Drasvin

...I'm not sure. On one hand, I hope that he learned his lesson to adhere to the spirit of his vows instead of the letter of them. On the other hand, Abraham has shown himself to not be that good at thinking through his actions.

Not everyone in a technology-based civilization knows how a given piece of technology works. That is dependent on education and potentially the availability of reference material. There are people in the world whose knowledge of cars is basic function knowledge. Fuel goes in the fuel hole, key turns it on, pedals make it go and stop, steering wheel makes it turn, stuff like that. An internal combustion engine might be a fairly simple concept to explain, but not everyone has the knowledge needed to explain it. (Though it's likely Magus was just comparing an esoteric subject with what he thought was an esoteric subject, not realizing that car internals are not really that esoteric) The principals of rocket science are fairly easy to explain: Fuel and oxidizer mix in a controlled fashion to provide thrust out the rocket nozzle. Once thrust exceeds the force of gravity, the rocket begins accelerating upward. The rocket can be steered with multiple different methods depending on the design: gimbaled(rotatable) nozzle (though I don't think gimbals are used on the large main rockets), maneuvering jets, adjustable fins, or shifting the weight with a gyroscope. Multistage systems are used to shed weight/mass from the system as fuel/oxidizer is spent from previous stages, allowing for more acceleration with a given amount of thrust (or the same amount of acceleration with less thrust, if the rocket is designed in that manner). Orbit is achieved when velocity parallel to the planet's surface is great enough that gravity causes the rocket to fall around the planet instead of plummeting into the planet, but not so great that it achieves escape velocity. The hard part about rocket science is detail work. If you want the rocket to do more than go up, you need to calculate a lot of numbers to figure out how to get it exactly where you want it (or at least close enough for whatever work you're doing). Even simply achieving orbit require calculating what velocity you need to achieve the desired orbit, and then calculating when burns need to be made to reach the needed velocity. If a person wants a rocket to reach another planet or moon or such, then even more calculations have to be made along with proper timing of the rocket's launch(Something I still have trouble with in Kerbal Space Program). Even if a person just wants the rocket to go up and then come down, calculations have to be made in order to get the rocket to come down at the right spot.

Elliot isn't happy (which is entirely understandable) though he's keeping his cool (which is probably good). Interesting that Magus is just a nickname, though unless he ends up objecting to that on the next page I'm going to keep calling him that. Helps keep who's who straight in discussions. ...and now I have that laugh stuck in my head again...

Rituals and incantations would seem more like Old Magic, the current system (well the system that was in place most recently) seemed more thought based, you just think about the spell and you cast it. We saw Abraham call out "sword" and "shield during the fight with Adrian, but we know Abraham was using an echanted item for that so it could be assumed that the item required spoken words to activate the various functions, but the creation of that item would likely have been no different than when Tedd made his first real wand, Adrian also called out "murder shroud" in that fight, but he didn't seem to do so when fighting the vampires so speaking it might not have been necessary. Magus though used the words "sleep" "calm" and "hold" which Dan put in a fancy font which could suggest that Magus's spells are more reliant on incantations. We also had Andrea who made various tones when doing various effects, though Tara seemed to follow the school of using fancy attack names which may be more like Elliot's ASMA special moves like "Tamashi Gekido" so actually speaking it isn't necessary. The speaking the spell/attack name might be a mnemonic safety mechanism, like what Don Edwards is alluding to. Even though a spell can be activated with a thought, if you train your mind to only activate the spell when you utter a given phrase, then you're less likely to activate the spell by mistake (Like when Susan summoned her sword after tensing up when hearing how many vampires had been in Moperville). Maybe not something that would be needed for your average mage, who only has a handful of spells, but definitely useful for a wizard, who might accrue dozens, or even hundreds, of spells over their lifetime. I'm not sure if the object Abraham used was a pre-enchanted item or just the focal point of his spell. It certainly could be a pre-enchanted object, though it could easily be an object that the spell builds off of to get a more durable summoned object. When Adrian was fighting the vampires, we didn't get any of the dialog or sound effects that may or may not have been there because we were getting the dialog between Zeus and Diane.

With all the maniacal laughter, I think some part of Dan wants to be a Bond villain. Abraham has learned his lesson about assuming creations of the diamond are always monsters. Though I do wonder how he'll react to the diamond being destroyed. I imagine he'll be at a loss for what to do with his life.

Dan loves foreshadowing so much that he's doing it even when he doesn't realize he's doing it.

I doubt it. Though body snatchers are a rare route for vampires to go, there are likely still some kicking around on the spiritual plane He might not know that Pandora's reset was modified and go with she was reset by the rest of the fairies. Though he doesn't know she's been reset at all yet, so by the time he finds that out, he might also find out that she managed to modify her reset to preserve some portion of her self. (Also the bug about quotes having the wrong name attached got brought up in the forums before and I think I might know what causes it. If the person is pulling the quote from a quote in another person's post without also highlighting the quote header, then it will attribute the quote to the post the quote is being pulled from and not who actually stated the quote)

While Sirleck likely isn't able to hide on the spirit plane the same way that Immortals can, he does have the small advantage that physical objects still block line of sight on the spirit plane, as seen with Magus surprising him by walking/floating through the wall. So an Immortal likely wouldn't see Sirleck unless they happened to be in the same room as him. Using fairly generic and low-profile hosts would help him avoid attracting attention from Immortals, whether they are specifically looking for aberrations or are just bored. He would have to worry about Immortals bumping into him as they travel to other places or wander aimlessly, though the potential risk to his host might help him in those cases. As for Magus finding Sirleck effortlessly, Magus had the advantage of meeting Sirleck before (thanks to Pandora) and knowing who his host is and where that host worked. All he had to do was go there, and if Sirleck wasn't there, then he could just wait for Sirleck to show up.

In the commentary, Dan put Sirleck's demise pretty definitively. Though they're not in the clear yet. Magus did just throw around a bunch of crates full of potentially dangerous, reactivated artifacts. I imagine events are going to escalate very rapidly on the next few pages There is also that to consider. I wonder how tightly he's held onto that grudge and whether or not he'll keep holding on to it after he's learned about what she did at the mall

Elliot's a smart guy. He just doesn't use his head at times and he doesn't know everything. Also Magus has been specially trained to fight against monstrosities like Sirleck. One of his courses might have been about manipulations like that, though probably more for the point of manipulating the monster into a position where the Battle Mage has the upper hand than convincing them to help get the Battle Mage a new body.

Adrian's had hundreds of years to come up with such spells. Why did he borrow a sword from Susan? Just to make her feel better about herself? Why didn't he use one of those other spells on Gullet instead of regretting that Susan's sword was only a short-range weapon? I've speculated before that Adrian's main magic weapon spell isn't to summon a magic weapon, but to enchant a physical weapon into a magical one. In that case, he wouldn't have to worry as much about his weapon breaking in the middle of the fight, but he would need a weapon in the first place, which he didn't have at the mall (Fighting aberrations is not a common occurrence). Though he does have at least one spell that summons a magical attack, his Murder Shroud. Unfortunately, that's a heavily telegraphed attack, so it's unlikely to work well if the target knows what the spell does.

And with that, another nightmarish horror is removed from the world. Good riddance. Body snatchers are built for stealth, not for power. If they don't have the element of surprise, they're likely to be pretty wimpy. Why spend effort on improving and bolstering a form they don't plan to use very often? It could bite them in the proverbial butt if they're caught between hosts, like Sirleck is here, but in that scenario their plans have already gone massively sideways.

If Sirleck could be hurt on the spirit plane he's probably be long gone. I think Magus could be hurt because he didn't classify as "human". Remember, Immortal law only triggers if the Immortal *thinks* they're breaking it. If they don't think they're breaking the Law by tormenting Magus, they aren't. Bit of a loophole, really,. Pandora implied it herself speaking to Sarah. Pandora herself noted that the "Laws protect mortals on the physical plane. With everything else [she] can be very direct" So if an immortal finds a human on the spiritual plane for whatever reason, that human is fair game, just like Magus was. I don't know why Sirleck hasn't been obliterated yet (or any other vampire on the spiritual plane), but if I had to guess, it would relate to the fact that he's only in the spiritual plane when attached to a host, which could make killing him hazardous for the host (if nothing else, there's the fact that vampires burst into flames when they die and Sirleck dying would possibly disconnecting him from his host, forcing him back to the physical plane as a mass of flame and ash while close to, if not wrapped around, the former host.) Though Immortals being able to kill him while he's on the spiritual plane would explain why he's so jumpy when we first got to see him. Maybe he just relies on the relative rarity of spiritual plane vampires (I don't remember where, but I remember Dan mentioning that most vampires prefer keeping and/or enhancing their own bodies, so vampires like Sirleck are rare) and his low profile to avoid Immortal attention. For an Immortal to kill him, they first have to notice that he's there.

Of course being awesome works that way. Awesome people can do awesome things because they're awesome, right? He looks like some kind of flying scorpion worm made of fingers. Probably freaky enough to be a boss, but one of the ones that die rapidly once you find their weakness.

As we well know, Squirrel Girls are very powerful. Not just Doreen Green, but also Grace.

Definite proof that Ellen is a badass...not that we needed any though.

Both squirrel and kid are forms, right? Wouldn't one cancel or replace the other? No. The Squirrel card is a 1-type animal card, while kid is a 2-type physical-Clothing card (I checked the How to Play: Goonmanji thread before posting), so a player could have both forms at the same time.

The commentary stated the player could add (or subtract) 1 to their roll. Susan had used it to turn her roll of 3 into 4 so that she could get to that 3 space, if she rolled a 5 instead though she could have still turned it into a 4 to get that 3 space. That's why Susan said that the Squirrel+Ditzy combo was powerful, because she could not only get the best spaces for her rolls, but can use whatever cards she has to buy/steal them. The combo was bound to be short lived anyway that early in the game since the only way she could really keep it long would be if she rolled doubles or stole spaces, which would allow her to transform other players. I wonder if it would be possible to effectively roll a 0 with Squirrel+Kid. I think it would be, though I'm not sure how often that would be helpful(Maybe if someone had just stolen the space you're on or something). I'm just amused at the idea of rolling zero.

Part of the modifications Magus did might have been to prevent Elliot from getting his powers and vice versa. While Magus might not mind having Elliot's abilities, Elliot having his could complicate things if Elliot gets angry due to him and his friends being used and abused to get Magus's body back, or for Magus getting Ellen possessed by a vampire.

At least it'll be easy to tell which one is Elliot and which one is Magus. Though the panel of Elliot-Magus holding onto the Diamond looks unpleasant.

I've tried to find it. It was posted in the forums, quoted from Facebook or possibly Tumblr, not sure which. I haven't been able to yet; I am still looking. I found it. It's in the Word of Dan thread

So the dewitchery diamond was just a very fancy looking doodad before Abraham made arguably the biggest mistake of his life, assuming it wasn't an artifact from a previous magic system. If it was a suppressed artifact, then things are going to get very complicated very quickly. Mixing magic, even within the same magic system, often leads to unexpected results. I did, actually. It was the only way I could explain why Sirleck was so agitated at learning of Adrian's existence at the time. Also the way Colonel Sanders seemed to stress that it was only a weak pair of Immortals who were guarding him, as if wanting to lure Sirleck to him. It seems almost certain Sirleck's motivation is different now. But I'm still not sure precisely why Sirleck became so agitated when learning of Adrian's existence. Because Adrian being in Moperville and supposedly linked to the two Immortals he hoped to distract complicated the plan. With just a records search, he could get a rough estimate of Adrian's age and therefor a rough estimate of Adrian's power and skill. With a powerful elf in the picture, Sirleck was going to need more than a couple vampires making noise to distract Helena and Demetrius. He was going to need enough vampires that were coordinated together to pose a serious threat to the elf, which meant more money and resources poured into a plan with greater risk if it failed

I have a question for the Q&A: Was Voltaire the one who marked Dex, or did he simply take advantage of a mark placed by Pandora? Grace's dreams were about Pandora going around marking lots of people, and included telling her about Dex. It's not out of the question that Pandora marked Dex and then Voltaire came along to use him to try to kill Elliot (while framing Pandora for it)

Like popping the cork on a bottle, going from magically-enforced calm to normal emotional control can lead to a flood of energy and emotion. Still being in a high stress situation when said magically-enforced calm ends certainly doesn't help. I would think the deadline for humanity reaching equality would be a lot sooner than that, though I guess it would very much be an ultimate deadline as a more realistic one will vary on multiple factors. Though, in a much more morbid line of thinking, death is said to be the great equalizer, so when the universe itself is dead, then all will be equal.

Sirleck seems to be getting impatient, which means that he's going to cause the group to bumble into a bigger mess than what they already have.