Grrl Power #1179 – Fantababble
Magic in and of itself doesn’t have an ethical preference in the Grrl-verse, but it is a force of nature which is also a tool, in that sapients and even some sentients can manipulate it. This also includes vast, incomprehensible entities of ambiguous… evolence. (You know, ben/mal.) Usually, the vaster the entity, the less direct effect it has on The Weave, or at least, the less focused its effects are, while at the same time tending to be far more widespread. This is especially true for the more incomprehensible entities, almost by definition. After all, if you can detect their direct meddling, it’s far easier to figure out their end game, and they are necessarily more comprehensible.
Deus’s other point is basically “There’s no such thing as that one thing because if that thing is like another thing then we call it another thing.” Except that it kind of means that there is such a thing as that thing we call another thing, so maybe instead of a thing, we build another thing?” So… Kat had a good idea maybe?
I’m still working on the vote incentive. Spend all Sunday on it. I honestly don’t know why they take me so long. I think shifting between simplified comic art and the more painterly stuff is part of it? I’ll keep at it and try to have it ready by the Thursday comic, and I’ll start on the next one right after. I think I know what I want to draw for that one, just have to figure out who to put in it.
The June vote incentive is finally up! Maxima is prepping for her night out.
And in the Patreon variants, she gets (un)dressed and takes a look through all the makeup options.
.
.
.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
that doesn’t change the fact that if left alone, it becomes a dungeon
Wouldn’t that require a Negative, Outside Influence for that to occur would it be an Entropy type deal where a Positive Influence must maintain upkeep or bad things happen?
No isolation produces anti social behavior. If it has proper social interactions it is less likely to be a threat. Proper diet and exercise also help dungeons be less hostile.
*dabbler produces a book* “On the care and feeding of your pet magical location* “Just remember to leave treats out. otherwise it’ll turn into a dungeon and lay traps for the unwary so it can eat.”
Probably just that negative influences are so much stronger than positive. Just look at the Warp in Warhammer 40k.
I like the more anime-like style for a few of the characters, but Maxima definitely doesn’t benefit from it XD
Anyways, take care of you!
Surely the neologism you’re looking for is “neutrevolence” right? Although “indiferrevolence” and “medievolence” would also do. :)
I wonder if Duce also listens to Lo-fi and Synthwave? If he does I recommend Lo-fi for Dryads Only!
tiny spelling errors in third panel.
“Magic does not have an ethical preference, Dabbler. same as gravity and inertia”
Am I missing something or does Deus have it backwards?
I mean, the question wasn’t
“Why aren’t benevolent entities creating dungeon cores?”, it was
“Why does a dungeon core not create benevolent entities?”
But even if his answer to the former question were to imply an answer to the latter, doesn’t the logical conclusion then simply lead to:
“Let’s not build a dungeon core, let’s build a forest/farm/whatever core that yields what we need.”?
Aaaand I just realized that Dave proposed the same conclusion in the comment. :-)
Well if a Dungeon Core did create a benevolent environment, would you realise it was a Dungeon and therefore have a Core or would you just think it was a nice place?
That was the initial question, if they could create something like deus mentioned, but you can’t according to dabbler. So his entire arguement is just kinda stupid. “If it did x it wouldn’t be called y”, OK, but why can’t we make something that does x but can create something that does x???
No, Dabbles didn’t say it can’t be done, it’s just something she’s never considered, because she’s always looked at it from the ‘Murder Hobo POV’ rather than the ‘Producer POV’
I’ve read like… 9 dungeon core stories that I liked and am writing two. One’s on hold. I figured a dungeon core’s monsters are its immune system since the dungeon & labyrinth are its body and you have to protect the core. Stories that don’t prove me wrong:
There is No Epic Loot Here, Only Puns
I Reincarnated as a Magic Academy!
Dungeon Life
Accidentally a Dungeon
The Heart Grows
Dungeon Worm
This Dungeon Calls for a Sage
Lazy Dungeon Master
The Devil Makes a City
I recommend checking out “Blue Core” (on Royal Road) if you’re not familiar with it yet. IMO, it’s the best dungeon core story out there.
I recommend against checking out Blue core. After a certain point the hypocrisy just becomes to much.
That’s why I stopped reading it. The ones I still read that are ongoing:
There is No Epic Loot Here, Only Puns
Dungeon Life
Accidentally a Dungeon
The Heart Grows
The problem is, the healing potion recipes Dabbler has are based on the stuff you’d get out of a dungeon, not a druidic magic garden.
Remember, Dabbler IS a “demon”, and the demons are, as she has admitted herself, influenced by actually malevolent entities. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-812-specism/
She’d probably be swimming upstream to use her own magic in creating a “nice” dungeon, due to that.
yeah I am just picturing it now, finding an alternative that produces similar ingredients *same potent enzymes or whatever just different packaging* but its a temple core from a pacifist angel and what you end up with a place like Freiza’s personal Hell. Just a labyrinth of cotton candy clouds, singing flowers, and teddy bears that shoot mind control beams out of their stomachs (hey a bright package doesn’t mean its not still horrifying when you look past the surface).
It’s also possible that monsters are just more likely to produce ingredients useful for combat-related potions. Monsters probably have bodies saturated with super strength and rapid healing juice since they fight all the time, so if you harvest that juice you can get the same powers for yourself. Peaceful entities probably have ingredients more useful for peaceful purposes.
LOLed at the Nightcore reference. Do enjoy a well made serving of the stuff, Anti-Nightcore too. I find The Phoenix by Fall Out Boy is rather interesting in that it works beautifully in all 3 ways – Nightcore, Anti-Nightcore and Original. Original sounds like someone is doing well in a battle, Nightcore makes it sound like they’re racing through the enemy at speed while Anti-Nightcore sounds like they’re dominating the battlefield, slowly advancing with nobody capable of slowing them down like a Mighty Glacier type…
I think i met that palm dryad. I once tried to prompt one of thes AI image generator with something like “Group of nude elves dancing under a full moon in a forest clearing.” The response was:
Whaaat??! I will not do that. Get away and never come back you disgusting deviant pervert!
I did not try to get past the trial version.
My understanding is that most commercial AI art generators deliberately lack nude and genital training images to avoid possible liability and to avoid being thought of as a porn art generator. That being said, a variant of Rule 34 has already been enacted – there is AI art porn out there.
Yet if you prompt for a “female in light tactical gear” it generates bikinis or cut-off shorts. I think it’s the AI with the kink, ironically. And projection issues, obviously.
I see that the June vote incentive is still up,I hope the next one is a masterpiece of art.
To be fair, the place itself is the dungeon. The monsters are generally extra.
Deus’ argument, if true, would seem to destroy the Mage’s need to set up Dungeon Cores to enrich the mana supply? If the cores can serve other purposes and still be cores (which do the enriching), then there are any number of other things that could be done that are more broadly useful than setting up a dungeon? More pertinently, they’re also likely much safer, and thus easier to get approval for, which would seemingly interest the mages, who are trying to set several of these things up?
My guess is they may be safer, but also do a lot less.
I think if could be like the mana system from Magic the Gathering, slightly, a similar system shows up in a number of games but can be frustrating for players. Mana colors.
The chaotic dungeon may be the result of setting up *clear mana* which can be used for any spell. It may not be as potent but has the wider use.
if we used *Green Mana* we could get a fertile field of plants and herbs, but the desired effect of high mana density anyone can use for any spell is lost as unless they use a mana filter (likely losing much of the mana in the process) to make it *clear mana* then all they can do is use it for nature spells.
-as well it may not spread as far and concentrate into a smaller area.
So what Deus is saying is if they simply talk about building a “Mana Coalescence” then everyone’s scope of what they might make would expand. A dungeon core type would be one but so would a dryad Forest for instance.
They started on Dungeon core because that’s where Dabler got her potion ingredients from
But according to dabbler they can’t make a mandatory coalescer do that, and if it were possible, everyone would do so.
yeah, my understanding is about the same. They want dense mana over a wide area *what the twilight council wants* but raw mana pouring into an area at such high density causes monsters to manifest, which the dungeon of such is what Maxima and Archon want for farming to make potions.
what Deus is suggesting then if I am understanding right wouldn’t produce the raw mana for everyone to use, it would produce a specific effect on a smaller area. Like you couldn’t use the life energy from a Hamadryad core to make fire spells or telecommunication orbs, it would just be fertility, plant growth, wine mists, etc… and what it manifests would be very specific as well.
(although that does relate to my question from two pages ago on if they can intentionally make a specific themed dungeon or if it relies on where its seeded).
It might well be that to produce the specific ingredients they want to use that they need a dungeon core type mana coalescence. There’s some suggestion that the monsters themselves are often the ingredients or components that need to be farmed. So in that instance, to get what they want, thats the only type they can build. But if they want highly fertile, farmable area, they might produce whatever kind does that for bumper crops in the area. Just no magical ingredients/components.
Dabbler noted that the heart of a dungeon core is a certain TYPE of mana condenser that coalesces mana by exchanging something (she didn’t go on to say). Zephan also noted that Dungeon Cores consist of one or more SPECIALISED condensers. This tells us Dungeon Cores are more than just a simple low or high concentration of pure mana.
That suggests that there are other types of mana condensers which might work in different ways and produce different results. They supposedly don’t have any on Earth, so its possible that the Earth magic community doesn’t have the broad knowledge of them and Dabbler (as per her name) likely doesn’t have in-depth knowledge.
Its even possible that the very nature of making a magic coalescence for the purpose of producing magical herbs and components for harvesting is considered more “selfish” than “benevolent” so by the nature of it’s intent, it draws monsters. But again, it seems they actually want the monsters because those get harvested as well.
But the Idyllic Forrest full of nekid dancing Dryads eventually turns into The Dark Forrest. which is a dungeon with trees
The idyllic forest does already have at least two faces. Many old stories about fauns and similar happy forest dwellers (Or old Greek stories in general) depict nonhumans as very lewd and thinking of consent as purely optional.
source
They get it on most every night
And when that old moon gets so big and bright
It’s a supernatural delight
Elves bodies dancin’ in the moonlight
i dont want to be that guy, but there is a typo in panel 3
Deus says “… same as gavity”. there is an R missing “gRavity”
Left untended the strawberry farm core took over a world.
that’s why there’s bunnies and squirrels
Beware the bunnies…
Just… beware!
Why, what’s it gonna do?
It’s not just semantics, it’s the types of beings that come to the core. It doesn’t matter the location as much as to who/what is attracted to the core. They influence they type of magic and growth caused by the core, and what is produced by farming the area. Dabbler stated a dungeon, so that is what everyone was thinking AND the best source of the ingredients she needs to make her potions. Plus the increase of mana produced on the planetary scale will help all magic users as well.
Both Dabs and Max where thinking top level, full regen potion, not your basic recovery, which to be honest, is all is needed in the field. A quick gulp-gulp, a moment to take effect, and the trooper down is back in the fight. While Max was thinking a super-soldier pick me up.
Ouch, in his first speech bubble, Deus sounds like an idiot. “have has” and “gavity”? I mean, I don’t mind characters mispronouncing stuff (often enough, that’s as well an explanation as the author misspelling it) but for Deus, that’s just wrong.
Call this coloring style Heavy Metal Homage month…
Gavity. Panel 3, Bubble 1.
I swear, the things people imagine to define “good” blows my mind. “Lives a healthy an (sic) fertile life until they disappear into the mists at the ripe old age of seventy-five”. Sounds great for doctors performing vasectomies, pharmaceutical companies selling contraceptives, bureaucrats selling falsified birth certificates, and those who would have died before 75 (you know who you are?), but if you’re 74 and perfectly healthy, why would you want to die at 75?
Unless it’s death by boredom since you can’t ever leave the valley. I could see that.
A good life can only be defined by the person living it. Imposing anyone else’s definition is evil. I’ll stick with real nature, thank you, which as everyone knows isn’t good, it’s neutral.
Neutral. The only natural alignment.
(Paid for by the Desert Druid Union, Arctic Realm)
People in my family often live into their 90’s so 75 is looking pretty young…and uncomfortably close.
I think the key word there is “ripe”. There wasn’t anything said there about sanitation facilities. After 75 years of no baths or showers, you’d be wanting to wander off into the mists looking for some way to get clean, too.
Also, they didn’t say “die”, they said “disappear into the mists”. That leaves a lot open as to what could actually be going on there. Probably most of the things would count as deaths, but not all of them.
so if dabbler influenced a mana coalescence, would it become a sex dungeon core?
not that any of that matters, since archon is interested in ingredients, not mana. they need the monsters.
Well sex dungeons have monsters.
But its a nasty risk, I mean well there is the consent sex labyrinth and then there is the…not consent sex labyrinth.
the former is a sign a waver, be scanned for physical tolerances, be granted a magical safe word and go have fun with the giant succubi insectoid lamia tentacle monsters and sentient sex toys.
the later however is…you are risking a horrible death, eggs laid in you, being eaten, assimilated into sex starved hive minds, and other horrific things people fantasize about despite the end results realistically being ungodly pain and death.
Observer perspective / bias also needs to be accounted for
Ie for grrl verse humans monsters malefic is one thing ie gobbos et al
However taking Into account our dungeoneer being what we would term malefic they may well see the monster filled pocket plane as being full of resources and a bit of an farm or garden for them where ‘we’ instead see a plain full of little chunks of xp (as per Oots’s Belkar)
Semi related grumble why does autocorrect helping seem to make things harder to type
That is the version of autocorrect known as autocorrupt.
The new style has revealed Maxima’s secret identity: Marge Simpson.
❗
《 Smirk 》
Don’t do text while sick, my man! Have has and gaviy. :( :(
If you make a Cottage Core does it produce Hobbits, Wood Elves, and trendy yuppies?
I think the answer truly is simple!
Dungeon cores are both forces of nature…
But they may also be a simple AI, Machine Spirit of sorts, if you will.
Dungeon cores are unlikely to be just a simple devices as they have to both make the mana condensation happen. But also take care of generating the magic plants which are the first thing these cores make.
A ton of magic and creating function will likely produce at least partially self-aware core even for a low tier cores, with higher inteligence for higher tiers.
This core is then happily doing it’s jobs of condensing mana and making fancy plants and mana creatures…
Until the first harvest happens and it gets miffed.
Then the path is set for all cores. It keeps getting madder and madder that some creatures outside of it’s sphere of influence are coming in and wrecking it’s stuff, so it’s starts giving it’s creatures more teeth to fight back. And that keeps progressing till it just makes straight up monsters who only desire/are programmed for destruction.
Now, it’s not like the cores can keep escalating forever, eventually they hit the restreains of their tiers and intelligence in what they can make. But as they never get time to calm down they are kept at their ‘Max Anger’ level and keep producing mainly their dangerous monsters and only as distraction also the safe original stuff they made first but only at low quantities.
Now, it’s question if the cores are truly sapient instead of just high level of sentience. Or if they get actually intelligent only after they were ‘angry’ for a while. Or if mages know about true scope of intelligence of their Dungeon Running Programs and just keep it secret or they just underestimate their creation that much.
But in short. With proper and specific care it probaly IS possible to get a Good Dungeon that Kat imagined! But that also means no dangerous monsters that can be harvested for their rare parts so no one does that.
This.
I mean, there are many things that grow in the dark that are not by necessity evil. If one goes in and talks with them and negotiates mutually beneficial trading agreements, one could have a non-hostile “dungeon”. But the people who build these things spent all this time and money making this mana engine and trading with it sounds like more expense that feels unreasonable to someone who isn’t particularly empathic. It’s probably also going to be a bit frustrating setting up mutually beneficial trading agreements at first, as even if life which is capable of communication forms early, does it even know how to communicate right away? It’s also probably not going to be living in perfect harmony right away, it needs some time to work out how its society works. That could probably take decades, and doing harvesting before that finishes probably will help align that society against the harvester.
But there’s also this other thing about a “dungeon”. It’s a dungeon. With the other cores that Deus mentioned, the beings inside are more or less contained by the magic. You’re not keeping them in, they’re just staying where they feel comfortable. With a dungeon core, you’re locking them in. Before they figure out that they really don’t want to exit into the larger world, they find that you’re preventing them from doing so.
So there’s two kinds of psychology working against benevolent dungeons. Or, rather, that work against would be benevolent dungeons being recognized as such. There’s also the third kind. “Everybody” knows that there are no benevolent dungeons, so you don’t expect it. So even if magically there’s an organized society ready to do business the moment you first enter, you go in and you take without asking or trading and it’s all downhill from there.
Are the last two pages unfinished, or does this represent a shift in style?
Read the blurb for the past three comics, all will be explained
And this is how we get “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes VII”
I really want a live action remake of the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes animated series. That Tara was one hot tomato.
“Gavity” -> “Gravity”?
I’m so happy everyone else pointed it out too. Get better soon, Dave, you sicko! Sickee?
Again, I think the problem here is they’re confusing “evil” with “dangerous”. The dungeon core attracts (or creates) magically powerful creatures trying to survive, whether this means hunting prey or repelling predators. If you don’t tune it to attract something specific (which is probably more difficult), it’ll attract random things and the most dangerous ones will survive.
Oh yeah this absolutely. I was thinking along the same line, but i like this phrasing.
They are absolutely mixing up evil and dangerous.
And its kinda sad the 2 super geniuses havent caught on to that yet.
Deus is about to introduce a specific kind of “dungeon” whose negatives are harmless, minimal for the ressources, or sell an efficient management strategy for a specific dungeon type.
The difference being simple naming conventions?
Simple enough.
Also why Dungeon Cores are more popular? Free defense to keep the core from being destroyed! If its a mystic tree with Dryads that is a sentient species which could be tricked as you get near the magic tree to chop it down or blow it up… A lot harder to trick a large hungry monster with words.
The real trick is looking at the non-violent options and remembering that those exist, but may just have different names.
After all you are not going to call a tree that produces free mana and friendly forest animals that heal your injuries as ‘Death Jungles Dungeon’ but may go for a more simple name like… Healing Harmony Forest. Far less undertones to make people want to burn it down to the ground.
You’re contagious. Deus has caught whatever’s illin’ you.
Personally, I’ve never liked strawberries so their presence in a dungeon would make sense to me. Breathing their foul stench would be tormenting. As far as a dungeon’s ecosystem goes, I feel the issue is one of containment. A place of dark confinement is going to result in different product than a place of bright openness. Intention should also play into the ethical component, just as one’s intention in weaving spells does.
do you like any type of berry? Bananas, maybe? (They count as berries, right?)
According to every encyclopedia I’ve ever consulted on the subject, YES, they are berries.
(I only consulted Wikipedia, so um, yeah. But it also makes sense to me, now that you ask.)
That, was actually a very good point.
My argument is more… natural. A Dungeon Core isn’t inherently “evil”, but it is likely inherently WILD. That is to say, the beings created inside of it are designed to protect the core, often utilizing their territorial instincts as a medium to protect the Dungeon. Those that are good at it are rewarded with being empowered and duplicated, which in turn both makes them more valuable for adventurers to hunt, and requires them to be supplied with more nutritious food.
The only “danger” is from the dungeon releasing it’s animals into the greater world, where they act like animals and start hunting. Nothing “evil” about that, just natural behaviors of wild animals.
I personally find the ‘tragedy of the commons’ variant the most likely. A benevolent dungeon would get depleted of all resources if it doesn’t protect itself because people* are fucking dickheads.
*Well, if being a dickhead gains you more power, it becomes a self selecting trait really fucking quick.
I’d also posit that the idea of the dungeon cores producing monsters would be a case of a defense mechanism. The idea of all this magic in one place is inherently volatile so volatile entities respond.
And hey, maybe it IS spawning in some brownies or satyrs from time to time. But that’s just what the other denizens of the dungeon call “take out”.
In any dungeon, you’re going to have the biggest, baddest MFer in the whole crowd, your proverbial Boss Monster, and the rest of the dungeon would naturally organize around them.
A dungeon core begins producing adorable little lemmings, sugar gliders, and flying squirrels, and ultimately they start producing flying lemmings, slowly overpopulating the world with cuteness.
It may be that, since they’re looking specifically for healing potion ingredients, these come from magical creatures that lead a very aggressive lifestyle, and actually NEED some serious, built in magical healing factors in order to survive the frequent life or death battles.
Which the potions just borrow for the imbiber.
Deus’s semantics notwithstanding, the answer to this is obvious to me. There can be no generation of magical power to create healing potions without the danger generated by a dungeon, just as there can be no generation of physical energy without the side effect of creating heat. You have to break a couple eggs to make an omelet, and you have to flay a soul to create a few dozen healing potions. Without physical or ethical friction, the energies of creation are never liberated from their stable forms, and you don’t get any kinetic or metaphysick forces that you can do work with.
One could imagine that “benevolent cores” would produce all kinds of harvestable things. Pixie dust comes immediately to mind, shavings from a Unicorn horn (need a virgin for that but I believe Harem has that covered…maybe) ditto for for the antlers of a Great Heart. Then there’s harvesting the (ahem) bodily secretions of Elves, Dryads etc. those would pose interesting stories.
If you play Rune Factory, yes; Theyre all dungeons – whether full of strawberries or elemental dragons.
DAVE! If you are at all interested in “non-evil/chaotic dungeons”, I have couple manga to recommend:
Maou-sama no Machizukuri! ~Saikyou no Danjon wa Kindai Toshi~
Maou ni Natta node, Dungeon Tsukutte Jingai Musume to Honobono suru