Intermediate Team Challenge: Orienteering on Labyrinth Gardens

May Gail

February 02, 2010 4:27 AM

Intermediate Team Challenge: Orienteering by May Gail

May Gail was excited, and honored, for the chance to really interact with the kids at Sonora. Having just been hired that term, it must mean that the Headmistress had quite a bit of confidence in this newbie. Lucky for her, the activity was to take place the very day that the Gardens had switched up the mazes again. All the students would be dealing with a new maze; it was a brand new challenge for all of the students. Excellent.

The woman pulled her black hair into two braids. The temperature, as always, was decent in the Gardens. The plants wouldn’t be able to survive otherwise. She made her way to where she’d be meeting the kids in the Gardens, after she left the Hall. “Hey there!” she greeted the first number of students she saw brightly. A couple seemed a little surprised; May didn’t blame them. She was proud of being a little…odd. She usually wore dark clothes, today’s ensemble being a black and red checkered shirt, black jeans, boots, a chain belt, and a spiked choker, accompanied by heavy black eyeliner and lipstick. Her rather bright personality, along with her look, tended to startle people. May certainly couldn’t deny that she enjoyed that.

“Alright.” She said when it seemed like enough teams had gathered. “Hey! My name is May Gail, your local neighborhood groundskeeper, and this is the orienteering activity.” She grinned, waved her wand, and sent maps to each group. “The mazes in the garden changed last night, when everyone was in their dorms. None of have been in this maze before. Your task is simple. See that blank map? You’re going to draw your own path out of the maze. Whatever team gets out the quickest, wins.

“Now, you have plenty of options to get yourself through the maze. You can use your wands, or you can use a good ol’ fashioned muggle compass.” May grinned again, perhaps a little more wickedly than she meant to. “Of course, it isn’t going to be easy. There are obstacles to account for. You might have to figure out a way to cross a small river, if you think the quickest way is over it. Maybe gnomes are invading the nearest exit, making it impossible to get out unless you feel it necessary to do a little de-gnoming.” She shrugged. “I already made sure to figure out the quickest ways out of the maze. They’re on my map. So, when you get to the end, show me your map, and I’ll determine if you made the right decisions, or not.”

She winked at the first group of students. “Well, off you go.”

(OOC: Now, obviously, you can be creative with what obstacles your characters face. But don’t go thinking there’s anything dangerous in these mazes. There’s light, so no Devil’s snare. There are definitely not dragons guarding an exit. You kids are logical; just have fun with it! Good luck.)

Subthreads:

Needed: Two more people by Jera Valson

0 May Gail Intermediate Team Challenge: Orienteering 0 May Gail 1 5

Jera Valson

February 05, 2010 3:58 PM

Needed: Two more people by Jera Valson

Jera had cleverly already discovered the days activities. She could tell her Ma was excited about what was planned, and so it hadn't been difficult to encourage her to talk about it. However, the actual planning of the separate activities had been down to each individual member of staff, and so all Jera knew thus far about the orienteering activity was that it would be held in the labyrinth gardens. So the fourth year was as excited as anyone else to make her way with her group down to the gardens to discover what their task was.

Even as May the groundskeeper was talking, Jera's mind was whirring, thiking about spells they could use, whether she remembered how to use a Muggle compass, and if using a time-slowing charm on all the other students would be considered as cheating.

Jera collected the blank map from Miss Gail and took the paper back to her group, along with a plastic compass. Bounding on the heels of her well-worn black pumps, mostly covered by jeans that were too long for her, Jera looked at the other members of her group. "We can use the point me spell," she suggested. "I don't know whether that finds the quickest or the easiest route, or if it just points to the exit," she admitted. It had been a couple of years since she'd learn the spell, and its details were fuzzy. She was supposed to be an Aladren and felt almost ashamed for not remembering such as simple spell.

0 Jera Valson Needed: Two more people 112 Jera Valson 0 5

Grayson Wright

February 07, 2010 1:18 PM

Well, here's one. by Grayson Wright

Strategy wasn't one of those things Gray really knew a lot about. From his perspective, real life was usually dull on those occasions when it wasn't flat-out annoying, and he'd developed a habit of largely ignoring it. He thought this was one of the reasons his mother felt a girlfriend was something he should add to his life and convert into a wife the minute he left Sonora.

Every now and then, though, real life threw something out of the ordinary at him because of one tiny little mistake on his part, and that curve ball made him pay attention to it for a little while. Maybe, half-asleep, he left a notebook lying out on the kitchen table at night and woke up to find one of Anne's had gotten mixed up with it, leaving him with a bunch of essays and her with his stories for the day. Or, better yet, maybe he let his parents' unhealthy degree of interest in his love life or lack thereof actually get to him and ended up having Bludgers hit at him all the time. Or maybe he had just been born in September instead of in August, putting him in fifth year now and thus in a team-building exercise.

It was at times like this, when real life decided to make him aware of its presence in a real way, that Gray could find in him a tiny, malnourished spectre of a strategist. His inner strategist wasn't the best in the world - among its most helpful pieces of advice had been 'choose a team of people I already know I can get along with', which was something he tried to do in normal classes anyway - but a little help was better than none, especially since people he felt comfortable enough with to work with on a project that was highly likely to end with him making an idiot of himself made up a short list.

As far as it went, he thought Jera had been a decent choice to go with. She was a fourth year, but he thought her being at least as and probably smarter than him made up for that. They had worked together before - in fact, Gray thought she might be his second most common partner, after Lucie. She'd been nice during said interactions. Considering his lack of really assertive, tough-guy (or girl) friends, he felt that was enough. Or at least good enough to be getting on with, though hearing what it was they were going to do made him have to make that idea a lot more an issue of faith than he wanted to.

At least he had topped his "casual" ensemble off with a hat. At the time, especially with the t-shirt, Gray had thought it made him look like an especially daft member of Anne's theater group (the source of the t-shirt), but now, it seemed quite practical. They were outdoors. Hats were a good thing to have outdoors. Or so he understood, anyway. He had never had much to do with the outdoors if he could help it.

Jera came back to him and their teammate with a map and an odd device he was assuming to be a compass. Since it looked plenty complicated to him, Gray figured magic and luck were their best bets. "I think it just points north," he said when Jera brought up Point-Me. "So we'd have to figure out which way the exit is." He looked over at the maze a little helplessly. His mind just didn't work the right way for patterns and puzzles. "I did hear once, uh, if you always turn the same way that you'll find the way out eventually, but I don't know if it's true or not."

16 Grayson Wright Well, here's one. 113 Grayson Wright 0 5

Raoul Delachenne

February 17, 2010 8:56 PM

And ze uzzer? by Raoul Delachenne

Raoul was kind of nervous for today’s events. He had never been social at school, unless you counted his romance with the lovely Miss Holly, and he didn’t have many friends. And of course the team building exercises meant… well being around people. People he knew but never even talked to. This was going to be slightly awkward of course. But Raoul was already used to the awkward new kid. After all, how much worse could it be than having English as a second language when you got to this country? Not much could really top that. He swept his California spiked blonde hair out of his bright blue eyes. He really loved being outside. It reminded him of home when he would spend hours playing in the sun. Even as old as he was he still loved to play outdoors, except his games were more playing soccer against the door of his garage.

He had decided to partner up with Jera and Grayson. Grayson was in his year, so he’d seen the kid in class every now and then. And Jera was an Alarden, so he assumed she must be pretty smart or at least crafty. He hoped the two of them didn’t mind him joining the team. But after all, it wasn’t like Raoul knew anyone else but Holly. He knew Holly was going to want to pair up with the “Ladies” and he didn’t mind it. He told Jera and Grayson his name, in case they didn’t really know him.

It was time for the Orienteering task. Raoul held out a hand to take the compass from Jera and listened to the two of them talk. “Well, ze task is to make a map no?” Raoul blushed. He wasn’t good at making suggestions. Plus, after his midterm trip to Paris, he still hadn’t quite shaken the accent that had come back to him quite strongly. “Perhaps we must find a tree? Or ze swing? Because I hear if one is lost in ze woods, one must get to a tall spot correct? To see all around oneself yes? Perhaps we can walk a little ways until we find a taller bush, tree or ze swing to get high. Then we can see everywhere no? And then we draw what we see and find a good path. Oui?” He looked from one person to the other, hoping to not see that they thought he was dumb.

52 Raoul Delachenne And ze uzzer? 125 Raoul Delachenne 0 5

Jera

February 26, 2010 8:18 AM

Now we have a team. by Jera

Jera's embarrassment developed a little further as Gray explained about the Point Me spell pointing North - not only had she remembered something very simple incorrectly, but it also made her suggestion of the spell quite useless if the Muggle compass worked. Passing the contraption over to Raoul, she did consider that maybe it wouldn't work because of the magic in the maze, but then why did the groundskeeper give it to them?

Raoul's idea registered as a good one - they could mark landmarks to help them identify where they were. Peering at the blank map she held - just a set of outlined passaways representing what was probably only a small section of the maze - Jera said, "there seem to be several different ways out, but if there are things like streams in the way it's difficult to tell by this," (she waved the blank map) "which was is fastest. I think we might be here," she pointed at an area that seemed to resemble where they were standing, in terms of passageways leading out of the clearing, to the boys.

She, too, had heard the theory about turning particular directions to be a sure way of exiting, but she had already set out to disprove this theory in her freetime, making several minature map models. "I've heard that too," she replied, "but I don't think it really works." Jera smiled, hoping Gray wouldn't ask her to explain how she knew. An Aladren might understand better than anyone else, but it still sounded rather nerdy to her own ears. This wasn't generally an image she wanted to portray. Especially to Grayson.

"So, um," she started, not sure she really wanted to take lead - as the youngest group member and the only girl - but she did seem to be holding the map. "Left, right, or sort of straight on?"

0 Jera Now we have a team. 0 Jera 0 5

Gray

February 26, 2010 9:22 PM

Go team! by Gray

Raoul's suggestion was, indeed, a good one, which was why Gray went ahead and mentally prepared himself for that to be far too simple. People without a pathological aversion to coordination might find it a simple task to climb up a tree, but he thought they would scarcely be better off in that department that he was if the tree had something big with fangs at the foot of it.

Since he didn't think displays of pessimism were good for the team spirit, though, he kept that thought to himself. He nodded when Jera first pointed out where they might be on the map and then speculated that the go-one-way tricks might be faulty. "I'll take your, your word for that," he said, with a slightly rueful smile of his own. "I'm - not good at puzzles and stuff. Mind never works the right way for them."

Gray was more than willing to accept Jera as leader, as he knew he wasn't cut out for it and had about ten years of a theory of Aladren superiority being force-drilled into him working against accepting Raoul in that role. He shrugged, not really knowing what else to do, at her question. "Left or straight?" he suggested, his tone making the words into a question. "Right doesn't feel right." He knew this was a flimsy justification, especially since right began to feel right almost as soon as he said that. "I'll just go along, uh, with whatever you guys decide."

16 Gray Go team! 113 Gray 0 5