Grrl Power #560 – Questions of security
The Council isn’t immediately worried about Archon wanting to get their hands on anything in the vault, though there is a concern that they might claiming some sort of national security eminent domain.
But of course, Archon exists because there are supers out there who operate in a more selfish manner, and would love to get their hands on an inventory of this vault, either for themselves or to auction on supervillain.net. The average super would have trouble breaking into this vault. Heatwave might be able to burn through those doors given enough time, but Mr. Amorphous couldn’t get in there unless he had a few weeks to work at it. Sydney, Dabbler and Maxima all by themselves could crack that thing with relatively minimal effort. The Council is worried about a Magneto/Dr. Doom/Sinestro level villain out there who could crack this thing like an egg, if not rip the whole thing out from the continental shelf.
The Council has had plenty of interactions with Supers in the past, but mostly with mid level ones. They’re realizing more and more that the top end of the super scale may be higher than they’d previously realized. Bit of a blow to some egos there, if they’re honest.
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Vault-Tec anyone?
Lucky it’s not the year 2277 yet.
But the Great War happened in 2077
*checks calendar*
I don’t think we have reached that yet either.
*pokes calendar, with paw*
Has someone not been taking pages off this thing?
would we have Yorpmeat as a commenter in 2277?
No, as an Entree’.
*runs and hides in kennel*
*sneaks down escape tunnel*
It’s OK, Yorp! Dogmeat is an immortal dog, so Yorpmeat, doubly so.
Yorp! Yorp? Hmmmmm kennel is empty.
Dogmeat is truly indestructible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91v1y1DoOjA
smells too bad to be eaten.
What? He just had a bath! Did he roll in something again? o_O
smells of 4chan
4chan favours the brave.
*peeking out of a periscope in bunker*
Only in Fallout 4.
In all better Fallout Games, he can die.
true. its just 2217.
luckily we have this nifty simulated reality 2017 our brains are jacked into through these pods until the surface is habitable again.
probably should have set the simulation a few hundred years later, since scientists are finding the resolution limit now…
Actually as the resolution of the universe is best visualized by the speed of light
1 Planck metre by one planck second,
the fact that this measurement is smaller than any known particle is scientifically sound.
only if the resolution was equal in size to the smallest particle would it be evidence that we live in a simulation. in fact better proof for whether the universe is a simulation would be the size of the universe. There are a few possible reasons for a simulation as complex as our observed universe.
1. to study the universe as a whole as a study of astrophysics
2. to study the possible evolution of life, and where in the universe we might find it.
3. to study possible alternate timelines
4. to run otherwise unethical tests in the fields of science, psychology, biology, and politics
5. to test potential candidates, to graduate towards some unknown field of career.
6. as an immersive environment to simulate a realistic reality
6a. Futuristic prison to rehabilitate inmates
6b. Colony Sleeper Ship on route to a new planet. Hybernation or cryogenic pods.
6c. Think tank or slave pods, humans easier to control if they think they have freedom and minds are kept active
Our observable universe is 13.5 billion light years in radius, that’s a lot of data to simulate,
even if most of the time it’s just listed as quantum information
and you are only simulating the parts that are actually being observed
and pixels get larger the farther away they are from observers
that’s still going to be lot of data to simulate all at the same time.
it would be far easier to simulate a smaller younger universe
even if the test subjects did discover they were in a simulation
how do you expect a whole bunch of NPCs or brains in jars
to actually escape the matrix without dying?
Let alone you don’t know how many times the simulation is nested inside an even larger universe.
What if it’s a Micro-verse, in a universe, in a macro-verse in a multiverse ?
Do you have a plan to escape each level or layer we’re trapped inside ?
what if we found our universe was just an astrophysics simulation
and intelligent life evolving inside the simulation was an accident the scientists didn’t plan on.
what if “god” was really a curious intern that wanted to know if we were intelligent enough to communicate?
what if the Dark ages were because that intern was fired for corrupting the simulation data ?
what if our universe is about to be deleted and unplugged, to make way for a new simulation
one that won’t be contaminated by curious interns, that should know better than to name the lab rats.
Simulating everything in the universe would require several times the size of the universe in data storage. If someone is doing it they built another universe that ours is running on. That said black holes and white holes could be input and output ports so I can’t totally rule it out.
the observable universe only contains
2.207480003189623677… × 10^156 Planck meters of volume
assuming you could use a mere byte of data to catalogue a particle
you’d only need 2.20748000318962346 x 10^141 petabytes of Data storage
1 petabyte = 1000 TB
SDXC card 0.5 grams 256 to 400 GB
1 TB = 2 grams
1 PB = 2 Kg
That’s only about 4.41496000637924692×10^138 metric tons
or 2.2196882887779019205631× 10^111 solar masses
at an estimated 7 x 10^22 stars in the universe
you’d only need 3.171 × 10^88 universes worth of mass
to build the a computer large enough to perfectly simulate a complete universe
or store a single planck second of data from that simulation.
I think I just proved it would be impossible for a perfect simulation of the universe to exist.
I think you transposed a 6 and 9. Bettrr check yer numbers again.
All those numbers and formula, formulay… formulii… whatever. The real answer to the universe and everything in it, is still 42.
Long live the mice.
Uh…you definitely didn’t do that.
Here’s an easy way to think of it. Imagine a few years go by, and for whatever reason we decide to make the Goombas and Koopas in Super Mario sentient.
We are simulating ‘a universe’, at this point. We have to run all of the levels at once, from the POV of each inhabitant. It isn’t super hard, because of how simple their environment is. We can also turn time forward and back as we will.
Let’s imagine that they are having their equivalent of this conversation.
The kuraimizu-Koopa is saying something like “In order to simulate a single Planck-level you would need an incredible number of coins of data storage! Peta-coins even! The score alone would have to be stored in some kind of metric mushroom!”
You see the problem? You are talking about the requirements to simulate our universe as though those terms are meaningful outside of the simulation, which is silly. Talking about how many universes worth of mass you’d need to simulate our universe is presupposing the simulators gave us a notion of ‘mass’ which isn’t just completely bankrupt. There is no reason to assume that, though.
Why do you presuppose that the ENTIRE universe is being simulated at once? The vast majority of particles and processes in the universe are simply nebulous probabilities until something observes them. Of course the term “observe” in physics isn’t exactly what most laypersons would define it as, but the point stands.
The game No Man’s Sky comes to mind. 18+ Quintillion planetary systems. But those systems aren’t actually stored on the drive. The whole game only takes up a few gigabytes. They are procedurally generated near instantaneously as soon as you fly to them. As soon as you “observe” them.
Of course this falls more into the purview of philosophy than science. It’s hard to observe something not existing when the simple act of observing it forces it to exist.
If a universe falls in a forest, does the Pope have a … wait.. what is the bear doing in the Vatican?
Errr…The same thing that bears do in the woods, perhaps?…
Steal pick-a-nick baskets? o_O
When talking about simulating universes, use orders of infinity, not mere numbers! Endless universes can be simulated within a universe scaled on a higher order of infinity.
Simulating the known universe inside of a reality consistent with the known universe would require a large amount of data storage and processing capacity.
Might be more cost effective to create a virtual universe where it’s sum of mass and energy is zero. Costs you nothing, exists outside the current universe, and will run in real time.
Why waste time inventing slow computers to run an imperfect sim?
The sum of mass and energy in our universe IS zero. Mass-Energy cannot be created nor destroyed only converted from one form (such as mass) to another (such as a huge explosion); therefore, the universe has to have a sum total of mass-energy equal to zero as it came from nothing.
In effect, your created universe IS a universe.
What about those subatomic particles that pop into existence spontaneously? Does that mean that somewhere else another particle has to vanish, to keep the sum of the universe even?
Plus the universe is a really big place. So there will be a lot of things poofing into existence , at any one moment, if you look across the vastness of space. Would this all be balanced by one bigger thing vanishing?
Does this explain what happens to left socks, in the wash?
The subatomic particles pop into existence in pairs – each opposite to each other, so the total mass and energy for them is zero. They then cancel each other out, and the end result is (nearly) the same as if they had never existed. (And they do it so fast that you can’t see it happening, regardless of what you do. It’s not just that we don’t have the tech, it’s that the tech can’t exist.)
There’s only a few very special cases where it’s possible to notice that it’s actually happened. Places like the edges of black holes.
So we should be able to build zero-energy replicators then.
In both of your cases the sum is not zero. (Easy example in the second: If they were truly anti-social, a bottle of social would make them a wallflower – not social enough to liven up the party, not so anti-social to bring it down.)
And remember that except in very exotic cases, in any observable amount of time over any observable area, the production and cancellation of these particles may as well never have happened. (And even in the exotic cases, some other energy or mass will balance the equation.)
Well all the matter we see in the universe today is the result of a zero-energy creation. So there is no reason why we cannot find a way to replicate that.
Point. Though I’d hazard that if we were to find a way to replicate that event, we wouldn’t be able to access the matter/energy it created – it would be in a different universe than ours.
Interesting thought.
Now what would happen if you took a bunch of it out of there, for use in the creating universe? And, for the sake of interest, taking it from just one side of the equation, so that you cease to have a zero-energy creation universe.
Mind you the inhabitants of the created universe would probably spot that there was a bunch of anti-matter missing, and get suspicious.
More like Gault-Tec. Because he’s s.p.e.c.i.a.l.
The short summary below brings to mind the question I always asked when the dracula arc appeared in marvel “Why would dracula try to find a woman among mutants most of whom could either catch him on fire directly or combo the effect”
Thrill seeking.
Why did he go after Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The man’s a horndog who loves a challenge.
If he saw Ingsol flirting with Maxima, he would be somewhere around here, waiting for an opportunity to mesmerise Maxima. The biggest challenge on the planet and a chance to piss off his old rival.
Love the three girls in panel 2. Likewise the split panel, on the previous page, with Sydney and Dabbler.*
The new art style gets the Yorp Paw Print of Approval®.
* Makes me wonder what their kid would look like, if they hooked up (clearly not a problem with Succubus technomagic)?
… Sydney’s ADD and Dabblers skill?
Little Washu.
They would be the most adorable, hyperactive, and ridiculously overpowered thing ever.
Dabbler did offer to Sydney.
Dabbler can read Sydney’s mind.
Dabbler can disguise herself as Wolverine.
Dabbler does have the technology (we humans almost do, or do already) to turn any cell from anyone into viable compatible cells and create an offspring with it…
For we all know, Dabbler already has.
Really? I thought we could only synthesize sperm from bone marrow.
That sounds like a whale of a claim.
It’s a whale of a tail, I tell you lads. A whale of a tail it’s true.
We haven’t quite figured out how to “de-age” DNA (replace lost telomeres), so while we could make a clone from any cell in the body the offspring’s cells would start out at roughly the age of the donor, causing them to experience health problems and die young. The exception to this are cells that don’t experience normal aging, such as the stem cells in bone marrow.
I put tiny end-of-shoe-lace covers on mine. Fiddly work, popping them on, but they work wonders at countering split ends and wear an tear!
Slashfic fodder.
With four hands it could handle four of the Halo balls at once.
The most adorable apocalypse baby ever they would rain terror on us all
We must appease Sydney Scoville 3rd, for the path of the righteous woman is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is she who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For she is truly her sister’s keeper and the finder of lost children.
And she will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy her sisters. And you will know she is the Lord when she lays her vengeance upon you!
Rule 37. There is no ‘overkill.’ There is only ‘open fire’ and ‘I need to reload.’
There is only one overkill in this comic. Sydney’s swear vocabulary.
And her natural biological weaponry (aka spicy food).
That’s a good Maxim.
I meant to say ‘Maxima is good’.
Thought you were saying “Maxima is God” (if a gay robot can become a god to a bunch of feral teddybears…)
Maxima is not a gay robot. She only looks like she is made out of metal.
Doesn’t stop Dabbler from trying mind.
C3po? Eldor’s ewoks? Where did this come up in this convo?
Didn’t say that Maxi was a gay robot, just that if one managed to become one, then Maxi shouldn’t have too much of a problem either (specially seeing how she can do more than just shine in sunlight and speak 6 million forms of communication)
Dakka is just like brains: You always need more of it.
But is Sydney a Schlock Mercenary fan?
Someone said open fire!
*grabs the PPO
Dabbler you need to rethink your colour co-ordination. From certain angles your outfit gives the impression you are wearing nappies (diapers, if you only know the one dialect).
No they don’t, at least you aren’t one of the multitude who believe she has human legs
You need to factor in blurry vision. I have not succumbed to wearing reading glasses yet. Can’t even put my paws on the one pair I did buy.
Yeah, I’m supposed to wear glasses to.I’ve put that action ‘on paws.’
That was a ruff joke.
I mean yeah, just look at em
But are those REALLY even her ears? I mean, I know Dabs isn’t human, but she’s mostly human-OID, except for those ears. They’re too far forward, and too high up on her skull. They seem more extensions of her eyebrows than anything else.
Also, what we generally call ‘ears’ aren’t – they are large cartilaginous channels that funnel sound down into the ACTUAL ears, which are holes in the skull. On Dabbler, those ‘ears’ don’t actually seem to ‘funnel’ down to ANYTHING, but if we extrapolated them down to their ‘base’, her ‘ear-holes’ would be in her temples.
Unless they catch sound via vibration and channel it to the brain for translation to “hear” she is alien. Her ears just are a form of electronic device basically.
Or unless she actually has 4 fully functionwl ears. Or 2 ears and 2 almost-ears.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_disc
Hmmm.
If Dabbler, our favourite succubus/doppelganger/unknown hybrid psychic sorceress mutant, by herself could crack the vault with relatively little effort, as stated in the commentary, then it seems that the existing security precautions are not just woefully inadequate against the top end of the human super scale, as it is argued that the council is realizing – it is also woefully inadequate against enemies who work on a power scale known previously by the council, which would be the sort of people the vault was presumably designed to keep out.
So that’s a bit weird.
Not really because Dabbler is not a typical example of an alien. Whilst she does have a lot of alien tech, she also has magic, psionics and gadgeteering ability that allows her to tweak existing gear well beyond its normal limits, even by the standards of advanced alien/demon culture.
Dabbler is not powerful because she is a alien with high tech, she is powerful even by their standards.
We should not be surprised that Dabbler could get through that vault door, in no time, given that we saw one of her toys shoot through a mountain! Plus do not forget her (likely true) boast that she has ‘killed gods’.
And that’s my point, Yorp – she is a known capability; She is powerful by their standards (as far as we know), but the vault was presumably built to stop people who were powerful by their standards, or what would be the point?
You don’t build a vault on the bottom of the sea with magical seals, guardian monster, and other protections in order to stop the “typical example” of possible enemies from getting at your artefacts of power, knowing that powerful people (and you know such are around) can just waltz through it. Not unless you are incompetent. (Which arguably is a possibility)
I don’t think Dabbler felt the need to explain to council just how powerful she is. Also, the council might have hard time noticing her power over their egos. To travel between stars you MUST have technology capable of rapid acceleration – and any such technology can be used for orbital bombardment.
As my alter ego pointed out, Dabbler is far from normal. They probably encountered her, and knew she was a succubus/alien, and figured that means her power (topping their charts) was that of succubus + alien.
Now, both of her racial traits as far as I can tell, come with an intelligence bonus. However, as anyone who works with kids with high IQ knows, those numbers aren’t merely additive. A kid with an IQ of 140 thinks at 140% speed of the normal kid (short version of the scale). So you’d -think- that makes them 40% smarter. But no, that 40% boost applies to how fast they learn, how fast they comprehend what they learn, how quickly they cross-reference it with other things they learn, how much they retain what they learn, and more. Although the base trait is linear, the effect is exponential.
Further, anyone who breeds animals knows about a nice little thing called “Hybrid Vigor”. If you take two specimens from very different stocks (say a Doberman + golden retriever, or a succubus + alien), the offspring will generally get the strengths of both parents AND fewer of the weakness, along with a few synergistic surprises coming from the mixing. (For example, assume one parent exhales particulate ethanol to no real effect, and the other parent has flint and iron deposits in their teeth to no real effect, but that results in a kid that can ignite exhaled ethanol, meaning they f’ing breath fire!)
So, as I was saying, what the council, merely knowing that she was alien/succubus probably assumed she was a succubus + alien as their top-end to judge by. What they should have been prepping for succubus X alien or succubus ^ alien.
but that results in a kid that can ignite exhaled ethanol, meaning they f’ing breath fire!
THAT explains why the cat has singed whiskers and won’t come down from the attic!
I deny ever meeting your cat and any claim it makes otherwise is a lie.
A dirty, dirty lie.
Not been here either!
Nobody can look as innocent as a guilty cat.
https://youtu.be/ADa6MXREhjI
Dabbler isn’t just powerful by their standards, she is powerful by the standards of anything they are likely to have in that vault. As a magitech tinkerer if she wants a doomsday device capable of destroying the world she will make one to her own specifications rather than stealing someone else’s work. Vehemence never got strong enough that Dabbler couldn’t take him down, he just got strong enough that the collateral damage might not have been acceptable.
Maxim 28 “If the price of collateral damage is high enough, you might be able to get paid for bringing ammunition home with you. “
I think the point hes trying to make that while Dabbler is impressive to us within the races of the council there must be thousands just as capable as her if not even more.At best Dabbles has looted some good toys over the years but most of her expertise is easily matched individually by various other members of the council which is Why an idiot like Sciona( was that her name?) was able to oceans 11 herself inside with the help of several other people with minimal effort.
This level of security is embarrassingly poor,Its like having the worlds nuclear arsenal guarded by bikelocks and Mr Magoo.
Hey the military resembles those remarks
Rimshot and mario death music
XD Id like to say youre wrong but I have a very military centric family tree and have heard some impressive “horror stories” over the years about what people have managed to move in and out of bases without anyone noticing.
I was actually meaning bikelocks securing nuclear weapons (only tank rounds but still nuke weapons) and a guy that lets his dominoes driver pull past the gate to turn around 1/4 mile up at a parking lot with exit on the other side to the bunkers and a wall blocking the lot from the guards view.
Seems to me that the main vault defense was simply being in an unknown location. Once located, it’s almost impossible to secure vs the kind of powers on hand in that reality.
Reminds me of the big door in Portal 2.
Or any Vault door from the Fallout series.
You mean Sydney has the hearing of a 20 something who has taken care to preserve that hearing, both by wearing hearing protection and avoiding excessive amounts of loud noise. It probably won’t last now that she’s going to regularly spend time at a firing range. Unless Arc has some kind of super science hearing protection or their doctor can heal long-term damaged ear drums that is.
Hearing loss from repeated loud noises is usually from damage to the hair cells in the cochlea. The ear drum is much more robust.
Sometimes the “hearing of a 20 something” lasts. I did a *lot* of high-noise activity over the years – shooting without hearing protection (when I was younger), motorcycles, etc. And I’d pretty well resigned myself to having lost some hearing over the years.
Then my daughter brought home an audiology test setup from college one weekend – she needed to demonstrate proficiency for an exam the following week and had nominated her family as test subjects.
But she kept giving me odd looks during the test. It turned out that except in one frequency range (~17 KHz, if I recall) my hearing was better than most 20 year olds, including her own (and in that one band, I was at ~95% – not too big a drop). Others she tested were right where she expected (including my wife, who was shocked to realize that when I told her I heard something that she could not I was probably correct).
Not quite a superpower, but kind of cool nonetheless.
They DO have a doctor on staff that has a super healing ability. Hair follicles (especially those in the ears), are hard to repair by hand, but as it’s a very minor amount of damage really, a super with healing powers could probably do so as a cantrip. Heck, she could probably cure male pattern baldness without breaking a sweat, maybe tone those muscles a little, get rid of a bit of belly fat, fix the ingrown tona…..
SWEET DRUNK HIPPO ON AN YOGA MAT!!!
I THINK I JUST FIGURED OUT THE MYSTERY OF WHY SUPERS GET PROGRESSIVELY MORE “IDEAL” FORMS! IT’S THE SUPER HEALERS SUPER-HEALING THEM!!!
I think we need a drawing of that drunk hippo on a yoga mat.
Fairly sure have seen something like that on a Hentai site (or maybe it was that Disney movie… )
Sensory defensiveness often occurs with adhd. In my own case, certain sounds get hyperreaction, thst is, are annoying or painful when other people think nothing of it. This resulted in extra care thruout life to protect myself from those sounds, resulting in hearing slightly better than average (i.e., less damaged by life’s normal wear and tear).
In my case, clinking of glass or metal on my sister’s new ceramic counters sends me outdoors when she’s having fun in the kitchen. No matter how many times I’ve explained it, she still gets hurt and thinks I’m exaggerating. But damn it hurts like getting bells rung 1 inch from my head while being hit with tiny hammers. I’ve wondered if this isn’t the kind of thing that can lead to autistic children’s occassional “meltdowns”.
It totally is.
I speak from firsthand experience.
I think what causes my sisters’ doubts is the things that get a hyperreaction: crinkling aluminum foil, biting into a hotdog, canned lima beans in my mouth, certain cloth across my skin, the smell of uncooked asparagus, stuff like that. makes no sense, but the reactions are too strong, too immediate to be “all in my head” as I was told growing up. It is all in my head, but that makes it no less real.
Have similar reactions to certain things as well, for years couldn’t handle cotton wool, the texture was very unpleasant (can’t even begin to describe the feeling, but it wasn’t nice)
For me it is cotton wool in my head. I have to get a length of cotton, thread it through my ears and floss all the wool away from between the brain lobes.
Feels like chalk being dragged across a blackboard, until the bleeding makes it sticky.
Wet cotton and wool is the worst, I can practically taste either when switching out laundry! (No I’m not like yorp and don’t use my mouth) And for sound it’s any case where there’s a radio host or talkshow host talking just quiet enough that I can’t make out the words…
Yeah, have that with radios and TV’s as well: the TV is in the next room and they try and turn it down, but if they don’t turn it down enough it can be more annoying attempting to sleep as the ears and brain and working harder to make out the sounds
Is that not normal?
with sensory defensiveness, the brain way overreacts to stimulus that neurotypical people may not even notice. when I bite into a hotdog, I feel what can only be described as an electric shock along my lower jaw. Putting lima beans in my mouth triggers an immediate gag reflex – I actually puked as a kid when my parents tried to force me to eat my veggies. As a kid (not so much anymore) crinkling a buncha aluminum foil close to my head to cause me to cry, even if I was ready for it. Strangely, it triggered not just the physical reaction, but the overwhelming emotion that goes with it.
This is way, way more than just being bothered by the tv in the next room.
Just sit yourself down on that couch. Lie back, if it makes you feel more comfortable.
*sits on chair, picks up notepad and green crayon*
OK, tell me more.
Sorry, all you have to do is get old.
you can get a decent idea of a person’s age just by the frequencies that they can or can’t hear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG0O478CQ-E
I can believe that. but when I was a kid, my hearing was normal, now it’s slightly better than average. I always thought it was cuz I wore earplugs, etc, more than most people.
Speak up there, I can’t hear you!
Yeah, not a good idea to try and destroy magic artifacts; I used this premise for my Hell series when I introduced the scattered McGuffins, several statues gave people wish power over a demonic entity, but destroying the statue only severed the control mechanism and released the entities, another was a cage for the persona avatar of a black hole, and trying to destroy the Harvesters Board Game *even more evil version of Jumanji…because why hasn’t there been a horror knock off of this yet?* only resulted in freeing the demon imprisoned in the board that was being used to power it.
The “cage” case is most likely: without knowing the artifact really well, how do you know if what you plan will destroy everything or just the outer layer, which was protecting you?
Wasn’t there a series of horror board games in the 80’s you could play via your VCR?
Until recently, I played Atmosfear once a year.
They appear to be geared toward security.
That door is just one cog in their defense machine.
They are definately a bunch of cogboys.
It’s not that big of a barrier, you could vault over it.
With mighty big teeth.
All the better to… smile (yes, ‘smile’)
‘what’s the difference between a gear and a cog, anyways?’
“about 12 bucks/per”
‘you mean they’re the same thing?’
“technically, but tell you what, for only 7 bucks/per I can replace each one with a widget and a whatchamacallit”
‘that sounds reasonable’
“(heh heh heh)”
‘what was that?’
[coughs] “nothing”
Ahh, sensible to gear up before entering that reliquary.
“You look like bright fellow. You are probably going to need some Holy water before you go inside. They are normally four dollars each. But as a favor I am willing to sell you two for only ten dollars!”
“I lose money on every sale, but make it in volume!”
Another point about the keypad. Has anyone bothered to check it for either a tracking spell or a keylogger in the software before he entered the code? It may have been the point of the break-in to get someone to reveal this information. They should at least reset the code while they are here in case it had been hacked by the intruders.
Author’s Note: If you are looking for a punchline for the next comic, Ingsol is standing at the open door to the vault. He checks a panel and says “It doesn’t look like anyone got in. The floor pressure sensors don’t appear to be triggered.” Sydney says “Excuse me” while she is floating in the air in front of him over the vault floor. “I have been on this team for less than a week, and I already know of at least a half dozen people who can fly. You may want to put in some new sensors.”
Considering the vampires can fly in form of bats, I don’t think they would be making THIS mistake.
yeah, them bats will poop just anywhere and set off the floor sensors.
They will guano anywhere. We have a word for that kind of poop, ya know?
They need to check what is missing BEFORE they alter any security setups.
Overkill is like “To Much Dakka” : It’s physically impossible.
I must say I like they coat on Dabbler in this arc. Gives her that sophisticated beauty look. I am kinda surprised that it took me this long however to realize it only has a single pair of sleeves with both arms in them.
Easier to draw, but limit her dexterity a bit. But they’re loose and can roll up if needed.
There is NO SUCH THING as overkill, Sydney. There’s only: “Open Fire!” and “Reload! Then hit them again!”
Max’s cheeks are back!
hmm, I dont get why the paranormal/alien/etc. of the council dont have powertypes of rank like Maxima
either good or bad ones
they had millennia to acrue power via technology or mystical means, yet Maxima/Dabbler etc is way off their powercharts (since either could easily break into that topendvault)?
It’s been mentioned supers are rare even by mythical standards. According to canon, they were the inspiration for stories of demigods, tall tales, and more. That’s mere hundreds of “Don’t mess with me” class of people, and heroes have a reputation for fighting (and beating) people like them. Probably they don’t have many survivors, and assume that causes of loss are exaggerated. Even if there’s a hundred in the world at any given time, that doesn’t mean they’re able to reliably get intel on something where the weak end is more powerful than a lot of their elites.
I is right. When you are building the ‘ultimate vault’ you need to ask the question ‘can we stop a god from getting in?’ It is not unreasonable that the answer would be ‘no’, even for an otherwise powerful organisation. In which case you do your best to keep it in a hidden and inaccessible place and hope that they do not find it.
Of course you still put in all the safeguards you can against lesser mortals, but if a god wants to kick the door down it really does not matter how big you make the door.
Though if this place cant keep Maxima out how the heck have they kept dragons out so long?If Dave wasnt a Golddigger fan Id just assume that dragons are as pathetic as all the other supernatural races in this series but i digress…
There could well be a dragon-repelling artefact in there. Somebody forgot to build a Maxima-repelling artifact.
Although they could hire the ‘COMIX’ fan.
I don’t think Dabbler can get into the vault because she is unexpectedly powerful (she is, after all, only a dabbler)… it’s because she has a vast number of different tricks she can use in a multitude of combinations (being, as stated, a dabbler).
Sometimes ‘second best at everything’ trumps ‘best at one thing’.
+1
I think it’s also that super high IQ of hers. She could probably easily figure out how to bypass most of the security in that place.
[Dabbler makes successful IQ check]
“I will shoot the door open with my gun that fires through mountains!”
[Dabbler makes successful Wisdom check]
“Being sure to point it towards the continent, rather than any direction which might let the ocean in.”
Eh I wouldnt say Dabblers IQ is supernaturally high,At best she might make close to Mensa level but shes not a supergenius of the level of knowing all the answers easily and creating brand new areas of science-As she advertises shes a Dabbler.Otherwise why is she having to research her own spells in an effort to de-lustify Archons newest recruit?
Reminds me of the comment about fighting
The greatest sword fighter in the world fears the worst more than the second best
It is about predicting your opponent’s move. The novice does not know what is a good or bad move. The master is thinking ‘just running straight at me and flailing away would leave him totally open to my counterattack, so I won’t even bother to defend against it. Ow, my arm!”
A drunken fighter master will train for years to achieve that effect.
Whereas Sydney is a born natural.
You saying Sydney was born drunk? o_O
You saying she wasn’t?
That would explain EVERYTHING about Sydders in general!XD
Clearly SOMEone is a fan of Fallout :P
Password and vocal protect it to Sydney’s swear tirade. Not only would they have to get the the order right, they would have to Know what they were saying to get the tone right.
I think that kind of set-up would be even more secure if Sydney were fluent enough in chinese to use for/in her “swear tirade(s)”.
O_o
That assumes Sydney remembers her own tirades…
While reading the last panels, I can’t help hearing the Fallout 4 main theme in my head.
Dun duun, dunnn.
Dun duuun… dunnn!
Dun duuun, dun duun, dun duun, dandandan dan dadadaan!
War.
War never changes.
…except when it does.
Hey now, no setting Ron Pearlman and David Hayter against each other… we’re still cleaning the whiskey stains out of the upholstery.
((Ron Pearlman is the iconic Narrator for Fallout (War. War never changes.). David Hayter is the Voice of Solid Snake. (War has changed.)) )
Oh there would be Hellboy to pay if that happened.
Is it just me? Or has anyone else noticed the cast page isn’t rendering? I have no ad-blockers or anything else like them running so it isn’t that.
It’s not just you. He updated the site, it broke, and it’s a low priority to fix. He’s mentioned it in comments already. (I’m hoping when/if he gets around to fixing it, it includes a scrolling bar that shows all the images that cycle through for the top bar.)
I got to dig up his email. If I had time I’d try to fix it for him. I really need to get back to our joint project if he is still interested but that’s also low priority for the both of us.
Me: How in the crap does the door open!?! The gear is clearly very tight so when it swings open it should jam against the door.
Sydney: Magic
Me: oh yea well…………. Magic Damn It!
It more likely moves out, and then hinges to the side
Traditionally, those kind of doors roll, rather than rotating on an arm or hinge. Much easier mechanically.
For Whom the Door Rolls?
Was a name that the Periwinkle Butt Sniffer considered earlier in his career.
Not like that, and we are talking magically rather than mechanically
Are people really that dumb and not notice that Dabbles’ shirt has two damn sleeves with one arm each in the first panel? What people are erroneously seeing as one sleeve with two arms in the last panel is a side view of Dabbles and she’s flashing her midriff
Cause different people interpret scenes different ways. Plus it seems kinda cool.
How? You can clearly see two sleeves on opposite sides in the first panel! And in the page with them rising out of the pool, we, again, can clearly see two sleeves with one hand sticking out of the bottom of each
How can anyone possibly interpret those scenes differently? o_O
Or you’re both right or wrong, because the sleeve(s) could magically merge and unmerge, or even be holographic. We’re talking about not just succubus clothes, but Dabbler’s clothes.
By getting an impression from the image, rather than meticulously examining the details. Just like people get the impression that she has human legs.
There is even a whole field of art which plays on this. If you look at an impressionist painting too closely all you see is meaningless blobs. Back up a bit and you get the artists intent.
Here the intent may (or may not) be as you say, but the viewer is as much a part of the process as the creator. If they choose to interpret the image based on their impression of what it looks like (which is not actually unreasonable), then it conveys a different meaning to them.
Even telling people that ‘Dabbler is wearing pink on her legs’ does not change the impression that she has human legs. Likewise with the impression that she has two arms in each sleeve.
You…. do remember that Dabbler has four arms, right?
I must admit that my mental process was ‘Dabbler has four arms, so her second pair of arms are probably being blocked from view by the ones we can see’, when I initially viewed the page. But I found the ‘two arms in one sleeve’ interpretation to be nice, and stylish in fact, so was OK with that.
However there is a way to tell for sure, by seeing Dabbler with two sleeves (total) each with two hands emerging and on her hips.
Was going to comment about that, but no, you can believe what you want, don’t give a shit no more
With the One Ring, they literally say that there’s no way to unmake it with the Craft of Men, Elves, and Dwarves at the current levels of accomplishment, not that the volcano is truly the only way to unmake it. Also, Tolkien was less a fan of supernatural and more preferred what he called “archnatural” as in using art and craft to align the function of natural laws to achieve a result so efficient that it is mistaken for the supernatural. That’s part of why Galadriel admits to having some confusion with regard to the term “magic”.
I kinda remember Gandalf saying it could only be unmade in the same fires that made it, but it’s been a while since I’ve read the books.
Elrond first makes a statement that none in the room nor anywhere else on Middle-Earth has the necessary Craft to unmake it. It is implied that if they were able to give to the Valar in the West, they or the Vanyar or other High Elves there could probably do something, but that the West refuses to deal with it.
After crossing out all the other options as impossible, Gandalf settles on the only one that is sort of within their power to accomplish.
Trying to keep true to this policy made Lord of the Rings Online very interesting from an in-world perspective. The developers try very hard to avoid giving you any ‘magic’. You don’t have a health bar, its Morale. the healer class isn’t binding your wounds per-se, they’re providing Bardic Inspiration, restoring said morale. Areas steeped in the power of The Enemy gives you stacks of dread, reducing your maximum Morale, but this can be counteracted with stacks of the Hope buff. Pretty reasonable, right?
Then you get the Loremaster class, who use Runes and debate to such great effect, their enemies are literally BURNED by their insults…
The loremaster class isn’t so much a problem. The lightning strike stuff was originally required to follow up the Ancient Craft which, when you read the description is basically throwing magnetic dust at people so the armor behaves weird. The fire is mostly like what Gandalf does using flammable materials like pine-cones as improvised grenades.
The class that screws it all up is Rune-Keeper which I can only play if I imagine it as a character sucked in from some other universe.
Also, while getting enough magnetic action or such to trigger lightning is unlikely, I’m willing to let that pass still….though the shift in the system of how powers work about 2-3 years ago made a lot of the interesting “it’s really science” interactions of Loremaster fall apart.
All you need is kill.
All you need is love!
Our chief weapon is love, death by snu-snu and love.
Two chief weapons, love, death by snu-snu, and always expecting ninjas!
Er, among our chief weapons are: love, death by snu snu, and always expecting ninjas, and near fanatical devotion to the author.
Um, I’ll come in again…
‘near’ fanatical?
A necessary stretch, to keep the (mis)quote accurate.
Bit of a blow to the egos there… – talking about the Council. I am reminded of a quote by John Constantine:
“You and I are not the greatest magicians in the world. We don’t come even close. The greatest mages are the ones no one has ever heard of who work in obscurity, doing magic that makes the worlds turn and stars burn.”
So if there are supers who can overpower the Council members I would bet there are Mages, maybe even in the Council structure who can take them on with no problem and are just experienced and wise enough not to be bothered by selfish beings unless the situation is at the stage where very fabric of the universe is threatened.
I’m pretty sure Mad Hattie is one of the people Cnstantine was describing. Literally.
Same universe and all, DC Vertigo.
Just as a note-Securitywise all weve seen so far is two bigass doors and a rather mediocre guardian.Literally the trip to the first lines of defence was more effort than the security so far.I wonder how long til Maxima gunship diplomacys again and decides to claim the entire vault for americ-er i mean the greater good!
………..Seriously I can think of a dozen good general purpose hard counters for superpowered individuals,Some of which even Maxima wouldnt be able to survive which should be easily accessable to an entire organisation of magical beings -_-
The “Closed for Renovation” sign trick does not always work.
You need a proper “trade entrance” sign that directs invaders around to the other side.
https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20071116
Naw if you want true coverage you need a Church of Scientology sign-Wont work on non sentient lifeforms but anything smarter than a hamster should instinctively turn round and leave ^^
:-D
The one flaw might be getting Tom Cruise wandering in for a quick praying session. And serious damage is bound to follow. You can bet fifteen minutes later he will narrowly escape death diving out of the exploding base!
Minor nitpick Mt. doom was not the hottest fire accessible to the hobbits. A dwarven forge, simply because it melts steel down into molten steel, should reach a hotter temp than the top layer of lava that destroyed the ring.
Are we sure it was the top layer that destroyed the ring, or did you only watch the movie, not read the book?
It was a math equation I saw once talking about the speed of gold sinking through lava. The lava would start getting dense enough where the ring would not really even sink anymore and at that point the heat is still not hotter than what a dwarven forge would have to produce to melt other metals. Sure in the mantle it starts getting pretty hot and pressured, but it is pretty far down before it starts reaching that temp.
For reference molten iron is over 300 degrees hotter than lava. And tempratures in a furnace are usually more than just the melting point.
You are assuming normal density for the ring, when it clearly holds some kind of central heat sink.
No it was based on the fact it rested comfortably on Frodo’s finger and was never extremely heavy. To sink through the magma fast enough it would have to be a streamlined shape, which it was not, or it would have to be quite heavy, which it was not.
I think the biggest assumption is that it is just a normal volcano. The place is called ‘Mt Doom’, not ‘Mt Pretty Hot Place for Tourists to Visit’. It is probably a portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire or to the Sun god’s foot spa.
The difference is not on the physical level. Active volcanoes are, in tolkeins legendarium, concentraited hot spots of morgoths power. With the added fact of it being the forging spot of the ring is was essentially the metaphysical rock to the rings metaphysical scissors.
Didn’t Gandalf say that if you got a dragon to eat it, that’d also work?
Another comment did point out that the Ring is also a phylactery/horocrux sort of deal, so granted, breaking it in a conventional zone may not be the best course of action, so feeding it to an evil lizard or tossing it into Evil Mountain lava would be best to avoid collateral/environmental damage.
Still: handheld points of THE FUCKING SUN I think ought to be hot enough to destroy the One Ring.
Alternatively, I wonder if Middle Earth is aware how hot a bolt of lightning is. Stick the Ring on a pike in the middle of a flat field during a thunderstorm, see what happens. Like I don’t recall seeing anything in the vein of a lightning rod on any buildings.
On the other hand, a world where bullshit wordplay (tho leading to a definitely EPIC badass moment) like “No man may beat me” defines the rules of the game, then yeah, I suppose the Ring can only be undone not by things that make logical sense, but by things that “ought” to make sense, ie, cast it into the flames from whence it came, unforge it, ect.
Like it didn’t feel like it made a lot of sense when it showed Sauron making the ring in the first place on a generic rock stand over the lava, instead of anywhere actually near it. Like at what point was the lava actually involved in the forging?
Like I’m thinking, if Satan-analogue Morgoth is the source of all destruction, and Sauron is basically an upstart lesser fallen angel prince of hell (but not the king), and volcanoes are hotspots of Morgoth’s destructive power, then the way the Ring would make sense to me to how it was made was if Sauron jumped into the lava for a spell, to let some of Morgoth’s power break him into a part, then use that to draw in some gold, and then jump back out to let it solidify, with some stolen Morgoth power also in it for good measure.
No. Dragons could melt lesser rings but not even a dragon that was explicitly the most dangerous one ever could hope to damage it. As for the lightning Sauron himself slapped lightning out of the sky using the ring so no that won’t really help either.
If you want to get into the weird power scaling of tolkeins universe that may be a bit hard. It kind of depends at that point on your interpritation of the text if you start dealing with solar levels of heat.
The dragon idea got brought up and discounted for two reasons:
A) No modern dragon had hot enough breath.
B) No dragon would likely agree to do it.
Glaurung or Ancalagon the Black might have had breath hot enough, but the book very explicitly states that no modern dragon had hot enough breath to burn it.
The Cracks of Doom are more than just a place in a volcano, they had been modified and set up as a workshop for the ring-making craft, which is why specifically you had to go to the Cracks of Doom and not just dump it in the main crater. The lava and such in the Cracks had been artificially worked up to a point where they could provide the heat that had been necessary to forge the One Ring and thus it still had the necessary heat to unmake it.
Well ‘splained.
Aha, now *that* makes sense.
Oh, right, I remember now that Ancalagon was specifically brought up as not having powerful enough fire. My mistake.
I just /had to/ type https://supervillain.net into my browser.
If the results aren’t fake, I’m disappointed. If they /are/ fake, I’m glad I didn’t allow scripts from the domain.
Go Daddy is legit, I’m afraid. I do have a discount code if anyone has better plans for the domain, though.
That too! :-p
Coo coo ca-choo! :-D
Should probably be “into.” Even better would be a simple “in.” You could make that read as being an additional investment (since it would appear that this vault is already fairly costly) by saying “in improving” or “in improvements to” or some such. In any event, “in to” is not correct.
They seem to have a decent amount of protections already. Maxima is a bit of a force majeure, no pun intended. Building a vault to keep her out might be a bit like building Fort Knox to keep a nuke out. If it wants in, it’s getting in. No amount of barbed wire fences, stone walls, armed guards, and being surrounded by a military base is going to help much against that. There’s a reason NORAD is no longer housed in Cheyenne Mountain. And in addition to their physical security (long underwater approach, impressive vault door, plenty of spikes, hopefully replaceable vault guardian) they have the security of obscurity of an unknown location.
The safest place to keep your investments is in a vault.
Clearly that ‘vault door’ is actually the most important artifact. One that Sciona did not even realise was significant!
*eyes up keypads suspiciously too*
No, no. Too many people were suspicious that they might be trapped. All too likely to be closely examined and discovered.
Exactly. Hide in plain sight. Booby trapped to turn your r=1 r-state brains into mush should you make the mistake of tampering with it.
Of course NORAD is not in Cheyenne Mountain. That’s were the SGC is.
Oh, I guess that explains why they moved to the beta site.
The fuck you talkin’ about, son? You wake up stupid or is that your natural state of being?
https://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Beta_Site
It is kinda getting impossible to take the council seriously at this point though. They cant even keep a conversation secret from a normal human girl?..
Maxima forgets that things have weight. Overlords forget that slaves have ears.
Sydney may be “normal” but her orbs are not.Now if they had a Null Field generator they could adjust it to hide the entire mountain. A smaller one could cancel out their voices so Sydney would not hear anything.
Yeah they really reaaaalllllly suck!Especially the vampires!*BaDumTish!*
Some are them are so designed by use of arcanophysics they can’t be destroyed by any normal means. Uncreation is highly developed power. First heard about “uncreate” on an episode of Outer Limits, “The Children of Spider County” the alien can do that to several people. He un-creates them.
The Door is overkill. The same thing could have been accomplished with a smaller door but with “sentient” security.
Take Ft. Knox for example. They have a only slightly more advanced door than most banks, but the handling of the keys is what keeps the doors secure. Multiple parts, isolated from other key-holders.
But the real security is outside of the building. It is the armed snipers on the roof, armed guards patrolling, cameras that are monitored constantly, sensors (that are literally to numerous to mention), a guard post to check IDs of people entering the facility, and the US Army 3rd Armored Tank Division (“unofficially” anyway, time of war only mainly).
All they have for “security” is ALARMS and a giant robot-thing. No onsite security at all, no one seems to check-up on things unless an alarm is rang.
Seriously, hire Arcon (or that one guy who sells supplies to Arcon) to provided BASIC security advise and recommendations. Like sentient personnel with Dead-man switches, that alert base if you die (or don’t check in on time). Maybe buy some modern defenses (including magical).
SO MANY SECURITY HOLES, IT IS MADNESS!!!
Their biggest security features were:
1) it being a secret vault
2) being one mile underwater
Having security guards going to and from it would draw attention to its presence, thus negating 1). So they used a guard (capable of overcoming any foes they anticipated facing) who did not need to keep commuting to and from the secret place. Nor needing feeding, paying or any of those other things which rack up the costs.
If they kept 300 security guards at the vault, over the past three thousand years, they would probably have had to sell off some of the artefacts just to pay the bills!
Plus it does not matter how powerful your guardians are, if they have to face the most powerful super on the planet. By definition they will be weaker. Clearly even when debuffing her.
Fort Knox does not have a security feature anywhere near as impressive as being one mile underwater. That alone vastly limits the number of organisations who could pose a credible threat. And makes it very easy to build a fatal trap that could kill anyone in the facility (meaning that not having living guards is a bonus for this option). Just turn off whatever it is that is keeping the 100 atmospheres of pressure at bay.
Even Maxima may not survive that suddenly happening.
Incidentally that bit about paying the guards is actually highly significant when you look at very long term security issues. The guards at the valley of the Kings, in Ancient Egypt, did an excellent job for generations, through successive dynasties. Up until a national crisis which meant that they did not get paid. So they then had to loot the tombs themselves in order to feed their families!
And in case you think ‘oh our system is stable, that would never happen to us’,* do bear in mind that is what the pharaohs thought too. But even if you are the world power of your era, all things come to an end.
I can recall when there were two superpowers. Then one of them got into financial difficulties. And could not afford to pay the soldiers manning security installations. So a lot of things went missing, and ended up in the black market. Like plutonium.
* And every time that the US government shuts down because it cannot afford to pay the bills, there is a risk that something security critical will be suspended. Especially if security features have been outsourced to private contractors. Fail to pay them and they are within their contractual rights not to provide the services.
Being at the bottom of the ocean is not as big of security feature as it once was. We now have the technology to dive that deep. The “Vale” could conceal a small detachment. I would set-up a payment system that did not rely on the primary organization to exist. Probably a distributed trust fund over the entire world (this would be very, very difficult, but not impossible). Gold is a good bet, but diversity is key. This should also have a disconnected management from the main organization.
The security team needs to be “detached” from the organization. (example. the President of the United States can NOT just visit the Vault at Ft. Knox. It takes a literal Act of Congress to tour the facility.) This is tricky but also doable. I am not sure how, but an expert adviser would know.
300 guards? No, no, no, no, wayyyyyyyy too big. 30-40 people at most (120-160 total, rotating 3 month shifts). With none given direct access to the vault. Paid at a given rate that is adjusted with inflation. Again, paid using a distributed trust fund model.
Every concern you raised is valid, but with a military or security management company advising, can be overcome.
30-40 redshirts? Mmm, I am sure your consulting company will advise you to set up a sizeable trust fund to cover funeral expenses and next-of-kin compensation.
At the very least you would want them to be extraordinarily capable, if you want them to be able to take on god-like opponents with any credible chance of success. Let us say a minimum of ten times the capability of a typical guard (that would put them up into the two star super category, so a group would pose a threat to Peggy).
Of course if they are ten times as capable as a typical guard, they will likely demand ten times the salary.
But at least you do cut down on the food bill, and other upkeep expenses.
This is very incorrect. I have been a government contractor for years, both as an employee of large corporations and as an independent contractor. Every single time a government shutdown has loomed myself and my team have been on the list of “critical” personnel, no matter how genuinely critical our task was at the time. Why? Because our contracts made us far more certain of payment than even the repaying of Federal loans. In other words, the USA could default to China more easily than it could fail to pay a contractor with a contract.
I have no idea of the legalities involved in any of this, I don’t do either law or finance. I think it might have had something to do with being paid a little bit in advance, so there was some amount of ‘slush time’ that we could ride out while the politicians figured out how to do their jobs. I just know that this is how it has played out in every single case. I or we would show up at ghost town facilities to do our jobs while half or more of the government employees were at home enjoying some unpaid leave.
Which is all well and good provided:
1) Every single critical function is correctly identified as such and given a similar iron-clad contract. As you must appreciate they will be significantly more expensive to maintain than a ‘standard’ contract. So there will be pressure to avoid classifying roles in that way whenever money gets tight.
Net result I am willing to bet a mountain of Yorpie snax that there will be a bunch of things which are not classified the right way.
2) You are assuming that payments will restart. My comment included two examples of world superpowers where they did not, even for the most critical functions in the country. Unless your contracts are written on edible paper, they will not help to feed your family under those circumstances.
Finally do note the final line of your own comment. Even if the contractors are all doing their jobs, if a critical government employee is not at work to push their button or stamp an authorisation on a form then the contractors work may still not get done.
I feel confident that there would have been things in your job which would have been prevented if a relevant public servant was not on paw to authorise it / allow access to a key area or the like.
Sometimes, it isn’t a matter of destroying the artifact, sometimes it is a matter of doing so *safely*. If destroying an object will do more damage than leaving it in tact, then yea… not destroying it is pretty important.
In several cases, I could see unmaking a potent magical artifact as akin to the arcane equivalent of disarming a bomb, only several orders of magnitude more difficult without going after the weaknesses in the fundamental crafting aspect itself.
The One Ring wasn’t JUST a ring of invisibility, it was, in effect, a phylactery, a resting place for a portion of Sauron’s very soul. I could just imagine what sort of cataclysmic event might happen if you shoved it into some Dwarf’s forge and suddenly released it. The effects would be… unfortunate. Rather akin to beating on a nuclear device until you accidentally trigger the detonator. The only way to *SAFELY* destroy it, without destroying us in the process, was to take it back to the place it was made so you have equal and opposite forces in play keeping it from going kaboom.
Maybe the reason why these artefacts and whatnots are in this vault is because they can’t destroy them
And lets be honest destroying the artifacts could also do more harm than good,The magical version of nuclear fallout is probably a lot harder to deal with than the vanilla version.
Sydney, Maxima and Dabbler being able to relatively easily breach the vault seems a tad strange. Dabbler especially.
I mean, neither she nor her abilities are Super-related, meaning they fall entirely in the Council’s domain. And yet, with this being one of their most important facilities, they can’t do anything to keep her out, or even make it difficult?
Maxima and Sydney getting in is more plausible, but it does raise a question I’ve been having- shouldn’t the power disparity cut both ways? Maxima deals in raw power much larger than anything the Council is used to, but if she touches, say, a soul-scorching force field, none of her powers seem like they would help her. We actually have an example of this, with the Boss Golem mesmerizing her.
If Amorphous could, indeed, breach the vault over several weeks time, combined with all of the above, is it safe to conclude the vault’s defenses are very passive? Besides the Guardian, it’s mostly just thick doors with locks, all of which will eventually fail against a persistent enough attack, and it’s all dependent on the alarm systems for calling in backup should this happen?
True and not-true. Where you are right is that (as far as we know) Dabbler is not a natural-born-super (or an induced mutated super, like Maxima, with her geode). Note that is actually two categories with the same kind of result.
However what your summary omits is the fact that there are other types of super too. Sydney representing the artefact-of-unknown-origin-wielding flavour. Whilst Math steps up as the so-skilled-he-can-beat-most-superhumans.
Yet according to your logic any human bank vault should be proof against Math, because he is human and they are designed to foil human. Yet his speed/reflexes are rated as identical to Maxima’s. So when staff were opening it up, for routine access, he could loot it and exit before they could finish yawning.
There is something about both Math and Dabbler that pushes them from being typical members of their species (a very broad stretch for Dabbler as she is a member of three to start with). They both causally do tasks* that easily earn them their seats at the head of the super-table.
They are supers (despite Math’s protestations at not being) but just of different categories to the others. Earth is designed to counter activities of mostly typical humans, and just about stretching to include exceptional ones (Peggy being an example of such**).
Yet Peggy is rated at a mere three stars, on the super-power rankings. With each star indicating someone who is an order-of-magnitude more powerful than the previous. Math is so far above the rest of humanity that he rates as seven stars! Likewise Dabbler has progressed just as far above her peers (such as we see represented in the council) given that she too is seven-star rated!
It is not possible to build bank vaults that are proof against people who are so far above the bell-curve that they are not even on the same page as the rest of their species!
* Such as doing a one-handed hand-stand on an opponent’s head, in the middle of a fight. Or tinkering up satellite-towing ammunition that can wrap up a powerful supervillain, like a Michelin-Man-mummy.
*** Peggy excels, to world-class standards, in two fields (sniper and helicopter pilot) and is so capable that the loss of a limb literally does not even slow her down in those roles. This puts her on a par with Beethoven (genius at both music and mathematics) combined with Douglas Bader (top fighter pilot and military commander, who’s career and fighting capabilities progressed despite the loss of a leg).
This means that there are precious few humans, in all history, who could be placed above Peggy in capability rankings. Leonardo Da Vinci being one such, as he was millennia ahead of his peers in practically every field that he turned his hand to.
Halo, time to get your shield back up, and sharpish!
Monday is almost upon us yet you are still exposed.
My first day of work after my vacation. I could sure use a shield like that tomorrow.
This vault door was brought to you by Vault Tech!
The mezo-american god of security. Brother of Zapotech the god of fire starting. And the god of anonymity Idontknowwhohewastec.