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Scotty

Story, Friday February 2, 2018

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One seer breaking the secret, one person taught by a seer breaking the secret, one person in the right place with a camera phone happening to see a person taught by a seer do something...

Unless magic itself blocks the spread of knowledge somehow, depending on the behavior of that many widely distributed people is not a reliable option. And we already know how magic itself blocks the spread of knowledge - by doing severe system changes. Depending on that would just mean that Tedd's right and they'd be back with a new batch of seers (around a thousand this time) advising magic on a new change in short order.

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Over one thousand seers...

And Arthur thinks they will all stay quiet...

Oh my.  Wild Speculation...

Lord Tedd was a seer in his world.  Saw the magic reset.  And convinced (or caused) the other seers to remain silent, which is why he is now the most powerful magical being in his world.

The only way to make sure one person does not become too powerful in magic is to make sure many people know how to learn spells and develop their own magical abilities.

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Too many cooks will ruin the pot. Then again, the crowdedness is relative – this is not Singapore, ya know.

52 minutes ago, mlooney said:

And we know that at least one is going to tell.

Mafia manoeuvre we will do then. :demonicduck:

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16 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Over one thousand seers...

And Arthur thinks they will all stay quiet...

No, Arthur obviously does NOT think that.

But he WAS thinking there were only a very few seers - possibly he thought there were just five. In the whole world. (If he thought less than five, he definitely wasn't paying attention.)

Think of the implications of there being only five seers - with two of them in Moperville. That (if it were true) would mean there are only a very few places in the world where magic can quickly start spreading again - a maximum of four places, currently. He's in one, and he can make inquiries through DGB channels to find where Van is, to immediately monitor two of them.

Now that he knows the correct number is likely somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand, he's somewhere in the general vicinity of panic. Maybe not quite there, but close. Because he knows there's no way that a thousand people will all keep quiet about it.

It also means that approximately 995 seers have no prior knowledge of magic, and thus are unlikely to be monitored by their countries' equivalents of DGB. So magic can start erupting at roughly a thousand different places, the large majority of them being unidentifiable until after something happens. Result: most likely, about half of those places will come to DGB's attention by way of YouTube and equivalents. Which is extremely inconsistent with keeping magic secret.

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37 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

It also means that approximately 995 seers have no prior knowledge of magic, and thus are unlikely to be monitored by their countries' equivalents of DGB. So magic can start erupting at roughly a thousand different places, the large majority of them being unidentifiable until after something happens. Result: most likely, about half of those places will come to DGB's attention by way of YouTube and equivalents. Which is extremely inconsistent with keeping magic secret.

Also important: if they do NOT go with a severe system change, the 995-some other seers will not be informed about the existence of magic and the new rule system. Ironically, the best way to slow knowledge of magic from spreading will be to choose to go public. That way at least they will avoid a huge amount of new seers starting to spread the word.

No way to put the genie back in the bottle, but that way they may at least be able to slow it enough to allow them to prepare a little for the coming magocalypse. :icon_eek:

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If, as has been implied, 99% of Seers do not ordinarily become active magic users, then it follows that the great majority of them probably are born to parents who are not themselves Awakened. Certainly what we have seen in EGS so far implies that the normal concentration of Awakened people is around one per hundreds of population (not counting of course Pandora and Voltaire's extra empowering in and around Moperville).

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2 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Also important: if they do NOT go with a severe system change, the 995-some other seers will not be informed about the existence of magic and the new rule system. Ironically, the best way to slow knowledge of magic from spreading will be to choose to go public. That way at least they will avoid a huge amount of new seers starting to spread the word.

No way to put the genie back in the bottle, but that way they may at least be able to slow it enough to allow them to prepare a little for the coming magocalypse. :icon_eek:

Wonder how he's going to explain to his boss that his plan failed?

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Hmm.  Well, I think Tedd's got the nuke, all but by pure luck.  With one in seven million, there would have been a handful of seers all of recorded history, but only now would exposing magic unleash such a torrent of them.

(Makes you wonder more than ever what Magic is - especially in a setting with aliens this doesn't affect.)

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3 minutes ago, WR...S said:

Hmm.  Well, I think Tedd's got the nuke, all but by pure luck.  With one in seven million, there would have been a handful of seers all of recorded history, but only now would exposing magic unleash such a torrent of them.

(Makes you wonder more than ever what Magic is - especially in a setting with aliens this doesn't affect.)

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2335

Well, the revelation was foreshadowed by Heka. He said that Tedd was far from the only one even if Seers are a rarity among rarities.

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If keeping magic secret is futile, then as I said, what of simply giving out the "harmless" stuff like self gender transformation or balls of light or minor telekinesis like candy, and then making anything actually powerful like fireball cost a ridiculous amount of money, time, effort, power and teamwork/organization along with a great deal of rationality?

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Since being a seer is related to having just the right heritage, this revelation gives us a glimpse at how common wizards are as well, as presumably, seers require both parents to be wizards among other things. Though since a vast majority of seers have never used magic, their parents are either not Awakened or are really good at hiding their magic from their children, with them not being Awakened is much more likely as children tend to be inquisitive and have a knack for getting into places their parents don't want them in.

4 hours ago, partner555 said:
6 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Also important: if they do NOT go with a severe system change, the 995-some other seers will not be informed about the existence of magic and the new rule system. Ironically, the best way to slow knowledge of magic from spreading will be to choose to go public. That way at least they will avoid a huge amount of new seers starting to spread the word.

No way to put the genie back in the bottle, but that way they may at least be able to slow it enough to allow them to prepare a little for the coming magocalypse. :icon_eek:

Wonder how he's going to explain to his boss that his plan failed?

"There have been some unforeseen complications"

1 hour ago, wanderingmagus said:

If keeping magic secret is futile, then as I said, what of simply giving out the "harmless" stuff like self gender transformation or balls of light or minor telekinesis like candy, and then making anything actually powerful like fireball cost a ridiculous amount of money, time, effort, power and teamwork/organization along with a great deal of rationality?

Unfortunately, Tedd, Arthur, and Van aren't there to discuss how Magic should change, but to simply discuss whether it should change severely to maintain secrecy or if it should change minimally to prepare for going public. They might be able to suggest things to Magic, but that's not why they are there.

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13 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

"There have been some unforeseen complications"

Unforseen indeed. I doubt Voltaire was prepared for this either.

I wonder what he thinks of what Pandora did? If his plan failed, do you think he'd attribute it to Pandora being so overt in killing Aberrations that Magic threw its hands into the air and gave up any notion of secrecy, or because Tedd wasn't as traumatised as he thought, again, because of Pandora?

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4 minutes ago, partner555 said:
20 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

"There have been some unforeseen complications"

Unforseen indeed. I doubt Voltaire was prepared for this either.

I wonder what he thinks of what Pandora did? If his plan failed, do you think he'd attribute it to Pandora being so overt in killing Aberrations that Magic threw its hands into the air and gave up any notion of secrecy, or because Tedd wasn't as traumatised as he thought, again, because of Pandora?

I imagine he would lay the blame on Tedd not being as traumatized as he thought. Unfortunately, I think he'll benefit from the Unspoken Plan Guarantee. We don't know which outcome he's trying to cause, only that it needs Tedd traumatized (and possibly Arthur now that I think about it. Something bad happened to Arthur or someone he cares about. I wouldn't put it past Voltaire to have arranged that, though again, that's just speculation) and somehow relates to the Immortals and their laws.

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19 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

I imagine he would lay the blame on Tedd not being as traumatized as he thought. Unfortunately, I think he'll benefit from the Unspoken Plan Guarantee. We don't know which outcome he's trying to cause, only that it needs Tedd traumatized (and possibly Arthur now that I think about it. Something bad happened to Arthur or someone he cares about. I wouldn't put it past Voltaire to have arranged that, though again, that's just speculation) and somehow relates to the Immortals and their laws.

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2334

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2254

I think we have a good idea of what he wants. He's frustrated by the limits of Immortals, and clearly wants them gone, or irrelevant. He also definitely wants Magic to change, given he tried to traumatise Tedd who wants Magic to be public. We can see how he intended to achieve the Magic change, though I'm not sure how what he did ties into the "last straw for Immortals" thing since the forced spell casting was up to Pandora and something he couldn't reasonably predict.

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9 minutes ago, partner555 said:

He's frustrated by the limits of Immortals, and clearly wants them gone, or irrelevant.

That's certainly his end goals (provided his end goals aren't a curveball of some sort). It's fitting together the pieces of his plan that's the part that I'm worried about.

10 minutes ago, partner555 said:

He also definitely wants Magic to change, given he tried to traumatise Tedd who wants Magic to be public.

That is the most logical conclusion (especially if Voltaire also tried to traumatize Arthur), but Immortals aren't always logical. He also wanted to fill Tedd with contempt and distrust towards Magic and I'm not sure how that would help push the argument towards severe change (though I'm not sure how that would help minimal change either)

14 minutes ago, partner555 said:

We can see how he intended to achieve the Magic change, though I'm not sure how what he did ties into the "last straw for Immortals" thing since the forced spell casting was up to Pandora and something he couldn't reasonably predict.

It's not too unreasonable, if Voltaire knows certain points of Pandora's history. He would know that she cares deeply about her family and that when a werewolf killed her husband, she influenced events to eradicate them. All he had to do was nudge events to play out in a way that guaranteed that Pandora would have to break Immortal law to save Adrian's life. Then she would want to do something to protect her family from the threat that almost killed Adrian, and since she doesn't the time to carefully influence things to eradicate the threat, she would have to do something big and drastic. Pandora knew about the connection between Immortals after one breaks the Laws and figured out how to use it to cast her spell, so it wouldn't be out of the question for Voltaire to have figured that out.

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3 hours ago, WR...S said:

Hmm.  Well, I think Tedd's got the nuke, all but by pure luck.  With one in seven million, there would have been a handful of seers all of recorded history, but only now would exposing magic unleash such a torrent of them.

(Makes you wonder more than ever what Magic is - especially in a setting with aliens this doesn't affect.)

An excellent question.  Pulling back a bit, we could even surmise about the basic nature of Magic.  For example, is Magic intrinsic?  If not, it it's some kind of alien, Magic might eventually pick up it's toys and leave.  If Magic is intrinsic, tied to Gaia, an emergent property of Human Consciousness, or some such, then as long as you have this kind of population growth, the eventual reveal of Magic was always going to happen, and perhaps that is what has happened in the Magic-rich Universes we know about, just earlier in their timelines.

5 hours ago, partner555 said:
7 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Also important: if they do NOT go with a severe system change, the 995-some other seers will not be informed about the existence of magic and the new rule system. Ironically, the best way to slow knowledge of magic from spreading will be to choose to go public. That way at least they will avoid a huge amount of new seers starting to spread the word.

No way to put the genie back in the bottle, but that way they may at least be able to slow it enough to allow them to prepare a little for the coming magocalypse. :icon_eek:

Wonder how he's going to explain to his boss that his plan failed?

Well, trying to say it was caused because he didn't know about Seers at all would be a start... Boss might point out that they should have planned for in case his plan was flawed or failed for some reason.  You know, I can see Edward being begged to come back.  That whole avoiding Apocalypse thing.

I am more concerned about the fallout for Tedd in this, especially because he is now on Arthur's radar.

1 hour ago, partner555 said:

Unforseen indeed. I doubt Voltaire was prepared for this either.

I wonder what he thinks of what Pandora did? If his plan failed, do you think he'd attribute it to Pandora being so overt in killing Aberrations that Magic threw its hands into the air and gave up any notion of secrecy, or because Tedd wasn't as traumatised as he thought, again, because of Pandora?

As has been mentioned in other posts, Voltaire is frustrated by the limits on Immortals and wants them removed.  We can theorize that he wanted Magic changed severely to limit it's use by humans; I would think that if Tedd were traumatized and distrustful of Magic, he would have argued for limiting Magic.  I don't think Voltaire knew how many Seers there were either.

In the above scenario, if Voltaire argued for Immortals becoming more involved in human affairs, this would seem like a return to Immortals acting like the deities of old pantheons, and perhaps that is what happened in the past, giving rise to mythologies of Gods having direct contact with humans.  He could have argued that humans need guidance...

Ironically, in a world with Magic revealed, it would make more sense to lessen the limits on Immortals, but I can see why Voltaire wouldn't like this.  Immortals may be powerful, but imagine an Immortal with plans of Godhood going up against fully staffed and militarily trained regiments of Magicians prepared to face magical threats; as well it would difficult to impress people that you are a deity if everyone knows about Magic and the bestiary of magical creatures just by looking it up on Wikipedia.

Oh my gosh, youtube videos of DIY magic hacks; magic geeks publishing a magical-themed Make magazine featuring projects you can do with magic crossed with other tech disciplines!

Sorry, got distracted by the Happy Shininess of applying geekness to magic.

 

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6 hours ago, partner555 said:

Wonder how he's going to explain to his boss that his plan failed?

Liefeld: "What happen?"
Arthur: "Someone set up us the bomb. We get signal."
Liefeld: "What!"
Arthur: "Main screen turn on."
Will of Magic: "How are you gentlemen!"
Will of Magic: "All your base are belong to us."
Will of Magic: "You are on the way to destruction."
Liefeld: "What you say!"
Will of Magic: "You have no chance to survive make your time."
Will of Magic: "HA HA HA..."
 

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So, if I follow what Dan says in the commentary, if were three changes in a short period of time, there probably wouldn't be any eligible Seers (unless it took long enough for new seers to be born and grow old enough to use magic)... This would seem to rule out the possibility of consulted Seers having their memory of the consultation suppressed afterward.

...

I'm never quite sure whether to cheer for the starbursts when they're clearly not "really" there, but they are overlaid on the true background rather than replacing it (the tradition is to cheer for special backgrounds, after all). ...Then again, seeing as this is a dream world, maybe it is "real" after all - that look Arthur is giving Ted in panel four could be because of more than just what she said... Sure, why not, I'll go with that idea.

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4 hours ago, partner555 said:

Unforseen indeed. I doubt Voltaire was prepared for this either.

I wonder what he thinks of what Pandora did? If his plan failed, do you think he'd attribute it to Pandora being so overt in killing Aberrations that Magic threw its hands into the air and gave up any notion of secrecy, or because Tedd wasn't as traumatised as he thought, again, because of Pandora?

Let's see here:

Voltaire knew that Tedd was a Seer. And he knew what the Seers second purpose was and it's involvement is the system change.

Voltaire's original attempt to influence Tedd, by killing Elliot failed, however he later realized that just informing Tedd of the system changing might have done the job.

Voltaire's "Plan CM" involved influencing Sirleck into setting up an incident involving vampires and targeting Adrian Raven in a very public place, an incident that was hinted would be "the last straw".

Voltaire knew who Adrian's mother was, so he knew how powerful she'd be, it's quite possible that the spell she used is known by other Immortals as well so Voltaire probably knew about it.

I think Voltaire intended on Pandora using that spell in order to protect her son, if using the connection to force all Immortals to cast that spell wasn't on his list, it was just an unintended side effect but the main goal of forcing Pandora to do something to get reset in a public place and causing the WoM to possibly change the system so far seems to be successful, the only thing that could throw a wrench in this is if Tedd does something unexpected.

 

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