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Scotty

Story, Friday October 27, 2017

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31 minutes ago, hkmaly said:
11 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Hmm, I wonder, as I have before, whether a chimera (genes mixed in a Uryuom egg) who was a mix of human genes but no other species would have any magic powers?

Technically, definitely, as Uryuom eggs works by mag- .... Uryuom power. Usable level, hard to say.

Alternatively, if you meant to ask if human genes containing magic talent will activate in chimera, that might be even more complicated question ...

I would think that if someone took DNA from 2 (or more) humans and put it in an Uryuom egg, the result would still be 100% human. I would also think that magic aptitude wouldn't be affected either, and still be up to chance whether or not the offspring became a wizard or which affinity if any they inherited from the DNA donors. Not sure if someone could have multiple affinities though, haven't really seen anything to suggest it, but there hasn't been anything to suggest it isn't possible either.

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2 hours ago, Scotty said:

I would think that if someone took DNA from 2 (or more) humans and put it in an Uryuom egg, the result would still be 100% human.

No it wouldn't. Humans can't develop in egg. They need to spend several months in womb, consuming nutrients and oxygen from mother. It could be genetically 100% human but it would still be seyunolu.

Also, it's quite likely that if you take DNA from say african person and european person, the child would be able to shapeshift between those two forms. Using, obviously, uryuom power.

2 hours ago, Scotty said:

I would also think that magic aptitude wouldn't be affected either, and still be up to chance whether or not the offspring became a wizard or which affinity if any they inherited from the DNA donors. Not sure if someone could have multiple affinities though, haven't really seen anything to suggest it, but there hasn't been anything to suggest it isn't possible either.

This is closely related to the "how it's possible that there are still people without magical talent left" AKA "failure to understand exponential" problem.

However, it is possible that just the stronger affinity can surface.

Back to chimeras: I don't think the affinity will completely disappear (although we can't rule it out either) but it is possible even person with magic talent needs to get over the uryuom power to connect with it. Obviously, shouldn't be that hard if the uryuom power is just from egg and not supported by DNA at all.

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

No it wouldn't. Humans can't develop in egg. They need to spend several months in womb, consuming nutrients and oxygen from mother. It could be genetically 100% human but it would still be seyunolu.

Also, it's quite likely that if you take DNA from say african person and european person, the child would be able to shapeshift between those two forms. Using, obviously, uryuom power.

They're Lesser Seyunolu, sure, but they wouldn't have Uryuom DNA so how would they have Uryuom Power?  It's possible that the reason Hedge and Guineas could morph was because they had DNA from 2 species that would normally be incompatible with each other, but the egg compensated somehow to make it work. If the DNA was from 2 or more compatible sources, the egg wouldn't likely need to do any extra work.

Also the egg may function much like a womb, maybe nutrients need to be injected on a regular basis for several months before it hatches.

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1 hour ago, Scotty said:

They're Lesser Seyunolu, sure, but they wouldn't have Uryuom DNA so how would they have Uryuom Power?  It's possible that the reason Hedge and Guineas could morph was because they had DNA from 2 species that would normally be incompatible with each other, but the egg compensated somehow to make it work. If the DNA was from 2 or more compatible sources, the egg wouldn't likely need to do any extra work.

The egg technically wouldn't NEED to do any extra work but how hard it's likely to check if it needs to? More likely, the egg works same way no matter how compatible the DNA is. Including morphing.  Which works on Uryuom power.

Regarding how, well, look at mitochondria - they are NOT in DNA, in fact they are separate incompatible symbiotic organisms ... or the infamous Midi-chlorians ... or, obviously, the answer may be "magic", or in this case Uryuom power.

Personally, I would consider existence of Uryuom power mitochondria more likely than some equivalent for human magic, but even THAT can't be ruled out - remember that fairies are NOT human. (On the other hand, magic with flair for drama doing same mistake as Lucas doesn't seem likely ...)

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On ‎10‎/‎29‎/‎2017 at 9:56 PM, hkmaly said:

This is closely related to the "how it's possible that there are still people without magical talent left" AKA "failure to understand exponential" problem.

However, it is possible that just the stronger affinity can surface.

Depending on how inheriting magical talents and wizardry works, whether by genetics or by some nebulous magical bloodline thing, it might be able to avoid the problem.

If by genetics, then the talents/wizardry could be dependent on long-ish sequences that can be shut off if not all of the relevant genes in the sequence are passed on. For a simple example, being a wizard requires have the sequence A_B_C_D_ (Just assuming the 'wizardry on' genes are dominant for simplicity), and a child's parents have AaBbCcDd and aabbccdd, the child could end up with the sequence AabbccDd and no wizardry as a result. Applying the exponential to this, it's certainly possible for many people to have pieces of the sequence, but lack enough of the sequence to actually express wizardry (I'm not sure how probable such a scenario is, as figuring that out would require determining both the length of the sequence.

If by nebulous magical bloodline, in many fantasy stories, the potency of a magical bloodline decreases as more non-magical bloodlines are added, until the point that the magic is diluted out of the bloodline after many generations. So that even if Genghis Khan had a magical talent, most modern people descended from him wouldn't have such a talent due to the magic being diluted out of their lineage. Though that would raise the question of how many generations does it take to make a magical bloodline irrelevant.

On ‎10‎/‎29‎/‎2017 at 11:44 PM, Scotty said:
On ‎10‎/‎29‎/‎2017 at 9:56 PM, hkmaly said:

No it wouldn't. Humans can't develop in egg. They need to spend several months in womb, consuming nutrients and oxygen from mother. It could be genetically 100% human but it would still be seyunolu.

Also, it's quite likely that if you take DNA from say african person and european person, the child would be able to shapeshift between those two forms. Using, obviously, uryuom power.

They're Lesser Seyunolu, sure, but they wouldn't have Uryuom DNA so how would they have Uryuom Power?  It's possible that the reason Hedge and Guineas could morph was because they had DNA from 2 species that would normally be incompatible with each other, but the egg compensated somehow to make it work. If the DNA was from 2 or more compatible sources, the egg wouldn't likely need to do any extra work.

Also the egg may function much like a womb, maybe nutrients need to be injected on a regular basis for several months before it hatches.

If uryuoum eggs are anything like most eggs on earth, they're packed with nutrients and stuff for the baby creature to grow and be born.(That's what the yolk of the egg is. It's embryo food!) The only question how to get the nutrients into the growing embryo. The uryuom egg might alter the embryo (or more simply force it develop in given manner) to ensure it can receive nutrients from the egg.

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2 hours ago, Drasvin said:

If by genetics, then the talents/wizardry could be dependent on long-ish sequences that can be shut off if not all of the relevant genes in the sequence are passed on. For a simple example, being a wizard requires have the sequence A_B_C_D_ (Just assuming the 'wizardry on' genes are dominant for simplicity), and a child's parents have AaBbCcDd and aabbccdd, the child could end up with the sequence AabbccDd and no wizardry as a result. Applying the exponential to this, it's certainly possible for many people to have pieces of the sequence, but lack enough of the sequence to actually express wizardry (I'm not sure how probable such a scenario is, as figuring that out would require determining both the length of the sequence.

If by nebulous magical bloodline, in many fantasy stories, the potency of a magical bloodline decreases as more non-magical bloodlines are added, until the point that the magic is diluted out of the bloodline after many generations. So that even if Genghis Khan had a magical talent, most modern people descended from him wouldn't have such a talent due to the magic being diluted out of their lineage. Though that would raise the question of how many generations does it take to make a magical bloodline irrelevant.

But neither by itself explains how reliable it was in Noriko's family. Sure, if there is just SINGLE sequence of wizard genes AND those genes are recesive, having both parents wizards can still guarantee the child will be wizard, but it would also be close to only way to have wizard child ... including the bootstrap problem of children of elf and human with no wizard genes not having wizard talent. If those genes are dominant, there is no reliability at all.

Problem is that genetics is about mixing: allele will either spread to big part of population or will disappear completely. What magic wants - small but stable population of hereditary magic users - is impossible to do on genetic alone (not counting some sophisticated breeding programme).

Meanwhile, the "nebulous magical bloodline" would be even worse: the moment new magic users stops being produced they will disappear pretty fast.

Of course, with magic which has flair for drama, most likely option is that it cheats ; either it does manipulate fate to keep number of magic users at desired numbers (but that seems to require too much power for EGS magic) or it manipulates conceptions of magic users for same purpose, making the usual probability-based mixing not to apply. Alternatively, in the "not in genes" version, it simply modifies the hidden variable with strength of talent.

Note that interesting possibility would be if awakening changed the probability your children would have talent. Directly in "nebulous magical bloodline" case, in case of genetics maybe AaBbCcDd will change to AABBCCDD after awakening.

BTW: Mitochondria are inherited exclusively from mother ; if mitochondria-like organelles are involved in magic, they must somehow also be inheritable from father (meaning, get from sperm to egg) ... but that makes even more likely they would spread into whole population very quickly. Again, cheating would be required.

Now ... everything would get more complicated when more than just wizards are evaluated. Is Susan's talent something like A_B_C_E_ or more like A_E_F_G_ ? What will happen if talents combine? What about Nanase? She has royal level magic, BUT she doesn't seem to be wizard; is it because her father is not one? Would that mean that A_B_C_ will makes you strong magic user but not wizard as you lack D?

2 hours ago, Drasvin said:
On 10/30/2017 at 5:44 AM, Scotty said:

They're Lesser Seyunolu, sure, but they wouldn't have Uryuom DNA so how would they have Uryuom Power?  It's possible that the reason Hedge and Guineas could morph was because they had DNA from 2 species that would normally be incompatible with each other, but the egg compensated somehow to make it work. If the DNA was from 2 or more compatible sources, the egg wouldn't likely need to do any extra work.

Also the egg may function much like a womb, maybe nutrients need to be injected on a regular basis for several months before it hatches.

If uryuoum eggs are anything like most eggs on earth, they're packed with nutrients and stuff for the baby creature to grow and be born.(That's what the yolk of the egg is. It's embryo food!) The only question how to get the nutrients into the growing embryo. The uryuom egg might alter the embryo (or more simply force it develop in given manner) to ensure it can receive nutrients from the egg.

Of course they are packed with nutrients ... but there is reason why eggs generally hatches in weeks and not months (unless there is some hibernation period involved): you can only pack limited amount there. I think that amount of nutrients required for normal nine month development of human embryo would be quite big.

Now, obviously the uryuom egg might alter the embryo, either just to get the nutrients inside without mother's blood circulation system or even more to speed up the process. But ... that's what I was speaking about: it means that even if only DNA of one species was in the egg, it STILL wouldn't be completely that species, it would be Seyunolu and therefore it's completely normal for it to have Uryuom power.

(I suspect there will be also lot of work with oxygen ; eggs do have pores in shell to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide, but I have a strong suspicion that this mechanism wouldn't be enough to get required amount of oxygen for developing human brain. There is reason why lungs have area between 50 and 75 square METERS - for adult of course, not sure how much it's for newborn but I suspect it's still more than area of egg.)

 

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4 hours ago, Kazzellin said:
On 10/28/2017 at 7:00 AM, Tom Sewell said:

Noah's ponytails have shown no signs of being prehensile like Archie's or Grace's antennae. Sometimes hair is just hair, even in EGS.

I present to you Exhibit A, which would be panel four. https://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=1361

It would be nice if EGS actually supported https ... but no. http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=1361

Yes to "this really can't be hair fairy", however.

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