Grrl Power #632 – The peg-legginator
Whoops, just realized I drew Harem firing left handed. Oh well. I won’t tell the boss if you don’t.
Seriously, that railgun would have like a +10 piercing in a D20 system. It’s one of those weapons that has so much penetration it actually does less damage than a comparable lead bullet because the projectile itself rips through everything before it has a chance to expand or disintegrate. It just ignores intervening armor, or engine blocks, hospitals, or whatever the target is hiding behind. On the other hand, it is moving so fast it’s dragging a bladestorm of supersonic wind behind it. It’s like having a fragmentation grenade go off inside the wound tract. If she hits someone in the torso with the thing, it basically ejects their head, limbs, and genitals in every direction.
Remember, Dabbler’s adventuring days basically makes her akin to a Diablo character. She has tens of thousands of kills under her belt, so she doesn’t consider limbing an enemy who can regenerate anyway antisocial behavior. At least she knows not to do it in front of a news crew.
The team went into this fight with instructions to bring Sciona in dead or alive, but with a strong preference for alive. Like don’t kill her unless her hand is hovering over the history eraser button. Turning her over to The Council would, as she points out, be a death sentence anyway, but at least a death sentence with some semblance of due process.
It’s probably nice to have a lot of bullet resistant teammates. It’s far less stressful to be able to shoot into a melee without worrying about friendly fire. It’s doubtful a 9mm round would do anything to Sciona while she’s jacked up on Super Juice, but you never know. Maybe hitting her in the eye would hurt. Or if you shot her right in an incisor. Ack! Can you imagine? Even if you were invulnerable, I think that would still give you a terminal case of the willies.
Edit: Yes, this is a little hypocritical of Max, considering she limbed Vehemence. Her reaction has more to do with just being surprised at her opponent suddenly coming apart in front of her.
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Seriously, Maxima needs to learn to save her lecturing for AFTER a situation is fully resolved.
“That’s now how we…” Really Max? Because Vehemences left arm can attest otherwise.
A) Partial mind control.
B) Maxima removing limbs didn’t put teammates at risk.
Maxima didn’t know about the ‘blood array’, so she still doesn’t have…well, I’m going to hate myself for using this pun, but I don’t really know a better phrase…she doesn’t have a leg to stand on for lecturing in the middle of a fight about removing limbs; that would make it a kind of ‘meta-concern’, something WE know makes it a bad idea, but not what Maxima knew; the partial mind control I suppose I’ll give you, but she’s being rather hypocritical right now (as well as having rather skewed priorities) for various reasons
I was not referring to the blood circle but rather the proximity of that shot to Maxima herself. Her response doesn’t seem to imply that that’s her concern but it is still worth noting as it’s one of the few difference between the situations. It could also be that the issue here is Dabbler ignoring a pressing concern to essentially play around, though.
I suspect I will have to make these points a lot …
*deep sigh*
Here goes.
1) In the fight against Vehemence, Maxima was under the influence of an emotion affecting attack, which was impeding her judgement and making her more aggressive than normal. Therefore that should not be taken as an indication of hypocrisy. Just as the civilians were deemed to be innocent, due to that influence, so is Maxima.
2) Vehemence had declared his intent to kill Maxima, and was showing every sign of being able to put that through. Plus the rest of the team (barring Sydney) were proving to be pretty much ineffective against him. Max was actually fighting for her life.
Contrast that to this situation, where they clearly have the upper paw.
Not that I am knocking Dabber’s decision mind. She makes a reasonable counter. But characterising Maxima as being hypocritical is being unfair. Plus (even under the aggro aura’s influence) both times Max gave orders to take the villains down using non-lethal methods, if possible.
Most importantly though, in Maxima’s favour, she was right in the middle of trying to get Sciona to surrender. Whereas, when Max demurised* Sciona, she had been trying to buy time to get the rest of the team operational again, when the fight had turned Sciona’s way.
Timing is important! Maxima got a -20 circumstance modifier, on her diplomacy check, because of Dabbler’s action.
* Defenestrated, substituting ‘ fenestra’ (window) for ‘muris’ (wall). I hereby deem this a vital addition to the super lexicon!
Small corrections:
1) Vehemence had indicated no desire to kill up to that point. Point of fact, he invoked the fact that Maxima was willing to limb him as why he decided that he had to eliminate Max as a threat (pg 274).
2) While later testimony does suggest that Vehemence had some kind of influence before he deployed the “aggro aura” and thus it is impossible to entirely rule out mental influence on Max during that fight, her actual rationale was coldly logical (pg 270, having been told the nature of his powers she realized that she had to find a way to end the fight immediately). Between that and Vehemence’s comment that she was “too violent for him”, it seems safe to assume that he wasn’t appreciably influencing her.
Mind you, at that point that was a logical course of action and Max lacked obvious alternatives, but let’s keep the chain of events in order
1) Yea I had actually put in a line about not being sure whether his decision was before or after that scene, and not being bothered about looking it up. But decided that his threat level had reached a level where that was immaterial, and making me ramble. So I snipped it. I should have thought to rephrase that earlier statement though, so you are right to call me out on it.
2) You are thinking that the aggro aura was only turned on at a later stage. All we saw was the point where Sydney thought to look for it though. Having reviewed the entire battle, numerous times, debating various points, I am convinced that he had it up throughout. The difference being that it became progressively stronger the more vehemic energy he absorbed and was able to pump into it.
Most importantly we know that most (excluding Opal and Victor) of the combatants, on the opposing team, were innocent civilians. Who would not be fighting under any circumstances (see Barberian as an ideal example). So the aggro aura had to be on, from even before they engaged the cops, and throughout.
Not only that but we know that the effect faded off, the further away folks got from it. We saw Barberian (a moderate distance away) querying if they needed to continue fighting. Whereas Hex (a long distance away) outright wondered why she was there at all.
So it is reasonable to infer that the closer to the source the stronger it would be. Hence, whilst Maxima was tanking, up in the air, she would have not been under its influence so much. But when facing Vehemence to-to-toe, she would have born the brunt of the effect.
Yes Maxima was making a ‘coldly logical statement’ but read through the whole sequence and you can see that Maxima carries on trying to attack him, even after Sydney warns her that this will only make him stronger.
Yet Maxima’s dialogue had not degenerated to the point where she was a raving lunatic. She was still able to put on a civilised face, even though she was hulking out inside.
2) I agree with this because how else could he ’round up every super’ who admitted they felt ‘like it would be rude not to fight’ if he didn’t have the aggro aura up to begin with when doing his recruitments?
Probably just increased its potency at the time of the aura into the (I hereby dub thee) Wrong Side of the Bed Call, which is why Sydney used her Detect Magic function on the Commball.
Regarding 2: Yes and no. As I said, later testimony does suggest that Vehemence had some passive influence throughout the fight, but Vehemence’s own comment that Maxima’s willingness to limb him made her “too violent” makes the aura’s influence on her up to that point questionable. Granted, it could just as easily mean that her baseline violence level was simply that much higher than the rest, but considering that she’s military and her “superhero triage” a few pages back, it’s too close to in-character to reasonably conclude that it was due to outside influence. It’s not outside the realm of possibility, mind you, but neither does it appear to be an anomalous decision given her background and the circumstances.
The key issue is that all of the innocent individuals were processed and released as quickly as possible. Despite having been involved in numerous crimes, such as attempting to kill police officers. Simply because we cannot say how much of the actions were of their own volition and how much it was due to the aggro aura.
What we can say though is that the effect was powerful enough to cause an apparently pacifist hairdresser to turn into a rioter, willing to attack police!
So clearly more than enough to create a ‘shadow of a doubt’ as to their guilt for ANY action that they took. Hence their ‘get out of jail free’ card.
Exactly the same applies to Maxima.
EVERYBODY outside of the shield was clearly being affected by the aggro aura (even having friend turn on friend, as it got more powerful). Maxima had no immunity to that, unlike Sydney (until she was trapped inside the shield with Vehemence).
Just as Maxima granted everyone else the automatic assumption* that their actions were under the influence of the aggro aura, so we are obliged to give her the same benefit of the doubt. And without besmirching her reputation by insinuating otherwise.
Maxima was not of sound mind, at the time of the incident. So cannot be held accountable for any misdeeds or misjudgements.
* By virtue of ‘innocent until being proven guilty’ and seeing that any prosecution would be unjust as there was an obvious shadow of doubt.
Note that this is what good police do from the outset, when they can see such logical conclusions. They do not pass the buck to the courts. That only wastes the time and resources of the criminal justice system and causes much distress to the innocent accused.
“Misdeeds or misjudgements”? Yorp, I’m not trying to portray Max as bloodthirsty or misguided. For the sake of clarity, I consider her limbing Vehemence to be the only valid option available to her under the circumstances. Playing purely defensive would be a gamble, a long-shot and questionably effective at best. Fighting regularly would just see Vehemence getting stronger until he overpowered her. And by the page description immediately preceding the event, he had already close to equal to her in strength, speed, and toughness, so she had to make a decision quickly. Refusing to further engage would simply leave the rest of the team and civilians at his mercy. With the knowledge she had at that point, the best available option would be to render him unable or unwilling to continue the fight, and seriously injuring him was the most expedient way to do that.
Therein lies my point. With the aura or without it, the decision would almost certainly have been the same because Vehemence was a quickly escalating threat that was about to become unmanageable.
And it begins. Quick everyone the inside of Sydney’s a bubble
My worry would be, once everything “goes ker-splodey!-boom!-eeek!”, how do they get OUT of the bubble fast-enough to keep Sydney alive? Not very heroic to save yourself, & be trapped in a front-row seat, watching all the helpless civilians die.
I believe Sydney is always inside the bubble, I seem to recall her saying that she can’t actually manifest it with her on the outside.
Makes sense. Otherwise it would be too easy to just bubble whomever and be like: “You have the right to consume less oxygen by remaining silent.”
[Brichins]:
Sorry to be unclear.
I was asking how everyone ELSE, if they sheltered inside WITH Sydney, would get out again in a timely manner without her dying if she dropped the Shield long-enough to free them.
Well other than Maxima they are just as squishy as Sydney so they wouldn’t want her to drop it until it was safe for her too.
Max flies to the top, Syd drops shield- Max holds debris. Syd puts shield up again, with Max outside. Max Superman’s her way out of the rubble.
Of course, Dabbler could probably Blink out, and Achilles… is Achilles.
It occurs to me that magic circle that Sciona has been so keen on keeping intact might have been for trapping/sealing whatever horror she is planning on unleashing through that portal she’s opening. So might end up with an out of control unspeakable horror.
Gonna wager she’s from another brane. All she ever wanted is to return home. The circle was there as a contingency/final step of the plan to erase/hide her trace. And now they all would be forced to go through that portal to her home universe in order to escape being crushed to death/trapped under the collapsing mountain.
Let’s grant that you’re correct.
(…the Author will confirm-or-disprove your wager soon enough…)
I’m worried as to why Sciona needed to “hyper-power” the brane-ripper, which seemed more-than-enough to get her home in its original form.
—
I’m picturing her as a vanguard.
I’m picturing her getting home, submitting her report on the “local fauna” (IE: we humans), & returning with a LEGION of her fellow Alari. This might be more effective if the brane-rip was HUGE enough to let her troops arrive here in massive formations (or even FLEETS of ships!), rather than marching single-file through a narrow gap.
What if the Brane-Ripper’s portals are on a d20 (or worse, d100) system?
Result table:
1 Elemental Plane of Happy Ponies ruled by Lord Pain (thanks Billy & Mandy)
2 Hentai For Everyone Universe (I will hook you up, girlfriend)
(3-19 unknown, you guys write it)
20 Sciona’s intended destination
3 The world without shrimp.
4 The world where pot noodle tastes nice (this one, come on over Sydney!)
5 A world where the aliens returned Elvis.
6 A world where aliens never got Elvis, in the first place.
7 A world where all Elvis impersonators are actually Elvis impersonating them.
8-19 for Elvis impersonators, and others to call.
8) Where the platypi reign supreme
9) Watchers watching Watchers watching Watchers watching Watchers
10) the Highlander universe where they duel not with swords but with spatulas
11) Where The Kaiju Are, by Shel Sednak
12) Yorpworld
Next…
13) Evil-Genderbent versions of ARC come falling out
I can’t help laughing at the thought of Maxima with a mustache.
Or with a beard.
More likely not to “super” the Ripper, but to control it. The way I see it, the Ripper is strictly indifferent to your intentions regarding desired destination. It just creates a rip between two random branes, that’s all. Sciona’s curious contraption was intended to direct _the rippening_ towards a quite specific pair of universes – current and her own.
Somehow I feel like you’ve seen The Thing.
That was just an alien that wanted to go home, but everyone kept getting in its way so it killed and became them, still just trying to defend itself and get its ship operational.
I also vividly remember “The Alien”, which is essentially darker, more depressing version of “Die Hard”.
A newborn – brought to this cruel world mere hours ago – is forced to figure out how to survive on alien spaceship, trapped, and hunted by a bunch of corporate goons trying their damnedest to kill him.
The hero dies in the end.
Speaking of unspeakable – I feel the time is right for a happy little song! So let’s sing together!
Demon Sultan Azathoth
Bubbles in confusion,
Center of the Universe
Sprouting foul protrusions;
Muffled madd’ning beating drums,
Hellish flutes a-playing,
Round him dance the Other Gods –
Voiceless, mindless swaying!
Many-formed Nyarlathotep
Bodes mankind’s corruption:
Calls us to our certain doom,
Voice full of seduction;
You can’t help but dance behind,
Gyrating and turning –
Tears of joy streak down your face
As the world dies burning!
Yog-Sothoth is Gate and Key,
Binding time to matter:
When his gaze falls on the earth
Laws of physics shatter;
Try to chain him with your laws –
Pitiful equations!
Naught but dust and sand shall mark
Your obliteration!
It took me a long while to figure-out, but I *SUSPECT* that this might be sung to the tune of “Good King Wenceslas”…?
Precisely.
Remember that talk we had about blood rituals going bad? Well, we soon won’t have to rely on suppositions anymore!
I imagine our hero team might have to detonate the cave in mechanism themselves.
First things first – OUUUUCHH – That looks insainly painful but very effective. Next: That looks like the activation/trigger for the bombs. That would explain her horrified NO. Always remember to use a safe activation method for your self destructing layer. No shiny big buttons and no blood splatter activation. It would seem she never thought someone could make her bleed.
Blowing of the leg of a convicted murderer is to extreme for someone threatening to blow off a head after disconnecting his arm?
I highly suspect like many that that circle isn’t for the bombs but is still imperative. My money is with ChaosSepher on this one. That being said, this really comes off as kind of Bond villain really. Make base expecting response, make fairly delicate internal mechanisms for imperative plan, and then not expect the expected response to break everything or disarm nasty things.
Speaking from similar, if less bone breaking, experience, endorphins are a hell of a drug and the pain doesn’t actually set in for about half an hour. For me, the sharp pain of stitching the wound back up or getting those stitches removed felt far worse but that pain wasn’t anywhere near as debilitating.
Given the unfortunate timing (unfortunate for Sciona, anyway), I’m picturing the overwhelming majority of her explosive blast getting focused (by the tons of surrounding mountain rock) through the brane-rip in the next room, & destroying whatever she was trying to draw into our world, leaving her underground base “singed” (perhaps even scoured clean of any remaining blood-sigils), but otherwise intact.
Also, the hell is Sydney doing with her shield?! She’s been turning it on and off every few seconds since the beginning of this fight.
She doesn’t want to get loopy from being in a bubble with too much CO2 like she did in the Super-brawl.
She’s got a mechanical breather and her air ball. She’s fine.
When you want to get close enough to talk to someone without shoving them out of the way with your impenetrable barrier, you may need to pick which you want to do more
I’ll agree to that.
nice comic, i like the gore component
stupid tags
it’s liquefied
Mind you, the ‘power scale’ Dave linked to probably goes up to… uh, I dunno, I’m guessing that Level 8 would be the Gunbuster III or something (destroying a galactic core for fun and profit!), which still leaves room for things that destroy entire universes, and even multiverses.
The main problem I have with the rail gun use is really the collateral. Sciona being the accomplished magic user and generally industrious person she is, you really can’t say you know what you’re doing shooting that thing around in her base. For all you would know, you could hit some sort of structural support or something worse that you’d really rather not go off. It’s kind of like having a fire fight around the nuke in Megaton in Fallout 3. Sure if you know what you’re doing you’re probably fine, but it’s extremely not suggested as some stray fire could make for a particularly bad day.
Wasn’t one of the basic combat rules “Look behind what you are shooting?”
The absorption of the kinetic energy into whatever structural component it hits will 1) send shrapnel at Mach speeds in all directions, and 2) send out a seismic shock wave that will make the actual bombs look like firecrackers.
Lastly, Dabbler let me introduce you to mister Newton (not the cookie guy). He said something like “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”. What, aside from ‘magic’, is keeping Dabbler from launching herself backwards every time she uses that thing?
IKR! I can only assume that part of the ring on that thing is a series of stabilizers to keep the thing from launching backwards and through her chest.
As we saw at the press demonstration, the railgun (and some of her other tech) has some exotic tech baked in that lets it pass through hammerspace back to her lab. She could easily have an internal recoilless mechanism that sends a superdense slug the opposite direction from the shot and through a wormhole into a safe backstop, like an isolated star.
recoil is a function of bullet weight, bullet velocity, powder charge, and gun weight. So how much does a coilgun bullet weigh? 5 grams (77gr)? how fast is is moving? 2000m/s (~6500fps, or a little less than 3x a high velocity rifle round, almost Mach 6)? powder charge is zero. How much does the coilgun weigh? Looks like at least 8lbs to me. Plug all those numbers into the recoil calculator at https://www.shooterscalculator.com/recoil-calculator.php and you get a recoil energy of 9.93 ft.lbf (foot pound force. ~1.3 Joule). that’s tiny. Let’s double the velocity (4000m.s). that’s 39.72 ft.lbf. That’s more respectable. If you are not braced correctly that could knock you over. drop the velocity to 3000 m/s and that gives you recoil (22.77 ft.lbf). less than a .30-06 fired from a 7 lb rifle (25.24 ft.lbf).
Let’s back that up an increase the density of the bullet. depleted uranium is approximately twice as dense as lead. a .30-06 bullet is 165-180 grains = 10.6 to 11.6 grams. let’s go heavy. There we go. a 360gr bullet fired at 9842 fps (3000 m/s) from an 8 lb gun has a recoil energy of 497.68. That’ll knock her on her ass.
I think that bullet size is too big. a coilgun is going to shoot a smaller bullet at hypersonic speeds. The first set of calculations are what I would design into my coilgun.
Rule of Cool + alien tech that gets the backlash and absorbs it, using it as offense for the next round fired so it can be used semi-automatically with no kickback.
God-Awful points in KnockBack Resistance, linked to an OAF.
I had to read that a couple times. I first read it as “Megatron in Fallout 3” and thought you made an amazing mod.
Where have we seen this before?
The secret lair self destruct activated inadvertently?
The warp drive activated before leaving the gravity well?
The debit card overdrawn before the deposit clears?
Oopsie!!
You for got the Bond villains assuming Bond is ether dead or good as dead before leaving to go do other villain things.
I like that you are putting overdraft fees on the same level with self-destruct mechanisms and interdimensional tech misuse. You must bank either here or here.
Dabbler is missing from the Who’s Who column.
…& Harem IS mentioned, even though she says nothing.
Dabbler should be mentioned. Harem too though, as she plays an active part in the scene. Although her shots were ineffective, she was very prominently positioned, and causing the antagonist to react defensively. So there would be bound to be various people wanting to comment on that.
The ‘must talk and be introduced’ rule is mainly there to prevent spoilers for a newly introduced character.
The only other time where the talking does play a key part is if there is a scene with a lot of characters, especially when they are all doing significant bits. In which case Dave tries to keep the Who’s Who panel from becoming too big. So the ones not talking would be snipped out before those taking part in the dialogue. Mostly. Again the significance of actions does sometimes have talking characters purposefully omitted when another character is undertaking a more significant role, without speech.
Although, with these small numbers, I only mention the latter for completeness, as it does not come into play here.
*sigh* When you realize a Johnny Dangerously quote is in bad taste due to current events….
The 88 Magnum? Totally appropriate in this context
I was thinking along the same lines, myself.
I don’t see any fireworks?
Don’r ever shoot me with a railgun, Johnny.
My grandmother shot me with her railgun once.
ONCE!
Don’t take your railgun to town son, leave your railgun at home.
Don’t take your railgun to town Bill, leave your railgun at home.
I think a railgun would actually be capable of propelling a projectile so fast that it would basically explode on impact instead of penetrating like a traditional AP round.
That depends a lot on the solidity of the projectile. If it is too fragile, this happens. If it’s hard enough however, it will go through, while causing a hella lot of damage. Speed is relative, so you can swap the positions of target and projectile and go back to case 1.
Here, it is Dabbler homemade projectile, so I assume it is much harder than normal materials. (btw, in that case, does it teleport back in the lab after usage?)
A Dabbler-scale railgun ‘bullet’ would view most things as being transparent – it’s thru and gone before the bullet even has a chance to a bullet’s job of inflicting damage. Like DaveB said in the commentary, it’s the trailing shockwave that does the damage, the bullet is just there to open a path for it.
The problem with the railgun projectile seeing other objects as “transparent” is that physics works both ways; picking the frame of reference doesn’t change the interaction (setting aside relativity). A stone wall moving at Mach 8 impacting a “stationary” projectile will sustain just as much damage, not vaporize the bullet and keep going.
The bullet will deteriorate as it passes through target(s), it still needs to be super dense to survive hitting most of the kind of targets it’s going to be aimed at.
I don’t think the railgun projectile is fast enough, but yes there is a mechanism which makes the projectile see rest of objects as transparent. Basically, you stop getting classical “one object hitting other by Newton’s laws” if the electrons which are part of atoms of one object goes fast enough to penetrate INSIDE atoms of second object before being repulsed by that atom electrons.
I am guessing that she has her railgun tuned to go slow enough that the metal in the projectIle is not fusing with the air. Knowing Dabbler it’s probably just below that threshold. Otherwise when it fired it would be like a nuke going off along the entire projectile path. There is a relevant xkcd what if but I am terrible at linking things. What would be funny would be if she had a limiter she could take off of it for emergencies. Disable the safeguards, hand it to Achilles, take cover in Halo’s shield bubble, hope whatever required such a drastic action can’t survive being nuked.
Well, the xkcd is about relativistic speed. She can still power her projectile to Mach 10 without having any nuclear fusion problems. Recoil however requires some tricks.
Magic.
And waiting for mountain to implode in 3, 2, 1….
Ummm…Dave? Did you consider that the kick from such a railgun would have thrown Dabbler through the opposite wall? Physics is notoriously unforgiving of such things. Action/Reaction, and all that.
She already used this hand-held railgun during the demonstration. As for how realistic it is … it is pretty hard to believe this can work without some magic to help with that. Usually, gun are designed such that the wielder as more time to cancel the momentum than it took to shoot the bullet, which reduces the force involved. At the scale of a railgun, I do not see any way this could work without making the railgun too heavy to lift to begin with.
alien tech, we can handwave recoil
Not really. We don’t exactly have specs for the mass or velocity of her railgun rounds, but let’s assume that they’re roughly the same size as a large rifle round (about 50g), but moving about three times quicker (3000m/s) – if so, the recoil is going to be about three times greater than that of a large-caliber rifle. That’s quite a lot, especially for someone standing upright like that, but it’s not going to propel her through a wall… at worse, it’ll dump her on her ass. And that’s assuming Dabbler cares about the laws of momentum, which as a super-science type, probably isn’t the case.
(I’ve actually thought about this a bit, because one of my favourite RPG characters was conceived as a half-tonne cyborg precisely to justify the carrying of a railgun much bigger than Dabbler uses).
I am no gun expert, but I feel you need to multiply the energy of a large rifle round by more than 9 to make it pass right through a tank while, no to mention 19 tanks.
More pragmatically, one railgun round made Achilles fly. Sure, it bounced off, but even if you divide the momentum by two, Dabbler should still be sent flying by the recoil.
It also depends on what you make the round out of. DU is a favorite for tank busting because it is heavy (though not the heaviest), self sharpening (so it really goes through armor) and relatively available (because of the nuke program).
Dabbler stole, er, “acquired” some Mass Effect technology. The projectile has little mass inside the weapon so it can be accelerated to insane velocities with little energy and has little felt recoil. Once it leaves the weapon it remains full mass but retains the high velocity.
Or because comics.
“Regains” not “remains”. Stupid auto correct.
Assuming you want the EFFECT to remain constant, I’d imagine that as the muzzle velocity increases, the mass of the projectile can be decreased, which makes it even easier to accelerate the projectile. As a bonus, a smaller pellet means that more rounds can fit into a fully-loaded gun. Based on some of the super-high-speed videos that are out there, the impact (in the wake of the pellet’s passage) will cause even the sturdiest materials to “ripple” with shockwaves, which tends to undermine their structural integrity.
She summons her gear with some sort of teleportation anyway, right? Maybe the railgun isn’t even actually firing the projectile, maybe it’s just a shell around a portal the other end of which is on the barrel of an enormous floor-mounted railgun back in her lab.
I was thinking just the recoil mass was being sent through a portal, but I like this theory better. It would be way more efficient to have the handheld portion of the railgun system contain only the portal, and not the firing mechanism itself.
+1
No recoil for Dabbler at all here. Big recoil in the lab, but using the usual mechanisms to deal with that there.
“+1” from me too!
Why carry the whole thing, when all you REALLY need are the “aiming” & “firing” parts!
Weirdly the succubi race employs the same principle for child birth (albeit they are catchers, rather than firers).
Not necessarily. We useless humans already have the tech necessary to turn one cell type into another, so a female-female partnership can produce viable offspring, as an example.
Good points. Although I was alluding to the fact that they use factories as a core part of their reproductive process (in some ‘complex’ way). Another snippet only known to folks who check out all of the blogs.
Mind you we are part of the way there, with in vitro fertilisation. Likewise with simple modifications to the DNA. But we do not have artificial wombs yet, so whilst the gestation can be outsourced, it still has to be done by some person.
That complex aspect to it is wholly understandable mind, given the likely totally incompatible nature of creatures evolved on different planets.
Although panspermia becomes much more viable when you have aliens visiting worlds! Especially as whole species could pop from one planet to another, so would not have to evolve all the way up from bacteria each time. So galactic life may well actually be a lot more sexually compatible than we would otherwise conjecture.
We are almost to the point where we have artificial wombs for the premature born infants. It may take another decade or so before they become available for testing on humans.
Shouldn’t have submitted yet.
Anyway, additionally, it makes more sense to me that a succubus would either grow a succubus child in a lab or someone else they hypnotize, so they don’t have the baby bump in the way of their parties, Unless it’s an experience they want to have, or it’s a fetish.
Heh, that they do.
Now you’re thinking with portals!
I think with portals 2.
I need to hurry up with my own comic! There’s a character I want to write in, who gained powers from a super (the main guy) who can give powers if he wants.
He’d give one of his fans the power of a portal gun, plus Miroku’s wind tunnel from Inu Yasha.
:-)
And now Dabbler learns to listen when Sydney uses the word DEMOLITION.
Syd, if we survive this, let’s explore alternate ways to phase this, such as:
“This whole place is rigged to blow — I need another pair of eyes to confirm-&-defuse!”
Sydney has been communicating really, really badly the last 2 pages. The word she’s been looking for is “Bomb”. The correct phrase would be “BOMB! This place is rigged to blow! It looks like it’s blood magic.”
Then things might have gone better.
Agreed. Sydney’s problem is that she is trying to pass on information, without drawing Sciona’s attention to the fact that she is on to the (presumed) demolition plan. Which is a sensible option, where feasible.
But letting her team know is the greater priority, and doing so unequivocally and fast is vital.
Does anyone else want to see Sydney give Dabbler an ass-punch to get her attention? … which might be difficult given the scale of the problem that will likely soon be kicking off near Sciona.
Yes. But not whilst Dabbler is holding a rail gun capable of slicing the mountain above them (or anyone in the room) in half!
Achilles excepted, of course.
Eh, she’d probably drop it (unless its her cyberarm and it doesn’t look like it is) and screech, get mad, then get an edumacation.
Why is Harem holding her gun so high up? Her eye isn’t in line with the sights, it’s like she’s trying to shoot over a wall.
We’ve seen before that Harem hasn’t taken to military training… she might technically be a soldier, but standing around firing a gun really isn’t something she seems keen on…
Harem is pretty accurate, considering she’s shooting at someone grappling Maxima and NOT hitting her teammate, but her fire discipline SUCKS. Granted a 9mm round is like the buzzing of flies to Max, but you shouldn’t be doing that.
Which is probably really why Max is shouting at Dabbler. After all, she probably can’t casually ignore a railgun shot…
Because of the rule “Any action of a secondary character must not block the face of the main character as seen by the audience.”
Just wait until Arianna gets product placement deals with sponsors. The characters will have to stand with their soda can facing label-side toward the audience.
(Plus after the battle they will celebrate with some nice Hostess Fruit Pies.)
https://cheesegod.com/4/pies3.jpg
Extremely overt product placement aside, those really are delicious.
I enjoyed Wreck It Ralph.
“The characters will have to stand with their soda can facing label-side toward the audience.”
All except Harem. Her choice of drinks is being carefully monitored and controlled to establish whether it involves clairvoyance or psychokinesis.
While I see what you are saying. It might be muzzle climb. She did just pop two rounds in quick succession.
+1, with a little artistic licence.
Why is Sydney outside her bubble? She is squishy and can be killed by any random debris falling, not to mention some form of aoe attack.
‘Semblance of due process’, you mean the ‘Pilate Process’? Where you wash you hands after turning the suspect over to the lynch mob?
The actual problem here is that Dabbler took a leg shot. You should never do that. If you’re going to shoot someone, shoot to kill.
Or else Maxima is upset because unlike Harem, Dabbler was shooting something that could actually have hurt Maxima.
Hardly… from what we’ve seen of Maxima, that railgun wouldn’t even scratch the paint. But between her wings, and having bulletproof-Max engaged in close-combat, Sciona has pretty good cover… shooting for the foot may have just been an opportune target for Dabber, knowing that with a gun like that, hitting anywhere would do the job.
the only thing we know about that rail gut is that it pierces a tank and sciona but not Achilles. That is a wide field to be in. And may not have a upper bound.
No, but we do know that Max is seriously tough… from memory, she was the only one standing outside the shield during the press demo, exposed to but unaffected by the apocalyptic blast she’d unleashed.
Achilles was there too, but nothing can hurt him, so your point remains good.
Thinking of this shot penetrating the wing, when Maxima’s was deflected off earlier made me think of this:
https://www.cassiopeiaquinn.com/comic/the-seat-of-your-pants-page-18
(Relevant more to the shot from Max more than this page.
Really, Maxima has no room to talk. Among other things, it was just a few minutes ago she was telling herself, “I should have just vaporized her.”
What she would have a valid point about is that unless they’ve tested it (and how would you?) if Xuriel’s rail gun can shoot off Sciona’s leg when she’s invulnerable enough to survive a mother-effing punch and go toe to toe with Max, they can’t be sure it couldn’t seriously injure Maxima. So Dabbler should not be shooting it into Max’s close-quarters combat.
+1
Really, Max…?
You won’t let ANYONE else have the fun of “limbing” a perp, like you did to Vehemence?
When did she think that?
And if she did: Action matters more than words and she was still trying for non-lethal here.
It was 13 pages ago.
Here (first panel)
True enough.
But a muttered word directed at herself does not a command make.
Remember, step through portal THEN activate lair self-destruct!
*shakes head*
If that is not in the evil overlords’ handbook, it really needs a new entry!
Well she didn’t expect to bleed on the “activate self destruct sequence” glyph before the portal was finished
I recall very definite instructions on where to place your self-destruct button.
However ‘on the floor, where it can be activated by any minor accident’ … now that was an omission which is understandable. It is covered by the ‘I shall run my plans by a five year old’ rule.
I imagine that the sigil must have a certain, minimum size, in order to be able to do the task for which it’s made…
…& wall-sigils tend to be drippy-&-runny, before they dry – even more-so when you’re in haste…
…& in all fairness, it’s hard to find a flat, smooth, non-floor surface that’s large-enough. It’s truly amazing, the number-&-variety of random things that tend to accumulate on such surfaces, over the course of even just a single day.
I have four cats in my house. No imagination required!
4 cats…?
You have both my envy & my sympathy.
;)
:)
No need for sympathy, they are all very well behaved (allowing for normal kitty instincts, of course). Plus anytime I am lonely, or sad, there will be one or another of them around, to cheer me up with a cuddle.
And one of them saved my life, so nothing but checks in the positive column!
The only down side is that I lost one kitten to traffic, so am worried now that I am having to move back to the UK, to an urban area. Plus one of the four is both (formerly) feral and extremely territorial. My lap being her territory, not the kittens! Although she is extremely sweet to me, she has been getting progressively more violent to her kittens.
Natural instincts mind, hence my comments above. Normally either she would move on, or would drive the rival cats out, once they were old enough to fend for themselves. For the time being I have managed to stop harm befalling them, but realise that ultimately they will be safer separated.
Plus, of course, Feral Cat has grown up fending for herself, so can cope without me. Whereas the kittens are dependent on me, having grown up with me feeding them. Although two of them are great mousers, there is no question of leaving them to fend for themselves.
Needless to say I shall be leaving big bags of cat food, and cash, with friends, to keep her fed for as long as my resources can sustain that. I think cuddles are just as important for her though. She is a real ‘people person’.
The kittens are young enough that, with luck, they will adapt to an urban setting. Especially as I raised them to be as comfortable indoors, as out. Just in case I deem an area to be too risky for them. F.C. would hate that though, having had the freedom of rural village life and her own independence, for years, before meeting me.
I shall be sad though. She is a lovely cat! Hopefully I will be able to visit though, and maybe my circumstances will change, so that I can bring her over too, in due course.
I’ve never heard of a cat saving anyone’s life. Risking it by tripping them down the stairs, sure. Getting diseases and slicing their face open in the morning, sure.
So, recount your tale of the cat that saved your life please!
It’s been known to happen:
https://weloveanimals.me/15-cats-real-life-superheroes-saving-human-lives/
+15
I was fast asleep, when Miss Kitty Fantastico gave a series of alarm calls. I know their calls well, and instantly respond to that one, as it means they are in imminent danger. So it woke me up like having cold water poured on me!
If she had not done that, I would have died in my sleep, as the room was thick with choking smoke. So thick that I could not see the walls!
As i use a wood fire, I thought it was just the wind blowing smoke back into the house (albeit that this was worse than I had experienced before, but I guessed that was because I had been sleeping through it).
So I got the kitties out (including carrying one who was independently sick at the time, and just lying there with ‘let me die, save yourself’ body language).
Then I set about fixing the smoke problem, only to find that it had nothing to do with my fireplace, but was an actual house fire, on the other side of the room! The open door had turned from a smouldering one, to a fully fledged fire. Larger than a waste basket (the rule of paw that tells you it is beyond control).
Fortunately I was able to drag the big stuff that was burning right out the front door. Leaving a dozen secondary fires, spreading around the room. So I knew I only had seconds. But managed to douse them with big (11 litre) bottles of water I keep in the room. Only needing the one, due to catching each of the fires before they grew too big.
It took me two months to recover from the smoke inhalation though (and longer than that, for blackened skin, from walking through fire ,and fire-fighting, but only lingering in a small spot on my paw). Walking was so fatiguing that I could not go more than a hundred meters, without having to rest, for quite a while.
The fire-fighting only took a few minutes however (and I got fresh air outside, plus held my breath when re-entering), so most of the inhalation damage was whilst I was very soundly asleep.
There is no way, as deeply asleep as I had been that night, that I would have woken of my own accord. I could not have been far from getting permanent lung damage, and would have died not long after that stage.
Which is the most common cause of death in house fires. So I have no doubt that, under identical circumstances, but without the kitties there, to wake me, I would have died.
I can only say…
:-D
5 kittens, their momma and great-grandmother, plus visits from the 4 fathers. =P
:-D
my wife has 9 cats with kittens on the way that she PROMISES she will find other homes for :D
Wow, that is going to be a huge task! I hope that the mummy cats will all be spayed, after that. Otherwise there will be the same problem, in less than a year.
I was very reluctant to do that, with mine. But struggle to even keep myself fed, let alone the kitties I already had. So it was necessary for all our sakes. Took a big chunk out of my budget mind, but far less than having kitties flowing out of the house, in a flood!
To clarify:
SYMPATHY)__because you’re outnumbered by all the cute lil’ furry disciples of Chaos.
ENVY)__because you can choose to join-in with their “Cuddle Puddle”, if you so wish.
;)
:)
:-D
Don’t think it’s in the handbook, but it is basically the same as Maxim 1: “Pillage, then burn.
Heh, yea. Although I was alluding to
The Top 100 Things I’d Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord.
In particular referencing:
Another pertinent one being:
Love the List, was just too lazy to look up a link. :) Haven’t re-read it in a while, I bet Dabbler and Deus have it bookmarked. Semi-pertinent entries here also include:
and
Doesn’t say anything about supports for a dangerously unbalanced person, but Dabbler did shoot at an angle that would pass into the floor and not further endanger the stability of the walls or roof. Who knows what’s in the sub-basement though…
Superman took a bullet to the eye and Achilles took a sword to the eye, both literally without blinking. I don’t think a bullet to the tooth would really bother someone that’s invulnerable anyways.
That would just be a question of mouth feel. (sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Perhaps not the impact but what about all that heat on a sensitive tooth?
remember the guy that Math put a knife in his teeth during the super brawl??
aaaand we haaaave a winner!!! :))
like Uhl said, prepare for the flash!
it’s not like everybody was expecting it, the only question was whom blood was to be spilled to activate The Doomsday Machine in an inappropriate moment ;)
Dabbler should have been stopped everything when Sydney started with a casual question in the middle of a fight;)
She’s a blood mage, she was gonna throw some of her blood on it just before jumping the portal
She’s a blood mage, she was gonna throw some of her blood on it just before jumping the portal
There are two things that worry me about this:
1) Her blood is currently a mashup of various super-bloods – is this going to supercharge her ritual, or cause it otherwise behave not as designed?
2) Given how worried she was about the possible effect of a small trickle of blood intersecting with the diagrams, what is arterial flow being waved all over it, along with scuff marks from her landing and flailing, going to do?
+1
As an ambidextrous shooter myself I don’t see any real problem with Harem shooting left handed. Besides has it been established that Harem is right handed? Has it been established that all of her selves are right handed?
If there is any issue with how Harem firing the gun is drawn, it has to do with the lack of recoil. Given the fireball from the muzzle and the slide currently back all the way Harem should have just had some significant kick from the gun. Max could probably hold a firearm straight at the target throughout the firing cycle, but not so for someone with normal human strength. The muzzle of Harem’s gun should be tilted slightly upwards from kickback.
Sydney needs a code word that she can yell when she needs everyone to stop and listen to her.
Problem is she’s not the best judge of when she NEEDS everyone to stop and listen to her… she’d probably never stop using it.
May as well make to code word “wolf” so she can cry it out.
Hammertime.
At least Sydney got Dabbler’s attention,if for a brief moment…!
Actually Dave I believe the Hydrostatic shock of that gun would be the real culprit in massive damage inflicted on flesh of amy kind. Though a lot of it probably was tranfered from the air smashed into a dense hot pile in front of the projectile. At those speeds a body would behave much like a water balloon hit by a regular bullet.
I think Max should have blood stains on her hands and forearms in that last frame.
A separate question:
When Dabbler refers to the “portal”, is she talking about the blood-sigil on the floor, or have they noticed yet that Sciona’s golem has been wielding the brane-ripper?
— If it’s the former, then why is she spilling blood all over it? That seems (to me) like using a flame-thrower in a gunpowder factory.
— If it’s the latter, then where in the story have our heroes noticed this activity?
I maintain that Dabbler’s weapon must be a coilgun.
Without technological limitation, the main difference between a coil vs rail gun is that the velocity of a projectile fired by a railgun is proportional to length squared, while a coilgun only suffers linearly.
So for a weapon with an acceleration distance of about a third of a meter, the coil gun will fire a projectile about 3 times faster.
Yep, Dabs just blew it (perhaps even literally)!
Also, who’s the blonde? Is it Harem with a new hairdo or a new character? She seems to have Harem’s freckles but also seems a bit larger (or could just be the jacket).
The after-action reports on this one are going to be interesting.
Aren’t you the boss, Dave? And I’d think that Harem might have had the chance to train herself to do some things ambidextrously…
Let’s see. She is standing in a blood spell circle, by the looks of it. She is now adding more blood to it,which will likely mess up whatever effect she was trying for, or maybe activate it prematurely.
Rigging the place to blow in the event of your death (eg it detects your blood not inside your body) is taking one last stab at whoever kills you.
Problem is, whatever method you use, it might get a false positive and go off when you are still alive and trying to escape.
As for Harem firing left handed, what is to prevent her from being ambidextrous? She is always wanting to gain extra experience, so may have practised for this body to fire her handgun left-handed instead.
I myself am right handed but generally shoot with the left, due to being cross-eye dominant.
Also, given the amount of time she has for developing various skills, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she’s worked on being ambidextrous.
Possibly Harem may develop muscle-memory separately for each body, so your point is good. Other than that though all of the experience she gains, in practising that is available to all of them equally. I do not know how much muscle memory might affect marksmanship though.
However I would speculate that it is important for reflex snap shots (or quickdraw). Likewise for fast-draws. But those should not be applicable to most policing situations. Where they need to assess their targets, before firing. So the conscious brain should be the most relevant aspect.
Meaning that (for most purposes) if one Harem fires ambidextrously then all of them should be able to.
And it is a skill that you can learn. I heavily favoured one paw, because the other had been badly broken as a pup, yet my martial arts instructor gave me no sympathy and insisted that I practice all techniques, until I was equally competent left or right pawed. And it worked flawlessly.
Harem would make one hell of a fireteam by herself. Remember the Rat Patrol from MGS: Guns of the patriots? like that but without nanomachines. She knows and sees what all of her “clones” do and could coordinate extremely well. Watch her own back, evade attacks that another of herself can see etc. Not to mention her teleport ability. She’d be super badass. I imagine her all kitted out in SWAT gear with special equipment.
In my suggestion, the team really should have a set of communicator codes to be used in the field to describe certain situations without letting the bad guy know what they are up to. Kind of like police radio codes https://copradar.com/tencodes/
That way, Sydney could have radioed ‘”We got a code 88 in the main hall!” and the rest of the team would know what to look out for.
Oops sorry, code 88 is a report of a Delorean breaking temporal speed limits.
As soon as Sydney realises the powers of her last mystery orb, she can pop back and implement that change, prior to them entering this complex.
And go on to an ‘assertiveness in a crisis’ course, for that matter.
Perhaps nothing in Sydney’s experience (so far) has been stressful-enough to trigger the function of the final Orb…?
Or maybe it needs to be charged up, by being struck with lightning? Or garbage?
Most modern police departments have stopped using ten-codes in favor of just using plain speech.
I think they are beyond the point where it’s OK to use lethal force.
Yup. Although Dabbler should follow the unit commander’s call on the matter. Maxima was trying to negotiate a surrender, so Dabbler should not have overridden that.