The battle of Cannae was Romes biggest defeat in all its history where they lost basically its entire army. And they had ~50% more troops than Hannibal did. To this day military strategists still try to use the same tactic.
@Toph Yeah, that's not even made up. Lots of young people make do as snake oil salesman. Step 1. be hot. Step 2. maintain your physique with what's called "being in your early 20s". Step 3. claim some slop is what made you hot. Step 4. profit.
Going back to the immortality - a surefire way to make sure nobody finds out is to have a detailed explanation. Doesn't need to be real, just talk about healthy food, fibers, maybe toss in some essential oils and such. I assure you, that anybody IRL who starts going on about these, isn't really listened to. People would just politely wait for a gap in the conversation and either leave or change the topic.
@Dmyt I mean, I don't even know many people who have been asked or even asked something like "How are you so strong and/or beautiful?!" I've been asked how I got so tall (I was 1.85m / 6 f when I was 14 years old) but that's not really answerable. Nor, do I think anybody expected a serious answer.
1. People generally don't actually know why they're in good health. The world's oldest people attribute their longevity to all sorts of things - a spoonful of olive oil every night before bed, a raw egg every morning after waking up, etc. Diet culture and health fads are plenty full of intimidating jargon that collapses on closer inspection. She just mumbles something about omega-3 when asked.
1. Dazzle camouflage. It's where you don't attempt to hide something but misdirect. Dazzle camouflage has been used to distort dimensions of an object or make it hard to figure out where a vehicle is heading (by making it seem the course is slightly off). Both of these are usually so the enemy will see the thing but draw wrong conclusions. WW2 ships used dazzle camouflage to avoid being hit by submarines (they'd calculate the wrong shot).
At any rate, the light mage can tap into that. They can misdirect people by giving them the wrong visual information. Like offsetting where they are or making it seem they are actually a star or another heavenly object.
I got a biopunk nation with widespread life extension procedures. There's a unique phenomenon after someone undertakes this procedure: they get locked into a specific, 'age' appearance unconnected to their age when they took the life extension. So you get a situation of a 100 year old looking like she's 20 after the procedure while a 20 year old looks like she's in her 50s.
It's not a matter of procedure quality as even the most privileged, which has access to the best doctors, are still afflicted by the same problem of mismatched actual age and superficial appearance. From a story perspective, this is my visual metaphor for traditional and progressive immortals. From an in-universe perspective, why does this phenomenon happen?
@MontyWild Why not make the drug producer codependent on some other creature? Like the wasps @Toph mentions and somehow make it so that the snail relies on said wasps to live?
@Mary @MontyWild Examples would be the American Hivemind having Titles like the Unchained Eagle, the Star-Spangled Sovereign, the Torchbearing Gunslinger, etc. The Chinese Hivemind has the Red Dragon, the Emperor of Ten Thousand Years, etc.
To echo Mary, a creature with wings on its ankles is going to strain credulity flying whilst oriented horizontally. Find the centre of mass of the creature and stick the wings somewhere near it - above if you want more upright flight, below if you want them to fly head-down (which would also look weird).
I guess it depends on how bloody you want the revolution to be. Does the hivemind treat its members as disposable pawns and doesn't mind if half of them die? Then you can do a lot of damage with a handful of suicidal attacks. If it wants its members to stay safe and above board, then it'll need a much larger number of them.
Sounds good! To me, the idea is sound, but it's weakened a bit by naming them "children" - they don't seem very childlike to me. I'm imagining it like Munchkin Land and the munchkins are adults, they're just short.
Hmm. In my country, presidents are elected for a term of 5 years, and they need to have a long political career before that. And there's still the argument to be made that that's too short, that politicians don't care about any project that'll take more than a decade to finish because their party won't be in power by then.
@192927376337929292283737373773 It's not uncommon in other places to number your messages, so they know how much they'd need to read. E.g., popular in Twitter X or Imgur comments. For the latter specifically it does have a benefit, since you'd also nest the comment under each other. Gives people a taste of how much they need to expand the thread. Not very necessary in chat but not really harmful, either.
@Dmyt 1. Obvious reason: cheaper. 2. people who suffer from nightmares would welcome just a general non-lucid dream instead of the normal dreams they have.
