Comic for Monday, January 25, 2021
Sorry about the site going down for a bit. There was some issue with billing, and then when it was paid the webhost seems to have decided that the site needed to be deleted in the hour between them giving me a notice there was an issue with billing and that issue being resolved. Including thinking that perhaps they should delete all the back ups too. It does not give me a lot of confidence in them, and is a little odd as previously they’ve been quite a solid service, but I wonder if I haven’t paid attention in too long and things around there have sort of changed, as that all seems pretty sketchy. Fortunately things were able to be resolved and they had no, in fact, deleted everything yet though in their words it was “it was on a verge of deletion… so the server was in limbo”… words that inspire great confidence…
That bit of fun aside…
Comic!
I noted that the magic the Family Head was using here was somewhat different than a Null Caster – in a way, it’s more advanced, but related. Null casters have the ability to directly direct and manipulate mana, and they typically use it bursts, to disrupt other mages casting (or magical effects). Mages like Kally can manipulate mana in the sense that she can use it, but she cannot easily direct it that accurately. We’ve seen what I’ll call “pseudo null casting” where a mage just dumps so much mana into something it becomes difficult for magic to effect (Naomi did that once), but an actual null caster tends to have two qualities over of that – a more accurate perception and… spatial awareness of Eidos, as well as their ability to process eidos data itself to determine what sort of calculations are taking place, and the ability to more accurately direct mana. The more efficiently they can do both of those, the more efficiently they can nullify magic.
Saraine’s ability – likely an innate one – is control the mana near her, not just her own. This would effectively starve out magical effects or calculations that need magic, as the mana is drawn to Saraine instead. In many cases, this would have the same effect as a Null Caster. It would actually slightly better against a booster as they would likely exhaust fairly rapidly if they couldn’t draw on ambient mana – I’ve mentioned before that mages do have mana reserves, they just rarely matter as ambient mana is plentiful. For most mages, that wouldn’t help them here as they’d have to emit that mana to calculate to fuel a calculation, but for a booster it would help them for at least a little bit until that tank ran dry, though that might happen fairly quickly as few mages would consciously keep much mana in reserve.
In the case of Kally, she cannot win a “magical tug of war” with the mana with Saraine as her ability to manipulate mana itself is limited in comparison, but she simply has a massive range and capacity to draw enormous amounts of mana, pulling it from hundreds of feet around (something she does when generating the power to make a tactical level strike). So, she’s essentially just flooding the area with raw mana – she’s not actually using it do anything at the moment; if she concentrated it into a magical effect we’d see condense in to the more lightning like effects, but she’s just essentially artificially making the local region mana soup.
This would potentially create two flaws for Saraine – if she was unable to absorb the magic fast enough, Kally would have enough ambient mana to use magic, or if she was able to absorb the mana fast enough, she’d run the risk of hitting her own limit of storage of for it as she doesn’t destroy the mana, just pulls it into her own reserves.
____
I decided to put this all in text as an explanation, as I wasn’t really convinced the visuals on this were super clear, and it’s complicated. I don’t necessarily know that any of it is really important to know to the story, but I figure some folks would rather know the details here, and I wasn’t sure I could render a more detailed account of what was happening – I had some ideas, but they didn’t all pan out and I’ve been fairly short on time… (my other hobby has been insane recently when it comes to devouring my time… I guess this is the problem of a hobby becoming a job… it becomes a job… that’s mostly good news though, and the Kickstarter will end sooner or later).
Loading ...
no comic this week?
It just went up.
Hey Folks-
Been awhile since I’ve done and I hate to do it, but going to delay the comic a bit. Not gong to skip as I don’t want to slow the pace down, but been super busy this weekend and am not projecting I’ll get the comic up tonight. It’ll be up tomorrow, probably tomorrow evening. I have other things I need to get done by Monday and the page isn’t done, so… the math does not check out on getting this finished.
This is the last week I should be completely swamped by Kickstarter stuff (as it ends Thursday) so I would anticipate this won’t be a regular thing (at least until we get toward print deadlines for the other stuff). For now though, it gets priority as its in the last week (and has somewhat higher stakes 😀 )
Just wanted to keep you the loop and let you know… probably late Monday.
-PastUtopia
Thanks for letting us know.
I hope the kickstarter isn’t driving you too far up the wall!
I only hope that I have power tomorrow night!
The obvious way for us to make this work for us it to buy into the Kickstarter. Then no matter what you’re working on, we benefit.
I believe that’s check, and check mate. Better luck next time!
You mean we get more time for groundless speculation and dumb humor? Count me in!
Dumb humour!? My favorite! What do Kermit the frog and Alexander the Great have in common?!
Their middle names.
XD
There were a few comments made by Superman that seem appropriate to Kally. I don’t remember the exact quote but it was something about feeling that he was living in a world of people made of eggshells or kleenex.
Cardboard. Which seems like pretty tough stuff, until you consider the perspective, and then it’s like, “Oh, same stuff, really.”
Cardboard and paper can both be quite resilient, under the right conditions. Those conditions aren’t typically found in the heart of a flame.
Are you thinking of the essay “Man Of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex”, by Larry Niven?
Does Kally’s hair length change with her mood or mana level? It seems to be to the top of her butt in panel 4, shoulder blade length in panel 5, and past her butt in panel 6 (the last panel) where she is “mana charged.”
I believe that it is well established that magical power causes long flowy things to behave unpredictably. Scarves grow, hair grows, both tend to become somewhat free willed.
§
OK, unpredictably. I have seen it mentioned about hair and scarves growing but never seen anything about it shrinking then growing longer again. Thanks.
See “unpredictably”. It may not always be chaotic, but it can be sometimes. I mean, if it was always just longer, then it’d be pretty predictable, right?
So I’m pretty sure, Jim, that it is just artistic license. I don’t think there is really an in universe chaotic hair and scarves rule. However we have a long standing tradition to blame magical side effects when such things appear to spontaneously change from frame to frame.
This is in contrast to the accelerated healing, and presumably also non chaotic hair growth, that native boosters can demonstrate. In particular I’m looking at Naomi.
If I recall correctly, we have word of god on it being ‘unpredictable’. So Naomi’s hair growth may have not been chaotic in the past, but any particular instance of it in the future *could* be. You just never know, because it’s unpredictable.
Saying this stuff is ‘artistic license’ is like saying that Past is not a 100% accurate reporter on the goings on in these actual alternate universes. To be clear, I’m not necessarily saying that he *is* a 100% accurate reporter on the goings on in these actual alternate universes, or even necessarily saying that they are actual alternate universes. I’m merely spelling out what that term means here, just in case it wasn’t completely obvious to anyone here, however unlikely that may have been.
1 My memory is not so accurate as your notes, so in most matters I’ll defer to your judgement.
2. Seems like some of this needs to make it into the wiki, and I can’t remember how to get in there.
3. I like Past. He’s a good dude. If you insult him by caring him a reporter again, it’ll be war. Seriously, Past is NOT a reporter! He’s a great guy!
Last panel:
My hair is a bird, your argument is invalid!
This meme popped into my head the instant I saw the image. Sorry not-sorry.
“Not a common one for a human to have” – ah, yup, she’s probably seen that before, and even if she hasn’t, she knows more than enough anyway. You lose.
“Go on, absorb the power” – confirmed, you have definitely lost. By quite a margin, it appears….
Not necessarily. Thinking about the author comment at length, there’s a few possibilities.
Saraine’s ability is to control mana near her, not just her own. Which basically means, she could *possibly* cast with some of this mana to use it up. It could easily be that she can’t possibly cast quickly enough to use all of this mana up, but it’s also possible that she has a big, spendy spell in her back pocket that she didn’t cast at first because it requires so much mana, there wasn’t enough to do it yet. Like, for example, Sarah’s spell from El Goonish Shive, which takes a lot of power to cast and doesn’t really have an outwardly perceptible effect, so the only way we’d be able to tell was by the mana disappearing, unless Past decided to depict that side of things, too.
There’s also an additional chance for Kally to fail here that she may not be aware of. She’s pulling in mana from hundreds of feet around her, while across the street from a hospital in the Malsan capital. Several things point towards it being the most important hospital in the Malsan capital, what with it being right across the street from the country’s only tactical mage, who is a member of a very important Family, and if I remember correctly, right near the Consul’s Office.
Hospitals, in my experience, tend to be huge affairs, often with upwards of millions of square feet. But we’re looking at linear feet here, and this hospital has a significant amount of stacking to get its square footage, which puts more of it in range than if it were just a single sprawling floor. How far is it between Kally and where important magic is being cast in the hospital? How well can Kally win a tug of war with the doctors treating patients? Some of them will probably be innate mages who can bind very tightly to the mana they use for their innate abilities, but will they be using those abilities, or different ones? There’s surely a lot of doctors who aren’t innate mages, and some might not even be natural mages. Kally probably pulls harder than someone using an autocaster.
It’s not part of this fight, but in the context of negative fallout from superhero action, it could be a pretty significant fallout. It might not be as bad as firing the PPO in rapid fire mode at Nyah Nyah Can’t Hit Me Man while he’s standing in front of Scraps of Hope orphanage & bunny rehab, but it’s possible that after event analysis will reveal that Naomi and Kally had another tactic that could’ve worked without that cost, such as possibly Kally pulling a little less hard and actively casting something she’s overpowering by doing this (with some care to “what happens if Saraine doesn’t try to drain its magic and lets the overpowered happen.)
Of course, this wouldn’t necessarily count as a clear win for Saraine, But it might not be a clear loss, either. Sure, if she let an overpowered attack from Kally hit her, she’s probably toast, but what if instead of draining the spell, she did a sufficient shield spell from the mana she’s already drained, protecting her and her minions, while letting any bits of the attack that wouldn’t have hit them directly continue on to further destroying parts of Eliane’s Family’s house?
Tee hee. I guess Kally isn’t going to let Saraine’s slight (“You may be a tactical mage…”) pass easily.
Really I think Saraine might be out of her depth: Kally is surely aware what Family mages are capable of (she obviously read the briefing reports)… and Kally still suggests Saraine bring the rest of the Families – you go girl!!
Thanks Past for the explanation of the difference between a Null Caster (redirects mana in a controlled fashion) and Saraine’s ability (take mana away by storing it). I think if I stared at the comic for a few more weeks I would probably come to that conclusion too 🙂
I guess this “mana soup” wouldn’t work on a Null Caster since they only need to disrupt your calculations… or maybe it’s a mild annoyance (like a light fog?).
It would not, as they target the calculation itself.
This is akin to flooding the whole area with a low level null caster effect, but the concentration isn’t probably high enough to cause most mages to struggle to cast, though ones that write particularly weakly to Eidos would find their calculations broken down by excess mana perhaps.
You can attempt to counter a Null Caster by writing to Eidos more clearly (with greater clarity and emphasis) but that’s much harder, and must could break about the calculation either way. It’s fairly hard to counter a Null Caster at short range, though there’s ways to do it (Naomi’s interference when Kally faced the IDS Null Caster may have saved Kally, it may have saved the Null Caster…). Boosting is another way to fight Null Casters, as their ability to nullify that is far more limited, though it’s something of a wash (as Boosters struggle to maintain the boost against a traditional Null Caster at point plank… as we saw when Naomi grabbed him and things started getting messy).
Another way to counter Null Casters is to try to calculate extremely quickly as that closes the window for them to interfere with you what you are doing, or to multicast, or pull various tricks – Rovak and Mium’s fight showed some examples of that.
A Null Caster can also struggle against Innate Magic, though its not entirely ineffective, it tends to be much less effective (though, again, more complicated as it depends on the nature of innate ability quite a lot, as innate abilities don’t quite cleanly fit into in a category given their nature).
So Mium’s (EF8, & possibly other platforms) magic canceling is a enhanced form of Null Casting ?
If I recall correctly from earlier exposition, a lot of innate magic would fall in the category of ‘calculate faster’. That probably wouldn’t be sufficient for some sustained effects (like Mark’s shield), but I’d guess Tyler’s frost field would still work well enough, because disrupting the current calculation wouldn’t instantly thaw things. Tyler would just need to keep recasting.
Acalia’s teleport might be “quicker” because of it being innate magic, but it looks like it’d still be slow enough o disrupt, possibly from either end. In that case, the innate magic speed boost might be the only reason why she’s able to actually make the calculations fast enough it can possibly work.
Is that all correct?
I dunno if it is all correct.
However the bit about Tyler vs Saraine is interesting to me. I recall the freeze aspect of Tyler’s innate ability is more side effect than effect. Something about reducing entropy?
That makes it a point of interest to me, whose skill wins there? Would Tyler and Saraine both be racing to deplete similar resources?
Panel 3: “do you really think i left your gun working?” Panel 4: “but neither she, nor this goon here, pose any real threat to me.” Panel 5: “then the problem with ABSORBING power…”
I agree, Panel 3: Kally Bubble 2: Should drop the “I” between “really” and “think”.
I agree, Panel 4: Kally Bubble 1: Between “But” and “she,” should be added “neither”.
I think it is fine the way it is written, Panel 5: Kally Bubble 6: Add ”Then” to the beginning of the sentence fragment.
Man, I had a feeling! This is great, I already can’t wait for next week! Ooooh yeah!
And now I’ve read the commit that goes with the comic. and went yeah! I like it.!
“But neither she, nor this goon here…”
And, like I said last week, “Underestimate me. That will be fun.”
Kid Salmon appears to be in a state of “Well, I’m certainly glad not to be being carried off but my rescuers are slightly freaking me out too”.
I’ve seen worse. At least he probably had an idea that Naomi was pretty tough. I mean, she’s his brother’s friend, and she’s famous for it.
I think there was a Vampire Princess Miyu where she saved somebody from being kidnapped. If I am recalling it correctly, the kid was unharmed, apart from the severe psychological trauma. I would guess there are hero-ish sorts who would be more traumatizing than her, but…
Oh, and then there’s the current Grrlpower arc.
Are we sure those two aren’t related? Naomi’s solution is punch harder. Kally’s is magic harder.
They’ve gotta be cousins or something.
Peter’s got a ‘type’, that’s all.
Boy I hope not. If either of those two is the jealous type… There goes Kansas. And Malsa. And Palindra.
Look Kally might be the jealous type, but Naomi is definitely not in this because she likes Peter, she’s in this because Peter kinda pays (I know he technically doesn’t, but odds are he at least covers daily needs) her to go do hero stuff. Which she loves doing.
Gonna go with “mage harder” on that one.
Alternatively “you want my chi so bad? TAKE IT!”
Maybe Spell Harder?
Or, perhaps, it is a Spelling-Bee!
“NOOO- NO- NOOO- NOT THE BEES!!!!!”
Docter Bees!
I have a funny feeling Kally’s solution also happens to prevent Saraine from locking anyone else out in the process. Cause if there is too much to absorb, it doesn’t matter who else is around to use it.
In some systems, Kally’s solution also locks any real mages out of being able to do magic, lest they accidentally overpower their spells or have various wild magic effects.
I’m sure Naomi would be fine in this field. The other booster(s) probably would be as well. Kally could certainly deal with it; if she has this pool of magic within her, she’s dealing with this all the time anyway, and it’s probably less of a concern than she’s used to having with it. But Saraine and lime green hair have a problem, and since the boosters are trusting the mages to pull their ass out of this fire, they have a problem, too.
Also, there’s another problem they have. It’s probably easier for Naomi to punch through anything in this field. I mean, the other boosters are probably boosted, too, but not as much.
Of course, that’s how it would work in several different environments that aren’t this. It doesn’t really say how it works in this environment. Only way to find out how it works here is to wait for the next update. And maybe a few beyond if the next update’s Steve eating cereal or something. (Of course, if it *is* Steve eating cereal, I’ll be sure to make a note of it, because I don’t have a character named Steve identified here. I only have three who even have noted cereal preferences, and one of those is more of a non-preference out of ignorance. :/ )
Sigh. I should make a point of reading Past’s commentary even if I saw it on Patreon first, because he tends to comment more here. So this isn’t from Kally, but she probably does have more experience casting with this much mana around anyway. Just not the way I thought.
Steve can go pound sand. He wanted to run off to Canada, they can keep him.