Grrl Power #554 – Mega culpa – OR – Sapphic witch kisses
So before there are 400 comments about what boneheads The Council is, I guess I should have a slight spoiler for the next page where Gault says that this vault was hardly the only thing reliant on this system. Still. Bit of an oops there.
Something not covered on the next page is the fact that this rail riding only works for certain types of spells. Communications mostly. Certainly nothing that requires line of sight like nearly all attack spells. Actually attack spells are specifically filtered out, but that leads people to wrap attack spells inside other spells, so you open your ae-mail from that Nigerian Prince and a Magic Missile flies out and blows up your closet. You would deserve that anyway, opening attachments like that. Still, people can’t cast Power Word Death from across the continent and assassinate whomever they like. A curse would benefit from this, especially if you already have a lock of their hair or other focus, but you couldn’t place a ward or a rune on a doorjamb or chest without actually being in front of it.
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That’s very human of them…
Some of them are/were human after all.
Isn’t Gualt still technically human?
He is human, but he’s a mage, and mages are part of the Council, as are people like Krona, who are reality-benders but still probably human.
Krona is a mage. With a very specific type of magic.
She’s not a mage actually. Her powers didnt set off the mannekillers. And she is not in the Mage group – she’s in her own group. Which means she’s some sort of non-mage Reality Bender.
DaveB said her powers were based on magic.
Based on magic, but not magic
It’s likely that magic is the closest thing Krona knows of that is in any way similar to her ability so she has based her usage method on how magic operates.
That sounds logical :)
If she was a mage, she would be under the Mage banner. She is under her own banner. She is not a mage. She’s a non-mage reality bender of some undefined sort.
Its one of those sorcerer vs wizard kinda things – both might use magic as an energy, but their spells have no “natural” interactions between them, so are both effectively “invisible” to each other.
(obviously I am just using that as an example to express the difference, not trying to classify krona’s abilites, lets not get anyone freaking out about it >.>)
AUGH I’M FREAKING OUT!!!!!
As I understand it, she’s a programmer with access to the system that controls reality. I suspect that wizards,mages, etc, are the equivalent of script kiddies using a higher level AI interface whereas she’s programming using something closer to assembler or maybe C.
Misusing a global network designed to hide your existence to send kisses to your girlfriend, not only extremely cute but also something that certainly would happen if magic and such a system existed in real life.
*Cough* Internet *cough*
So did Aethernet inspire Internet or vice versa?
Yes
Classic.
(For the non-techies: ethernet is a hardware network design/device/brandname and very low level hardware protocol. It was borne in about the same time and areas that Darpanet was. Datpanet grew up to become internet. )
I think the Veil has been around a lot longer than the 1970’s, so Internet is the imitator.
Could also be the Veil itself has been around longer, but the ‘treating it like the internet’ was inspired by the internet when some mage also got his comp-sci degree and thought, “Hey… you know what…?”
Maybe Al Gore was originally part of the council, and was “inspired” by the Aethernet to create the Internet!
“The Aethernet is for porn.”
….
It had to be done!!!
Actually, I am guessing in this universe, someone who knew about the AetherNetwork tried to replicate it for their own “regular” human friends to begin the internet in their universe.
Also….. Avenue Q reference, you get a cookie
I don’t get a cookie too?
It sucks to be me :(
I haz cookies. We can share.
I will have the BBC and YouTube ones. Here, you have the Deviant Art and Wikipedia ones.
Errrm… those digital models are all over eighteen by the way. They check their birth certificates.
You have no idea how much, Scotty. True story:
The University of Toronto wanted to do a study of men that don’t watch porn.
They had to cancel the study because they couldn’t find any!
Oops… Sorry We just knocked down the cell tower to speed up my Network sever. I forgot that my alarm was tied to that.
No, more like disabling everything except emergency calls. And the vault was never added to an exemption list.
More like disabling Scripting on the server, and forgetting that the Notifications protocols all use the scripting interface for access to the Exchange server. I have in fact done this. Twice.
or like disabling all fire hydrants from working for firefighters and dogs taller than schnauzers. I have in fact not done this. Or that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
What alarms? I mean what do they warn about? Max knows but I think I missed something.
Probably someone stealing something from that giant vault behind them
Given that the Big Bad of this story is a “blood mage” I would guess whatever is behind that door has a lot of very powerful blood.
The internal alarms of the vault mentioned last page. Which probably warn about someone entering, or trying to enter, without the proper access methods.
Technically, the alarms on the vault still work fine, the problem is the Council took a large chunk of the extra features off the Aethernet to keep the Veil (the spell keeping supernaturals from being recognized) working while they repaired the damage the attacks had done.
One of the features taken off-line was the ability to send signals over the Aethernet. Means the vault was sending its alarm out like it should, but no one got the notice until someone manually checked it.
I love how Sydney is the first to acknowledge she’d do something like this.
It is not like admitting this hurts her reputation. Just re-enforces it.
Hoo boy – this sounds totally like the internet now: not created for all these additional protocols, but still repurposed as needed. Good thing that Sciona’s gang did not DDoS the complete system – bouncing off over Sibirian sigils, rerouted over Russian runecircles and chucked back over Chinese crystals – that would have thrown them off completely.
The Mars factory was a really lucky guess, I think.
I think Max sent her there to keep her out of the way, and, hopefully, out of trouble. Too bad Sydney is a chaos generator and trouble magnet….
Hm. if that is true, then the best course of action is controlled chaos. Send in Sidney wherever – then you can be quite certain that the bad guys are there – just follow Sidney silently and surely some sinister scoundrel will show up.
Sciona did not wish to disable the Veil, but saw how weakening it would get her what she really wanted – access to the Vault – without actually revealing the Council’s existence to the world. Her actions were quite calculated.
Immortals tend to have a long time to make complicated plans.
When SYDNEY can call you out on doing something stupid, you KNOW you done ****** up BIG TIME………..
You know… I would have figured they’d honestly be smarter than to base such crucial systems on something that basically had public access. I would have assumed that the council would have made their own set just for the sake of security. >.>
It’s not really a problem with the public access, it’s the fact someone blew up one of the omnipresent servers and they turned off some of them to repair them, and they just happened to host their alarm system (besides a milion other services)
Unhappily, that sort of thing does happen. Though it’s more likely to happen as a “security” requirement than as a temporary load reduction measure.
Such an important system and no one had the idea to run Security Links on a different level with backup solutions? The whole Thing relies on the veil and there’s no equivalent of DO-178C? Is there a position open for Spell Quality Engineering in the council ?
Nobody seems to respect Quality Control, even in the supernatural world…
If Boeing & Airbus spend billions in creating a new plane, trust me Quality Control is NOT something you can ignore. Programs with A, B, and C levels of security mess with real people lives. Total QC Integrity is mandatory, emphase on total, to receive certification (FAA & EASA). Everything is logged, ALL versions of each and every document, line of codes, corrections of the tinyest of bug, all programs used (msword included), computers to run theses programs, all serial numbers of the chips programs were tested on, EVERYTHING ! I worked on the Airbus A350 landing gear and braking system. Each document I’ve signed will follow me for the next 40 years. When lives are at stake, QC is no joke.
I agree, when the company cares about QC, it is damn effective. When a company worries more about meeting a deadline, not so much. Sadly, I’ve worked for both companies and the later really aggravates me as they invariably try to blame QC when things go wrong after they themselves right off the noted issues.
We can say that all we want. But reality tells us that despite this there will be cases where it happens that QC is neglected in favor of time.
It’s nice everything is logged but that doesn’t make MS Word secure. It doesn’t even have usable specification for it’s format …
Msword isn’t secure, it is not the point. Some documents were created using msword, thus computers and msword install cds were stored. Nothing is assumed and one can not assumes msword docs will be readable in thirty years.
Sydney was so right to obsess over including an adaptor for obsolescent devices, in her utility belt!
The best form of long term storage, is still the MicroFiche: all you need to read it is a light source and a magnifier (and time to search it :P )
Good for 500 years (or 20 in tropical climes, where fungi eat the normal variety, so they have to use a less durable version).
Currently our best proven long-term storage are Aboriginal Australian oral traditions. Far exceeding any form of written storage by thousands of years.
The most promising experimental storage is DNA, as that can potentially last millions of years, under perfect storage conditions. Having the additional advantage that it cannot be disrupted and lost purely by forced adoption programs and cultural decimation.
Problem is, how do you read DNA without specialised equipment? And even oral history can be corrupted or forgotten and lost
Regular oral histories can become corrupted, yes. The Aboriginal ones though have a powerful fact checking mechanism though. Where youngsters are trained to listen to the same story from multiple individuals and to check that they match.
As being accurate is valued highly anyone who would otherwise be inclined to embellish stories knows that they will be found out, so they will endeavour to keep their facts straight. And where honest mistakes are made, the correct version can be deduced from the other sources.
The fidelity has been found to be considerably better than the generations of scribes re-writing ancient written works.
As for being lost, that is true of any medium. Look at the great library of Alexandria as a famous example. A single fire and generations worth of wisdom was lost. For the oral tradition it requires killing a generation or bringing them up without contact with their oral traditions.
As for reading, you need that with microfiche too. DNA just requires a different kind of equipment. But even if that equipment is lost or forgotten, if future generations (or alien archaeologists) discover the repositories of DNA and have some clues as to its true nature (Voayger style plaques with pictures explaining the principles would do the trick) then they can recreate the equipment.
The clever bit being that it is using a medium that is present in all life on Earth, so if any Terrestrial life survives, and the future scientists study their genetic material, they will be able to use similar techniques to translate the repository of ancient Earth porn.
I think a part of it is how the veil is really very important, arguably moreso than these alarms. It’s like basing a system off of public radio- it’s not supposed to ever fail either.
More like the messaging servers the alarms use for notifications was dissabled, not the alarm servers themselves.
Welcome to the magical internet… you do know how the Internet started, don’t you?
So apparently Al Gore is a magic user. Likely a Druid specifically. That’d explain a lot.
He has always acted a little wooden to me. Probably some sort of Ent. (Which explains his ‘save the environment’ campaign)
Umm, no, not Gore (unless he was part of the military?)
The internet started by the US Army. It was designed to be a durable, scalable decentralized information delivery system so that in the event of a nuclear attack, American military leaders would still have access to pornography.
not the army, but the military’s DARPA. Defense Advanced Research Projects Admin.
It’s a 3 Dead Trolls in a Baggie quote, Garbler :) Ashen made a link to the animated skit below :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9R-2X9Bl5w
Cookie for Ashen for recognizing that quote :)
Aha! I see that evil Pander has stolen good Pander‘s mousey and computer. Good Pander would not advocate lying to and stealing from your parents!
Muhahahaha
holy garnish, how do I miss that one? And I’ve considered myself a proper geek all these years….
This comments thing really needs an Edit and Preview function
It does. You can edit it before hitting the “Submit Comment” button. And, after hitting it, you will be able to preview how your comment will look, for the rest of eternity.
The French invented a precursor to the Internet called Minitel. It was used to shop online from as early as 1984.
That’s 7 years before The Internet became publicly available.
It was profound in offering a thousand services. Foreshadowing some that later appeared on the internet. But it was not foresight enough to open it up to everybody, to communicate and collaborate with anybody, anywhere, for any purpose.
Plus it did keep going until 2012, so did make the French remain more insular, on their own limited network, rather than opening themselves up, to the rest of the world, as much as they may have otherwise done.
Why make something new if you can repurpose or piggy-back on something already existing, thus saving lots of costs on development and deployment?
(Yes, there are reasons to do this, but you also have to consider things as costs and efficiency.)
Then there is the often overlooked – what am I saying – rarely if ever done beforehand, risk assessment and failure mode analysis.
Oh it will never break. – but what if it does? – Nah, we can deal with that if it happens using SOPs.
Cue cut scene to Lucy trying to avert a disaster and just making things worse as everything dominoes as she flails around.
Reminds me of a chemical plant I interned at. Safety inspector wanted to connect a safety valve to a tank so it wouldn’t spray boiling acid everywhere if it ever triggered only to be told that that would ‘never’ happen.
Guess what… On the bright side, they DID finally connect it to a tank.
Heh… Our new data center was having power/UPS issues. Random failures, but the backup generator would take over so no customer-facing outage occurred. The vendor was called in to find and fix the problem. I was the manager on duty at oh-dark-thirty when we allowed maintenance of that scale to occur.
I had them walk me through exactly what they intended to do, and they told me exactly why their plan could never ever even possibly cause an outage even though they had to take the generator offline in order to do their diagnostics intended to locate the problem.
45 seconds into their “plan” one of them says “we lost the load.” Which is insider slang for “all the stuff that needs power (the load) no longer has power.”
Queue me and my crew spending the next 30 minutes making calls to the heads of every department (and several members of executive management who just liked to be informed about shitshows such as this one) to explain that they will need to check their servers to make sure they came back up from an event which was the equivalent of pulling the plug…
I didn’t even bother to ask the two vendor guys how or why they could have been so very wrong despite all of their assurances to the contrary. At that point there just wasn’t any purpose for such a question.
On the bright side they did identify (and eventually replaced) the failing component. And it was of course a single point of failure. When I asked if they could at least give it some redundancy the answer was ‘no.’
I’d have preferred that they encountered your boiling acid at that point, but that was a few decades ago and I’ve almost forgotten that experience.
crucial systems on networks with public access? you mean like the port of houston?
https://m.crn.com/news/security/18824049/teen-computer-whiz-cleared-in-houston-hacking.htm
or LA airport terminals?
https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/06/28/la-port-terminal-still-closed/
or nuclear power plants?
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-nuclear-plants-computer-system-hacked/story?id=48314345
Seriously, who would be so careless with critical system security ? (answer in the back of the book: any organization that doesn’t send people to jail for computer security negligence)
> So before there are 400 comments about what boneheads The Council is, […]
I operate such interdependent systems for living. My systems probably don’t even come close to the complexity of The Veil, and overlooking something like this is very plausible even in my environment. I think you did a good job of building this plot.
Agreed. I had to make a database to keep track of how my databases are interconnected.
The people who literally CAN’T understand the complexity & possibility of this occurring that try to shout out “its so obvious, why didn’t they just check it” just reinforce why it would work too.
I’ll just put the code snippet here, it explains itself:
dblog "Unable to access database"
exit function
If people only send lips by that system I would be very disappointing. ;)
Magical dickpicks
Gah! My Eye!
Why would you wear a plaid hat???
Because is matches the robes? Maybe she’s English or Irish (looks more Tartan than plaid)
That is such a plaiditude.
Pun -1
Funny +1
Congrats Dave, I’m way more into Fantasy than sci-fi or superheros to a genre, and this is a really cool use of magic I haven’t really seen before, or at least a kind of spell system I haven’t seen before, piggybacking on existing spell webs like this… cool stuff.
*as a genre
If you want more with this concept, try Kelly McCullough’s Webmage series. It’s like the Dresden Files, but with computers and quantum physics.
And if you can read french, try “Morgoth L’Empaleur” & “CSS: Cretinous Star Sauvageons”
the Dragon Knight novels, Google: Wiz Zumwalt
Wiz takes the use of magic like a programming language to a hole new level. Just watch out for Crash, Burn, Kill the Operater type errors.
OK that does it, I am NOT flying Wiz Air again!
“Wiz Air” sounds like the plane has fire plugs at front and back of passenger seating. Definitely a dog-friendly airline.
Gives a whole new meaning to “Halt and Catch Fire”…..
What’s the difference? Turned off the alarms themselves or turned off the alarms’ ability to tell you they were triggered? o_O
Putting black tape over the annoying red light?
placed a marshmallow over that little hammer that hits the bells
Got the system convenient so when the alarm goes off, it texts your phone. So you stopped putting a guard out who specifically listens to the alarm, because the text was good enough.
Then for some network maintenance, the texting service goes down. Pretty much exactly what happened.
Stuffing some foam rubber into the little hole that makes that annoying noise.
putting a plastic bag over the smoke alarm because it triggers whenever the oven’s used.
…well, that’s disabling the alarm itself, I suppose. but I’ve seen it done. :/ People are usually the weakest link in security.
Yeah, we use to have a smoke alarm, but sister would always steam the crap out of veggies setting off the alarm (in another room), so she took the alarm down (she’s no longer allowed to cook, but we never got around to putting the alarms back up)
Same idea here. My smoke alarms and I had creative differences about my cooking. Everyone’s a critic.
My friends have a smoke alarm outside the bathroom.
It’s the shower alarm.
What does your shower get alarmed about? A water shortage? A lack of any internet connected viewing devices? Rural poverty in sub-Saharan Africa?
Maybe it’s so they know when they have been in there long enough
Ahh, like the dinner bell on a steamer.
Mine had to come down when it ran out of batteries and insisted on informing me all night long. There was no way I was going to dismantle an active alpha source just to temporarily fix the problem.
Ooh, an alpha source. We worship those, right? Or are those the tasty variety that Sydney might want to put on food?
Would that be a dominant super sauce, a sauce containing an alpha source (drink tritium for a (un)healthy glow) or one of my early product ideas not yet tested on the general public?
This actually gives me a silly idea. I’ll let you know if it works.
*wags tail in eager anticipation*
*mouth drooling*
That sounds a lot like “Hey, hold my beer!”
Look on the bright side…
Free beer.
and then hooking it up to the video input
While both result in nobody realizing something bad is happening, the difference is that a turned off alarm doesn’t know it was triggered during the downtime, while a silenced alarm can still give a warning once it is no longer muted.
That was aimed as a response to Gault’s last comment
The difference is in how you fix it.
Thought the difference might have been in who you blame…
If they had had a guard on site, then it would have been noticed. It’s the remote link to the central security office that was turned off.
They may well have also had a guard on site. “Had” being the operative word…
I know so, I was just explaining to Guesticus the difference between an alarm that was turned off and an alarm that (temporarily) couldn’t signal it was triggered.
(Something he apparently wasn’t confused about but asked as a response to Gault.)
in this case, I think they don’t know if any alarms (and/or traps) WERE triggered during the ‘blackout’
if none were triggered, all should be good (I’m thinking Sciona’s ritual/spell will endanger this situation)
f they were, they don’t know, and could be walking into an active death cloud.
They do know, they say so on the previous page: “The internal alarms have been triggered, but we didn’t see that until…”
My response was to Guesticus who asked what the difference is between the alarms being off and the alarms being unable to signal they’ve been triggered (which was as it turned out a reaction to Gault and not a real confusion of his).
There’s an enormous difference – an activated alarm is likely to log WHEN the actual break-in occurred. It might also trigger internal recording mechanisms giving you a detailed account of your intruders. With a tripped alarm you know _something_ happened and you might even have some clues to start your recovery efforts or a better idea what was taken even before you have to fully inventory the repository.
With no alarm tripped, you might not know the vault had been breached at all for months or years.
Sciona bought herself a small head start. A more perfect crime would likely have had a insurmountable head start.
She already gave herself a head start, when they removed hers and thought that was the end of her (it was, but the wrong end)
Have they tried turning it off and on again?
Oops…that’s probably not an option.
There’s only so much people can ignore.
Is their system responsible for the The Mandella Effect?
(I thought that was Time Travelers.)
“…so before we go any further, have you made sure that your magical sigil disguise system is plugged in? Is the power on? “
Panicky client: When I started the computer this morning, the first things it did was gave me a Blue Screen of Death, so I turned it off by holding the power button for 5 seconds, and I called you.
Me: (Concerned over her turning off BSoD) Let’s see. Please try turning it on again.
Client: There! You see? The blue screen! I’m gotta turn it off.
Me: No! Stop! Let it be. Read what is on the screen first. This is not a Blue Screen of Death.
On screen: Windows Update. Preparing your computer for use. 3% Do not turn off your computer or unplug the battery.
Me: Besides, what did I say about getting a Blue Screen of Death? I did not saw shut it down; it will do that on its own anyway. I said take a picture and send it to me!”
And that’s why redundancy is needed :)
It bothers me that it’s not spelled (and pronounced) redunduncy.
With Decollete around,who wants to wager that she and Dabbler get into another rivalry?
Or something…
“Magic sexting can really get out of hand”
… I don’t wanna imagine what dick-pics would turn into :P
probable just turn into the kind of dorks that send them
Blue or beluga?
yay! at least I’m not the only one that knows that term!
Yeah, it’s always fun teasing people when they call themselves a ‘dork’ :D
it’s a better insult than you think, size for size, it’s the smallest comparitive anatomy.
the clam has the largest. (but doesn’t say a word about it)
They are notorious for clamming up.
I saw Sapphic Witch Kisses open for Quidditch Snitch Pitch back in ’01.
bet you can’t say that 5 times quickly
Wouldn’t disabling the reporting of a lot of things and not just the vault make the Council more boneheaded and not less?
“A nefarious force seeks to disrupt our veil! Let’s turn off the reporting on a vast array of alarms and sensors. Some of which would probably be useful in determining who is disrupting our veil.”
It’s sort of interesting to note that ARPANET (from which the internet descended) was specifically built so that the failure of any one node (like say you had to turn one off so that you could reinforce your veil (or a nuclear strike had destroyed the relevant city)) wouldn’t disrupt the entire system.
From the sounds of things, they hadn’t known they had turned those off… at least not right away
Either that, or they figured ‘People can go without their ae-mail for a few hours’ forgetting that several important systems use the ae-mail too.
More like shuting down the coms between computers/sensors/actuators/engines in a plane @ 33000ft.
From the sounds of things what actually happened is that there was a communications network piggybacking off the veil network, to try and keep things stable they turned that off. Since they’d worked for centuries under the assumption it existed, their previously made reporting mechanisms used that same communications network so were accidentally broken at the same time.
For a more modern example, it might be comparable to setting up firewalls to block a whole range of connections for security reasons that are superfluous to the goal of security. Maybe you block the common ones for web browsing temporarily while you try to track down the security holes? Only to realise something you made a few years back used those things despite that it probably shouldn’t have because those were easy and the normal way to do things. The problem is not realising it’s not working until after it breaks.
I think a better analogy, rather than nodes on the network, think of it as turning off emails, but the rest of the Internet so worked, to free up bandwidth. Then realise that your alarm system needs to send emails to work.
But if you can globally turn off these communications, would that not indicate that the communication aspect basically has a single point of failure, rendering it similar to a single node?
I can think of a number of ways to architect such a thing involving 1 node or several (linked via some sort of management protocol).
While I agree that the packet switching aspect of Arpanet is not a direct parallel, I think that the consideration of redundancy for vital communications is still interesting. It also seems like something which might be considered by the magical community as a technological parallel evolved, especially given the parallels that have been drawn between magic and coding (Krona, for one; or the discussion of runes with Dabbler which was basically a pun on cofdng language names).
“would that not indicate that the communication aspect basically has a single point of failure, rendering it similar to a single node?”
Not really. Nothing implied that they turned it off globally from a single location. They may well have turned it off at each individual Sigil.
Assuming that they did turn it off at each individual sigil, independently, it seems doubly stupid that they would turn off the ones that let their super vault email them when there was trouble?
They forgot the vault’s notification system used aemail.
Right, which is the kind of thing that you might be reminded of when you independently “logged into” the Vault’s nearest node and turned off the that functionality (in the unlikely case that this was controlled on a node by node basis (we’re wandering into hypotheticals based on hypotheticals at this point)). It’s the kind of thing that might be scrawled in blood on a grimoire page and stuck to the appropriate sigils.
The fact that they cancelled a planet’s worth of notifications because they forgot it worked like that is quite boneheaded, as I mentioned earlier.
As a heist plot point, what’s been set up is interesting, but it would work far better on a small scale. The suspension of disbelief required for accepting that a secret society never set up an independent comms network, and shut down the one they had entirely by accident, and didn’t realize the consequences, and so on is a bit large.
As is, I want to see the magical equivalent of a sysadmin fuming in the magical equivalent of a comms closet fuming: “‘Oh just shut it down’, they said. ‘Who cares about the consequences’, they said. I’ve been telling them for years that we needed to set up a redundant spell weave but nooooooo, don’t listen to the guy who wrote the telenecrocomnicon” Or something similar.
I like the scale.
“We need to get into that one room. OK shut down the magical internet, for the entire world, that will do the trick.”
That shows some hardcore scheming.
To me, it sounds like the guy who originally set up the notification system no longer works there.
Probably moved on to greener pastures with fewer boneheads and more bucks.
(unrelated: That last sentence is an example of why natural-language software will never be able to handle natural language.)
Never is a long time.
Sometimes it comes about within the predictor’s lifetime.
Nine times out of ten (see predictions about chess and go as examples).
I figure it can’t hurt to make that prediction. Either I will be wrong, but would not care, on account of pushing up the daisies. Or I am right and either smug that it occurred quickly, or smugger because I lived an extremely long time.
Oh dear. At this rate whoever it was will have ended up jumping ship to work for Deus. Heck, they might even be involved in the heist.
I have been criticizing the council about security but this is definitely stupid of them. They kept the thing that tells them about the alarms on the same thing that hides their very existence is a good idea, HOWEVER, if the bad guys plan is too disable the alarms and not expose the races then it makes it easier to break into the vault of magical McGuffins. Also, if it was that important, why didn’t they have an “independent server” that was separate from the rest of the veil. That way if that was attacked, they would know what was happening, but maybe all this magic is too “expensive” to make and decided to go with the easier option.
Archon is going to have a serious talk with the council about how they manage security.
Considering this is an “Ocean’s Eleven” plot in the making…
You have an impenetrable vault. You can’t even get near said vault without tripping the alarm. However, if you derp up the power grid so that you make the people in charge check the status of the vault…
True, but still, if I was Archon I would be PIIIIIISSSED about not knowing this.
Which they notably are. They are just being very professional about being pissed off.
If it’s impenetrable, how do the proper owners put anything into it?
(kinda like Halo’s takedown of the villain who claimed to have claws that could cut anything and impenetrable skin.)
You do realise, that 90% of security is created after it is needed, don’t you?
If something is working, and you are not a complete nutter, why would you do more before you need to?
The US government didnt make independent servers after they got hacked. They made them so they wouldnt get hacked in the first place. This is a similar situation. If someone is after your vault, dont tie the security to another very important thing, otherwise you wont be able to tell what is actually being attacked.
I suspect that if the real truth were known, computer security had been breached on a hekkuva lotta computers before the govt or anyone else started even thinking about securing them
Zack Tilly
“The best way to get a company interested in a disaster recovery plan is to burn down the building across the street.”
Hello council, let me introduce you to the burning vault.
“Why is everything on fire?”
“Its the BURNING vault. Duh”
Sciona’s ultimate goal is to sell the Council a better vault?
I can support this particular brand of entrepreneurialism ;).
Next you will be suggesting that Sciona intends to offer them a knock-down price for an Olympic-sized golden swimming pool!
A short story, relevant to the above failure to communicate: https://thecodelesscode.com/case/48
That site has a page describing Apple ][ assembly programming. But the author made it seem worse than it actually was. The Apple had a “miniassenbler” that converted opcode mnemonics to machine code – you didn’t have to do it by hand.
This is how I learned assembler. After this, C was easy.
https://thecodelesscode.com/misc/ancient-code
Hmm, some of those lei lines converge close Toronto. Or is that Ottawa? I often think that secret weird things happen over there all the time. Let’s see; where else are these things converging? Reykjavik, Iceland; Yellowknife, NWT; Vancouver, BC; Pittsburgh, PA?; Miami, FL; Dallas, TX; San Francois, CA; Mexico City, Mexico; the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, Mexico and a few other places.
The one in Florida looks more central than Miami. Possibly Orlando. The Veil disguises creatures such as were-folk. The next time you are at Disneyworld and you see those giant animal characters walking round, here’s a clue. Those are NOT costumes.
The actual Veil Sigil itself is located in the ‘Wizarding World’ section of Universal Studios. In plain sight. Surrounded by actual wizards casting actual spells to maintain it. And nobody notices.
Probably supposed to be Miami – there appears to be the Bermuda Triangle.
The corner being too far northwest is probably a limitation of scale.
I see at least half a dozen triangles in the Bermuda area….
Miami – Bermuda – Puerto Rico:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bermuda_Triangle.png
Equilateral – Isoceles – Scalene.
:)
with https colon slsh slsh, etc
with http slsh, slsh, etc.
without http, starting www
starting without http or www
pls ignore. trying to figure out what the magic formula is to get the fricken a href= tag to work, since the help text is obviously incomplete.
ok, git it. must include http or https to prevent forum code from screwing it up.
That homonym had never occurred to me before. David, the lines you wanted to refer to are ley lines. Lei lines are typically found at Hawaiian airports and cruise-ship docks..
So this vault cannot properly call for help. . . How many others use this same system to inform of danger? In theory stopping the one alarm from going off allows a theft easier than silencing the entire broadcast net work. So look bigger. What else has now been effected?
I have a real world example of something similar. I work in IT for a state government. We send data and reports back and forth to the federal level all the time. Several years ago the federal government stated that a certain report on state welfare activity would be used as a basis to assess penalties to states that were not meeting certain performance levels. Some states implemented expensive reform programs to boost their performance ratings. Others decided to simply stop sending the data to the feds.
I am a litte bit lost now. Let me see if I can get it straight:
So at first the attacks happened, then they did some repairing, thus disabling alarm notifications, and because of this, MORE attacks happened, but only for the purpose of telling them that they blundered by deactivating alarm notifications? Is that what happened? So are they really dealing with a “white hacker” now?
A ‘white hat hacker’ implies the person doing it to expose flaws in a system and show how to fix it without actually damaging anything.
The attacks happened and damaged the sigils. The Council then took a subsystem of the sigils off-line to reduce the strain on the sigils and veil, giving them more time to make repairs.
This subsystem that was taken off-line was also used for long range communications.
Then the vault was breached, triggering alarms, but with the long range communications off-line they did not realize this until they turned it back on.
Very close.
The Mannekiller attacks damaged the Sigils, which threatened to expose the Council races.
The Council disabled some Sigil functionality to effect repairs. This disabling caused some systems to become isolated and unable to communicate with the council, including this vault.
While this vault was isolated, someone breached it.
When the repairs were complete enough and they reconnected those systems, they discovered that the alarms here had been trying to tell them that this vault had been breached.
There is no “white hatting” going on.
Sciona and her flunkies launched the first attack on the council directly to force them to focus all the security on themselves, presumably rather than whatever is in that vault. If the council was killed in the process, so much the better.
Since the first attack failed, thanks in huge part to Sydney’s warning, they launched the second attack on the veil’s servers. This serves two goals. 1.) Disable the warning system on the vault by disabling the entire veil. 2.) If disabling the veil fails, depend on the council to disable the systems upon which the alarms in this vault depend to keep the veil itself stable.
The second attack ultimately achieved “2.).” The council only realized this in hindsight because whatever method of redundancy was used suddenly stopped working. Either a physical guard went “missing” or something else suddenly went quiet. Thus Archon was called in.
Might be I missed/misread a hint or drew a conclusion too soon about the events in the comic but I thought the location of the Council meeting was also the location of one of the sigils, thus the attack on the Council was also an attack on a sigil.
Also, the attack on the construct and fey sigils happened at roughly the same time as the attack on the Council, not as a result of the attack on the Council failing. So it was just one attack on several fronts.
Furthermore, from what I gather, it is not so much that a redundancy system alerted them, but when they brought the subsystem back on-line they could receive the warnings again from the alarm that was triggered.
And, the not so secret Council meeting was arranged because there had already been an attack on the Sigils, more likely just a tentative feint to force the unscheduled meeting of Big-Wigs so Manny and Co can hurt the Council directly and damage the Veil
I see, thanks for explaining, everyone! I keep losing track of plots whenever comics don’t hold my hand all the way through. :-) I even forgot about the council getting attacked and confused it with the breach, because the pool scene erased my long-term memory.
I do like the fact that Gault does not back down from Maxima, reinforcing the fact that the Council DOES NOT ANSWER TO Archon and doesn’t need Archon’s permission to function. In fact, the Council (a world-spanning organization that has existed for centuries) is more wide-reaching than Archon (which is limited to the United States, has only existed for a few years, or at the MOST, 150 years if you take Abraham Lincoln’s involvement into account).
A world-spanning organisation that is not officially recognized by anyone, and only unofficially as long as they don’t fuck things up, Archon is officially recognized by world leaders and the public
Heh, the Council is effectively an organization of monsters.
I bet ARCHON doesn’t even *want* to know what all of their rules, methods and protocols are.
Meeting bylaws:
Members are not allowed to each other members they do not agree with.
Members with two heads do not get two votes on issues at hand.
As a courtesy, members will not use the phrase ‘at hand’ when members with no hands are present.
Additional bylaws:
– No hentai jokes when members with tentacles are present.
– Flying members will use appropriate outdoor facilities away from council location no matter how high they are flying.
– Carnivorous members will not eat anyone of a species represented on the council.
Unless they are really ugly and really tasty.
(unspoken rule)
The Council is recognized by Archon otherwise they wouldn’t go through the trouble of trying to work together.
They are probably also recognized by the U.S. as Archon is in the military branch of the U.S., and there are most likely other governments that have deals with the Council that the public doesn’t know about.
It’s like you don’t bother reading the comic sometimes, Guesticus. The Council IS recognized by Archon. Archon literally has no say over anything the Council does.
I’ve even, in yesterday’s forum posts, given links to comics and panels where it outright says that the Council is recognized by Archon and the US government, and predates it, and the Council is able to ban Archon from even being in the meetings if it so wishes. Not to mention that at least one person in the Council (Dabbler) is in Archon… and it was a big deal because Dabbler joined against the Council’s wishes, because Dabbler considered it a ‘proof of concept’ that Archon might become a real thing LIKE the Council already is. To paraphrase her ‘You need to be able to take one before you can take two’ :)
Okay, maybe shouldn’t have said ‘anyone’, but did say ‘officially’, as in, public records
As far as the public knows, the Council doesn’t exist
What is the Council going to do if Archon, officially recognised world wide, does decide to step in? Go to The Hague or the UN and launch a formal complaint? Start a war?
Well obviously the public doesn’t know the Council exists…. that’s sort of the point of why the Council exists. But the government knows. Officially. It’s just top secret. Archon itself has existed before its official unveiling as well…. it just wasnt public. :)
“What is the Council going to do if Archon, officially recognised world wide, does decide to step in?”
Considering that the Council has its hands in all manner of businesses in the US and worldwide, as well as in the government (again, US and worldwide), I’m pretty sure the Council could do a whole lot of Archon decided to get aggressive with their ‘turf.’ It would not be good for either side, but the Council clearly has farther reach and a much more established infrastructure, given how long its been around and how many more members it likely has worldwide.
And galaxy-wide, while we’re discussing who has the larger amount of reach and jurisdiction… :) Since the Council also includes aliens.
Remember this is just the result of trying to reduce strain on the system. Imagine if they have ransomware run rampant.
That is the next attack. “Hello, this is a notice that the Toronto sigal is locked and nonfunctional. To unlock it, send at least $1000 worth of Bitcoin to this address: “
I think the vampire community uses ‘bite-coin’ as their currency.
Oh yaz!
+3.14
+ 3.14159
+3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679
1̵́̀͏̷̼̩͍̱̭̠̗̙̜̬͍̭4̸̸̧̛̥͙͔̫͖͚͠1̷̸͉͖͈͚͖̮̻͖͇̪̬̙5̸͈̩͙͖͇͔̩̯9̹̠̖̬͈̥̞̰͙̤̻̠͘̕2̶̡̨̠̩̥̲̮̩͇͠͡6҉̢̝̬̺͚̣͟5̸̡̳͉͉̦̩̺̲̝̕3̵͇̘̟̗͖̥͙̠͎̮͢͟͜͞ͅ5̶̺͕͎̮͉̖̺͇̪̙̤̱͚͚̞̱8҉̶̧̰͉̪̬̼̠͔̺͈̬9̡͕͔̙̬͈̻̺͍̣̫̲͘͢͢͞ͅ7҉̡͈͙̣̭͓͎̲̹͉̺̗̪̯͇͕͜9͏̧̢̢͍͇̣̫̻̖̩̺̳ͅ3̷̢̨͖̯̯̜̹̳̦̻̫͕2̨̡҉͚̣͖̜̼̀̕3̴̶̪̤͓̘̯̹̬̩̝̳̼͓͍8̸̵̷̛̞̩̬̙̙̣̖̰̭̼̭͟ͅ4̷̻͚̭̗̥͔̰̙͍̻̤̭̯̦̰͇͟͠͠6̷̢̭̜̖͍̪̥2͏̬̮̥̙̹̪̰̪̹͔̘͓̳̻̗́ͅ6̵̡̼̼͙͔͙̣̙̺̳́͞4̧̮̳̹̟̩̪̀͢͝3̡͝҉̢͍̺͍̬̭̤͍̜ͅ3̴̩̻͍̘̼͎̭̬͉̹͉͈̯͖͎̪͢͞ͅ8̷̢͖͇̭͎͕͚͡3̶̼̩̳̬̠͜͝2̶̸̲̜̫͉̖͔̗̻͎͙7͏̶̺̙̻̳͇͇̖͙͍͖͍͟ͅ9̦͉̖̬̯̩̭͈̠̭̹̀͜͡5̡̛̕͏̤̱̬͔͈̘̝̲̜̮͎͙̟0̵̼̜̥̥̬͔͘͘2̢͎̻̮͖͉͇̗̣̜͉̖͖͡8̸̛͎̞͓̹͉̟̩̝̼̻̀͠8̷̡̡͚̣̩̳̭̘̝̕̕4̷̢̙̻͈̻͖̹̼̠̪͡1̶͙̙̦̲̪͞͠9̴̳̯̬͈̬̼̝͇̩̠̙̪̣̫̳̠̖̕͡ͅ7̢̰͍͉̤͙͍͞1̶̲̞̪̞͎̱6̷̸̵̼̮̳̮̼̗9̶̸̫͉̠͎͕̠͍̻̭̝̺̜̘̦̯͢͝3̸̶̴̛̰̞̱͕̬͉͈͎̞͝9̢̣̜͉̜̜̭̕9̗͙̦̮̲͇̝̟̠̪̱̩͓̝̙̤̟́͟͟ͅ3̶̶̨̞̦̗̜͘7̢̛̱͇͕͓̗̞͓̙̥̪̜̫́ͅ5̶̛̹͕͖̼̗͟͡͝ͅͅ1̀͠҉͢҉͍̮̩͇̥̲̱͙ͅ0̢̞̦̻̠̣̕̕͢5͙̯͔͔͖̟͉̣͚͕̲͘̕͜͠͠ͅ8̴̷̘͇̙̮͉̹͕̜͎̝̀͞2͏̡̢̖͍̫̜͕̤͙̦͕̤̪̭̙̕̕ͅͅ0̡͏̟̠̭͎̝̬9̢̨͙̱̯̯̣̼͉̝̺̼͈̝͉̮̻͡ͅͅ7̨̙̲̺͉͇͍̮̺̳̩̺͇͙̣͇͉́͜4̸̷̛̝̪̠̬͍͖͔̠͉̱͚̝̩͔̀̀ͅ9̀́͏̢͇͉̬̘̻̠̳͇̙̼̗̟4̷̴͙̞͖̱̘̲̝͈̗̪̰̠4͏̢̘̤̤̫͡5҉̸̱͎̹͓̖̭͓͎̩͕̠̗͖̗̤̯́́ͅͅ9̣̭̝͙̼͉͞͠2̷̷̺̗̖̺̩̫̺͘͢͞ͅ3̢̱̪̬̯͍͈̯̭̮̫̦͙͚̹̞̙0̴̢͔̯̪̺̝͙̱̟7͏̨̹̙̺̖̻͕̦̱̞̹͇̙͠
+3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!
And when he awakens he will want pie.
And they probably get loans for bite-coin from the blood bank.
Safer than from a loan-shark.
I’m not sure whether to give you a Yorpie Snax or hit your nose with a newspaper for that pun.
I vote the snax it was another good pun
….. Fiiiiiine. *grumble*
*tosses Yorp a Yorpie Snax*
Yummy yummy yummy!
That would cost you an arm and a leg!
Come to think of it, I wonder if the banks ever face fishing attacks.
You are a Nigerian prince, who needs an urgent blood delivery, at night, because you suffer from hemophilia and are unable to get in touch with your kingdom, right now, but will give a big reward, once you return, if I help you out?
Sure, here let me email you a bag right now!
If that worked with Icon, he’d have to write “Rattle ok” on the outside of the mailer box.
Early on in my career I had a joke bet with a guy, in our head office. When I won, I sad “you owe me £10”.
“Sure, I will fax that to you straight away!”
He was a fun guy to work with. Sadly he later died on 9/11, in one of the Twin Towers.
is… is that a latin pun?
Ah, now Maxima is starting to look like herself. ^_^
Maxima is most Maxima when angry.
start of next page
max: halo did you arrange this to hear me quote banner?
syd: what? banner? where does a colorful cloth fit ……………….. oooh bruce.
max: and that answers that question.
gualt: now can someone explain what you two are talking about?
Could you please explain what you’re talking about?
bruce banner = hulk aka “you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry”
“You are making me angry.
You won’t like me when I’m angry”
Rraaar! Hulk Smash!
right, that part I got. not the connection to max.
So. You can tack on a magical internet thingie, and have no problem with people using the spel for other stuff, but can’t be bothered write supers into the thing?
Actually, they were covered until they started attracting attention to themselves. Keep low and the spell keeps you on the down low. Higher profile not so much.
They were ‘partially’ covered.
It’s the same reason why there are no Universal power-dampeners
well to be fair you if a nigerian prince spell calls you you would definitely answer. isn’t this the one place where magic was somewhat common place. occult magic curses in general probably have a decent history in Nigeria.
I can see it happening.
It’s kinda like this: In the event of general power outage, the security system is wired to the backup generator and UPS so there is no interruption. However, the claxons attached to said security system are not. So the alarms went off… and no one heard them.
Or, for a more computer related event, a computer which automatically disconnects from the internet if it determines that has been infected by a virus, runs an antivirus program, and emails someone that this has happened. The email, of course, can’t be sent because the computer is still off the internet. I can just see something like that happening IRL.
I have seen this sort of thing happen. It is actually not an uncommon for something unexpected to be affected by temporarily shutting off a service that due to poor documentation, or just not paying attention to the documentation. Management causes this kind of problems all of the time and leaves IT (or in this case the MT – Magical Techs) to clean up the mess that they caused.
Excellent job Keith on coloring!
.. except maybe that last panel of maxima.
It’s a little under excellent.
Not sure if that’s Keith’s fault or Dave’s fault though :-D
Regrettably, that’s an art error, not a colouring error
Sounds like the work of every IT department ever.
Sydney’s clever way of saying, “That was a rookie mistake.”
I think both Max and Gault have valid points in the first panel, but I particularly appreciate Decollette demonstrating her trained social skills by defusing their face off with such a friendly smile that both could reasonably back up and nobody could take offense. (And although she addressed Gault, I don’t think there was any doubt to anybody that she was speaking to both of them about putting the posturing on hold.)
I love Dabbler and her Blood Knight/Lovable Sex Maniac/Gadgeteer/Prude-Poking ways, but I’m really taking a shine to Decollett’s Wicked Cultured/Femme Fatale/Silk Hiding Steel persona.
This is why you plan ahead instead of using ad-hoc spaghetti code for everything.
Spaghetti code bad. Tying security systems into a general infrastructure, which will change over time, and not having contingency plans for that (and, just as importantly, oversight to ensure they are put into place), is very bad.
One of the worst banking breaches, over the last year, occurred because a penny-pinching middle manager decided to save money by buying a $10 second-hand router (replace with appropriate technical term, as may be required), rather than a standard one which could be configured to integrate with their multi-million dollar security system.
And, of course, it linked to the internet, which is what that equipment was designed to do. The instant it was plugged in and the system was told it was a secure, trusted, piece of kit, any hackers had unrestricted access to the inner workings of the bank.
Any defense is only as strong as the weakest link.
And yet they still do not allow the execution of incompetent middle-managers!
Well hopefully the Twilight Council will be more enlightened and we will see a bunch of them impaled beyond these doors.
First, it’s mostly not the fault of middle managers. They’re in the middle for a reason: not good enuf to be upper mgrs, not techie enuf to stay out of mgt altogether.
It’s the fault of a legal system that puts bored teenagers in prison for decades for breaching screen door security systems, while not prosecuting at all those individuals and companies who used screen doors for security in the first place.
Security is where bad code is at its worst. In other code, minor faults are minor. But the quality of security code tends to be binary: it is or it isn’t, and if not, bad guys get in.
Most of all code written has bugs in it, yet works anyway. Security code with bugs doesn’t work, and sometimes the failure is ugly.
Most of the ‘code’ for the Veil provably dates back to the 14th century or earlier. Formal architectural logic might have been a wee bit less developed at that stage. :)
And if you think people don’t just muddle along paving over old structures, take a look at a street map of Washington DC sometime. Its genius for horse-drawn carriages and a bloody nightmare for automobiles but nobody’s ripped out the old streets…
Arcane rule 34:
If it is possible on the internet it can be done with magic too.
Arcane rule 34.1
With kisses.
*ponders*
42.
Towels are important. You never know when they might be more pawey than you thought. One minute you may have one pussy sitting on a towel, on your lap, and a few minutes later you might have five! Towels help prevent any mess.
Yeah, that’s just the kind of mistake I can see happening in a lot of situations. The Black Reliquary is probably as impenetrable as is feasible — they weren’t expecting anyone to get inside, ever. But, there are alarms inside, just in case — which, at the start, may have been mystically linked to nearby guardians. After (let’s say) a couple hundred years of nobody even getting *near* the Reliquary (much less inside), the council decided that they really didn’t see the point in having guardians stationed so close to it. Piggyback the alarm ward on the Sigil network — which *also* (most likely) hadn’t ever seen a credible threat to its function. An advanced ward on an impenetrable vault, with the alert going over a 100% uptime network? If I’m honest, *I* wouldn’t have been all that worried, either.
Ok guys, we can probably also allow just tiny bit of conservation of drama. ^_^
If the Council had been that much more wise and there had been live guardians there, Sciona would have still gotten the McGuffin because that’s what the plot demands. The only difference is there’d be a mound of dead guards laying there too. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if the vantage point moves inside and we see any number of wrecked defensive golems and other perfectly reasonable on-site security. If the alarms had worked, it just means you’d have a pile of dead first responders. She was getting the goods. That’s all there is to it. The story written this way is telling us she’s got some finesse to go with the firepower.
You missed last page: Disrupting the ability of the Alarms to call the council, was literally the purpose of the attack on the Sigils. Gault just realised it.
So nope, Sconia would not have been able to pull it off with working alarms, live guards or first responders. That is why she did the whole attack on the sigils in the first place.
Pretty sure if there were live guards, there wouldn’t be a pile. Instead they’d be kidnapped and drained.
That is why we usually have dedicated security services use more reliable, seperate communication channels. But I guess their systems is a really a few centuries out of date.
Some organisations really do use the internet for critical security functions and they do get hacked.
Plus the real world does have something which was developed in the last millennium which keeps on getting updated, with all sorts of handy features (many in a completely uncoordinated fashion) that have become integral to day-to-day life, yet has integral flaws that keep getting exploited.
I won’t whitelist a site before even viewing it. Surprised Forbes’ primary income is internet ads. What was the article, Yorp?
Here is an excerpt, to give you a flavour:
Forbes are reputable enough that I was OK with that. You can always remove it, from the whitelist, if you felt that it was not worth it.
Forbes’ site, on my mobile, overlays article with a stupid pithy quote PLUS an ad in such a way that I can’t get either to GTFO of my way to read the article I came for. I hate forbes even more than pinterest for offering, then blocking content in this way. I empathize with Viirin’s aversion to it.
The only people who think unavoidable, unasked for pithiness is acceptable are the sort that decorate their offices with cute cat plates.
ok, DaveB, the a tag is definitely broke. here’s what I input:
newauthors.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/dolores-umbridge.jpg
between the quotes, after a=, I even added a title=, and here’s what got put in link:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2605/newauthors.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/dolores-umbridge.jpg
why is it adding to my link?
Because that code tag in the box below is wrong, it’s [a href=””]title[/a]
Dolores Umbridge has a general-purpose mild curse, for anyone saying her name in a disparaging context. Remember there is power in invoking a name, and not always granting you power over the subject. It cuts both ways.
there’s a weird curse on my name, that if it’s engraved on anything, that item disappears from existance
Probably just the time corps museum getting a bit ahead of themselves. I bet you have an impressive display there!
just a school ring and a pen so far. i stopped getting my name engraved on stuff
I have a set of text msgs I use to reply to wrong numbers. An early smart phone number of mine got included on a realty company’s text list, so I started getting several msgs a week having to do with their lunch meetups, etc. Asking to be removed didn’t work, so I started replying with these:
Time Travels, inc announces that it will comply with government restrictions on trips to assassinate Hitler in his youth, as the enormous number of travelers attempting to do so created a massive paradox making young Adolph even more batshit crazy than his adult self turned out to be. Paradox Prevention agents assure us this is for the best, since he apparently could have been much worse than history records.
Our apologies to all who sought justice.
Time Travel, Inc. Tours throughout history and prehistory! See Babylon in its glory, or Hannibal leading his elephants through the alps! Hunt the mighty T. Rex, or go deep sea fishing for Megladon! Or visit Africa’s Rift Valley in 1,000,000 BC and see real primitive humans, not Raquel Welch!
Note: some restrictions apply, in particular the Permian extinction until we’re cleared of culpability by the Paradox Prevention Patrol.
Time Travels, Inc is saddened by the loss of our founder, Swiggle D. Leggboan. He served as company president from 2012 to 1845, 2013 to 2187, and 2022 to 2066 (three times).
Time Travels, inc regrets to notify all customers that adventure trips to the Cretaceous to view T. Rex mating season are postponed until we retrieve all the parts of the last tour group.
Time Travels, inc proudly announces cuts in price of trips to the French Revolution. Regrettably, this is necessary since ISIS has chilled the public’s appetite for beheadings.
Time Travels, Inc regrets that trips to the future to bring back advanced technology to fix the present are now banned by Paradox Prevention agents. And if anyone can explain the purpose of “Mr Thingy” (https://www.imgur.com/zUnkVdT.jpg) please contact the Paradox Prevention Bureau, since it is due to be invented and no one knows where Mr. Larson got it except that it was manufactured in Tycho City, Lunar Republic, with patents pending circa 3478 AD.
:-D