Comic for Monday, June 8th
It seems like it’s been so long since we’ve had a comic… I dunno if I can do this not updating everyday thing!
I feel compelled to point out he is shooting a gun. In lack of similarities between the object and a gun are in fact because I’m not very good at drawing guns 😀 I feel I’ve complicated things by making autocasters occasionally look a lot guns.
Block of World Exposition.
Guns are decently effective against mages; while we’ve seen that mages can use ethereal matter creation to make a shield that can usually withstand some hits and there are handful of other ways of stopping bullets, and there are bunch of more complicated ways to stop bullets, but usually it requires the mage to focus at least briefly on stopping the bullets rather blasting you to pieces – this was what the IDS Droprover was hoping for when unleashing against Ila that she wouldn’t be able to maintain the Eidos shift bringing the ship down while holding shield powerful enough to stop high caliber automatic rounds. It didn’t work in that case because she could maintain three highly complex calculations simultaneously (shifting her own weight, shifting the IDS Droprover, creating a continuously refreshing ethereal object capable of withstanding the rounds…).
There are some guns that are more dangerous to mages – namely psionic burst rounds; these rounds are a little special and will probably be detailed in the future – there are also autocasters that function a lot like guns (ie: autocaster rifles that the Avon agents were using) and can have functions that are of varied levels of threat, but have their own drawbacks – namely that they rely on the users mana/psionic particles to fuel it – while pretty much everyone has enough to use them, it limits your shots a lot more than ammo does.
/Exposition.
That’s a bit of a long exposition, but I feel its sort of an important point to give some info on where the balance of power falls between autocasters, mages, and technology – but we’ll see more on it later I’m sure.
Sorry no new incentive up yet. Will probably put up a new one before Wednesdays update.
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Interesting bit of world-building in the description block. It reminded me of a question I had for you; Is it possible to make an autocaster computer? Basically an autocaster capable of modifying it’s calculations to either change what spell it can cast or just to try and trip up natural mages.
From what I understand of your magic system, it’s logical enough where I’m sure someone would try to make a computer run off of magic.(And therefor become able to cast spell programs.) But it’s individualized enough where such research could very easily fail.
I have a few idea’s of how such a system could work, but I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to force you to put in something you don’t want to…
Yes! Sorta. A “generalized” autocaster is largely just that; you can put and upload any spell you can make onto it, and a talented user can even cast spells with it on the fly by combining different systematic components to spells stored on the autocaster – but this becomes a lot harder. You can even manually input a spell into a generalized autocaster than cast it – the advantage of this for someone that CAN do the Eidos Calculations, but nearly fast enough (or in their head at all) to use them to actually cast magic can do it that way. And in fact, there are larger computers that are almost exactly what you are talking about, but they are a little clunky to carry around 🙂
The only catch is that by popular knowledge, you need a human to activate the sequence once its programmed in. In world they haven’t really discovered the nature of the “Eidos Key” beyond that humans have it – while the computer can handle the calculations, it can’t apply them without a human. This is the subject of a huge amount of in world research – for example if you could make autonomously casting magic computer, you could use it to do all sorts of things – from fly a plane to run a power plant. A lot of people claim a humanistic reason for that (ie: there is something that makes humans special); however, people like Peter view that as ridiculous, and that it’s just a matter of discovering what the key actually is.
That said, there is another minor wrinkle, and that’s the power required. To do magic, or shift Eidos (same thing), you need what the Malsan’s refer to as Mana, and the IDS refer to as psonic particles (though they are not, in fact, particles). It is possible to generate/access these synthetically (without a human) but for the most part this is unknown in world – most autocasters draw on the human using it.
Sorry about the long reply, questions like that are basically author bait! 😀 If there are any parts of the question that aren’t answered, feel free to let me know. And don’t worry about speculating about the system of magic and technology! I always love hearing what people put together, and even more it’s valuable to writing; if it occurs to readers on what they know, perhaps it occurs to characters in the world 😀 While the “rules” of the system are set (and I know them) what you can do within those rules is something neither I or any of the characters really know, so hearing exploration on them is always fun 🙂
Aaaaw, Naomi’s so cute when she’s having fun. ^^
That looks like a passable pistol to me. Were you using a specific pistol as a model?
Naomi seems to be in two places at the same time. Decoy or hyperspeed? ^^
It’s just how I render fast movement – my early experiment with it was the couch hop; this time since she’s moving a lot faster I made it a lot blurrier; she’s just moving really fast. Not physically too fast to see, just too fast to hit easily (hitting an even normally moving target with a pistol isn’t that easy).
It’s just a gun from imagination – I should probably use references, but tbh I don’t use them for, well, anything. It’s something I should work on, but it’s always annoying trying to find what I want at the right angle. I know some artists actually use 3d modeling tools with premade models for references, which I’ve always thought was a cool idea, but have never got around to trying to set up.