least manly. And he’d be on a team with Winston.
13 Jeremy Mordue I'm fine 1443 Jeremy Mordue 0 5