Drasvin

I forget the name of the game, but there's a horror game that lets you temporarily see what nearby monsters see, so you can know when it's safe to come out of hiding or need to find another hiding spot.

Supersonic planes flying overhead don't break windows, because the intensity of sound is inversely proportional to the square of the distance, and the shockwave of breaking the sound barrier(and the shockwave from explosions) follows the same principle of sound: differences in air pressure. So overhead planes won't cause problems due to distance from the shockwave's epicenter, but if Cheerleadra goes supersonic at ground level, it'll be like she set off a bomb. Especially if she's inside a building, where the shockwave can reflect off the walls(unless the shockwave is stronger than the walls, in which case it will break them.) This is, of course, assuming she doesn't have the fancy reduced/capped air resistance common to speedsters in comics.

Ah. This infernal pit that is internet comments. In some corners of the web(like this one), comments can be insightful, interesting, funny, and/or just generally enhance the main content. ...Then you have the boiling drek that flows across other places.

And this is one of the many reasons to have locking gas caps on your vehicles.

Expanding on a couple points here and adding my two cents, what makes a career "successful" is a subjective metric. Some people consider a successful career to be one with a lot of income. Others focus on fame and admiration. Impact and chances to improve the lives of others is another common metric. I personally use a quality of life metric (is the job covering my financial obligations and do I enjoy the work.) Children are more often going to gravitate towards the fame and admiration metric (or a separate "awesomeness" metric) as that's a concept that they'll know and many consider important. A lot of children don't have a firm grasp on the value of money (certainly they know you buy things with money, but they don't quite grasp the work and effort that goes into getting money.) Also, many children don't have a developed enough sense of empathy (or a concept of legacy) for the impact metric to out-weigh the fame metric in importance.

A SQL server being down for only minutes can be very costly if those minutes aren't inside an opportune maintenance window. In a lot of businesses, when the database is down, everything stops.

I'm not sure the vampires would die off. It's been stated that magic will be changing for humans, and aberrations are explicitly not human anymore. They likely fall into the broad category of beings with magic interwoven with their very nature, so likely their vampiric magic is unlikely to change drastically.

Certainly. I imagine if it would be difficult to determine if the energy of magic would count as one massive whole, or countless separate pieces working in concert.

I don't think the Will of Magic is a separate entity from Magic. As in it's the energies and such that make up magic that are sentient and self-determining, not a separate mentality that directs and structures them. Back in squirrel prophet, DW didn't say he was there on behalf of the Will of Magic, he said he was there on behalf of Magic Itself. He stated that magic has a "will and objectives of its own". He also provides some insight into why magic can drastically change for humans but not uryuoms. He mentions they are a species with magic interwoven into their very nature. To change how magic works for uryuoms, you have to fundamentally change what a uryuom is, and the wording he uses on that page implies that magic is unable to enact such a fundamental change, at least to a drastic degree. Also there's the fact that it's a sentient, reality-defying force. If it wants itself to be applied differently in different circumstances, it certainly can.

For some reason I'm reminded of the flavor text from the Spellbook card from Magic:the Gathering. "Everything the wise woman learned she wrote in a book, and when the pages were black with ink, she took white ink and began again." —Karn, silver golem

If the store has reason to believe the alcohol is being bought for someone else, they are obligated to require the ID of the person or persons that will receive it. When I worked at WalMart, one of the training videos detailed an instance where the cashier had reason to suspect the alcohol was being bought for underage individuals, but allowed the sale to go through. Then the alcohol was taken to a party, where an underage drinker died of alcohol poisoning. The cashier was held liable for that. (I don't remember what all she had to deal with, but she lost her job at the least)

Between magical energy recovery being greatest while asleep and non-sapients needing to starve themselves to shed an enchantment, I think magical energy generation might be tied to biological processes.

Entering Grace's dreams might be an ability that's exclusive to dreams. Depends if EGS magic treats dreams and thoughts as different but related things or not. And Pandora doesn't necessarily need mind reading to learn of their marking potential. Might be a kind of 'aura vision' related to the way Adrian can sense people's magical power.

Well, with the replicators (which I think TOS era had) and the engineering crew, they should be able to repair most of the ship themselves. The only things I think that would give them trouble would be the warp core (because it's dangerous and is what provides them with power), the structural skeleton (fixing the structural skeleton might require advanced facilities to not weaken the structure), and maybe the hull (similar concerns to the structural skeleton, also would require equipment that can function in vacuum, which the Enterprise should have, but I'm not sure that they do)

The page I read on Balance of Terror stated that they poweted down thier ship to avoid detection. So maybe they were whispering to conserve oxygen? I honestly doubt whispering would actually help conserve oxygen, but it sounds like to sort of handwavy excuse a lazy and/or overworked sci-fi writter might use.

I haven't seen the episode (I haven't seen much of Star Trek and most of what I've seen is TNG and Voyager), but reading through the episode detail on the Star Trek wiki, it seems the phaser banks started shorting out after the Enterprise took a hit from the Romulan ship using a weapon they'd never seen before and was strong enough to tear through most of their shields with ease. Which if that's the case, then it's not so much bad hardware as hardware that can't hold up to weaponry beyond expected parameters.

The velocity the rocket would have wouldn't be straight away from the Earth's center of mass, but tangential to the surface of the earth at the moment the gravity is negated. Though it might appear that the vessel rises straight into the air by people on the ground. This is also ignoring the other gravity-dependent velocities, like the Earth's revolution around the Sun or the Solar System's revolution around the galactic core. Also people and things in that hypothetical bunker wouldn't splat against the ceiling (though they would slam into the ceiling as if they had suddenly fallen up), as we are currently experiencing the acceleration of angular velocity from the Earth rotating and gravity holding us to the surface. Once the people and objects hit the ceiling, their velocity would be redirected by the structure, similar to how a seatbelt prevents people from flying forward if the car stops suddenly, though there could be problems if the ceiling isn't strong enough to support people and thing falling into it.

I think it's a little of both. When they were human, they technically had the capacity for empathy and remorse, but it wasn't leveraged, or at least wasn't leveraged enough to get in the way of murderous immortality. Once they became an abberation, they lost the very capacity of empathy and remorse.

True, but a tantrum spiral in the Moperville mall would definately be zany. At least for a little while.

And I am reminded of the Dwarf Fortress catsplosion. Which is significantly different than the catsplosion at threat here, though would likely be zany as well.

His spell lets him remember who Grace is, details about her and their past meetings, and why he's contacting her. I remember nothing that would imply he needs to spell to know about the nature of the Will of Magic and such other knowledge that immortals have forgotten.

I think she's going to see the Wizard. Specfically the Emmisary of Magic. He's the one that gave her the hint, he knows stuff about magic that even immortals have forgotten, and she did tell him that it would be easy to find his physical body.

Recently, I got to wondering what Colors of Magic the cast of EGS would be (I wonder about characters in other settings at times as well, but this is an EGS forum, and there's plenty of characters to ponder in this webcomic). I had figured that such a topic would already exist, due to the Squirrel Prophet arc (and I guess might have on the old server) but a search turned up nothing. For reference,here are a series of articles about the five colors: White, Blue, Black, Red, Green and a list of articles including those five and a bunch of articles about color combinations here. I'm mostly looking at personality and philosophy of the characters, as abilities(mechanics) would bring in a splash of blue for a good portion of the cast due to transformation. Also, any whole and complete person is going to have some degree of all five Colors. A person's Color identity is which Color, or combination of Colors, most represents the person's personality and philosophy. That said, here's my thoughts on the colors of the Main Eight: Elliot: White: Elliot is loyal, honest, and helping to a fault. Even to the point of suppressing his own wants and desires in an attempt to make others happy. Ellen: Red/Black:In her drive to differentiate herself from Elliot, Ellen embraced her impulses and emotional drive. She also heavily values her individuality. She likely still has a good splash of white to her, as she retains some of Elliot's core values, like morality and justice, just not as strong as they are in Elliot. It's also a nice bit of coincidental symbolism that she fits into the two colors opposite of white. Tedd: Blue/Red: Tedd is a man of science and is extremely passionate and driven towards progressing science. He's also self identified as a mad scientist before, and Red/Blue is traditionally the colors of mad science, as the pull of reason and irrationality can make it appear, or even be, insane to someone outside of that color combo. Grace: Green/White: Grace is values all life and community, traits shared by green and white. She prefers peaceful means whenever possible, something both white and green like, though white likes more as Green has a feral, instinctual side to it. And Grace generally embraces the natural side of things (see her views on nudity). She's also very adaptable, whereas white is very inflexible. She possibly also has a splash of blue to her, as she really enjoys doing math and science, especially with Tedd. Sarah: Red: Sarah is emotionally driven, passionate, and romantic and she is an artist. While art as an in-setting concept doesn't show up much in the card game, due to the card game focusing around battle and warfare, it is a significant part of red, especially passionate art where the artist pours their heart and soul into the work. I'm not sure she would fall under pure red, but I'm having trouble pinning down what else she could be (Maybe Black? Sarah wants personal power, and black is all about making the self more powerful) Nanase: White/Red: Nanase highly values honesty, truth, and community, but she is also very passionate and emotionally driven. A few times, I've gotten the feeling that she fits Red's philosophy of "feel, don't think." She acts on what she feels is right without considering the consequences of her actions, or dismissing the potential consequences as irrelevant in face of the values she's seeking. (It was realizing how, from my point of view at least, Nanase fits Red that got me thinking about this topic, along with seeing some fan-made M:tG cards of the characters) Justin: White: Justin is one of the more level-headed members of the main cast. More often than not, he's a voice of reason that maintains order (as long as his own major problems aren't in consideration). I'm tempted to add red. He's certainly a passionate individual, though I'm not sure how much his passions drive his actions outside of a couple key issues. Susan: Blue: While I think Nanase fits Red's ideal of "Feel, don't think," Susan often does her best to fit Blue's ideal of "Think, don't feel." She thinks through her choices, makes decisions as logically as she can, and disdains irrational and impulsive courses of action. I would love to hear other people's thoughts on this, along with possible Color(s) of the other characters in the setting.

Well, in most situations, the author could be considered the biggest fan of the material. So...I don't see a problem with the author writing fanfiction...

True, though then that leads into questions about his nature and especially the philosophical question of whether a person can change their base nature (For the record, I believe a person's base nature can change, but not easily) Noah wouldn't be pure black, even when he was searching for any power he could get. He wanted power at all costs, but he didn't want power for power's sake or some other self-focused reason. He wanted the power either for justice(white) or for vengenful rage(red). Once the reason for power has been fulfilled, the drive to aquire it diminishes, though the mindset that allowed the drive doesn't necessarily go with it. In short, once Damien died, Noah no longer had a reason to recklessly persue power, but that doesn't necessarily mean he wouldn't be tempted to reckless avenues of power if another reason that demands he be more powerful comes up.