Grrl Power #569 – Gore tunnel loop hole
Sciona must talk a good game. That or she was a lot nicer before she got most of her head chopped off. Also we don’t know how long any of these people have known Sciona, who seems to have been around for a while. At least longer than a regular human anyway.
She is exploiting a property of the field here, which is that it kills anything that passes through it. The field is a pipe, not a solid volume of energy, since non-living material can’t pass through it, it would knock the artifacts out when activated. So presumably you could achieve the same result by sticking your arm down a snake’s throat and wearing it like an opera glove, or by taping hamsters up and down both sides of your arm. Normally the whole vault is shielded against teleportation and portals, so Opal for instance couldn’t reach in there, but whatever Sciona did to slip her blood portal in through the cracks disrupted the teleportation wards, which is how Deus et al got in.
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Would anyone really miss Wyrmil if he doesn’t survive?
Depends on what all he’s guilty of, I suppose.
Mrs Wyrmil and his baby wyrmlings?
Wyrm’s mom?
hermin the wyrmil
I think Wyrmil’s still alive. There’s only so many times you can treat your minions as disposable before no one wants to work for you any more, for one thing. For another, that being the case, if it really were as simple as using a snake like an opera glove, Sciona would have done so whether she gave half a shit about her minions or no. Therefore, it’s logical to assume that there is something about Wyrmil’s body specifically that is blocking the field–say, that its fighting a monstrous healing factor.
I dunno. The world has an ample supply of greedy and stupid people to hench for charismatic monsters.
Logically deduced and argued. There is a broad consensus for the various elements you stated. With some counter opinion..
True. But the ones on this team are the immediate concern and the only ones who matched those characteristics are already dead (or apparently dead, but likely to feel better soon). Reputation is important though, even with a world full of mugs. They may be swayed into signing up, but if they keep hearing folks saying that they are not likely to make it to the end of the week, their loyalty could not be counted upon.
Bearing in mind that it is all too easy for someone in a team to betray them. Sciona has managed to get on the top of the ‘most wanted’ list for two of the most powerful organisations on the planet. You can bet that (on the supernatural side of the Veil) there will be a substantial reward offered for information on her whereabouts or plans.
Greedy and stupid cuts both ways.
… unless, of course, Sciona is one of those super-deep undercover goodguys who is specifically teaming up with other major villains so she can off them.
Well I don’t know if she is necessarily even deep. She is opposed to the Twilight Council, and (although it has been portrayed as just a means to get them to turn off the magical internet) her only known policy was to bring down the Veil.
As there are some readers who consider that to be preferable, to having something that can conceal monsters, as they prey on humans, they would consider that to be a righteous goal. Provided they also consider Archon to be in cahoots with the ‘evil’ monsters maintaining the Veil, any actions against them would be viewed as justifiable.
Offing Cooter was a service to humanity, and here she is liberating evil artefacts from the possession of ‘evil’ monsters. Sciona, the ‘freedom fighter’.
Now we just need her backstory to involve a human lover who was killed by a vampire.
Sciona really is scum.
I don’t know what Wyrmil’s crimes are/were, but what Sciona’s done just onscreen is appalling.
Absolutely correct. It is a shocking action to take, and even hardened monsters will turn on someone who murders a core team member, without justification. Especially if you recall that Cthillia has just threatened Sciona with “… a face full of death ray!”
But we have seen that Scthillia plays a deep game and has planned out this robbery carefully. Inciting her henchmen to revolt is unlikely to be her aim here, so I am sure the true situation will reveal itself promptly.
Note that Sciona has been very shrewd here, once you see how the next scene plays out (if it goes the way the community is expecting). Deus caught her flat footed, and put her at a severe disadvantage. Sciona knows sod all about Deus, his team, or their capabilities.
Something a mastermind schemer, like herself hates. She cannot risk a confrontation with him. And she slipped up by letting the fact that she was rattled by that show.
So Sciona has now chosen a shocking path to make it clear to Deus that she is as ruthless as anybody he has encountered!
OK she has not gained the upper hand, with this act. But the purpose is not to punish Wyrmil, as he has done nothing wrong (to Sciona). It is sending a message to Deus. “Don’t fuck with me!”
… so the whole premise is that they didn’t have a lot of media to learn from when they made this, right?
But didn’t they?
Aliens helped. There are definitely alien otaku. I’ve seen them!
When this was built, media hadn’t been invented by Obama yet, and the last time it was even accessed was when Reagan was still President (that would be 1981 for those who don’t know)
If Wyrmil is dead from this, Deus is probably going to make fun of her for being too hasty at sacrificing her minions.
Yea, presumably she is counting on him surviving this. If he does not then she will have a serious problem getting any more artefacts. Which is doubtless one of the reasons why she made sure her chosen artefact was the one she grabbed. Maybe the sheer power in her hands will stop an outright rebellion, out of fear.
However that will be countered by Deus and his team grabbing their artefacts and not having any limits. So the balance of power will shift quickly and irrevocably his way. And the Henchmen and Minions Union would not reproach any of Sciona’s team for swapping sides, given her behaviour.
Sciona will be putting a fierce face on it, but inside she is praying to the dark old ones that Wyrmil is tough enough to survive.
You realize, since this works, all she needed to do was make a tunnel of flowing blood, right? She is a blood mage who has collected a lot of blood. Kind of like one of those CNC Waterjet cutting machines. Pretty simple.
Of course, this may be some sort of power play or show of force, so who knows.
It certainly falls in the latter, which could on its own account for Sciona’s action. Therefore your idea is an extremely good one. Which is compatible with the author’s blog.
There is an alternative possibility though, namely that the artefact would simply kill the blood cells as fast as they were fired at it. Which would be working on the assumption that Wyrmil’s cells (or a hypothetical colony of worms that form his body) would not die instantaneously, because he is so tough. Giving Sciona the precious moments to bypass the most dangerous part of the field.
But that still leaves Sciona’s hand exposed on the other side of the Wyrmil tunnel, where the blood surrounding it is presumably affording it some protection. There are a ways of justifying this. But your power play version is simpler than those. Which lends it credence.
But what if she had collected Wyrmil’s blood beforehand to do this very thing? She didn’t hesitate when taking other team members blood.
On a different note, does a vampire count as “living” to these fields? Or would it not let them through at all?
Oh I am sure she would have a sample or even a quantity. But we have seen no vial nor bottle of the red stuff.
As you say, Sciona does not hesitate to take blood. So I doubt she would be shy about using it.
Dangit, you didn’t make the argument I thought you’d make. So, I’ll make it for you.
Wyrmil doesn’t seem to have any blood. Look at Sciona’s fist and sleeve. The only seemingly wet stuff I see is the tendrils of blood she’s using to drill through Wyrmil. Her hand is very clean for just penetrating someones chest.
Ahh, but Sciona is contaminating the process rendering it very hard to use normal judgement criteria. All the visible blood is being animated, so is not behaving the way a forensic scientist would expect. If you look at the previous two panels you can see her drawing her own blood and animating it.
In the final panel though there is a lot more again. We have not way of determining if the excess is just her drawing significantly more of her own blood, or if she is using the same magic to also control Wyrmil’s blood.
Whilst, of course, acknowledging that he may indeed not actually have any blood.
We can look for clues though, and the key one is that, near to the exit wound, there are a lot of things that look like muscles, tendons or other fairly typical body parts, similar to those we might expect to see in a human.
Possibly the animated blood is just forming structures which end up looking like this, but that seems an unlikely option. So if we go with the more likely one, all of those body parts look like they are inherently bloody (like human muscles). We do not, for instance, see any bits in Wyrmil tones, when examining the presumed ‘internal organs’.
To give extra support to this we can see that the tones match the inside of his mouth. He does have a weird tongue, but the mouth walls look like they are blood-bearing.
Duck season!! Fire!!!
personally, i think that that would NOT work, because to manipulate the blood, she has to put some sort of essence of HERSELF into it… and in most magical systems i’m familiar with, that would create a bond between the blood and her that other magic would also affect… therefore, when the breaching charge made of blood touches the force-field, and it gets killed, it would also kill HER!!!… whereas if she shoves Wyrmil thru it: HE dies, and when she makes a tunnel thru HIM, SHE is not touching the force-field, therefore she LIVES!!
If that theory is true, perhaps many mages were sacrificed to make all these fields.
They were likely Bothans.
A guess: it was originally her plan to get the Regenerator first, specifically so she could re-use Wyrmil or Coot as an ‘entrance tunnel’ as needed. But since Deus showed up, her plans have changed.
Hmm, wait. If only living matter can got through the barrier, shouldn’t Wyrmil’s bandolier gotten caught or blocked or something?
That… has already been speculated on, in the previous two pages of comments
And all this work could have been replaced with a baseball bat.
so is no one going to mention that wyrmil’s belt is passing through the field that blocks all non living things and kills living things?
Just like no one is going to mention that someone asked that damn question just two fucking questions above… oh wait, someone did mention that, oops!
Hey hey, that bandoleer might be alive. You never know. It could be one of those sentient magic objects that produce unlimited bullets with a will check every day to see if it wrests control of your body from you.
Was Wyrmil bald just so people wouldn’t ask how dead hair was getting through?
I gotta ask, is Yorp Dave’s comment manager? I’m genuinely curious after reading this from the getgo
Yorp is my alter ego.
Nope, Yorp, other than being lil Joshu‘s counter-ego, is simply a long-standing reader and super-fan, if you had been reading ‘from the getgo’ you should have known that
I can’t help but think, given the criteria, that the most simple solution would be to hollow out a fresh-cut and de-barked tree section: hold log-ring up to field so that the living xylem penetrates the field, and reach through the sizable hole to retrieve the items.
You and I had a similar idea.
Bring me… a shrubbery.
I’ve just realized it this Forcefield could literally be defeated with a Christmas wreath, As plants are living biological material that could be killed without compromising the inner circle that you could stick your arm through and grab whatever you wanted
The author’s blog does explore some options:
Do note the presumably though. Dave is not giving away any spoilers, so this is just as speculative as our own ideas.
It is worth noting though that anything weak, like plant leaves or hamsters, would probably be killed very easily. As soon as it is dead it would then be repelled by the other aspect of the field.
Thus the trick would be to use living matter which is tough enough not to die instantly. Were he around Achilles would have no difficulty picking up every artefact here, given his absolute invulnerability to any harm.
I have to ask, does anyone have any idea how the field determines if something is alive or not?
Also any ideas on how it it kills?
Is it mererly scanning for certain molocules or elements common in biology?
Or is it scanning for a spirit or life force?
As for how it kills, given the cracks on wyrm’s skin,
I would guess instant dehydration followed by fossilization.
Magic.
Maybe ultra-technology.
With either the effects under discussion are so much in advance of our own, that I doubt it would rely on anything as fallible as specific molecules or elements. Especially given the vast range of life we have seen represented in the council. Organic tests would pick up the humanoid races, but would not detect a suit of living armour, for example.
Could you really classify a suit of “living” armour as living though?
I could, yes. Others might not.
I deliberately chose an extreme. But consider a planet that has evolved silicon based life. Which is entirely possible, in theory. Their entire planet’s eco system would be closer to a computer, than us, in chemical and biological terms.
Yet they might otherwise behave very much like animals, plants and even people.
And if they used carbon-based computers, then we would have a nice symmetry.
So what parameters would the spell use to include a suit of armour within the same category os living flesh?
I think with magic, “living” can be your parameter. Your definition is the platonic Form of life.
Nicely put. Whilst on the technology side do bear in mind that I specified “ultra-technology”, in order to imply something vastly beyond our current capabilities. Therefore you are doing something equivalent to asking a person in the dark ages just ‘how do you think we would be able to get to the moon?’
About the closest she might reasonably come would be to suggest ‘using a ship that can fly’, which is not even close, other than as an analogy. Essentially the things that get used include components that have not even been thought of.
Mind you we do have one advantage, in that is we have a huge body of science fiction. Some of which may have gotten close or even hit the nail on the head. And maybe the dark age man had seen a rocket (the mongols did kindly put on open air demonstrations for ignorant Europeans, when they came visiting) and could actually say ‘by using something like that’.
Most importantly do note that the definition of life is both highly variable and in much dispute. Therefore ultimately there may be various different solutions. Not to the same problem, but because each is operating to match different criteria. If a society does not consider virtual life forms to be ‘alive’ then their ‘life detector’ will not consider that.
But one aspect that a broad-spectrum life detector may include (as part of a complex package of sensors, each looking for different cues) is anything which disrupts entropy in a particular manner. Because that is one common characteristic of ‘life’ versus ‘not life’.
One which may, depending on implementation, also detect ‘living armour’ and a ‘sentient AI program’.
As for silicon life it wouldn’t be an ecosystem of machines
Machines are too organized to evolve.
Silicon replacing carbon in organic life would be possible.
But given the fact carbon has stronger molecular bonds than silicon
The ecosystem would have to have basically no carbon at all.
The biggest problem would be how to keep silicon disolved in the primordial soup.
All good points.
To quibble a couple of points mind “As for silicon life it wouldn’t be an ecosystem of machines”, do note that the dictionary definition is:
Barring the word ‘apparatus’ indicating something artificially created that would include people. And the human body is often described as ‘a complex machine’. Just like a human brain is, in function, similar to a computer. Presently vastly more complex, but the gap is narrowing steadily.
So your statement is correct, because it is excluding the [natural] ecosystem from being composed of [artificial] machines. But it would be incorrect if we removed the requirement for the machine to be artificial. Essentially humans and animals are all machines, when doing that.
As would the alien planet’s silicon inhabitants. Which you go on to say.
If speaking about the vast majority of [artificial] machines presently in society, yes. As an absolute statement though, no. We already have proof of principle machines, which can evolve. And more complex ones are being built.
We are a society which wants problem solving machines. So we are building them. And one aspect of solving problems is that, if the tools are not fit for purpose, then they must be adapted. And one efficient (if potentially dangerous) way of doing that is to have them adapt themselves. Quite often opting to design them to do so via trial and error.
In other words, by using evolution.
I guess ‘evolution’ also incorporates ‘self-replication’, but we are building machines that can do that too.
Couldn’t you just toss a wooden stick into it to knock the item off and then just push it out of the field?
It also destroys nonliving matter that touches it.
‘Prevents it from passing’ rather than ‘destroys’ but having the same result, in that it will have no effect This assuming a ‘dead wood stick’. A ‘still living branch’ would fall in the category of ‘alive’ and thereby be killed. At which point it becomes a ‘dead wood branch’, and cannot enter.
Plus, as confirmed by the author’s blog above, it would actively be pushed out at that point.
Clearly, as the final defense of the most dangerous items on the planet, these fields will have been tested. Most especially with five year old children. Err, doing the testing, rather than throwing them at them. So the ‘poke it with a stick’ will have been tried, and any success will have had them refine the process.
Essentially, assuming a basic degree of competency, the killing will happen near-instantly* and likewise the repulsion effect. Meaning that, to the naked eye, EVERYTHING, living or dead, would be stopped. It is just that the living things would stop dead. In a very literal sense.
* The plan would be to make it instantaneous, but even with magic or ultra technology, there are likely to be limits. Hence the ‘near’. Which for most purposes would be synonymous. And may have been accurate, for the various threats available for testing, thirty years ago (when the vault was last accessed and possibly upgraded).
Well the next comic seems to pretty much prove my point.
Yup.
*goes to dog house*
I can’t help but think that the people who set up these defenses would have than to rely on a would-be thief being unwilling to murder a henchman in order to get at the prize…
Wyrmil may be a super, of a type which has never been encountered before. Or at least not one that the council knew about thirty years ago. And any henchman with lesser durability might die too fast to be usable in this way. As such the designers would not have been able to factor in such actions, one way or the other.
A bit like 30 years ago no architect or engineer would need to factor in the possibility of frequent high strength hurricanes or flooding in, at the time, safely dry areas. Now the world has changed. Present day designers are aware of these factors, so their plans need to incorporate projections on how these things are going to worsen.
No, the vault was last accessed thirty years ago, that does not mean it was built thirty years ago
You are correct about architects and engineers not foreseeing changing environments, doesn’t stop them from being blamed if the structure they designed and slash or built collapses (except in the cases of incompetence or deliberate use of sub-standard materials)
Fair dinkum. Although structures can be upgraded. Varna’s big bridge has a serious design flaw to it, so they periodically have to work on it, to extend its shelf life.
By stipulating 30 years though I was just pointing out that it cannot have been designed (or modified) since then. Which remains true whether the build date was 3000 years or 31 years ago. But, yea, I was lax in my phraseology, as it would imply a construction date then (even though I did not actually say that).
Lucky the feild does not permeate the outer organic matter.
In last page it clearly says:
“Only _LIVING MATTER_ can _PASS THROUGH_ it, and it _KILLS_ anything it _TOUCHES_”.
Sounds rock clad to me? Something touches the field, it dies, and it cant pass through it.
But hey…?
Yes, hey.
How very enlightening.
It all depends how quickly it kills it. If it kills instantly, before it has even entered the field, then yes, it will be stopped. Likewise if it is killed whilst still traversing the field, as Dave has indicated that it will knock artefacts out.
However if it takes any longer than that then it will have passed through the field successfully. Therefore alive (but dying) or dead it is on the right side of the field to knock the artefact. At the point that the artifact comes into contact with it, the field itself will propel the non-living artefact out of the field.
Sorry, I intended to elaborate on the implication, but forgot to:
“…Dave has indicated that it will knock artefacts out….”
Implies that any non-living matter finding itself within the field will be expelled, in the same manner.