Tom Sewell

You need a precisely controlled voltage for any solid-state device,. This is why you should NEVER EVER hook up your solid state electronic devices to house current without using a surge protector. When I was in the U.S. Navy in the 1970s, I had a friend who was the sysop for the mainframe on a repair ship. He knew his stuff--but he was an enlisted man, not a commissioned officer. The dedicated power supply for the mainframe went down, and the division officer, who probably had an Anapolis ring but didn't know squat about electronics, ordered the computer to be hooked up to the regular ship's power. The computer was fried, and since it was a MILSPEC computer, it undoubtedly cost a lot more to replace than a commercially available computer. Keep in mind this is in a world where the laws of physics don't really change, at least on the time scale of recorded human history; only our understanding of those laws has evolved. That isn't the case in Dan Shive's universe. Anyway, it's just silly for Magus to be wearing a modern tie if his world doesn't resemble ours in most ways. And while Dan does silly well, he also puts an awful lot of thought in constructing his multiverse. One might even call it obsessive, or compulsive, or both. So I wouldn't be surprised at all if Dan explains that tie someday. Oh, Terra was wearing the same uniform.

Basically everyone who looked at one of these images for minute would have the basics. It may take you few weeks to make it really running even with team preparing all the parts, but you simply can't say that the principle of car is hard to explain. It's not. Even principle of computer is easy to explain. You can explain how to go from transistor to logic gates and simple calculator in less than hour (well, I could). Sure, this explanation won't help you make computer, because the hard part is how to get billions of transistors into space small enough ... but still, the principle is easy. Assembling a car from scratch is not putting together parts manufactured by someone else. Scratch building means building from basic raw materials. In building models, it means no kit; you decide what you want to make and you craft the whole thing yourself, not assembling a kit. In furniture, it doesn't mean buying a flatpack from Ikea and assemblying it; it means gathering deadwood or cutting down trees and curing the wood, carving all the wooden pieces, obtaining fiber for any fabrics and making the fabrics, learning how to smelt durable metals from ore, learning how to smith that metal, smithing, inventing the Allen wrench... The principal of the computer is easy to explain? Okay, what's the difference between a digital and an analog computer? How do you make a chip? What's a semiconductor? What is valence? Who was Boole? Why is Lord Byron's daughter considered the very first computer programmer? Getting back to your diagram of a piston internal combustion engine, what's making those sparks? The ancient Greeks knew about static electricity, but it took over two millennia before Benjamin Franklin came up with the first practical use of electrical theory: The lightning rod. Wait, actually some Babylonean invented a battery thousands of years earlier; most likely it was a trade secret used for electroplating jewelry. But the secret got lost during some war or plague or some stupid forgotten law (protect our people from fake gold!) Speaking of Ikea again, is there any doubt that those wordless assembly instructions weren't designed by the Will of Magic? They read like spellbooks...

What I meant was cooperating with other dragons. Magus said "tornado sirens" instead of "air raid sirens" so the dragons of his world don't form air forces, at least yet.

If Magus world has enough magic to power a comparable number of cars as our world has now, everything would run on magic and dragons would have to be at least as intelligent and co-operative as humans to survive as anything other than a protected species. Ever wonder why there are no lions in Europe or the Middle East? We killed them all before we even got to the Middle Ages.

Magus does not come from a world with medieval technology. From the very first, he's been pictured wearing modern clothes, basically a pants-shirt-tie school uniform with a short cape. :He's about as "medieval" as Harry Potter. And warning sirens only go back to around 1900. As for knowing how a car works, how many of you could build a car from scratch? His world may not have satellites, Viagra, and Twitter yet, but it probably has railroads, telegraphs, newspapers, and at least some flush toilets.

Ashley has already wondered why there doesn't seem to be anyone else there. That's what no cars in the parking lot seem to imply. But she also noticed that all the lights were on.

I think whether or not Elliot will throw a punch at Magus is trivial now. Here are some unanswered questions I think have more priority: Will Dan end Sister III with this comic? Will Dan end this chapter with this comic and start a Part 25? What about those re-activated artifacts in the crates that Dan has warned us about in canon twice (once by Magus in this chapter, once before by the Will of Magic in The Fate of Magic) As Good Guys, shouldn't Ashley, Elliot, and maybe Magus check to see if there's anyone hidden in the facility who needs help now? 1. Will Dan end Sister III with this comic? Well, if he really wants to, but he really hasn't set up a proper cliffhanger in canon for that. Besides, it isn't Friday in our world yet. 2. Will Dan end Sister III with this comic? That's more possible. There are a lot of loose threads in the overall story and some of them should be tied up or at least touched on, but its arguable that just about every question this chapter has raised up until now could be answered later without as much work for Dan and without as much delay in the progress of the story. 3. What about those reactivated artifacts? There are a lot of them, and probably many more in locations Dan hasn't revealed so far. Any of them could become suddenly very important at any time, However, unless Dan has already worked out some reason for one or more of them to do its thing right now in canon, I think they can go off into the same limbo Lord Tedd has been in for most of the series since the end of Grace's Birthday Party. 4. Shouldn't our Good Guys check to see if there's anyone who needs help before running away? Of course they should! It's in the Universal Code of Good Guy Behavior! But they could also talk about it, with a suitable flashback or two, later. One way or another, I'm for them handling this before the end of Sister III, Dan's vacation, Q&A #8, etc. But I'm not Dan. Really. Honest. Cross my heart or, as my girlfriend has often said, cross the hole where my heart should be.

Unless the building really is unmanned now, I think the chances of everyone sneaking back out have fallen to zero.

I'm starting this one because I have nagging questions about Pandora's Terminator-style Judgement Day for Aberrations. Here are some roughly in order of how nagging: Why isn't Sirleck dead? How could the Immortals have killed so many Aberrations with a spell that only has a range of several miles? How much collateral damage resulted? If Adrian Raven needed Susan's sword to slay Aberrations, where do Susan and Diane get their hunter talent from? How do Helena and Demetrius find Aberrations? Why wouldn't they have detected Sirleck's presence in Moperville when he came to possess Francine and then Ellen? When and how was Sirleck sure that Helen and Demetrius wouldn't be guarding Elliot? (I'm not saying that he was necessarily right about being sure.) When did Sirleck look up at the lights in the sky?

Magus is an alternate Elliot, so sympathy even for an enemy isn't out of character. Our Elliot hasn't shed any tears for anyone, at least in canon--but our Elliot hasn't killed anything yet.

I forgot about the other Tedd in Ellen's Second Life dreams, which is a pretty darn big thing to forget. Still, there could be ways for our Magus to be from the same univerese: Terra is Tedd's sister. Terra was Tedd before she went off to BMU. Neither one seems likely to me, but #2 would kind of fit in the overall themes of EGS.

True enough, but not all that commonplace. "Magus" is actually the singular of "Magi", a title that originally applied to Zoroastrian priests. This was the ancient religion of Persia, AKA Iran, and it remained so until the Arab conquest and the suppression of that religion by Muslim clerics. Zoroastrianism survives mostly in India now among a small population known as Parsees, and may have influenced Tibetan Buddhism. Both cultures do not burn or bury their dead but leave them exposed. The Parsees have even developed a breed of tamed vultures to remove the flesh from the bones, and since they do not revere the bones either, many mounted skeletons, particularly older ones, found in the United States are from Parsees. And, yes, "Magic" does derive from the same root. Other ancient peoples saw the Zoroastrians as most peculiar and associated them with sorcery. Anyway, I'm still putting my cookies on "Magus E". At the very least, it could give Magus another silly name for Dan to reveal. BTW, Genghis Khan was a title; the man's name was 'Temujin", more or less the Mongol equivalent of "Smith".

Nioi is from a differennt universe (and not necessarily the same one as Lord Tedd, and probably has access to many universes. Remember, Grace's warning came from Beta Tedd and Beta Ellen in still a third universe. And the real versions of Second Life Ellen and Kaoli are from still another universe. It's also worth noting that Ellen has Second Life memories are longer than the sum of her own life and the life of Elliot before Ellen's creation. To me, at least, Magus E. seems older than Elliot and I wouldn't be surprised if Dan has made him so. Maybe he's even from the same universe as Second Life Ellen and Kaoli, although no dragons came up in Ellen's dreams.

How many of you have seen an old Harry Harryhausen movie called The Golden Voyage of Sinbad? I have an immense fondness for this film; I rate it as the best of Harryhausen's career, and it's also the very last of the classic Hollywood Arabian Nights movies. The reason it has relevance here is the villain, an unnamed sorcerer who calls on the Demons of Darkness to work his most powerful magics. But "there is a price"; each time he summons them he ages. He progresses from what seems to be the prime of his life to old age throughout the movie. All in all, this guy didn't seem to be as evil as the composite Sirleck and the unnamed old man formed. That's why I thought and still think it would be an entirely appropriate backstory for the man (or woman) Sirleck used to be became so obsessed with the old man that they became an Aberration. I don't think it has any particular relevance to canon now unless Dan wants to explore Nietzsche's warning about being careful about fighting monsters lest one become a monster oneself. But then Dan has sort of done that with Pandora, hasn't he? Getting back to the last really great Sinbad movie, you should watch it if you ever get an opportunity. You'll know why Tim Burton made The Corpse Bride and why the piano that Victor and Victoria used was a Harryhausen.

Good points. And related to my theory that Susan might be a wizard after all. I wrote one of the longer Sailor Moon fanfic series starting in the Nineties, and I decided early on that most of the magical objects and magical incantations were silly, or merchandizing gimmicks, or both. I didn't want to keep anything but the ginzuishou, so I made all the rest into learning aids that would be dispensed with as the senshi got more skill in using their powers. And that's, more or less, the mechanic I propose for Susan's conjuring fairies and magical weapons: The sign-and-chest system she got from her mark are becoming irrelevant. What's really happening is that Susan learned Nanase's fairy spell and then started modifying it. Nanase still can't summon more than one fairy and isn't conscious of her real body while she's using a fairy. Or is Nanase really limited that way now? Remember Susan didn't read her spellbook for a long time before she got the idea of getting a fairy that looked like herself. Does she really need to have a fairy doll from Nanase in her treasure chest for each fairy, or does she just believe she can summon copies of all her dolls but no more? Quite awhile ago Dan did a Sketchbook showing Susan summoning a swarm of fairies, and I immediately thought of Raven's Murder Shroud.

Magus E. is obviously a very powerful wizard. But able to get back to his own universe on his own? Well, if Dan wills it, yes, but I wouldn't bet on Dan willing it. The Dan has invested a lot in M.E.'s character development. If Magus E. needs help to get back home, the go-to people to help him would be Raven, Edward, and Tedd. At least two out of three have obvious Pandora-related issues.

I don't imagine any of Tony's alternates being masterminds, but catspaws of masterminds, yes.

I think what is more relevant is are there more body thieves. I think it was Sirleck himself who revealed that Aberrations of his type were the most hated by Immortals. The fact that Sirleck survived Pandora's Apocalypse kind of indicates that his type had a better chance of survival.

Who doesn't want to be as cool as a Bond villain? They always have the best lines. "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die." -- Auric Goldfinger "Look after Mr. Bond. See that some harm comes to him" -- Hugo Drax I agree. In fact, who exactly sabotaged that potion in Magus E.'s home universe? Perhaps some mastermind seeing E.M. as a major obstacle to accomplishing another fiendishly clever master plan? Sounds like an excuse for a cross-multiverse adventure. M.E. just destroyed the Dewitchery Diamond. That at least ought to be good for brownie points with Abraham.

That thing on Sirleck's "tail"? Scorpion's stinger.

Probably not, at least in my headcanon. But, as always, it's up to The Dan. Seems likely for now, but while Magus E. has his own body and seems to have proved his credentials as a good guy, or at least a trying-to-be-good guy, he still faces a few other issues, such as still having no obvious way back to his own universe, and what Susan, Nanase, and Raven are going to do when they learn what M. E. did. And, of course, those crates I mentioned, and Arthur's and Edward's somewhat mysterious organization. Any or all of these issues could keep cropping up in storylines to come.

Oh, since the title of this comic is "The Magus", Magus is probably not actually "Magus" but "Magus (unknown regular name that probably starts with 'E')".

Okay, we've learned these new things in today's comic: Magus paid attention in class at Battle Mage University (BMU). Magus qualifies as a Hunter in the Moperverse Ashley can scream at least as loud as Screaming Girl and that girl being chased by the vampire Susan killed at the mall. Some of the windows on the second floor do have glass in them (or did) Magus just knocked around a bunch of crates containing magical items that are no longer inactive. But that's probably not going to be a problem or anything, is it?

Actually Pandora has come closer than Voltaire in terms of long-term plans fulfilled.

Grace is very, very smart but she's not mastermind material. Masterminds think strategically; they plan for the long term. A mastermind may not have read Sun Tzu or Machiavelli, but operates on the principles the two sages set down. I wouldn't even rate Napoleon as a mastermind. Now, Cardinal Richeleu, Bismarck, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Stalin, and FDR all had chops and were probably as close to a Bond-level masterminds as the real world can produce.