Grrl Power – Dabbler’s Science Corner #7
One more DSC to go then we’ll cut back to the story in progress. Things have settled down a bit but there’s still lots to do.
Max is being pretty unfair to Russia here. Infrastructure and upkeep is not a sexy thing to spend tax dollars on, but it is absolutely critical. I personally find it super embarrassing when a bridge collapses somewhere. I mean, as a citizen of my particular nation, which happens to have had the largest economy in the world since the late 1800’s, (I’m not sure how accurate this is, but I have to say I’m really surprised the UK’s GDP wasn’t WAY bigger around that time since they were big in the world conquering business at the time. Though I suppose you could arguably add the GDPs of all their vassal countries to theirs, depending on the extent to which they were conquered.) Anyway, my point is that the U.S. shouldn’t have collapsing bridges, but keeping them from collapsing is only important to a whole lot of people just after one has collapsed.
I don’t know a lot about Russia’s dedication to infrastructure, but I think the general sentiment is that any dictatorship swamped with oligarchs probably doesn’t have the general interest of the proletariat in mind. But you never know, I’m sure there are some dictatorships out there with their usual raft of horrific human rights violations, but not a single bridge collapse or train derailment or… I don’t know. Pothole? Well, maybe not within 5 miles of the dictatorial palace anyway. Still, as we saw… see with the Ukraine invasion – god, that’s still going on – it would seem Russian expenditures on upkeep can be very selective.
And a dungeon, once it exists is like an oil well that keeps building pressure. Farm it/pump it out every so often and you’re good, but it can get away from you if you don’t pay attention to it. Not usually in a decade, as Max suggests. Usually they grow down and become more intricate as they add chambers and floors, and eventually a certain level of monster power/magic density causes a sort of reflux that can cause a break. But dungeons can also encounter things that prevent their usual expansion, like pockets of low mana, or a lair of something that won’t be budged, like a dragon or something. Also another dungeon can limit their growth options, and if they don’t wind up fighting/absorbing/combining, that can cause a dungeon to break to the surface before expected. None of those things are likely on Earth, well, except the low mana pockets.
Oh, speaking of dungeons, there’s a three book series called simply “Blue Core” that I enjoyed. It’s kind of a weird isekai, as the person wakes up as a dungeon core and has seemingly little memory of his prior life. In fact it’s not really all that clear that it is an isekai until I think the middle of the second book when he starts thinking about what is clearly Earth tech. But I enjoyed it, even though there’s some kind of weird tentacle sex stuff which is passed off a a bonding thing… well it does factor into the story but it seems a little out of place. Not that I don’t mind weird sex stuff in books, it’s just kind of only a factor in the scenes where it happens. Anyway, if you like wildly OP MCs (and I do) and a good cast of supporting characters, then check it out. It was written by the same guy that did a book I really liked called Invading the System, and… holy shit, book 2 just came out! Thanks for not telling me Amazon. Dick. Welp, I’m going to go read that now.
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Russia under present management is horribly corrupt, and has a pattern of being unable to do *anything* without the result being junk due to the majority of the resources stolen by people at every level. As applied to Dungeon Containment Systems, that means you’d probably end up with one that was wood or cardboard with maybe a thin layer of concrete or metal slapped on to conceal the interior, like happened with some of their anti-tank Dragon’s Teeth and tank armor. It would be more surprising if there *wasn’t* a Russian Dungeon Break, to be honest.
No, maybe Grrl Power Russia is less corrupt, or they have some super who can slap on a layer of something indestructible that makes up the difference. But Maxima clearly doesn’t think that is what would happen. (I presume the purple box is Dabbler talking and the gold one Maxima)
The Russians would put a (probably, as you said, very cheap) dome over the dungeon, for “security purposes” – which to them would mean “so other powers can’t see how incredibly poorly it works”.
“3.6 roentgens, not great, not terrible”
They didn’t put a dome over Chernobyl, I think it’s worth noting. They did, however, turn a major lake into a salt flat.
I wonder what the dungeon administrator’s version of, “Hey, let’s see what happens if we do this?” is. Build a dungeon in Russia and you’d likely find out.
So, amusingly, you’re both right AND wrong:
RBMK Reactors were infamous for not having containment layers surrounding the reactor. This was because they were as much designed for plutonium manufacture as power plants, and so were designed to quickly cycle out hot fuel assemblies without shutting down and disassembling the reactor.
After the disaster, however, reactor #4 was buried in molten lead and concrete, and between 2010 and 2016, a literal steel containment dome was erected over the site.
Chernobyl is part of Ukraine so Russia definitely did not erect any domes there after 2010.
Russia disagrees that Ukraine isn’t Russia
Aaaaand you’re wrong. The «Chernobyl New Safe Confinement» project got finished in 2019. Even though some amount of tension in Ukraine have started back in 2014, the border with Russia (and diplomatic channels) only got closed in 2022.
The project was performed by commercial companies, and the list is quite big: France, Italy, USA, Turkey
Russia has donated 55 millions Euros to the project. Russian companies are not directly mentioned in the list of contractors, but I can tell you from personal experience that some Russian companies were at least involved in development of the electronics and IT systems behind the new sarcophagus (those that monitor what’s happening inside).
So now you are suggesting that Chernobyl was a cover up of a Roque dungeon, just a Fukushima was a cover up for a disturbed sea creature? they just evacutate the area with the fear of radioactivity (while the early reports just say 3.6 röntgen)
The first dome above Chernobyl was erected in 1986.
The mistake here is in thinking the dungeon itself would get built
Not in the slightest. In fact, Russia has more ability to “Do things and do it well” than the U.S. has with its insistence on “Leave everything up to private businesses!”
The whole nonsense about the justified Russian intervention in Ukraine, done because of ethnic cleansing against a group of the populace in Ukraine called Ethnic Russians, is showing in your post.
The problem isn’t “Private Business”, it’s “Lowest Bidder”
thank you for the shitpost Boris, ten thousand roubles (~$0.01 USD) have been deposited into your account, Czar Vladimir expresses his hope that you can get to the store before the value of rouble halves again.
Feb 24, 2022 · Putin said ethnic Russians in Ukraine face genocide. His ambassador provided misleading evidence, and international observers found no activities to support the claim.
Related claims that do not seem to help credibility.
It’s only a training Exercise.
It is not a war. It’s a Special Military Operation. ( спецопера́ция )
International observers haven’t seen anything wrong in arming Taliban, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Georgia, they don’t see anything wrong in dozens of pedophiles exposed by Epstein case, they also don’t see anything wrong with Boeing witnesses dying. I’m sorry, but don’t you think that inclusion went too far and your observers is a race of blind troglodytes?
should have left out Georgia if you wanted to hide your affiliation Mr./Mrs. Kremlin, or should I call you Vladimir Vladimirovitš?
Why? Mikhail Saakashvili, president of Georgia in 2008, currently in prison for corruption. He fled Georgia soon after the conflict has ended, after it was exposed that he was imprisoning and raping opposition. You can google it by keywords “This broom is for you, Misha”.
So, NATO was arming a corrupt dictator who wanted to bomb civilians and legally stationed UN peacekeepers with an attempt to commit an ethnocide… But international observers somehow “reee, evil dictatorial Russia attacks innocent democracy”.
And that wonderful rapist has joined post-2014 coup Ukrainian government. And NATO started to arm and train Ukrainian army. Yep. NATO has armed rapist dictator, he attacked Russians, and then NATO started to arm this rapist dictator in Ukraine… connect two dots, what was the plan there?
Why do you even bother spreading propaganda here? This is entirely made up.
so are you a completely dishonest propagandist for a government committing continual war crimes, or are you so damned stupid you actually believe Russian propaganda?
In either case piss off and stand next to windows in Russia until you get taken care of.
On the British Empire’s GDP, it turns out that empires aren’t very economically efficient. They make the ruling country feel good in other ways, but they aren’t the best way to get rich. Note that Russia didn’t start seriously trying to rebuild its empire (by invading Ukraine) until its dictatorship had pretty much abandoned industry and development as ways of getting rich, and settled for resource extraction.
Yeah, a colonial empire isn’t going to add _that_ much to the home country’s GNP, especially if your colonies remain pre-industrial so that locals can’t compete with the home country’s businesses. There’s really only so much you can get from resource extraction and selling Birmingham cloth to subsistence farmers, especially if you have to pay for a navy to keep other colonizers away and an army to discourage revolt.
The book “Why Nations Fail” by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (2012) presents the thesis that extractive economies will never advance, since the people doing the work have no incentive to advance the economy. The book expands on Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” (1776) by linking economics and politics. Adam Smith also warned that if Britain didn’t allow the American colonies to invest in themselves, the colonies were going to cause problems, a warning that came a little too late, and probably would have been ignored even if made earlier.
That’s related to the natural resource curse. Extractive economies often wind up flooding the government with income that doesn’t depend on the rest of the economy doing well. So repressive regimes deliberately flat line the rest of the economy, encouraging dependence on government, to avoid alternate power centers.
By contrast when a country lacks an extractive resource valuable enough to keep the country afloat by itself, there’s no avoiding having a diversified economy, and the government usually has to tolerate the fact that this results in alternative power centers.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/12/19/how-britain-stole-45-trillion-from-india
suggests that over less than 200 years Britain took about 45 trillion dollars from India
That’s 17 times the current UK GDP
Dictatorships generally only spend money on things the dictator sees or profits from. For example, that might be the capital, some mines/oil wells, a seaport, an airport, the roads connecting them, and enough military bases to defend them.
Very true, and unfortunately dictators generally don’t know/want to admit that they would profit a lot in the long term if they instead had a mindset similar to Deus, i.e. make life better for everyone for maximum profit and comfort.
A German engineer developed a computer based on electric relays in the 1930’s. He went to the German Nazi government for additional funding. The funding request went all the way to the top and Adolf Hitler could not see the advantage of the machine in the upcoming war effort, so denied the request. Unfortunately, the prototypes were destroyed during a bombing run in World War 2. Had Hitler been a little more visionary, that computer could have given the Nazis quite the edge, especially in developing a nuclear weapon.
Funding or not, the Z3 (Third model built by Konrad Zuse) was still the first programmable electromechanical computing machine. A replica, also built and maintained by Konrad Zuse until his death, can be seen in the “Deutsches Museum” in Munich.
Sounds like Dungeons and Dragons don’t mix in this universe. I’m surprised.
Also: Sydney’s question still remains: Dungeon delve when? Sounds like it’ll be years, maybe decades, so unless you time-skip at some point or do more time travel shenanigans like when Sydney was stranded on a remote planet, I don’t see it happening, sadly.
I think it’s gonna take a while. There are other plot threads to follow before they turn big enough to derail the story for months.
A dragon is stereotypically in a dungeon, or at least an underground lair of some sort. But given the D&D assumptions (flying, smart, breath weapon), this is a really bad idea.
It’s like running a speakeasy that has only one exit.
Whether we see a delve depends on how funny and/or story-advancing it can be made. Deus does a lot of empire building/tech tree running things, but we don’t see much of it because a) he’s not the main and b) most of it isn’t all that funny. Even though his stuff is more likely to cause divergence from our timeline than anything Archon does.
I mean, *more* divergence. It’s already pretty divergent.
I disagree. Not knowing what environmental impacts there will be has NEVER stopped the government from doing an environmental impact study. Once you have the power to do something, never miss an opportunity to do it, or you’ll lose the power to do it. This is Bureaucracy 101.
I also disagree, but for a different reason. Not knowing what the environmental impacts will be is precisely why you absolutely must do an environmental study.
You realize that the point of an Environmental Impact study is to determine what the environmental impacts will be? So not knowing what they’ll be is a very good reason to do an environmental impact study
Well THAT would be a fun SCP crossover episode
SCP: *Secretly Capture Pokemon*
While there may, indeed, be Pokemon in one of their cells, the SCP Foundation is…not exactly kid friendly, shall we say?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBE1pFBoiTY
there’s a YouTube channel devoted to covering the SCP files. my son and I have listened to it from time to time. we stop when sleep becomes a problem. or we stumble across the truly horrible afterlife one. this forced me to add another possibility to Pascal’s wager, that we all go to a horrible place.
“There’s no environmental impact studies to do, since no one has any idea what the impact might be.”
That’s a really optimistic view of government. A more realistic view would be that they would need a study group to figure out possible impacts, and then you get to do the actual impact studies.
The way around that would be to make it military (which they have) and then just use force majeure to say “We’re not going to do those studies, since we’re not allowing the government to be sued for them.” The government can only be sued if they allow themselves to be, and civil suits cause most of the extra cost and delay.
The dome is a good idea as a defense against breakouts (at least until the dungeon expands out from under it), but more or less hopeless for keeping people from finding out that there’s something there. At most it will keep others from finding out via satellite what exactly is going on, which just means they will use other means (spies, reporters, other supers) to find out.
I think we should allow the lawyers that file suit into the dungeon to gather evidence…Whups bad idea! We’d get zombie lawyers. Probably double the number of zombie politicians we already have in government.
Does that mean approximately doubling the number of politicans?
Great idea. Will never happen.
Who makes the rules about discovery and gathering evidence? Lawyers, sitting in a warm, clean, well lit room, after a big dinner.
Who gathers the evidence? Not lawyers, far too hazardous.
The problem isn’t usually “the government”, it’s people using the government as a weapon to block projects they don’t like. Since no one knows about the project, no one can file lawsuits to use the government as a weapon to block it.
Max is probably assuming that there won’t be a continuity of government in Russia that will keep such a dungeon monitored since Putin is probably not going to last until it’s read to be delved.
That wouldn’t matter. Under Putin, even priorites like the military fall victim to corruption. If you’re a corrupt ruler, you don’t want underlings who *aren’t* corrupt because they’ll push back against you, but corrupt underlings will enrich themselves rather than do their jobs. This is why the Russian military in Ukraine is fighting with Mosin Nagant rifles.
They might also be fighting with those because they’re reliable, unlike most post-Imperial Russia weapons. (The Kalashnikov is built for no field maintenance, for conscripts with little to no training, and a centralized construction process. If one breaks, you hand them another, and the broken one goes into a truck to go back to the central factory. Russia’s entire military process has been based on _short_ wars, with time to repair and replace between conflicts. )
A club is also a pretty reliable weapon that needs little training, but I think we can both agree that neither reliability nor simplicity of use on their own are going to put someone using it on equal footing with someone using a Mosin Nagant.
Likewise, a soldier equipped with a rifle that’s a century out-of-date isn’t going to be very effective against someone using a modern rifle if all things are equal, and that’s already being very generous. There’s a reason cavalry charges disappeared with the advent of the machine gun.
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Someone’s been mainlining Solo Leveling.
Eh, a bunch of fiction uses the same the basic concepts; the author just mentioned Blue Core for example, another Dungeon-themed work. No need to assume they got the idea from one specific story.
Which bridges have collapsed in the last 10 years that haven’t had barges/ships run into them?
In Germany for example just recently the Carola Bridge in Dresden. Not a proud moment for German engineering.
Wikipedia has 11 bridge collapses alone in 2024. Most of them due to flooding.
Hmm . . . doing a quick scan of Wikipedia for USA related bridge collapses seems like the most recent due to engineering issues was a pedestrian one back in 2000, the cause being listed as beam weakness.
However, I poked at one saying it was due to a train derailment, but the full page says it is under investigation and currently believed to be due to erosion. An adjacent bridge had actually been demolished a couple years earlier due to it being deemed in danger of collapse for a similar reason. So they realized the issue with the road bridge, but overlooked the rail bridge from the sounds of it.
So not sure how accurate a quick look at the list was, but that quick look did indicate most collapses were due to ships/fires or due to hurricanes or other such natural disasters. But the point is as bad as USA can be about such things we haven’t had too many issues with bridges ‘randomly’ collapsing. Assuming you are within the weight limit, there have been issues with ‘historical’ bridges that get damaged due to overweight vehicles trying to use them. One bridge collapsed because a truck weighing 180,000 lbs tried to use a bridge rated for 35,000 lbs. I don’t think we can blame that one on the government not maintaining the bridge.
Most recently in the US that was not caused by any particular accident or natural disaster: Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh in 2022.
Good catch, I completely overlooked that one somehow. Well I did say I did a quick scan Ha. Thanks for catching that one that is definitely an example of bad maintenance.
All ya’ll seem to be pretty committed to ignoring the literally crumbling infrastructure in the Capitalist Paradise of America. Hell, a bridge just collapsed in Mississippi today. 4 dead, 3 injured.
Indeed, three workmen died, because the bridge was being demolished and had been closed for weeks.
‘Contractors were actively demolishing the bridge when it collapsed in a “work site accident,” according to MDOT. The cause of the collapse is unknown, and the project is on hold “until an investigation can be completed,” it said in an updated release.’
Which isn’t exactly “the bridge collapsed spontaneously due to lack of maintenance” although it’s possible that it’s lack of maintenance requiring the bridge to be demolished (it could also be that they need to upgrade it)
To add on to this… I live in Texas, and two bridges in the last 15 years within 20 miles of where I live have been shut down and redone because they started to crumble. No, they never completely ‘collapsed’ with or without vehicles on them, but I would say it counts when large chunks of rock begin falling on the cars driving below them. That being said, I doubt there’s a great way to count these up as no one wants to advertise that it happened, if they can get away with it. So I side with Dave on this…we should really care BEFORE they start falling down. They did shut down two bridges recently near my hometown in West Texas after an inspection, so it’s certainly not every bridge being allowed to run to failure, just to be fair.
Russia almost doomed Earth on multiple occasions after getting their hands on a Stargate, only to have to have SG-1 pull our collective asses out of the fire; you think they can be trusted with a DUNGEON?
This dungeon ecology thing is sounding more like 13th Age with every strip. They better hope they don’t accidentally spawn a mobile one like in Eyes of the Stone Thief. Damn thing will just giggle at the concept of being caged in with a dome – or worse, it’ll eat it and you’ll wind up having to deal with a giant murder-dome arena level in your free-roaming dungeon.
Oh hey man! I’m glad you’ve enjoyed my work, I love your strip!
… Look into zombie wells sometime–they’re all over TX and the gulf, and there’s even more of them scattered across the US. Rather disturbing that we’re basically on Russia’s level with them, since the funding to fix them isn’t there.
The mention of worlds overrun by their dungeons makes me wonder if Earth might eventually put together teams of supers to send to other planets for dungeon clean-up and containment. Not anyone in Archon, since it’s not in their charter, of course, but that would be anninteresting way fornsome countries to earn money–rent out their supers.
I guess it would be another tool for containment/cleanup. But Earth’s supers are currently one in a million, so we might have somewhere between seven and eight thousand or so if you believe population estimates.
How many worlds out there have dungeons that are out of control? One per super? More?
How many of Earth’s supers are suited to the job? I’m not sure how well e.g. Harem would do on dungeon containment as opposed to say riot control. Yeah she outnumbers normals, but I doubt that does much against a turbo-plutonium dragon or whatever. Maybe if you fit her bodies with power armor…
That we have to estimate our population and the error bars involved tells you how likely we are to be able to contact all or most of Earth’s supers anyway. Let alone getting them to do a years-long off-world contract as opposed to being a big deal in their local area.
Blue Core’s good stuff. The tentacle thing’s there for I think 3 reasons- 1 is Author’s Choice, 2 is as a worldbuilding method (as you see what OTHER dungeons do with THEIRs) and 3 is as a method of more direct interaction between what is essentially a non-moving crystalline object and a bunch of flesh-and-blood people who wind up building relationships with it, without going the “The dungeon builds an avatar and this isn’t a story about a nonhuman protagonist anymore”.
They’re somewhat separated out specifically so people can skip over them if they want, which I always think is a solid choice on an author’s part.
Blue Core is still available on ScribbleHub.
So, only Grrlverse Baba Yaga has huts with arms for legs, instead of chicken legs?
None of the commenters above seem to actually have any idea of what Russia actually is at the moment, so.. Dave, if you are honestly interested — I can give you a quick overview, just ask (though I would probably prefer to voice it over on a call rather than writing an essay there in the comments). There is also a trend on youtube for tourists from the U.S and other ‘civilised’ countries to post videos of how unexpectedly nice, clean, cheap and vary average Russian supermarkets are, even in small cities. Just look it up!
If I had to fit it into just a few sentences:
It’s slightly tougher than in 2021, but we’re doing really good, and it’s certainly getting better. Infrastructure is not being as quick to renovate, but the trend is still positive.
The war does take a significant amount of resources, but average Ivan doesn’t really need to worry about it, unless he happen to live only a few kilometers away from the frontlines.
Vast majority of Russians (me included) would not call it a dictatorship, and would not expect anything to become worse in the foreseeable future. Unless somebody will provoke an all-out nuclear bombardment, of cause.
Sincerely yours, Nonsens, a reader who no longer has any technical way of paying for the Patreon.
TOTAL BULLSHIT but nice that Kremlins bot factory even reached comics.
Nothing you said is true not even if you live in Moscow or ST:peterburg.
20% interest, 12% normal inflation 30% inflation on most food,, 3056 of gdp going towards the war,
*
But i guess you are proud of you fascist army and their daily slaughtering of civilians in the name of the russian empire and their planned genocide of ukraine
That’s exactly what I meant. No freaking clue.
I mean, I won’t deny the central bank’s brutal interest rate, but the situation is very far from being horrible, especially for “most food” (it’s not 30% at all, closer to 10-15).
And yes, I’m fairly close to Moscow, but not in it. And I do have first-hand information from those who live far away from it.
And that, Dave, is why I would prefer to avoid public comments on that matter.
Oh, and yes, the war goes on, and will most likely go on for many more months, irrespectively of who will win the U.S. elections.
Are we going to get back to how Peggy lost her leg? Eventually? Do we need this much exposition to understand how Peggy lost her leg?
It’s not exposition, it’s Dave having a break from exhaustive fulltime comic drawing. You may read about the reasons just a few pages earlier.
Chill, dude. The artist has recently suffered a family tragedy (see his comments here: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-dabblers-science-corner-3/).
Instead of taking a full hiatus and halting the strip he’s temporarily dropped back to “filler” episodes with lower art quality.
And literally the first sentence in his comments today he said only one more of these to go then back to the regular storyline.
Sorry, didn’t read those posts and i usually avoid the comment section all together.
Peggy has three legs now. You don’t want to be kicked by any of them.
I wonder what Baba Yaga’s foreign policy would look like if she took control of the Kremlin?
Baba can quite reasonable in some stories right? So she might become a valuable and popular ally for much of the world.
*giggling* imagining a re-hash of ‘Gremlins’ as ‘Kremlins’
Mystical Iron Curtain. Actually this is World of Darkness lore)
Okay, for me this is the first time encountering this idea of DELIBERATELY building dungeons, just to farm them, because they somehow magically create valuables but as a side effect also create things that will fight.
That’s such a completely BONKERS idea that it deserves applause. That’s like ‘how do you take advantage of the fact that all children between three and six years old can levitate’ sort of bonkers.
That said? It’s hard to fathom the idea of, say, kobolds or orcs (to use a D&D trope) ‘created’ by this contraption, looking around themselves in this world and not wanting to install internet access, set up amazon accounts, establish trade, and hire civil rights attorneys.
If the orc and goblins do valuable work in the dungeon they deserve a fair share of the profits. Perhaps they should start a union.
– there are a large number of stories about this trope, with a large number of variants on the details. Look up “dungeon core” (there are variants in space stations etc., but those just have “core” and that’s likely too generic).
– “how do you take advantage of the fact that all children between three and six years old can levitate”. There was at least one novel where children had psychic powers and puberty removed them. I can’t remember the name, but it was published (I think) in the late 80s or early 90s). I only read the blurb on the back, so I don’t know the details (I had a lot less money then).
– the “monsters gonna monster” trope is generally handled (for those where the setting is our time and world instead of generic medieval European or Chinese fantasy world) by the monsters being essentially AI with guiderails. Or being very limited in the circumstances where they can exit the dungeon and interact with the surface world.
I can’t be sure, but I think John Wick just got confirmed as existing in the Grrlverse. How else would you fix a Baba Yaga dungeon break?
I think maybe you’re onto something. If Russians can screw up the containment and have their dungeon installation spitting out Baba Yagas, maybe the American dungeon will be creating John Wicks that people have to fight.
Never mind that both are unique characters. The idea that a ‘dungeon’ draws on the legends and stories of the surrounding culture makes them instantiations of a theme. John Wick is very much a ‘legendary’ monster of America.
……2 Words, Chuck Norris.
the trouble is, he will sharpen a pencil for John Wick.
You know… I’d play a rogue-like featuring ARC members.
Dave, Baba Yaga is a character in Russian mythology, like saying Hercules or Zeus. So, swimming in Hercules and Zeuses is about what you said there.
I’d probably use ‘hag-witches’ or ‘daughters of Baba Yaga’ or ‘Annises’ or something like that. Or just huts with chicken legs.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen the idea that there are many Baba Yagas instead of one. It’s mentioned that there are something like 14-15 in Mercedes Lackey’s Five Hundred Kingdoms Series, for example.
There is famous (over here) russian musical animation “Flying ship” where are lots of “babki yozhki” so sometimes there is more then one singular “baba yaga”.
I’ve seen series do that. Use a singular figure as a species name, including gods. Treating the god name as a title rather than use the source mythology (and its variants) as literal. The many gods using a name when passing through an area etc…putting aside multiverse stories it does feel weird granted to use god names that way like, “Be careful she’s an Amaterasu” or “I have a pack of Beelzebubs”…very Shin Megami Tensei LoL
that said, there also plenty of series that do use singular entities, or small groups of them, as entire species names.
Lamia (was a single entity, now commonly used in fantasy), guess Naga has fallen out of popularity, personally I’d go with Enchanted Moura because then you can excuse giving them magic powers and still be a group.
Minotaur is often used as a species name despite being an individual, funny enough there is a race of bull men in Mesopotamian mythology but the name is a pain to pronounce correctly I guess.
Gorgon (there were three Gorgon sisters, even before the popular Ovid rewrite of Medusa’s backstory, but now its common to have an entire race of snake hair people called gorgons),
That said I think I have seen Baba Yaga treated this way, a story or show that said something like, “its actually a sub-species of hag with a particular theme, the humans encounter them so rarely they’ve mistaken the entire species for a single individual”.
Also Pegasus was specifically Bellerephon’s steed.
The “Wearing the Cape” series (there was a crossover with GrrlPower a while back) uses e.g. “an Atlas” or “an Ajax” for naming some super types.
They’re usually named after the first cape to show those powers, or the most famous. Most manifest powers following certain types; there are oddballs though.
It does occasionally get confusing; apparently “Ovid” is for shape-changers, presumably after Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I guess the first cape to shape-change took that name, but he or she never shows up and it’s just there by implication.
The author, like OGH, throws everything into the mix, justifying it by saying that the “breakthrough” to manifest powers is somewhat directed by the subconscious of the person manifesting them. So there are a number of vampires, kitsune, benandanti, dragons, Santa Claus (only one so far), etc.
If you have a number of super types who show up with the powers attributed to Baba Yaga, people might end up saying “Oh it’s another Yaga” or however they would shorten it. More than two syllables is unlikely for a shortened name. “Baba” seems to be something to do with “old woman”, so that’s less likely. Unless those supers also all look like old women. Or have a dancing/walking hut. Or a flying mortar and pestle (not sure if that’s Baba Yaga or some other figure).
Now I’m curious. What would a French dungeon look like? An Indian one? A Japanese one?
For Japanese we get the answer in various Manga and Anime.
But I am with you. I’m very interested in various myths around the world. There is for example not much information about African myths. I heard someone tell, that the African “lorekeepers” (insert better word here) are afraid to share those because it would bring bad luck or enable mythological enemies to attack and exploit weaknesses.
The mainstream D&D phantasy is very Anglo-Saxon shaped. even in central Europe some creatures (*cough*Kobolds*cough*) are unrecognizably different.
French dungeons would grant massive bonuses to underage female paladins.
They might also manifest the Tarrasque. Which, depending on what powers it actually has, could be reason not to have a French dungeon.
I think even Maxima might have trouble with the D&D version. Certainly the landscape will never be the same.
I wonder if Max’s suggestion of Baba Yagas in a Russian dungeon is purely fanciful or if there’s something about the beliefs of the surrounding, intelligent inhabitants that influence a dungeon’s creature spawning.
Dabbler was wondering why a Dungeon Core specifically summons monsters and creatures generally thought of as evil or bad and we know from her that there’s a general sort of mana or etherial essence to a planet (I can’t remember the terms she used). So maybe a part of it really is in the name and to a good extend its the dungeon forming that way because of the planet’s perceptions of a dungeon and summoning creatures associated to that.
On another note: Who wants to see them go on an interstellar trip to a “dungeon-broken” world?
At which point Deus said something like “If it doesn’t spawn monsters, it’s not called a dungeon, it’s called something else.”
So it’s a naming thing.
“Neck Deep in Baba Yagas” sounds like a New Wave band or the title of a Bureau 13 Book by Nick Polatta.
The military is the wrong place to do those intentional mispronunciations, Syd. Either everyone uses a slang term unrelated to the brand anyway, or you piss off your superior officers (like RIGHT NOW) and get to run a few laps.
Not to “um akshually”, but I feel like it’d be Babas Yaga.
The broader world is just *super* keen at the 50/50 gonna elect Trump a second time country being responsible for the dutiful management of the apocalypse hole. On the sum… I would only trust Denmark. They’re the only nation with a track record for setting up infrastructure whose failure would wipe them off the map and then maintaining it for centuries (70% below sea level ftw!).
It’s more like “We’re able to do it, and you aren’t. So we’re doing it.”
Which is pretty much how things always work.
It’s not like the nuclear arms proliferation limiting treaties are actually working to limit proliferation. It’s almost like budgets (at the very least “There’s all these other arms we can spend money on”) are the limiting factors there.
Comment from Russia – I think, government would try to implement Dungeon into some old and extremely secret Soviet bunker structure, that is already extremely secure… Or were deemed like that at some more paranoid times. But if there’s a breach… Well, swarms of conscripts against swarms of orcs. Or Rosguardia – suppression units with biiiiig funding. Possible place for Russian supers.
And if we’re extremely optimistic… There can be remains of something like the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy (NITWITT, original Russian acronym is still funnier). Fictional structure from somehow scientific and partly satiric fantasy from Arcady and Boris Strugatsky “Monday begins on Saturday”. Wholeheartedly recommend it.
How about Novaya Zemlya? If/when there is a breach most monsters would freeze to death or be trapped on a island.
A dungeon in an environment like that would probably spawn ice giants and arctic sea monsters.
Radioactive too thanks to all the nuclear testing in the area. A recepy for Godzilla.
There are several parties with ideas about the environmental impact.
That defensive dome has the environmental impact of a defensive dome, which is clearly documented.
The dungeons have the environmental impact of heightening mana concentrations, so you can compare it to other situations with heightened mana concentrations.
Whatever materials they will need also have a clearly documented impact.
Also environmental impact is just one thing that makes construction slow.
Zoning laws(this one will fall under the category military base), design(have you designed a military dome for an unknown inside threat before), etc.
I am reminded of Delicious in Dungeon with how dungeons can be seeded. Which makes one wander if the backstory of that series had the elves and dwarves seeding dungeons as weapons against each other, and given certain tech deep down, also used as a way to form “natural” defenses around underground bases.
And now for something completely different.
OK, I am genuinely curious.
I see both Max and Dabbler being arms crossed, and given the fact that they are both quite … pectorally superior… I wonder what the logistics of this is. Are they resting their arms on top of their chest? Are they placing them under? and if they are doing the latter, isn’t that a bit off character for Max, given that this would be a quite sexualizing pose to have? If they’re doing the former, doesn’t it get inconvenient to hold the arms-crossed pose for a long period of time?
My wife is a cup C and I rarely see her cross arms. I’ve asked her and she said she doesn’t like pressing down with her arms, or pushing upwards like a superbra. I can only assume that this becomes worse as the cup size gets bigger but I don’t have other data points in my research (nor any immediate way to acquire any) so it’s only speculation :)
Looks like Maxima is crossing her arms above her boobs in panel five. Compare with the more mammary deficient Halo who is crossing her arms below.
Singapore.
Several of my ancestors ran Wales fairly well as pretty much absolute rulers. Most of their bad decisions were related to being under constant attack from the British.
Gruffydd forever!
(Yeah, if you look that up you’ll find what I’m CERTAIN is the original of “Bulletman”. And yes, I’m descended from him.)
I’m sure the usual speedbumps like “Environmental Impact Studies” -which were more like roadblocks especially in 2008, were probably smoothed over by a certain bloodmage…
Dabbler saying that reminded me of “Dungeon Siege 2: Broken World”
Also knowing Russian history they might randomly decide to sabotage themselves deliberately after realizing they were sabotaging themselves incidentally. They’ve always been corrupt. So I put my money down less as a “decade” and more within 3 years.
Keeping this a secret from any outside government is a lost cause, since the Twilight council started to lobby for it.
The Twilight council is canonically international, so they will have lobbied by different governments, which now all know about the option of a dungeon and the one obvious and desired effect.
Dungeons produce one really obvious and measurable effect(the one desired by the council) increased mana availability, so if the USA suddenly starts a giant military construction project and after that the mana availability takes off in the USA(, which can be measured by having any mage cast a spell) somewhat close to the project.
You don’t have to be a genius to conclude that they build a dungeon and they can probably construct their own(unless usa mages can do some stuff needed for it that foreign mages can’t)
There are “Dungeon Broken” worlds?
As in a Dungeon Broke?
Or the world was broken, by the dungeons breaking?
I am thinking a mystical apocalypse type event. But in the bio dome mutants broke out and flooded the world version. So probably end up looking like Fall Out, Adventure Time, or Vampire Hunter D, with the ecosystems and land being flooded by monsters. This is also a concern in the Delicious in Dungeon series where dungeons break containment and the monsters get to the surface and attack towns and get into the country side.
“(I’m not sure how accurate this is, ” referring to the US being much wealthier than the UK well before 1900.
Readers actually interested in this question should read Corelli Barnett’s Pride and Fall Series on the UK, especially the first volume.
Arguably, Russian dungeon wouldn’t grow deep underground – catacombs, mines, underground cities – it’s more like European heritage. There are local tales of Ural mountains but they aren’t a big part of the culture (and they don’t contain mindless hostile creatures in big amounts). Our quirk is the sheer size, when a fairy tale hero would go for a “hard quest”, it’s not a labyrinth delving, it’s a far away travel. So, Russian “dungeon” would look more like a vast forest with glades-encounters. Something akin to “Against the storm” game. Tunguska event might be the catastrophe of such “dungeon”.
Baba Yaga’s huts multiplying, though… Smart house which understands voice commands… Man, free housing. Where’s the tragedy?
Whose voice commands it though? Is there an override?
If all your stuff is in the hut, and it decides not to let you in one day…