Comic for Friday, June 26th
Edit: New vote incentive up; while it’s nothing too fancy its the first image I drew in Manga Studio 5 as opposed to Photoshop. One of those changes I mentioned that’s in the works. Personally I think the line work on those MS5 images is vastly superior, but there are some process kinks to work out before that linework hits the comic 🙂
Ahhhhh… this page. Had a lot of trouble with the words part. Once again it will be a long commentary of rambling. I’ve tagged it for easy skimming for those so inclined.
Author Rambling.
Otte wasn’t originally a point of view character so it takes me a long time to come up with an authentic approach to how his thoughts go. There are a certain set of attributes each character has when talking, but unfortunately they frequently don’t apply to their thoughts. There are few characters I deliberate avoid using as POV for like Peter (as what in the nine hell’s he is thinking is anyone’s guess, also usually spoilers) and Mium (for other reasons but that many have probably guessed by now) but for most of them I have their POV ready – Nick wasn’t one of those, unfortunately.
That said, I felt compelled to cheat here, and usually when I feel compelled to cheat it cause I don’t think I’ve left enough evidence before hand for a complete picture. But I think I’m going to double up on the sin here and explain in comments even more. That said, as always world information in comments is not actually necessary to the story 🙂
Registered Mage
Otte refers to Tyler as a Registered Mage. We’ve seen that term crop up before. I explained it a bit in commentaries back than – but the essential concept is that countries of this world aren’t dumb – when a mage is powerful enough to be a tactical asset, they are usually recruited and registered by country – no one really wants independent mages that strong running around. Thus registered mage is generally synonymous with bad news – Tyler is the only registered mage we’ve seen so far, though prior to this it wasn’t directly stated that he is. That said, not all mages that should be registered are, and the IDS doesn’t exactly register the handful of actually good mages they do have 🙂
Boost Engine
We’ve seen the little white dot with the spiral pattern around it before. While mostly notably on various bonus art, also back here, though I can’t fault anyone for not recognize it (the back of the Avon people’s armor). Otte refers to it as a boost engine, and it accomplishes a roughly similar thing to what Naomi does – altering Eidos properties of the caster directly, rather than augmenting Eidos (and by extension, you know, the world) around them.
OPB Round
Oscillating Psionic Burst Round. It’s been referred to a few times in comic as a Burst round I’m pretty sure. We’ve only seen one fired and it was against Mium to no great effect. Pretty sure that means they are harmless. 😐
Author Rambling, Part II
Anyway… the comic…
The two characters that probably would have seen this coming were unfortunately not present – Kally had this worry last time someone seemed inclined to use rupture class spells underground (though considering how I changed how I drew magic circles, good luck guessing that was the same class of spell 😀 ), and Mium reached the same conclusion back then in justifying his intervention. Ah gawds the only thing I despise more than the current art is the old art. Well. I guess that’s some sort of progress 😀
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And this is why you shouldn’t use anything that explodes when you’re underground. He really didn’t think using that spell through it seems.
I would hazard that Tyler probably has more skill than experience. Just because you CAN do something doesn’t always mean you SHOULD. This can be a challenging thing to remember in the heat of the moment, especially when there is pride involved 😀
So, did Tyler do this deliberately? I’m pretty sure that Naomi’s shield will have some protective effect, but all the guards and henchmen are in greater danger. Did he localize the damage to Nick Otte’s position?
I’m loving (and laughing at) the damage to Nick’s “Men In Black” uniform in panel 1–great touch. ^^
Would Sparrow be an example of an IDS Registered Mage equivalent even though he was outclassed by Ila?
Gah, you ask questions I want to answer in paragraphs! 😀 I type too many words and it scares people 😀
Ahh – I realize that it’s not clear looking at it now, but collapse is a side effect of the previous explosion, which was Tyler concentrating and rebounding Otte’s original attack; neither of them probably fully appreciated the problems with using that class of magic underground in a largely stone and concrete environment.
The glimpses of a calculation ring in the last panel are a reaction to the collapse, not the cause.
Sparrow is just pretty average, plus wasn’t really specialized in combat. Typically Registered Mages are the ones that are considered a combat asset to the country, as well as simply talented. It’s half an honor (as its usually paid and has some perks) and half a monitoring program (such you need special visas to enter other countries), as they are typically capable of rather widespread havoc.