Comic for Thursday, July 6th
The gun used by RMF agent here is, as most of you probably assume, an autocaster. It works fairly similar to the spell we saw Mione using, in that it’s a simplified information based attack that targets the Eidos Form more than physical body. Mione’s attack would have very similar results if she’d hit a human with it. It can cut through a human’s Form well enough to tear a hole in the physical body still, but it doesn’t shatter the Eidos Form, as human Form is too hard to break apart. It’s slightly different than Mione’s in that it actually does have a mass acceleration element to it; why that is would get too far into the weeds for little burbles I put down here, but it needs it because the RMF Agent here isn’t as good as mage.
There are benefits to using an attack like this, as it’s going to have high penetration power against magical defenses (and it works vastly better against Eidos/Ethereal Constructs). I’ve noted before that using magic on another human’s Form has complications, this is not an exception, but more of a loophole, as it’s not strictly speaking magic. There are also drawbacks, and a good reason guns haven’t gone the way of the sword… er… wait, we’ve seen people using “swords” to… Anyway, I’ll wrap of my tangential rambling before we get too far out of control…
Of course, the main problem with it in this instance is that they the used it on Rovak Stas, who is not known for dying properly.
As it turns out a few characters in the last panels look sort of similar to people they are not really supposed to look similar to (just be coincidence and the lack of a huge range of unique faces that occasionally plagues our resident artist) I should probably clarify that you are not expected to recognize any of the characters in the last six panels particularly.
Lastly, I should note in regards to the RMF agents “shoot to kill” mentality two things. First, if you suspect your opponent is a better mage, you rapidly hit the point of shit creek and no paddles in a prolonged contest. Jayce noted it against Naomi – better mage has the advantage the more time is involved. Second, he likely recognizes Rovak as Orish, and possibly recognizes him as an Orish Warmage. If the former, he doesn’t need much of an excuse to shoot, if the second, well, he showed remarkable restraint.
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(WARNING! SPECULATIVE THEORIES AHEAD!)
Imagine what might happen if word got out that Rovak Stas was behind the kidnapping of Arpon’s President? (I’m fairly sure a survivor or tactical camera has a good chance of piecing together his identity.) Now, imagine further what could happen if news spread (even as just rumors) that the IDS hired mercenaries – Rovak specifically – to cause a ruckus at Avon merely to give IDS a reason to storm the building. And, finally, imagine what could happen if word spread (even as rumor) that Bianca was the one behind Rovak’s employment…
I mean, even as a widely spread wild rumor, it might put Bianca in even more hot water with her political supporters than she already is for how she is handling Malsa. Combined with a few more failings or stuff becoming public, she might be forced to resign or – depending on how bad things go for the IDS from here – maybe even thrown under the bus.
Then there’s how Palindra’s nations would react, especially if this was substantiated instead of just rumor. IDS could kiss Arpon and possibly even Resh goodbye as potential allies.
It’s probably far, far too premature to throw around such theories. But thinking about them does make me smile. 😀
You put that warning out as bait, not as a warning, right? There is no faster way to attract a flock in the comments than start speculation.
I think it is a likely theory, and if you think about it, almost certainly why Mium and Ila brought Rovak here. While Kokato himself can attest there were “designer children” with Rovak, Rovak is known to run with a crew that contains a few anyway. Even if he has the names “Mium” and “Ila” those are unknown to anyone besides Avon (and only if Avon can put together MYM = Mium).
The only caveat is I think the audience for this is almost entirely Resh. Remember that Ryn just set the hook of saying that the IDS that raided his lab were working with an Orish warmage… now they find an Orish warmage that is in the process of blasting Resh RMF Agents to pieces with the supposedly kidnapped Kokato.
One of the important things I think we are missing is what the RMF agents are doing here. Resh knew Arpon Special Forces (I assume the people in blue) crossed into Resh, but these guys are clearly not chasing them. Likely Mium/Peter called the RMF in to ensure that there would be a three way battle between Arpon SF, RMF (Resh) and Rovak, almost certainly know that the RMF would get the badly losing end of the stick here.
Lastly, I think it is possible that we have to remember that Peter is not strictly speaking on Malsa’s side. It is quite possible that he wants to increase the chaos so that no one can really focus on him and whatever he is up to.
I do not believe Bianca will be politically hurt from this escapade, well not from the IDS side. They are used to heavy handed tactics… well, because they can get away with it.
The problem that Bianca will have is that trade balance will seriously be impacted as much of this new world learns distrust for IDS.
Bianca is going to be put into a position where she is going to have to negotiate, or completely withdraw. But, she has other plans, that I think she will try to implement even if it means war and self destruction
@PastUtopia
Pressing [Ctrl]+[left arrow] when typing or editing a comment is being interpreted as a command to {Go back one page} in the browser. I find this terribly annoying as it interrupts my typing/editing, all the while there is a 5 minute countdown until editing is no longer possible. Also, I using [Ctrl]+[arrow keys] all the time when editing as it is handy to jump from word to word. So, it happens subconsciously – out of pure habit.
Is this merely a macro or thing of my (Firefox) browser? Or is this due to the webcomic/website/comments software you use for this site? Is this something you can do something about?
This is due to a sort of crappy plug in I use as the basis for comment editing. For me only happens when editing the comment, the default writing the comment box properly handles the arrow keys, control or otherwise.
There really aren’t many options that allow guest users to edit comments, which is all I’m really after. I could swap to a universal comment login like Disqus or something, but that’s incompatible with the current comments, and I don’t think it’s a viable option to lose the comment archive.
I’ve extended the timeout to an hour again. This setting gets wiped a lot because I’m not following the correct wordpress method for setting up a proper filters section in the site code, that should help at least mitigate the issue a little, though not really solve the core of the problem. Just putting a hacky fix into the plugins js file doesn’t seem to fix it (I just tried), I suspect I would need to know about php and how the plug in is loaded to fix the arrow key problem.
Ctrl-left/right arrow as page-back/forward in a web browser seems to be almost universal. I can’t remember the last time I had that not work.
Right, if I’m understanding correctly, that works, the issue here is that if you’re in a text box, it typically captures the event (pressing the arrow keys) – like if I hit control-left while typing this box, it jumps to the start of the word. If I do the same thing while typing in the edit box, it activates the go back a page.
The javascript for the edit textbox is just designed wrong, but it’s not an easy fix for me because I’m not really familiar with how wordpress and plug ins work.
That’s understandable. Thank you for extending the editing time. And thank you for trying.
It’s a pity the plugin doesn’t offer an option to get an E-Mail link to edit the comment, even after the timeout.
“We don’t have time. That’s the R.M.F..”
“If we delay, Resh military units will arrive.”
Color me confused. If R.M.F. is not the abbreviation for Resh Military Forces, then what is it? Was I at least correct in assuming that R.M.F. represents some Resh organization or branch?
Also, am I correct in assuming that the forces talking in the bottom panels represent Arpon?
That’d make too much sense. They are a Resh organization, at least. I think it’s funny that that acroym would make more sense, but it didn’t really occur me that that’d be the obvious reading of it 🙂
As for the fellows at the bottom, well, that seems like a pretty good guess to me.
OK, Color me dumb. That answer is even more confusing.
To repeat Xpacetrue’s question:” If R.M.F. is not the abbreviation for Resh Military Forces, then what is it? ” Are the incoming “Resh military units” backups or rivals?
RMF is the Resh equivalent the Malsan Burea, or at least a branch of it. I wouldn’t equate it to the MSB exactly, but there are similarities.
RMF stands for Royal Magically-equipped special Forces*
The RMF and Resh military would be allied, but neither would like either Rovak or the Arpon forces here. That’s not to say there is not considerably rivarly between the RMF and the military.
The following is “behind the scenes info”, read at your own risk 😛 :
*Realistically RMF is a hold over from when the non-Malsan languages were represented by fictional languages I used – this was stripped mostly out the comic besides a few early instances, but there are holdovers. It was the Resh-language abbreviation for something. The closest I could make it would be Royal Magically-equipped special Forces, so that’s what it is in my notes now; it could be simpler to say that I (and thus people of the world, prefer 3 letter acronyms when possible).
Huh, I would have expected the information-rays to affect Rovak’s shirt more cleanly and strongly than his body. Apparently his interference field extends to his clothes as well.
This development takes down a couple of my theories on why people are magic-resistant.
It’s a little bit of a red herring, due my my desire to draw examples and yet not babble endlessly for me compare this to Mione’s attack.
While they operate on similar principles, and her attack would have a similar effect on a human, this attack would not have the same effect on a gun as Mione’s.
Mione’s attack isn’t reliant on a real object to deliver it, while this one is – while the “real” part of this attack would do little damage on its own, it serves as the delivery mechanism of it. There is similar power involved,but different levels of finesse.
I suppose it would make sense if the spell portion of this attack were designed specifically to ignore clothing; there are reasonable attacks on the principle of “tear apart the first object this hits”, and ordinary clothing would be like armor against such an attack.
As such, I can’t use this example to conclude that a person’s spell resistance also protects their clothing.
There are enemies, especially when magic is involved, where you simply have no tools that will work against them. So when faced with that immovable rock of an obstacle why do so many people insist on trying to beat their way through it anyway? Why approach directly and become a casualty when you could either try from another angle or just leave? Even if another angle isn’t possible, the only difference between leaving and attacking directly is your own death. Are these people either too stupid/blind/indoctrinated/uninformed to see this futility?
PS: I appreciate the dressing down that was given to the team that attacked Kally and her dragon. It was refreshing to see SOMEONE acknowledge that sometimes the best thing you can do is cut your losses and back out gracefully.
In part, there is a knowledge gap between us the readers and most of the people in comic. We know that attacking Rovak is basically pointless unless you have some way to beat his instant regeneration (it was sort of implied that Tyler’s ability might actually be dangerous to Rovak), but even the IDS monster hunters only realized he was an I-Code user once they saw him shrug off the gas the knockout gas with it.
In the case of Kally, the reason they backed off originally was that one of those people actually knew who she was and that should smoosh them like bugs, and even in that case, the null caster was dangerous to her as long as he could get close enough (which was mostly only because she did not really want to vaporize him with dragon fire I am guessing).
Also, unless I miss my guess, this is pretty much exactly what Peter was going for. Rovak is now wiping the floor with a bunch of Resh citizens (presumably) in the middle of Resh, while on IDS business, and Arpon Special Forces is about dive in headfirst. I.e. this is rapidly approaching an a clusterf*** from which there is no return.
Likely it was Peter or Mium that called these guys in and threw them into the Rovak grinder just to make sure the situation was really clusterf***ed.
All that said, I certainly find the fights between more equal balanced characters more interesting as far as the actual conflict (like the aforementioned Rovak vs. Tyler).
This is why inteligence is key, especially in a world where “shoot em first and clean it up later” can fail so often. In our world alpha-striking works because nothing stops a bullet to the face, few things truly stop a body shot (and high caliburs deal damage even then), and there are so many threats and those threats realistically differ so little from more ordinary threats that “know the big players” just can’t work.
In the comic world, however, there are plenty of ways to stop/dodge/intercept/disolve bullets, so “shoot em first” won’t necessarily work. More importantly the truly big name players are a small enough pool that it is possible to know all their faces (if not exactly realistic) and absolutely likely that whoever is working inteligence on these opperations should be able to look up whomever shows up (if they are a big enough threat).
So when there is the possibility of threats of this magnitude, and you can’t have your best pieces go in for every strike, you have to find some way to make due. Either you learn to mitigate those threats (concurent intel gathering, evac procedures, cautious approach, etc), you allow for intel through live fire (also known as “send in the peons and see if we can learn anything”, though that requires good id gathering of the results), or you engage in the “brute force” method of overcoming an obsticle (also known as “zerg rush”, though that requires a near infinate supply of expendible pawns). Basically it is a balance between preperation and overwhelming force (of numbers if not of individual power). Barring that, of course, you just loose.
This makes me question what the thought process is behind those entering. Obviously they aren’t using the caution and restraint of the first method, they don’t have the secondary intell needed for the second method, but they lack the numbers for the third. They then send in the “big guns” but with seemingly no info on what they will be facing other than “something???”, which defeats the point of sending the peons in first. The only thought I have for why to send the peons in at all is in case there are some traps, but even then non-magical traps should have little to no affect on a throughly prepaired mage and magic doesn’t act without an edos key (a person using it), so sending in peons not only won’t set off the traps but will alert your target that they need to get ready for a secondary attack.
Is there something that I’m missing here? Why send in the men in body armor at all? It appears that the men in blue are unafiliated with the strike group in body armor, so maybe they will be better equipped to deal with a range of circumstances once they get in. It just seems like a waste of resources to send in good men to almost certainly die (if not in this mission, then in the next), often without even inflicting noticeable damage on the enemy.
I think it’s a flaw with the story that too often we see characters who don’t bat average going up against the more normal forces of the world. Do agents like this know there is a chance they are going against someone they can’t beat? Sure, but they don’t assume that, for a few reasons.
We have probably only seen two characters that would shrug off being hit like that – a few more could block it, for example Marc and Kally both probably have shields strong enough to stop that attack but Marc wouldn’t be able to bring his shield up fast enough if it wasn’t already up probably.
Even if you – the agent the ground – reckon their shield would stop it, that’s usually still a go to move. A mage that’s keeping a shield up is going to have a harder time doing something else – usually we see that mages drop their shield to attack, meaning that if you keep firing, they will have a hard time attacking – there are some exceptions to this (like Ila, who cheats), and some creative solutions (like Kally frequently either using her dragon as a shield, or a pile of rubble/rocks that she can than fling at what she is using them as a shield against).
Plus, an autocaster equipped agent going up against a powerful mage is still a pretty new concept in Palindra, especially someone using a powerful but ultimately simple autocaster like this. There would have been a time not too long ago where if they suspected a mage was in the house, they’d either try long range high powered weaponery or stay the hell away until their own mages got there, but fueled by the IDS’s tactics, a lot of new agencies are bought into the idea that a normal autocaster equipped agent can beat a mage – and their not always wrong. A lesser mage than Rovak would probably have been dead on the floor there.
As noted, I think on reflection that it’s a bit of a flaw of the perspective we’ve seen, because a broader theme is that to some extent it’s working – being a natural mage isn’t really a trump card anymore. But since we frequently see from the perspective of disgustingly powerful people like Kally or Ila it can make the plight of the mook seem worse.
In the case of Rovak, if the agent really knew what he was dealing with, they wouldn’t have entered the house. We’ve seen an agent like Jayce Myer (from Avon) who himself is batting out of the weight class of an average agent will only confront Rovak if he doesn’t think there’s another option, and was more than happy to ditch the fight to Tyler or let Rovak walk away if he can – all because he actually knows what he’s dealing with.
Ultimately I think the last piece of the puzzle is what these guys were expecting to find. They were not tracking down Rovak Stas – if they were, they’d have have probably launched missiles and hoped for the best. They happened to run across him, and while the can probably guess he’s a warmage, very few even in the RMF have tangled with an Orish warmage. Of course, most Orish warmages would take one look a Rovak and peace the hell out too.
Anyway, sorry for the endless post! I think a lot of this is just me thinking through the idea. I think to me why characters act the way they do makes sense, but it’s always a good check and challenge to make sure that I’ve put enough information to piece it together in the comic, and I think the “why would normal agents with nothing but an autocaster attack a mage?” is a great question from the perspective of what we’ve seen, and I don’t have a great answer beyond that we’ve seen the world through a somewhat flawed lens given the comics propensity to follow characters like Kally, Rovak, and Ila.
First thanks for the reply.
Honestly, though, I don’t think it is necessary a problem with the story or writing either, more likely it is a problem with the character’s mindset within the story. You mentioned that a lot of people had gotten big ideas about how much they could handle now that they were equipped with an auto caster, and against lessor mages they are well entitled to that opinion. But against greater mages, or even more prepared moderate mages? Slowing down a mage by shooting his shield doesn’t really help if all it does is give you 15 more seconds till he slaughters you mercilessly. Heck, even against Rovak shooting him was a viable option if it was immediately followed by “get the heck out” during his regeneration. Even if they didn’t know who or what he was, the very fact that he didn’t immediately fall over when they shot him should be screaming at them to be careful and create some space just in case. But it didn’t.
Now there are a number of reasons why people might do this, but each of them ends up saying something important about the world where the characters live. Perhaps it is just as simple as that, the characters think that now that they have casting capabilities through an autocaster they are now on the same level as most mages. This is rubbish, of course, but what is more interesting then the fact that they think they are now on equal footing with mages because they can cast what amounts to one very effective spell (and so not need to exercise the same caution) is the fact that this one spellcasting ability is ALL that they thought separated them from being somewhat on the same level of mages. In other words there seems to be some sort of “superiority complex” or “inferiority complex” going on between non-mages toward mages such that a non-mage could say “You aren’t such hot stuff now that I have magic too.” Prejudice is an unusual thing in that way, and it often creeps up any time you separate out a group of people for special treatment that others simply cannot qualify for. It happens in high schools toward the athletes and also toward the honors students and even toward the “special education” kids. Heck, even a fairly bad caster could still be hired out to a power plant to do the job of hundreds of dollars of equipment during peak hours (the Shinoji project may have run flat, but that doesn’t stop the more hands-on solution); and even if all they can do is work for an hour before they are exhausted and have to go home with their couple hundred dollar pay-check, that is going to make a lot of people jealous. It may or not be cost effective but if people have the idea that it might be true than that is all it takes.
Of course, that isn’t the only reason why they might be overconfident. Another very obvious option is that they are stuck in a pseudo cult mentality. In our own world the entire nation of North Korea has conditioned itself to believe that they are better and more capable then their opponents. In actual wartime, including a cold war, this mindset tends to be universal. It is what allows young barely-adults to fight like heroes because, rather than actually being brave, they just don’t realize the danger because the enemy is beneath them and “fate” is on their side. Of course this requires that either there is at minimum a cold war going on or that the group itself is in a bad enough position that it can make monsters from the enemies without (and then treat their opponents as these “lessor beings”).
Of course there could be a combination of things or even something else going on. The swat uniforms could have simply assumed that no competent battle mage would care enough to be involved in the kidnapping of the leader, but this assumes that the nation is too small and unimportant to be worth that mage’s effort (and other evidence contradicts this assessment). Or perhaps they have simply been overtrained in the military mindset of “follow orders” such that the command “shoot anyone who doesn’t surrender” has no leeway for “run from anyone who might be able to kill us all”, but that sort of non-thinking mindset tends to require an entrenched bureaucracy where following orders (and passing blame) takes precedence over any and everything else. Possible, especially considering who is in charge, but if this is the case than it brings up questions about why the powerful, compitent, and influential old families have no official position. Is it because they are all natural mages (and there is some prejudice mixed in) or did something else force them out?
I’m sure there are other options, but that is just what popped into my head at the moment. People doing smart things is often less telling then when people do dumb things. Because smart things are smart, and that often ends the story. But dumb things seem smart to those doing them, and that opens up the question of “why?”.
It’s my impression that there aren’t so few major players that it would be possible to memorize them. We get that impression because the web comic, like any entertainment media, focuses on a tiny subset of the population. There are other major players out there, we just don’t see them.
Also, compound this with the detail that autocasters are apparently relatively new. People using autocasters are apparently the equal of low end mages, and they have a speed advantage against most mages. But they haven’t really had enough experience to really come to grips with their relative lack of power. And a lot of the ones who have had enough experience to come to grips with their lack of power are dead from that experience.
That is my read too. Someone like Kally is somewhat widely recognized inside the IDS, but she is apparently pretty infamous and has a very recognizably and so far unique ability. People like Tyler, Rovak, Jayce, they are locally notorious maybe, but not internationally recognized (Tyler maybe, but they would be unlikely to take him seriously as a mage until he froze some fools, Rovak and Jayce seem to operate more in the shadows).
We have seen a fair bit of evidence that there is a bigger backdrop to the setting, and I think that is important. There are probably literally hundreds or thousands of mages running around. The Consul and the Families are both in the fairly small pond of Malsa, and they clearly have their own arcs and plots that only partially intersect with the main plots of the comic. @PastUtopia has noted that Tyler is really the main character of another story that happens intersect with this one.
Personally it does not bother me in belief unless the same people try to take down the same mages multiple times without a hope of success. In the case where the Witch Hunter tried to get Kally, I think it’s worth noting that he quite possibly almost succeeded (if mostly because she did not want to incinerate him probably), and it had been established that the Witch Hunter himself had not seen Kally really in action, and once he did he realized his only chance was a blitz since he could block her dragon fire attack.
For these guys, they know the risk of their job. This is a world a lot more dangerous the real world. An agent cannot really give up because the enemy might be a mage.
As for the argument that making them bring up their shield is not a great tactic, that is probably true 1v1, but presumably he has allies with him. Additionally this attack seems likely designed to penetrate a shield and one shot a mage… they just had the bad draw of going up against an immortal badass instead of a mage.
My thought on it was that you really can’t have it both ways: Either there are too many big names/truly dangerous mages for the majority of them to be known, or there aren’t enough of them that a SWAT team would have to worry about running into them regularly. And by dangerous mages I’m talking about anyone capable of dealing with someone shooting at them long enough to retaliate, either through magic or a good ol hand grenade tossed past the shield. Even if someone on Naomi’s level might not be known (she has dodged multiple shots while fighting off multiple assailants, and shrugged off a hit shot till it could heal within a day) Rovack certainly would be.
That said, I don’t think it is necessarly bad writing, people do dumb stuff all the time. Take a look at my above post for some examples, but there are other options too. Perhaps the swat members were ill informed and thought that “autocaster shots that pierce edos” meant “shut down mage’s ability to cast” rather than just “higher penetration factor vs shields”. Of course this would mean that the weapons they are using were not developed in-house or in a closely linked organization, but were gathered from some other place like an international arms negotiation or were gained somehow where the full details of their capabilities might not be completely known. Perhaps the M.S.B. reserch division or some other group simply reverse engineered something they had “found”. And if this is true it shows how behind the R.M.F. is in terms of technology and helps to explain why the Director was so certain that they completely lacked the capability of building a working gate detector. There are plenty of possibilities.
Perhaps Rovak’s face isn’t well known in that “if you see me and I get serious enough that you can recognize me from what I cast, then you are already dead” sort of way. I could see a mage/techie whose entire job it is to confound recording software to keep an air of mystery/terror surrounding Rovak. Or perhaps his face just grows back slightly differently every time it gets blown off, not enough that we saw it in the comic but for him face melting happens a LOT.
Sometimes it is the dumb things people do, and why they think those things are smart, that says the most about what is going on behind the scenes.
PS: this may end up being nothing more than a thought experiment. I do understand the rules of narrative causality and structure and how they inform/demand certain things happen in the story for the reader’s benefit/enjoyment when they might play out differently in real life. Perhaps that is all this is.
sorry, I mistyped. It should read: “Either there are too many big names/truly dangerous mages for the majority of them to be known, or there aren’t enough of them that a SWAT team would be incapable of knowing them or looking them up on the fly.
I don’t think Rovak would be particularly well known by someone like the RMF agent. Even if they’d heard something about him, they’d lump it into the larger group of Orish Warmages.
A long time ago it came up that Tyler is what’s called a Registered Mage; typically speaking a particularly powerful mage (especially one that is particularly dangerous) is known and tracked to an extent. If Tyler wanted to fly into Resh, he couldn’t just get on the first plane with his standard passport, and if he did end up enacting a cyropreservation experiment on a bunch of RMF agents, there would be diplomatic consequences.
The list of mages that powerful enough to probably be Registered Mages but aren’t is a lot shorter than the list of powerful mages, but also tend to operate in intentional obscurity. While it may seem that Rovak flaunts his power, the list of people that have seen him regenerate from a fatal hit and then survived to spread the word isn’t all that long, and the vast majority of the people on it are also part of the grey/black market of mages (like Jayce, who, shall we say, does not file reports to his local government).
It’s my view that an RMF agent like this definitely knows that mages that powerful mages exist – he may have worry that the one in his sights is one. He probably knows his job is not as safe as being a turnip farmer. But he knows that he’s got above average stopping power in his hands – if the person he’s facing is another autocaster user, he’s chance of winning the fight by shooting first is pretty high. If it’s a natural mage, it’s still pretty high.
And realistically speaking, in a time of relative peace, what’s the odds of it being a rogue mage of registered power level running around? Even if there are hundreds of them, he hadn’t seen any indication that Rovak was one of them.
Now there is a decent chance he started to suspect it was a Warmage he was looking at, but the time your eye-to-eye with them, shooting is really still your best realistic option.
If we think about the rest of Rovak’s squad we’ve seen (who seem like a fairly high tier – if cocky – group of black market mercenaries), shooting any of them besides Rovak would work fine (well, besides the ones with swords maybe, but they’d be a little more recognizable to the RMF agent by their outfit…).
I think it’s worth noting that Palindra (and Central for that matter) are considerably more dangerous that our modern world. It hasn’t stagnated to the relative peace of the modern era, in part because magic prevents the level of security most modern nations have. Though I suppose that’s a topic for another time.
Increasing the lethality of your world actually changes a LOT. In our modern world, since death is so much more rare, the general accepted philosophy is basically “defense before offense” where waiting out an enemy till you can get a sure kill means that both parties are much more likely to walk away alive. While mages would have the short term advantage (within the first few minutes or so) if this philosophy were employed, because they could prepare their spells, non-mages would almost always have the long-term advantage (after 20-30 minutes or an hour), because of greater numbers and resources and possible vantage points and such. Both sides benefit due to lower lethality, either side can pull out and/or surrender just before things get lethal, and the predictability of most encounters leads to much lower costs over all areas. But, of course, this assumes that both sides are focusing first on defense rather than offense.
Think “Prisoner’s Dilema”. Both sides benefit by “working together” to keep things safe but if one side decides to be crazy while the other is safe they bulldoze over their safe opponent. And if neither side decides to be safe, M.A.D. starts popping up way more than any sane individual would prefer.
In the case where lethality is high and life expectancy is comparatively low, “shoot first and ask questions later” is actually the preferred tactic. You never retreat because that would be giving ground, basically giving up the ability to make shots at your opponent while allowing your opponent free reign to act and strike at their leisure without even having to take a shot to earn that opening. Think about it like a game of chess: if both sides trade and loose one of the same piece from the board than which side wins? Generally the side with more peaces left wins, unless the favorable board position by the side with less numbers overcomes that inequality. At the very least the trade forces both sides into a formulaic action that prevents other actions in the moment. But if one side backs off rather than making a trade then the other side gains ground and forces the first side into loosing a move.
The major offshoot of this, however, is that this is never restricted to only the military and law enforcement sectors. Nowhere is safe when protecting safety is a weakness that the opponent can exploit. Large gathering places like malls and sports arenas regularly become targets as the additional people, at the very least, serve as meat-shields or decoys for the less scrupulous. When “life is cheep” the more outlandish and less conservative often come out on top due to how probability works when odds of the “good outcome” are low. Explained simply conservative choices tend to narrow the range of possibilities, but when average is bad that means less opportunities to “win”; but the more inconsistent a choice is in terms of outcome the more likely for an unlikely “win” to come up when otherwise that might be impossible.
In terms of world building it makes for a setting with many more interesting characters putting themselves into more exciting scenarios (which explains why the post-apocalyptic, wild-west, untamed lands, etc. settings are so popular) but it comes at the cost of distancing the setting from our real world experience of reality. It also means that you need more characters to cycle through because characters or their close associates often die and you need your “red shirts” to ensure that the setting remains lethal without too often loosing the people that keep your audience attached to the show.
why does noone listen to the mage? i mean yeah he rambles on about stuff but…
Rovak wonders the same thing all the time. I mean, just because you occasionally blow some people up doesn’t mean everyone has to be so violent and jumpy. Sit down, relax, have some tea (or ice cream). Then kill each other, like civilized people.
Well, that seems to have been a sub-optimal choice of action. “Oh, crap” level infinite!
Kokato appears to be quite the heavy sleeper. Did F5, um, assist him in this?
I don’t think Rovak was seriously suggesting narcolepsy as the reason that he was sleeping, at least… 😛
panel 2: “this is actually a giant MISUNDERSTANDING.”
Fixed, thanks! 🙂