Grrl Power #883 – Garbage duty
Are* of Lube Spell: 0 physical damage. 4D6 damage to self-esteem, + additional 2D6 damage to self-esteem if the person who cast it stands around talking about their plans while you fall around like a newborn fawn chucked onto a waterslide, + 1D6 self-esteem damage if you caught the other team flat-footed, plus another 1D6 if they’re from some medium tech backwater.
*An “are” is 100 square meters, or, 10 meters squared. A hect or hecto is 100, therefore, 100 ares is a hectare, or 10,000 meters squared, or 1/100th of a square kilometer. I guess a hectohectare is a square kilometer. So is a meter a hectocentimeter?
A lot of good stories in the comments for the previous page. Many, if not arguably all, rely on a permissive Game Master. Sometimes they can’t argue with a well planned attack, and sometimes they’re the kind that want to shut down the fun and make players slog through the campaign as laid out, but personally I’d rather have an amazing story to tell than a good slog. In the few times I’ve run games, it’s become obvious that I am personally far too permissive, and the players accomplish far more than they should in single adventures.
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Looks like this one is well in hand.
Unless – Halo has an adventure while securing the pod….
Also – who’s going to salvage that beverage can with the world changing, altering the course of humanity portable disposable fusion reactor in it?
In order to be able to replicate the technology, those examining it need to be able to understand how it works and be able to fabricate all of its components. Bringing a 1980’s computer chip back to 1930 would not have helped any of the nations at war, as they lacked the technology to replicate it.
A microwave oven brought to 1936 might have helped the USA in 1941.
Fun Fact: As soon as they can get the emitter price down our microwave ovens will have true variable power instead of the on-off-on we have today.
Your microwave oven only has on-off-on?
Mine can do anything from “is thing this even on?” to “are you sure the glass will protect us, mommy?” But then, it is rather old. Like, 20th century old – back when they built things to last, rather than to be replaced.
I once had to design a microwave as part of a university assignment. Got marked down because I chose a dial interface rather than a keypad. Apparently dials were unrealistic for the post-modern digital age.
In Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘The City and the Stars’ the on-demand food teleporters had rotary dials, a hundred thousand or so years in the future.
Were you going for a retro-future or steampunk motif?
Just curious on the mark down bit. Was there a criterium that said something about an aesthetic? Because when it comes to being practical, a dial for power and a dial for time is almost always massively preferable to flat buttons that require you to almost break your fingers. If you add a third dial for ‘mode’, you have the same versatility as the stupid flat button system, more pleasant user interaction and better reliability.
No. The lecturer was just a dick. He didn’t even write the question. Always marked things based on his own personal criteria, rather than follow the setter’s recommendations.
We got our own back later that semester, when he assigned us to model a vending machine, as literally minutes after the lecture, we were in the cafeteria, and he walked in got frustrated with the dodgy vending machine we were sat near, gave us all a look, then stormed out. Needless to say, our inclusions of a feature specifically to prevent his frustration got mixed reception.
Most microwaves are simply turning the microwave emitter on full blast, then shutting it off, many times per minute. There’s no true variable amounts of power coming out of it, it’s all or nothing. This works fine because when you average it over time, you get whatever power level you want, but it’s not really elegant.
Newer microwaves may have true variable power in them, but it’s not common.
This is my understanding as well, any ‘variable power’ is actually just varying the percentage of the time it’s on. It’s also how LEDs dim – they just cycle faster than persistence of vision allows you to catch.
I built a working enrichment centrifuge out of microwave parts, lead tractor batteries, and a spare motor for a middle school science fair. I say ‘working’ but never got to test it. The FBI took it ‘for my own safety’. They assured me it was well done, even though I only had enough lead for four inches of shielding.
Oddly enough I still have full functioning microwave i bought 35 or so years ago.
Yeah the magnetron oscillator was a very clever method for producing microwaves of the correct frequency consistantly. It is true they use a on/off pulse for cooking, it’s amazing what pulse width modulation PWM can do. Just ask the users of a old XT PC with a single speaker and a hPWM hack to play music.
I demoed it to colleagues once, and this was before audio cards were a thing. I had a ad-lib and monoonly sound blasrer card (i was a musiciphille as well)
If you sent back a late 70’s Amana “Radar Range” microwave oven they could probably reproduce it. It had hand wired, analog components. The big advantage would be in having a relatively small, efficient emitter. One of the big hurdles is creating high frequency oscillator circuits. UHF frequencies were just becoming practical in the 1930’s. An engineer might not be able to recreate it exactly but it wouldn’t be so big a jump as to be unfathomable.
Just knowing that X is possible is big. Being given some basic tips on how to do it is bigger.
For your computer chip example, our 1930’s scientists couldn’t have gotten the chip working but they would have learned that they should be studying rare earths, micro electricity, and a bunch of stuff I won’t go into here. Rather than a leap their research would get a lot faster.
Mr 1936 science person, do you suppose the cat’s whisker effect could somehow be made to act like a vacuum tube? Like a variable-resistor or something?
Search for Patent US1745175A granted in 1926
John Campbell notwithstanding, efforts to duplicate the patent claim have not been successful. Bell Labs put a lot of effort into it.
On the other hand, just before the end of the war, MIT Research Lab for Electronics (not sure of period name) was doing measurements of the resistance of ultrapure iirc silicon. They were, of course, using four point probes. Suddenly they got oscillation, i.e. they had gain. If the war had continued a bit, transistors would have been invented. Something with discrete transistors would be a lot simpler to analyze. ‘we do not know how it works, but the gain must be appearing in that element of the circuit’.
exactly, just like bringing a steam engine back to the Enlightemnent era doesn’t meant they’ll go through an industrial revolution on the spot, but if you manage to dodge the Church’s accusations of ‘heresy’, they’d at least know that making a machine capable of an incredible power output (compared to windmills and water mills, nevermind ox mills) using just water and combustable fuel is possible, and can work towards it faster.
They actually had some very simple steam engines as far back as ancient Egypt. Terry pratchett wrote some popular science books that pointed out that’s it’s as much a social and economic and government thing that created the industrial revolution – the abilty to own private property without it getting seized, having iron cheap enough and good enough to make the engine itself profitable and safe, having a class of professional artisans with the vision and capital and political clout to exploit the applications instead of just sitting on the tech and turning it into a private monopoly.
That is how I explained it, but nobody, listened! They had RADAR, in 1936. Which was microwaves!
But just because they have microwaves doesn’t mean they could understand WTF most of the stuff in a modern microwave oven is.
Much like the steam engine provided too soon, this could trigger acceleration towards microwave ovens and stuff, but most of the details would be lost to them, because all the microchip controls would be completely impenetrable for years to come.
Well not all inventions need to be complicated to be important, how about the cotton mill? Lkts of inventions not only change the way we work , but the way we think about work. The water wheel multiplued a persons ability to make edibe food. The steam engine allowed you to bring the workhorse to the site and not the other way around.
Just the IDEA of interchangable parts and Standardized measurements was more important.
Mose inventions are small improvements to a previous generation. Some are so evolutionary they are disruptive class technology. Example: the internet.
With all due respect, RADAR isn’t microwaves in the 1930’s. They’re both applications of radio wave technology, but the tech itself doesn’t converge for decades. Not totally useless as there are 8 different countries working on RADAR (which isn’t even called that until 1939/40) in the late 30’s, but NOT close to the same thing.
Watson-Watt was working with 49 meter waves in 1935. A good scientist in 1936 would be able to tell that your microwave is emitting radio waves but the emitter just isn’t going to be comprehensible. The resonant-cavity magnetron isn’t developed till 1940 (it was all long waves to this point). Since there IS a magnetron in your microwave, once they work out what it is, this may save some time (though I personally suspect the design of the wave guide near it will prove more useful in the long run).
Now, I’m no expert (everything here the internet used to confirm memories from history classes). But even though they know about microwaves and can generate them since 1940 (the magnetron), the entire war was still fought with decimeter and centimeter wave RADAR. Presumably there’s a reason for this…?
On the other hand… Take the microwave to Great Britain after February 1940. Point out the magnetron (theirs are huge by comparison – highly machined iron cylinders several inches long). Good lock neither getting shot for being a spy OR locked up somewhere to find out what else you know that would be good for the British Empire.
a note on time scale though, if the date of official reveal is only a handful of years after the date being mentioned chances are they will recognize the tech; only as a completed version of what they are currently working on and see just a few years sooner where the missing gaps are. This is especially true if you are taking back a more advanced version of something already existing; some components will be mysterious but a good chunk of it will be recognizable and with study deduce what was changed and how. Like taking a modern cellphone back to 2010. Ten years has made a lot of advancements, but the majority of it was known just not as capable. It would mostly be filling in the blanks. Now taking a Nintendo Switch game cartridge back to 1989 might blow some minds, especially if shown the games; and while they’d be at a loss as to how; taking it apart and comparing it to what they have they might see what areas to focus on to get their that much sooner; it would be right away (a lot of additional technology including manufacturing and material refinements are needed).
The frequency of the radar (actually the length of one sinosodal wave) determines how small of an object can be resolved by that radar. I believe its 1/10th of the wavelength. The additional issues are the higher you go in frequency the the more power out you need to send a signal the same distance. And the higher in frequency the more absorption is an issue. Example USA’s weather radar is 10cm wavelength. Canada uses 5cm which is a higher frequency, so it uses more power, but can resolve smaller particles.
Radar in 1936 was 200mhz uhf.
Even if they can’t replicate all of the components completely, it can offer hints to new avenues of research. We probably have the tech to see the structure of components considering they wouldn’t put their most miniaturized tech in a cheap, low tolerance item. Even if we lack the technology to make things that small, we might be able to reproduce it a 10× or 100× the scale, which would still be a huge step up for us.
That said, considering the fact that the reactor is disposable and osmium has a really hot melting point, it might destroy itself after one use. Also, since the alien said that heatwave might melt the alien’s hand if she went much hotter (though it might be hyperbole), she may have heated the can more than the reactor would have.
The can material might be worth a look since it would need to be able to take the heat required to melt osmium and not only stay solid, but remain rigid rather than weakening.
We do NOT have the tech capable to analyze the structure of the CPUs we are CURRENTLY using. The CPU is too big for electron microscope (it would take too long to scan) and too small for anything optical.
Wonder what a CPU would look like under a hospital MRI unit. They have the ability to see soft tissues.
Would the MRI EMP the chip? We have lots of chips to play with now. Maybe we just have to be quick about it? Well then how about about using sonics? Not like a CPU has to breathe.
The only reason we don’t know is that MRIs are expensive. Maybe we just need to toss said CPU into a cyclotron… dissect it a few atoms at a time. AKA a TRON disassembly gun.
I doubt a Magnetic Resonance Imager would give you anything useful from any computer equipment, at least without extensive modification: they’re tuned for mapping hydrogen atoms, which are in short supply in the materials used for electronics. You might be able to map the plastic used for surface-mount chips and epoxy waterproofing, but not the things they’re protecting.
It should be at least theoretically possible to retune the system to map several different elements; it’s mainly a case of changing the frequency at which it looks for them ‘ringing’ in response to being ‘hit’ with a changing magnetic field. That is regularly done in NucleoMagnetic Resonance Spectroscopy for research chemistry, but those machines are designed to look for the slight changes in ‘note’ with different chemical structure and are usually deliberately integrate over the whole (small, liquid) sample rather than map. A medical MRI scanner may simply be too optimised towards getting spatial resolution in the hydrogen, and be impractical to change off that nucleus type.
There’s also an underlying issue of physics. Different isotopes have differing strengths of response to an NMR/MRI probe, and for many that response strength is zero. Only about 4.7% of the silicon atoms in your chip will respond, for instance – the minority of silicon-29 among the silicon-28. Copper and gold are almost 100% responsive, but they’re very unusual targets. I’m not sure offhand what other elements are used as dopants in the silicon, whether they’re generally responsive or not.
Of course, there’s also the fact that an NMR/MRI involves a hefty constant magnetic field, even in modern machines that are specifically designed to focus it inwards and compensate it outside the machine. There’s a very good reason that most metallic fittings are not allowed within a certain range of the machine, and why people with heart pacemakers or certain prosthetics need someone else to operate them. I don’t know whether a chip would have any problems with getting stuck to the casing in the same way a pen could, but it’ll need to be considered.
While they may not have been able to duplicate it, they could certainly have reproduced a larger version, as long as anyone had some understanding of what it was and what it was supposed to do. We could have bypassed vacuum tubes completely and gone straight into solid state.
And once they applied a bit of optics with a photographic nudge, straight into integrated circuits. Like you said it might be big at first, but that would change fast. We all have seen them making wafers for solar power panels (if not go seek youtube) the tech to make them is bloody primitive. Eg mining equipent level. But they have massive scale.
A point I think gets buried here and in a lot of scifi is what would a free interstellar market in tech do to research and development? Because if you can just buy a guaranteed tech off the shelf, why risk blue-sky spending on science? Who would finance the truly original research, if you can just spend money or trade favours or earn tech points to unlock technological progress? After a few billions years, the pressure would be to just pay-to-win and the idea of actually doing your own research would seem as crazy as having someone announce that the were tired of coasting off other people’s ideas and were going to design and build their own smartphone. From scratch. Alone.
If you exist in a massive, multitech, multicultural interstellar ecosystem and economy, then why not just buy the stuff? Because somebody will be looking to make back some of what they paid and will trade to you at a slight loss.
This is basicly what Deus has already done. He’s paid to win.
Bug it implies that nobody, absolutely no-body, has a serious scientific community doing anything beyond trying to cheaply reverse engineer other peoples captured tech, because that’s all the science anyone is going to be willing to pay for.
The other thing is cross-tech interaction issues. You buy an American hair dryer, you can’t plug it in in France. We have converters, because there are only a dozen such techs.
However, tech specs are essentially arbitrary. there are an infinite number of them possible, and a wide variety of ways to break up a single “mechanism” into solo components wihtin each system.
Buying into one particular world’s tech style has advantages and disadvantages. Picking a small set of tech styles to import and standardize on… likely to be the way to go.
I would argue that Deus is not paying to win — he’s paying to jump-start. While yes, this functionally means he’s goin gto win, he isn’t buying thing in order to use it directly. He has scientists (not the two klutzes) that’ll work long and hard on reverse-engineering the gizmos he’s acquired — and figuring out how to lower production costs — and then he’ll be mass-producing the aforementioned gizmos and selling them to Earth People Like You Would Not Believe.
However, while the overall community, once they ‘get out there’, may simply be buying to advance, the top-level technological societies are always going to be pushing further on — if only to eventually make what some other society did, but whose tech steps are lost, such as the Halo Orbs.
Meh, she was only asked to stow it someplace fairly inaccessible while they finished up the fight so that no humans managed to run off with the tech. In NY city that should be as easy as flying it to the top of any building, parking it on a cell tower, or whatever.
My criticism would be that removing Halo’s firepower and other capabilities from the fight while she does that would appear to be absolutely unnecessary. Consider how many people are going to creep into the middle of a super fight and try to haul off a container large enough to hold a human. Imagine trying to run off with a casket. As someone who has been a pall bearer, I can tell you that those things are damned heavy, and even if the stasis pod is lighter it will still be awkward to pick up and maneuver. The chances of someone creeping off with it without someone noticing and being able to try to prevent that appear to be vanishingly small.
And, the stasis pod having been depowered, it could even serve as a distraction to the bad guys, who might pick it up and try to use it, wasting their time and giving more time to the good guys. Some times in a role playing game it’s all about the action economy. Sending Halo off with the stasis pod is a terrible use of her actions.
You are missing the obvious (again)
It’s not to stop some lookey-lou from pilfering it, it’s to ensure Those Who Think They Are In Charge don’t find out about it, like what happened with the Fel ship
When you say Those Who Think They Are In Charge, do you mean the Earthican governments or the galactic governments who saw the Fel ship?
*sigh* I’d ask you to explain your idiot theory, on the off chance that while articulating whatever passed for a thought in your tiny brain you might come to understand that you, as usual, make zero sense. But you really do appear to be incapable of learning that lesson.
But I’ll try: Exactly what part of “keeping (whatever the fuck you mean by “Those who Think” ’cause it sure isn’t you) from finding out about the stasis pod” did you manage to convince yourself that all the shouting about getting Maxima into the stasis pod, and all the shouting about who could read what on the side of the stasis pod, was in any way a secret from anyone within earshot? And if they aren’t within earshot, then what exactly needs to be kept SupEr SeKrEt from who now?
No, you’ve managed once again to read your own brand of idiocy into what’s happening instead of taking what the characters in the comic you’re reading at face value: Dabbler said to Sydney, paraphrased: “Even unpowered, this thing is full of illicit tech. So go put it somewhere safe.”
And I already explained above how moving the thing in the middle of combat isn’t a good use of Sydney’s talents, since sneaking away with the stasis pod isn’t something that seems likely, again in the middle of combat.
Now run along, child. The adults are talking here and you need to remain silent.
So not Sontarans but Chin people?
They have different outfits (the Sontaran on the previous page had blue shoulder pads for example). There are multiple individuals representing a variety of different races. Some of which look closer in appearance to each other than to humans (and they may well be related).
I instantly thought about those two “I dub thee Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum”.
Reminds me of the “Shave for a Cure” campaign they ran a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FMpYhSl4w4
The Tardis was in the kitchen sink Fracture station shot, wasn’t it?
Wait… Is that a red dwarf ref with the two guys in scarves???
That’s a possibility.
I wonder if there’s a nose like appendage below the scarf.
The Vindaloovians decide to get their despising of all humans in early.
I am so happy to see someone else recognize the Vindaloovians. XD
SCUM SCUM SCUM SCUM SCUM!
I do recall being too permissive as DM of AD&D games back in the 1980s….Amazing the uses players can think of for chopped-up troll bits that won’t stop trying to regenerate…..
Especially if they have access to a wide range of condements.
If you eat the trolls, they will regenerate, in your stomach, killing you!
being digested involves acid damage, which a troll can’t regenerate.
Back story on never-ending trail rations was they were just troll jerky, that also regenerated the preserving spices.
Ah, tinned kobold.
Been there, done that. We stopped an invasion that way. We also permanently closed a major trade route by blocking a mountain pass. And yes, we demanded full payment for that job. They hired us to stop the invasion, they didn’t specify how.
The lube spell reminds me of the manga In Another World With My Smartphone. He constantly casts a Slip spell that defeats a mythical beast. Funny stuff.
The completely frictionless surface where he left said beast slipping non-stop for several hours until it gave up?
Yeah. That was a pretty messed up spell, lol. Wish the series was more interesting, though. I got bored a couple arcs in.
Yeah, that show had such a good premise, but a poor execution.
He could have started an Industrial Revolution. One of the harem was a Noblewoman, there is the start-up capital…..
But no, it became just another generic harem/comedy with an OP protagonist.
“I want to get a good angle to record the fallout”
Well we know what the next movie on movie night will be. Last time we saw a movie night, it was Sydney tongue slamming a ‘bank robber’, I think.
Dabbler does have her priorities. The boobs cannot capture Maxima now. It’s only a matter of time now.
Only a matter of time before Dabblers boobies capture her captured boobs. Just like the first fight, really.
Getting those lubed-up boobs to stay in a Sportbra might be tough.
The Operation, I mean.
Why fly it off somewhere safe? Why not just put a shield around herself and the container and wait out the fight? They could have other players with backup power supplies encase the first power supply was faulty.
Given what happened with the ship, it might be awkward dealing with the people who go all gaga over time related technology. Granted that the ship was magic radioactive, but just 1 entry level ship will be enough of a destabilizer.
It would be annoying if the powers that be try to start ransoming the prisoners in exchange for tech or even encouraging these sorts of attacks in order to salvage the tech.
I am getting some weird deja vue, I know I have seen somethings where a people acted defenseless, but spread rumors about having something valuable and high tech that they supposedly regarded as magic and kept it out in the open; this attracted looters and bandits; which they then jumped and took their gear.
It might qualify as something Dabbler has to keep from Earth scientists lest she break some interstellar law. So keeping it hidden means she can dispose of it off the books. While kept there she has to turn it over.
That does make more sense as to why Dabbler would want it removed from the area. The only other issue is that if Maxima and Dabbler face off over what should happen to the technology, the person that holds the cards would be Sydney (if we assume no-one else finds it). Who would she back in this debate; Dabbler or Maxima?
This is different to the Cora vs faceless government agent, as we don’t know who the faceless government agent was and it can be assumed the same of Sydney. Dabbler and Maxima are both different as Sydney is colleagues of both of them, seems to be friend with Dabbler and seems to respect Maxima.
She may be more worried that the bandits have a spare power supply for the thing. Best to get it out of range of any last second shenanigans.
This.
Well I mean tehnically yes a hectocentimeter is a meter because hecto means x100 and centi means /100 which nullify eachother and meter is the base unit.
It’s the same as a decadecimeter or a kilomilimeter
Attoparsec = 3,086 cm
Rule 63-ish Sydney in panel five, I like him, he’s a clean-cut kinda guy. XD
She still looks like a girl there to me. In fact she has quite an hour glass figure, and her hips are suitably feminine. Whilst her face does not look butch or even boy-like to me.
Femboi Sydney
HERETIC! Load all orbital bombardment cannons. Target Guesticus. Bury him in participation trophies. fire, fire, fire!
Note to whichever government agency in charge of super prisons. Some aliens do even worse than humans with a diet of SPAM knockoff and mac ‘n’ “cheese”.
Max must have seriously amped up her speed since she’s already turned completely around and is currently stomping toward her assailant…
The interesting part will be what happens when the stasis suddenly turns off. That is a very short distance for her to stop.
I think this will depend entirely on how DaveB chooses to handle both the stasis drop and Max’s reflexes, but from a logical perspective from what we know about Max and how this stasis field works, it shouldn’t be an issue – as long as the distance doesn’t change significantly.
Presumably Max is experiencing time linearly; from her POV, her speed, movements, and reaction times will therefore be completely normal and continuous, allowing her to stop exactly as she normally would in the same distance. This would be true whether the stasis collapse is instant, or ‘gradual’ (say 1/10th to 1 full second), her perception and motion are completely in sync.
But – everyone else is currently moving at super-speed relative to her, the exact opposite of what her reflexes are conditioned to dealing with. That is about to not only completely reverse, but compound. Say (for easy math) that her top speed is 100x normal, and the stasis field slows people to 1/1000th normal speed. Now that she’s alert and fully accelerated to top speed, those effects counteract each other, leaving her moving at 1/10th normal human speed; or from her POV, everyone else is going 10x normal.
Once the field fails though (lets say instantaneously), she will suddenly be going 100x again as usual – while trying to intercept someone who changed (from her perspective) from moving at 10x to 1/100th normal speed, a 1000x velocity change. Her target would instantly go from moving super speed to effectively frozen in place – while she was moving to intercept them. This could be a huge problem.
She can catch a bullet once alert and re-spec’d for speed (as she is now) – but what if that bullet suddenly froze in midair as she reached for it? Now it makes a great difference which direction it was moving; we catch things in motion by tracking their trajectory, and moving not to where they are, but to where they will be. If the bullet was moving toward her and stopped, then she closes her fingers on empty air. No problem – it’s frozen at some distance beyond her reach, she can now step forward and pluck her stationary target out of the air at her leisure. But if the bullet were moving away from her, Max would be reaching for a spot beyond its current location. A sudden stop would mean Max is now swinging her hand at bullet speed into a stationary bullet (comparable to the immovable rod in many stories from the last strip). Once again reversing the frame of reference, Max will now shoot herself in the hand.
Taking that analogy going back to the actual situation, if Torchy stands her ground or even runs at (or perpendicular to) Max, everything will be completely fine; Max will have time to readjust and the smack-down will then proceed as expected. But if she starts running away at the last moment, Max could very well be moving to intercept and, having insufficient time to react, end up overrunning Torchy’s position at top speed. The Boys pilot episode shows (warning: very graphicly*) what that might look like.
Again, it’s up to DaveB who does what, in what manner and tempo the shield fails, and whether Max’s reflexes are sufficiently quick. I really don’t want to him to have Max splatter anyone, particularly in such a public setting, but I do kinda want to see some props get broken to show this was a close call that could have gone very very poorly.
* I loved the premise and technical execution of the show, but couldn’t stomach the explicit material. May try it on VidAngel at some point.
If the stasis gun is projecting a visible beam, then the discussion is moot. Max would be able to see the beam cut off and the tail end of it slowly approaching her position. All she would need to do is stay accelerated but standing still, she would just wait for the end of the beam to wash over her before moving again.
Presumably the stasis beam is electromagnetic / gravitational in nature, and therefore moves at the speed of light. Relativity dictates that Max won’t be able to see it moving.
Sounds like Dabbler is advocating the use of a sports bra. ;-)
I think Sydney should introduce Dabbler to the Carry On series of films. She obviously would appreciate intensive double entendre training.
I agree. My parents were Brits so I got introduced to that series early.
was one of them cyclops chin guys called BindyBaji? :0
I hear that he despises humans.
Scum, scum scum.
Permissive gms are fun. I remember this one session, after we burned down a supply depot for a cult, where the big bad cult leader was supposed to only be introduced as we encountered him sitting through the wrekage. One crit sneak attack from our rogue and superb arrow from the fighter later, and the fireball flinging cult leader was down and out to a lvl 2 party. next session we snuck undetected into the cult headquarters and left the severed head of the cult leader in his bed, after robbing his private rooms. Bag of holding with small characters gave us 5 minutes of air, and wild shaping druid could carry that into the base as a mouse.
You had a bag of holding when you were only lvl 2? That’s a bit past the level of just a permissive DM.
Given how quickly the team is mopping up these acquisition specialists, I’m beginning to wonder if this whole fight is just to keep Max and team occupied while the real snatch and grab takes place elsewhere. I can imagine criminal types wanting to grab someone like Krona.
They would have to know about Krona. She’s not ARCSWAT, she’s in the supernatural council that is still unknown to the majority of Earth, let alone from those beyond.
I’ve already mentioned a few times how ill-prepared the Aliens have been facing the other supers, with most responses being that they are just basing the capture of whatever the space cops reported/has video for the Fel ship destruction. I still do not like this explanation, as well as the fact that they could easily gain further information on Maxima that would have given away her super speed. People mentioned that tourists probably don’t watch the news, but the fact that Aliens were coming here as tourists BEFORE this ship arrived in disguise would have allowed them to gather recon with little trouble for Maxima.
I do think this fight might make Halo a bigger target. Aliens do know about her, but seeing the orbs do something other than float around her head while eating Gratz might make them look closer next time she decides to hop over there for some food.
The Council has Aliens on it’s Board of Leadership
The problem with your idea is while *those* aliens were busy getting their recon on Maxima, *these* aliens were busy getting wiped by the team here because they felt like they could get ahead of the game by doing a quick snatch while other teams were still just doing recon.
People make mistakes like that in our world with only about 7 billion people. Recon is easy, and yet they don’t, because it takes time and they feel like the prize is just sitting there waiting for someone to take it. Now imagine a universe with billions of populated planets, many of them more densely populated than ours.
Due to the limits on data input, the population of would be thieves might not go up that dramatically. But the impression of the population of thieves probably would, leading the first group to make an attempt to have spent as little time as this group did. All it takes is one group having enough overconfidence to think that they didn’t need the recon time.
Full marks.
“Recon is boring, our plan is foolproof, let’s go!”
There is a world of difference between a consummate professional and the rest of the amateurs. The big one is “assuming you have enough information and not actually confirming that you do”.
There are idiots in every crowd – these guys are this crowd’s idiots.
“No plan is idiot-proof when the idiots are the ones executing the plan.” – Deantay
To be fair, supers of this power seem very recent. The twilight council was awed by Maxima and they’ve been on Earth for quite a long time. The weird thing is that Dabbler has traveled around the galaxy and she’s the 2nd strongest person on the team, albeit a significant portion of that comes from versatility rather than being unparalleled in any one area.
My new head canon: these aliens -were- tourists. Then they saw an interesting opportunity for a snatch and grab.
Not tourists as such, maybe they came to Dirt to ‘lay low’ from the Galactic Fuzz (no, not Frix), saw Maxi right there, quick phonecall home and they have a ‘job’
Bit of a stretch that they would have all of their equipment as well as being able to determine the need for a plan, negotiating a ‘price’ for the ‘job’ and formulate that plan in what seemed like no more than fifteen minutes. But not IMPOSSIBLE…
I still think it is a setup of some kind.. Either a recruitment attempt for Maxima or Sydney or a test to see exactly how powerful these primitives are and what their motivations are.
Agreed! They saw her from the Space Police vid of her one shooting a Fel Ship which Corona talked about how hard af that was, and the firepower needed.
They saw how quickly Maxima’s team took out the Fel.
Any acquisition team would do there research. And even with a lot classified, a lot isn’t. At least the important things like “has super speed, super durability, super strength, can fly and shoot Fel Ship killing beams.
So yeah. They should not be this unprepared, nor going after the team using a “generalist strategy”.
So yeah, this being a diversion makes sense. Since I can’t see any “Best of the Best” Group not knowing Dabbler and her friend on sight.
Worse if they do know, but ignore the infamous super genuis demon, and intergalactic hero – space pirate. With no moves to counter them.
It’s really irking me, and these mooks really have no excuse unless they are there to be a distraction. Since any gathering team would extensively study the target to ensure a successful capture. Including getting all data on the Supers who wiped the floor of the Fel, and what + who the overall threat level was. Like Dabbler and friend (intergalactic knowns).
But they had no clue about her reserve pool and ability to dump power from her other abilities into just one.
they are saying they are the best.
that alone tips off they are not.
also it sounds like they normally poach rare animal specimens for collectors.
Going by what little they’d know at this point, assuming the individual they saw take down a Fel carrier; and not knowing about supers their only reasonable thoughts could be.
*Super Advanced Battle Android (we might be able to capture this)
*Demon Lord (probably should leave this alone)
*Goddess (probably should leave this alone)
*Eldritch (definitely leave this alone)
*Ascended being (probably should leave this alone)
Anything that can produce that kind of firepower should most likely be left alone by anyone who normally captures life forms that are rare or display unusual abilities someone might be interested in learning about. Imagine someone going after Cthulhu, the Silver Surfer, Morrigan Aensland, or Overlord Laharl like they are tracking down a fire breathing space shark.
Also looking at their gear, looks like the stasis gun and the stasis pod are the most advanced things they are packing; I doubt if Maxima looked like her power *supers tend to not look like something that should have their kind of power so it makes sense a lot of folks would underestimate them* she’d probably be a thousand feet tall with long energy hair, probably some weird orbitals, six arms and a floating halo-crown made of stars. A definite look of *yeah maybe the bolas and selling this to a criminal syndicate plan is really stupid* clue in.
personally I think It may not be so much a distraction as these mooks ARE the attempt to acquire Intel.
who’s ever behind them knew they didn’t have enough information, so they sent these greedy fools
in with a Fair amount of power but only a basic Briefing, and some very stealth drones watching.
if they succeed they get Their test sample and their Intel, and if more likely they fail they still get their Intel
for later plotting, and they don’t have to pay them.
I hope it’s jamesH’s opinion. That actually plays smarter.
—
@Rhuen: But Super’s have been all over the news, the Alien ambassador is part of the Twilight Council who’d have been keeping alien society in the know about Supers and earthly affairs, and any of hundreds to thousands of tourists would have been around the 6 months that Supers first made their appearance on the global stage, and showed off their stuff.
So, pretty much, only the dumbest of the dumbest mooks would be that thoroughly Unprepared for Supes.
—
@ DR.REVENGE: Semi-True. They might not have known about Maxima’s dump ability. But they did know she had the power to solo take out a Fel Ship. That’s not even covering all the other data on the news that any alien species could have seen pre-that moment, nor the news of Supers showing themselves and their powers over 6 months that 1 out of hundreds to thousands of space tourists could have seen on the news and put up on Space-Twitter, or SpaceBook.
Hell, the Invincible Supe, was going around showing off his invincibility to alien tourists for LOLz. But Mook with the sword was all “Imma cut you!” … #AllTheFacePalms. Like we know that there’s going to be a lot of data missing, but Dabbler and Cora (their allies) are known intergalactically, and the Base Powers and skills that are still beyond your usual threats. Were shown on Alien feed taking out a Fel Army with only like 6 members with their powers alone?
That’s got to warrant a little more concern than “Welp! Time to use ordinary means to face peeps who are known to wipe the floor with the Intergalactic Communities most dangerous threat. What’s the worst that can happen?”
(Personally why I’m hoping jamesH is right in what’s going on.)
Super have only been public knowledge for less than three months (not six), and even the Twilight Council, which has been around for thousands of years, is still collecting data on them (number one on their list is “Where do they and their powers come from?”
Remember at the start? Prior to the Restaurant Rumble? It was believed there was only a (relative) handful in the entire USA, and more than they believed existed showed up to curb-stomp the new Super Cops (didn’t succeed, obviously, but it was enough to completely change what little they knew)
Can’t forget Dues who is hinting that he can create and or stimulate super beings occurances. Maybe by studying varioys artifacts that can give phenomenal power to ordinary humans. Also consider sone of the company he has kept, Vale for instance.
For example most of those weapons he had displayed in his office gave mostly normal humans heroic abilities. We still don’t know what artifacts he snitched from the vault. IIRC one I saw looked like the cube from Hellrauser, a considersble nasty puzzle.
@Guesticus: Yo fam! Still doesn’t stop the fact that you have thousands of aliens world wide with access to Space-Twitter, Space Facebook, and Space Youtube. That’d have been uploading and commenting on Supes. Yeah, Twilight’s still talking about them and asking questions.
But that still doesn’t stop there very public, and very bad ass displays.
Nor does it stop the fact that every alien that wants to capture them for taking out a Fel ship. Would know 2 Basics.
1) They took out a Fel Army, and have Dabbler and Corra on their side in a support capacity.
and
2) Just how hard and powerful a Fel Army and Fel ship is.
That’s like the basics of the basics. And no person worth their salt would go to try capturing them with basic shit. All that extra junk you tried commenting on is irrelevant.
– They’d have seen the footage.
– They would know their “basic powers” that are up on Space Multi-Media.
– They would know Dabbler and Corra are on their team.
and
– Them seeing the Supes taking out the Fel, would be able to extrapolate how powerful they are against the Army, and how much fire power Maxima has.
Earth news, and aliens are every single one of countless cultures across countless worlds. Not everyone cares about the latest pre FTL planet or that information about it would circulate everywhere. Private specialist tourism isn’t a great news source. The Space cops leaking info is a bit higher on the scanner list. Plus given their we’re the best ego spells out they wouldn’t bother to get real Intel and just assume after all their wins they can handle anything. So hubris.
Dude.
– Maxima one shotted a Ship that requires a high end warship with big guns to take out normally.
– A small handful of allies took out an entire Fel Army with Borg Shields. Like mopped the floor with them.
– They are not only famous, but have lots of vids about them (Supes).
That and, no capture team worth their salt. That is “The best” goes in without knowing their prey. Which is why I’ve been lately leaning on the hired Mooks side of thing. Since any group that specializes in capture, would look up on their prey, environment, and allies.
These rubes are a distraction, because no team of actual hunters can be this incompetent.
Recall though that no one anywhere in the galaxy has dealt with superpowers before though – even Earth’s supernaturals were completely unable to deal with Max and the team. An assault team could (and apparently did) plan for her strength and firepower, and are putting up decent resistance for the rest of the supers so far (aside from the Grease trap).
But if super speed had never been seen anywhere in the galaxy before in centuries (millenia?) of recorded history, how would they know to plan for it?
I think these guys are just the hired expendables that get sent to test the waters. They used to call the first men to go through a breach in a fortified wall a forlorn hope. Definitely fits this bunch.
Good thing Harem is good for that super popcorn run.
Wonder if she brought enough to sell to crowd.
Look at Sydney being all responsible and mature, I’m proud of her
Old School D&D, our GM had a house rule that when using a magical weapon rolling a crit miss meant the weapon broke, resulting in an explosion. Proportional to how powerful the weapon was. He wanted to discourage low level characters wielding high level weapons, I guess, because if you had few hit points you likely died if your +10 hammer of smiting exploded on you.
So…. of course, once the party was able to enchant items, we started enchanting glass daggers and such. Carry them in padded containers, then break out the hand grenade daggers as needed.
I remember having a GM with that line of thinking.
“So, um, Mike, you’re basically saying that on average, a magical weapon lasts 20 attacks. Why would anybody go to the trouble of making magic weapons if they’re that unstable?”
Stating it like that didn’t convince him to change his house rule immediately, but it did convince the rest of the players that his game was dumb, (especially since somebody else noted that the rule clearly didn’t apply to our enemies, since they never had a magic weapon explode on them, but they did have enough misses that one of them had to be a critical) and *that* convinced him to change his rule.
Could you have crafted an especially powerful, but fragile magic item, to use like a grenade? Like a ring that grants you a stat bonus, but you can remove it, squeeze to crack, and toss?
Not at that point in the game. I mean, this conversation happened at the time we had our first critical fail with a magic weapon. I think some of us were level 2, one of us was level 3, but one of us was still level 1. Only a couple XP away from that, but still.
In any event, it’s a completely ludicrous rule which is entirely counter to the spirit of the game. Magical weapons are supposed to be impressive things with histories, and with this rule, most would not last long enough to be taken out of the dungeon. If we hadn’t Identified it, we’d have just guessed it was boobie-trapped, but we knew better.
I mean, to be fair, magic wands are known to be a bit more fragile. But it’s excessively fragile even for them. If we were talking percentile dice, that could be reasonable for a magic wand. You roll an 01 on a percentile die, the wand goes boom, sure, I can accept that. But something that’s supposed to be a durable magical good having that kind of fragility is insane.
I’m looking at the crowd of people watching the fight in the last panel… Damn but they are close, if it was me I’d put some distance between me and aliens firing off rayguns.
You forget where they are, surprised they are not closer trying to get selfies from Torchy or Les (yes, while he is on fire)
I’ve seen people in irl videos standing just across the street to watch a burning car. So yeah, people standing this close to watch supers fight ray guns is believable.
My ex took a picture of a burning car that was right outside our bedroom window, from right by the burning window, because after we got the cats safely into the bathroom, she asked for a picture, and I took it from the safety of the living room window (about the distance of being across the street), and didn’t risk looking at the phone’s actual picture when taking that shot, because doing that would have required I put my head in the path of glass shrapnel if it went boom.
My ex is and was a lawyer, so she’s not really among the bold and brave. (Note: we didn’t separate over this, it was something completely different.)
This was a street-level in city apartment, so the distance from the burning car to the bedroom window was the width of the sidewalk.
In her defense, she said she didn’t realize that cars could actually explode like they do in movies, but that’s probably in large part the sort of thing going on here. “We’re watching people fight, and there may be special effects, but if it’s fine for them, surely it’s fine for us… five feet away.”
Which character is no selling the explosive ordinance in the bottom right corner of the final panel?
Who do you think?
Looks to be Achilles, I think.
Now the question becomes: did she teleport back that power supply or disintegrate it?
Ported it back, that was big enough, the whole pod isn’t, and now it’s useless
A physics teacher of mine once called a milligram a microkilogram.
But formally, you only use one prefix when describing a multiple or factor of a unit of measurement.
Technically correct!
And that’s the best kind of correct!
*Cheers* Most indubitably!
Guards! Bring me the forms I need to fill out to have her taken away!
The same reason uuCi is a dumb unit when pCi would mean the same thing
“Converter” would be a powerful super, capable of turning a cube into a pole or shrinking a mass to 1000th of its size, and negating any need to visit a beuro de change, when crossing international borders. Not to mention alchemical-like transmutations, so turning a barrel of water into petrol or an ingot of lead into gold. Maybe even converting a fundamentalist into a moderate. ;-)
Sydney is getting it done!
(And here I was expecting her to crush it like a beer can!)
It probably reminded her of the can of Apocolypse Soda, and made her envisage timey wimey problems.
Leon, step up the game. All those jumbotrons…
He is leaving it for the big news studio’s to do.
I was an *extremely* permissive DM, back when we were trying out the Rolemaster game system. (All percentile based and had unique hit tables for every weapon and spell, plus critical charts. Complicated but fun.)
In one instance, the party was attacked by giant ants and found that their weapons were ineffective. The Ranger decided they needed a blunt weapon to crush the ants’ armor plating. The dwarf was wearing a magic helmet. So he picked the dwarf up by his ankles and started swinging him. Every time he did a critical hit, I ruled he would do a critical of 2 steps less severity to the dwarf. They both started laughing uproariously and decided to see exactly how much the dwarf could be hurt without actually dying.
The dwarf was, naturally, named Billy. So this was the invention of the Billy Club.
Reminds me of a very-high-strength barbarian character I had decades ago. He was prone to dropping his sword (seriously, I think my dice were cursed back then since I rolled 1s on attacks constantly), had gauntlets of giant strength, and was very good at grappling.
It started innocently enough. I had dropped my sword, so I grappled the goblin in front of me. Then I got hold of his ankles and started swinging him around. It worked so well that it became my goto solution for dropping my sword. By the end of that campaign we had figured out the damage of half the small and medium creatures in the 2nd edition Monster Manual when used as improvised weapons.
It got worse. They paid to have boots made with handles so he could pick the dwarf up more readily. And a spiked helm for bonus damage.
Why when I see Maxima in the last panel slowly walking forward like she is I keep hearing the “monster approaching!” music from the old Johnny Quest show? The one they would play when a mummy or spider robot was slowly approaching some doomed fool.
DUN dundundun DUN dundundun DUN dundundun DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!
I wondrred if Max was from Pasadena…
Ohhh Yeahhh! Maxima stalking in slow motion like the mummy in “The Curse of Anubis”.
I’ve got another interesting takedown story to add from my kids’ DnD group (for which I’m the DM) the other day. The group consists of a gnome sorcerer, a dragonborn wizard, a warforged barbarian/warlock, a dwarf barbarian, a tabaxi cleric of Poseidon (yes, you read that right, a feline water cleric), and a human bard/paladin. In case it’s not obvious, I sort of let them go wild during character creation, but that’s beside the point.
They were attacking the manor of an anti-paladin/warlock with the support of a small army of goblins (there’s quite a lot of background there that I’m not going to get into). The goblins served as a distraction for the small army of guards this guy had on his payroll, so it ended up being just him, his pet demons, and them, a bunch of 5th level characters. After fighting their way past one of the demons they were faced with the anti-paladin/warlock himself. The sorcerer won the initiative and cast Tasha’s Hideous Laughter.
So far so normal. Except this guy was high level. He should have been able to go toe to toe with the whole group. He only needed a 4 on the die to save against the spell. He failed. Repeatedly.
When he FINALLY managed to stop laughing he was down to single digit hit points, and so he teleported to the summoning circle in his basement. The group entered his manor and began searching. The warforged found an ostentation bathroom with gold inlaid ivory pretty much everywhere and stole everything that wasn’t nailed down, then went back for everything that WAS nailed down. Including the sink. And the faucets. And the handles. (indoor plumbing is a magical luxury for the very rich in this campaign). The result was water everywhere, flooding the whole manor in the time they took searching the first floor.
At this point I’ll remind you that they had a cleric of Poseidon with them.
After going through the first floor the members of the group who’d been here before made their way to the top of the stairs to the basement. They were pretty sure they’d find our villain down there. Last time they were here they rescued an aquatic elf girl who was being forced to carve runes for a ritual summoning circle under the watchful eye of a demon down there.
The Poseidon cleric channeled all the water that had flooded the first floor down the stairs. And then, from safety of the top of the stairs, the wizard cast witch bolt with a 3rd level spell slot. And held that lightning bolt on the water he could see from the top of the stairs for as long as he could. A full 10 rounds of 3d12 damage per round. Our poor villain, the guy they’ve spent about 15 sessions preparing to go up against, never had a chance and never even saw it coming.
Your villain was a pigeon, trying to draw to a full house when his opponents were holding…a straight flush. :D
Not bad–I’m a fan of environmental takedowns. I love it when a DM just rolls with them, and when I DM, I accept that every time I describe something, I’m handing the players a weapon. (Mind you, if the bad guy were plot-critical and the players used this tactic while he was offscreen, they might not find his body when they drain the cellar…just a bunch of wrecked traps, dead guards, and a nifty bidirectional summoning circle….)
Oh, the anti-paladin wasn’t plot critical. He was supposed to die in this encounter in fact. But they did find a greater demon – immune to electrical damage, resistant to almost everything else, and the right hand of the next big bad of the campaign – down there. He toyed with them for a few rounds before using a single attack that knocked both barbarians and the paladin down to 1/2 HP or less, knocked the sorcerer and wizard prone, and buried their NPC ally under the remains of a wall. The cleric only escaped the carnage because she had maneuvered onto some crates behind him and was getting ready to jump on his back.
Oh, and he teleported away after that attack, the better to leave them to spread the story and thus the fear of the demon hoard that’s about to descend on the kingdom. Since there’s a bard in the party and they don’t realize that’s why they were left alive it should work fairly well.
For stasis fields being the safest place in the universe – in Ringworld they used them as impenetrable shields.
Wait, isn’t that bingo game things that Maxi is supposed to say? Kinda cheating if they say it
For Sydney it is things she does. Not says.
two different bingo cards, also it is an expression.
Sydney knows all the super hero tropes and has a list of them; “well I can mark that off my bingo card” is an old expression for experiencing one of a list of oddities in your life.
https://www.factmonster.com/math-science/weights-measures/metric-weights-and-measures
Decameter is 10 meters. 100 meters squared is 10 meters. But that isn’t an Are nor an Acre.
If I’m wrong. Can someone link to an actual math page proving it. Else.
http://www.math.com/tables/general/measures/metric.htm has all the big and little sizes you’ll ever run into without hitting the really big numbers or really small numbers.
An are is another name for a hectare, which is a 100 meters squared. A hectare doesn’t have to be a 10×10 meter square though, just any area that ahs a surface area of 100 meters squared (but a 10×10 meters square is an are).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hectare#Are
Thank you very much for that ^_^! We greatly appreciate it.
so, how large should an are-a rug be?
In searching for a place to hide the stasis pod, Sydney finds out the last orb is a “Bag of Holding”.
Heh. The cargo pod orb.
I would favour that as a possibility. Especially if the upgrades could significantly enlarge the capacity to be comparable to that of the hold of a large ship. Likewise if other options incorporated passenger facilities (she already has the life support, so could utilise it for people if the capacity was large enough, but amenities make it comfortable).
Ooo, and a “Heads Up Display” for inventory. Wait, if it is storage, would she be able to stow the other orbs within it? If that’s the case would the HUD give more details of said orbs?
Or if Sydney went in, she could access her character sheet.
If Sydney went in, would she be able to get her self out again?
Probably find that that was what happened to the previous owner :P
Kinda like those doors that appear in a Star Trek holo-program, that only appear within the program when they open from the outside
Last orb could also be the airlock ‘doorknob’ so to speak of the real ship :fracture
Torchy and the gang are pretty powerful to have lasted this long. Torch is facing 3 supers at once. It’s a losing battle, but if they had gone after nearly anyone else on the team and fewer heavy hitters were around as backup, they could have succeeded. Most of the team would be powerless against that stasis gun. Only 2 people on the team (excluding Cora) can read the alien text on the pod. While the supers can beat the goons, those goins are not going down immediately. A bit more of a numbers advantage and not dealing with the top 3-ish most powerful supers would be a big change. Also, Sydney is very vulnerable to a sneak attack since she doesn’t stay in the shield all of the time. A good human boxer could take her out in one punch.
A super tried backstabbing her once. As a result, he probably still speaks with a squeaky voice, and may well have fertility problems for the rest of his life. Admittedly however it did take both the luck of her noticing him in a reflection and a lightning-fast retaliation.
But, regarding the rest of your post, yea, Torchy is holding up impressively. Ultra-tech is itself a strong super power, against foes of a lower tech level. Just as modern special forces squad would be well capable of opposing a group of hunter gatherers, even if all parties have comparable wilderness survival and hand to hand fighting skills.
Forget going up against hunter gatherers, modern special forces would wipe the floor with the first SAS unit, even if they didn’t have the modern gear
The reason Shadow No-Nuts lost, was because he wanted to play with Sydney first, instead of ending her when he had her on the ground
If they had managed to ambush Maxi alone, it would be all over
Probably, for the initial point. But only because the first SAS unit was only just innovating the first techniques which have since evolved into the modern special forces. 70+ years of development would give a considerable advantage, on top of the use of satellite surveillance and other toys never even imagined at the start of WWII.
But put a veteran WWII SAS soldier into a fight in Times Square, with a modern navy seal, and I would not guarantee that the latter would automatically win. The SAS racked up a lot of fighting and killing experience over that conflict. And WWII guns and knives are able to kill quite effectively even today. The modern guys would have a clear edge mind, but no where near the difference between that of a super versus a muggle.
Your Maxi point is a good one. But ultimately it would depend on whether the power source of their stasis unit is more powerful than Max’s super power. Would they be able to reach their destination before she broke free of stasis?
*places a Yorpie Snack on Max*
There may be certain powers Maxima has, that have yet to be displayed to readers. If there was nobody else to consider (especially bystanders) then an ambush may have resulted in the incineration of everyone within 200 feet.
I would wager the stasis pod is vulnerable to nuclear blasts so long as it’s not turned on; Even if it was, if it was actively containing a nuclear explosion, then the moment it was turned off (perhaps even partially to try to get a sample of her hair or a toenail or whatever) the blast could escape and incinerate everyone around…
Good points.
A veteran at their peak, I should have stipulated, of course. Rather an unfair disadvantage otherwise, if they have had 70+ years of aging to contend with since.
Now with the stasisfield active I started wondering how many calories is max eating on a daily like today? The hyperspeed should cost some calories I reckon
Not as many calories as creating a mini-nuke. I suspect that Maxima can draw power from some other source than mundane digestion. Possibly, for example, she may do matter-energy conversion. In which case, yes, she could end up feeling a bit peckish after a fight.
Those real space tourists watching are getting their moneys worth, and when their videos hit the galactic net, the fun will really begin!
I’m rather surprised to see little-or-no effort at crowd-control.
A missed/deflected shot could do some horrific collateral damage amongst the people.
—
ON_A_DIFFERENT_NOTE:
Just to be clear, in the lower-right corner of the last panel, I assume that’s Achilles, soaking-up explosive rounds?
If so, then how did they finally devise an effective containment for an alien who could summon her “Schism Blade(tm)” sword back to her hand from a distance?
What would stop her from cutting her way free once she awakens?
How would you safely keep her asleep, without knowing anything about her biology?
let’s just assume off panel Dabbler or Cora took the power core out of the blade *its tech not magic*, and used some bondage gear able to restrain even a demon or elite vampire class to be safe and left her in the pile of other mercs they have been taking down…although yes; everyone we saw there is in the fight, so who is guarding the prisoners and who is doing crowd control. Granted this whole fight in comic time has probably only been a few minutes so far.
But chances are Maxima is going to be giving them all a talking to on proper crowd control when this is over.
Times Square is big, and the crowds large, and they have the immediate priority of countering those individuals who are shooting, which is what they are doing.
Crowd control is relegated to those not on the front line, and they only had a small force initially. Dabbler clearly has a moment to spare now, so should be utilising that to assist with crowd control. Something which would not appeal to her, unless she spotted a bunch of off duty strippers or the like. However she may use it as an excuse to get back to a good filming vantage.
Otherwise Dabbler can indeed look forward to a good tongue-lashing by Maxima.
As for the rest of the force though, there simply are not enough of them to spare. Doubless Archon will have already dispatched the space marines, and anyone else they can spare, in order to take up that slack. Likewise local police will also be responding to reports of shots fired. And hopefully Archon will have mechanisms in place to co-ordinate these responses.
But until they arrive the crowds will just have to do the sensible thing of either taking cover from the fight, or make arrangements for their relatives to pick up their Darwin awards, if they want to take selfies with the action as a backdrop.
Breaking every bone in her body might slow her down. Putting her in a giant box of gel might slow her down. Cutting off the schism hand might make it less effective.
It’s tech, just disable it. Turn it off, take out the power core and tie her up.
*Beavis and butthead laughter* Boobs.
Once more I feel like I must ask why the lighthook has been blue for the last three pages? Its supposed to be pink and literally no one has mentioned this but me!!
Okay so sorry I didnt realize that people had already replied to my previous complaint because stupid thing wasnt emailing me my notifications that i was getting replies -_-
I am assuming those are vindaloovians in the last panel, and i love that they are there.
Ahh, you need to put in the notification checkmark on each page (comic rather than comments) which you want notifications on. Any page that you forget to check at least one comment/reply will result in you never getting notifications for that page.
One tip is to avoid putting the check mark in soon after a comic has been posted. Given the 100s of comments to every comic, your in box would become inundated. It is better to wait two or three days, unless feeling particularly obsessive-compulsive.
Personally I get notified on every new comment on every page posted up until a couple of years ago, when I returned to the rat race and could not spare the time to be as active in this community as I once was.
I have to wonder how much of Maxima’s slow movement is the stasis field, and how much of it is Maxima intentionally giving this fool a chance to abort this foolish plot to kidnap her.
Judging by her look on the previous page, I would say pretty much all the former.
Maxima is a serious professional, and every second that she is taken out of the command loop is a second that somebody under her command or in need of her protection is being exposed to danger. There is more than one villain here, and there are multiple situations occurring around Times Square. The sooner that Maxima can lock it down the happier she will be. Rehabilitating one individual will have a far lower priority than that.
“Hang on, I need to get a good angle for this video.” -Dabbler next series.
Two questions come to mind about the Stasis field and pod, as they are time distortion tech (and no this isn’t another rant from me about that),
1: How were they planning to put Maxima in the stasis pod? They can’t physically interact with her while in the beam; if they cut it off the stasis; if they cut it off an try to grab her she is back to fully aware and not asleep or anything…unless that was their plan, surround her and use their weapons or whatever to tie her up thinking she is a glass cannon and just needed to prevent her from charging up. Unless the stasis gun can move people like Syndrome’s gloves or the Ghostbuster’s proton packs they would be taking a gamble to get her into the pod.
2: This one is more a curiosity; as Sydney’s orbs have displayed physics defying properties, if the stasis gun hit Sydney would the orbs stop orbiting or would they just (freaking out anyone watching) just continue their normal rotation unimpeded in the stasis field? likewise since Sydney is tethered to them could they then yank her out of the stasis field.
1. Tractor beams are low tech, by comparison to stasis fields (we can already use tractor beams on a microscopic scale, and there are reasonable tech paths that we can follow which would allow some kind of ship based tractors). So the only issue would be how to combine the two.
The stasis field already localises its effect (Maxima did not get stuck in a specific spot, whilst the planet and solar system moved away from her, as they continued their movement through space/time, for example). So if the stasis gun already incorporates a command “freeze subject, but still allow the force of the planet pushing her up, to keep her moving as the planet moves, rather than dropping through it or falling off it”, then the designers can tweak that to add responsiveness to the force of a tractor beam’s push/pull.
Yes the first generation of stasis guns would have nasty effects, like holes in mountains or planets, or targets lost to deep space. And the second generation would result in a bunch of statues in very inconvenient places, perhaps requiring building a prison around particularly dangerous targets (powerful ones are obvious, but such might be required for a patient zero who has a deadly contagious disease).
But in due course a third generation would be built which overcame that problem, and would allow transfer into a pod.
Alternatively a much lower tech solution would work for the second generation. One which parallels a situation I was in recently. A very heavy individual had collapsed and the ambulance service needed to lift him into their ambulance. The device they used was a metal stretcher, which could split vertically. So that you could slide each half underneath the victim, without having to lift them up manually.
Then once the two halves met underneath the person, they could be secured to each other, and the stretcher is whole again. Then allowing the person to be moved, but without the risk of spinal injury or compounding some other hidden injury.
In this situation Maxima need not move at all. The stasis pod could be opened up next to her, then closed around her (like an iron maiden). Then just push its on button before turning off the gun’s.
Or the stasis gun could integrate with the pod, for maximum safety during the handling of dangerous (and angry) cargo.
There’s also the obvious fact they did not have a clue HOW fast she was, so it’s entirely possible they had no idea she has any ability to move at an accelerated rate.
A practiced count-down of 3-2-1-Now! to coordinate turning OFF the gun and turning ON the pod (which would be deployed AROUND her while she’s in stasis) would be sufficient for any dangerous beast on Earth, if that beast was originally caught completely unawares. That could still be true out in the rest of the galaxy.
Once you factor in super speed of any sort, it’s not quite as sure of a bet, though… and of course, it’s obvious that Torchy is surprised by the super speed and apparent awareness of the situation, so with Maxima, that’ll be a death sentence — unless Max is particularly lenient or controlled in her enforcement of her own bodily autonomy.
Hence why I suggested turning on the stasis box’s field before turning off the gun’s. That way no count down is needed, nor is there any risk of the subject not being within a stasis field at any point.
Of course there could be some technical reason why you can’t have two stasis fields affecting one subject. However I see no fundamental reason why such would exist. Both will be doing the same thing, namely stopping (or vastly slowing down) time. It is not like they are attempting contradictory effects, they are both designed to put a subject in stasis. And likely having been designed by the same organisation to be compatible, as it would be foolish to go on a mission where they were not!
Yes.
No. They would just not move away from her. We have seen that they don’t care what Sydney is doing so long as they remain within their orbit around her. If she is a statue they would happily rotate around her (if outside of the field themselves).
might as well list this again, mystery orb possible function;
step outside of time function; granted it would still need to go to her hand to work; but maybe like the air orb that mental panic causes the right orb to select its self to hop into her hand and work.
I was going to say status ailment remover, but it didn’t do anything for the paralysis drug used on her; although it is questionable what biology *if recognizable as biology* the makers of these orbs had so even considered that a problem for whatever use these orbs were for (utility belt, space ship, weapons, toys, ect…).
imagine how freaked these criminals are just seeing Maxima move in stasis, imagine not only seeing the orbs continuing to orbit a still Sydney but one moves to her hand no problem and suddenly still in the beam Sydney is shouting off a string of curse words at the enemy and moving around normally.
That would be a powerful capability. But Sydney herself theorised that the orbs emulated the functions of a space ship, and since then she discovered her Aetherum gate capability, which very strongly supports that. On top of which she is very good at figuring out super powers (take the guy with nemesis power as an example) and she knows her own powers better than anyone (us included, given that we have never seen the full truth about her power origins).
Stepping outside of time does not seem like a space ship function. So I would not put many Yorpie Snax on betting that is the remaining mystery orb’s power.
True , it would also fall under the category of too convenient. The cargo hold theory is much stronger.
It’s very space shippy(v=l/t), but it would not be basically useless for a spaceship with aetherium causeways and it would be an obvious effect that could always be noticed(as long there’s another moving thing) and thus Sydney would have noticed it, making it non-mysterious and so not this orb.
Could also be that while she knows about comics and super powers we still have yet to see a lotof magic type powers being used. The current canon universe allows for it. I find it highly unlikely hrr orbs don’t have othdr magic capabilities.
Maybe she needs a magic 101 class?
Kind of comes down to which are scientific and or magic based. Would think that n-th tech tools would be balanced to accound for the forces that drive the universe
Depending on the setting the above 3 or 4 level civilization tech tends to be able to rewire and rewrite some local physics. Including the idea of being the source /architects of magic creating the source higher dimension machinery and coding that otherwise is mistaken for a fundamental aspect of the universe. Go even higher and some settings the highest level tech IS the fundamental forces of the universe.