Story Monday August 15, 2016

[Stature 96]

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2227

Alas, the growth of Chaos is here at last.

Pandora is a real introvert, though.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

This is unfortunate.

Pandora and Tedd have valid points.  The Will of Magic may have been doing things the same way for a millennium, but would it really hurt to at least consider rational arguments from opposing points of view?  After all, Magic's alternative of changing the rules for everyone seems like putting all the toys on the top shelf and then letting the toddlers try to get them back on their own.

But that is probably just wishful thinking.

I am fairly confident that this Emissary of "The Will of Magic" does not have the knowledge or authority to actually speak and negotiate on behalf of "The Will of Magic", beyond delivering an occasional message.

[Zorua 124]

Okay, panel-by-panel commentary time.

 

Panel 1: He TL;DR'd it. And yes, the implications are kinda scary.

Panel 2: Right. That isn't news at least (except the part where she's possibly an introvert).

Panel 3: Why do you do this? That's the ultimate question, isn't it? Right next to "You ever wonder why we're here?" and "Who left the air conditioner at 80 again?"

Panel 4: Yeah, magic would've been the gun in medieval times. The Great Equalizer. Take it away and you have swords that take time to train to use, and bows that take more time to train to use. Magic levels the playing field. It's like giving everyone rocket launchers and bomb suits.

Panel 5: The gun is the Great Equalizer even when magic is in play. People (mainly military) have actual rocket launchers and actual bomb suits. Magic doesn't stand a chance against the range and muzzle velocity of a firearm. The only ones that might have a plausible magic-based defense against bullets are actual soldiers, since they're the most likely ones to get spells related to bullets. Generic forcefields might come second (I can see introverts and antisocial people getting forcefields) but, again, rocket launcher vs. bomb suit. Would the defense be up to snuff?

Also, Teenage Pandora. We've seen her as an adult, a child, a formless monster, and a Character That Is Not Pandora. We haven't seen Pandora as a teenager who is still recognizably Pandora. So, props there.

Panel 6: She invoked Tedd. Not sure if good or not.

I read a fanfic once where a modern human in a magic-using medieval fantasy world realized the danger that modern technology presented, even to magic-users. Guns and missiles have better range than most spells, jets have excellent hit-and-run potential, tanks are tanks, and nukes take care of whatever's left. To say nothing of the communication technology that would leave modern armies way more coordinated than medieval ones. Magic doesn't stand a chance.

So far we haven't seen mundane efforts to combat magic users. Nobody's pulled a real gun on anyone yet (unless enchanted boars count as "anyone"). We've seen a bad guy or two that might be resistant to guns, though (Damien and Not-Tengu).

The ultimate problem is people have to become used to magic, and until they do, it's a New Thing. People don't know how to use New Things right away, and first impressions affect how long it takes for New Things to become just things. Between gaining spells without knowing it, gaining spells based on their personality and behaviors, and not reading the manual (which pretty much nobody's gonna do; "I have magic! Why do I need an instruction book? It's magic!"), things are gonna be hectic for a while. Inevitably a magic-using criminal is gonna cause real damage, magic is gonna be seen as a Bad Thing, there's gonna be social stigmas that dissuade magic use, blah blah blah I ran out of steam here somebody continue the argument.

Admittedly, this would push the "guns = Bad" thing off to the side, but let's leave that for another thread, mmkay?

Of course, this doesn't really matter since Magic Itself doesn't want to become a thing.

Commentary: Pandora backing Tedd. Not sure if good or not.

Villain Has A Point?

[ChaosSepher 10]

More we are seeing of Pandora more I think she might actually have the right idea overall.  Sure she is utterly unstable and responsible for some terrible things, so many things could go wrong with the plan, but can't say I disagree with the idea.

[partner555 170]

2 hours ago, ChaosSepher said:

More we are seeing of Pandora more I think she might actually have the right idea overall.  Sure she is utterly unstable and responsible for some terrible things, so many things could go wrong with the plan, but can't say I disagree with the idea.

Thing is, Magic seems to disagree.

[Scotty 1,061]

3 hours ago, Zorua said:

Panel 6: She invoked Tedd. Not sure if good or not.

Well despite Disco Wizard saying that Tedd wouldn't cause a system chance, he may have at least indirectly influenced it. Unless Pandora had felt this way for a while before Tedd started thinking it and put into words that made sense to Pandora.

 

3 hours ago, Zorua said:

Also, Teenage Pandora. We've seen her as an adult, a child, a formless monster, and a Character That Is Not Pandora. We haven't seen Pandora as a teenager who is still recognizably Pandora. So, props there.

Yeah, I'm thinking this represents her maturity in terms of being ambitious but maybe still a bit nieve.

Child Pandora: "I'm doing this because it's fun!"

Adult Pandora: "I'm doing this for family."

Teen Pandora: "I'm doing this because I want to help people!"

Also for Dan's commentary, it sounds like if there was a room full of Immortals and one of them happens to break Immortal Law, the others would be made aware of that one Immortal and deal with them, but still could likely be unware of each other.

[Tom Sewell 268]

6 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

The Will of Magic may have been doing things the same way for a millennium

Which would also mean Pandora could have last reset a millenium ago...kind of turning up her "scary" factor past eleven. Could also make her more intelligent and maybe even more powerful than the "will of magic." Maybe she hasn't automatically reset because she's so powerful she overrides the reset mechanism. And, really far out there, if she's that powerful, she could wind up becoming the (new) "will of magic."

Kind of like the most powerful wizard gets to become the King of Xanth.

Oh: another possibly relevant thought: Does time pass the same way in the other half of the Moperverse? It seems likely with the presence of giant magical lion-bears, dragons, and guys wearing chicken hats, Pandora met Raven in the other half. Maybe a thousand years passed there, but "only" a few centuries in the mostly-mundane Moperville half.

[Aura Guardian 57]

I just had a scary thought: What if Pandora later tries to arrange fights of increasing scale between mages and guns, to show magic that it's old rule is obsolete? I could just see it, given her instability and direction at this time.

[Tom Sewell 268]

5 hours ago, Zorua said:

I read a fanfic once where a modern human in a magic-using medieval fantasy world realized the danger that modern technology presented, even to magic-users.

I don't know about that fanfic, but I do know about several examples of "gun control" in fiction and in gaming:

• In Fred Saberhagen's Empire of the East series, magic comes back to replace technology just at the outbreak of a nuclear war.
• In S. M. Stirling's Dies the Fire and its sequels, electronics and gunpowder stop working.
• In good ol' D&D, Gary Gygax invented a sulpher-eating fungus that made gunpowder hard to make and preserve.
• In the a series of adventures and sourcebooks for GURPS, mages and feudal lords have deliberately suppressed knowledge of gunpowder to keep from losing their jobs. In another GURPS parallel world, black powder works but creating any kind of artificial electric discharge doesn't seem to be possible.

All of these "solutions" overlook the fact that life depends on physics and chemistry working the way it does. Yes, you can wave a wand and say "magic" but that would involve magic stepping in to rebuilding the entire universe. Now the gods in Oh My Goddess actually did that in the King of Terror arc, but The Shive has so far steered away for the most part from divine intervention except maybe for Guardian Angel forms.

[Tom Sewell 268]

6 hours ago, ChaosSepher said:

Sure she is utterly unstable and responsible for some terrible things

The only terrible things I think she's done we know about are trying to get Abraham killed and then lashing out at Magus. Miitigating factors:

• Abraham is a self-righteous fanatic
• Magus is arrogant, self-centered... come to think of it, he comes off a lot like Tony. I wonder if he left any "#1" shirts in his locker back at that magic school?
• Her son was hurt!

[Tom Sewell 268]

6 hours ago, Zorua said:

Nobody's pulled a real gun on anyone yet

No, no one has, something Arthur J. Arthur didn't seem to consider when he said "police have guns." Griffin flying through the mall firing energy blasts? Call in a "code spooky." Giant midair explosion? Kids with fireworks. Jewelry store robbery? Let's call in a couple of meddling teenagers instead of the police.

Does Moperville even have a real police force? Maybe they spent all their money on murals or something.

[Scotty 1,061]

13 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Magus is arrogant, self-centered... come to think of it, he comes off a lot like Tony. I wonder if he left any "#1" shirts in his locker back at that magic school?

The fact that Magus refused to get Edward to kill Abraham is a good indicator that he isn't really a bad guy, he's just desperate to get out of his predicament, he even despised the idea of having to go back to Sirleck for help after Pandora left and said he'd have much to atone for because of it. I said before that I believe Magus' relationship with Terra is similar to Elliot's with Nanase when they were dating, the magic duel felt very much like Elliot and Nanase's sparring matches where they taunt each other strictly for dramatic effect. Terra wasn't expecting Magus to just vanish after firing her beam, which might have been similar to Ellen's beam in that it probably would have transformed Magus rather than actually did any harm.

[starkruzr 0]

I mean, she's not wrong. At all. Magic could cure disease, provide clean power, any number of other things.

[Don Edwards 548]

Magic levels the playing field.

And the playing field used to have a castle on it.

In a high-tech war, magic would be a weapon primarily for unconventional forces. And if there's no way to definitively tell who doesn't have magic (which is implied by some of the things Edward said about Tengu)...

For most of the Main 8 it's not hard to imagine how their magic could be used to kill or disrupt, or at least gather information, while keeping the person doing it safe from non-magical detection.

Tedd: override the safeties on the TFG and make a no-bronchia transformation with 5 minute duration.

Ellen: FV5 a person who's on their way to a high-security area (disruptive, unlikely to do lasting damage - but there is a possibility). "On their way to" can have a rather expansive definition, so Ellen need not even enter an area that would bring her under suspicion.

Nanase: clothing-swap a suicide vest with a dead-man switch on a 1-second delay, from her onto the target. We know her range is considerable (home to school) and buildings in the way are simply not a concern, so if she's familiar with an area and is watching a live TV broadcast of the target in that area, or looking out an upper-story window at people on the street below...

Sarah: espionage, obviously. "Take a nap" in the passenger seat of a car that is stuck in nasty traffic going past the facility of interest.

Susan: fairies. Espionage, again. Unlike Nanase's, they disappear - sometimes explosively, so have four of them group-hug a target's neck and unsummon them. (With Tedd's and Nanase's help, produce fairydolls that look like currently-popular toys.)

Grace: she needs forms that have a much different face, but Tedd can fix that. And she's a fire-resistant flying telekinetic melee-combat machine that can disguise itself as a cute teenage girl. Of course, she's on-site and therefore subject to things like weapons fire.

Elliot: unfortunately, his most powerful form is rather identifiable, and he also has to be on-site. So far. He'd have to turn into some random non-superhero female, do the deed, and escape. (Of course, if he's in custody but outside, and everyone turns their back on him, he can fly straight up. Hazard: unnoticed video cameras.)

Justin: another weak spot. So far all his magic requires his physical presence and has immediate effect, and he has no shapeshifting ability on his own - everyone else has either range, delayed effect, or shapeshifting, or some combination thereof - so he's extremely identifiable.

Also consider: what could you do with a fire the size of one lit match? What if you could create that fire at a hundred yard range behind cover? Like, oh, inside a gasoline tank, or inside a person's skull?

[partner555 170]

6 hours ago, Aura Guardian said:

I just had a scary thought: What if Pandora later tries to arrange fights of increasing scale between mages and guns, to show magic that it's old rule is obsolete? I could just see it, given her instability and direction at this time.

I fear that may just cause magic hysteria.

[mlooney 3,417]

The last panel.  Gun control or Arms Control at the nation vs nation level?
Are atomic weapons mundane to an immortal?

Also teen Pandora. Not as hot as Adult Pandora. From my view point, the least hot/cute of all the teen females so far in strip

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

1 minute ago, mlooney said:

Are atomic weapons mundane to an immortal?

On the mortal plane, immortals are mundane to atomic weapons.

If we could shoot an ICBM into the spirit plane however....

[Tom Sewell 268]

1 hour ago, Don Edwards said:

Susan: fairies. Espionage, again. Unlike Nanase's, they disappear - sometimes explosively, so have four of them group-hug a target's neck and unsummon them. (With Tedd's and Nanase's help, produce fairydolls that look like currently-popular toys.)

I think when Susan makes kamikaze fairies, they should be wearing hakimachi. Also, they might be able to carry grenades, as might Nanase's fairies.

1 hour ago, Don Edwards said:

He'd have to turn into some random non-superhero female, do the deed, and escape.

Elliot has already transformed into a superhero that doesn't look like Cheerleadra. If he entered in another non-Elliot form, he could transform without blowing his secret identity. This presumes only mundane captors, though.

Grace can be a squirrel. Even squirrels without superpowers are pretty good at getting in and out of places they're not supposed to be.

Justin doesn't even have a spellbook yet. Remember that the dragon didn't attack him at all. He might already be incredibly hard to injure now, when he's powered up.

1 hour ago, Don Edwards said:

Also consider: what could you do with a fire the size of one lit match?

You can set goo on fire.

[Tom Sewell 268]

4 minutes ago, mlooney said:

Are atomic weapons mundane to an immortal?

Any volunteers to find out? What Pandora is saying is that modern weapons are way more of a danger to mortals than letting them use more magic. It's a diversion, dodging the fact that magic can be dangerous and is easy to misuse. But it also exposes that "magic itself" might not have the welfare of humans in mind in restricting access and changing the rules.

The way Immortals avoid damage seems to be to "phase out" to avoid it. But even bullets may move too fast for them to react in time, and the flash of a nuclear weapon arrives at lightspeed. And for all we know, some of the energy of a nuclear blast might actually propagate onto that spirit plane they are hiding in.

Maybe that "better world" Voltaire mentioned is one without all that dangerous human technology...like maybe one after a nuclear holocaust?

[hkmaly 490]

11 hours ago, partner555 said:

13 hours ago, ChaosSepher said:

More we are seeing of Pandora more I think she might actually have the right idea overall.  Sure she is utterly unstable and responsible for some terrible things, so many things could go wrong with the plan, but can't say I disagree with the idea.

Thing is, Magic seems to disagree.

That doesn't mean it disagrees for correct reason. It's possible Pandora is more right than magic. Magic having power to force it's decision doesn't make it right.

7 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Which would also mean Pandora could have last reset a millenium ago...kind of turning up her "scary" factor past eleven.

Could, but it's not really implied.

7 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

13 hours ago, Zorua said:

I read a fanfic once where a modern human in a magic-using medieval fantasy world realized the danger that modern technology presented, even to magic-users.

I don't know about that fanfic, but I do know about several examples of "gun control" in fiction and in gaming:

• In Fred Saberhagen's Empire of the East series, magic comes back to replace technology just at the outbreak of a nuclear war.
• In S. M. Stirling's Dies the Fire and its sequels, electronics and gunpowder stop working.
• In good ol' D&D, Gary Gygax invented a sulpher-eating fungus that made gunpowder hard to make and preserve.
• In the a series of adventures and sourcebooks for GURPS, mages and feudal lords have deliberately suppressed knowledge of gunpowder to keep from losing their jobs. In another GURPS parallel world, black powder works but creating any kind of artificial electric discharge doesn't seem to be possible.

All of these "solutions" overlook the fact that life depends on physics and chemistry working the way it does. Yes, you can wave a wand and say "magic" but that would involve magic stepping in to rebuilding the entire universe. Now the gods in Oh My Goddess actually did that in the King of Terror arc, but The Shive has so far steered away for the most part from divine intervention except maybe for Guardian Angel forms.

Just because gunpowder is not working doesn't mean guns are not working. There are lot of explosive substances (like that red jewel polish from Avalon) which can be used. Or, you can just skip gunpowder and go straight to railgun. Guns are easy. People are complicated. Most fantasy writers don't know enough about physics and chemistry to find change which would render guns useless and people still alive - if it's possible at all, without the mentioned replacement of everything with magic.

In fact, physical laws of our universe seems to work on level of subatomic particles, with no "high-level" exceptions. I don't think anyone is able to predict how to change the basic universe constance to produce observable-by-naked-eye difference which doesn't kill everyone.

41 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

44 minutes ago, mlooney said:

Are atomic weapons mundane to an immortal?

On the mortal plane, immortals are mundane to atomic weapons.

If we could shoot an ICBM into the spirit plane however....

It wouldn't work. Spirit plane have different laws that our own - for example, you can fit infinite number of immortals in room. Hey, likely on head of a pin. That's not possible in physical plane. It's unlikely the ICBM would explode in spirit plane, much less harming anyone.

40 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

I think when Susan makes kamikaze fairies, they should be wearing hakimachi. Also, they might be able to carry grenades, as might Nanase's fairies.

Probably only one grenade each, but that's enough.

2 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

Nanase: clothing-swap a suicide vest with a dead-man switch on a 1-second delay, from her onto the target. We know her range is considerable (home to school) and buildings in the way are simply not a concern, so if she's familiar with an area and is watching a live TV broadcast of the target in that area, or looking out an upper-story window at people on the street below...

... damn. If suicide vest actually counts as clothing, that would be really devastating.

44 minutes ago, mlooney said:

Also teen Pandora. Not as hot as Adult Pandora. From my view point, the least hot/cute of all the teen females so far in strip

Didn't noticed she's growing at first, but yes, she might already reach teenager here. Not sure if she reached 15, though. And the clothes are no really sexy ...

26 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

The way Immortals avoid damage seems to be to "phase out" to avoid it. But even bullets may move too fast for them to react in time, and the flash of a nuclear weapon arrives at lightspeed. And for all we know, some of the energy of a nuclear blast might actually propagate onto that spirit plane they are hiding in.

MIGHT. It's also possible light is slow for immortals. Depends on how close their predictive power is to Jedi knights - who are fast enough to dodge lasers.

26 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Maybe that "better world" Voltaire mentioned is one without all that dangerous human technology...like maybe one after a nuclear holocaust?

Wouldn't surprise me. These "order" types often see desert as better world than the chaos of forest.

[Scotty 1,061]

5 hours ago, mlooney said:

Also teen Pandora. Not as hot as Adult Pandora. From my view point, the least hot/cute of all the teen females so far in strip

Well to be fair, she isn't trying to look hot/cute there.

5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

12 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Which would also mean Pandora could have last reset a millenium ago...kind of turning up her "scary" factor past eleven.

Could, but it's not really implied.

She could be referring to what she would have felt in her previous incarnation when the last system change occurred, she would have seen the horde of magic users rushing in and felt that no one could stand a chance against it, and agreed that that system change was for the best. Now though it seems like the opposite, she feels that mankind has developed conventional weapons that rival or maybe even surpass the kind of destruction and chaos that magic could do, so she feels magic users are at an unfair disadvantage.

[ijuin 572]

9 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Just because gunpowder is not working doesn't mean guns are not working. There are lot of explosive substances (like that red jewel polish from Avalon) which can be used. Or, you can just skip gunpowder and go straight to railgun. Guns are easy. People are complicated. Most fantasy writers don't know enough about physics and chemistry to find change which would render guns useless and people still alive - if it's possible at all, without the mentioned replacement of everything with magic.

In fact, physical laws of our universe seems to work on level of subatomic particles, with no "high-level" exceptions. I don't think anyone is able to predict how to change the basic universe constance to produce observable-by-naked-eye difference which doesn't kill everyone.

The "fungus/microbes that tend to consume refined sulfur that isn't sterilized and hermetically sealed" version from D&D is probably the most plausible way of making gunpowder not work, which means that the adoption of explosives would get delayed until the discovery of nitroglycerin and methods of stabilizing it (dynamite or nitrocellulose/guncotton).

Anyway, as for magic being widely available, it does appear that magical energy is a limited resource. Living beings can generate internal energy to a point, but any "industrial" type uses would have to draw on environmental energy--and there may be minerals or something that contain a relative concentration of magical energy that could thus be consumed like coal. Universal use of magic thus seems likely to deplete the world's magical energy supply. At best such a situation would lead to a limited availability of non-personal magical energy and a forced rollback of industrial usage. In a more dystopian situation, people or animals capable of generating enough energy to be useful but not enough to be powerful combatants may be enslaved as energy sources. Even worse, environmental magical energy might turn out to be vital for life (think of Mako/Lifestream depletion in various locations due to Shinra's activities in Final Fantasy VII).

[mlooney 3,417]

Project X has guns, nukes, magic, and FTL space flight.  Everywhere except where the Elder Gods say one or more don't work.  And they change their minds every so often, just to keep mortals on their toes.

[animalia 64]

You've heard of Dumbass Has A Point, this is Nutjob Has A Point.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

1 hour ago, animalia said:

You've heard of Dumbass Has A Point, this is Nutjob Has A Point.

The Moderator: This kind of remark is not appropriate for these forums. I do not care how it was intended, it comes across as insulting. One warning point.