Comic for Thursday, July 13th
Jul13
Well, I suppose we’ve reached two digit chapters. Only took a few years. Though I’m still not entirely sure even I know what makes a chapter a chapter in this story…
There’s a lot I could say about this page, but probably not too much I should… time will answer all and so forth.
So I’ll instead note that we are only 6 dollars away from the next Patreon goal- Patreon goals are nifty things, the last one is what made it so we had content to fill the 2 week gap a few months ago! Plus you occasionally see doodles and stuff.
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A tactical mage reshapes the battlefield. A strategic mage deletes it. š
Mium/Query seems to be having a bit of a sibling rivalry with Ila. Could it be that his programming is beginning to wrap itself around love and family bonds? He *was* originally purposed to help Peter understand interpersonal interactions.
He does have adapted rather quickly to treating Ila differently than anyone else. š
To be honest, it actually was a H.V.W.–just not the kind anyone would expect, and certainly not from such a small source. ^^
I.V.W. – Ila Velocity Weapon.
[snicker…] [hehehe…]
Why do I feel guilty about laughing?
That exchange between Mium and Ila, though! I especially liked, “Don’t worry, I doubt your mind would be tasty food.”
Mium may not be fussy when it comes to his material energy consumption, but he’s got standards when it comes to mind eating.
My reading of Mium: “I’m pretty sure you just killed people; you certainly took that action without full information of whether people would be killed. Seeing as I’m not allowed to do that, I’d imagine other people [read: Peter] will consider your lack of controls scarier than mine.”
That is a good point. Mium is likely reassessing not what Ila is able to do in a magic sense, but what she can do in a general sense.
One potential takeaway then is that is he is reassessing how he gives her instructions. It is possible that the instructions here were non-lethal sounding to a Mium that is not really supposed to murder things, but he did not realize how little Ila seems to have on restrictions (if any).
The other potential (much darker) takeaway is that Mium is now reassessing how to rube goldberg plot all his enemies into death by Miss Sister. As a technically free willed agent, she may not really fall under his responsibility as much.
Either way it should be interesting.
did… it go all the way through? its a magical railgun or gauss cannon maybe.
also kinda hard to land softly when BOTH lift fans are moving indipendantly of the craft. unless theres a really good mage around.
Yes, it went all the way through. And if you look at the exit angle it comes from under the top of the craft. That means it didn’t just go all the way through the lift turbine, it went all the way through the lift engine and the craft itself; seemingly vaporizing one lift turbine and splitting the craft in half by demolishing the ENGINE ITSELF. And it kept on going afterward.
uhhh correct me if im wrong tho… if the side of the craft that is to the right as we see it, is the front wouldn’t the side away from us (the one thats been blown up) be the PORT side fan?
The shot looks like it entered somewhere around the tail (maybe a little low) and went up and starboard. So the port lift system may still be attached. In fact given that they are only reacting to starboard being missing suggests port is still intact.
The starboard life engine is still intact in panel 4, but I do not think it is still attached to the ship. I think it sheered like the back starboard quarter of the ship off.
To me, since we have seen this IDS flying vehicle before, it looks like the shot went through the wingy looking part, probably right through the starboard lift engine support. After this damage to the structure, the starboard lift engine decided it should detach from the rest of the ship and attempt to save itself.
Someone in the comments previously called it “railgun”. I think it was @Delta-v. While not literally true, it seems like a good name for it, as “mass accelerator” just lacks the sort of ring to it.
This looks like the same attack that is sort of her signature ability in the last few fights, just cranked up to full power.
@Amaranth: Yeah, that was me, and “railgun” IS wrong. The more proper term is “Gauss gun” or “Gauss cannon”, as the projectile is accelerated by a force field (magnetic, in existing prototypes) and doesn’t actually touch the barrel of the gun as it is fired.
Mium apparently needs to reassess his assessments on his assessments. Or something.
He’s also got….an interesting expression in panel 7. Worried/curious mix? Nervous/fascinated? Somewhere between all four? Definitely seems more than just blank/bored like usual. (And once again, the interactions between those two continues to be absolutely wonderful. ^.^)
Mium expressions are enigmatic. I think it’s a side effect of them typically existing within a range of a few millimeters off resting-bored-face at the most expressive š
Someday we’ll see Mium run “HaveExpression.exe” and people will get spooked.
Heh. Your patreon link is broken. š
But on the bright side, it leads to a pretty cute picture of a space faring fox…
Fixed, thanks š
That’s one game of T-Ball I don’t want to join in on!
We can’t tell if Miss Sister used the post as merely a targeting aid, or used the ball encased in some level of magic as the projectile. It is the same type of calculation that she used against Mium previously so this isn’t a new use and its also used to slow her fall when she jumped off a building. It’s also her flight mechanic.
Because she can pick the item that’s being accelerated or decelerated her magic could also be used to transport stuff or to catch stuff that was thrown at her at a high velocity. I wonder if she can manage small things like incoming rounds. I mean conceivably if you could catch an incoming round in Magic that lets you accelerate or decelerate items it would probably be just as easy to redirect it back to the sender. I can just see the police reports now, “They all shot themselves ….”
I would guess the post is at least lined up someway, if low tech. Ila’s range has been established as not particularly great (why she was using the sniper rifle previously, as she could not actually hit things otherwise).
Likely if she could aim better, she would have nailed the cockpit. She does not seem to have a high opinion of leaving her enemies alive.
I think she could likely reverse bullets. We have seen Rovak blow bullets up, and every indication we have seen is that Ila can cast very quickly by a mages standards. That said, maybe not though as we have not actually seen her target something moving besides her self that I can think of. Her spacial calculations might not be that great.
Of course… if Mium got his hands on that power….
Now *that’s* a tactical class destructive magic.
It is – as a point of fact – indeed a tactical class destructive magic. š
I would also says that its a type of destructive magic that causes everyone to rethink there tactics. Or is that the same thing?
Long range extreme velocity projectile technology is one of the most dangerous to mages. Detecting a small high speed object is very hard, and they only exist within most mages effective range for a tiny fraction of time before impact, and contain sufficient force that causing an effect that negates their effect takes serious power. There are defenses against them, but they usually take multiple powerful mages being prepared.
Having an Ila sized portable one seems likely to have tactical ramifications. The only other people we’ve seen use something like was Kor’s world firing from a high altitude platform.
Mages like Kally can generate “artillery” class attacks like this, and we saw her use something similar against Naomi in a tennis match, but the range and power on that isn’t really on the same scale as this, as she’s using a single acceleration spell – thought she used a handful of others to improve how well that worked, most mages cannot hit a bunch of spells in sequence on the projectile, because the timing and speed of execution required is out of human range. Very few mages could execute five spells at one, let allow accurately adjust their environmental variables to activate in sequence correctly.
Of course, we’ve also seen that there are other techniques that people like Kally can use, but, well, that’s what tactical class means, if there is a tactical class mage involved, tactics are entirely different.
I’d hate to see what kind of mess a strategic class mage could cause then by showing up. Assuming one exists.