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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!

ijuin

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Posts posted by ijuin

  3. Posted

    21 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

     

    Really the matter of who we replace a bad leader with is the same problem as who get/allow to lead in the first place.  If you don't have good options for replacement, fix the part of the system that spits out the leader options in the first place.  Otherwise garbage-in/garbage-out is all you can reasonably expect.

     Or, as my late father used to say, if you keep going to the pig trough, don't be surprised that all you get is pig slop. 

  5. Posted

    40 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

    The diseases mentioned above were what actually did the exterminating. Exterminating populations by hand is actually very time consuming and difficult work and is usually not worth it if you can just convince them to be ruled. Which is usually a LOT easier than convincing them to hold still for being exterminated.

    Well, my intended meaning was that with iron weapons and armor, it would be less like "shooting fish in a barrel" for Europeans to roll right over them.

  6. Posted

    If the more advanced Native American cultures had possessed iron weapons and armor even comparable to that used in the Roman Republic era, they would have not been completely helpless against European weapons. As it was, they had no weapons that would penetrate European armor, and no armor of their own that was adequate to stop a musket ball or steel pike or axe. Native Americans with iron weapons and armor would likely have been conquered and ruled over (as with other colonized regions such as Southeast Asia) instead of simply exterminated.

  9. Posted

    On Soft Magic, Hard Magic, and the Will of Magic, it seems in EGS that the main limiting factor (aside from the availability of an appropriate spell) is one of energy--it apparently costs more energy to make more changes. Minor cosmetic things such as Nanase's hair change (or most self-transformations that leave the transformee still a baseline human) are low in energy cost, while stuff that actually grants high power (e.g. Nanase's Guardian spell) consume a huge amount of power. Sarah's spell apparently consumes so much power not because of the "impossibility" of it (since the scenes play out in her brain, it's just an illusion), but rather in the "information gathering" part of it (the energy is expended due to the spell having to collect an accurate "snapshot" of the surrounding space--at minimum a house-sized space, but Pandora implied that she may be able to simulate much larger spaces with practice).

    EmpactWB reacted to this

  10. Posted

    16 hours ago, mlooney said:

    All joking aside, it was the germs from the old world, not the human invaders that allowed the European occupation of both North and South America.

    True, although it was his impersonation of Quetzalcoatl that allowed Cortez to march into Tenochtitlan instead of the Aztecs simply killing him and his men on sight--he had only a single company of men, against an empire with tens of thousands of soldiers/warriors. Tenochtitlan was supposedly more populous than major European cities such as Paris or London at the time of Cortez's arrival. If it had only been the germs, then Cortez would not have lived long enough to enjoy the defeat of the Aztecs--they would have killed him and then all dropped dead from disease.

    15 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

    Yup, there's growing evidence that the previous inhabitants of the Americas were far, far more numerous, sophisticated, and technological than they've been given credit for.  The travelers on the Mayflower found a deserted town and carefully managed orchards waiting for them, left behind when all but one of the inhabitants dies in a plague which had swept the coast.  Europeans remarked on how easily they could move through the forests, never considering that it was because they weren't wild places, but closer to orchards and parks.  Even Lewis and Clark found that devastating plagues had beaten them to most of the places they explored.  (The linked article is long, but worth it!)

    The native Americans mainly lacked two key things that held back their development--they had no heavy draft animals such as horses, donkeys, or oxen, and they never figured out smelting and working of iron (which takes a much higher temperature than gold or copper). They were, however, mostly pretty much as advanced as it is possible to be while still technically being in the "stone age"--especially the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas had civilizations on a par with ancient Mesopotamia or early-dynasty Egypt (back before the Upper and Lower Kingdoms were joined).

  11. Posted

    Aberrations feed on the life of others--presumably this means sapient beings, since they seem unable to gain the needed extra sustenance from eating ordinary livestock, and there is no evidence that they are strictly limited to eating their own former species (i.e. human-derived Aberrations eating only homo sapiens, griffin-derived Aberrations eating only griffins, etc.), so they may be able to feed on any sapient being possessing what we would consider to be normal biochemistry.

    Blood does seem to be the most common method, but some may eat flesh (or particular organs such as the heart or brain, which are both regarded as seats of the "soul"). There may be ones, though, who drain "life energy" without actually consuming a bulk material part of their victims. Hmm, might it be possible for an Aberration to exist who specializes in draining the magical energy from Mages? (once the Mage is rendered unable to resist, of course)

  14. Posted

    3 hours ago, Scotty said:

    Aztecs had the unfortunate disadvantage of their empire developing at the same time Europeans were going through their "Our god is best god" phase hardcore and the spanish conquistadors that came over to the new world weren't intimidated by the Aztec gods and scary pyramids.

    Also, Cortez impersonated one of their more benevolent gods, Quetzalcoatl, a major benefactor of humanity (comparable to the Olympian Apollo). The Aztecs fell for the trick, in part because their prophecies spoke of him returning that particular year and being tall, pale, arriving in a floating palace (ship), with strange beasts (horses) and hurling thunderbolts (artillery).

  18. Posted

    Hedge had known Damien for years, and would probably know if Damien had much shapeshifting ability beyond the normal Seyunolu "shift between any mix of parental species forms" ability, unless it was an ability that Damien kept extremely well-hidden even from his closest associates. Hedge would not have to have seen Damien in a Nioi-like form before; he would merely need to be aware of whether Damien was capable of disguising himself in general.

  19. Posted

    5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    Remember that Elliot ALSO used his Cheerleadra spell first time there. Well, not counting when he casted it while sleeping, IF it was cheerleadra spell and not just normal girl transformation spell with same look.

    Cheerleadra would likely be able to defeat the fire golem herself, but it WOULD be possible Voltaire tried attack Elliot hoping he'll fail to transform. Especially if he's not really as old as Pandora and is worse at predicting.

    If Voltaire was not watching Elliot at home that morning, he might not even have been aware that Elliot had gained the Cheerleadra spell, and instead was expecting Elliot to fight using the powers that Elliot was previously known to have (Cat-man transformation and Anime-Style Martial Arts).

  21. Posted

    10 hours ago, mlooney said:

    First world drug problem:
    My generic Excedrin / "acetaminophen plus aspirin plus caffeine" and my generic "just acetaminophen, but twice as much acetaminophen" tablets look identical and are in the same size and shape bottle. 

    It sounds like you might want to mark the bottles with something colorful in order to make them visually distinctive from each other. Stickers, colored sticky tape, colored marker pens, whatever works, as long as there's a big spot of bright and different color on each one.

  22. Posted

    6 hours ago, EmpactWB said:

    That same comic implies that the same person who gave him the pendant was the one controlling him, though, and while it's difficult to be certain, I think you can see the top of the mark when Dex puts on the pendant in panel 2. Also, he noticed the mark Friday and summoned his fairy on Saturday, but it wasn't until Tuesday when he summoned the fire guy that we see any evidence that he had the pendant.

    There is also the possibility that Pandora was the one who marked Dex, but it was Voltaire who gave him the pendant (and the telepathic commands). It would explain why there was a time lag in between getting the mark and getting the pendant.

    Tom Sewell and EmpactWB reacted to this

  23. Posted

    Also, whoever was influencing Dex had commanded him to make a suicide attack on the Dojo by having him make the Dragon fire on his own position. It seems uncharacteristic of Pandora to try to make somebody commit suicide unless they had done something to seriously anger her (e.g. Abraham). Also, Grace was at Ground Zero for that blast, and Grace is fairly high on Pandora's "protect" list.

    As for the idea that it was a False Flag operation by Voltaire, we do have his own monologue implying that he views Pandora as an adversary, what with calling Elliot her pawn and all. Also, the idea that Tara was his second pawn (or perhaps "knight", since we are using a chess metaphor) with which to kill Elliot after Dex failed would explain why he was losing patience after Tara likewise failed to kill Elliot--his abandonment of Plan A for Plan CM come off as rather sudden if that had been his first attempt, but if he had been trying since April, then his impatience makes much more sense.