Grrl Power #961 – Easy peasy thaumaturgeezy
I understand why in most fantasy settings, it takes people (humans especially) decades to learn how to use magic… or at least why it takes everyone else decades, but in nearly every book I read, the Main Character has a considerable aptitude for learning. That is to say, a lot of stories I read take place over a few months to a year or two at most, and the MC goes from trying to cast “Rehydrate Trail Rations” to battling arch-wizards by book 5.
That isn’t to say I’ve never read a straight-up D&D book, but those are never about someone learning how to be a wizard. The stories are about something else, and the MC learns a few tricks along the way. Whether they aren’t a wizard when the book starts or they are, either way they might learn about three new spells by the end of the story. I suppose someone has probably written a book that covers a person’s 80 year lifespan, during which they become an arch-wizard, but that sounds like a challenging read.
The problem with magic is that if there’s not a massive commitment needed to learn it, or only one person in 10,000 can ever touch mana, then just anyone can spend three months in Nepal and become the sorcerer supreme.
In the Grrl-verse, there is such a thing as computer aided spell design, but getting a computer to cast a spell is a lot trickier. Usually the best you can get out of a stock ass computer is getting them to activate enchanted items. Truly sapient AI’s can be taught to use magic, but usually have some peculiar limitations with how they harness mana and interact with the Aether. Sapience is only part of the puzzle though, because there are plenty of animals that can use magic as well. Not so much on Earth, usually, but on like a D&D type world.
July’s vote incentive is up!
You guys don’t know who this is yet. (Her name is Xerxa.) I will give you one single guess what she might be from. (And no, it’s not Dabbler’s mother.) It was a piece I had half finished from a little while ago and given my time constraints this month, I threw a little polish and some background on it and here you are. Unfortunately there aren’t nine separate versions because she’s not wearing a ton to begin with. Hopefully you can read about that soon. I hope you like it, personally I think it turned out pretty good.
As always, nude version are up at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
It would have been RUDE to ignore it…
I’m more distracted by how Xuriel looks like a cross between Shelley Duvall, Peter Lorre, and a younger actress I’m forgetting the name of right now. I’ve been up way too long at this point. I don’t know why but she’s just looked off to me for a couple chapters now. (shrugs)
Her appearance does seem to shift around a bit. Whether it’s some context dependent glamor, or just the artist being inconsistent, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that we’re seeing her from Leon’s perspective, looking down, rather than from the same height?
But, now that you mention it, I do see the Peter Lorre vibe in panel 6.
I’m pretty sure she was actively stated to glamour closer to the tastes of those she is actively interacting with at some point.
Is THAT why she’s looked so anime the last few pages?
I’m starting to think that there are multiple artists. With that said we seem to be moving back to a more comic style instead of that god awful 3D uncanny valley effect we had what 50 or so pages back.
I do ‘like’ the new version, seems to have more detail and complexity allowing more expressions to go with artistry. Dave (or whoever, I mean I actually don’t care as long as the story continues :D) still appears to be struggling with some ‘basics’ (ahem, coming from someone who can’t draw for toffee that’s a bit rich) see panel four bottom right for some ‘awkwardness’ (Elsbeth?).
But yeah onwards and upwards. Dave, if you’re paying attention, some consistency would be nice little (and yes, coming from someone who can’t draw toffee for toffee I absolutely empathize with how difficult that can be).
Dave may I recommend a couple of Anatomy college classes? Your women are awesome but their bone structure keeps changing… And the guys….. Welp cardboard cutout seems to cover it. Love the webtoon and been a devoted fan from about the fourth page. Realize your playing with styles and distorting for comedic effect. But the classes really supercharge realism.
Consistency is definitely my weak point. Also drawing quickly. It’s not a good combination.
I had noticed in the last couple pages that her cheekbones seem to have gotten wider and fuller, and that her face is a tiny bit shorter, resulting in a younger, more… innocent(?) appearance
I only noticed the change on this very page, IMHO it was not so apparent on page #957 <- wild guess about the linking.
So – is this an in-comic change or is it DaveB experimenting?
If it’s the first: For whom is Dabbler doing it? Leon maybe?
Link didn’t work, so here in plain text: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-957-dabbler-has-a-cunning-dot-plan/
Dabbler looks better on pg. 957 then she does in the above page. There is only so far one can visually evolve a character before we lose said character in translation. That’s when inconsistency becomes a problem.
Thank you, now I can’t get that image out of my head! Now I’m imagining her laughing and talking like Peter Lorre, damn you.
I will say that I’m surprised Dabbler is actually going to teach some of what she knows. I’ve always compared her abilities to Washu from the Tenchi Muyo series and seen it more as a combination of Magic, Technology, and Bullshit because most of the time Washu would say it’s too complicated for most people to understand.
I imagine it IS rude, among succubi, to ignore one who’s clearly vamping you. However, this is a p-rude world (the ‘rude’ is built right in), so I suspect Dabbler is used to it.
Dabs long ago figured out that Earth’s problems are p-rude complete: difficult to parallelize effectively (where parallelize is a euphemism), difficult to solve in limited space (use your imagination).
This is a math joke that I do not really understand.
I’m still stuck thinking about the teacher staying put it next to the basket with the 6,000 condom. Yeah that’s about what three years worth? At least if she’s a succubus like I think she is. Also I’m pretty sure that all of us are thinking along the same line he was where he said “That’s a fair point”. But he is busy looking at dabblers nipples.
I never got to the ‘rehydrate’ spell. I flunked out on ‘crumble soup crackers’. Kept setting the soup on fire.
6000 over 40 years is less than every second day.
Most of them will be expired after six months so ‘cure disease’ spells are a must.
The basket obviously has a Protection spell…
Those numbers are off. There’s over 6,000 seconds in a single day
One condom every 2.4 days. Not every other second for 40 years.
r/whooosh
I dunno where y’all went to school but where I’m from they have two semesters per year – three actually but it’s traditional to take one off. That would make 200 semesters take 100 years, implying the use of 60 per year. Or if crashing (and a human better crash it if they want to finish the course while still alive) 67 years making ~90 per year.
Neither of which would imply a particularly strenuous schedule, or at least not a schedule dominated by a normal and traditional use of these items.
As someone pointed out though they only last 6mo to 1yr. And it’s not reasonable to be gathering lab supplies more than a year before using them. So using them up in the course of a year would mean – allowing 7 to 8 hours a day for sleep, meals, and bathroom breaks – using about one per hour.
If the usage intended is normal and traditional, that does seem rather strenuous. Though perhaps achievable with the kind of technique that might motivate taking magical training specifically to learn.
Emphasis on “if the usage intended is the normal and traditional”. They can be useful for a lot of things besides that, which may be where the bulk of the consumption goes in a practical magic course. Either that, or one of the first-year assignments is to magically play the preventative fairy at the Olympic village.
I misread your comment. Honestly I would expect him to have to go through a minimum of three any maximum of 6 condoms a day.
what if the basket was enchanted with a “cornucopia” spell in it?
correction a “never-empty” enchantment
Like the loaves and fish for the sermon on the mount…
Gives a new meaning to “Horn-A-Plenty!”
Anyone wanting to try it should first attempt to read J.J. Hurtak’s “Keys of Enoch”. I’m not saying that anything in the book is true or false, but just attempting to sort out the meaning (if any) or to prove any of it meaningless, is quite a challenge!!
I’m pretty sure most magic — the imperative procedure-oriented forms — can be mastered fairly easily, say one semester to get the nuances. O-O is obviously more difficult due to inconsistent logic assumptions, say two semesters.
The hard part is the two or three task-related PhDs for simple hack work, or 20 to 60 PhDs for specialists… at 5 or 6 years each. For example, making stuff fit into a small bag: we need General and Special Relativity, a solid understanding of Spherical Trigonometry, and Astro-Navigation. A good understanding of Dark Energy and Dark Matter would not go astray, together with Micro- and Macro-Biology if living matter is involved (and needs to be preserved). I count 3, probably 4 PhDs right there, maybe 5 if we want to take Number Theory on board for special cases. So, let’s go with 25 years hard study just to stuff stuff into Bags of Holding.
That is… shockingly close to the general physics knowledge one needs to learn how to create non-specialized self-contained sub-dimensional spatial anomalies anchored to a fixed, but portable, entry point (in less jargony terms, a pocket dimension that doesn’t expand and lacks any features beyond space tied to a portable opening like a pocket or bag). Although, learning the general physics knowledge is only a little over a third of the process, you’ve vastly underestimated how long it takes to reach the level of mastery over the procedures and theory behind them to invent something that complex. Granted, since the construction of “bags of holding” was invented a long, long time ago and the original formulae have only been improved over time, you don’t technically *need* to know any of that, you just need to know *a* functioning formula, access to certain materials, and access to sufficient magic to activate it. If it weren’t wildly illegal for me to do so I could give you a 20 page booklet on methods to artificially boost the magical supply for item crafting purposes, a 5 page pamphlet on an appropriate formula, a single page explaining how to activate magic in the first place, and a URL for a webstore that sells the materials (detailed in the pamphlet above) and you’d probably be able to pull it off in, like, a year, even assuming zero prior magical experience. Granted, as I said, wildly illegal for me to provide such resources, also, the trial and error involved in figuring that stuff out without a mentor or teacher would be exceedingly dangerous as you’d be mucking about with dimensional magic, and while it isn’t *easy* per se to screw it up in a manner that something bad happens, there is a non-zero chance of damaging the universe if you don’t know what you’re doing, and I have to clean those messes up enough already without potentially causing them myself.
I’d love to see exactly what laws you’d be breaking in providing that info….
The Treaty of Falthehir, as well as A General Consensus On The Secrecy Of The Folk.
Great, hoe fast will they create a M# or M++ spellcompiler with libraries and other stuff?
Then it would be somewhat sililar to Pixel’s interface, nut just notepad based.
No need to know how stuff works, just know what it does and connect the dots.
And build in some pretty big failsafe parts and a testing environment, something like VMagic, so the whole parkinglot won’t be turned into cinnamon jelly with strawberries every thursday.
I WISH they’d finally move over to M#. Arcana++ programmers get SO SLOPPY with variable energy types. Yes, it’s more flexible, but have you ever tried casting a fireball, only to find that borrowed energy management routine has replaced your fire mana with eldritch? SUCH a mess. Plus it’s a pain in the ass to debug!
But I like cinnamon jelly, even if it used to be a parking lot! I wonder what the Eclipse plug-in looks like that supports M#.
You are aware of how old some of the magic users, including the human ones who are of fairly high level in the Forgoten realms are? Never mind how old Elminster is (he aparently spent multiple Century’s in the past on more than one occasion.
There was one book series I read where the author basicaly commented that one type of spell caster saw there aging process slow down roughly in parralel to there level, level 1 would get to level 2 in roughly 2 years and be roughly one year older physically. They usually started between the age of 9-13 so a level one prodigy would be and look roughly 10 years old, at level 2 he would look/be 11/12, level3 he would l/b 12/15 level 4 he would l/b 13/19 and so on. If he did not maintain his leveling up he would continue ageing at his current rate untill he resumed his normal 40 hour week work rate of studying magic and only using it in a controlled environment studying and probably crafting magic potions and lesser items and so on.
There is in fact a fantasy book that covers a character’s entire lifespan and features a wizard. The Earthsea Quartet by Ursula Le Guin is a pretty good read, though instead of one story covering the character’s lifespan it’s actually four different stories spread over that lifespan (hence the name of the book).
Came here to see if anyone made this comment already!
Ursula LeGuin is a master of putting a proper lot of thought into sigh things, and also a recognized Grand Master of the written word.
Well worth the read.
If you like the programmer meets magic idea, try reading the Wizardry series books by Rick Cook.
What “Wiz” Zumwalt could do with computers was magic on Earth. Then, one day the master computer hacker is called to a different world to help fight an evil known as the “Dark League”. Suddenly, the “Wiz” finds himself in a place governed by magic – and in love with a red-headed witch who despises him. -From Wiki entry
Too bad he had to drop the series.
Post on his blog said that heart medication killed his writing drive, and by the time that he didn’t need it anymore (or they changed it, I can’t remember) he lost his interest in the story. There is an incomplete version of his next book there, if anyone wants to find it. He posted it when he realized he’d never finish it.
Knights and Magic anime has a programmer reincarnate into a magical world where spells were laid out like scripts. You can imagine the rest.
Programmer, and mecha fan, don’t forget. Especially since they had magically powered mecha.
This just keeps reminding me of Rick Cook’s Wizardry series of novels, which involve a programmer being summoned to a fantasy world and creating a whole new school of magic based off his programming skills.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Cook
I guess she just can’t top that top.
“Six thousand”?
That’s quite the ambitious teacher.
Is it just me, or has Dabbler looked a LOT more attractive over this last mini-arc than she had previously?
Leon, on the other hand, looks stoned out of his mind.
He looks like Saitama (One Punch Man) with hair.
This shows that attractiveness is subjective. I have the opposite reaction.
What, Leon looks more attractive?
In comparison, Leon becomes more attractive :P
Or rather, Dabbler’ attractiveness dropped a bit for me (too). Not that I dislike the look in general, but it… seems… to belong to someone else, I’m used to Dabbler looking more like an adult.
Her face looks like Purple Dolly Parton(circa 1980) in this one.
If you want stories about computer-aided magic/programming you should read Charles Stross’ “Laundry Files” series, starting with “The Atrocity Archive”. Men in Black meets Call of Cthulhu meets British bureaucracy and tech support woes, is one way of putting it. Highly entertaining, satirical, exciting and excellent reads, despite current British politics going so far off the deep end it’s hard to satirize properly.
And Stross created Githyanki, githzerai, slaadi and Death Knights for D&D, so give him a read for this if nothing else.
Sounds interesting.
Log all those symbols intk a database with their known meanings s d I interactions then run regression analyses. See what you get and repeat. It might not help you cast anything but it would be a hell of a research aid in theorycrafting.
“three months in Nepal and become the sorcerer supreme.” When the Ancient One, is ready to die, they pass their power, to the next one.
Three months in Nepal for a genius speed reader with perfect recall. Might take five months for your average Joe.
Plus? I can imagine the training space under a time dilation spell.
People learning magic in a couple of months is just about as realistic as people finishing their engineering degree in that same time frame. Sure, there may be the once in a generatin genius who spends his time studying 24/7 and just never makes a mistake, but the rest of the eligible population takes 4 to six years to arrive at a baseline proficiency and thus get their degree.
Any other depiction of the topic is merely laziness on behalf of the author…
If they weren’t once in a generation there wouldn’t be a book about them
The teaching system isn’t especially efficient. I think you could get a fair number of fast finishers if you find good candidates early on, then feed them what they need at the best pace they can take. The current system is a semester-based set-program batch processing system for turning young and gullible people into slightly less young people with a piece of paper tacked on. (And also a giant scam that is coming apart at the seams, but let’s not digress.)
The point of the degree is that it’s moderately hard to get and begets the issuer monies, not that any of the knowledge sticks. Getting through fast requires more than aptitude for the topic. The kids who do, do that on a “I am very special” ticket with lots of support attached. They tend to be rather fragile as socialised human beings, though.
And the reason why they are badly socialised is that a major part of the purpose of education systems is socialising the children. That takes a lot of school time, which the child getting through fast spends on learning the subject, not socialising, hence their unsociability.
I’m not disagreeing with you. I do think you could do the socialising (well, letting it happen, the kids do it fine by themselves; schools do little more than stop things from going off the rails too much and colleges do even less) as well as teaching a lot more topic to those that can take it, if you’d choose to change how the schooling system is set up and what it is optimised for. Especially the American highschool system is on the low end of what’s possible. Just look at, say, basically any European country. Or several, and compare.
Personally, I came out of Jr. High poorly socialized, because as a nerd I was bullied, and by the time I solved my bullying problem (By beating the head bully unconscious.) it had made me thoroughly misanthropic, which took years to get over. I wasn’t INTERESTED in being socialized, I was interested in studying genetics and perfecting my biowarfare agent to cause human extinction.
Good thing I got socialized my second year in college… It was going to be a pretty good one.
Biowarfare is way too traceable. Best to create two that are individually innocuous and release them in opposite sides of the worlds so that by the time it is discovered that the combination is lethal they will have spread far and wide with nobody tracing the origin because it didn’t seem important.
I would compare the theoretic part of learning magic to learning one or more computer languages.
And then you have to learn how to channel magic.
And then do it under combat situations.
With regards to the Doctor Strange dig.
My headcanon that the airforce guy with the spine is the guy working for Justin Hammer who got turnes 180 but survived.
That gives a more logical time for the multitude of hand operations and all before going to tibet.
Also, Strange didn’t officially become the Sorcerer Supreme in the movie, just reached the rank of Master.
Plus, the director explains that the time loop with Dormammu was actually over a decade, so he had ‘years’ of practice with the spells he’d learned.
Doubt he had time to practice during those years of getting wasted by Dorm
He wasn’t getting stronger or smarter, he was simply annoying Dorm until Dorm just gave up (“If I agree to stop the invasion, will you fuck off and leave me alone?”)
The choker thing also attracted Elsbeth’s attention as well!?
No, the magic, she’s a mage-in-training (with the cursed book literally chained to her)
Krona suggested they call her in, on account of her “taking dual minors in Enchantments and Curses”. Whether that’s in order to use her knowledge, or to give her an unusually good look at the innards of the working to learn from, isn’t stated.
I remember a line, I think it was from “The Colour of Magic”, where it takes so long for a wizard to learn, for example, how to summon a nymph, that by the time they learn the spell, they forget why they wanted it.
If it is this easy to learn magic why does it take people years to do so?
Take a look at any college with how many nonessential classes you need to take and the up charge fees they slap on to the point some classes become e outdated and useless by the time you actually earn your degree.
And that is for something like normal non-magical degree courses where messing up will not turn you into a newt because you forgot to carry the one.
So yes… I can believe it would take years.
Hmmm, don’t know if you’ve read it, but the book “Wizard’s Bane” by Rick Cook (first of the “Wiz” series) describes a computer wizard who becomes, well, a *real* wizard. It’s a good book.
Read: Elminster, the Making of a Mage by Ed Greenwood. His initial magical training takes decades.
It makes sense that it’s not actually easy and requires an education, but she’s still a smug Mary Sue and I cringe every time I see her.
How is she a Mary Sue?
She literally has a cyber eye, hand and detachable-tail because she’s not very good at adventuring
Devil’s Advocate here… the eye makes her better at adventuring than she would be without it, and here she’s basically saying that she’s a jack of all trade, master at none, but Earth people are much lower than jacks at any trade.
I’ll agree that the cybernetics don’t rule out being a Mary-Sue; we didn’t see the injuries happen, so they’re just part of her backstory, and a tragic backstory isn’t incompatible with being a Mary-Sue. That said, however, she still has in-comic moments of failure like this one: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-597/ (and the following comic for further dwelling on it.) One of the most fundamental parts of being a Mary-Sue is that you don’t fail on-panel, not even in comedic moments, let alone dramatic ones like https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-217-dabbler-second-best-at-swording/ .
Also, Mary Sues are usually loved by everyone and someone not liking a Sue is either them being a obstacle for the illusion of growth, or a clear indication that said character is a “bad guy”. Dabbler is very strong and well rounded, but she’s also offensive and obnoxious and there are people who dislike her for it. She’s smug and condescending and not everyone takes it as well as Leon. She needs Sue and more high level character hanging with low and mid tiers. Several of the characters weve met could best her.
The only character I’ve seen at all that’s been Mary Sue-ish really has been Hench Wench, who started feeling like a Villain Sue after the legal angle suddenly didnt trap her for … reasons? Then got away scot free except for some water damage to her carpeting. Dabbler doesnt seem like a Mary Sue at all though. She’s a lot of trial and error, and not automatically knowing how to do everything, which is definitely not Mary Sue-ish. Like when Sydney came up with the simple idea on how they could have tracked where the blood portal went after Dabbler went through a whole complicated equation to figure it out mostly, possibly.
Hench Wench felt like a nice(ly wacky) idea that didn’t work out so well, more than a Villain Sue.
The thing about a Mary Sue, at least AFAIUI, is that she (is a wishful self-insert who) hijacks the story and the leads for love interests and generally wrecks the story and the setting with improbable prowess and inexplicable admiration from everybody. Like Douglas Adams’ Rain God guy, except the clouds that follow the Mary Sue rain accolades, admiration, perfect successes, and Nobel prizes. Given that this is a comic full of… well, characters so overpowered they could be a few short steps from being Mary Sues elsewhere, none really manage to hijack this story. Even, say, Vehemence gets his day in the limelight then gets stuffed in a box.
Sidney could be an anti-Sue, due to being inexplicably the lead character when everyone else is better at everything anyway. And they love her anyway! What does she have to add? Well, she has a set of MacGuffins irretrievably attached to her that give her a story ticket. Even then she’s more used to give us a guided tour (and wacky antics) than hog the limelight.
“Hench Wench felt like a nice(ly wacky) idea that didn’t work out so well, more than a Villain Sue.”
I would agree with you except the longer the fight went on, the more villain sue-ish she was becoming.
I prefer it when learning magic takes about as much time as getting a normal education. You can and will of course become better and better at what you can do while gathering experience at work, but a 40-year apprenticeship would just be too much for my tastes. In that case you might as well have the characters go into the hyperbolic time chamber and have them learn magic in there.
That 4o-year apprenticeship isn’t about how long it will take them to learn that shit, but how long that pussy will hold off on actually teaching him anything useful
Leon isn’t wrong though (still needs to wear tastier footwear for all the foot-in-mouth comments, or maybe the people around him need to stop taking it so fucking personal!)
To summarize… Programming for a computer is one thing, but magic is more than that, it’s also building the entire computer from scratch every time you want to write a program.
it seems more like they are using Wi Fi, have to build their own hardware initially to contact to the server, and then are using something equivalent to DOS to guess at what they can do and having to write every combination of codes and what they do down because the system they are accessing wasn’t made for them and thus not user friendly.
-operating off the idea magic is a multidimensional computer made by Nth level beings.
To be honest, Technowizardry isn’t that hard, u just have to remember which crystals go with which metal and that its sympathetic magic u’r using to work Mana into Stuff. So a Gun is good for shooty spells, but not so good for that healing Magic. Well maybe if its a Syringe Gun. Also that “simple” blueprints will only get u simple things.
So its like, learn a little and you can repair a car and rework its engine to run on Mana, if you know/have the Blueprint. Or install a magical Light switch circuit in a House. Basicaly Craftsman lvl stuff.
Plan and oversee the Construction site of a transcontinental Teleportation Network with a few other Magical Engineers or BMA(Bachelor of Magical Arts)? Maybe after 10-12 Semesters, if your fast with understanding the advanced Blueprints and design Blueprints based on established Rulesets yourself.
And finally, if you want to create the Blueprints and investigate the rules to create total rad new Stuff, then you should be willing to see your Alma Mater for that Masterdegree after a few of working in the Field.
I have to say making magic recognizable to modern concepts while also keeping it its own thing is an impressive feat. Too often you end up with a “you call it magic we call it science” that is clearly neither, using buzz words from quantum mechanics or particle physics, and only annoying both fantasy and science fans *see The Sorcerer’s Apprentice* for example.
however being able to point at modern concepts for a comparison on the other hand is far more relatable. Its not unlike using modern chemistry to explain alchemy or how concepts such as avatars via robots, drones, virtual characters ect… helps to understand how gods and supernatural beings were said to have avatars, projections, and proxy forms and such. Ideas that were harder to explain to people in cultures without those gods with nothing to compare to *seriously trying to explain self but not self operating in different bodies but with changes and limitations to abilities and even personalities* is a lot harder to explain without a concept like robot avatars with personality changing software to still be you but with some slight variations and you are still you as before when not in that form.
basically its easier to explain the internet to a society that already has the telephone than it would be to explain it to one only has merchant and messenger roads…and even harder still to one even without that.
The Dresden Files comes close. The character is already a wizard at the start of the book, having both a natural aptitude, and almost a dozen years training. The books have about a year or so in between them most of the time.
Mists of Avalon covered about a Decade as well IIRC.
Mists of Avalon covers a period greater then the life-time of Arthur.
In Mallory Arthur’s grandsons were adults (and leading units of Mordred’s army) by the time he died, and though I cannot remember any reference to Modred’s children in the books (it has been a long time since I read them), the time span of the Mists of Avalon is of a similar length.
To be fair, that top could be labeled a weapon of mass distraction.
…
Most of Dabbler could be labeled that.
Because of my top?
Because of your top.
I could remove it, if that would help?
On considered reflection, I suspect it would not.
the basket of 6000 condoms.
Because of my top?
Because of your top.
Because of my top?
Because of your top, also your bottom, but mostly your proximity.
> written a book that covers a person’s 80 year lifespan, during which they become an arch-wizard, but that sounds like a challenging read.
We shall call it: “100 Years of Crawl-itude: A LitRPG Opus”
In the Dragonlance Chronicles, Raistlin frequently was out of the story because he was busy studying. But even with that handwave, he still learned magic way too fast.
Admittedly, it was recognized within the story that he was learning magic at an absurdly fast rate.
Big fan of the Mother of Learning web serial (now complete): https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21220/mother-of-learning. A young man in magical college gets stuck in a time loop. Really enjoy the depth of world building on offer there, especially in the way it shows the slow and steady growth of someone ruthlessly exploiting a time loop to build their magical knowledge and power.
Who else wants to see Leon taking “mana Manipulation 101” in a pointy wizard hat?
Your avatar, is a pic of Ahhz, a Pervect, not an elf. :) From the Myth Adventures series, by Robert Asprin.
I find I prefer the earlier cover imagery of Aahz (no relation).
Yup. Though I’m a fan of Wendy and Richard Pini’s Elfquest, I love Phil Foglio’s stuff too.
Did you catch the recent kickstarter for the Elfquest audio movie? Even had some figurines as add-ons
think about who he is dating… and what Dabbler is. Heck she may even have a subconsious glamor ability that adjusts her to match someone’s “type” [or just has it set to automatic just to improve her chances for a recharge].
That and his vantage point really makes it hard NOT to notice that top…
He is dating Kronachrome
I always really liked the White Wolf take on magic and science.
The idea was that magic is about being able to diverge the collective will of society that normally believes something is possible. Mages are individuals who have a will capable of changing reality despite the consensus, depending on different ‘Houses’ that they belonged to (different ideas of how reality works). Their enemies, called the Craftsmasons, thought this was a raw deal for the average person, who pretty much had to just suffer when some wizard wanted to rule a kingdom or some witch wanted to turn people entering her forest or setting foot on her island into animals or trees or what-have-you, and they decided to put an end to it by creating a repeatable form of magic that anyone could eventually use, once the ‘Consensus’ of humanity collectively believed it wa possible.
And they started by inventing things like cannons basically. Eventually their sway over humanity and what is and is not possible became so strong that magic became very difficult to do without having some sort of ‘excuse’ on what it worked to avoid what they call paradox effects (ie, reality smacking the mage in the face and saying no, you’re not supposed to be able to do that). Whereas the ‘magic’ of the technocracy, which was basically super-advanced science, would more likely be accepted, and once it was accepted, it would just be regular science that anyone could do.
Like guns. OR the internet. Or robots. Or cars. Etc.
There was also a really good book I read when I was a little kid that played on this idea as well, called “Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?” where a bunch of vikings got frozen and emerged in the present, trying to kill a powerful wizard. The wizard in the thousand years+ (during which the vikings who believed in magic were trapped) wound up basically ‘inventing’ most of technology by starting off the starting blocks of modern science as ‘repeatable magic by non-magic users.’
Some guy from the present had unearthed the vikings and he was confused about why they were not surprised by stuff like cars and planes, and to paraphrase, they just said ‘it’s magic, what’s to be surprised about?’ HE then tried to explain how it wasn’t magic, it was science, and explained how cars worked, and how gasoline was made, and oil, and stuff like that, and the viking chief said ‘Your magic cart moves by using the essence of dead giant lizards and other creatures that were in the earth – why do you not think this is magic?’
:)
Oh the vikings didn’t see much difference between using runes for magic scrying and using a computer for hacking cameras, if I recall. :) I need to find that book so I can give some direct quotes though, since I read it when I was like… 7 or 8.
I feel like your background in contract law would lead you to be a proficient Summoner, whereas mine would lead to puntastic supervillainy, overestimation of my abilities, and a quick death.
No. Because you leaned over in that top.
Her top? Her hair is just as amazing! I just realized how much of a sucker I am for a fancy ‘do.
well, we as humans develop in layers and iterations, so i guess an species that does things faster, maybe wont take that much time…