Drasvin

The funny thing is that when Ian Fleming originally came up with a name, he wanted a name that was nothing like what you would expect a secret agent or spy to have. He chose 'James Bond' because it sounded so utterly boring and bland. Like someone working in an office. A travel agent, for example. Nowadays, of course, whenever anyone says 'James Bond' people instantly think of the action superspy. Interesting how a story gaining fame can rob it of some of it's intended context. Like how there will never be a true-to-form adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, because everyone already knows the twist to the mystery at the end.

I don't think Agent Cranium - or Agent Wolf - has the qualification. I predict someone new or Edward again. I think Cranium might have the qualifications (Wolf doesn't though. He jumps way too easily to his own conspiracy theories and prejudices to be the Head of Paranormal Investigations) but she's significantly more useful in the field I've seen Girl Scouts selling cookies right outside of a WalMart before. Pretty much annually. Maybe Noriko used the Travel Agent career as a cover to keep her being a monster hunter hidden from the public. Obviously Edward told Tedd she was a travel agent but maybe it wasn't a complete lie to keep Tedd from knowing what she really was. Pandora's response could have been based on it what Edward said being half true, like Edward saying she's a travel agent, but in reality she's an agent that travels? Or if Noriko had a legitimate side job as a travel agent then Pandora would be simply acknowledging that as true. I figure Noriko actually is a travel agent in addition to being a monster hunter. From what we've heard about her, it seems she isn't employed by any official organization, and I imagine freelance monster hunting doesn't pay very well. Pandora's uncertainty is likely from the fact she hasn't been keeping tabs on Noriko since she left for Europe. More importantly, if she is indeed a travel agent, is she double-0 rated? ...now I'm imagining a James Bond plot, but instead of trying to save Britain, Bond is trying to get a customer the best deal on a travel package. The problem with that possibility is the fact that Pandora dropped everything to try to get 'petty revenge' on Abraham, to the point of even letting Adrian fight him. If she had the opportunity, she likely would have gotten Abraham killed all those centuries ago, like she did with all the werewolves. A consistent theme with Pandora is she will bring about the demise of anyone that hurts her family, and even those that try to hurt her family, as seen with the vampires. Also, contagious werewolves likely existed since before the Dewitchery Diamond existed, as a werewolf is what killed Abraham's master and cursed his noble friend in the first place. They had certainly been around long enough by that point for people to know how to deal with them. The Dewitchery Diamond just made matters worse, as normally werewolves only became monsters at night, but the cursed beast the Diamond created was a monster all the time. (I kind of wonder if the monster the Diamond made was the exact same one that killed Blake, but the panel of Blake facing off against the wolf appears to be at night, so it's impossible to tell without asking Dan)

So the obvious bet was true. I'm glad I didn't go with the counter-bet. If I had, I would owe people a lot of cookies. Also with the confirmation, Van's line in the previous comic appears to hint that Noriko, on some level, realizes that Tedd might not be magically impaired, but refuses to let the guilt eat away at her.(Some people guessed that, but I wanted to reiterate it here)(Another possibility is she might not realize Tedd's not magically impaired, but has some guilt about abandoning him) I don't think Van's father will be any characters that we've seen so far. Dan's line, "There will ALWAYS be "I guessed right" congratulatory cookies on the line, darn it.", makes me think that the cookies are on the line despite it being practically impossible to guess. As for where I would put my theoretical wager, I'm guessing another wizard that works at the travel agency that Noriko works at. Van's father is going to be a wizard, because Van is a seer, but Van only threatened that his mum will get the other if they hurt him, not both of his parents. That means that while his father might be powerful, he's not as directly powerful as Noriko, which rules out my first thought which was the head of the paranormal organization of either Britain or France (Though it is possible that Van underestimates how powerful his father is). Also, while Adrian being Van's father would clarify some things, there are some bits of logic that are missing. The crux of the problem between Noriko and Edward is the seeming lack of an apprentice for Noriko to teach and carry on the family tradition of monster hunting. So, unless she independently discovered that elves can have children (which I doubt as most Immortals don't even know that), there's little reason for her to seek an affair with Adrian. Secondly, Adrian tries his best to be an upstanding person, so he wouldn't sleep with the wife of one of his students and close friends without a really good reason, which he wouldn't have since he for certain didn't know he could father children(if Noriko wanted to try to get a child from him and knew that elves could have children, then why didn't she tell him?) and would likely become suspicious if Noriko tried to seduce him, as he knew that Noriko desperately wanted an apprentice and heir. I could see him helping Noriko have an affair with someone else if he was worried about Noriko's obsession tearing her apart (which given that her profession is monster hunter, having something weighing on her mind too heavily could be extremely dangerous), though I would imagine he still wouldn't be happy with it. Probably personal prejudices to a degree, though hiring Van could be difficult, even without considering child labor laws. Arthur would need to get him a work visa to work in the USA, and getting Van the proper security clearances would most likely be more difficult due to Van not being an American citizen (as far as Arthur knows at least).

I'm not sure Arthur could force Tedd to accept without angering Edward and his superiors. Arthur wants Edward on good terms, due to his talent for averting cataclysmic crises and his superiors would be concerned about oversight and legal obligations (and his direct superior is a good friend to Edward). Tedd will likely want the resources, but if she didn't want to work for Arthur, I doubt there would be much he could do about it. My concern is honestly more about whether or not his superiors would give him the authorization to do that. The Paranormal Division's SOP has been suppression of magical knowledge for as long as the Division has existed. They are part of a law-enforcement agency, and as such their mandate may be specifically focused on protecting the people, but it might still take some effort for Arthur to convince Assistant Director Leifeld (or worse, Leifeld's superiors) on the change in SOP, especially after his assurances of letting some incidents go public would solve the division's problems for decades.

I don't think it's settled whether the Will of Magic governs just human magic. Perhaps the WoM does also encompasses Immortal magic. If so, it could restrict Immortal magic if it wanted to. While individual Immortals can have far more magic than most humans, there are a lot more humans than there are Immortals. And if the WoM is dependent on the use of magic, it could need human magic users more than Immortal magic users. There is some evidence that the WoM is connected to Immortal magic. It knows about the spell Pandora cast, even though it stated it views the world through magic, as in the various spells that are formed and used. Though because the magic of Immortals is inherent to their being, the WoM has substantially fewer options to restrict them. It might be able to adjust how their spells interact, but it can't take their magic away. Not only are there likely more humans than Immortals, but human magical energy generation might be more reliable overall. An individual Immortal can have more magic than a human, but the average Immortal might be comparable in power to the average human mage, Immortals just have greater access to knowledge and special abilities. On top of that, an Immortal's power fluctuates due to their cycle of resets, each reset dropping their power significantly. And given that the WoM is (and simultaneously isn't) magic itself, the magical energies flowing across the world would be akin to its body, it very substance of being. That sounds like something an entity like the WoM should care about there being a lot of. A thought just occurred to me as I was typing this. The rate at which a human generates magical energy increases as they use magic. It's the whole mechanism behind training to Awakening and why Sarah can train with her spell to try to one day not need the ambient energy to cast it. What if humans are the only species that can increase their magic generation in this manner? Immortal magic increases simply through age. Uryuom magic isn't the same as earthly magic (and seems to be increased by adding forms anyway, though I could be wrong on that). Non-sapient animals don't seem capable of producing any energy beyond what is produced via metabolic process(They have to starve themselves to get rid of enchantments they don't want and gorge themselves to keep enchantments they do want). If humans are the only species on earth that increase production of magical energy through use of magic, then that would explain why the WoM cares so much about it being used by humans.

Can we count the dewitchery diamond as such a spell? I think trying to create an item that decurses but results in an unwaking werewolf that goes on a killing spree would be a dangerous failure. ... right. Ok, ONE case of spell failing dangerously. And it was still only dangerous in combination with another spell (the werewolf curse). The spell was also cast by an individual that later became famous as an idiot for what he did. Abraham wasn't exactly the best at thinking things through...

Nanase and Noriko are most likely not descended from Adrian. Nanase doesn't have the inherent magical talent of the Raven family, magical weapons, which persisted even in the long line of descent to Susan (if Adrian is correct in that her line of descent comes from when he was in his actual 20s)

My (admittedly limited) understanding is that the taking away of flag and uniform is a sort of compromise. I guess the IOC is unable to levy fees against those that pushed for doping, so they opted to ban the Russian team from competing this year, but they didn't want to be harsh on the athletes that wanted to compete and were willing to follow the rules. The athletes can't use their country's flag or uniforms, because officially, the Russian team is banned from competing.

They might be different physically, they're still going to be more or less the same psychologically(Though maybe the differences would help break apart some of the old divisions of race and gender and such) They're still going to have the same needs, wants, and desires that fundamentally shape who people are. Also, I wonder if wide spread transformation magic would make it easier or harder for uryuoms to remain hidden. ...In search of enlightenment? Been done. Actually, no. The Terracotta army are golems, they simply follow the program. Sure, they damage everything in their path, but noone told them to be careful and not damage bridges as there were no bridges there when they started. Now, let's hope someone will find the artefact which designates him as someone with authority to change their orders before it's too late. And that such someone is not some dangerous lunatic (with small red button). Though if the artefact isn't found, the effects of the army would likely be minimal. The army was created for the purpose of guarding the tomb of the First Emperor of China. Any terracotta soldiers not at the tomb site would try to get back to it, but otherwise the army would probably be a minimal threat.

Whoever ends up trying to catalogue all the magical effects and artifacts (because someone in the setting will. If nothing else, someone will set up a wiki about it. Wikis are everywhere) is going to have their work cut out for them if any of the old systems have a resurgence. Seemingly conflicting rules make for massive headaches.

If Magic needs to actively suppress systems to prevent them from working, that would explain why Magus's magic and the griffins' magic(assuming their rule system is different) work in Moperville.

Was warm and nice yesterday, then today turned icy and cold. Got to go home from work early though.

I personally don't think Magic is an artificial entity. The drive to be used could easily be a natural occurrence, especially if magical energy is generated by individuals and then diffused into the surrounding environment (similar to body heat) instead of the ambient energy refilling magic users' personal energy supply. The need for secrecy could have been born of a concern of early humanity wiping itself out (Which would impair the ability to be used), or widespread fear limiting it further than secrecy would have (The various witch hunts of history and other bouts of paranoid prosecution of the supernatural happened with magic being secret. I imagine it would have gotten a lot worse if magic had been public at those times.) Instant percentage-based calculations that are seemingly on-demand with zero latency is easy with enough processing power. It's difficult for humans, because our brains only have so much processing power to devote to cognitive processes like math. Magic is composed of all the (non-Uryuom) magical energies across the globe. Every human being has at least a little magical energy inside them, even if they aren't awakened. While it would be difficult to determine how much processing a given quantity of magical energy can do, if the amount in the average human has even half the information processing capability as the human brain, then Magic would have a lot of processing power at its disposal. Automated flow isn't a concept restricted to computers. It simply means it's a continuous process without conscious control. Non-computerized machines can have automated flows, such water systems with pressure-controlled valves. Some of the involuntary systems in the human body could potentially be described as automated flows, like the circulatory system, with it's ability to dilate and constrict blood vessels. It's explanation doesn't reveal how it knows when a person is at risk of knowing magic is real, but it obviously has some method of doing so (My guess would be that it's related to the spell potential Pandora was tapping into during the Marker storyline. When a person learns that magic might be real, potential spells start shaping, or at least become more defined, in-case the person is given a spell) and it would need to decide how much is too much. Magic using percentage-based thresholds allows for population growth (and decline) without necessarily needing to move the thresholds. And it doesn't need the seers advise on what to do next. There have certainly been times where there were no eligible seers at the time of a reset. Magic wants seers, because it understands its own limitation at understanding people at least to an extent. That spell books are hard to read still surprised it, but eldritch, near-omnipotent entities can still be fallible. Also, Magic would have to make the initial decision to call a meeting of eligible seers. The seers themselves couldn't call the meeting, because then they could try to abuse the capability and they might not even know about cases of magic becoming widespread in ages before world-wide communication.

Greater power causing a person to see those without power as less significant is something that happens in humans as well, but only when empathy is lacking or missing all together, and there are examples of Immortals at the end of their life showing empathy. Pandora certainly did, at least when she was putting forth the effort to keep her mind coherent, and I would argue that Jerry should quite a lot of empathy towards people. Even when he made the hammer to encourage inappropriate comments(which was done when he was considerable younger), it was due to guilt from women being offended by the comments. I doubt power is the reason for Magic's thinking and difficulty with humans as much as perspective. Every piece of magical energy across the globe is apart of the same gestalt entity. It is simultaneously a single entity, a collective of countless number, and an empty set. It doesn't perceive the world like humans do. The solid, singular, squishy bags of water that are humans are just as alien to Magic as Magic is to them. Magic required the Seers to convince it not to make major changes, because the cycle of change and secrecy had persisted for thousands of years, since the dawn of man. It simply didn't understand why this time would be any different. Sure the world was more crowded, but from Magic's perspective that wasn't really a significant difference. The same basic patterns, just more of them. The major thing that was different this time was technology, more specifically the internet, which was something Magic had little to no knowledge of. Without that important context, the argument that secrecy is doomed to fail seems illogical. That's why Magic said the logic was insufficient. The logic it was presented simply didn't add up from its perspective.

Actually, we don't know that. Grace is never enchanted, remember? The game might completely block magic interfering but be unable to do anything with Uryuom power. It's only enchantments based on Uryuom magic, such as the TFG and Ellen's beams, that never enchant Grace. Non-Uryuom magic should be able to enchant her just fine. Unlikely. The card will PROBABLY still work on her player piece. If it wouldn't, then the initial enchantment would fail as well, meaning Grace can't take part in the game at all. Hmmmm ... Come to think about it, it says Grace is not enchanted by TF gun and Ellen's magic. There is still possibility that other kind of enchantment can work on her, although Tedd's failure to make any suggests that all enchantments transforming her are going to be intercepted by her Uryuom power ... ... I remember reading something more about the mechanism but not sure where ... When Pandora mentioned needing a spell that targets Grace's clothes, they were talking about a variant of Ellen's FV5 beam, which emulates uryuom magic. I think Tedd might also have been thinking about ways to give Grace the ability to change her clothing without needing to carry a wand or some such. Grace's uryuom power abilities let her do many of things that most enchantments would do for her anyway. She can assume forms with the benefits of pretty much any animal, change her muscle mass, change her over all size, change her body coloration, fly, speak with animals, and maybe more. With the exception of her clothes, there's not much that typical enchantments can offer Grace that she doesn't already have. Basically just pushing the extreme bounds, like getting even smaller or larger than she normally could.

Hm. Possibly, yes, but with the existing system of magic surviving with only minor modifications, maybe the situation will be more like this: that Magic allows matters to proceed from where they are now and does not inform the rest of the world's seers. That way instead of a huge revelation following on the Internet it would simply continue at the present pace. Which is to say, dribbles and drabbles slowly spreading and probably accelerating, but happening on a slower scale and leaving the various magic bureaus with intimidating acronyms for names more time to adjust and prepare themselves. Certainly, though due to Pandora's world-wide spectacle, the rate of acceleration for magical awareness will itself be increasing as people post videos and discussions and in general try to figure out what those lights were and why they seemed to cause people to spontaneously combust at seemingly random. The magic organizations will have time to adjust and adapt, but any that knew about the potential magic reset but don't know about the seers' second purpose, like the FBI's Paranormal Division(Though they'll be lucky in having one of the seers that was in the discussion to inform them), are going to get blindsided when the reset doesn't come.

That's an interesting perspective into how Magic perceives the world. Certainly makes sense though. I doubt Magic understands human morality. It's already been established it can't fully understand mortals. Tedd had to repeat everything they said in a way Magic could comprehend to get it to see their point. Arthur though, yes, I'm also wondering how he'd react to all this. Maybe it comes later? I imagine Arthur is going to have a very busy Monday, unless he works weekends. He needs to get the Paranormal Division ready for a potential tidal wave of new magic users. He also has to think about how he's going to tell the Assistant Director that his plan backfired. All-in-all, his next work day is going to be a massive headache.

Building two separate planes would potentially require more production capacity then building a single plane that could do both. The separate planes would require at least two production lines, while the single plane could make do with a single line, which could be a boon if there aren't enough factories to go around. Though I'm not sure if that boon would have been worth the massively increased design and development time needed.

I'm assumed Dan already had more exposition planned for Friday's comic to go along with this, whether that means he'd have to edit that down to fit as well is a possibility but if it was already planned then he can't really scrap it now can he? He could scrap it if he really wanted to. He's done last minute major script re-writes before, though those are usually unpleasant and stressful. At the moment, Tedd's exposition has painted Humans as greedy, opportunistic jerks who will either try to keep magic all to themselves and exploit other with it or sell to anyone willing to buy. that's probably a good enough reason that a severe change wouldn't keep magic hidden for long, but it's not making the idea of letting magic go public seem ideal either. This is why I'm hoping there a "but not all humans are jerks, they'll want to use their magic to help protect people, if there's a natural disaster, someone who can get super strength can clear rubble away faster than anyone can get machinery in to do the job, which would be a big deal if there's lives at stake." Basically Tedd's exposition feels like listing pros and cons and so far I've only heard the cons and am hoping the pros are coming up next. If Magic truly doesn't care about morality, instead of simply not understanding it well, then it's not going to care if humans use it to save lives after a major disaster, or use it to cause the disaster in the first place. Maybe it would care if the caused disaster risks wiping out humanity, as that would severely limit how much it gets used, but some less than apocalyptic issue wouldn't be much of a concern to a truly amoral entity. Though listing off the pros of humanity and magic going public wouldn't hurt.

I'm really hoping Tedd has more to add to this, because at the moment if I were the WoM, I'd be questioning if humans can be trusted to handle magic at all and decide to make even more drastic a change based on that. More exposition would like be good (though I don't know if Dan would be up to it based on Twitter and the commentary), but I doubt Magic would consider drastic changes after what Tedd told it. Magic wants to be used and doesn't really care about human morality (which is likely another alien concept to it) outside of whether or not they'll keep it secret if the ruleset says it needs to be kept secret.

Like Father, like Daughter. She did say some new pieces of information, mainly information about human nature. Which is information that could be inferred from their previous statements or most listeners would already know, but Magic isn't good at subtlety and explicitly has a poor grasp of human nature. Tedd needed to make the implications explicit and correlate them with technology to explain why trying to keep magic hidden is a futile effort in the modern era.

Demanding that all Serbian judges be placed by the Austrians sounds like de-factor annexation to me... Based on how Extra History told it(Which mentioned law enforcement officers being allowed more or less free reign in Serbia instead of judges, which would still be something no sovereign nation would allow), Austria never expected the demands to be met. It was an attempt to seem "reasonable" and to attempt for "peace." They wanted the sympathy of Europe, so that the other nations didn't try to intervene as they exacted bloody vengeance on Serbia.

So expansion to keep their disparate parts focused outward and thinking about conquest instead of secession? Russia has that same problem today. I have heard an idea, that Russia is either shrinking or expanding. Either the tensions between individual interests within Russia's boarders are all pulling away, or Russia is out conquering and everybody's unified behind the effort. Not so much expansion, as they had no intent to annex Serbia (the Hungarian part of the empire wouldn't agree otherwise. Though they did a poor job of conveying this fact to other nations, if they had, Russia might have backed off as annexation of Serbia was their main worry), as they were trying to show off their might and show that they weren't going to be pushed around and humiliated by other nations and peoples. That's of course based on what I know from Extra History. Other sources might have other information and provide other perspectives.

http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=724 And knowing is half the battle...

Most of my knowledge about the lead-up to WWI comes from the Extra History series on it. From that, it seemed like Austria-Hungary had two main motivations. One: revenge for the death of the Archduke(He was the heir to the throne after all) Two: dampen the growing agitations for increased freedoms among the various minorities in Austria-Hungary, which were slowly breaking the empire apart. The Austrian were banking on their German allies, but they were also banking on Russia being slow to mobilize. If Austria could have crushed Serbia fast enough, then there was little the Russians could do. Unfortunately for the Austrians, they delayed for several reasons, letting the support of the Nations of Europe wane (who might have been sympathetic to Austria if the had acted while the issue was fresh), and giving Russia time to get their stuff together (While also forgetting to tell their own military staff to get ready for war ahead of time). To be honest, how Austria handled the issue would almost seem like a comedy of errors, if the ending wasn't so tragic.