Vorlonagent

I think he's got it!

I expect that it is still Bad Tom...

I rather hope (and knowing Dan, expect) there's more to Noriko's story. She may have felt she had to leave when she could no longer pretend Tedd could possibly grow up to be a monster hunter. But I don't know what that reason is, and leaving a child is a crappy thing to do to the child, so I feel entirely free to hate on her now, knowing that the day will come when I will eventually feel sympathy for her.

That's what I mean. If Will says "common" that ought to be taken from his frame of reference. His frame of reference is as an Uryouom hatched and raised on Earth and should reflect CMD availability on Earth. You'd expect they would be something of a necessity. As you imply, however, there are plenty of gifted human programmers who would crack the legal CMD programming language just to say they did it. Maybe Uryouoms are different? I dunno. You'd think there'd be at least an underground community on the Uroyuom homeworld which has legal CMD units thoroughly hacked, but Will and Gill would never have brought their gray market (pardon the pun) TF Gun to Ed Verres if they had access to hacked CMDs that could give them fully human forms. Equating *that* Avater and Lord of the Rings in any way seems rather off to me. You weren't happy with Peter Jackson's work? I can understand why people might be a bit put out by his "Hobbit" movies. I know I found them disappointing, but the Lord of the Rings was top-notch stuff. ...the way Avatar wasn't. M. Night Shamalan and Michael Bay. Two directors with fatal flaws to their style who get plenty of movie work and really shouldn't...

...chasing nuclear wessels. It was a decent light comedy but the framing story (Generic Death Probe #147 destroying Earth) left something to be desired. I'm mildly surprised the whale didn't tell the probe "yeah go ahead and kill 'em all. That's what they did to us". Guess it wasn't in the script... Even odd-numbered Trek movies have something to recommend them. III "Don't call me 'tiny'." also Christopher Lloyd as a Klingon captain. V: "What does 'God' need with a starship?"

I acknowledge that your point of view concurs with that of most Trek fans.

The difference between a legal-to-sell (by Uyouom law) CMD and the illegal-to-sell device Will and Gill gave to Tedd is all back-end functionality. In the following comic Will describes it as a "common cosmetic morph device" and reiterates that what makes it different is the programming language by which it operates. "Common" has to mean that there's nothing unique in how Tedd's TF Gun operates in terms of transformations. Any CMD would do for a greater Seynoulu what Tedd's would do. "Common" should also mean "plenty of them among Earth's Uryouom population". The people helping Grace's siblings should be a part of the paranormal community and therefore should have easy access to a CMD if they wanted one. I'll back off partly on making Vladia male. Only Tedd's TF gun or another like it could easily make Vladia male. You could do it with a legal CMD but setting up the form is implied to be a major programming headache. Probably like working with COBOL or something. It exists. It's just that its big ending scene was never filmed. Trek VI was, sadly, the last Trek film too. Best to go out with a bang than a whimper I suppose. They should look at making more Trek films some time. Paramount hasn't done anything with the franchise since they pulled the plug on Enterprise. I hear they're doing a new TV show, though. I'm looking forward to watching Orville...

Vladia says in a comic that in her mind she was never a man, which cuts to the idea of Vlad thinking he was a monster and embracing humanity as Vladia. In the comic you linked to upthread she even refers to her previous body as her "monster form" and says "I'm not risking my life, and my face, when I'm happy like this." When she adds "and my face", she seems to be saying both are very large concerns with shapeshifting: Losing her life, losing her humanity. You write as if Tedd's TF Gun were the only one on Earth. It ought not be. It's simply the only easily programmable Cosmetic Morphing Device known to exist on Earth. There ought to be plenty of Uyouom morphing devices on earth that are up to Uryouom legal code. The people suprivising Grace's siblings ought to be able to borrow one if they wanted to stabilize Vladia. They could probably make her male again too.. Probably Vladia is just done with shapeshifting thoreticals and ought-to-bes. she's human, she likes it. That's it. being a sexy girl is probably a nice bonus. There's a lot of stories and movies about how being human at heart is more important than looking outwardly human. It's the whole "judging a book by it's cover" thing. Vlad was a bioweapon first and a soldier in Damian's army after that. Neither role fostered much in the way of humanity. Vlad was taught that his outward monster form was an accurate reflection of who he was. Being turned human gave him a way out of that trap and he went for it.

Correct. No offense was intended. The obvious truism bears repeating. Being different is often painful. More literally than most in Vladia's case.

Unless he really was interested in Susan. He was pretty devastated after she was done with him.

That and Vladia is happy to look and feel like a human being instead of a freak.

Actually it was a buck-and-a-quarter quarterstaff but he didn't say so.

The way I read that comic, It's not a question of "convinced" or "not convinced". Vladia has chosen not to find out if her shapeshifting is more fluid so we still don't know if Ellen's beam would stabilize a greater Seynoulu even though she has used it on one. As an aside, Vladia's fears are probably reasonable. It's Grace's Lespuko side that lets her hide her antennae. Vladia has no Lespuko component in her, so if she gets her antennae back, she's very probably stuck with them. The comic also makes the point that when Ellen zapped Vlad and created Vladia it wasn't a normal use of her beam. Vladia's experience is an exception. That makes it a shaky counter example when we're talking about how Ellen's beams generally behave.

Shrinking might not reduce the impact of a Vampire's spells either. But Ellen's beams mimic the delivery method so well that they are for all intents and purposes Uryouom energy effects. The only thing we aren't sure of is whether an ellen-beam can stabilize a Greater Seynoulu the way a TF gun beam can. No reason to think it couldn't. Being relative newcomers in conflict with much more seasoned magic users is a common problem with the characters in EGS. The only known S-Rank talents are Rhoda, as stated by Pandora and Nanase an implication of being called "royalty" by the griffins. They ought to be a cut above in some way and effectiveness of spells might be it.

Agreed. As the "Mistriss of Shrink", if anybody can reduce a horror to pocket size, and keep it there, it would be Rhoda.

Being magic users themselves, Vampires probably would resist Rhoda's shrinking spells fairly well. If Ellen used her FV5 beam on Not-Tengu then there's limited amounts we can say about how he would resist Rhoda because Ellen's FV5 beam uses Earth magic to generate a TF Gun beam, which uses Uryuom energy. But yeah. In the main, they won't stay small, tall, fat or blonde as long as a none mage would.

Those threatening Diane would suddenly get very small. Rhoda has Awakened so there isn't anything like that which can happen for her.

I like her fine as a brunette but anything for SCIENCE!

The usual magic user route is Lots of study till you make it.

OK then. That explains why I didn't have a reference. Suggest "Legacy (of Pandora)" or "(Pandora's) Legacy" for clarity's sake in the future since only you understand the title as you write it. Is this the comic you're referencing? Dan's language is vague about Adrian's magic training. Arguably an Immortal need not train an Elf in magic the way humans train other humans. He does seem to have taken to magic very fast and very young. That tends to mitigate against Adrian needing an Awakening, but doesn't prove he didn't need one.

Could you remind me what the "Legacy of Pandora" is? You seem to be using it as if it were a title and I'm not recognizing it. I'm usually good at keeping my continuity sources straight too...

Raven has had magic long enough to have unlocked it on an Atari 2600.

Uryouom energy is a different class of "magical energy" altogether. It is not a ruleset for Earth-magic. Grace, who uses Uryouom energy, cannot cast spells. She cannot even use Tedd's watches. Noah is a greater seynoulu like Grace and he does cast spells but he seems to act under the same rules as any other earth-magic-magic user, not under Uryouom rules. Interesting to note: We have never seen Noah shapeshift. Did he exchange one magical energy system for another? Both the griffins we know cast spells. They seem to have some instinctive insight like Immortals. They most closely match the rules for elves to be honest. We also know that there are humans over there because of the casual way the Griffins treated Nanase. EGS-Prime's Earth still has a lot of weird stuff in the margins. EGS-Prime could even have a native griffin population. I don't know how behind that I am but it's a possibility. Adrian Raven uses magic. Did he Awaken or simply unlock that ability? Maybe Griffins unlock the ability to use magic at a certain age as well... I tend to think there's 3 rulesets. Rules for Immortals/Ancients, maybe others. Rules for magical creatures (Griffins, also half-Immortals like Elves) Rules for mortals (commonly humans). I tend to want to think the rules are the same on both sides of the world. I would also think that the common general rules tend to have specific implementations for each type that follows it (Even if all elves "taste" magic with their ears, for example, If Griffins have that same sense, it would work in an unrelated way) I would speculate that a mortal with a magical affinity makes the possessor of that affinity a little bit of a magical creature in the narrow sense that the affinity, not the possessor, follows the magical creature rules and remains through Magic resets. Edit: Though how and affinity expresses itself would depend on the current mortal-magic ruleset and could/would change when Magic resets.

There's a lot we don't know about the other half of the world. We know ambient magic energy flows from one world to the other and probably from the other back. The simplest way of running magic use for the whole is both component worlds use magic by the same rules.They're one world not two when considered metaphysically. but magic seems to have one set of rules for humans and another for Immortals, so magic may not do things the simplest way. if we decide Griffins are "magical creatures", what rules do they use? Human? Immortal? A third set? What is the other half of the world even like? Andrea was very bad at hiding, which suggests she doesn't need to hide in her own world. A magical world then? Magus' home, perhaps?.. What happens to magical energy that is used in spells? Sarah puts 'dents" in Moperville's magic buildup and the energy she uses is by definition no longer trying to move to the other side of the world. Is it recycled? If not, how is new magical energy generated?

It looked like they were giving Maria food near the end. I thought that was to keep her him in the area...