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The Old Hack

Story Friday April 14, 2017

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Well, nothing like that battle Pandora sort of remembered from her previous life has occurred in recorded history. Maybe you could shoehorn it into the Aryan invasions of the Indus civilization that the Vedas are supposed to chronicle, but there are doubts now that that invasion really happened, at least as depicted in the Vedas.

But with a whole other side of Earth to work with, with dragons and griffins, and werewolves all over the place until Pandora wiped them out, The Shive really doesn't need to fit that into the recorded history of our side of Earth.

And how many wizards, seers, and people with magical affinities are there? Let's see: The Circle of Eight all have at least one spell now. Grace probably doesn't count because, uryuom. Other teenage magic users now include Noah, Rhoda, Catalina, Kitty, and Good Tom. That's a dozen so far. Then there's the adults: Edward, Wolf, Cranium, and Arthur Arthur, and maybe Greg. Tweens (probably) Luke and Dex. Now we're up to twenty.

Moperville is usually supposed to be based on Naperville, which has a population of around 150,000 now. That works out to a ratio of one magic user to to every 7500 people. By a happy coincidence, the current world population is estimated to be about 7.5 billion, so if the Talented are spread evenly, that works out to 20 million. At the simple doubling-every-generation rate, that works out to something like 21 generations or 420 years. We're talking the era of the Three Musketeers, the Thirty Years War, the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan, and the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock.

But that doesn't fit the clothing and the lack of firearms shown back when Adrian's father was alive. After all, to have musketeers one must have muskets. All these problems vanish if it's on the Other Side. Maybe Pandora brought her son to this side to be safer?

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5 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Well, nothing like that battle Pandora sort of remembered from her previous life has occurred in recorded history. Maybe you could shoehorn it into the Aryan invasions of the Indus civilization that the Vedas are supposed to chronicle, but there are doubts now that that invasion really happened, at least as depicted in the Vedas.

Well, any magical elements may have been expunged from all "official" histories in the regular EGS world, given that from the 18th century onward the policy of most governments seems to have been to convince the general population that magic is fictional. Thus, the whole part about the attacking army planning to use fire spells and whatnot would have been covered up.

Hmm, a random thought: what if firearms had been originally developed specifically to substitute for the lost battle magics?

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43 minutes ago, ijuin said:

...the whole part about the attacking army planning to use fire spells and whatnot would have been covered up.

To do that much covering up would have really needed magic, and magic wasn't usable for a long time after The Change. The weirdness of the Moperverse is limited by the premise that it's not vastly different from our world. It can maybe go as far as Men in Black territory, but not into full X-Files/Cthulhu. Or at least so far.

There's also the fact that witches were being hanged or burned in America and Europe until about 300 years ago, and how can you believe in witches if you don't believe in magic? If there was a huge effort to make people believe magic wasn't real, it wasn't working very well, was it?

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41 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

But with a whole other side of Earth to work with, with dragons and griffins, and werewolves all over the place until Pandora wiped them out, The Shive really doesn't need to fit that into the recorded history of our side of Earth.

There were werewolves on EGS side of earth and seems they disappeared ... that MIGHT mean that Pandora eradicated them HERE. Of course, EGS earth might not be our earth ; just because it LOOKS similar doesn't mean it IS. In fact, it is very unlikely to be our earth, because our secret services are much more corrupted.

Also note that the magic reset is supposed to be limited to EGS half of earth. Magic is perfectly ok with being open on the other half of the world, remember?

41 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

By a happy coincidence, the current world population is estimated to be about 7.5 billion, so if the Talented are spread evenly, that works out to 20 million.

Moperville is SUPPOSED to be big anomaly. I think we can safely assume that concentration of magic users in Moperville is above average. On the other hand, I don't think we know all magic users in Moperville.

13 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

There's also the fact that witches were being hanged or burned in America and Europe until about 300 years ago, and how can you believe in witches if you don't believe in magic? If there was a huge effort to make people believe magic wasn't real, it wasn't working very well, was it?

That actually work quite well if what you make people believe is not that magic was never real but just that it's not real anymore. The government cover up had two phases ; in first, it made people believe that magic was evil and that they are on way to completely remove it, in second they made people believe that magic never existed.

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24 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

The government cover up had two phases ; in first, it made people believe that magic was evil and that they are on way to completely remove it, in second they made people believe that magic never existed.

Send for the the ASBs! (Alien Space Bats)

Of course, maybe there are ASBs in the Moperverse, given that uryuom have been living on Earth for a long time. Maybe they are the ASBs of the Moperverse, smoothing things out so they can live in harmony with their new neighbors. After all, there's Lavender, and there was the uryuom trooper in Painted Black. And of course, Minion, The Shive's victim assistant.

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3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... BTW, who did Cain and Seth have their children with?

All the other women around, which would presumably be Lilith. Talk about a shallow gene pool.

To be somewhat less Biblical, there is a hypothesis that states that at one point only circa two to three thousand homo sapiens survived on Earth, in the same general region somewhere in Africa. From there the population started to grow again and spread across Earth. If that hypothesis is correct, we're all descended from these guys. Not a huge gene pool either, really.

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16 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:
16 hours ago, hkmaly said:

The government cover up had two phases ; in first, it made people believe that magic was evil and that they are on way to completely remove it, in second they made people believe that magic never existed.

Send for the the ASBs! (Alien Space Bats)

Of course, maybe there are ASBs in the Moperverse, given that uryuom have been living on Earth for a long time. Maybe they are the ASBs of the Moperverse, smoothing things out so they can live in harmony with their new neighbors. After all, there's Lavender, and there was the uryuom trooper in Painted Black. And of course, Minion, The Shive's victim assistant.

Actually, DGB can be ASB in Moperverse, regardless if they do or don't have actual space bats (technically, Vlad would count, right?).

13 hours ago, The Old Hack said:
17 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... BTW, who did Cain and Seth have their children with?

All the other women around, which would presumably be Lilith. Talk about a shallow gene pool.

Well, according to Genesis 5:4–5 Adam had "sons and daughters", presumably with Eve. That doesn't exactly make it so much better, also it's not clear how long Cain was waiting for his sister to randomly wander around in Nod ... unless, yes, Cain somehow managed to pick up Lilith.

13 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

To be somewhat less Biblical, there is a hypothesis that states that at one point only circa two to three thousand homo sapiens survived on Earth, in the same general region somewhere in Africa. From there the population started to grow again and spread across Earth. If that hypothesis is correct, we're all descended from these guys. Not a huge gene pool either, really.

Luckily, according to another recent hypothesis, we made it better by banging Neanderthals.

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2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

technically, Vlad would count, right?

Considering Vladia doesn't want to ever change forms again, she likely doesn't count.

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If it somehow turns out that Adrian is the father of Mr Pompoms, how would he even begin to discuss the situation with Susan and Dianne?

Ladies, forty-eight years and nine months ago today my girlfriend, a miss Pompoms, told me she was pregnant.  I believed that I was incapable of fathering children so I left her.

Today, I have been informed that I was wrong.  Your father was my son.  And the way I treated his mother and ignored him was a significant part of why he grew to be so awful to women.

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26 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

If it somehow turns out that Adrian is the father of Mr Pompoms, how would he even begin to discuss the situation with Susan and Dianne?

Ladies, forty-eight years and nine months ago today my girlfriend, a miss Pompoms, told me she was pregnant.  I believed that I was incapable of fathering children so I left her.

Today, I have been informed that I was wrong.  Your father was my son.  And the way I treated his mother and ignored him was a significant part of why he grew to be so awful to women.

Is it wrong that I laughed upon reading this

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1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

If it somehow turns out that Adrian is the father of Mr Pompoms, how would he even begin to discuss the situation with Susan and Dianne?

Ladies, forty-eight years and nine months ago today my girlfriend, a miss Pompoms, told me she was pregnant.  I believed that I was incapable of fathering children so I left her.

Today, I have been informed that I was wrong.  Your father was my son.  And the way I treated his mother and ignored him was a significant part of why he grew to be so awful to women.

Hmm...I imagine Diane would be understanding. She wouldn't have a lot of emotional impact tied up in Mr. Pompoms. Susan, on the other hand, would likely have to wrestle with a torrent of feelings. Her emotional side would want to hate him, but her logical side would state that it wasn't his fault, as he thought he was incapable of fathering children. I see her logical side winning out in the end (Susan does tend to listen to her logic more than her emotions) though it might take a while to get there.

Though to be honest, I doubt Adrian would be Mr. Pompoms father. More likely, he would be farther up the ancestral line, as I would imagine he would get into attempting to date and such much earlier in his lifespan. He is hundreds of years old after all.

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4 hours ago, Scotty said:
7 hours ago, hkmaly said:

technically, Vlad would count, right?

Considering Vladia doesn't want to ever change forms again, she likely doesn't count.

I mean, Vlad would count before turning into Vladia ... oh wait. He wasn't working for DGB then.

Well, maybe she changes mind later.

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

If it somehow turns out that Adrian is the father of Mr Pompoms, how would he even begin to discuss the situation with Susan and Dianne?

Ladies, forty-eight years and nine months ago today my girlfriend, a miss Pompoms, told me she was pregnant.  I believed that I was incapable of fathering children so I left her.

Today, I have been informed that I was wrong.  Your father was my son.  And the way I treated his mother and ignored him was a significant part of why he grew to be so awful to women.

Damn that makes sense.

Except ... wait ... is Susan's father really born Mr. Pompoms? Didn't he changed name when he married?

11 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

Though to be honest, I doubt Adrian would be Mr. Pompoms father. More likely, he would be farther up the ancestral line, as I would imagine he would get into attempting to date and such much earlier in his lifespan. He is hundreds of years old after all.

It's not like Susan's father is his FIRST child. The farther up the ancestral line, the weirder is how similar Susan looks to him.

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4 hours ago, Scotty said:

Considering Vladia doesn't want to ever change forms again, she likely doesn't count.

Vladia doesn't want to change forms, but if she can do it to save a life?

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12 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Vladia doesn't want to change forms, but if she can do it to save a life?

There is a very good chance that any attempt to transform could cost Vladia her life.  People in rescue situations are often in positions where they must face some risk to their own life and well being to save another.  But there are limits.  If Vladia dies or maims herself, that doesn't give the first victim any help.

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1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:
1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

Vladia doesn't want to change forms, but if she can do it to save a life?

There is a very good chance that any attempt to transform could cost Vladia her life.  People in rescue situations are often in positions where they must face some risk to their own life and well being to save another.  But there are limits.  If Vladia dies or maims herself, that doesn't give the first victim any help.

There is a very good chance she can transform as easily as Grace now. But she THINKS there is very good chance it will cost her life, which might be effectively the same.

Obviously, there is still at least one opportunity where it would be worth it: to save her OWN life. And in her specific case, there is actually very straightforward situation she can get into where she would be likely to try to transform ... falling from height.

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5 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

If it somehow turns out that Adrian is the father of Mr Pompoms, how would he even begin to discuss the situation with Susan and Dianne?

Ladies, forty-eight years and nine months ago today my girlfriend, a miss Pompoms, told me she was pregnant.  I believed that I was incapable of fathering children so I left her.

Today, I have been informed that I was wrong.  Your father was my son.  And the way I treated his mother and ignored him was a significant part of why he grew to be so awful to women.

I accept this as canon until proven otherwise.  And maybe after that.

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On 4/15/2017 at 11:41 PM, hkmaly said:

... BTW, who did Cain and Seth have their children with?

I used to have a Chick Tract parody version of this essay, probably still have it in a drawer somewhere.  Basically, Cain went to the land of Nod, to the east of Eden, and found a wife there.  Adam and Eve weren't the only people on the planet, they were just the pets of a local diety, Yahweh, who was one among many Elohim dieties who created a great many more people than just that pair.

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4 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

I used to have a Chick Tract parody version of this essay, probably still have it in a drawer somewhere.  Basically, Cain went to the land of Nod, to the east of Eden, and found a wife there.  Adam and Eve weren't the only people on the planet, they were just the pets of a local diety, Yahweh, who was one among many Elohim dieties who created a great many more people than just that pair.

Science has the answer!

http://www.besse.at/sms/descent.html

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4 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:
9 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

I used to have a Chick Tract parody version of this essay, probably still have it in a drawer somewhere.  Basically, Cain went to the land of Nod, to the east of Eden, and found a wife there.  Adam and Eve weren't the only people on the planet, they were just the pets of a local diety, Yahweh, who was one among many Elohim dieties who created a great many more people than just that pair.

Science has the answer!

http://www.besse.at/sms/descent.html

Not only is this version funnier, it's extremely hard to disprove by either science or religion ; because archaeologists have almost zero chance to find something which happened only on one small place (which was later swept by flood, for good measure), and, well, CritterKeeper's link already shown how Bible can't really disprove other people.

... actually, both can be true. It would be hard to draw, but imagine how multiple versions of people created by various gods are gradually mixed into the homo sapiens's ancestor population, turning it into homo sapiens. Only problem is with that "not of Semitic descent" ... because while Jews did what they could to keep themselves separate considering the place they were in (like, they had it harder than Australia natives), I don't think they succeeded. There is significant risk that everyone or almost everyone have some Semitic descent.

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