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Story Monday May 14, 2018

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Shouldn't Elliot or Ellen have picked up a phone by now and called Edward Verres?

"Mr Verres?  It's Elliot/Ellen Dunkle.  Hey, we're at that warehouse where your agency held the Dewitchery Diamond.  You know the one with all the supposedly useless artifacts?"

...

"It's a long story and we'll be glad to tell you everything when you get here.  But for right now?  Two things.  First, the supposedly useless artifacts are suddenly not useless.  And second, we are in a fight and not doing well."

...

"We aren't fighting the Security Guard.  There aren't any warehouse employees here at all."

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Is it weird that the Golem seemed to be begging for mercy there? And the fact that Magus hit it again even after it had been completely drained of power?

Despite the fact that it wanted to hurt people, it was only doing so because it had no idea of how much time had passed and that Uryuoms were no longer against Humans having magic or the library. It might have been possible to eventually repower it and bring it up to speed (once the language barrier had been broken at least) and maybe learn something from it.

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Magus had no idea what the urteronc was saying, though, only that it had attacked and thus needed to be stopped.  A Battle Mage may be trained to finish off any non-sentient foes to prevent them being future threats, although hopefully they take a different tack with sentient foes, including presumably the one(s) who sent the non-sentient golems/robots/summons/etc.

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Just now, CritterKeeper said:

Magus had no idea what the urteronc was saying, though, only that it had attacked and thus needed to be stopped.  A Battle Mage may be trained to finish off any non-sentient foes to prevent them being future threats, although hopefully they take a different tack with sentient foes, including presumably the one(s) who sent the non-sentient golems/robots/summons/etc.

Well Magus certainly didn't think it was necessary to kill Abraham despite Pandora saying he'd be a threat. It remains to be seen how that will play out though as Abraham has yet to arrive.

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Abraham had already been persuaded to not kill Ellen, was surrounded by mages capable of dealing with him, and was submitting to arrest - and thus was no longer an enemy - when Magus declined to assist in killing him.

The golem was apparently incapable of continuing to fight, but that might have been a temporary condition. Never turn your back on a dead enemy, unless you've made sure it's really dead.

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21 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

The golem was apparently incapable of continuing to fight, but that might have been a temporary condition. Never turn your back on a dead enemy, unless you've made sure it's really dead.

And when it is a mechanical enemy, 'dead' is not necessarily merely when it stops moving.

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Yeah. For something like a magical golem, without any knowledge of how to build one I'd consider dismembering a good start, followed by sequestering the parts in separate sealed containers.

Maybe later I'd encounter someone with sufficient knowledge to tell me that such measure are unnecessary... but better unnecessary and done, than necessary and not-done.

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Hmmm... pretty sure "double-tap" was used incorrectly unless it was intentionally misused to convey the pun. After all, landing a killing blow to confirm a kill is more of a coup de grace. Double-tap is more for increasing accuracy of a hit.

 

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoubleTap

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_tap

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CoupDeGrace

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16 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Shouldn't Elliot or Ellen have picked up a phone by now and called Edward Verres?

"Mr Verres?  It's Elliot/Ellen Dunkle.  Hey, we're at that warehouse where your agency held the Dewitchery Diamond.  You know the one with all the supposedly useless artifacts?"

...

"It's a long story and we'll be glad to tell you everything when you get here.  But for right now?  Two things.  First, the supposedly useless artifacts are suddenly not useless.  And second, we are in a fight and not doing well."

...

"We aren't fighting the Security Guard.  There aren't any warehouse employees here at all."

When they really were in fight, there sort of wasn't time for calling Edward. Now, sure, they might want to call Edward now, but they already know Magus doesn't want to be their enemy and it might be better to talk with him before Edward to not cause any misunderstanding.

(And, obviously, there is question if they have their phones.)

Now, remember that the panels with Arthur were flashback, possibly hour or more back. Edward might've already be informed about the magic reset problem and his answer to that first couple of sentences would be "get the hell out of there".

10 hours ago, Drasvin said:

I wonder how well Magus would have faired if the urteronc had been in top fighting form instead of badly damaged.

Probably not that much worse ; seems that the urteronc would used up the power quickly anyway and durability alone is not good long term fight strategy ...

10 hours ago, Scotty said:

It might have been possible to eventually repower it and bring it up to speed (once the language barrier had been broken at least) and maybe learn something from it.

Not if Magus destroyed the memory ... however, maybe it was not ONLY urteronc left? Another urteronc operational would be another reason why to bring that history up ...

9 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Magus had no idea what the urteronc was saying, though, only that it had attacked and thus needed to be stopped.  A Battle Mage may be trained to finish off any non-sentient foes to prevent them being future threats, although hopefully they take a different tack with sentient foes, including presumably the one(s) who sent the non-sentient golems/robots/summons/etc.

I suspect that Battle Mage training doesn't cover the topic of sentience in any detail ; however, he IS likely to deal differently with other humans.

(Dragons themselves might be sentient. I'm sure he's trained to doubletap THEM.)

7 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

And when it is a mechanical enemy, 'dead' is not necessarily merely when it stops moving.

Neither is true for biological enemy. Unless you count stuff like blood circulation, which you probably wouldn't be able to detect, not moving doesn't mean dead.

6 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

Yeah. For something like a magical golem, without any knowledge of how to build one I'd consider dismembering a good start, followed by sequestering the parts in separate sealed containers.

Maybe later I'd encounter someone with sufficient knowledge to tell me that such measure are unnecessary... but better unnecessary and done, than necessary and not-done.

If it's mostly hollow with fragile looking parts connected by cables inside, you disconnect the cables, then put the bigger most fragile looking parts with most cables from them into those separate containers. There is big chance one of them would be power source and another CPU.

If, however, it looks mostly homogeneous, including the parts which were moving, even putting into more containers is unlikely to help and you should try to ensure chemical change of the material (burn it to ashes ... with fluor if oxygen doesn't work).

34 minutes ago, Evilbob said:

Hmmm... pretty sure "double-tap" was used incorrectly unless it was intentionally misused to convey the pun. After all, landing a killing blow to confirm a kill is more of a coup de grace. Double-tap is more for increasing accuracy of a hit.

 

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoubleTap

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_tap

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CoupDeGrace

The usage is not exactly correct, but you can see the idea from the tvtropes page ; sounds quite likely Magus will do such mistake, after all, how did he learned English?

(Unless English is his native language due to alternative universes using same languages ... in that case, yes, he should know better as he was likely TAUGHT this.)

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Neither is true for biological enemy. Unless you count stuff like blood circulation, which you probably wouldn't be able to detect, not moving doesn't mean dead.

That was in fact part of what I counted. Cessation of breath and pulse may usually be considered a reliable indicator of death. As to detection of blood circulation, well, a pulse is usually a requirement for it.

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35 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

That was in fact part of what I counted. Cessation of breath and pulse may usually be considered a reliable indicator of death. As to detection of blood circulation, well, a pulse is usually a requirement for it.

"he's dead, Jim."

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53 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:
2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Neither is true for biological enemy. Unless you count stuff like blood circulation, which you probably wouldn't be able to detect, not moving doesn't mean dead.

That was in fact part of what I counted. Cessation of breath and pulse may usually be considered a reliable indicator of death. As to detection of blood circulation, well, a pulse is usually a requirement for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_syndrome

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/14/waking-morgue-death-janina-kolkiewicz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_animation

And that's for PEOPLE, who are warm-blooded mammals and also the same species as the one checking the pulse.

For biological enemy of unknown species, checking if breath and pulse really ceased might be very hard.

Also, checking breath and pulse can rarely be reliably done at distance, which in the "make sure it's unable to continue fighting" situation is quite important.

17 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

"he's dead, Jim."


You're dead, Jim

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3 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

The usage is not exactly correct, but you can see the idea from the tvtropes page ; sounds quite likely Magus will do such mistake,

In the Heavy Gear game I was in, the squad leader had a small arms specialization called "Double Tap" which allowed him to take 2 shots in one action, with each shot counting as a separate attack meaning the defender would take a -1 to dodge on the second attack. It was great for stacking an extra dodge penalty on a moving or very agile target, but also good in that they were more likely to take out one enemy themselves which would free up another player to focus on another target.

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7 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I believe that the original "He's dead, Jim" was an attempt at humour. To wit, a comment on the absurdity of Dr. McCoy declaring a person dead after a cursory inspection that does not even involve use of a med scanner. Your own post indicates how difficult this can be even for forensic specialists with a lot of time yet McCoy did this all the time.

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26 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:
36 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I believe that the original "He's dead, Jim" was an attempt at humour. To wit, a comment on the absurdity of Dr. McCoy declaring a person dead after a cursory inspection that does not even involve use of a med scanner. Your own post indicates how difficult this can be even for forensic specialists with a lot of time yet McCoy did this all the time.

He was TYPICALLY doing it after using his medical tricorder to check, at least according to this list. But ... it's not what the trope is associated with (tvtropes link warning). And Dr. Bashir doesn't consider tricorder to be reliable at this ...

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18 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

He was TYPICALLY doing it after using his medical tricorder to check, at least according to this list. But ... it's not what the trope is associated with (tvtropes link warning). And Dr. Bashir doesn't consider tricorder to be reliable at this ...

Still. It would have to be an insanely sensitive device to determine it with that kind of certainty so fast. I am with Dr. Bashir, I must admit.

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Declaring a person dead...?

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says, "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence; then a gun shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says, "OK, now what?"

The World's Funniest Joke, according to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_funniest_joke

 

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1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

He was TYPICALLY doing it after using his medical tricorder to check, at least according to this list. But ... it's not what the trope is associated with (tvtropes link warning). And Dr. Bashir doesn't consider tricorder to be reliable at this ...

Still. It would have to be an insanely sensitive device to determine it with that kind of certainty so fast. I am with Dr. Bashir, I must admit.

I would normally be with Dr. Bashir too. But ... considering McCoy also have a pill capable of regenerating kidney in likely around 10 minutes, just randomly in pocket ... I wonder if he didn't steal better-than-23th-century-federation technology somewhere. Or maybe got some god-like powers like Gary Mitchell.

 

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