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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!
The Old Hack

Story Monday January 29, 2018

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27 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Tedd was told about the magic change and the existence of the WoM, and then Pandora told her that she was a seer and able to learn the changes and teach others. Elliot had previously mentioned that Tedd could potentially force Magic to compromise, what are the chances that Tedd could have realized that she could potentially be able to reason with the WoM and affect whether or not the system change and would that have been enough to make her ineligible?

 I think the main disqualification factor is knowing you could talk with Magic if it's considering a change. Tedd didn't know it, Arthur didn't know it, and we have no reason to think Van knew it, therefore, all three were eligible.

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7 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

Ahem...

While I definitely sympathize with this attitude, I have to ask: who moderates the moderator?

The attitude itself is a leftover from the days when the forums basically remained unmoderated and other experiences in similar electronic gathering places where the Law of the Jungle would have been a significant improvement on what we had. It is not a very productive attitude, I grant, but it is born from a great deal of cynicism and bitterness and the conviction that certain people are just not worth the trouble to waste civilised behavior on. And whenever I politely disagree with someone only to be met with unthinking insults and stacked arguments, all those bad memories come back to life. The unfortunate truth is that you are stuck with a scarred and bitter cynic for a moderator and that every once in a while the veneer of politeness I have erected to simulate a civilised being will slip.

It is possible that you would be better off with a different moderator and if asked for one I would without hesitation name one or two posters here I deem able to do a superior job. I am certain that the admins would be happy to set a new moderator up. And in all honesty being moderator can be exhausting and thankless. If the regular posters here should ever wish me to step down I would do so with more relief than anything else.

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TOH, you are a wonderful moderator 99% of the time, which is an exceptional proportion, and we are far better off with you than without you. Adding a few helper moderators might reduce the burden on you, give someone to fill in during absences, and give you someone to nudge you on those rare occasions when you do over-react.  I suspect truly replacing you would require several people and would be met with middling success at best.  In other words, we need you, and we appreciate all you do for us!

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9 minutes ago, partner555 said:

 I think the main disqualification factor is knowing you could talk with Magic if it's considering a change. Tedd didn't know it, Arthur didn't know it, and we have no reason to think Van knew it, therefore, all three were eligible.

That's what I mean, with everything Tedd had been told, how close was she to becoming ineligible? If given more time she could have been like "Hey...maybe I can try to convince magic to not change" and then she never gets the chance because that statement made her ineligible.

Given that it's apparently really easy for someone to negate an Immortal's ability to given them a mark, would a stray thought about talking to Magic be enough to negate the second purpose?

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14 hours ago, Haylo said:

Would the magical equivalent of a Dyson sphere be a series of "empowering shelters" laid out along the paths magic follows (does EGS have ley lines?) where magic users can sleep and absorb some usable magic before it finds it's way to a "drain" area like Moperville and gets recycled?

While ambient magic would have currents of flow between 'springs' and 'drains,' I think that flow might be too diffuse. A better plan would likely to build the collectors around either the drains or the springs, where magical energy is going to naturally be more concentrated. As for what the collectors should be, I think spell catalysts refill from the ambient energy. If you could find a spell to transfer energy from a catalyst to another catalyst or a person, then you could set up very large catalysts imbued with the spell to transfer energy out of them as the collectors.

14 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

If all of the energy went into ambient, then any given area could run out of magic if too many people are casting too many spells.  I do picture ambient magic as flowing like water, so that a depleted area will eventually refill, but it would take time.

And the importance of spell catalysts would increase in this scenario, as spell catalysts are capable of storing energy in them. Though without personal energy, once both the stored energy and the ambient energy are spent, the catalyst is useless until it recharges, which places heavier importance on large catalysts (as size is important in determining storage capacity) or multiple catalysts (similar to how some people would carry multiple flintlock pistols to minimize the need of reloading between shots)

14 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

If, on the other hand, ambient magic was sharply curtailed, and all magic came from the spellcaster, then it would be very difficult to become Dreaming and to Awaken, because those who didn't already have a big enough pool of personal magic to cast simple spells with a wand would have to hope training such as ASMA would work for them.

Wands would likely still have an internal energy storage, as there needs to be a way for 'non-talents' to use magic (and eliminating the internal storage would also decrease the usefulness of wands and, by extension, wandmakers), though the mechanism for recharging that storage would probably change if ambient magic was sharply curtailed.

14 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Someone like Sarah, who can get a spell but doesn't have enough personal energy to cast it, would be no better off than someone with no spell at all.

That's not entirely true. As was seen with Dex and the fire monsters, it's possible for an external source, like an Immortal, to pump energy into a person. It's an incredibly risky avenue, but it does give a person with a spell a way to use it to train with it if they lack the personal energy to cast it themselves. Since such a person can use ambient energy(or the energy stored in wands) to train up their magical capability and awaken, I don't see why they could do so with other external sources, outside of the already mentioned risk of letting something pump power into them.

7 hours ago, Stature said:
9 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Of course, he is really old, so he isn't likely to have a long post-Change career. 

Immortal much? Then again, would an Immortal be a Seer? No, right? Right?

Immortals would make poor Seers, at least as far as the second purpose goes. They've been shown to struggle with human concepts such as morality, which would limit the perspective they could give to Magic on how it should change for humans. Though they could be really good at the first purpose. A bigger problem would be that being in charge of a human organization would likely be beyond what "Empower and Guide" would allow. Besides, I doubt the Paranormal Division would be foolish enough to put an Immortal in charge in the first place (they're pretty easy to figure out when on the physical plane if you know what you're looking for, as their magic is completely non-detectable)

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Elliot had previously mentioned that Tedd could potentially force Magic to compromise,

Not exactly. Elliot said that eventually Magic would have to compromise - not with any specific person, but with the reality that even Elliot has a video camera in his pocket. Either Magic must allow magic to be more widely known, or there'll be an annual magic reset.

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56 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

Immortals would make poor Seers, at least as far as the second purpose goes. They've been shown to struggle with human concepts such as morality, which would limit the perspective they could give to Magic on how it should change for humans.

Considering that Edward said "they've started wars just for fun", some of them don't struggle very much with morality. Also, this crisis wasn't really caused by humans but by a couple of Immortals, Pandora and Voltaire. As far as we know, the Will of Magic doesn't affect them at all. And Uryuoms and Uryuom-hybrids? Dan's gone to a lot of trouble to say that their magic isn't the same as human magic. So the Will of Magic from what we've been told so far is just the Will for Humans magic. Noticed something about that limitation? Aberrations by definition have given up humanity, so they shouldn't be governed by the WoM at all.

So, why does the WoM exist at all? Story-wise, it's there to make our heroes and villains more exceptional. As Syndrome said, when everyone is super, no one will be. The "Magic is dangerous and needs to be controlled" seems like a good argument, but all the magical capabilities shown by human-scale beings don't even measure  to the scale of today's mundane weapons--or for that matter, bows and arrows. That unarmored horde of flame-throwing idiots wouldn't have done very well at Agincourt or Carrhae. The problem that Magic had with them was that they put on too much of a show.

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1 hour ago, Don Edwards said:

Not exactly. Elliot said that eventually Magic would have to compromise - not with any specific person, but with the reality that even Elliot has a video camera in his pocket. Either Magic must allow magic to be more widely known, or there'll be an annual magic reset.

True, even still once Tedd learned about the first purpose of being a Seer was, she'd have been in a position to consider following through with that suggestion, teaching Elliot and the rest of the main eight the new system and then they'd be able to go around using it in public and such.

 

Could go as far as telling the public that magic has the potential to change but that there are people that are born with the ability to see those changes and teach others how to use magic in the new system.  But that has the potential of either turning Seers into outlaws to be hunted down and imprisoned, or raise them to celebrity status. Also there's no telling if the WoM could just change seers as well, it's unclear if Seers being immune to the changes was granted by the WoM or if it was a side effect that the WoM can't do anything about except to consult them and the rules for eligibility were created around them not with them.

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21 hours ago, Scotty said:

I don't think the WoM would give the option of minimal changes to accommodate magic's reveal if the amount of available energy was limited or could not support widespread magic use, I mean sure it's possible to use up ambient energy in an area, but supposedly the space whales have been eating excess energy for ages so magic energy must naturally generate somehow so it would truly never run out. And then there's the fact that people generate their own magic energy and using magic just builds their ability to have more energy so it's not like everyone would be draining ambient energy all the time.

My thought was that the "magic is allowed to be well known + minimal changes to the system" option would require restricting magic-users to a certain subset of the population and/or making it a lot harder for people to gain magic. (I was also assuming that people do not actually create new magic, they simply store it in their bodies, much like a wand; in this case people would not be able to replenish their magic if the ambient magic level was too low. As for the Space Whales, magic would need to be like water for them, not food; if they're taking magic in and not returning it later, there would need to be something actively creating magic, in which case my theory gets a little shakey.)

The more I think about the mechanics of how my "magic cycle" would work and how many things that have been established in the comic don't quite fit, the less confident in it I become. However, I still suspect there will be some aspects of the "minimal changes" scenario that Tedd won't like, enough so that even Tedd will question whether it's the right choice, at least for a few panels. 

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10 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

 I suspect truly replacing you would require several people and would be met with middling success at best.  In other words, we need you, and we appreciate all you do for us!

The motion has been seconded.

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20 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Aberrations by definition have given up humanity, so they shouldn't be governed by the WoM at all.

Though Aberrations are by definition no longer human, they are still using the human system of magic for spells and such as it's the magic they had before they gave up their humanity. Presumably they would lose any spells they had before the change, but the WoM wouldn't touch the magic that's sustaining their existence.

Also a thought I just got, WoM might be only changing magic for humans because the way magic works for them is not intrinsic to their nature. For Uryuoms, their transformation magic is intrinsic to their nature (and explicitly something different, yet similar to Earth magic). For Immortals, the way their magic works is intrinsic to what they are. For humans however, magic isn't inherently part of their nature. Potential for magic is intrinsic to humans, but how that magic works isn't. That also fits with why people with hereditary talents wouldn't lose the talents even if they lose their current spells related to the talent. The talent is an intrinsic part of the person.

20 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

So, why does the WoM exist at all? Story-wise, it's there to make our heroes and villains more exceptional.

I think it's less about making the heroes and villains more exceptional and more about making the magic system more exceptional. There are many people that feel that a wide spread magic system would cause it to lose that special spark and become something banal and mundane, which I don't really agree with, though a magic system with a limited pool of use is easier to make it feel special. The WoM is also a semi-logical extension of magic's flair for the dramatic and tendency for trolling. If dramatic flair and humorous pranks matter to magic, then making it sentient isn't too much of a stretch.

20 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

That unarmored horde of flame-throwing idiots wouldn't have done very well at Agincourt or Carrhae. The problem that Magic had with them was that they put on too much of a show.

Pandora's memoir mentioned they rode into battle without weapons, but didn't mention them not having armor. Admittedly, riding into battle without any weapons is rather foolish, though their flame magic might have been enough had magic not changed on them. Fire weaponry can do terrible things to living things and carries a heavy psychological element to it as well.

14 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

I was also assuming that people do not actually create new magic, they simply store it in their bodies, much like a wand; in this case people would not be able to replenish their magic if the ambient magic level was too low. As for the Space Whales, magic would need to be like water for them, not food; if they're taking magic in and not returning it later, there would need to be something actively creating magic, in which case my theory gets a little shakey

If new magical energy was not generated, then depletion of it would be inevitable, regardless of how many magic users there are. The only difference would be how quickly it is depleted. The magic supply is shared with the other half of the Moperverse, which has open magic and presumably a plentiful number of users, which should lead to greater concern with the dam at the Moperville exchange point than it did. On top of that, the fact that animals can sustain enchantments by eating and need to starve themselves to shed enchantments implies that magical energy can be generated by biological processes. That also make sense with sleep being the time of greatest energy regeneration, as the body increases processes related to healing and such while asleep. The ambient energy levels might even be refilled by natural dissipation of magical energy by living beings. In many settings, magic is closely connected with life and it would explain why energy build-ups are harder to deal with in areas of high ambient energy. It's more difficult to dissipate energy when the area is already highly saturated with that energy, similar to how it's difficult to cool down on a hot day. People that don't have to deal with energy build-ups would have greater regulation of their energy generation, so difficulty in dissipation would be much less of a concern.

Though magic depletion is a significant consideration on a short-term scale. Personal energy can be exhausted and ambient magic used up, depriving people of their magic until either personal energy regenerates or the ambient magic refills. Though based on what happened to Nanase and what Agent Wolf said, completely exhausting one's personal energy might be hazardous to one's health for reasons other than not being able to use spells (Another interpretation of that would be that it's not how much of her personal energy supply she expended but simply the total volume of energy she expended that was dangerous).

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1 hour ago, Drasvin said:

If new magical energy was not generated, then depletion of it would be inevitable, regardless of how many magic users there are. The only difference would be how quickly it is depleted. The magic supply is shared with the other half of the Moperverse, which has open magic and presumably a plentiful number of users, which should lead to greater concern with the dam at the Moperville exchange point than it did. On top of that, the fact that animals can sustain enchantments by eating and need to starve themselves to shed enchantments implies that magical energy can be generated by biological processes. That also make sense with sleep being the time of greatest energy regeneration, as the body increases processes related to healing and such while asleep. The ambient energy levels might even be refilled by natural dissipation of magical energy by living beings. In many settings, magic is closely connected with life and it would explain why energy build-ups are harder to deal with in areas of high ambient energy. It's more difficult to dissipate energy when the area is already highly saturated with that energy, similar to how it's difficult to cool down on a hot day. People that don't have to deal with energy build-ups would have greater regulation of their energy generation, so difficulty in dissipation would be much less of a concern.

Though magic depletion is a significant consideration on a short-term scale. Personal energy can be exhausted and ambient magic used up, depriving people of their magic until either personal energy regenerates or the ambient magic refills. Though based on what happened to Nanase and what Agent Wolf said, completely exhausting one's personal energy might be hazardous to one's health for reasons other than not being able to use spells (Another interpretation of that would be that it's not how much of her personal energy supply she expended but simply the total volume of energy she expended that was dangerous).

I'm not sure what you mean about the depletion of magic being inevitable if new magic was not generated. Animals and plants make heavy use of water without ever significantly diminishing the worldwide water supply; water shortages are the result of water moving from one place to another, as well as in some cases rising human demand, not water being destroyed. Why would magic be different?

At any rate, I no longer think my idea fits with what has been revealed so far about magic in the comic; in fact I think your idea the relationship between magic and biological processes makes a lot more sense. It would even mean Greg wasn't so far off the mark as he thought when he referred to the energy he and his students were using in their martial arts as "ki".

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6 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

I'm not sure what you mean about the depletion of magic being inevitable if new magic was not generated. Animals and plants make heavy use of water without ever significantly diminishing the worldwide water supply; water shortages are the result of water moving from one place to another, as well as in some cases rising human demand, not water being destroyed. Why would magic be different?

Sorry, someone had mentioned Larry Niven in the thread, who is notable in Fantasy for  his 'The Magic Goes Away' series and my brain got confused, especially as I tend to conflate the idea of limited magical supply and threats of magical depletion. That said, we've seen cases of ambient magic energy being lowered significantly, both when Nanase and Ellen fought Not-Tengu and when Sarah used her spell to lower level to make the dam safer to remove. If they were simply moving the energy around instead of expending/destroying it, that shouldn't be possible as they are inside the area of high concentration that the energy is flowing towards. There is the possibility of converting the energy into some kind of waste energy, but that would still run risk of depletion of usable magical energy if there isn't some means to refresh the energy, and to someone that doesn't know about or doesn't fully understand the cycle, it would seem like new magic is being generated. To use your water analogy, if someone doesn't understand how the water cycle works, evaporation would seem like water being destroyed by the heat and rain would seem like water being generated from the clouds. Also, if the rate of renewal is less than the rate of use, then shortages and localized depletion could become an issue. Natural processes can generate new fossil fuels from dead things, but only really on a geological timescale.

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6 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

Sorry, someone had mentioned Larry Niven in the thread, who is notable in Fantasy for  his 'The Magic Goes Away' series and my brain got confused, especially as I tend to conflate the idea of limited magical supply and threats of magical depletion. That said, we've seen cases of ambient magic energy being lowered significantly, both when Nanase and Ellen fought Not-Tengu and when Sarah used her spell to lower level to make the dam safer to remove. If they were simply moving the energy around instead of expending/destroying it, that shouldn't be possible as they are inside the area of high concentration that the energy is flowing towards. There is the possibility of converting the energy into some kind of waste energy, but that would still run risk of depletion of usable magical energy if there isn't some means to refresh the energy, and to someone that doesn't know about or doesn't fully understand the cycle, it would seem like new magic is being generated. To use your water analogy, if someone doesn't understand how the water cycle works, evaporation would seem like water being destroyed by the heat and rain would seem like water being generated from the clouds. Also, if the rate of renewal is less than the rate of use, then shortages and localized depletion could become an issue. Natural processes can generate new fossil fuels from dead things, but only really on a geological timescale.

Ah yes. Tom Sewell and I were discussing similar but different ideas of limited magic; his was like Niven's series, while mine was like the Water Cycle. I didn't mention it in those terms, but for my idea to work there would need to be a form of "waste magic" which cannot be used by humans and which over time through some natural process is transformed back into usable magic. And yes, if magic was used faster than it was replenished, there would be shortages; while not quite my original point it boils down to the same thing - if the number of magic users is allowed to increase too high (which under the current system is pretty much inevitable if magic is publicly known) there wouldn't be enough to go around.

 

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My first thought with the dual-world thingy was that magic energy naturally flows in a continuous cycle between the two worlds, and the actual use of magic shoves some of that energy through to the other side... but if that were the case, a situation with magic being commonplace on one side and rare on the other would be untenable: nearly-all the energy would be on the side with little use of magic. Magic would be very easy to use where almost nobody uses it, and very hard to use (due to insufficient energy) where almost everybody uses it. Therefore it would become more common on the one side and less common on the other.

Eventually a rough equilibrium would emerge, where (over time) magic use in the two worlds is approximately equal.

Unless the natural flow is slower in one direction than in the other, so that it naturally builds up on one side...

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10 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

My first thought with the dual-world thingy was that magic energy naturally flows in a continuous cycle between the two worlds, and the actual use of magic shoves some of that energy through to the other side... but if that were the case, a situation with magic being commonplace on one side and rare on the other would be untenable: nearly-all the energy would be on the side with little use of magic. Magic would be very easy to use where almost nobody uses it, and very hard to use (due to insufficient energy) where almost everybody uses it. Therefore it would become more common on the one side and less common on the other.

Eventually a rough equilibrium would emerge, where (over time) magic use in the two worlds is approximately equal.

Unless the natural flow is slower in one direction than in the other, so that it naturally builds up on one side...

I'd say there's an even amount on both side, or there should be if it wasn't for the dam in moperville blocking one of the flows. There are other areas where magic can flow between the halves so it wasn't like the other half would ever run out, but Andrea did say that the area where the flow was blocked had basically become unusable magically.

I had said before that there shouldn't be a finite amount of energy in the world The Whale told Tedd that energy can occur naturally and unnaturally, and considering the Whales feed on the excess energy, if there were no Whales then it would be likely that the world would eventually become saturated. Naturally occuring energy could come from any source, from either specific animals, plants or something geological, or it could occur from all life. Unnaturally occurring energy might be pulling energy from other realities or some sort of spell that alters matter into energy or increased a being's ability to generate energy, the dam would have been an unnatural disruption in the flow of energy.

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On 1/30/2018 at 7:59 AM, Drasvin said:

Immortals would make poor Seers, at least as far as the second purpose goes. They've been shown to struggle with human concepts such as morality, which would limit the perspective they could give to Magic on how it should change for humans.

Their very immortality is likely one source for their difficulty in understanding human norms of ethics and morals--first of all, other than their "resets", or being totally annihilated, it seems that nothing can cause them unrecoverable physical harm. This would almost certainly make them rather cavalier about inflicting less-than-lethal harm upon anybody.

Their longer timelines and magical abilities would probably reduce their estimation of the value of material objects/property as well--they would view non-unique items as replaceable, and wouldn't quite "get" that a house burning down means bankruptcy for its owner for example, nor would they instinctively grasp the progression of "no money = no food = starvation". This would be exacerbated by Immortals' tendency towards holding onto past eras--prior to the mid-19th century, rebuilding a house for example would be mainly a matter of the wood and labor as opposed to a matter of raising several years' worth of income, and the poverty/starvation issue would have been less important when going out and hunting (or getting a cheap homestead in 17th-19th century New World) was an option as opposed to "everything is acquired via purchasing with money" that predominates today.

And as for social/sexual morals, the cycle of Resetting (or the extremely long "lifespans" of those who don't Reset) would probably lead to a de-emphasis on "eternal" social commitments--as with Pandora, a relationship with a Mortal would only last until the Mortal is dead, and it is likely that a relationship between Immortals would only last until one of them Resets--it would be more serial marriage than Eternal Soul Mates. The idea of being obliged or committed to a person or a goal "forever" may not occur to them most of the time.

Finally, as Pandora has stated, Immortals rarely convene in large groups, preferring to interact with each other individually most of the time. This leaves them rather weak on large-group dynamics, especially where social position is determined by something other than mass consensus or "powerful/charismatic dominate because they can".

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15 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

My first thought with the dual-world thingy was that magic energy naturally flows in a continuous cycle between the two worlds, and the actual use of magic shoves some of that energy through to the other side... but if that were the case, a situation with magic being commonplace on one side and rare on the other would be untenable: nearly-all the energy would be on the side with little use of magic. Magic would be very easy to use where almost nobody uses it, and very hard to use (due to insufficient energy) where almost everybody uses it. Therefore it would become more common on the one side and less common on the other.

Eventually a rough equilibrium would emerge, where (over time) magic use in the two worlds is approximately equal.

Unless the natural flow is slower in one direction than in the other, so that it naturally builds up on one side...

I think of it as one side being "lower" than the other -- magic energy will tend to flow "downhill" to that side.

5 hours ago, Scotty said:

but Andrea did say that the area where the flow was blocked had basically become unusable magically.

Not exactly.  She said it was an inconvenience to people who could normally use that wellspring, but there's nothing to say that people can't use their own internal magical energy, or wands, or whatever else they might have there.

1 hour ago, ijuin said:

they would view non-unique items as replaceable, and wouldn't quite "get" that a house burning down means bankruptcy for its owner for example, nor would they instinctively grasp the progression of "no money = no food = starvation". This would be exacerbated by Immortals' tendency towards holding onto past eras--prior to the mid-19th century, rebuilding a house for example would be mainly a matter of the wood and labor as opposed to a matter of raising several years' worth of income, and the poverty/starvation issue would have been less important when going out and hunting (or getting a cheap homestead in 17th-19th century New World) was an option as opposed to "everything is acquired via purchasing with money" that predominates today.

On the contrary, the poor in the Victorian era were much, much more miserable than the poor today.  Getting a homestead was no easy thing to do, and limited to healthy, strong young men who lived in the right part of the right continent.  "Labor" is an easy word to toss around, but the amount of labor that goes into a house, even a simple one, would be prohibitive to the vast majority, not to mention trees/wood being hard to come by in many places.  Immortals who could remember what things were like back then would be well aware that losing one's home or place of business could be disastrous.

1 hour ago, ijuin said:

as with Pandora, a relationship with a Mortal would only last until the Mortal is dead,

On the contrary, Pandora's love has long outlived Blaike, and thoughts of what he would and would not approve of are a major influence on her decision-making.

1 hour ago, ijuin said:

Finally, as Pandora has stated, Immortals rarely convene in large groups, preferring to interact with each other individually most of the time.

But it's possible she's just an introvert....

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4 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Getting a homestead was no easy thing to do, and limited to healthy, strong young men who lived in the right part of the right continent.

This was one reason for the massive migrations to the New World during the late 19th Century. People in Denmark who were trapped in poverty moved to the United States in massive numbers. It is believed that some 300.000 Danes moved to the United States in the years between 1865 and 1914. Given that Denmark had a population of about two and a half million people in 1901, that makes for a very significant percentage of all Danes.

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Just now, CritterKeeper said:

Not exactly.  She said it was an inconvenience to people who could normally use that wellspring, but there's nothing to say that people can't use their own internal magical energy, or wands, or whatever else they might have there.

I was speaking strictly about using the area for things like recharging wands (I remember Dan saying somewhere that wands need to be recharged) or for magic powered constructs to work. if there was anything being used in the area that relied on ambient energy then the blockage would render it useless and maybe it was something that made the area easier to live in? Either way if people are unable to use the wellspring, then there's no reason to stay there, and they'll move on to another wellspring leaving the area a ghost town, or the remaining residents have to rely on nonmagical industries or something as a person's own magic can only go so far.

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3 hours ago, Scotty said:

I was speaking strictly about using the area for things like recharging wands (I remember Dan saying somewhere that wands need to be recharged) or for magic powered constructs to work. if there was anything being used in the area that relied on ambient energy then the blockage would render it useless and maybe it was something that made the area easier to live in? Either way if people are unable to use the wellspring, then there's no reason to stay there, and they'll move on to another wellspring leaving the area a ghost town, or the remaining residents have to rely on nonmagical industries or something as a person's own magic can only go so far.

"This blaster? Dead as a doornail." (points it at ceiling and pulls the trigger)

(shortly thereafter, outside the burning building:) "There is a profound difference between 'insufficient charge' and 'no charge'."

-- from one of the Man-Kzin books

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I'd like to re-iterate that my Arthur theory is that Arthur might be an elf, not an Immortal. The way Dan seems to have set up elf-hood is that elves don't age beyond their early twenties, but they don't reset, either. That would mean that Arthur could be older than most immortals who would have reset themselves (or been reset) one or more times since the last time Magic changed.

Dan has established that magic power can be stored (Tedd's gauntlet, Susan's hair) but I don't think he's made it clear that wands can store power. They could be powered by using ambient magic, and that could depend on mass or surface area, more of one or the other means being able to draw more of the ambient magic power, like being able to pump more water through a larger diameter pipe, or more current through a heavier-gauge wire. Or they could use the power of the person using the wand or staff. Edward seemed to have plenty of power for another shot after he downed Abraham with a very powerful blast. Or they could use either power source. Or some might be enchanted with a sort of magical battery to either give them the ability to store magical energy, or to increase their natural ability to store magic.

Or it just might be possible that Dan hasn't worked out details like this, and doesn't really think it's necessary to do so. Because, magic.

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27 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Dan has established that magic power can be stored (Tedd's gauntlet, Susan's hair) but I don't think he's made it clear that wands can store power. They could be powered by using ambient magic, and that could depend on mass or surface area, more of one or the other means being able to draw more of the ambient magic power, like being able to pump more water through a larger diameter pipe, or more current through a heavier-gauge wire. Or they could use the power of the person using the wand or staff. Edward seemed to have plenty of power for another shot after he downed Abraham with a very powerful blast. Or they could use either power source. Or some might be enchanted with a sort of magical battery to either give them the ability to store magical energy, or to increase their natural ability to store magic.

Or it just might be possible that Dan hasn't worked out details like this, and doesn't really think it's necessary to do so. Because, magic.

I thought for sure it had been established that wands store power, but I'm not sure where to look for confirmation.

At any rate I suspect he has a lot more details about the magic system worked out than he's had a chance to explain in the comic; coming up with rules and figuring out details seems to be something he likes doing.

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