Tuscahoma

Yeah, I did not suspect that everything in the easily entered warehouse would be an active artifact. Wow. Three incidents just tonight or before DGB can realize what they have on their hands? I suppose it's a foregone conclusion that at least one artifact will come into play, Chekhov's Warehouse and all, but perhaps we can speculate who might be the one to activate one, and yes, how many get used. I think anything more than one artifact used tonight means major fireworks (Hand of Vecna, hah, I have the Wand of Orcus!). Actually, I wonder if Arthur will realize upon returning from speaking with WoM that his warehouse of mostly useless items is a treasure trove of active ancient arcane artifacts. We might see some MiBs show up very soon.

what could Ashley actually do? I think Magus- who has claimed to be more powerful than Nanase- is more planning on defending himself via his own magic if that comes to pass. I think it's more hoping that Ashley's presence will prevent Elliott- who would be understandably angry following Magus getting his own body- from attacking him before he can explain. I think Magus wants Ashley nearby to keep her from causing trouble (leave in car awake, she calmly tries to contact someone) or getting into trouble (leaving in car with sleep spell, maybe not a good idea). Actually having there as a distraction for Sirleck if he tries something, I don't quite see. There as a person to calm Elliot down and relate Magus' intentions, yeah, that sounds about right. What could Ashley actually do? Heh, heh, heh... take advantage of random opportunity. She has proven quite capable of acting quickly under stress and in ways that are quite innovative. I wonder how easily wizards can be distracted during spell casting and what happens when they get distracted? Granted, not likely to find a soccer ball here, but I think Ashley could find something to use in the warehouse to take advantage of an opening. Plus, reactivated artifacts! Potential game-changer.

Brrr.... yeah, those so do not exist anywhere near the Moperverse. Got sucked into reading the wiki. Compelling but horrific.

So a warehouse of possible newly repowered artifacts and possibly even Abraham waiting for someone to activate the Diamond. Wow. Should be exciting. So, what will happen next, will the artifacts be noticed by Magus or Sirleck? Will one of the artifacts notice them? Shall I have a go at speculation? They use the Dewitchery Diamond, Abraham awakens and encounters them, and uses some wizard spell to see what they are. Then we get to find out if Magus is truly more powerful than the wizards of our world. In the confusion, an Artifact gets Ashley's attention, and she touches it, activating it fully. And suddenly... Anime-powerful Ashley joins the fight! I envision a sword that covers her in magic armor that shields from spells. Probably not, but dang that would be cool. They'll probably just activate the portal to dread R'lyeh or some other foolishness.

Forgot to react to this ... Tedd glowing is sideefect of him using his seer ability to analyse magic. But it's true we so far don't know why he's activating that ability to help with his love life ... or if that really could help. Well, we know Seers can see magic and analyze spells when they are cast, but he hasn't glowed when doing that. But the glow occurred when he analyzed Magic itself and he felt energized. The other times he felt the glow was when he felt intense love. In fact, the love glow seemed almost like a different effect. These latter two things I don't believe were mentioned as being part of being a seer from Heka or Pandora (at least as far as I remember). The first one could be part of being a seer, but seems to me like something more; it is an ability that with experience and practice could let Tedd actually intuit how to heighten the average person's magic resistance. That love glow, I have no idea how that could be part of being a seer. I honestly believe these two things may be part of what WoM was going to tell Van. Certainly, if the ability to commune with the nature of Magic is somehow related to Tedd and Van's family, that could benefit Magic.

I'm going to go out on a limb and bet that it isn't any one we know. The Dan isn't shy about adding new characters. Honestly, that might be a better direction for this story to take. If it is someone we know, Adrian seems too likely, and that is opening a huge can of worms. Or maybe, Director Liefeld? Maybe Noriko, Edward and he were all contemporaries?

Where would they had that relationship? There's no indication that Adrian has left Moperville since he was teaching Noriko, her sister, and Edward at Moperville South. Would it have been when Noriko came back to visit Tedd? Maybe the last time Tedd saw his mother? That's pretty dark. Kind of makes getting drunk and losing their inhibitions seem like a better excuse. Sorry, that maybe wasn't clear. If Adrian is Van's father, as some had speculated, my take on it was that perhaps it occurred after Noriko and Edward divorced, not that it was an extramarital affair, and that the split between Adrian and Edward was over Adrian encouraging Noriko's focus on career so that she left her family and maybe over Adrian and Noriko having a relationship after the divorce. My idea was what the split between Edward and Adrian didn't see acrimonious enough if it had been an extramarital affair. And as for when they might have done the deed, summer vacation to Europe? Noriko visited Moperville surreptitiously? Honestly, I was just arguing that I don't see Adrian being one to be involved in adultery.

Series of events: 1000 seers now know magic exists and how it works=> at least one releases info that goes viral => assuming Immortals change the rules in some fashion that gives Voltaire what he wants => Voltaire tries to act all Demigodly and play with humanity => UN, NATO or some other government group creates a task force => military recruits wizards. Some possible additional elements; seers recruited to make weapons to fight "evil" immortals, task force organizes teams of people to relocate and study newly awakened ancient artifacts using forgotten systems of magic (bonus: one or more of those artifacts have spells that affect immortals). Have I forgotten anything? Possibly. But yeah, Voltaire may be smart in some ways, but his lust for power and to dominate have made him a big poopyhead dumbbutt. I really prefer that his ambitions be stopped before all of this; he is opposed effectively in getting immortals to change their laws to his favor and/or he trips over his vow not to try and kill Elliot (still fails but the attempt is all we need) and gets infinite OCD. Still, it would be really cool to see his face when he stares down a regiment of wizards armed with artifacts that target immortals and realizes he caused this. Dan mentioned having a chunk that dealt with the aftermath of all this, that might include Carol finally getting the scoop she's been after, but I think it might also deal with how Diane, Susan and Adrian are taking things once their recent revelations sink in and for Adrian in particular, how he copes with his mother's reset and that matter of removing the dam. Tedd may also need to talk to Edward about all of this and I wonder if she'll try to contact Adrian as soon as possible. I wonder how Adrian would react to opening his door Saturday and seeing Tedd standing there. I wonder if dealing with Magus and Sirleck will be mostly another chapter; perhaps the next scene or in the epilogue of this chapter will just move that story along a it. There seems to be a lot more story left with those two. Also, as for aftermath, the scenes I am look forward to the most: Tedd talking with Edward and Tedd meeting with Adrian (especially if Tedd can tell Adrian about Pandora resetting).

So much speculation regarding Van's father. The general agreement is that if we can guess, it must be someone we know. Since we know of only two men that Noriko has relationships with, her ex-husband Edward and mentor Adrian, and Van is a half-sibling the speculation has run mostly to Adrian. We can also add to the mix that it is likely that Van's father is a wizard. I can't imagine Noriko wouldn't try to increase the odds of her child having magic to protect himself. Adrian kind of makes sense, though I don't think it was an extramarital affair. If he were Van's father, I think it would have been after they were divorced. Adrian seems to have a certain sense of honor. Remember when he realized that a one-time dalliance resulted in a daughter and he didn't remember the woman's name. He thought himself a scoundrel. I think his guilt over Tedd's parents is partly because his encouragement of Noriko's career might have led to the divorce, and maybe because he and Noriko had a relationship after the divorce, but I think if it had been an extra-marital affair, Edward wouldn't have even spoken to Adrian on the phone when he called to offer his assistance and Adrian wouldn't have even called to offer it. Honestly, Adrian being Van's father is almost too obvious. More interesting would be trying to figure out who it could be if it weren't Adrian. Though I am coming up with a dearth or reasonable candidates. Well, thank goodness the link didn't take us to the Demonic Duck. I guess at least Phill is a hero of legend...

Yeah, Tedd would be very distracted by that revelation. And yes, I can see Tedd being very instrumental in easing the transition to public awareness of Magic. Still, there must be a serious secret to Tedd's family if WoM feels that Van and Tedd (eventually) should know about it and will benefit Magic. Perhaps they are some kind of different type of Seers. I have always wondered why Tedd glows when he has an epiphany about Magic and when he feels intense love. This latter part has never really been explained as part of the description of Seers. Of course, how that would benefit Magic is not really self-evident, so it may not be the secret WoM is talking about.

Also possible. But that wouldn't have been so funny as a potential panic-inducing scenario for our seers. Actually, Atlantis sinking was merely metaphor for the magic-users on Atlantis accidentally causing it to phase out of shift with our dimension. The Pillars of Atlantis held this off for a while but then failed during one of the magic changeover event. The actual phase shift still occurred because the material of Atlantis has been changed. So yeah, I think it's going to reappear somewhere over the Atlantic. Oh, did I mention it was a floating Island? Dan has outlined many situations where using Magic is safe. For example, eating lots of food while huge and then shrinking back to normal will not kill you. These kinds of safety measures are encoded into Magic, but as has been pointed out, if Magic is programmed like an application, Magic might not be able to handle all possible situations that humans can come up with, so there are situations where it might have error handling functions that simply go to some default, safe state, like growing clothes to maximum size. Chaos storms. Why are people so afraid of Chaos storms? Why is no one concerned about uncontrolled magic crystallizing into Pylons of Order? I mean those things hurt when they hit you on your county or region.

If Edward has been reporting this though, I would presume that DGB would want a copy of the gauntlet, or at least Tedd's notes for it, and having tried to reverse-engineer it, failed and chalked it up to Tedd being a kid wanting attention or some such. Still, working watches, from a gauntlet. Use the gauntlet on something quality that is able to store a charge. Wand-maker. How is that not something that should have grabbed Edward's attention? If Edward didn't know anything about Tedd, perhaps it's because he has a blind spot (too much drama has happened already to question what Tedd is) or he is too busy with something else (heading off some coming Apocalypse). If so, perhaps it was the fragility, or perhaps he didn't want Tedd to turn into a Lord Tedd. In this instance, worrying about your child becoming a supervillain is a legitimate fear. Or there's always the private sector. I'm sure Samsung is looking for someone to head up their Galaxy Transformation Wand research section.

Maybe a few decades ago. Maybe even one decade ago. Now, at least in USA and EU, I think they'd be accepted by the majority. But then you would get the cheap, knock-off brand versions that explode into flames or change you into a war chicken or something.

Oh wow, just realized. Once Magic goes public and knowledge of transformations becoming permanent is common, we will see humanity start to really change. Imagine a world full of people who realize they can become whatever they want by magic. Stronger, handsomer, furrier, taller, smaller, different colors, extra sets of things, whatever. Generations from now, humans might not be recognizably human anymore.

So new spells learned naturally are only from the default system, but a wizard can learn spells from other sources. A seer could see an artifact in use and learn the spells it uses. Could a regular wizard do that as well? We really haven't seen how regular wizards learn spells form other people to be able to say whether or not they could learn from an artifact. Still, that means at least one thousand people in the world who might be able to learn ancient, forgotten, possibly forbidden, maybe world-shaking magic. And in the case of seers, could make wands that allow the casting of said spells. As for storms of chaos magic, sounds like magic behaves like a lot of natural systems governed by chaos theory that are dynamical and sensitive to starting conditions, like weather or your heart. You can't predict when your next heartbeat will occur, but under most conditions, you can predict the space it will inhabit. So your heartbeat, while sitting, from previous experience, might be like between 60 and 70 heartbeats per minute. Interestingly enough, such systems can be kicked out of their usual space and devolve into more chaotic behavior, such as when a heart starts fibrillating or the climate starts warming up. Seems like the rules in place for magic are designed to make the system of magic less brittle, more resistant to devolving into chaos.

My money is on Dresden Files. I'm betting on Shadowrun myself. Harry Potter and Dresden Files seem to have some version of the Masquerade in place. Magic is about to be revealed, by some seer on Youtube and it will eventually go viral. All we need now are some black market cybernetic enhancements. Perhaps more accurately, we are about to see something closer Magus' universe or the Griffin's universe. Hmm, perhaps like Shadowrun, with the Masquerade broken, we might see return of magical monsters, or a more public return. And while no living human might know of those previous systems of magic, other immortal or long-lived beings might. Who knows, a helpful dragon might decide to teach Tedd.

So wait, hold up. WoM was keeping certain forms of magic from being possible, and now those previous systems of magic are now accessible. And ancient artifacts that used those systems are now working. Oh, and the magic resistance of the average person is going down. So, what exactly is the WoM's real function here? Some sort of System Administrator for a magical network? The Sys Admin can control many things, but ultimately the network and system are written by someone else and the Sys Admin has limits to what he can control and often there are things that don't work optimally, but that's the way it is unless you want to change operating systems and network protocols. Seems too late at this point, but perhaps at the Seers Three should have had WoM spell out the options in more detail. Seriously, I shudder to think what sort of Systems of Magic are now possible and what will happen if a Seer is able to observe an artifact in use. "Oh really, we can summon entities called the Great Old Ones? How interesting."

Actually, I was sort of hoping the Voltaire might be baited into doing something with the intent of getting Elliot killed (failing of course) and then having to deal with a targeted form of severe OCD. And being turned into a talking cat.

Interesting thought. I can see this as well. I really like this idea. That would be such a blow to Voltaire. Yeah, I really like this idea. But my big scene I want to see, Voltaire learning that Tedd was the one who convinced Magic.

Ok, I know the cute kid trope can get annoying, but dang it, seeing Van being protective and supportive of his sister Tedd, is giving me the feels. I believe that he and Tedd don't realize they are related, at least not consciously, and that when Van hid behind Tedd it was simply because he was a female who wasn't Arthur. Though, I do wonder if Tedd resembles his mother somewhat and it before everyone departs back to where they came from if Van will remark on any resemblance to his mom, or say something else that will give Tedd a clue. Of course, I am not sure that will be a good thing to Tedd's psyche at this point. We know he wanted Tedd traumatized and disillusioned with magic. Considering how Arthur feels, I wonder if Voltaire either had a hand in that? I begin to wonder if he has been trying to track down seers to determine if they have used magic so he could influence how they feel. Hell, he might have discredited those other two seers by throwing hints their way about the second purpose of Seers. This would seem to indicate he wanted Tedd to be in favor of magic changing severely. We also know he feels overly constrained by the laws of immortals. And he wants immortals to listen to him in changing those rules. This would seem to suggest he wants immortals to loosen the restrictions. We don't know what happens in the world of immortals when magic changes, but what if they come together at this time as well? I really think that Voltaire wants humans unable to use magic again and Immortals able to directly act, and perhaps in a more visible manner. Possibly, but you would think that some secret government agency somewhere might recognize the value of supporting private monster-hunting if they had trouble recruiting enough talent themselves. Or possibly there might be some secret guild somewhere, supported by old money (i.e. confiscated treasures) that gathers and trains monster-hunters. Oh wait, those tropes have probably been done. Okay, how about this, maybe since travel agents are being driven out of business by online trip-booking, they have decided to branch out into monster-hunting since that would make destinations more safe... eh, nevermind, I need more coffee.

Yeah, WoM, kind of a jerk, but with moments of what seem like genuine niceness. Seems like the not-quite midway point of a Korean drama where the male romantic protagonist does something genuinely nice for the female romantic lead and she has the feels even though he's been a bit of a jerk to her, but oh isn't he handsome, though not as handsome as he seems to think... wait, where were we? Oh yeah, WoM unwittingly derails Colonel Voltaire's plan CM, cause you know, Tedd was looking a little like she was going to declare WoM his enemy. Now, now I think Tedd will want to find Pandora and help her. And maybe wait for WoM to send flowers. It could be that I have been watching too many Korean dramas lately.

But Magic isn't laying it's cards on the table. What are it's reasons for changing severely? It obviously has some or there would not be a need for the logic to be sufficient. What logic is preventing minimal change. Perhaps that would be a good question to ask. Both very good points. It does seems like Magic's lack of tact is about to push Tedd to some kind of breaking point. Perhaps instead of declaring she will reveal Magic, this will push her to become more passionate and share her experienced-based perspective; why having magic is so important to her. You know, Magic says it wants logic, but maybe it really just wants some drama. I am having trouble reconciling this entity calling for logical perspectives when in practice, it having a flair for the dramatic.

It has a flair for the dramatic, I'll assume it's drawing out the debate for extra drama. Perhaps this is also true in the presentation of logic for not changing magic severely. Perhaps it requires that the logic be dramatic, like some version of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Magic does seem to have other considerations, so that the logic must has a preponderance of weight to convince it. Perhaps Magic would entertain questions regarding those considerations, what hurdle must they go over to convince Magic. For one thing, the presence of more magic-users is going to change the ecology of available magical energy, but in what ways? Will magical energy become so scarce that waiting for recharging takes days or longer, or will the presence of more magic-users increase the available magical energy (if say, the magic-user himself helps bring it into this world in some way)? Would this affect the Griffin's Universe's magical energy supply? Indeed, how did Magus' universe come to have dragons? Were the rules always so different, to allow for the birth of dragons in that Universe and the existence of Griffins in their Universe, or did the revealing of Magic lead to more Magic and thus more magical creatures? If magic is revealed in the Moperville Universe, will that mean more magical creatures? Unicorns, dragons, gelatinous cubes and the like? Cause, you know, I could do without the gelatinous cubes.

An excellent question. Pulling back a bit, we could even surmise about the basic nature of Magic. For example, is Magic intrinsic? If not, it it's some kind of alien, Magic might eventually pick up it's toys and leave. If Magic is intrinsic, tied to Gaia, an emergent property of Human Consciousness, or some such, then as long as you have this kind of population growth, the eventual reveal of Magic was always going to happen, and perhaps that is what has happened in the Magic-rich Universes we know about, just earlier in their timelines. Wonder how he's going to explain to his boss that his plan failed? Well, trying to say it was caused because he didn't know about Seers at all would be a start... Boss might point out that they should have planned for in case his plan was flawed or failed for some reason. You know, I can see Edward being begged to come back. That whole avoiding Apocalypse thing. I am more concerned about the fallout for Tedd in this, especially because he is now on Arthur's radar. As has been mentioned in other posts, Voltaire is frustrated by the limits on Immortals and wants them removed. We can theorize that he wanted Magic changed severely to limit it's use by humans; I would think that if Tedd were traumatized and distrustful of Magic, he would have argued for limiting Magic. I don't think Voltaire knew how many Seers there were either. In the above scenario, if Voltaire argued for Immortals becoming more involved in human affairs, this would seem like a return to Immortals acting like the deities of old pantheons, and perhaps that is what happened in the past, giving rise to mythologies of Gods having direct contact with humans. He could have argued that humans need guidance... Ironically, in a world with Magic revealed, it would make more sense to lessen the limits on Immortals, but I can see why Voltaire wouldn't like this. Immortals may be powerful, but imagine an Immortal with plans of Godhood going up against fully staffed and militarily trained regiments of Magicians prepared to face magical threats; as well it would difficult to impress people that you are a deity if everyone knows about Magic and the bestiary of magical creatures just by looking it up on Wikipedia. Oh my gosh, youtube videos of DIY magic hacks; magic geeks publishing a magical-themed Make magazine featuring projects you can do with magic crossed with other tech disciplines! Sorry, got distracted by the Happy Shininess of applying geekness to magic.

So, I would guess that Arthur will argue for magic being severely changed in order to keep it hidden, and Tedd to argue for it to change minimally to accommodate its reveal. That would leave the deciding vote with Van who might have formed his own opinion being the child of a monster hunter. I wonder if he will be influenced by Tedd? Also, what is the likelihood of Van saying something that will lead Tedd to guess who Van's mother is? Finally, what is the likelihood of all of them remembering this little interlude (is it occurring in the dream state; if so, they might very well forget most of it)? Fun time!