She'll pop in, she doesn't want to miss her training!

A short, bearded old man is giving a lecture to three people. A vaguely asian looking man in some sort of foreign and tribal-looking outfit, a young-looking redhead woman in as simple a shirt and pants as she could get away with, and a very anxious looking blonde young woman wearing white priestess robes and carrying a metal staff decorated with angelic imagery. The display on the whiteboard is some sort of battle tactics.

"Ah, Mr. Tota? Here's Liath - the other new Fall Diver we've been sent. Apparently she has a good will. Bright Sorceress path."

"Welcome, welcome! Come sit, will you? I have to finish talking about the encirclement of Znevit and what we can learn from it, but then we can all get to know each other!"

The asian guy waves with a sideways grin. The other two greet her more subduedly.

She waves back casually and sits. No need to be intimidating to her own.

Mr. Tota continues the lecture! It's about the psychology of risk and Znevit's choices that led up to the current situation, which is a disaster for him.

Surrounded, with tired troops, in terrain suitable for the enemy, outnumbered, but with a few more high-level combatants and more support casters. What could Znevit do to get out of this? (He asks the class somewhat rhetorically.)

Tribal guy thinks Znevit should have turned and run a long time ago and now he's boned. Maybe he can get decent surrender terms. The priestess girl is too nervous to respond.

The redhead, though, says, "He should use his reputation. Znevit at this point had never lost a battle, and the Caledorians hated him, but they thought he was capable of nigh-impossible things. He should go out in front of his army and bluff. Thus biding time for his soldiers to rest, recover, and throw up makeshift fortifications."

Liath nods. "I agree."

"Why not surrender? Sometimes, you must accept that you have lost and try to preserve what you can."

"They wouldn't have offered him good terms. They thought they had him finally beat. One last gambit, risk all or save none." Shrug.

Liath is quiet, mulling the decision. 

"I might just hate giving up, but I prefer her solution."

"Hmm? Well, it's good to think for yourselves. Let's resume the lecture and everyone can meet our new friend afterwards."

He is quite a good teacher, though, managing to engage his students and present everything he has to say in the slightly rambling lessons on tactics in a compelling way.

When they're done, he says, "Go ahead and socialize a bit. Miss Liath, good to meet you. Go back to the secretery whenever you're ready to get a proper schedule set up."

"Hi!" The tribal-looking guy announces, holding his hand out for a handshake. "Name's Varrin. I do water manipulation and sword. Good to meet ya!"

She shakes his hand. "A bit of an opposite number, hm? Charmed, I'm sure."

Varrin laughs. "I'm not a bright, it's just a thing, lots of people in my clan have it, but I'm really lost and good at it, so..."

"L-Lucille," the priestess-looking girl says. "I... Heal things."

"Call me 'W' or 'hey you'. I'm older and stronger than I look. No magic, lots of punching, probably some other tricks once I think of them. Stronger than I look."

She nods to Lucille. "Glad to have you. You're probably going to save me from a nasty miscast at some point. Looking forwards to that."

W gets a smile. "Hey, W. How much older, do you mind me asking? I'm 27."

"Sixty five and I'm made of magic rocks, is why I still look like a teen. Well, because the guy who made me was not entirely right in the head. I'm told I'm very realistic for an awakened golem."

"Congratulations and condolences. You're our tank, then?"

"Sort of by default, yeah. I'm trying to learn other stuff but I'm pretty naturally suited to taking hits. We're going to get split up into other parties once our training is done, though. Varrin's been here the longest, me and Lucille are about tied."

She nods. "Here's to successful training, then. I guess I'll go get myself sorted out on the administrative side."

They wish her well!

Administratively speaking, they want to schedule her for 30 hours a week of training with a focus on Bright Magic but 'broad' enough to make her a little well rounded, and she can have a room here in the Fall Divers building if she wants. They don't have a cafeteria though, she'll need to buy food herself if she wants to live here. They don't object to her continuing to attend the academy or whatever else as long as it doesn't appear to be affecting her performance.

She would like to live in the Fall Divers building. A little bit of mental math - three silver for food a month times six months equals eighteen silver, but she was already setting aside twelve and a bit silver for rent and food over the next two months, so she just has to come up with six silver from her tuition for everything to be the same. Which ought not to be hard. Hopefully she can get back enough to instantly repay her debt. 55% annual tax rate is not something she enjoys.

Assuming that's everything, off to tell her course advisor the good news! If she drops everything and withdraws her whole account, how much money will she have? 

She can get an advance on her Fall Divers pay? She is getting paid. Not as much as she'll earn on missions, but not nothing. Fall Diver trainees get six silver a month and they can advance her three months.

She will take three months with no pay over a one gold loan accumulating interest any day. And have four silver left over to spend, too.

All that's left for her to do is go talk to Liscor Academy student services, then. Her class advisor congratulates her a lot on becoming a Fall Diver and is pretty excited to rearrange her classes to cover things they won't.

She does a couple calculations and concludes that she can afford to keep all the money she already has in tuition there. "Can you stretch this out to four months or so based on two hours a day of evening classes instead of eight hours a day of classes?"

Oh, easily and she'll have a good amount left over. Though evening classes does limit her options a bit. She can withdraw money from the student account for a small transaction fee (2 copper).