Grrl Power #555 – One stop inconvenience shopping
It always bugged me in Buffy when the scoobys were looking up the latest demonic threat, they’d all be desperately scouring through stacks of books, and I always wondered why they didn’t scan them. Buffy was on the air a while ago, but it wasn’t pre-computer.
Edit: As about 2 dozen people have pointed out, they did scan some of the library in Buffy, to detrimental results. It’s been a while since I watched the series.
Sure, scanning books in ancient languages doesn’t make them instantly searchable. But it would have to save you some time, right? The Sunnydale library’s OCR software probably doesn’t do Sanskrit, but you can bet your ass that The Council’s and ARC-Light’s software does. Also Mesopotamian, Sumerian and Hittite.
It also does facial recognition on the drawings of demons in it, in case the person drawing them was particularly skilled and the demon in question is long lived enough to still be around when someone digs up the tome 2000 years later. Also they can use it to quickly identify creatures based on horn configurations, tusks, tails, number of eyes, etc. Assuming the resident demonologist isn’t all “oh yeah I know what that is.”
Scanning also presents the issue of potentially not capturing all the information in any given book. Some might have notes in the margins that can only be read under the full moon, or evil creatures see different coordinates on the ancient map than good creatures. So obviously you’d keep the original texts around, but it would still give you a head start in a lot of cases.
This page colored by Keith.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but 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.
Here to call out the sheer stupidity of using a known compromised system to alert everyone that the system is unreliable. Sigh. With great magical powers comes great loss of common sense apparently.
I once had a boss who tried sending out a company-wide email to alert people that the internet was down.
Yeah, these sorts of things are ridiculously common occurrences. “Common sense” just isn’t actually common.
The IT where i worked would do that all the time: send an e-mail to say: the internet is down we are investigating the issue. update in 30 mins.
so when internet was back up we had like 12 message saying so. All in the name of the mighty protocol!
If the boss is old enough, he may remember a time when that worked – because intra-company e-mails would stay on the local network, no internet needed.
Old? The company I work for now hosted their own email until about 5 years ago, so if you were at the corporate office, no internet connection was necessary. Some companies still do this – it’s not hard.
Depending on where you work, this might not be stupid. In the case you cite, I’m sure it was, but:
If the company hosts their own email server, having their access to the Internet at large would not prevent a company wide email (excluding any remote sites) from going out. They could still do all the things that they could do using access to their own internal servers/utilities/tools, and yet be unable to access any outside sites until their ISP restored service.
I had an issue where my computer couldn’t email, so I went to our IT guys and told them, without even blinking, he scolded me for breaking the (recent) policy of email requests only, don’t knock on their door.
Of course I had a reasonable and rational response, I said in as loud a voice as I could so the entire floor could hear, including the supervisors, “I CAN’T SEND YOU AN EMAIL ABOUT MY EMAIL BEING BROKEN BECAUSE MY EMAIL IS BROKEN!”. They had it fixed in 10 minutes, and a couple of days later they rescinded the email only policy.
A friend’s wife, on a stressful day, called him on her cell phone to ask him if he’d seen her cell phone
Well, don’t leave us in suspenders. Did he know where it was?
*sits on edge of seat, tail wagging, in eager anticipation*
That might work if only the Internet is down, but not if the company’s intranet is also down. (And if either the HOSTS file on every computer has a list of the IP addresses of all the other computers on the company’s intranet and/or the company’s DNS is not the cause of the problem…)
When am I going to remember to read the rest of the thread? Ninja’d by Oberon.
Sorry, but… Look – I’m I.T. and this kind of thing is so common it’s amazing. They shut down the power and don’t understand why the WiFi in the building goes off. They work on the telephone lines and don’t understand why the internet no longer works.
I had to explain to a general manager once that battery backups were to provide a period of doing a graceful shutdown NOT so they could keep working as normal through the tropical storm. (No, he still didn’t get it.)
Yeah seen that too, thus our APU were hospital grade (aka 1200Ah of power storage) and coupled with a generator so you could continue your work.
But it probably the same people that see a check engine on their car and are like: well it still work so…. until 3 month later the car stop working.
Granted. There Are batteries that can do that. now. some companies are making them. however they’re usually huge things for camping.
Sorry, but I disagree. This is something we can easily see in a well-managed network:
Have you never received an e-mail like this:
“Subject: Service interruption.
For technical reasons, we are going to shut down the all internet access services (including e-mails) starting from tomorrow at 9:00.
Regular service should be back by Monday next week at 7:00.”
I did, and there is no problem in this message being sent by e-mail.
There is a problem if that network also informs you that your classified stuff is being stolen. To compare this too computers, its if they decided to turn off the Anti-Virus software for the update to work. The analogy I am using isnt even good enough to describe how dumb the council is being.
This is if the United States Military had their military computers connected to the rest of the internet and if, due to some internal problem, they had to turn off or limit all communications from basic chatter to strategic command to repair communications. That would mean they would have to blind themselves from their own defenses and wait till the system was back up or until the enemy was at their doorstep to see what happened, and the fact that they announced the limitation of communication to the whole world. That basically sums up what the council did.
This is simply a WMD-armed group connecting their weapons vault to a network alarm, alerting everyone the network would be down for a few days, and then doing exactly what they alerted everyone about.
He’s right about the network design. I don’t know what you’re saying but it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Also, no matter what the council has implied, their incompetence was visible long before the vault got robbed. Their troops we’ve seen so far are horribly trained and lack discipline even compared to Sydney. This group simply ISN’T a proper military to begin with. Anyone with a little oversight would’ve pointed this out long ago, but clearly the politics of the group has decayed their cohesion.
The system wasn’t compromised. Remember they thought Sciona’s objective was knocking out the Sigils and The Veil.
You have to assume that any system the public can access is also monitored by your enemy. The issue is that Sciona knew an outage would stop the alarms, but nobody on the council knew.
That is pretty much what the comic is saying. Albeit that Gault realises that they should have been more diligent in their checking. Clearly Sciona knows her enemies well (her allies from their inner circle doubtless helping considerably). She spotted that they had gotten lax or were inclined to knee-jerk reactions to crisis situations.
Which is not dissimilar to many governments, and other organisations, around the globe. It seems human failings are not limited to humans alone.
Also remember: they only realised Sci-fright still had shoulders under her head a couple days ago
In my hometown, someone planted bombs at several schools and notified the police. Later, the bank across town was robbed. They were never caught.
The police covered up the mistake by making a big fuss about the schools, but then announced there was never any danger. Which was a blatant lie – I was told by an officer on scene that they got the bomb squad to remove – and I quote – “the explosives.” It seems Sciona is using a pretty common tactic.
As an aside, later that year the police made their first ever crackdown on the local mafia, which everyone in town knew had been operating unhindered for decades.
“It seems Sciona is using a pretty common tactic.”
One commonly referred to as a Kansas City Shuffle. You make everybody look left, and you go right.
Thanks for filling me in, I appreciate it.
De nada.
They actually tried scanning the books in season one. It summoned a demon into their computer system and out onto the net.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0533445/?ref_=ttep_ep9
That is why you DO NOT have the computer connected to the internet. Also keeps outside nogoodniks from getting into your computer, Put up some wards and keep the comp in a circle of binding and stuff like that there. But no, they just gave up. Bunch of lazy tossers. =P
i remember this episode. though i would think the possibility of a demon escaping into even a isolated database of magical knowledge would be bad.
I was hoping someone would remember that episode!
I didn’t remember the episode until reminded, but the first thing I thought when I read DaveB’s plaint was, basically, that scanning that much magical information could cause problems.
The Buffy episode notwithstanding, consider the library at the Unseen University where they have to chain some books down and try to keep many of them isolated or, at least, not in close proximity with other books, due to the dangers of unpredictable magical interactions.
The thought of scanning those books into a single computer database fills me with dread. The result would probably destroy the universe. Maybe several universes. Possibly entire realities. Not even destroy outright, but .
No, I think it best to keep them on paper.
OK that link didn’t go as expected. The “you can use these tags” note is… deceptive. Let’s try that again:
Not even destroy outright, but pervert in some unspeakable way.
No, I think it best to keep them on paper.
I came into the comments specifically hoping to find this here. In particular, that episode makes clear that scanning magical text is the same as casting it. With the demon just “reading” the text was enough, but Ms Calender’s computer coven was able to cast spells at the demon by just typing them into chat, so clearly even hand entering the text could have consequences.
I was really sad they never followed up on the implications of this, especially once they had characters with magic around. Sending a text-spell could have come in handy a time or two.
Equally none of the characters used mobile phones, despite them actually being around at the time. That ‘really handy’ would have been from the individual’s point of view, but not from the plot perspective.
“Oh, you are not actually the rampaging demon that we see, but Giles? OK we will get on with fixing that fast.
By the way how did you manage to type the message with those big ravening claws of yours?”
Buffy had an episode “I, Robot… You, Jane” (S1E8) Ms. Calendar was helping Giles scan those books into the computer and a scanned book was the demon Moloch who was then released onto the internet and it became the big evil for the episode.
After that it made a lot of sense to me the wouldn’t scan more.
That said you could at least make an index or reference guide rather than having to open dozens of books and skim through them.
Considering Giles was a librarian and they always had the books out that were needed, I always assumed they did. Looking for the Dewey Decimal would be boring to watch; it’s the same reason you never see Buffy trim her finger nails.
Besides trying it once and seeing what happened there are other reasons they may not in general.
Old fashioned. Even the younger watchers would at times seem old fashioned.
All that info at the tip of one person’s, the wrong person’s, finger tips. Would they have the security for it?
They could always rig an alarm system to it, in case it is accessed by an unauthorised person and send an alert to the authorities, over the internet.
*wags tail proudly*
Oh adorable and helpful doggy, why are you ‘EYorp’ here and ‘Yorp’ farther down?
Because one of my kitties keeps pressing the “E” key. I have removed it, from my user name, at least three times over this weekend. And it keeps popping back in, whenever the kitty comes back up on my lap.
I suspect the key has a drop of something sticky and yummy on it.
Either that or I should get Cordelia checked out for an ‘E’ addiction!
“over this” = “since this”
Half dog, half jackass?
(Couldn’t help making the obvious Eeyore joke)
Question: is Decollete name inspired from the french Décolleté which mean neckline/cleavage? if so that quite fitting for a succubus :D
Yes. :)
She could be old enough that the fashion is named after her…
Just like renown Lt. Blouse, a smoking associate of a certain group
from Bletchley, who had an article of clothing named after him – a sort of fingerless glove.Halo’s arch-nemesis, Mitten?
that would actually explain a lots of thing…..
Yup. She could be the power behind the media moguls, and fashion houses, who portray larger busts as being aspirational.
Based on who they chose to model their clothing, fashion houses espouse the small to nearly non-existent bust as aspirational.
Rival succubi clan hostile takedown.
There are currents beneath the currents, and curtains behind the curtains.
Welcome to the Boob Zone. Chose your side, and grab something to fight with – but make your decision wisely, for Secret Boob Wars are not to be taken lightly, and that choice will seal your fate and can not be undone on the whim!
I’m sorry, what? After I “grabbed something to fight with” for some reason I just lost all interest in the fight.
And thus your your choice was cast. Welcome, brethren. Our illustrious leader, lady Tittalina von und zu Booberstein am Jugge, will meet you soon.
There is actually an H-game based on this concept.
I’m the only person to squeal with glee at Sydney’s mention of Friday the 13th series? OK then!
I’m old enough to remember watching that series. I found it surprisingy enjoyable, considering the source of its title.
Warmed this oldtaku’s heart.
I’m named after a character from that series. It’s fortunate that I love MacGuffin Collection Service series. (I REALLY wish The Roomhad lasted long enough for more closure.)
are you sure you don’t mean The LOST Room?
No, no you are not, I just wish I could find them somewhere on DVD or online.
Not to mention the Watchers Council tended to be very old school, and frowned on the use of newer technologies. Especially technologies that weren’t in widespread use yet.
So is there a good reason they didn’t just destroy those items instead of keeping them around to be stolen?
Well yea. If you only live on the one world having armageddon devices laying around is a bad idea. But if you are part of a galactic community and may have need to destroy some other planet, then you will want the weapons to do that.
Plus he who can destroy a thing controls a thingl.
No it’s never a good idea for the very reason highlighted in this comic.
Because you cannot properly protect something like this as a small hidden organization. Because the very act of hiding means you loose out on most of your ability to secure the place.
They managed it OK for three thousand years. Plus they are not small, they are a world-wide organisation, with armies under their control,* not to mention the galaxy-spanning factions that are sub-sets of the Council.
Smaller organisations would be the United States of America and the former USSR. Both of which maintained their own nuclear arsenals. Seemingly under tight security, most of the time.
Yet, when a crisis occurred (the fall of the Iron Curtain and a prolonged period of military personnel not being paid) a frighteningly large amount of fissionable material went missing. Much of which still has not been traced to this day.
Yes, you are right that if such things cannot be safely stored, then it is better to destroy them. But you can’t destroy plutonium. Likewise I bet the apocalypse McGuffins are probably quite resistant to that.
But, either way, the needs for them remain, even with the risk of theft. Every nuclear armed nation has retained their capabilities, since acquiring them, albeit scaled back at times. They just need to be eternally vigilant and to make robust contingency provision for catastrophic circumstances.
Such plans do not always work out in practice though.
* Remember the army of gorgons? I doubt that they are the only one they can muster.
You can pretty easily render plutonium unusable and drop it into an abyss. Like if a demonic book couldn’t be destroyed persay, perhaps its protections don’t extend to dipping it in ink.
Plus, you can always throw shit into the sun. At that point, its probably dead and if not, nobody’s going to be going deep into a star to pull it out. Heck, if they have the power to do that they’re already a major threat.
I don’t know if you noticed, but they are in an abyss. That did not help.
And arming Sun-dwelling fire elementals, with doomsday devices is not a good idea. They tend to have fiery tempers.
Plus, what if the book you throw into the sun is inhabited by a flame demon? It’s hardly a stretch to say it would crush the earth with one hand post-power-up.
You know, with some powers being scalable in this comic, I wonder how the universe hasn’t already been demolished. Just Kevin could’ve become a galactic threat if he was left alone for a few days. And it’s already been demonstrated that he’s not unique a la Krona. The Council doesn’t take its job seriously enough for them to be the only intergalactic line of defense.
There are obviously a host of things with unusual powers, some of whom are especially so. One thing that we know is common to most lifeforms is a desire to live. The survival instinct is a very strong one. Part of which is the need for the world to carry on existing, in order to stay alive on it.
So it is not unreasonable to assume that, even amongst powerful beings, the majority would likewise want to keep the world from being destroyed. Meaning that those individuals and groups which may want to destroy the world will face significant opposition.
And even if the bulk of that opposition is not particularly competent, there will nonetheless also be those of exceptional capability, who will be able to oppose the diabolical plotters. Probably aided subtly by anyone with a vested interest who has confidence in their ability, but wish to ensure that the odds are sufficiently stacked in favour of today not being the last day of existence.
Yes of course, but to break something is far easier than to build it. One can destroy what many have built or defended. That is my point.
Mostly. But look at how much infrastructure is necessary to maintain the nuclear arsenal, plus the large number of personnel involved. And even if you happened to give the nuclear football to some complete nutter, who decided that they would end the world, there are sufficient other people, in the chain that they can just say ‘no, actually, I am not going to launch just because you are having a bad hair day!’.
Easy, when compared to all the effort to build up civilisation, yes. But not easy to actually turn the theory into practice. If it were the world would have vanished a long time ago.
That’s because individuals are relatively powerless. The more power you give an individual the more they can tip the scale by themselves.
Change your situation to one where a nutter gets the power to toss a nuke-level blast by himself. But he’s still intelligent enough to run when the tables turn, and to plan where to toss it so he doesn’t get caught.
It’s the Unabomber but on a much larger scale. You see where I’m going with this?
Ukraine disarmed, and got themselves stomped for their troubles.
Whist the nuclear weapons were in their territory, they were not under their command, but that of the Soviet Union. As such it is not possible to claim that they were a nuclear armed nation.
All they did was disarm nuclear weapons that were under the control of the nation which later decided to do said stomping. So probably a wise idea to reduce their enemy’s capabilities.
Well you can make plutonium go boom. But the amounts we are talking about would have … problematic side effects from doing that.
Or you take a particle accelerator, aim it at the plutonium you want to get rid of to induce fission, use the heat from the fission to run a power plant, power that accelerator and dump the excess on the grid.
And yes that has been considered as a way to get rid of plutonium (and other radioactive stuff). Things like the plutonium falling apart into stuff that is radioactively hot compared to plutonium and not being able to guarantee safety of the process due to that and that it would still take 100 years to get these isotopes down to an acceptable level of activity it never made it out of a proposal.
There is the possibility that, like in Friday the 13th the series, the items simply cannot be destroyed by any means.
Hey, at least Achilles will still have furniture, when the last star goes out. I am betting at least a few glow too.
Yeah: destroying them will destroy you
To quote Professor Farnsworth while filling a dumpster:
“I’ll feel so much better not knowing where all these unstable doomsday devices are.”
Sorry, couldn’t find it on youtube.
Those items might be indestructible.
That as well
Or they may be destructible, but only in a way that releases more problems. A ‘can of evil‘ doomsday artifact sounds like a terrible idea in isolation, but it does mean that the potentially very durable evil is kept out of action for as long as the can remains intact.
Plus, of course, the standard justification that Humans use for their doomsday artifacts in our universe is another option. We may not have any intention of using them, but we keep them in existence in case we run into an outside-context problem – the classic ‘unknown unknowns’.
(I’m sure this was said once already) Buffy did scan the books in the library once, it resulted in a demon being released into the internet by lifting the curse from the book holding him (or something it’s been like 20 years since I’ve watched this). He then proceeded to control some high school jerks into building him a body for the final showdown. Magic and technology typically don’t get along in most universes.
Thank you, someone else who has seen both the Buffy episode where a scanned demon released it (and Willow could hack anything, so ‘security’ is not a thing that works in that series) as well as Friday the 13th and Warehouse 13.
Triskaidecaphobia, anybody?
Actually, congrats to Sydney for being able to summarize them so well in panel 6!
I’m placing my bet on something connected to Sydney’s Orbs woke up, and that is what tripped the alarms.
Secondary bet on there actually being a vault intruder that accidentally or on purpose woke up something connected to Sydney’s Orbs while doing whatever evil deeds they were planning.
Sydney is being positive: she’s positive you screwed the world
I love the Librarians! Such a good show.
And once again, people are so quick to show how smart they are by posting that they know about an episode of “Muffy the Umpire Layer” they didn’t even look at the immediately preceding entry to see that someone else already did
Don’t use a porn parody name when you mean the original, thanks.
Have been using that name since the movie, thanks
I still have a tough time believing PeeWee Herman was one of the vampires in that movie
The proper porn title alternate is from Friends, Buffet the Vampire Layer
I can’t help but wonder in a universe with copious magic, how profitable a business mdoel it would be to have a dedicated digitization firm, advertising specialized scanners regularly being updated to simulate esoteric viewing modes, photo-thaumic capture of just what IS moonlight filtered through a unicorn-horn lens on a vernal equinox at the top of the highest tree in an ancient forest. Just how does the presence of one of the ancient Wyrmblooded lineages alter surrounding manaspace so the book knows that one of them is nearby and reveals secrets only for their eyes.
They’d eventually have such an exhaustive list of alternate scanning conditions, that for them to process anything would be hugely time consuming and expensive, but probably really profitable because you’d have people who’d be paying them not jsut for the work once but a retainer to be notified of the option to re-test when a new scan method is added to the ‘reliably replicable list’, being one of their customers would be the literal ONLY way to be as sure as possible you know everything in your spellbooks.
Yet another triumph for the Accelerated Research Mega-Swot Engine! Soon you will show them all!
https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20160208#.WZtk5VGQxQI
also the reason Mad Science is strictly forbidden in the Library stacks!
And now i’m sad again because Warehouse 13 is removed from netflix :(
Yea. I watched it round a friend’s, and was looking forward to seeing the next series. There were some interesting personal and plot arcs that I would have liked to seen through.
Same. I got Netflix around the same time it was removed so now I have to use [i]’other sources'[/i] to watch it.
Ugh, you’d think I know by now to use the proper tags. ‘other sources’
Mentioning both warehouse 13 and the librarians. Me and Sydney would get along just fine.
For people that are supposed to be good at keeping secrets, the council is rather incompetent at it, aren’t they?
Seems they haven’t yet looked in the vault…
I can see an outcome more distressing than the vault being empty…
That would Be: The vault having everything still in it, in its proper place with nothing missing.
For that matter, howd they find out the alarm had been tripped?
A security guard doing a routine check?
they got over their initial panic protocols and RE-enabled the text messaging service spells which then finally sent the notification alarm texts that the Vault had been cracked open…
Since everyone else already pointed out the Buffy episode where they tried and failed to scan the books o’ knowledge and that ended up failing epically, I’ll take a different tack. It would, theoretically, have been perfectly possible to index and copy over the texts into a database. Especially since they end up translating and researching so much as they go, converting all that work into a digital format would have kept it for easy accessible storage. I think Dawn actually does suggest this later in the series. But, visual mediums being what they are, there’s a certain amount of visual appeal in seeing a group of people in a increasing pile of books, searching for that elusive piece of knowledge, falling asleep in the stacks, as opposed to a slightly more sterile image of someone clicking away at a computer screen. There are ways to make that interesting, but it’s harder.
Should I be ashamed that I got that “Librarians” reference?
You! Say. that. with. pride! (like this)
+1
*offers a bucket of tasty mackerel*
Nummy!
Scanning the Necronomicon in even the damaged versions could do some peculiar things to the continuum. Even worse if someone finds a way to use an Artificial Intelligence Mage to do the reading. What will those powers do if on electrons over just some kind of paper, or skin with inks…?
Some of this stuff contacts and deals with powered beyond our 3+1 r-state. Higher r-states can alter the parameters of the physical universe as we are adjusted to. Could drive us insane by just taking a glimpse since it effects on more than just the visible physical level. Warps the brain. Putting them on computers could start any number of things or maybe disable them. Who knows? Care to try a Grimoir for a test?
Since we have no arcanophysics or arcane based technology for protection. But Archon does as does the Council. Maybe that is why they didn’t put it all on computer discs or hard drives. Or did they run tests and found that bizarre an potentially dangerous things begun to happen with the least spells.
I loved the Librarians!
a negative attitude would be that she had a very specific use for all of them.
While yes there are potential downsides to scanning specific books (Hey did you hear there was an episode of buffy where they did that and it went bad? I bet im the first to think of it!!!) Thats hardly going to be all the books, or even most of the books. Hell, its probably a distinct minority of books, and I would imagine the mages responsible for scanning the books into a computer would be aware of what books would be dangerous to do it for. Thus leaving them with a FAR smaller library of restricted books, and a vast online library available for quick searches.
I was beginning to think you guys were doing the Buffy reference as a running joke.
No no. It was never possible to run on Buffy, as their sets and locations were mostly too small to allow more than a short dash. So even when a script called for ‘frantic searching’ or ‘reaching someone before they died’ it would usually be done at an ‘energetic amble’.
No more headband for Sydney?
Yeah, not since the night she got it and hunted Sciona by the looks of it.
Decollete doesn’t seem perturbed by her not wearing the gift but maybe she’s just being diplomatic.
It is probably in an Archon secure vault (one without internet access), with a label saying:
Subnote:
Schedule Halo the Mightay (apex superheroine in training) for psycho-analysis scanning for transferred enchantments and blood testing for nanite infestation.
Warning: do NOT compare psycho-analysis scan against the normal template to determine deviation.
OOC: On a side note, I wonder if Sydney could just look at herself in the mirror with the Comm orb on magic filter mode. Wouldn’t spot the nanites but *shurg*. Further… I wonder who would be best to interpret the symbols it shows her, Dabbler/Gwen/Arc-light or Krona. Difficult to say if it’s showing standard arcane symbols or if they’re more in line with code sigils that Krona sees.
Gwen is a self-taught mage, barely at the apprentice level, so her practical qualifications are not that high. However she does have a job as an investigator in Archon. Given how very highly qualified most of the other personnel we have seen are* you are right to put her on the list of potentials. She was the first one called to check out the orbs initially, after all.
I suspect that Gwen probably does have very impressive academic qualifications in things like the occult and cryptozoology. Except, for her she studies things which she knows to be real, but just can’t publish the truth to the world at large.
But until we find out more about her, to be able to confirm such supposition, Zephan would probably be the better Arc-light member, given his experience as both a retired adventuring mage and as a senior member of the mage faction of the Twilight Council.
We should not forget Pixel mind. She was able to figure out the nature of the killer manikin’s enchantment, on the fly, without using any magic. Plus she is the official lead investigator of the orbs (over both Zephan and Dabbler).
Given how broad Dabbler’s experience is, in both magic and ultra-technology, that implies Pixel’s capabilities are impressive (especially as nothing about her were or super nature would appear to help in reverse engineering super technomagic).
But you are right to give the edge to Krona. Clearly she does have the potential to understand the symbols, as she did recognise the orbs operating language. Not a certainty mind. Just knowing a programming language does not mean that you will understand icons (or HUD display graphics) created in an application using that. But it may help her to do that. If Archon let her.
* Peggy is both a sniper and a helicopter pilot. Who’s skills are clearly up in the Olympic sniper and trick-shooter class. Even Arianna is a PR expert and lawyer and merchandising guru.
I didn’t realise Zephan was skilled as a mage. I generally figured Gwen was the most skilled in actual magic or they would have called on Zephan or Pixel to check them out before Dabbler, who is still considered an external consultant in a technical sense (not 100% trusted but probably 95%) and likely someone they don’t want to expose others who are outside the know on the veil.
Krona is the best to call on IF the Orb’s HUD for magic is anything similar to Krona’s code sigils or the sigils she saw previously which she called code sigils. It’s equally possible that the symbols Sydney could see are actually arcane symbols which form part of the enchantments or spells but are generally invisible unless they have showy display or are viewed by scans similar to Gwen or Dabbler’s. But if they are code sigil interpretations of the spells then I’d imagine Krona and a mage could work together to decipher meanings
…Not that Krona could necessarily be trusted to interpret a scan by Sydney’s orbs for any enchantments on her that may have been put there by a council member’s enchanted headwear.
I suspect that Zephan’s problem is precisely that he used to be an adventurer. So whilst I am sure he has a shed-load of tricks for defeating opponents and escaping dangerous situations, he may simply not have the breadth of knowledge that is necessary for methodical research.
Roleplaying games tend to make everything unrealistically easy and assume that if you ‘level up’ through adventuring your skills become better than non-adventurers. Which, given that said non-adventurers will be spending their time studying their core profession, rather than roughing it in some jungle, does not really make sense.
Especially when dealing with mages, who really do specialise in sedentary study. But even if you look at athletics you find that the world-class champions are those who spend their lives training. Whilst there are a number who do adrenaline junkie sports, I bet there are not many who spend most of their time backpacking around the world, or serving with a unit of mercenaries.
As far as we officially know he is ‘an artifact specialist’, rather than a spellcaster. But we can guess he is on the magical artefact side of things, given his seat in the mage’s delegation. That said though he does have many years of experience over Gwen, either way. Which probably does count, even if his knowledge base is ‘adventurer patchwork’.
Yeah, I generally think of Zephan as a much more experienced Pixel who’s done all their adventuring and gained all their experience and is far more at home with the retired adventurer crew, like retired explorers, hunters or military officers, gathering together to drink a fine brandy or port and reminisce about their lifetime of accomplishments while continuing to network with their long list of acquaintances from years and adventures past.
A great man for seniority in the Arc-Light and/or Arc-Dark teams but particularly for diplomatic relations with the council and it’s members. I could easily imagine his seating position as an indication of him being a guest of Gault’s or such, and Gault being an “old friend”
To stick to the ultimate goal or divert a tad.
It’s hard to know which way Sciona and team would lead. I mean, in one sense if you have a very specific, very intentional goal in mind that requires a single item from there, it could be very good to stick strictly to your game plan and keep it simple by getting only what you need.
On the other hand, its not like you’re gonna get a second chance at anything in there (unless your main goal will give you that power) so while you’re there you may as well grab anything else of use.
Now, certainly you don’t want to be stupid and go in without a plan just grabbing as much as you can as quickly as you can. If you know the specific item you’re after is in there then it’s likely you know some or even many, of the other items in there. So if you’re confident it won’t impact the primary mission and you know some of those items would be useful there there’s no reason not to plan for a number of secondary objectives/items and maybe even some tertiary ones in the form of looking through for anything you recognise which you didn’t know was in there.
I mean… If you’re after the Orb of Blue Bloodlight and you happen to see a BFG 9000 sitting there as well then…
Having completed a search of all these posts, let me just add…
…let us all pray that the Council was AT LEAST savvy-enough to keep an up-to-date INVENTORY of this vault’s contents, Almost as bad as finding an empty vault, would be the sneaky trick of taking just one CRITICAL ‘McGuffin’, whose loss might go unnoticed in the piles of other items left behind…
…until it was too late!
Lets hope they didn’t do a Sydney and store the inventory inside the vault…
Turns out only the inventory list was taken, leaving everyone paranoid about what else might be gone.
Worse, leaving something behind.
Ok, I have an issue. Two facts from the last few comics: (1) Archon doesn’t know the system was going to be down and (2) before shutting down the system, the Council sent a system-wide message alerting users that the system would be going down. For both to be true, Achon must not have received that system-wide message. Which strongly implies that Arc-Light is incompetent.
Archon employs at least one person we’ve seen with magical talent, Gwen (page #80). She should have gotten the message, and there’s likely more mages working somewhere within Archon. And that kind of message is something you definitely kick up the chain of command because it’s important.
Hmmm…. yeah, I don’t see an explanation for why that wouldn’t be the case. I’m usually of the opinion that most plot holes are nothing of the source and just constitute a lack of imagination on the part of readers/viewers. But this seems like a genuine plot hole.
Unless there’s going to be an arc about how arc-light is secretly up to no good and they totally knew but didn’t inform the brass or other divisions…
nothing of the sort* (my kingdom for an edit button)
and just who in archon knows the list of people authorized to know about magic? gwen reports to a seated council member who would also have gotten the message, he may have mentioned to someone read in on magic or had no one cleared for the knowledge (unlikely) and nothing be passed back down because they rely on response advice from the person telling them and the advice was don’t worry.
There is no firm reason to assume that Gwen, or Arc-light is on the network. After all the network may /use/ magic, but it was created to hide the existence of semi-, demi-, hemi-, para, and nonhumans.
The council only works with Archon (and presumably its predecessors) with considerable reluctance and under duress. And Archon has shown all the grace and diplomacy of the American army with how it inserted itself in what for the past several centuries (or more likely millennia) was the exclusive domain of the Council. The later may not be so keen on incorporating Archon mages into their network.
And of course, even if the Archon mages are in that network, they simply got a ‘Due to system maintenance delivery of AeMail may be delayed for the next several hours. No AeMail will be lost during this period and all stored AeMails will be delivered as soon as the maintenance is completed.’
Not exactly something to sound the alarms over.
I don’t see why Dabbler wouldn’t have known though.
I suspect more likely that they DID get the message but, like the council, saw nothing significant about it or any risk as you noted. Not even enough to inform Maxima, although Maxima is the head of Arc-Swat so not in their direct chain of command for general information. It may have gotten to the General as something like a memo among the countless others.
Why would Archon be informed? Or even Arc-Light?
If The Pentagon decides to update it’s porn library, do they inform the Canadians? o_O
Who says they didn’t get the message?
If you receive a message along the lines of ‘E-mails will not work between X and Y because we’re updating the servers’ do you immediately connect that to mean that some obscure alarm system for a room you don’t know about that hasn’t been opened since before you were born would no longer be able to tell you it was triggered?
Arch-light, or at least the magic users of Arch-light, might have got a message they won’t be able to send ae-mail for a while, couldn’t know this had other side-effects, made a note about it and went on with their work.
Also, Maxima is not part of Arch-light so anything that would get in through those channels would not be passed on to her unless it was vital to her or her team, which it wasn’t as far as they knew. You aren’t going to pass on a message that Facetime will be down if you know they exclusively use Android systems.
Sure the OCR would do those languages. Some of the the council members probably are native speakers of those.
But how well would it handle pre-cambrian? ancient eocnochian?
And hopefully the text to speech option is not only disabled but removed entirely and burned to ashes for good measure. It would be embarrassing if speed reading through an ancient tome would summon a couple of deep ones and elder gods before anybody could say ‘wait, where’s the containment circle?’
In Buffy, let’s not forget that Giles (and probably a lot of other Watchers) didn’t really like computers.
They did use some demonic databases in the later seasons, as well as on Angel. But considering some of those books are older than human civilization, it’s a safe bet that even if they were fully committed to digitizing their entire library it would still take a very long time to complete the project. Even longer when you consider that at least some of them are flat out dangerous to scan/read/be in the same room with.
Next have her make a She-Wolf of London reference and complain about the horrible second season.
Also, I see Sydney is somebody who mis-uses the term ‘MacGuffin”. MacGuffin’s specifically drive the plot without ever actually affecting it, like the Maltese Falcon. But the weird devices and cursed artifacts in Warehouse 13 and Friday the 13th the Series each directly affect the plot of their episode in significant ways. They’re just general plot devices rather than MacGuffins.
I think I know what will be in the vault. A crazy guy with a shotgun called Cooter Jones. And he might come out shooting. If he isn’t hungry from being there a few days.
The circle they were painting was a transporter. But you have to balance the mass. Take something out the vault and you have to put something else back in of the same weight.
They could’ve used a jar of dirt if they needed to replace the item, but that would explain why they felt the need to work with Cooter. And a living, shotgun wielding bigot would make a great distraction and he might even accidentally blow up everyone (including himself), giving Sciona an even bigger head start before they figure out what she took.
I’ll be signing up for this theory till we learn otherwise.
Warning: bizarre train of thought ahead.
1) The bad guys not only stole a bunch of stuff but also left their Gorgon member behind. That way, when the Council opens the vault to check out the alarms and survey what remains, they get stoned. And not in the Colorado way.
2) Would The Mighty Halo’s force field protect from that, the way it protected from Vehemence’s aggro field?
3) …is Halo’s force field actually transparent? Maybe it is a reverse stealth holocamo: it is opaque, but projects an image of it’s contents on the outside of itself, and projects an image of the surroundings inside of itself (adjusted for perfect perspective despite the curve of the surface)?
The safest way to test #2 would be to have Sydney put up her field and have Dabbler try to mesmerize her from outside. Since a succubus seems to require a gaze, that would test if visually-cued magic can penetrate Sydney’s shield.
tested and proven to work with kevin or that could have just him being a guy with xurials assets on display. I mean that last bit as a joke I have nothing against guys (especially as I am one).
Cunning thought. Maybe ‘some booby trap’ would be a more likely scenario mind. Given that we have seen gorgons being used as elite enforcers against those defying the Twilight Council’s will, so historically are very firmly allied with the Council, rather than their enemies. Of course, as there were clearly a number of gorgons, it is entirely possible that one or more might be traitors.
But elite troops tend to be carefully vetted, well paid, motivated and respected. Which makes it much less likely to find disloyalty amongst their ranks.
Probably. In addition to that, and still in the car-park fight, we saw what appeared to be a laser attack (certainly an energy attack of some sort) bouncing off the shield. However I would be happier if Sydney did not risk that.
Eee, that be clever.
3) It can’t actually be transparent in the strictest sense, since lasers don’t shoot thru it. But that does leave a lotta questions about what can get thru it. Like a General Products spaceship hull.
Exactly where my mind went.
We can tell that pretty accurately. Anything with a damage rating equal to a top-end world-class super’s attack. Sydney has five-star defense with her shield. Which does also factor in general utility, mind, so the fact that it can be embiggened enough to protect a crowd, and also includes magical effects, does push its rating higher.
In raw damage stopping power it is probably only on a par with Dabbler’s. So even a bottom-end five-star attack will penetrate the shield. Likewise most of the four star attacks would also be a serious risk (unless they too were inflated due to versatility).
For a spaceship colliding with her, I think she would be fine with a low-speed collision. However space ships can get extremely high velocities going, and if one, with a big differential to Halo’s velocity, impacted her shield, I think she would have a bad day.
Scanning the books directly in might be a bad idea.
But setting up a searchable index of important terms and cross-references seems like a no-brainer.
Some things you do not want to make easy to find. Only once you have learnt how to cast the appropriate protective spells and proven your morality enough to be given a key, to unlock its reliquary and chains, should you even be told where it is.
Let’s see now….”mole men of Atlantis”, yeah right, “mole men of mid oceanic trenches”, wait, that’s sounds like scientists actually found… “mole men, Lava God of”, and a section on how to release it from its dark watery prison…sounds interesting, hmmm, I’ll need to buy some baking soda and….
I can just imagine this from Zander while he’s sitting on the floor in the back of the stacks.
All succubi worldwide will mourn this day.
Buffy had an episode specifically about scanning books. They accidentally released a demon into the internet.
It’s perfectly rational to scan those into a digital format even if only to serve as a mundane backup and to give a super index that can tell you which book, and even page it’s on if it’s something identifiable either through a text match (including translated text) or image search (for all those drawings of demons, magic circles, and whatnot.). :)
Have a look at that book behind the girl sitting down. When it opens up, different things come out, like weapons. Just how does scanning that, with Earth technology, help to utilise its magic?
“Oh look, here it has a machine gun. Ooh, in this one it produced a pyramid of cheap chocolates, on a tray, as a gift for a senior diplomat.”
Of course you are right if the books are just like normal books, with easily identifiable characters. However just think how many depictions we have seen of magic books, where the text squirms around on the page.
At the very least you would need to film the moving images. And even if the cameras can pick up such things OK, would it capture why they are behaving in that way? Is the text responding to the time of day, or month, or what the reader is wearing or thinking?
The latter seems more likely, given the cerebral nature of spells. So if your thoughts do not make the images respond in the way necessary to learn the spell, it would be useless.
Finally, in this setting, the Veil would render any useful information into mundane gobbledygook, of no use to anybody. Dave has indicated that is precisely what happened to the photos that Sydney took of Mr Fluffy. Whatever may be in that camera’s digital memory is not images of a werewolf.
And thus a enchanted interactive camera is nessisary like the librarian might have
Sydney just keeps getting prettier …
Kudos to Keith for being able to blend his colouration in smoothly with DaveB‘s perfected new style. And making Sydney look good too.
I’m guessing the reveal of the Arsenal of Doom will be a repeat of Deus’ trophy wall, with dozens of geeky references to doomsday devices? Anyone want to get in their predictions now?
The Moment from Doctor Who.
Planet Eater from Star Trek (shrunk down of course)
One of the Infinity Stones from the Marvel universe (or maybe all of them in the Gauntlet)
My dad hung up all his tools on a board at the end of our garage. With silhouettes drawn around each one. Both my brother and I were free to borrow any, but had to put them back, when done. And he could spot the instant he drove home if one was not back in its designated spot.
I think there may be a lot of empty silhouettes here. And a superstitious tumbleweed. And possibly a mammary trap.
Hold up if magic in this universe is analogous to programing than why wouldn’t a skilled mage be able to set up a hacking interface like krona’s? Whats the fundamental difference between the two? Is it just that kron can see the code ofthe universe unaided? (Sorry if these questions have already been answered but they just started bothering me today. )
First off because mages only deal with magical things, whereas Krona’s power does not have that distinction. When she changes something it is a fundamental change to its nature, as opposed to, for instance an effect which could be detected (with Sydney’s truesight) and dispelled (by a ‘dispel magic’ spell or in an anti-magic zone).
As an example we saw both Achilles and Mr Amorphous magically disguised as bank robbers. But Mr Amorphous had to remember that his tongue was not meant to be stretchy, whilst posing as a normal human. Likewise Achilles would still have been utterly invulnerable.
Whereas if they asked Krona to do the job, they would actually become normal humans, until she chose to restore them to normal. Her limitation is that she must understand the nature of what she is tampering with. Normal humans she knows (she could alter Sydney’s bladder for example), so that is fine.
Likewise Krona has been able to restore supers to a previous state (Pixel, using the checkpoint) so restoring their starchiness and invulnerability should be within her capabilities.
But nobody understands the real nature of super-powers, so granting someone super powers in the first place would not be possible. She knows that Achilles is invulnerable, but without knowing what makes him so, she could not grant that property to someone else.
Krona may be able to do something that appeared super-like though. For instance turning a second amendment activist’s arms into those of a bear. But turning them into bat’s wings probably would not grant flight, as the muscles would not be sufficient to overcome the weight of the person (amongst other problems).
Whereas magic can grant flight to a person, even with disproportionately small wings (see the fairy above). For Krona to be able to do that she would need to intrinsically understand the nature of gravity and how to alter universal laws for an isolated individual.
Halo’s orbs can do that mind, but Krona does not have the knowledge to duplicate that effect. Yet. Plus they operate at a deeper level than she does, in any event. So Krona may never be able to do so.