Grrl Power #565 – Thermal shock knock knock
Sciona can reactivate the portal, but until then they’re trapped in the vault, which is why it was imperative they got the jacks in place right away. Also once the ceiling is down, there’s no empty space to pass through the portal into. Of course the first question anyone might reasonably ask is why isn’t the collapsible ceiling pre-collapsed in the first place? And that’s a good question.
Honestly if I was in charge of the place, that would be my call. The two best reasons I can think of would be the one, no one thought of it. The vault was built before movies and TVs and even adventure novels. They weren’t saturated with all the tropes yet. Plus the Vault is heavily warded against teleportation. It took Scion a long time to figure out a way to bypass them, as will be hinted at on a future page. Two, they could have just been so enamored with the idea of a deathtrap that they figure it was better to let people who could breach the vault do so, then let the array of deathtraps within the Vault trap or kill them, and of course, under normal circumstances, the Vault would have been blaring alarms to the Council and deadly deadly agents would have been dispatched.
The other problem with having the ceiling down in the main vault… uh… lobby area, the antechambers where the actual artifacts are kept would still have open space in them. The reason they started off in the lobby was, as you can see on this page, they need to get into multiple antechambers. If they started off in one antechamber, they’d have to break out of it into the lobby, deal with all the defenses there anyway, before breaking into the other rooms. Plus each antechamber has its own set of defenses unless they’re deactivated from the lobby.
You know, I designed Sciona’s hot/cold drill basically with the knowledge I gained from watching the old D&D cartoon, where Tiamat (whose name I thought was T.M.X. for some reason) used her red and blue dragon head to freeze and heat a door to something and eventually shatter it. Like a dummy, it didn’t occur to me to check if that’s a real thing until I was trying to come up with a title for this page. Obviously with stone, repeatedly expanding and contracting with temperature variations will cause cracks over time. That’s what most of the cracks in anything made out of concrete comes from. (That and roots messing up sidewalks) But with metal, well, it seems to depend on the metal. With some metal that actually makes it stronger. I mean, why else would blacksmiths plunge their glowing hot swords and what have you into a vat of whatever to cool them off only to reheat them again? It’s called cryogenic hardening. Also it helps add carbon to the blade. Still, I’d think that repeatedly heating and cooling almost anything, especially if it was wedged into a wall for instance, and had nowhere to expand, it would eventually become quite detrimental to its overall structural integrity. Plus this stuff regenerates so who knows what the hell kind of metal it is.
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Ice Laser Noise discovered. Now who wishes to convert this to text?
I think I would stick to the classic “ICE LASER NOISE”.
Me.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen comic book science that bad before.
Yea, that scene does treat the laser beams as if they were a physical object that could be frozen and shattered.
Now if it had frozen the mechanism, shattered the mirrors or otherwise prevented the beam from being emitted, then they would have had a clever use of the gadget in hand. But, no, the freeze effect did not even touch the sides of the walls and fell short of the points the laser emerged.
They are fools to trade a plausible scene for a visually spectacular piece of crap.
It takes a couple of seconds to come up with something that retains the science and the visuals. Just have the guy shoot at the mechanisms, but have the weapon form ice as it tracks from one target to the other. With the lasers still being emitted, albeit somewhat refracted.
So that when he strides forwards it is the force of his impact, on the ice, that drives it into the mechanism, breaking it. This can be done with much scattering of laser light, as the mirror and ice shatters, along with sparks and electrical arcing as the electronics are damaged. All rolling onwards as he strides forwards.
So you actually get a significantly more spectacular effect, and do not alienate anyone with science education greater than a chimp.
oh god, that video did lowered my IQ
why would cthillia wear a good coat? did sciona not tell him it was going to get covered in blood? Kind of an asshole move on her part if she didn’t give him a heads up to not wear anything nice.
It’s not the blood she has a problem with, it’s what’s in the next room
Sciona may not have. The fact that she openly murdered an underling indicates that she does not rate high on empathy, so I doubt that informing others, sufficiently in advance, so they can pick their wardrobe would even appear on her radar.
But she’s not stupid, she understands that happy underlings are obedient underlings.
Yea but empathy and intelligence are two separate things. If she is in a mundane situation, without too much distracting her, she could focus on looking at a situation from an underling’s point of view and emulate empathy from behaviours she has observed in the past. But presently she is having to concentrate on a very complicated scheme requiring overcoming many layers of defenses in specific ways.
In fact you can see her missing the mark above where she is micro-managing a henchman who knows full well what she is doing and gets irritated by that. A more empathetic leader would be able to balance her knowledge that the minion knows her role, with the need to double check, and decide that trusting this minion is the better course.
Sciona’s social skills are being pushed here. Despite this not being a socialising environment.
I suspect Cthillia might favor that coat above others because of armor, enchantments and/or other features that come in handy during life threatening adventures.
Thus, wearing the coat to break into the vault sounds like a really good idea if Sciona didn’t warn you that her teleport spell might be a little messy.
Chthilia is female according to WoG.
So the plot thickens… What exactly is Cthillia? Reptilian in nature.. ok… but what about the rest. I mean, eye beams apparently too? My my, she’s one special little butterfly.
If old enough Cthillia may be the cause of the basilisk legends. Either that or she may be descended from or otherwise related to (such as being exposed to the same super-power-origin source) those who were.
Note that I am referring to the basilisk of legend (which causes death by gaze) as opposed to the one in Dungeons and Dragons (which stones people, and not in a Kevin kind of way).
And the other interesting question to that being, is she super in origin or of the more monster in variety…. maybe both? Some interesting connotations to that. Achilles + werewolf = even more super durable werewolf? Heck, and then we have Pixel… Schrodinger’s super as it were.
I suspect that it would be impossible for Achilles to become a werewolf. He certainly could not be infected with a bite, as it would not penetrate his skin. If it slobbered in his mouth or he decided to bite back and eat some of it, then there is a possibility. However this would play out though would purely be down to which route the author chose to follow.
On one paw we have the fact that (to paraphrase from memory) ‘nothing has been shown to harm Achilles, even at a sub-atomic level’. Therefore when the werewolf virus tried to penetrate a cell, in order to propagate both itself and the magical curse, it would fail as even that cell is invulnerable.
On the other paw is the question of whether the virus is harmful. Should it operate in the normal way a virus does (by penetrating a cell) then it inherently is ,regardless of its secondary effects. However this is a magically altered virus, so who knows, it may simply snuggle up to a cell and cast a lycanthropy curse on it?
Clearly the latter option is stretching things though. So I would put my Yorpie Snax on Achilles being immune to lycanthropy. He cannot catch a cold or any kind of disease, nor can he even change his hairstyle.
As GrrlPower lycanthropy is primarily a disease (which also carries a virus) I think it cannot hurt him. Plus, even if the curse did affect him, it may not be able to change him.
So one strange option is that he might become a Typhoid Mary-like carrier of lycanthropy, but without it actually affecting him. I say that for interest, but think it the least likely option. Whilst it would give a story arc to try and find a cure, it is not actually that important as he simply needs to avoid nibbling on people or spitting in their drinks. So it would be a very low-priority mission, and thereby rather dull to cover.
You’re forgetting the other hidden option. Propagation by mating. Achilles having kids with someone otherwise afflicted with lycanthropy would be a much more likely option as he also wouldn’t have anything to fear from any forced outbursts from them. As such, he could very well shrug off the lycanthropy problem while accepting the individual for themselves. So the question then comes off of if his particular condition would be passed on, dumbed down, or mixing the two conditions. Also, is he possibly sterile?
Very good points, all round.
Achilles’s invulnerability does not interfere with his normal biological functions. Cells do still allow oxygen to penetrate, for instance. Likewise waste is still removed after metabolising nutrition, and so on.
As such even invulnerable wrigglers should deliver their payload of genetic material without the power interfering with the process.
Invulnerable lycanthropes would be much more useful on the team than just using Achilles as an indestructible club and missile weapon. He should be encouraged to commence creating the next generation of super-police.
Just keep the bunny girl away from him. He needs to find a girl with decent claws and fangs.
Now there is a specialist requirement for his dating profile.
But I thought Clover didn’t give a …?
For what its worth, quenching metal swords was tricky because making it harder also would make it more brittle so perhaps could still be used to explain how to use that to break something
Very true. The heating process creates stress and weakpoints within the metal. To counter that the metal needs to be cooled SLOWLY. Cool it too quickly and it can case the metal to break.
Sciona’s device obviously cools fast and in a way optimised to cause weakness and breakage rather than the reverse.
case = cause
Cause = Effect
Effect = Chuckle.
Normally you do not blow up vault doors because of the likelihood of damaging the valuables stored beyond them. Sciona seems completely unconcerned that this is a risk, given that she only cites the danger to herself (which would not be as convincing an argument to present to a super villain as ‘we don’t want to destroy the loot’).
So this would support the line that those artifacts are pretty much indestructible unless ‘dropped into Mount Doom’ or ‘soaked in the tears of a thousand angels’ (or whatever is each of their poison).
In a bit of foreshadowing, why do you think Dave created the ‘UNMAKER’?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/697
OMG, one of the most dangerous artefacts can only be destroyed by…
Sydney eating it!
Sydney: “How can something be so deliciously spicy and still taste like butt?”
Maxima: “Shut up and finish your artifact.”
Sydney: “But it’s horrible!”
Maxima: “There are starving people in the world who would be happy to have that arti–and now I’m turning into my mother. Crap.”
That’s a pretty normal reaction to Da Bomb’s Beyond Insanity.
I wonder what Sidney’s tolerance rating is. Assuming that her taste buds haven’t been critically desensitized to spice seeing as she rated Asian cuisine as 3 million Scoville but had a pronounced initial reaction (though admittedly that could be more due to her ADD/ADHD) she’d still have a relatively accurate gauge. Personally knowing folks who regularly go up to 10 and 16 million Scoville and have been desensitized to the lower millions (roughly around what Sidney’s was eating in aforementioned comic) could she maybe handle around 5 or 6 million Scoville?
What? You want 5 or 6 million Sydney’s? The world barely copes with just one!!!
That would be a world I would want to emigrate to!
If one Sydney rejected my advances, there would be no need for me to risk harassing her or engaging in stalker-like behaviour. I need just learn from any errors I made and find another one.
The only trick being to win the heart of a single one fast. I doubt Sydney would remain that way long, even with millions of Sydneys in competition with her.
And there is always the possibility that, amongst the millions, there could be some who liked the idea of emulating Harem and dating in pairs or as a group. Even outside of dating there would be huge geek benefits from teaming up. For instance she could form her own party in any roleplaying or multiplayer game.
And, given her body image issues, the non-dating benefits would probably be the far more appealing. But she is making a list of suitable candidates. I just need to find a way of getting myself inverse-Listed by a group of Sydneys.
Five seems like a possible figure, if she avoids nosebleeds through being inspired by Harem. But one would be fine.
:D
Millions of love interests who can’t be distinguished from one another but will all end up with a unique experience of you? Yeah, that totally isn’t several disasters just waiting to happen.
Even if your dog nose can tell you which you’ve previously spent time with, how do you know which were positive interactions?
Uhh… serial numbers?
Actually, in said world identifying herself would be a very real issue Sydney would have. For instance if she wanted to buy a house or open a bank account. So Sydney would solve the issue herself. Probably involving names, rather than numbers.
Everyone values their own unique identity, even if they look identical to someone else. Theoretically we all have a double out there. But indentical twins face the problem in their own house. Some relish keeping the looks the same, however most will dress differently or otherwise make an effort to make themselves distinguishable as individuals.
So all I would need to do is to pay attention to how Sydney chose to do this.
Names though… that is a serious problem for me. Especially if they chose to keep to the alliterative theme. As such I would be very reliant on spotting other clues. Like the big throbbing vein, in the forehead, if I start snuggling up with the wrong one.
For some reason I was assuming the spontaneous appearance of these 4999999+ clones at the current time, possibility to avoid the potential of divergent personalities emerging. If you have a favourite Sydney then you’re back to square one, after all.
Were she to have time to naturally settle into a system, that would simplify things greatly
Your suggestion that she keep the name alliteration would be less helpful, as you say, but it would be a lot of fun. Perhaps consider it for an “Inside Yorp’s Dating Simulator” subseries of Grrl Power After Dark.
Well if we were in a pre-existing relationship before the cloning then they would all have the memories and the emotional attachment. So they would all be my girlfriend.
As such the solution would be to replicate the cloning process for myself. I would just be sure to try and tweak it to ensure I had a group mind (like Harem). Otherwise I am pretty sure all my clones would start to kill off the rivals. Nobody gets to steal my girlfriend!
I thought she was saying that they’d advertised 3 million as an optional extra to add in but we can safely say that there is most certainly extract of some sort already in there. We can probably also assume that the meal is at least close to the million mark, given how straight up chocolate coated Ghosts (averaging about 800K) still register as an enjoyable prospect, not an excessively painful one.
It would hurt but I’d consider adding 3 million to my own meals if it were just a drop. I did, after all, ask around to see if I could make Yorp’s curry.
Long story short, the police said “no”.
Aww.
*ears droop*
Okay… I know she has blood magic as her focus… but surely in a world with supertech and aliens and supernaturals working together grabbing black market cryobeams and lasers would have been easier than scratch building a blood-powered laser/ice – beam drill?
Don’t forget that the world is limited to Earth technology, for the most part. Just like Dabbler and her attitude towards ‘no sharing technology with humans’, I imagine there will be strict regulations prohibiting others doing so as well. Meaning that it would be harder for Sciona to get ‘off-the-shelf’ stuff in general. She would need to go through the black market, to avoid the regulation and control of off-world technology. Which boosts the cost (and risk) associated with every item.
Plus we should not assume that every piece of super technology we can imagine is sitting on a galactic supermarket shelf. Not all such will have been developed and the dangerous ones might be carefully restricted even off-world.
As such Sciona may have only been able to source relatively weak components, which needed boosting to get the necessary power for the task at paw. Hence needing to incorporate her blood magic to power it.
Not to mention, Sci-fright was supposed to be dead, at least as far as The Council was concerned, and if they heard about someone making inquiries to that specific sort of tech from OffWorlders (description of individual may or may not known) would make them start making inquires of their own
Not to mention the void left, above the ceiling (where it was before it descended). Which would either be devoid of defenses or need doubling up on all the defenses in the chamber below.
*busy so doesn’t read comments first*
I was a blacksmith at the Ren Faire. I was told NOT to put my metal in water until it was done- it hardens it, and makes it more difficult to work with. So only do that at the end, and don’t do it too much, because the harder the metal is, the easier it is to break it. Keeps a blade better, but more fragile. Trade defense for offense, basically.
That’s why the damascus smith that was there told me how he did his- two metals. One soft, one hard. Thin compounded layers. So it keeps a blade really well and can’t break. The wood pattern in damascus is due to the acid dip he uses dissolving the metals at different rates.
Samurai swords also combine a hard steel cutting edge and a softer steel core in order to be both sharp and flexible when used.
You are leading an interesting life, and building up some esoteric skills.
Mind you I do have proficiency in bows and laser weaponry, plus am now becoming a master kitten herder.
Whole lotta pounding going on there, repeated folding of iron and steel. Time for a nice gas forge and power hammer, IMHO. Otherwise you’ll have arms like trees.
All well and good if perusing a career as a modern blacksmith. But if working at a renaissance fair, that would be a bit out of place.
I am still trying to come to terms with those actually existing. I thought they were a product of TV land. Obviously some must exist somewhere, otherwise they would not be a feature of pop culture. But to find that real people actually go to and/or work at them…
*head swirling*
Mind you I do have ‘stay with a Japanese family’ on my ‘list of things to do before I die’. It would be nice to see if they do actually go to temple fairs all dressed up in traditional garb. It does happen in many animes, but how much does that reflect normal life?
Obviously it would be possible to do the tourist thing and book a holiday to one of the festivals. But it is far better to have locals showing you the genuine experience, rather than being dragged round by a tour guide.
As Wyrmil is kinda wormy, maybe his nemesis will be Vance? If he breaks down into a big pile of worms, that is. Whereas if he starts breathing fire, it is probably Vance who will find himself nemesised..
maybe Dave means wormy as in another word for dragon
No, Earth Worm Jim type wormy, not wyrmy, and we did see Wrymil with ‘wormy-like’ arms when setting up the jacks
That was my intended implication from mentioning “fire breathing”. A characteristic more normally associated with dragons, rather than earth worms.
Never met Jim then :P
Here’s an idea to save Lia’s favourite jacket: take it off, take it all off, we won’t mind
Heh. Curious to see what human characteristics she may have, I see.
Hopefully human saliva. It’s a wonderful detergent.
I am pleased she doesn’t have breasts. Reptile females don’t have them (Oblivion/Skyrim argonians nonwithstanding).
Congratulations on keeping the consistency up DaveB. These characters all look great in the new style. I have not even thought about it in weeks, as it blends in with their previous looks seamlessly.
Plus you have done a nice job on all the textures. From the heating and freezing metal through the skin textures for Wyrmil to the cloth of Cithillia’s favourite jacket You get a nice blood-soaked feel to the latter two too.
wonder who comes after you if you do transport planar tech to share with earth.
if they are bad enough to keep the bad guys from doing it they must be pretty doggone nasty. seems the cure for inter-dimensional criminals is to set the critters that keep them from breaking really strong taboos after them.
Where there are prohibitions there will be smugglers. But this is provided that the returns are sufficient to justify the risks. The average human (or even human organisation) is unlikely to have much to offer that would be of value to a member of the intergalactic community. What they dc want they can get just as easily with legal items.
There is no need to supply super-tech items when shiny beads will do the trick. Oh, humans call them diamonds, rubies and so on. But just scoop them up when on a diamond beach or abandoned ruby-cobbled road. Just avoid the bigger ones, or giving out too many, as those activities will attract too much attention.
Destroying the human economy would harm the space-sex tourism industry. In which case it is not the Twilight Council you need worry about, but the Galactic Mafia!
(OK one and the same thing, in some factions, but technically distinct as it would not include all of the Council. But, in any event, most factions would be pissed off to find their shiny beads devalued.)
Of course, with the advent of supers, there will be a new wave of potential products and services which could tempt galactic crooks to break any embargo. Which would probably require the involvement of our heroines, in sorting out (or preventing) any problems that occur on the human side.
Cthillia is a female?
Yes. For quite a long time.
Don’t stare at her though. That could be detrimental to your life.
Ice laser – :)
Wonder how many know that if you want something REALLY cold, lasers are the goto tool?
https://www.rp-photonics.com/laser_cooling.html
https://www.rp-photonics.com/optical_molasses.html
In a simple one-dimensional version, an optical molasses is made with two counterpropagating laser beams, the frequency of which is tuned slightly below an atomic absorption resonance. As a result, a motion of an atom (or ion) in the direction of one of the beams will lead to a Doppler shift so that the absorption rate for the counterpropagating beam is increased, whereas the absorption rate for the opposite laser beam is reduced. Effectively there is a dissipative light force which is always directed opposite to the motion and therefore serves to reduce that motion.
Me me!
*holds up paw eagerly*
And I know all about molasses too. It is yummy and it comes from Canada-land. They have mounties, and their heads flap open when they speak. They are very nice and polite.
Fairly sure you are confusing ‘molasses’ with ‘maple-syrup’, one comes from sugarcane the other a tree
Yea, I realised that after. But it is actually mainly consumed in the US and Canada-land, so I was partly right.
Interesting that both the eye laser and death gaze are centered around Cthilia’a left eye. Is that a matter of personal preference/drawing style, or are those powers are specific to her left eye?
Maybe her right eye does other effects? A resurrection gaze and freezing laser perhaps?
Ooh ooh, it could also turn stuff into fruit?
“You call that a knife now this is a… melon? What the f…?”
Blacksmiths don’t really dunk red hot blades into water, they use oil. Cause the water will cool the metal too fast, and cause cracking and faults and issues in the structure of the metal. However, there is some method, i remember seeing in the news, about using nitrogen to cool a metal so much that the material almost crystalizes, as the atoms reorganize into a neater shape…makes the blades super hardened, but also a lot more little. Great for slicing, not so much for chopping.
Nobody expects the Machina Imposition.
…Is Cthillia Sparky Sparky Boom Man?
+1
Seeing Sciona referred to as a she is really confusing since she has no feminine traits in her appearance. I know the author can do whatever he wants since it’s his comic but that doesn’t make it easier to keep organized in my head.
Nevermind. I see it a little bit now in the upper half of her head. Anyone else wish there was a way to delete comments?
Mother Tiamat!?
I’m a Daughter of Tiamat.