Welcome to Gaia! ::

Hi, I'm Althor Enchantor. You may remember me as the guy who writes Westly Morganna, the awesomest and best character to have ever been cool enough to hang out with Gaioh.

In any case, if you're reading this, you're either:

a) New to the guild and need to be shown the ropes, or

b) Here to pelt me with rotten fruit or worse, or otherwise heckle my first class.

So, lemme start you off. Write your character as walking into the room (assume a large old-timey one-room schoolhouse), and introduce themselves to the class. Try not to break character from here on in.

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A young man dressed in a grey shirt and jeans walked into the room, turned on the lights, and set a number of books down on the table. "My name is Westly Morganna," he said to the empty air, as no one had arrived yet. Didn't matter; he could just say it again as needed, and he liked to hear himself talk. "I am a Chuunin and a Combat Support Specialist. I'm also a lying trickster faerie who once used a transformation jutsu to successfully masquerade as his own girlfriend for an afternoon, just to mess with people." Smiling, he bowed with the flourish of a practiced performer.

(( OOC: If you need to say something out of character, either PM the person in question or format it like this to differentiate from when you're talking in-character. ))

(( Namaki Household, first couple pages. ))

Westly's grin went wide, to Cheshire Cat levels. And like the Cheshire Cat, it left room for debate whether it was a happy smile or a creepy one. "Yes! Welcome! Have a seat! Have a drink!" Westly made a handseal, and a glass of iced tea appeared on a desk in the front row. Another handseal, and a name card appeared on it. According to the card, the desk belonged to an illegible smudge of ink. Westly's grin faded back to a mere smile. "I'm... sorry, I don't think I caught your name."

Westly nodded, though his smile grew. He kept a lynx as a familiar, cat associated with dreams, but it had been a close thing. He'd nearly chosen a peacock, which said a few things about, if not his vanity, at least his ego. He'd expected "Westly-sempai" or "Westly-sensei"; that is to say, in the common tongue, "Senior Student Westly" or "Professor Westly". Calling him "Westly-sama", a term closer to "Lord Westly", was something he found very flattering indeed.

"Are you sure you don't want any tea?" asked Westly. "If you're worried about poison, don't be. The tea is perfectly safe. In fact, I kind of wanted to see if you could deduce this from the information you already have. I'll give you a hint, but I want to see if you can solve the puzzle on your own. The hint is... where did the iced tea come from?"

Nothing happened. Well, Ayumi felt some borderline fossilized chewing gum stuck to the bottom of the desk from some student who must have graduated years ago. It was kinda gross. But neither the iced tea nor the card vanished. Westly smiled at Ayumi's cleverness. "Good choice. The first step to solving a problem is speculation about all the possible solutions. A seal was one of the... three possible explanations, I think, for where the tea came from. No, I just thought of a fourth. Ahem. In any case! Unfortunately, if the tea had been simply sealed away, it could still have been poisoned. In fact, with three of the four explanations, the tea could still have been poisoned. And, as you've no doubt noticed by now, there is no seal. So that's out of the question. What else is there?"

The iced tea and the name card both vanished. Westly... pouted. "You... you didn't have to kill it...." He grinned. "Nah, just kidding. Good job. Yes, the four... no, five ways it could have happened were as follows:

1. A seal hidden in the desk. As you noted, there was no seal, so it couldn't be that.

2. I created actual tea out of thin air. The problem is that creating 'real' things is insanely difficult. Only a handful of people on the planet can do it. For some random Chuunin to be capable of what even most Kages cannot do is unlikely enough to be discarded if other explanations are available.

3. I summoned the tea. Except, summoning jutsus tend to require smearing blood across a seal drawn on paper, not just a single handseal. Also, who the heck would make a summoning pact with a glass of iced tea? That's just silly.

4. Genjutsu. The tea didn't exist. What isn't real isn't poisonous. Also, Point of Interest? What isn't real also isn't fattening. I could make a delicious strawberry cake, so good it tastes like the real thing, but it'd have zero calories because it would also have zero mass, not that you'd be able to tell.

5. Alternative Genjutsu: the tea was real, had been sitting on the table all along, but I'd rendered it invisible. The handseal I made, in that case, would have been me dispelling my own illusion. You could have tested for that by running your hand across the tops of the other desks to see if you knocked over a glass."

Westly made a handseal, and the tea reappeared, along with a slice of strawberry cake, and a new name card, one that said "Ayumi".

"Aside from the very basics, like how to go about training, how to find things you're looking for, and basic etiquette while fighting, the main 'advanced' topics I will cover will have to do with puzzles, riddles, and creative thinking." He bowed with a flourish. "Any questions or requests, or shall I pick the next lesson?"

Westly's lips pursed in thought. An idea occurred to him. Perhaps it was time to start teaching that thing he wanted to teach. "Let me show you a puzzle that I can't seem to solve myself." He reached under the table and pulled out a pair of knives. "Can you stick your hands out flat on the desk for a minute or so?" He started to walk towards her, the knives bared, though he held them limply. Carrying them rather than wielding them. The thoughtful expression on his face never slipped.

In the middle of the room stood a man who looked not a day over twenty. He had short blue hair, an outfit the color of mist in a forest, and while he wasn't startled, he was currently in a fairly compromising position. Westly paused, mid-step. He was... if not quite brandishing them, still holding a pair of drawn knives as he approached an unarmed girl about half his age. Turning his head slowly to the side, he smiled sheepishly at the newcomer.

He cleared his throat. "Welcome! I am indeed a skilled illusionist. But first! An Impromptu Test of Character: If I told that this isn't what it looks like, would you give me the benefit of the doubt long enough to hear the perfectly reasonable explanation for the scene laid out before you?"