Grrl Power #639 – My empire of dirt
So, no real surprise here. Sometimes the reveal is a big “duh” because of how the pages break down. I maybe could have squeezed a slice of this onto the previous page, but the dedicated splash page is more dramatic, even if it’s fairly telegraphed at the twice a week page rate.
Still, fun to see the results. I have to say, drawing blown up cities is a lot easier than drawing intact ones. If a building is looking wonky while I draw it, then I’m like “Nope! You get an explosion, and you get an explosion! Everybody gets an explosion! Except you. You get a CRATER!”
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Opps!
Black Opps, obviously.
The very darkest.
Black to the future.
To me, it looks like the Alari race is history…Fallen into the Black Age.
You must construct additional pylons!
Still waiting for those at the Restaurant Battle Royale site.
That’s exactly what I thought when I saw that object in the foreground.
Flames mean that what happened did so not too long ago…
Unless it hit a pocket of underground gas, but yeah.
Not necessarily. Perhaps the buildings are made of flame retardant materials. Or someone blew everything up, then cast lots of Continual Flame spells on the ruins just to add insult to injury.
CF doesn’t produce smoke though…
Not unless you add in a Continual Smoke spell in as well
That’s just evil!
That or what’s happening is a ongoing cascade failure of perpetual magic devices. Think Fallout but with everything being powered by magic and not Uranium-plutonium-thorium rtgs. Something failed in the stove and it melts down, then later the sterio that was left on blows a speaker because a magic mouse gnawed on something and that shorts out and so on.
Makes sense. We would not get as much, in a technological society, because most of our devices (and the most energetic) are powered by the mains. Power plants would likely be an early target and, even if not singled out, the generators would be vulnerable to the kind of damage we see all buildings getting above.
So, without power, washing machines, driers (clothing or hair), TVs and so on would not be left on unattended, with the fire risks associated with that. Leaving just the battery powered items, and our battery technology is so primitive that they would only have power for a few days, max. Ignoring the really low drain items like clocks.
As such our deserted cities would only be at risk from chemical fires (from those batteries and other sources), plus variations of ones present in nature already.
Whereas magical items could presumably last a long time, if not indefinitely. We did not see Decollete giving Sydney any magical batteries for her hair band. But we would expect some kind of energetic reaction if it were destroyed.
*stands guard over headband, hackles raised, looking around warily for magical meeces*
Exactly! Something so evil couldn’t happen.
So the fire/smoke/etc is really just the workings of a space photographer sprucing up the place for a good op.
I’ll go with a guess of Magma Pit with extended duration to epic level. A couple elder elementals could do as much damage also. I would not put it past the council setting this up properly for if Siona escaped. Now the other direction needs a Deus was here sign.
The enemy guns used tire fires as ammunition.
My first thought exactly: Stuff (including craters) is still burning, can’t be long ago. On the other hand, it doesn’t look like it happened yesterday. Wild guess, between one week and a few months.
I refer you to Centralia, PA (underground inextinguishable mine fire since 1962 (55 years)) and the Darvaza Gas Crater in Turkmenistan (Commonly called the “Door to hell,” on fire since 1971 (47 years)).
Besides, maybe they shelled the place with a Volcano Cannon. You know, one that actually fires volcanoes.
That is my new favorite overblown super-villain weapon.
I find myself somewhat fond of it too… but I can’t stat it up or use it in a game. I learned long before I became a GM that players have a habit of taking things off NPCs… and that GMs shouldn’t put anything in the game that they don’t want the players to have.
Wereas I use a Cathedralpult. (it uses entire cathedrals as ammo)
pretty sure my buddy on a rogue trader ship had one of those. although i think he called it a drop church.
which just goes to show you, in the 40 millennium, there is no such thing as to large a caliber
I do seem to remember one of the WH40K novels… I think one of the books in the first Ultramarines trilogy… that they mentioned the Nova Cannon fired shells that were literally about the size of the Empire State Building, at a significant fraction of the speed of light. Even without an explosive warhead, that’s going to do a metric f**kton of kinetic damage if it hits something…
And it’s still not enough dakka.
My flagship uses super nova and blackhole weaponry.
It also has a nice arboretum, with a redwood and sequoia forest, leading up to a relaxing beach, with gentle waves.
Maybe it is like in the book “Footfall”, wherein they dropped asteroids from space. This time, though, they found asteroids made of white phosphorous.
Or volcanoes made of willy-pete.
Or…or cathedrals…
Or before that The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress…
Around 99.999% light speed, the explosive force that would be added to a missile by ANY payload (even antimatter or a hypothetical “total conversion bomb”) is meaningless.
Maxim 11. Everything is air-droppable at least once.
And of course, Maxim 37. There is no ‘overkill.’ There is only ‘open fire’ and ‘I need to reload.’
A volcano cannon? Well seems my character in Icons need to have a chat with our resident mad scientist.
I’ve come to be quite satisfied with the Summon Bigger Fish spell.
Hmmm, so you’d like to have a weapon that fires volcanoes? You’d have to hire them first, so I wonder what a fair wage would be per volcano? Pro-rated according to caliber (size)?
I bet the unions would be venting about that. And those affected would blow their tops!
I know about the PA fire (and thanks for the Turkmenistan fire; I enjoy trivia), but some of the fires here are on top of buildings.
As for a Volcano Cannon- no offense, but there’s fantastic because it’d be effective, and fantastic that’s just senseless. Why do all the magic and tech required to launch volcanoes when a more conventional and mundane artillery shell (or beam attacks or whatnot, less fantastic but highly effective and efficient stuff) will suffice?
Occam’s Razor isn’t just being logical. It’s also being practical.
Nope, that makes no sense. Occam’s Razor cuts stuff, it does not set fires!
Occam’s Matchbook?
Ahh, I can see the philosophy behind that. A bit like ‘the shotgun approach’, to problem solving.
You try to ignite interest in one theory, amongst your audience. If it falters you blow harder, and try to feed it more information tinder. But if the conditions are not right, and your detractors blow out your allegorical match, or piss all over it, you can try again, with a variant one.
And if that fails, you just keep working your way through the box, in the hope that you will get one which will have the community blazing with interest.
Because you’re also making new land along the coast,
Expanding the land your gaining whilst invading it…
Also to neighbors
Oh no we’re just here to help they had a natural disaster strike…
So practical expansion in land mand mass gained and provides political cover for our takeover
Oh and there’s another reason
Because I can
Once it’s known I can do it it’s extra intimidating specially cause it’s inefficient
Well a volcano cannon would be pretty handy for making the perfect evil lair… Just find some unclaimed ocean, fire a volcano or two into the water, and then build your evil lair inside it once it stops erupting long enough to install a stable foundation.
It’s like a genetically modified tree fortress, it grows more expansive, and intimidating, as you carve into it, but with the added assurance, that no enemies are going to want to blast their way in to get you.
A ridiculous number of technologies were invented because someone got drunk and dared somebody who was also drunk.
Volcano cannon is a valid weapon because of precisely this truth.
There was an anime I saw where the bad guys built their base inside a volcano because unlimited geothermal power. I thought “Okay, that makes sense.” Then the base got up and started walking around. I thought “God damnit Japan that is NOT how geothermal energy works!”
Lol!
You don’t want to see the size of the batteries they had.
two D sized coppertops. that’s all.
The damage seems to radiate outwards from where they are standing. The unstable portal blew it all to hell before everyone landed?
And all because Sydney shot Super Buster, and caused the portal to destabilise.
You do realise what this means?
Halo is going to get so many experience points, that she will level up the whole of her skill tree in one go!
I wonder if that massive destruction even counts as XP for Sydney, or if Buster automagically gets the credit as the one running the cosmic can opener.
Is it 2x or 3x if she also rezzes everyone afterwards?
I’m glad someone else had that thought straight away. True (as pointed out by others) there are other ways, but really….. That’d make things all too easy.
That was my first take. Looks like it’s time to mount an intergalactic rescue operation. That’s not an “everybody’s dead, Dave” kind of warscape.
We just went through a wormhole. It’s a bit late to try to force things to be realistic.
Just because the setting has fantastic elements doesn’t mean everything has to be fantastic.
Unrealistic doesn’t mean unrelatable.
You can be as unrealistic as you want. Once people cannot relate to your story you’re out.
The REAL problems with rescuing these people seems obvious.
1. How many of them have similar powers to Sciona.
2. How many of them are going to blame the planet earth team if it was the cause.
3. How many of them are interested in revenge if #2 is real.
4. Even without Sciona’s power, she was convinced she had won when they all went through. What kind of technology could they use against earth if #2 is real.
Etc..Etc..Etc.
It’s one thing to rescue people. It’s another to rescue a large amount of enemies with hella powers and revenge on the mind.
“‘Alo. My name is irrelevant. You killed my father, my mother, my sister, my daughter, my son, my grandson, my aunt, my uncle. Prepare to die.”
Inigo Montoya reference ftw
Who said it’s not still happening.
A Hotspot Generator (TM) was used.
Our devices direct magma plumes from the core of a planet to ANY place on/under the crust.
Resulting in an ‘instant’ volcanic region of any required intensity.
From a small lava hole to a continent wide crater or an above atmosphere volcanic mountaintop,
unstoppable destruction guaranteed.
For the new Hotspot Generator Turbo (TM), visit our website to watch our promotional videos.
Guaranteed annihilation within one planetary rotation! Molten core required!
Prices on request.
One question about the “Hotspot Generator (TM)”… Is it capable of making volcano that are suitable for real estate purposes? If not do you also sell anything capable of making said volcano’s suitable for habitation? I ask because an active volcano is one of the classic villain lair setups and I think you would do well to get into making and selling real estate… Volcanic island lairs are especially hot this time of year.
Could be mass drivers. Orbital bombardment by chucking asteroids at the planet. Makes a bloody mess of things and is cost-effective at the same time.
I had the same thought believe it or not
A lot of us did.
*examines e_voyager carefully*
You don’t look too shifty. I believe you!
*wags tail approvingly*
I actually didn’t see this coming, though it was gonna be like a graveyard, skeletons on the streets and all that, not apocalypse right now.
Well it was my third guess
C: The city has a huge hole in it
A big hole that’s glowing at the bottom.
Presuming the place is built like Earth, that’s either a really large pocket of radioactivity or that hole is full of lava. (Ah, yeah guys, there are some pretty hot pockets of radiation close to the surface. How hot? Ah, try setting off fire alarms for six months because your breath is that ionized hot – yeah, as I’ve said before, I’ve had a really odd life.)
PS: It was funny when I visited the oldest child in California a while back and took her 20 odd years younger sibling along. I happened to remember skepticism from her about the “hot breath” story, so I asked her older sister if she remembered me doing that. Answer was “OH, HELL YES”, with much laughter from me at the look on the youngest face.
Yes, I get checkups, no, don’t have any issues as yet.
Did you at least get any interesting super powers from the exposure?
Well, that clinches it. The Alari homeworld is indeed also known as the Holy Land. But that seems to be a fairly recent nickname that was acquired.
“Not apocalypse right now”, at a cinema near you.
I thought they renamed that “Apocalypse eventually”
“Apocalypse Sometime in the Near Future, Maybe” Tag line, It might happen at one point in the near future!
“Apocalypse Whenever We Get Around To It” – The sequel everyone is waiting for
That’s certainly a revelation…
What about the prequel?
“Popcorn”, at a cinema near you.
Doh, I missed that you had the genesis of a joke.
Apocalypse tomorrow,
Apocalypse yesterday,
But never apocalypse today!
That’s because Apocalypse Today is Darkseid;s favorite morning show. Sorry just had my first cup of coffee the joke leapt out at me.
‘and now on Apocalypse Today’ (aside: ‘why didn’t we just name the show Apocalypse Now?’) {red eye beams blast news anchor} [replacement news anchor: ‘no further news today’]
Its the desctruction recent? Those fires still burning…
First rule of intergalactic conquest. There is ALWAYS something bigger and more powerful than you are. Drawing it’s attention is often fatal for your entire civilization.
I wonder if it’s actually possible that this could be a result of preemptive action against the Alari by the Twighlight Council. There’s Alien representation on the council as well so I could easily imagine that a Twilight Council united by a common enemy and some friendly alien war fleets might be capable of this devastation.
I don’t think so. At the very least I doubt it would have been sanctioned by the Council, anyway, although one of the alien races on the Council could have been responsible.
Well… You have an advance scout of their race (A Duchess no less) who has done who knows what in the past to warrant cutting off most of her head by the council. Now that scout has attacked several key infrastructure points of the council’s veil, a meeting of the council itself, raided a council storehouse and left a trap which attacked another half dozen council members.
Alternatively, any one of her allies from the storehouse raid may have guessed or known her plans (she certainly wasn’t shy mentioning it to Deus despite Vale’s presence) and called ahead to some third-party invasion force with details on the Alari’s home planet. Dues could have done much the same himself presuming he has such contacts and capabilities.
Of course it would have been sanctioned by those arseholes, they are the ones who attempted to kill Sci via beheading!!
Hopefully, whoever/whatever they were fighting is at least significantly weakened by the recent Armageddon. Surely the destruction of the Alari Homeworld wasn’t just a one-sided slaughter, right?
…
…RIGHT!?
He he.
“Actually this is normal, we are not some weakling species, like yours. We are warriors! Welcome to Alari.”
Well said.
It’s supposed to be on fire, it gets mighty chilly in the winter you know
Yeeeeesssss. Large smoking craters…
Oh, wait. This was somebody’s civilization.
Correct, it was somebody else’s civilization.
Unless you need their help to get back or they owe you money not your problem.
you’re a Commonwealth of man player when you play Stellaris, aren’t you? XD
Nah, US Politician: “We said we would help you fuck your neighbours, butt rebuilding is your responsibility! Oh? Your infrastructure is in ruins and no resources or money left? Not our problem! Call us if you find anything worth stea… um, buying! Toodles, suckers!”
Yeeeeesssss. Large smoking craters.
Oh, wait. This was somebody’s civilization.
Trouble posting? Me too.
Sometimes posting from my phone has, interesting results.
No wonder you are having problems. You need more than a phone, if you have insufficient pylons!
By the way, the cluster of stars of the galactic bark is a nice touch. You only see the stars like that where there’s no artificial light to mask them.
*galactic arm. Not bark. At least I don’t think that’s Yggdrasil.
“…no aritficial light…”
*Stares at burning city.*
…I’m sure this is all perfectly natural.
Natural lights work as well.
fire technically casts natural light, no matter how a fire is started
But only at lower levels, once it has grown enough it can cast colour spray, continual light or even meteor swarm!
Elementally, my dear Yorp
*puffs on meercham pipe, in satisfaction*
That structure in the ‘foreground’ is disconcerting. The one that looks like some kind of headgear. Clearly it must be some huge building or crashed vessel though, because we can see a fortress-like building even more in the foreground.
If the Alari homeworld has been attacked by folks with helmets that big, it would explain why things went badly!
Looks more like some sort of a mana pylon or a teleporter or a fallen spaceship
It does resemble the remains of a Draenei warcraft
Yeah, I thought Protoss-inspired tech, the gold and blue crystal motif
(Pareidolia mode on) I-is there a blurry face under that “headgear”? O_O
Wow, yea. And seriously. That looks like a ghostly skull!
Not a human skull, but there are teeth, nasal cavities, eye orbits.
And other weird stuff. Something with really big noses, and multiple nostrils maybe?
Hmm, here’s what I see: Dark eyes / eye cavities, a nose with tiny nostril cavities, an open mouth with most teeth missing & one broken, and then… OH NO! *shudder*
Strangely, you can see the path still there in a broken but relatively straight line across the top of the debris from that foreground building. This suggests it is something that’s come up from underground… or a minor art mistake .
The giant ghost, with the big helmet, is presently rising up out of the ground?
Most undead tend to rise (raise?) from that direction. Giant ghost, zombie, skeleton or other undead.
If you were to presume that only bodies/skeletons from 1900 onwards were viable and close to half of those were un-viable for other reasons (cremation, etc) then if you could raise only the dead humans of the world you could raise an undead for every man, woman and child alive today.
Then put them to work… spoiler.
Poked at a sleeping giant they should have left alone.
Okay Halo, you’ve gamed you entire life, you know what to do.
Step one, defeat the grief turned enraged super villain who will blame you for the dead city because reasons.
Step two, LOOT EVERYTHING!
She ain’t gonna fit that golden thing in her pocket. It is about thirty double-decker busses tall!
Dabble has a pocket dimensional arm, she can be the Nodwick of the party
Not enough common sense
If the attacker is competed there will not be much to find. they would ever followed maxim 1: Pillage, then burn. Or at least maxim 34: If you’re leaving scorch-marks, you need a bigger gun.
Also everything might be a bit damaged.
Oh, you just got here?
You should have seen it last week.
We had a parade.
Huh, was this an outside invader or is this what Dabbler meant when she said unstable wormholes were a bad thing? Of course that would mean they were pulled through by the “vacuum” caused by what created the devastation.
Well those fires do point to the events having happened very recently, as Messenger points out, in a thread above. Assuming normal building burning times (which are going to be different for alien buildings, but it gives a starting point), no more than hours ago. But it could well have been just a minute ago, when the wormhole erupted.
Depending on materials used, large structures can burn for days.
But not a single (ex-)living being in sight! Because of that I thought they had some time to move on. Agreed, normal stuff doesn’t burn longer than a few hours but what if it’s radioactive?
The buildings in the distance are big skyscraper type structures and seem to be fairly intact aside from a few fires. Most of the devastation and craters we see is fairly close to the park they’re in.
At least one of the sky scrapers is broken off, most are burning, not over their full length but mostly at one location near the top. Also, some structures between the sky scrapers and the viewer’s position seem OK. Strange – it seems to me that the portal did not cause this.
The most irritating thing for me is: No living being and no dead bodies visible, AFAICT. Any ideas about this? Did they give up this world (or this city) and moved somewhere else?
Folks keep saying that, but our heroes are in the foreground and they are barely more than a small smudge. Then you have open ground, with a crashed thing on it. On that rubble there are loads of dots and smudges, of various colours. There could be a hundred corpses (or survivors) visible, just in that section.
Much further and you would not be able to differentiate a corpse regardless.
Hmm… Could be, rather well – point taken.
So the body count is an unknown number, we can’t know (yet).
So, um, help me out here.
Am I supposed to be worried that whatever catastrophe put this place into ruins is recent, and perhaps ongoing, enough that the fires are still burning?
Or am I supposed to be worried that there are still fires burning so long afterwards?
Unless they know amaterasu from naruto, I think we are dealing with a recent event
Well, I think the distinction between ‘recent’ or long-term’ would be irrelevant to the former inhabitants, eh? Welcome home, Sciona. You’ve just been selected (by default) to be Queen of the World. Finding any of your subjects is your first official task.
…dammit, does this mean Sciona gets to be one of the good guys?
Somehow I doubt that.
She face-shoved one of her own people into a death-aura forcefield and used him as a straight-up meat-grommet, and he was sensationally lucky to halfway survive that.
Then she death-from-above splatter-gibbed him just to perform X-Treem Mugging.
No, she does not get to be a good guy.
Meat-Grommet!
I didn’t expect that one. I like it. So very visceral and perfectly descriptive.
She face-shoved the one individual most-likely to survive, remember, he didn’t see why they didn’t just blast open the vault doors, with Sci replying that not everyone can survive their organs being liquefied (or something similar)
Oh that is very considerate of her. Someone is tough so she feels that is fine to kill (not damage, kill) that individuals head and everything in it! And we know, from his Wyrmil’s own testimony that was sufficient that he was dying fully, and would have done so, had he not resorted to the extreme of merging himself with another person who Sciona had previously murdered!
Wyrmil, as a person, died. He has been replaced by a hybrid being, much like Frankenstein. The new being is a different individual, who reflects aspects of Wyrmil, at times. Whilst at other times none.
So not only did Sciona wilfully attempt to murder Wyrmil, by purposely pushing him into the death field (note not ‘mild injury field’, not ‘pretty dangerous to super individuals field’, it was a ‘death field’), she actually succeeded in killing him!
Wait, where did Wyrmie state that was true-dying and only smerging with the Coot-goo ‘saved’ them both?
“Wilfully” is speculation and needs to be proven, as it is, it could argued that Sci believed Wymie would survive, going off previous claims about him being able to survive an explosion that would liquefy most others’ internal organs
You do know that mine fields were also called ‘death fields’? So simply calling that force-field thing a ‘death field’ may not be 100% accurate
The fact he called her a bitch also doesn’t mean much, he could have simply been (naturally) pissed that she did that (remember that scene in one of the “MiB” movies when Kay blew that aliens head off only to find out that it can grow back? The alien was pissed as well as it would take him weeks to be able to taste food again properly)
It is very plainly explained here. Wyrmil was incapable of surviving Sciona’s murderous attack naturally. Only through artificial means was he able to salvage any part of himself.
Just read a dictionary.
Which you have about a dozen times. And no it is not any more convincing this time round than the first one. You have not a single shred of evidence to offer to supplement that single argument.
All you have shown is that Sciona knew Wyrmil was tough (not invulnerable), you have not proven that she gave a damn whether he lived or died. Sciona has not shown any concern about anyone’s welfare at any point.
Please cite a source confirming that name. Even assuming you can corroborate that, it is not called a “100% fatality guaranteed death field”.
However I advise you not to go wandering around an active minefield for the day, picking flowers. On the off-chance that you survive, you are likely to end up being sent to a mental hospital!
Which I didn’t mention, so not much point in you debunking it. Rather you should actually memorise the dialogue that Wyrmil gave, in the link I provided above. Hopefully it will prevent you raising this unsubstantiated point over and over again.
I would like to say, “No, absolutely not.” But Loki in the MCU got to be kind of a good guy after awhile and there’s the example of Vegeta in Dragon Ball who is personally responsible for the death of billions who by the end of the series was considered one of the “good guys.”
At best I can see her getting the Vehemence treatment.
That’s if she lives long enough to get the Vehemence treatment. I’m worried that discovering her entire race has likely been destroyed, unless there are some living in offworld colonies that we don’t know about, is going to cause her to do something rash. (“Go Mad from the Revelation”, as TV Tropes calls it.)
I’d just leave.
Patreons are the ones who will have the benefit of being able to make out more of the team and their surroundings. Notably including that wibbly wobbly portal.
Maybe they can make out X better too?
The purplish pink blob looks like the unstable porthole. The smudge of color just above and to the right is the team. They appear to be in some sort of park with statues flanking the entrance. Sciona is next to the statue on the right. Still can’t tell what the big gold structure with the shattered crystal is. I tend to think all the craters used to be a palace or maybe a military complex of some kind. The city in the distance seems remarkably intact with just a few fires burning in the buildings. The rock in the craters is still glowing, so it’s only been a day or so at most since this happened.
I mean, this looks grim and all. But how do we know this isn’t just that planets middle east?
I’m sure several places on Earth has looked similar, without it meaning the end of civilization.
On a planetary scale, the area you can see in one location is pretty insignificant.
One way or another, whatever happened there destroyed something significat to Sciona. She wouldn’t look like she did on the last panel of the previous page if the city meant nothing to her.
Also, usually, when something large scale like this happens on Earth, there are local survivors (all large scale bombings of WW2 did, at least). Here, there is nobody in sight.
But then again the Mars rover is getting a fairly representative view, from its single point. There are no forests just over the horizon. If there has been planetary devastation, the entirety would be much like this (or devastated wilderness/farms).
Statistically, if there are only a pawfull of devastated cities, in a world, it would be extremely unlikely to find one right next to you.
Don’t you know that in the entire universe, Earth is unique in its diversity? All other planets are the desert planet, the water planet, the ice planet, the jungle planet, the city planet etc. OK, I may be using Star Wars as my primary reference here. :-)
In her rush to dial up her home planet, Sciona fat-fingered the selection on the touch-screen. Unfortunately, the one on her address list next to ‘Alari’ was ‘Alderaan’.
P.S. To add to your list, the official description on the Star Wars Wiki is “Alderaan, located in the Core Worlds, was a terrestrial planet covered with mountains.” To George Lucas: I find your lack of imagination disturbing.
Looks like the party started early… and ended abruptly
So they clearly picked the wrong fight…. but the question remains, with who?
I rememebr frfom a collection of short stories one in particular where a scientific exploration ship ran into a ver warlike planet. They were attacked so they put their analytical minds to the task and re-purposed their equipment – its amazing what cold calculating minds can come up with.
If your civilization is viewed as an infection the antibiotic can be quite unpleasant.
And that reminds me of the Man-Kzin wars, specifically the first-contact short story of how it all started. Humanity had reached that “unified peaceful species” ideal, at least as far as who we sent out into space, and the Kzin had a telepath who scanned the ship and verified we had no weapons on board.
They eagerly assaulted the ship, pirate-style. Unfortunately for them, this means they provoked the demented monkeys. Nuclear powered engines double as great short range weapons if you aren’t to worried about any radiation that gets reflected back at your own ship.
And the angry monkeys now knew that FTL drives existed as a fact, and had a clue or two about how they worked. Once the angry monkeys caught up in tech, things started going very poorly for the Kzin.
The Kzin used a gravity drive at the time, the humans a light drive which doubled as a communications device and was used to roast the Kzin. But at the time not considered a weapon by the humans so the Kzin telepath kept thinking they were unarmed, oooops.
The humans later bought FTL tech from the outsiders following a starseed into a system with a human colony.
“A reaction drive’s efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive.”
Maxim 24 – Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a big gun.
Lol.
62. Anything labeled “This end toward enemy” is dangerous at both ends.
Yeah, and a lot of the in system traffic was propelled by solar sail shoved along by really big lazer arrays set up through out the solar system. And the First Kizin fleet found out the a lazer big enough to push interplanetary freighters around the solar system has a enough power to burn a Kizin warship out of the sky if it was set to max power and left to dwell on target for several hours. None of the First Fleet got any closer than the orbit of Jupiter.
There are several. The first Man vs Kzinti war comes to mind. The Kzinti (large predatory cats) encountered a human scout ship full of pacifists. The on-board telepath was confused by the pacifism, so the Kzinti warlord aboard ordered the human ship microwaved (literally). The humans responded by converting their ship’s engines into a laser cannon. The Kzinti didn’t know what hit them.
never underestimate the human will to live, or the human ability to weaponize anything.
In Ringworld, the protagonists include a Kzin. They are being attacked and are searching for a weapon. The Kzinti takes some batteries from their ship specifically designed to never ever explode and manages to turn them into hand grenades. I believe the quote from the human Wu was something like ‘Never underestimate the ability of the Kzinti to make something blow up.’
No. The humans used Fusion torches as drives. They just aimed and refocused them at the Kzin ships. At such a short distance it was like marshmellows facing a blast furnace. Basically Huge ass Charged particle cannons.
Probable with themself
Not a soul in sight.
On Earth, whenever large scale destruction of local (or even regional) character happened, there were always local survivors.
This is bound to not be limited to just a small area around the portal.
Question is, did the portal cause it?
The city in the distance is miles away from the look of it. I doubt anyone with any sense of self preservation is going to go wandering towards the giant glowing craters.
As somber and recent as is this devastation may be, there is still a rogue wormhole. Was this the result of a civil war or action of an outside entity? Will Sciona go aggro or breakdown like Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes? Do you search for survivors?
“I blew it up! Damn me! Damn me all to whatever the Alari version of Hell is!!!!”
This looks to be heading into the comic book trope of <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FireForgedFriends" title="Fire-Forged Friendship" while Sciona and the team fight against something worse than Sciona…
That was supposed to be:
Fire Forged Friends
Actually, the tropes that apply best would be either “Enemy Mine” where they have to work together but would betray each other the first chance they got, or “Teeth Clenched Teamwork” where they have to work together but really, really hate each other and would both rather be far, far away from each other. Or maybe both.
…. also, am I the only one looking at those two glowing craters and being reminded of ground zero for Max’s energy shot-put?
But she hasn’t even had a chance to break anything here… yet.
Hence my prediction in the mouseover.
…. wait, I’m not sure if that even counts as a prediction if it already happened…
Ooh, impressive, I did not even know you could do that!
Check the cheat sheet below the body of the comment form. You want the anchor tag, which starts with an a. The href section is where the link goes, and the title section is where you put the mouseover text. So the above would have been <a href=”link location title=”Occam’s Razor etc>shot-put</a>
(Probably just screwed all of that up.)
Huh, no, I got that almost right. I just left out the closing-quotes after “link location” and “Occam’s Razor etc”. …. which would screw up the whole thing. …. so yeah, screwed it up.
Thanks. It gives enough to allow me to replicate that sometime, when there is a suitable need.
This looks like the . Sciona might have to team up with the group to fight something worse.
We don’t actually know there aren’t any survivors yet; the party is quite a ways from much of the city, and I doubt there is much at the ceremonial-looking place where they are to attract people trying to dig out of the destruction.
I wonder if they brought the city’s pain with the unanchored oortal.
new word: Oortal. A portal made from (and solid as) Oobleck.
As long as it’s not made from oblex.
https://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?5271-Making-A-Wish-Creates-New-D-D-Monster-In-Mordenkainen-s&page=2&styleid=16
You leave the stove on for a couple of millennia and LOOK what happens…
Craters are a hot commodity. They have a hole lot going for them and usually have explosive growth.
with meteoric growth potential!
Here it looks like that led to a boom.
I LOVE the Johhny Cash/Trent Reznor title.
?? Just realized this could have been caused by the “Great Evil” that Dabbler had premonition of (and then dismissed) way back when they had the press conference where Maxima threw a mini “nuke” to vaporize the tank.
Well, at least the sky is lovely.
Yep collecting craters and cities eternally on fire.
Well close to eternally. Seeing as how she was supposed to be dead for awhile. And the councils policy is a gangbang of gorn.
But maybe buildings staying on fire is in Vogue. You can never tell with the super Lawful Evil beings.
Narrator voice: And then Sciona went on a soul searching journey, traveling her world, looking for survivors and hints to what happened. Eventually, as Earth faced off with the same threat, she returned, the dramatic antihero, ready to save the day. Once Earth was (temporarily) no longer in danger, she reluctantly remained, traveling, once again looking for answers, maybe picking up an apprentice along the way. And slowly, she found herself at peace.
… Heh. In my dreams. 50/50 odds rage and/or sadness is about to overtake her. It’s fun to imagine though.
Are the characters standing in the rectangular area in the foreground, or in that circular area with the glowing statue thing at center-right?
Must have been recent as everything is still burning…?
Could also be the aftermath of a wicked party.
Comprised of a necromancer, a devil worshipper and the Four Horsemen of the Acropolis.
hmmm possibilities that come to my mind a active war, a civil war/rebellion, a rather nasty accident (think along the lines of chernobyl), a civilisational collapse (either partial or complete). either way does not seem like the locals will be marching on earth as conquers.
Usually how aggressive empires end up. They pick a fight they shouldn’t have with a bigger dog.
like my last Stellaris run. had Machine and Biological guys both hellbent on cleansing the Galaxy of all other life…. unfortunately for them both, they were bordering the United Nations of Earth, and Humanity for me, while nice and welcoming to most alien species… really doesn’t like people who think genocide is cool, which promptly led to both being flattened by Humanity’s superior military might. just because Humanity is compassionate in that setting doesn’t mean we’re stupid, or forgiving.
Funny how that works. I usually end up conquering more planets in my non-aggression runs than when I try to be aggressive.
*nose bleeding profusely*
OK, you were selling me on that, up until I checked it out, on Steam, and saw the price! Was kind of hoping it was a real old one, that I could put on my wish-list, for someday in the unforeseeable future.
*sighs dejectedly*
And Sciona’s family jump out from behind the wreckage and yell, “Surprise!” This was all an elaborate setup to bring Sciona to Pandemoniumland, the Alari homeworld’s favorite theme park.
City of Demons is a name not guaranteed to bring in the customers.
Damnation for all the family!