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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!
hkmaly

Story, Monday January 22, 2018

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22 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Tedd's supposedly a Well of Power so in reality the watches should work ONLY for Tedd. Tedd stated that he could ask his dad to test what the whale told him and it was confirmed.

Also considering Edward's supposedly a powerful wizard, if all the watch needed to work was someone with enough of their own energy, the watches should have worked for Edward during his tests right?

The only thing confirmed in the second comic is Moperville has a crazy high level of magic energy.  The comic does not say either way that Ed Verres could/couldn't use Tedd's watches outside Moperville's ambient magic.

And the whale pretty much says the question is one of available energy.  It does imply that a Tedd watch has an energy draw that puts it out of most magic users' reach, however.

But your second comic does confirm one thing for another conversation.  Ed Verres definitely knows Tedd is working with earth-magic and ought to have a good idea of where Tedd is at.. 

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6 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

The only thing confirmed in the second comic is Moperville has a crazy high level of magic energy.  The comic does not say either way that Ed Verres could/couldn't use Tedd's watches outside Moperville's ambient magic.

I would imagine that as part of the testing Edward drove out of Moperville, probably did the tests while he was out of town on business or something which would allow for a number of different locations that Edward may have tested the watches at, either in the US or around the world, I don't think the Whale would have lied when they said the watches wouldn't work anywhere else in the world. If they aren't supposed to work anywhere else, then Edward's tests would be enough to confirm it.

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5 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I would imagine that as part of the testing Edward drove out of Moperville, probably did the tests while he was out of town on business or something which would allow for a number of different locations that Edward may have tested the watches at, either in the US or around the world, I don't think the Whale would have lied when they said the watches wouldn't work anywhere else in the world. If they aren't supposed to work anywhere else, then Edward's tests would be enough to confirm it.

I read that comic and acknowledged the possibility.  But as the rest of the comic makes clear it comes down to energy input, not some other intrinsic limit.

Maybe magical implements can only use their own internal magic supply and cannot draw off the user's energy.   Tedd's watches would have such a vanishingly small supply due to size that they wouldn't operate anywhere else.  In that case, if you could give the watch a magical jumpstart with the users energy, they'd probably work fine.

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1 minute ago, Vorlonagent said:

I read that comic and acknowledged the possibility.  But as the rest of the comic makes clear it comes down to energy input, not some other intrinsic limit.

Maybe magical implements can only use their own internal magic supply and cannot draw off the user's energy.   Tedd's watches would have such a vanishingly small supply due to size that they wouldn't operate anywhere else.  In that case, if you could give the watch a magical jumpstart with the users energy, they'd probably work fine.

I feel that's based on the assumption that Tedd originally made, that the watches worked because people had some energy to use them, but meeting the whale proved that to be a false assumption.

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1 minute ago, Scotty said:

I feel that's based on the assumption that Tedd originally made, that the watches worked because people had some energy to use them, but meeting the whale proved that to be a false assumption.

I'm not sure where in the whale's conversation Tedd's theory was negated.  Everybody does indeed have some magical energy.  The question is where the energy to fuel the spell is coming from. 

QA# 6 has this to say about Tedd's watches and such.  It confirms that users can power a magical implement (including a watch) with their own energy and tells us that Tedd's watches simply have no reserve of energy to draw on.  While I don't have any EGS canon to directly contradict, I have a hard time thinking Tedd's watches would be totally unusable by anybody outside Moperville's magic buildup. 

The whale did speak in absolute terms and the most straightforward interpretation would be "without Moperville's magic buildup, nobody could use Tedd's watches anywhere else in the world, not even competent magic users".  But that leads directly to the idea that the spells contained in a Tedd watch have such an astronomically high energy cost they couldn't be cast, even by said competent magic users.  I have a really hard time accepting that last part, which means I have a hard time accepting the first part.

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32 minutes ago, Scotty said:
42 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

I read that comic and acknowledged the possibility.  But as the rest of the comic makes clear it comes down to energy input, not some other intrinsic limit.

Maybe magical implements can only use their own internal magic supply and cannot draw off the user's energy.   Tedd's watches would have such a vanishingly small supply due to size that they wouldn't operate anywhere else.  In that case, if you could give the watch a magical jumpstart with the users energy, they'd probably work fine.

I feel that's based on the assumption that Tedd originally made, that the watches worked because people had some energy to use them, but meeting the whale proved that to be a false assumption.

The assumption Tedd originally made was that the watches required so little energy that even someone that is incredible magically impaired (as he originally believed himself to be) could use them. This Q&A states that the watches can give someone access to the spell, they just lack the capacity to do anything more than that. All of the energy for the watch's spell has to come from the user and the page after the whale tells Tedd that the watches are too small, it tells him that one of the effects of the build-up is that "spells require less energy"

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My theory is that a person using a magic implement such as a wand or watch *can* feed their personal energy into it, but they would have to know to do so, know HOW to do so, AND have sufficient energy to (in combination with the implement's innate energy, which is near-zero in the case of a watch, and whatever ambient energy the implement can draw on) activate the desired spell that was previously implanted into the implement.

If Tedd made some watches specifically for his father and associates to test, he'd probably set them up with a spell such that that "it's really obvious but non-harmful and short-term" is all the testers get told. That way they CAN'T feed it. (Also, obviously, the watches would have to lack the usual safeguards. So "also, please return or destroy the watches after testing.")

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2 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

I'm not sure where in the whale's conversation Tedd's theory was negated.  Everybody does indeed have some magical energy.  The question is where the energy to fuel the spell is coming from. 

In Power Fantasy, Tedd tells Sarah "The watch is like a wand, it doesn't need much", In There be Whales, The whale tells Tedd "spell catalysts that small should require a lot of energy to use",  If Edward is as powerful as we've been lead to believe, then the watches should have worked for him outside of Moperville right? But it doesn't appear that they did so it's likely that there aren't any wizards powerful enough aside from Seers that would be able to use the watches.

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5 minutes ago, Scotty said:

In Power Fantasy, Tedd tells Sarah "The watch is like a wand, it doesn't need much", In There be Whales, The whale tells Tedd "spell catalysts that small should require a lot of energy to use",  If Edward is as powerful as we've been lead to believe, then the watches should have worked for him outside of Moperville right? But it doesn't appear that they did so it's likely that there aren't any wizards powerful enough aside from Seers that would be able to use the watches.

We don't know if the watches did or didn't work for him.  We only know that Moperville's high magical energy was confirmed.

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1 minute ago, Vorlonagent said:

We don't know if the watches did or didn't work for him.  We only know that Moperville's high magical energy was confirmed.

I imagine part of the testing included the statement of the watches not working anywhere else, not just whether Moperville had high amounts of energy.

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2 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I imagine part of the testing included the statement of the watches not working anywhere else, not just whether Moperville had high amounts of energy.

But nobody is ever quoted as saying Ed Verres couldn't use the watches.  They skip straight to the conclusion (Mopervill has super high magic energy") without telling us how it was confirmed. 

You could be right and Verres couldn't use the watches.  But QA #6 tells us Verres could fuel the watch with his own energy.  If Verres couldn't use the watch, the only possible reason would be that the spell in the watch had such an astronomically high energy cost that Verres couldn't cast it with the entirety of his own energy.

That's where I have a problem.  The implication that watch spells are too energy intensive for a seasoned magic user to cast outside Moperville's super-high magical energy.  If you're OK with that, we can agree to disagree.  If not, then the whale's assertion, "the watches wouldn't work anywhere else" has to be qualified in some way.

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2 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

But nobody is ever quoted as saying Ed Verres couldn't use the watches.  They skip straight to the conclusion (Mopervill has super high magic energy") without telling us how it was confirmed. 

You could be right and Verres couldn't use the watches.  But QA #6 tells us Verres could fuel the watch with his own energy.  If Verres couldn't use the watch, the only possible reason would be that the spell in the watch had such an astronomically high energy cost that Verres couldn't cast it with the entirety of his own energy.

That's where I have a problem.  The implication that watch spells are too energy intensive for a seasoned magic user to cast outside Moperville's super-high magical energy.  If you're OK with that, we can agree to disagree.  If not, then the whale's assertion, "the watches wouldn't work anywhere else" has to be qualified in some way.

I can't believe that the only test that would have been done was to see how much energy was in Moperville, I don't even think Edward would need the watches to find that out. but the conversation with the whale left Tedd with 2 questions that he knew he could get his dad to answer, 1 was the energy level in Moperville, and the other was the usability of the watches. Even if Dan didn't bother telling us the results of one test doesn't mean it wasn't completed.

Tedd's watches were pretty much all transformation based, size changing, gender change, clone forms, etc,  I think the most basic watch he could have given Edward would have been the hair watch, if Edward couldn't power that himself then the watches' power requirements are pretty darned high.

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2 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I can't believe that the only test that would have been done was to see how much energy was in Moperville, I don't even think Edward would need the watches to find that out. but the conversation with the whale left Tedd with 2 questions that he knew he could get his dad to answer, 1 was the energy level in Moperville, and the other was the usability of the watches. Even if Dan didn't bother telling us the results of one test doesn't mean it wasn't completed.

Tedd's watches were pretty much all transformation based, size changing, gender change, clone forms, etc,  I think the most basic watch he could have given Edward would have been the hair watch, if Edward couldn't power that himself then the watches' power requirements are pretty darned high.

Then we can agree to disagree.  I don't buy the watch energy costs as being that hgih, but I don't have any canon to support my opinion.

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7 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

Then we can agree to disagree.  I don't buy the watch energy costs as being that hgih, but I don't have any canon to support my opinion.

Well that Q&A page also stated that materials also make a difference and that a well crafted wand can be more energy efficient than a big staff, so the watches could be considered poor quality and very energy inefficient making even mundane spells cost more energy.

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8 hours ago, Don Edwards said:
On 1/24/2018 at 0:34 AM, hkmaly said:

To be more exact, they wouldn't be able to reproduce watch programming unless they have Seer AND the Seer will be the one doing the testing. It's possible that the testing is done by different division who's members don't have "need to know" about Seers.

I suspect any wand-maker (we don't know that wand-makers are necessarily seers; I'd say the abundance of wands argues against that) could reproduce the watch programming - although they might have to be shown how first.

Researchers by definition have "need to know" about the underlying principles and mechanisms of what they are researching. And if you want rigorous testing, the test designers qualify as researchers - you can't know that you've properly tested edge cases if you don't know where the edges are.

It may be the Uryuom technology unit doing the reproducing. Also note that lot of wands can be copied by wand-copying spells.

8 hours ago, Don Edwards said:
On 1/24/2018 at 2:01 AM, Vorlonagent said:

Ill agree that someone is likely keeping Tedd's status secret from someone else.  It could be Ed Verres holding out on the DGB or the DGB holding out on Verres, or even both.

My guess: Tedd is keeping it secret.

Consider how badly Ed reacts to Tedd in girl-form. Do you suppose Tedd chooses to invite that by routinely being in girl-form while his father's around? And yet quite a lot of Tedd's work is done in girl-form. So for Ed to know about Tedd's magitech experiments, either he'd have to read Tedd's written notes or Tedd would have to make a point of telling him separately.

And if Ed doesn't know, he can't tell DGB.

Edward likely knows more about Tedd's research than Tedd thinks (and yes, that includes reading his notes). Also, Tedd can show him some results not talking about what form he was in when he was working on it. That obviously doesn't mean Edward MUST know everything.

2 hours ago, Scotty said:

Also considering Edward's supposedly a powerful wizard, if all the watch needed to work was someone with enough of their own energy, the watches should have worked for Edward during his tests right?

Edward wasn't necessary testing the watches personally - he could LET them be tested. And probably more thoroughly than just activating them once.

Also, he has experience with wands and may be able to intentionally NOT feeding the watches.

49 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

If Tedd made some watches specifically for his father and associates to test, he'd probably set them up with a spell such that that "it's really obvious but non-harmful and short-term" is all the testers get told. That way they CAN'T feed it. (Also, obviously, the watches would have to lack the usual safeguards. So "also, please return or destroy the watches after testing.")

He could easily EXPLAIN those safeguards.

3 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:
6 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I can't believe that the only test that would have been done was to see how much energy was in Moperville, I don't even think Edward would need the watches to find that out. but the conversation with the whale left Tedd with 2 questions that he knew he could get his dad to answer, 1 was the energy level in Moperville, and the other was the usability of the watches. Even if Dan didn't bother telling us the results of one test doesn't mean it wasn't completed.

Tedd's watches were pretty much all transformation based, size changing, gender change, clone forms, etc,  I think the most basic watch he could have given Edward would have been the hair watch, if Edward couldn't power that himself then the watches' power requirements are pretty darned high.

Then we can agree to disagree.  I don't buy the watch energy costs as being that hgih, but I don't have any canon to support my opinion.

We sort of do. Pandora told SARAH to remove excess magic with her spell. Meaning, Sarah's spell consumes more magic than the watches. Regardless, she IS supposed to be able to cast it close after awakening.

I'm pretty sure the Whale was talking about non-magic user using the watches. Alternatively, I could accept that the watches has so small capacity they are hard to power up with own energy.

 

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4 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Well that Q&A page also stated that materials also make a difference and that a well crafted wand can be more energy efficient than a big staff, so the watches could be considered poor quality and very energy inefficient making even mundane spells cost more energy.

I thought about that.  It would mean Tedd crafted all his watches especially poorly.  That's possible too but theree's no canon either way and I like to think Tedd knows enough about what he's doing to produce average gear.

3 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I'm pretty sure the Whale was talking about non-magic user using the watches. Alternatively, I could accept that the watches has so small capacity they are hard to power up with own energy.

That's how I want to interpret what the whale was saying too.  That Tedd as he is now would not have the energy to use the watches.

But that's not what the whale said.   Scotty is entirely correct about that part.  I just don't like the implications of taking the whale literally and choose not to accept them, even though Scotty has canon evidence on his side that I don't.

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40 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

I thought about that.  It would mean Tedd crafted all his watches especially poorly.  That's possible too but theree's no canon either way and I like to think Tedd knows enough about what he's doing to produce average gear.

They are watches he bought in bulk using the allowance his dad gave him, I never expected them to be good quality to begin with, his glove would have been hand crafted by him, but the watches may not have been modified much, aside from zapping it with his glove.

The watches themselves were probably never actual timepieces but "toy gadget watch" probably implied that they made a noise or something when the button was pressed.

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1 minute ago, Scotty said:

They are watches he bought in bulk using the allowance his dad gave him, I never expected them to be good quality to begin with, his glove would have been hand crafted by him, but the watches may not have been modified much, aside from zapping it with his glove.

The watches themselves were probably never actual timepieces but "toy gadget watch" probably implied that they made a noise or something when the button was pressed.

The question then is what Ted did with them.  Did he use them as-is? 

I can't find the comic but back in the early days there was a badly-written memo from Ed Verres to Tedd that everybody who read it saw as commentary on their lives.  Ed Verres tells us that the note said hewas bringing home enough of the "hard-to-get materials" that Tedd could build a TF Gun 10 times over.  It seems reasonable to assume that Tedd has used those hard-to-get materials in his watches, so while the outside is most definitely "cheap toy watch" the inside could be much better quality work.

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Just now, Vorlonagent said:

I can't find the comic but back in the early days there was a badly-written memo from Ed Verres to Tedd that everybody who read it saw as commentary on their lives.  Ed Verres tells us that the note said hewas bringing home enough of the "hard-to-get materials" that Tedd could build a TF Gun 10 times over.  It seems reasonable to assume that Tedd has used those hard-to-get materials in his watches, so while the outside is most definitely "cheap toy watch" the inside could be much better quality work.

This comic, we know for sure he used enough to repair the original TFG and Tedd built a second backup TFG for Grace's birthday party, other parts were likely used to make both the programming glove for the watches and the Gauntlet, that still leaves some parts left over so who knows if they've been used up yet. I think the most significant part would have been the gems we saw in the glove and gauntlet, which might be the focusing lenses used by the TFG to create the beam, I suspect they'd be capable of holding a high amount of energy which would be evident when Tedd used the Gauntlet, but I doubt he'd smash one of them and use shards in the watches, not sure if that would affect their ability to hold energy.

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15 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

I thought about that.  It would mean Tedd crafted all his watches especially poorly.

No it wouldn't. It would mean that the watches are, overall, of low quality.

Now consider what Tedd was likely to start with. He has more than just one or two watches. He gives them away. And while Mr. V isn't poor, he doesn't show signs of being extremely wealthy, so Tedd probably doesn't have a couple dozen spare $50 watches. Most likely he bought a box of "watches" from the toy department at a cost of noticeably under $5 each - perhaps he found them at a dollar store. Cheap plastic cases on cheap plastic bands that aren't even replaceable.

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15 hours ago, Scotty said:

This comic, we know for sure he used enough to repair the original TFG and Tedd built a second backup TFG for Grace's birthday party, other parts were likely used to make both the programming glove for the watches and the Gauntlet, that still leaves some parts left over so who knows if they've been used up yet. I think the most significant part would have been the gems we saw in the glove and gauntlet, which might be the focusing lenses used by the TFG to create the beam, I suspect they'd be capable of holding a high amount of energy which would be evident when Tedd used the Gauntlet, but I doubt he'd smash one of them and use shards in the watches, not sure if that would affect their ability to hold energy.

That's enough to cast reasonable doubt on the idea that TEdd's watches must be of sufficiently low quality (and thus bad efficiency) as to be unusuable apart from Moperville's high magical energy.  That's all I'm after.

Since there's no canon on this, we're all merely speculating anyway.

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4 hours ago, Don Edwards said:
20 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

I thought about that.  It would mean Tedd crafted all his watches especially poorly.

No it wouldn't. It would mean that the watches are, overall, of low quality.

Now consider what Tedd was likely to start with. He has more than just one or two watches. He gives them away. And while Mr. V isn't poor, he doesn't show signs of being extremely wealthy, so Tedd probably doesn't have a couple dozen spare $50 watches. Most likely he bought a box of "watches" from the toy department at a cost of noticeably under $5 each - perhaps he found them at a dollar store. Cheap plastic cases on cheap plastic bands that aren't even replaceable.

He bought them in bulk. They're toy gadget watches that are meant to be cheap prizes for arcades. He just bought a bunch of them and started sticking magic into them. They're not even functional timepieces, just a plastic button on a plastic or rubber watchstrap. Presumably blank so the arcades could add their own decals to them cheaply.

 

19 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

The question then is what Ted did with them.  Did he use them as-is?

Presumably he used them as-is. His plan was to change the world with them and give everyone magic. A plan with that wide of a scope would require some form of mass manufacture. If he needed to use hard to get components in the watches themselves, it would severely hamper the effectiveness of his plan, especially if those components require government clearance to obtain like most Uryuom tech parts would.

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56 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

He bought them in bulk. They're toy gadget watches that are meant to be cheap prizes for arcades. He just bought a bunch of them and started sticking magic into them. They're not even functional timepieces, just a plastic button on a plastic or rubber watchstrap. Presumably blank so the arcades could add their own decals to them cheaply.

 

Which means the problem started with the watches he bought being simply low quality when he added magic.

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49 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

Presumably he used them as-is. His plan was to change the world with them and give everyone magic. A plan with that wide of a scope would require some form of mass manufacture. If he needed to use hard to get components in the watches themselves, it would severely hamper the effectiveness of his plan, especially if those components require government clearance to obtain like most Uryuom tech parts would.

For the TFG I would expect the majority of the parts would be common electronics and whatever the shell is made of (either plastic or metal), it would mostly be a matter of money that would limit how much of that stuff Tedd could get.

The parts that Tedd would have more difficulty acquiring and would need Edward's help getting would likely be the power source, the emitter that generates the beam and the crystal used to focus the beam.

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50 minutes ago, partner555 said:
1 hour ago, Drasvin said:

He bought them in bulk. They're toy gadget watches that are meant to be cheap prizes for arcades. He just bought a bunch of them and started sticking magic into them. They're not even functional timepieces, just a plastic button on a plastic or rubber watchstrap. Presumably blank so the arcades could add their own decals to them cheaply.

Which means the problem started with the watches he bought being simply low quality when he added magic.

Their quality as toy is unrelated to their quality as wand. Quite likely, if they would actually show time it would interfere with the magic. We know they are not as good as wood, but we don't have ANY idea how bad they are. However, that doesn't matter: the whale was in rush to tell all important points and didn't wanted to elaborate. The Q/A directly states that small catalyst DONT make the spell cost more, they just don't store enough energy to help the caster (or, in case of Tedd's watches, don't store ANY energy at all).

However, there IS mechanism which could make casting the spell outside Moperville with them difficult: timing. Imagine that you need to put the energy into watches EXACTLY in time they need it to work, because they can't store it even for five seconds. They lack not only batteries but also capacitors.

It would probably still be possible for magic user to use them outside Moperville, but he would need to be aware of this quirk and cast carefully.

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