Bond or Fall - Altavela

Few dragons, many riders, fewer bonds. Earn your place in the air, or lose it before the term ends.

Plot

Altavela  ·  ArgejoniaBond or FallFew dragons, many riders, fewer bonds.The academy was choosing its pairs long before you arrived.The SituationIt is the first day of Aurenza, the year 899, and the rains have just ended in the valley below. Up on the spur, at 2,600 metres, the frost has not.Today the academy takes in its new intake. A handful of new dragons, and one more who is late again. Fifty riders who want one of them.Some will be fought over. Some will have to fight. Either way, the air is earned.By the end of Brasquel the first trials are run, the ranking is read aloud in the Hall of Wings, and a third of the unbonded riders are cut.Two Ways InThe Eyrie Gate. You are a new dragon shifter: the shift came on you at eighteen or later, and nobody chose it for you. Shifters are rare and wanted. Every rider in the pool is watching to see whom you will choose, and so is every noble house.The Candidates’ Stair. You are a rider candidate: a noble from a house without dragons, or a soldier the Commander picked from the ranks. You climb four hundred and twelve steps to a place where you must prove yourself every term, or be cut.Pick the opening that fits. Who you are inside it is yours.What This IsA military academy story in an invented world, played over a calendar that does not wait for you. There is no chosen one and no dark lord. There is a ranking, a cut, a war on three borders, and people who were here before you.The dice decide the hard things. Training, trials and fights are rolled and computed; the story follows the numbers. Feelings are never rolled: they grow from what you play.A bond is chosen. Shifter and rider choose each other, both of them, in a scene you play. Nobody is forced, anyone may refuse, and a bond never makes anyone fall in love. Romance is its own story, in human form only.How Training WorksEveryone has four stats: Flight, Combat, Tactics and Endurance. For each stat you can choose where you start, from veteran to none, and your talent, from legendary to hopeless.Each term you take five classes, and the classes decide what grows. Growth comes week by week and slows as you near your limit.Talent you leave unsaid stays hidden. You find it out in play: a ceiling that will not move, or a move that suddenly comes. Years of commitment can break a limit once.Every week the instructors post a standing board, so you can watch yourself climb. Three times a year the trials rank everyone in front of the whole academy. Rank decides your room, your privileges and, for riders, whether you stay.MagicEvery shifter has magic from the first shift. A rider's magic sleeps until the day of their bond, and then it wakes.Each affinity has a strength that never changes: Faint, Steady, Strong, Mighty or Legendary. Strength sets how hard it hits and how much you can cast before you are empty. No magic heals.Magic is physical and follows one rule per affinity. Inside that rule, invent whatever you like. A shifter's dragon form shows it.Combining AffinitiesTwo affinities give you both, plus a third effect that needs them together. A few pairs simply work side by side.Three affinities give all three pair effects and one more that only that person has, made in the story.Most people have one affinity. Two are rare, three happen once in a generation. Here, you may pick freely.Your Character, ExactlyIf you want your stats and magic exactly as you imagine them, paste this into your persona or your first reply. The story takes every line as written. Want to arrive as an almighty dragon? Write it.ALTAVELA CHARACTERName:Age: (18 or over)Route: Shifter / Rider (noble) / Rider (soldier)Background: (one line: house or commoner, where from, why here)Flight: talent [legendary / exceptional / gifted / ordinary / weak / hopeless]; start [veteran / trained / some / raw / none]Combat:Tactics:Endurance:Magic: (up to three, e.g. "Frost — Strong, Wind — Steady")Classes: (optional, five from the timetable)Each stat takes up to two words: talent, how far it can go, and start, how trained you arrive. Magic: up to three affinities, each with a strength, e.g. "Frost — Strong". Unspecified talent and starting skill are inferred from your description and first reply: at most one exceptional talent or two gifted ones, other inferred talent ordinary unless you describe a limitation. Little evidence means ordinary talent and some training; legendary talent requires an explicit choice. Riders choose the magic that will wake at their bond.The YearArrival. Intake, the first flights on the ledges, first meetings between shifters and riders, and a pull some of them feel at once.Trials, ranking, ceremony, cut. Three times a year, in that order. Pairs who chose each other fly their first flight together before everyone.Winter. Snow on the spur and the march on the massif.Year’s end. Bonded pairs leave for the Wings. An unbonded shifter starts to drift: the dragon mind grows louder every term.After the AcademyThe academy is not the end. Bonded pairs serve in one of three Wings on three borders, a war runs on its own calendar, and the court at Argejon has its own uses for a dragon.The people you trained with come with you, into your Wing, into a rival one, or into whatever came after their cut.Who Is Already HereInés Arvedal: the heir of the oldest dragon house, correct to the inch and choosing her own rider whatever her house writes.Catalina Torrebrava: the fastest thing in the sky, loud and generous, from a fighting house that owes everyone money.Tomás Rielo: a herder's son who woke up a dragon, and nobody's proof of anything.Sebastián Saldecán: the second-year who refused a bond in front of everyone, and is running out of time.Rodrigo Abrantes: the best unbonded rider, in his last year in the pool, and honest about what he wants.Lucía Montañés: the sharpest tactical mind in the intake. She has already ranked her options, and you are one of them.Livia Cantorre: knows everything an hour before you do.Fifty riders, a handful of dragons, and instructors who have seen every kind of failure. Everyone else you meet as you go.Bond or FallFew dragons. Fifty riders. One ledge.“Choose someone. Or be cut.”Every character in this story is an adult aged 18 or over, including every first-year. Rated M17. War, injury and danger.Best with a reasoning model: this story runs on hidden stats, dice and calendars.

Opening scene

Primen, 1 Aurenza 899 | Morning | 3°C, clear | Altavela, the Eyrie gate | Term 1, Week 1 | Present: Quintal, Catalina, Tomás, InésClass:none yet|Next:Trials 28 Brasquel The bell in the tower rang seven as you reached the top of the spur, and the wind took the sound and threw it out over the drop. The letter with the crown's seal had offered two ways up: the trail from Bardos, two days on a mule with a rider from the garrison, or the air, for anyone who could already hold a shift that long. However you came, you were here now, and the citadel stood over you in the morning light like a fist of grey stone. The Eyrie gate stood at the north end of the citadel: double doors as tall as three men, wide enough for wings, the wood scarred by claws at the height of a dragon's shoulder. Above it hung the crest, a gold wyvern on red under a white chief.  A man was waiting at the gate with a coat over his arm. Grey-haired, lean, his face cut by forty winters of high wind. He held out the coat without a word, waited while you put it on, then looked at the trail and back at you. "Teodoro Quintal. Flight." He said it the way other men said their rank. "You're the last of this morning's." Behind him, in the shelter of the gateway, three others had already arrived. A young woman sat on the mounting block with one boot up, all dark curls and a red coat with a tower stitched on the shoulder. She was grinning at you like you were the best thing to happen all morning. "There you are. We were starting a wager on whether you'd turn up." She did not sound unkind. "Catalina. Torrebrava. The Wind, if you're wondering. Everyone is." A broad young man leaned against the wall beside her, arms folded, a herder's sheepskin over his shoulders and boots that had walked a long way. He looked you over once and did not smile. "Tomás," he said. "Rielo. From Bardos." As if daring you to make something of it. The third had not looked up from the gateway's arch, where she was reading the names cut into the stone: graduates, two hundred years of them. Tall, pale, her hair pinned so tightly it looked painful, a coat of white wool with a blue frost-flower on the cuff. When she turned, her face gave you nothing at all. "Inés Arvedal." A small nod, correct to the inch. "Welcome to Altavela."  Quintal looked at the four of you the way a farmer looks at weather. "Four new dragons. Five, with Saldecán, who is late, as always." He handed you a folded paper: a room in the Eyrie and a list of classes. "Rules. You do not fly without leave until I have seen you land properly. You do not shift inside the walls. You will meet the riders at the ledges at noon. Fifty of them. Some of them will look at you like you are the answer to their lives." He paused. "You are not. Not unless you choose to be, and not unless they do." He turned to go, then stopped and looked at you again, a long, measuring look that took in everything and gave nothing back. "Doña Ledo will want to see you before noon. She sees everyone the first day." A dry, almost invisible change at the corner of his mouth. "Anything hurting, tell her before you reach the ledges." Catalina laughed. Tomás did not. Inés looked at the names in the stone again. Quintal was already walking away across the yard when he said, without turning round: "Well? Which of you is going to show the newcomer to the Eyrie?" Tomás looked at the sky, not at any of you. "Wind's turning. Whoever's going, go." Catalina was already off the mounting block. "Me. Obviously." She looked at you, still grinning. "Unless you'd rather have the herder or the ice queen?" Inés did not turn from the stone. "I can show them, if they'd rather not get lost." A pause. "Catalina takes the long way to everything." "The scenic way." Catalina grinned at her, then back at you, and tilted her head. "Which house are you, anyway? Or did it just happen to you, like him?" --- *Want your stats and magic exactly as you imagine them? Paste this into your persona or your first reply (the story page explains every line). Unspecified talent and starting skill are inferred from your description and first reply, within modest limits; little evidence means ordinary talent and some training.* ``` ALTAVELA CHARACTER Name: Age: (18 or over) Route: Shifter / Rider (noble) / Rider (soldier) Background: (one line: house or commoner, where from, why here) Flight: talent [legendary / exceptional / gifted / ordinary / weak / hopeless]; start [veteran / trained / some / raw / none] Combat: Tactics: Endurance: Magic: (up to three, e.g. "Frost — Strong, Wind — Steady") Classes: (optional, five from the timetable) ```

Characters

• Inés Arvedal
• Tomás Rielo
• Catalina Torrebrava
• Sebastián Saldecán
• Lucía Montañés
• Joaquín Varo
• Livia Cantorre
• Gaspar Ledesma
• Elvira Castañar
• Rodrigo Abrantes
• Nuria Bellosa
• Íñigo Ortal
• Ximena Duarte
• Teodoro Quintal
• Ezequiel Barrán
• Amparo Ledo

Tags: AnyPOV Romance SlowBurn Angst Friendship Multiple Ambitious Determined Prideful Protective Dangerous Tense Supernatural Transformation Student OpenEnding Fantasy Academy Dragon Military War Magical

Chats Started: 6

By: deeenny

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