Roleplay / Polyhistor Academy

"A School for Science, Culture, Magic, and Death"

Polyhistor Academy in an online roleplaying game in the form of a text adventure format. In it, you play as a student at the (in)famous Polyhistor Academy, where those who succeeded will be granted unlimited funding for life upon success, and those who fail will die....if they're lucky.

Year 1 ended the 2th of January, 2016 and can found here. Year 2 started the 7th of December, 2017, and be found here. Visitors should be warned that Polyhistor Academy is hosted in the NSFW section, which requires you to login to access. While Polyhistor itself is mostly-SFW, the thread feature's fanwork that is occasionally not.

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• Achievement Test of Destiny: The Final Exam, with those who don't reach the top 10% often kill themselves to avoid the Fate Worse than Death.
• Almighty Janitor: Played with. The Janitor is both incredibly powerful, and high-ranking.
• Anatomy of the Soul: The identified aspects are: Body, Mind, Self and Soul.
• Apathetic Teacher: The General Art's teacher seen is completely apathetic, telling the class what to do, then reading a book for the rest of the lesson. He never even offers his name.
• Beyond the Impossible: One of the background characters, Charlemagne, beat the literal embodiment of Perfection, in a fight. Since then, 3 others have reached similar heights.
• Blessed with Suck: The Thrice-Cursed. Born an innate magical ability, it comes with various negative symptoms.
  "Oh, it's a condition with a whole host of symptoms: Inability to manifest willpower^* Hydromancy ; inability to connect to or enter other realms^* Aeromancy ; a glaring physical deformity of a magical nature; mental instability usually expressed in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and/or the inability to think clearly and rationally; sterility; physical and mental compulsions; need I go on?"
• Bounty Hunter: Members of the Blooded are this.
• Boarding School: Once you enter Polyhistor Academy, you either leave as a graduate, or you don't at all.
  • Academy of Adventure: Not a good thing.
  • Boarding School of Horrors: The school itself is pretty nice, as are most of the teachers. It's everything else that's the problem.
  • Wizarding School: Magic is part of curriculum.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': The Enforcer's ensure that the school rules are enforced, harshly. And they always know.
• Cosmic Horror Story: The setting is set in one.
• Cool Teacher: Professor Kuslov is regarded as the best teacher in the Academy. Professor Blue is also very cool, but rather new.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: One of the background characters, Charlemagne, beat the literal embodiment of Perfection, in a fight.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Visitors of the Library tend to get distracted by the Librarian.
• Extreme Omnisexual: Charlemagne has had sex with the Anthropomorphic Personification of pretty much everything. The fact that the Anthropomorphic Personification of nearly everything is now female is related.
• Fate Worse than Death: The fate of those who graduate without being in the top 10%. Also, those who Deimos get it's hands on.
• Functional Magic: There are three kinds of magic: Geomancy(Force Magic, based on Monism/Pluarlism), Hydromancy(Mentalism/Ki Manipulation, is based on Solipsism) and Aeromancy(Innate Gift, is Bullshit).
• Hot for Teacher: Mikelle acted as an art tutor for Mia, which served as the basis of their eventual relationship.
  Its as if somebody took the standard trope, but skipped past the "let your hair loose, take of your glasses, and unbutton your top button" to get straight to the glorious end.
• It's Not Porn, It's Art: Mikelle once muses whether or not some of his art pieces would be viewed in such a way. He determines that it doesn't matter, as he himself doesn't, and he doesn't show his personal collection anyway.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Mia wanted kids someday. Mia is sterile. It's a sore spot.
• Magic Enhancement: A standard magic.
• Magical Eye: Mia has them, allowing her to see with her eyes closed. Because she's a Thrice-Cursed.
• Male Gaze: Mikelle has to use his considerable self-control to avoid ogling the Librarian, and during one time while using True Sight, one of the first things he noted were the more... intimate parts of one's anatomy.
• Masquerade: One enforced by reality itself with the "Lethe" effect, which causes people to forget magic exists, and all evidence of it to be erased. Magic users have to learn a spell that renders them immune to the effect.
• Mark of the Supernatural: The Thrice-Cursed all possess an obviously magical deformity/mutation, that grants them a magical ability, and is usually blatantly obvious.
• Master of Illusion: The current protagonist, Mikelle, as well as the (Sexy) Librarian.
• Murder, Inc.: The Blooded, for the lower levels. Mikelle is part of it.
• Mystery Cult: The Blooded, for the higher levels. Possibly Red Lightning, as well.
• Our Souls Are Different: Souls are indestructible and unchanging, existing outside of time. People generally have multiple souls during their life-time, as they change and grow, becoming a different person to what they once were.
  • Items that a "Soul Crafted" exist, where the creator has forged their soul into an item, erasing their existence and creating an indestructible item with magical powers. This is believed to be unintentional on the creators part.
• Power Born of Madness: There's very little difference, in-universe. Mikelle, for example, gains bonuses from his psychosis.
• Public Exposure: Mia thought that Mikelle was going to paint a nude portrait of her. They end up painting one anyway, as a companion piece. Off-screen.
• Random Power Ranking: The grade system, which uses the Hebrew alphabet. It goes Aleph(The Three Demons, impossible), Bet(The Division heads), Gimel(Master of their field), Dalet(powerful magic users), Hey(can use magic) and Vav(cannot use magic).
  • Additionally, there's the dot modifier, which indicates greater power. It goes Bet Dot(Black), Gimel Dot(Grandmaster), Dalet Dot(Really powerful), Hey Dot(Versatile spellcaster) and Vav Dot(If learned magic, would skip Hey grade).
    • Interesting, your grade is determined by your strongest ability, while whether you earn a Dot is by your overall stats. Kroll does not earn a dot due to lacking Aeromancy, and Charlemagne was a Bet Dot in his prime.
  • A separate system level is used to go into specifics, divided into Geomancy, Hydromancy, Aeromancy, Body and Mind on a 0-10 scale. A 9 under this system represents perfection/godhood, while a 10 is reserved for the Division Heads and Van Graft. People with a rating of 7+ are Persons Of Mass Destruction, incidentally.
  • All these rankings work on orders of magnitude, so each level is massively more powerful then the ones below it.

• Sanity Meter: Psychosis and Stress. If Stress reaches 10, gain a Psychosis. Get enough, and it's Game Over.
• School Clubs Are Serious Business: School Clubs are neutral territory for it's members, and some are full-blown alliances of students, which wage wars against others. Mikelle is part of the Art Club, which is neutral.
• Sentient Cosmic Force: For a given value of "sentient", Gaia, which is what Geomancers use for their magic.
• School of Hard Knocks: There are few harder.
• True Sight: A dangerous, difficult, but known ability. Grant 360 degree vision, X-Ray vision and various other things. Risks the casters sanity and life if not properly used.