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01:28
hey there @James
01:56
hey there @Tero
02:07
@Shalvenay hey, how goes it?
OK here, as for you?
Pretty good. It wasn't crazy cold today.
@Green yeah, the weather is improving here too
@Shalvenay Oh, hello to you, too! <:D
how're things going?
02:17
Pretty well!
good to hear
03:03
hey there @sphennings
 
7 hours later…
09:36
Have you folks seen or interacted with the following two question? I think they are very useful but have gotten too little traffic: https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3624/how-to-write-the-perfect-question https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/checklist-for-the-perfect-answer-idea-refinement - If you think they are useful too I would like to push the idea of somehow linking them so more users can profit of the accumulated knowledge in them.
Be that featuring them on the meta or maybe even consider linking them in the help/tour (idk what is possible)
4
 
3 hours later…
12:08
@Secespitus thanks for the typo fixing
@dot_Sp0T np
 
3 hours later…
14:41
I think I'm going to start a series on which books to use to restart civilization.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Farmer%27s_Almanac Needs to be one of the books at the top of that list.
14:58
@Green very interesting, will you include the foundation rtilogy? :D
@dot_Sp0T Grey's Anatomy I presume?
@Green You should check out this project then opensourceecology.org/gvcs
@Shalvenay I feel like we high five in passing basically every day :)
15:19
@sphennings I saw that one yesterday. Very very cool.
@James yuck
@dot_Sp0T Grey's Anatomy would be incredibly helpful with jump starting medicine again.
@Green really..?
Should just print Wikipedia.
@dot_Sp0T The book, not the TV show.
@FerretCivilization True but that's obvious and not very fun to reason about.
15:24
@Green there's a book? Oh dear, I was assuming you talked about the TV series that even messes up geography
@dot_Sp0T Ah, what a difference a single letter makes. Grey's Anatomy is the show. Gray's Anatomy is the book. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray%27s_Anatomy
Gray's Anatomy is an English-language textbook of human anatomy originally written by Henry Gray and illustrated by Henry Vandyke Carter. Earlier editions were called Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical and Gray's Anatomy: Descriptive and Applied, but the book's name is commonly shortened to, and later editions are titled, Gray's Anatomy. The book is widely regarded as an extremely influential work on the subject, and has continued to be revised and republished from its initial publication in 1858 to the present day. The latest edition of the book, the 41st, was published in September 2015. ��2...
Not "bad life choices, the series"
3
@AndyD273 :smirk:
@Green Not fun to reason about, I imagine someone looking through to sample a book about books, seeing Wikipedia, going 'What?' Then show this picture, img.labnol.org/di/wikipedia-book.jpg which is not even close to it all, ha.
The wife likes that show... I think it's one half step up from a soap opera. The only good thing is that when they dislike an actor so much that they hit their character with a bus, you know they aren't going to come back later.
15:30
Scrubs is way better
@dot_Sp0T Scrubs is a comedy, not a soap opera. I like it better out of hand for that reason alone.
Oh, the other good thing about that show is that I can go play video games when it comes on. She got tired of how much cringing I was doing every time someone that was supposed to be smart decided to do something super unprofessional and stupid.
@Green Scrubs is a drama :/
@AndyD273 The same thing happens at my house. When my wife watched American Horror Story, I get to go off on my own.
@dot_Sp0T Felt like a comedy to me.
@Green classic drama, as defined by the greeks more than the modern definition. There's lots of slapstick and comedy in there, but at least as much drama and sadness. All complemented by accurate medical jargon and procedures - that last part was told to me by someone in medschool after I asked them if they'd seen scrubs and they binged it..
15:53
@Green @AndyD273 Ah TV. Saving marriages since 1950-something.
16:06
@James Heh. I'm not quite sure that's how that works, but I do appreciate the chance to do stuff, so I won't argue.
Would having both water storage in the cells and a water-storing organ in a creature be too redundant? I can't decide...
@Pleiades No. Camels do this all the time.
A camel is an even-toed ungulate in the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The three surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; the Bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia; and the critically endangered wild Bactrian camel (C. ferus) that has limited populations in remote areas of northwest China and Mongolia. Bactrian camels take their name from the historical Bactria region of Central Asia. Additionally one other species...
@Green the hump of a camel is just a large deposit of fat. There isn't a dedicated water storage organ,
`Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates.
When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in wa
16:15
@sphennings I think my point still stands. In cases of extreme water scarcity, a creature that can store water in its cells and in a specialized organ will outcompete a creature in the same environment that only stores water in its cells.
@Green Possibly. Camels aren't an example of this though.
Also, it could act like a mobile canteen, if it could also be "milked" to get the water out
Further, cellular storage will only get you so far. In times of plenty, you'll have tons bloated cells. I suspect that there are some cells that require specific geometries to function optimally. Bloating may push them out of optimal shape.
I wouldn't want my brain to swell just because I've had plenty to drink today.
Unlike other mammals, camels' red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water
@Green Animal cells can't stretch much without rupturing.
16:19
@Bellerophon that's further evidence that storing water in a specialized organ is superior to storing it in the cells itself.
Alright! Let the Three Books series begin!
0
Q: Only Three Books: Restarting Chemistry after civilization collapses

GreenGlobal famines have dropped the population from 7 billion people to 500 million. We aren't sure how much further the population will drop till it stabilizes. In an effort to save future civilization some time, you want to provide some information to kick start civilization's regrowth. You have...

@AndyD273 thanks for the list of topics the other day. It was instrumental in getting me started on this series.
Oh, this is going to be gooooood. Let me know if you do one on physics.
@HDE226868 That's probably going to be tomorrow's question.
I think the political philosophy question is going to be the most interesting.
@Green Good. I think I know two of three for physics.
@HDE226868 I look forward to your answer.
If anyone has better or clearer selection criteria, I'd be happy to have them.
16:39
@Pleiades You could have an organ that fills the storage system...
16:58
@Green are you intending to ask these questions in a row?
@dot_Sp0T In quick succession, yes. Probably not every day, but a two or three times a week till I run out of subjects.
@Green what you got so far?
@dot_Sp0T I've started with Chemistry. I know I want one on political philosophy, physics, astronomy, biology, medicine, metallurgy. That's just what I can think off of the top of my head.
@Green Oh, there's a law book I remember reading about, but I'm having trouble coming up with the name...
@AndyD273 Let me know if you remember it.
17:09
@Green I think I finally figured out how to ask a question about my magic system
@Green what about agriculture?
@James Oh yeah? Do tell.
@dot_Sp0T also on the list.
@Green, how about computing? Although a lot of books on the subject would probably include stuff about programming languages, which would be obsolete by the time it's needed.
material sciences, botany, computer science
@Gryphon why should programming languages be obsolete? Assume that there are computer systems in use before the apocalypse - these are the most likely to be in use after apocalypse. Also there's plenty of subjects that are language independent and can be formulated in mathematical and logic terms
@Gryphon I think a book on the Church-Turing would be a good start. Programming languages on their own won't be useful. Perhaps a book on language design might.
17:15
@Green So in short you have to use life energy to alter the physical world. You can alter the physical world in any way that can be done by mundane means. For example if you had the knowledge you could pull all the carbon out of a human which would take little to no effort. So I decided that magic will burn ATP first and then move on to fat, which will only provide say...10% of its potential energy since it is being released quickly.
@dot_Sp0T I had assumed that this was intended to be post-apocalypse, therefore there are unlikely to be surviving computers. New programming languages would likely be invented after the reinvention of computers, but any information about old ones would be largely pointless, as it is probably easier to invent a new one than to try to piece together an old one.
So the question would be how do you condition yourself and prep for situations to maximize your power
@James 1 gram of fat gets you 9 calories. Carbs and protein get you 4 calories. Alcohol gets you 7 calories.
and are there any tricks utilizing magic that would make you more potent?
@James Magicians would be huge fatties!
17:17
@Green I thought of this as well hence only getting 10% of the potential power from fat.
instead of 9 cal of power you get .9
@James what happens to the other 8.1 calories of energy? Is that just waste heat?
@Green yep
since it is not designed for rapid use there is a lot of waste
@Green I guess that would explain the traditional trope of magicians being extremely ineffective physically. They're all just really fat.
@James I'd want to know why it's so inefficient. Any magician who can figure out how to make the process more efficient will just clobber everyone else.
@Green is that's the way it works because I don't want lard laden magicians sufficient
17:22
@James Consume a large amount of booze, soda, and processed food just before going into a wizard battle... Kind of like a long gaming session.
"A fifth of vodka, 200 proof... that's good for a half dozen fire balls"
@James I don't think that will have the effect you want. A magician should be smart enough to min-max his power. If thin magicians can only do a little bit of magic because they have small fat reserves, then all magicians will maximize their fat stores.
Any association you make between fat stores and power available will influence the appearance and habits of the magicians.
"Look at him, he must be a very powerful wizard. He's almost spherical!"
3
@AndyD273 Bingo.
BUT! If that extra 8.1 is released purely as heat, then a super fat wizard is going to have trouble cooling down after performing a spell. Thus, there's an optimal fatness where both heat dumping ability and energy reserves are optimized.
Maybe magicians are pear shaped instead of apples shaped so the waste heat just makes their posterior warm instead of baking their vital organs.
ooo, So a lot of overweight, scantily clad wizards... Sounds horrible.
2
@AndyD273 Another reason why absolutely no one wants to keep their company.
Wait! They can make super heated poops that will help them dump heat quickly! Magicians will literally be hot sh**!!!!
17:32
user image
2
@AndyD273 Yes and probably creepier.
That is the most terrifying magician I have ever seen. And he's not even doing any magic yet.
Probably why wizards wear robes... really easy to take off
@Gryphon I don't know if it would be easier to invent a new computer instead of getting old computers to work :/
How many bones does he have? Like Good Game joints.
17:36
@dot_Sp0T I could be incorrect, but from the chemistry question, I had assumed that these books would be discovered hundreds or thousands of years later after essentially all modern technology had decayed beyond repair. If I am incorrect in that assumption, I withdraw my statement about programming languages.
@Green - clarification?
@Gryphon The question doesn't say how far in the future these books will be found. A large part of the question is intended to inspire people who come after us to go build something new. Sure, all our computers are gone but the math and physics will still hold. Just knowing that such a thing could be built is good enough.
@dot_Sp0T Does that help?
@Green So, roughly how much of our stuff is left?
Like, are we talking 20 years, 200 years, 2,000 years?
@Gryphon We don't know how much will be left. I'm assuming that nothing of ours will be left except these books. I imagined that some cleric or archaeologist finds these books, recognizes them as valuable and sets about trying to figure out what they are and what they say.
@Green it's a start :D
17:41
@Green So, nothing else is really left. @dot_Sp0T, I rest my case. I don't think examples of old programming languages will really help when the implementations don't exist anymore.
@Green so easiest would be to assume a 'pristine' world with a few million homo sapiens and a library of three books per subject
If none of our language survives then these books won't be much use to anyone....but we don't know how much of our language will survive.
@dot_Sp0T And some degree of a modern human language has survived to make reading the books possible.
@Green actually that's wrong; assuming we have a dozen subjects on which each three books have been preserved we have 12 * 3 = 36 books, this should be more than enough to make sense of the system used to fill these things with lines and symbols
@dot_Sp0T Are you sure?
@Green How do you think people were able to start deciphering hieroglyphs?
17:45
We don't know what language they'll be using and it may be a grand conglomeration of lots of modern languages plus who knows how many years of language mutation.
@dot_Sp0T Because there was a rosetta stone that mapped egyptian to greek. Without that translation from unknown (egyptian) to known (greek), the hieroglyphs would be incredibly difficult or impossible to decipher.
okay yeah, the rosetta stone has ancient greek in it. But these books will have math/logic in them which is in itself a universal language that the culture likely understands
You have books on math/logic with graphs and other visualizations of concepts, described in language form as well; this will be your rosetta stone
@dot_Sp0T As long as the symbols still mean something. What does $\int_{a}^{b} x^2 dx$ if you don't have the background of calculus or summations?
It starts off with symbols for numbers being mapped to amounts
@dot_Sp0T :) I think we could argue this one back and forth for a long time.
I would assume that three books of mathematics include at least one book on basic arithmetics?
like three chemistry books will contain at least one book on the basics of experiments, etc.
And basic arithmetic books contain images such as of hands and fingers to teach counting to ten. Or 4 coconuts on the left side, a minus symbol, 3 coconuts on the right side, an equals symbol, one coconut after that
under that you have 4 - 3 = 1
@Green know what I mean..?
17:56
@dot_Sp0T Possibly. Depends on which books we pick.
0
A: Sandbox for Proposed Questions

Shard martinCan the ability to determine the sex of your child lead to an imbalanced ratio between boys and girls? Magic in this world allows an individual to determine the sex of their child while it is still developing. There are a number of steps to this ritual. Gestation must be paused during the third ...

@Green I would be genuinely disappointed in the collective WB mind if that answer would not come up or be downvoted
@dot_Sp0T I've added basic literacy to the list.
@Green you sneaky person you
@dot_Sp0T Always come at them sideways. Frontal assaults are for suckers!
2
18:01
@Green what list?
@dot_Sp0T The list of subjects for the Three Books series.
@Green ah, like that
That's even better than having to find out language from Math
@dot_Sp0T It's basically the movie, Arrival.
@dot_Sp0T Pedagogy is on the list now too!
18:05
Include complete works of Terry Pratchett. That should keep us in toilet paper and firelighters for a while.
2
@Green what have I done
@dot_Sp0T Created a monster....
Or you've just got a better insight into the monster I already am :)
@Green you're terrible, but you like chocolate so you are a good terrible person
3
@dot_Sp0T On that subject, if you can get a hold of a chocolate brand called TCHO, do it. It's excellent chocolate.
Chocolate=everything is forgiven.
18:10
@Green I'm always ready to receive little gifts per mail ;)
@Gryphon well not all chocolate obviously
@dot_Sp0T Heh :)
@dot_Sp0T Hershey's is garbage.
@Green I mean, it's chocolate, so it's better than nothing, but it's literally the worst kind of chocolate that exists.
@dot_Sp0T Do you know anyone who doesn't like chocolate?
@Gryphon dogs
@Gryphon I've met some women who said they didn't like chocolate. An old girlfriend of mine, didn't like it.
@Green that's why you dumped her, right?
18:21
@dot_Sp0T That is a very long story that I'm not going to put into chat.
@dot_Sp0T But, sure, we broke up over differences of opinion on chocolate.
@dot_Sp0T When I say "anyone", I generally mean that to include people, not canines.
No bother, it's always a long story with love in my experience. Even if it only lasts briefly :/
@Gryphon for some people canines are more of a person than the people around them
18:39
@dot_Sp0T how far do you have to walk from your front door to find a good bakery?
@Green hmmm, that's a hard question to answer as there are two biasing factors playing into the answer: 1) The bakery in our village is run by the father of a schoolfriend, and is also the only in the village - so it's where I'm getting bread from for the last 20 years or so; 2) I've never invested much time in finding good bread I must admit, it's one of the many shortcomings in my life so far - maybe I've been blessed with a good bakery by mere accident... ;; so ~400m (around 1300 feet)
@dot_Sp0T Very nice! I wish I had one that close. It's a 15 minute walk to get good bread but a 15 minute subway ride to get to a good bakery.
I gotta say I really enjoy making bread myself, alas I am as terrible at making bread as I am good at making cakes in the meanwhile
@Green that is a shame... But the last time I was in the US I couldn't find any good bread at all (yet that was 10 years ago)
18:57
@dot_Sp0T Good bread is starting to come back. Americans are getting fed up with garbage balloon bread and are looking for legit, good bread. It's easier to find good bread in the cities, obviously.
I find it fascinating how food is generally coming back everywhere. Thinking about those 80s/90s where TV dinners and all these premade meals where so fab
@dot_Sp0T True. Have you ever heard of Modernist Cuisine?
@Green not until now, what's it about?
@dot_Sp0T It's a five volume, $500 set of books on the best cooking I've ever seen.
I don't have that kind of money but it's fantastic!~
Dang that is expensive
I mean, damn expensive. 500 bucks for 5 volumes? that is, much
19:07
@dot_Sp0T The photography is excellent. More than anything, these books describe a radically different (better) approach to cooking than I've ever seen before.
They find clean, precise ways to achieve results that usually make a huge mess or are highly error prone.
I'll agree $500 isn't for everyone but I'd like to own the set one day.
I haven't but I have a friend who probably has.
The Larousse of beaking bread
great book :D
@dot_Sp0T I haven't.
If you are interested in beaking bread regularly I recommend the Larousse one. Lot's of details about how you knead dough, how doughs work, etc.
19:12
Is smoked meat something that Europeans do regularly?
@Green uhm, define Europeans :/
I mean, first, unless talking to people from the US I don't think most would refer to themselves as Europeans. They'd use the specific country they're from - e.g. I am Swiss. @Secespitus is German. bilbo_penguin is French iirc. And So forth.
@dot_Sp0T Someone who lives on the continent of Europe.
There are vast differences over hundreds of years which are only recently getting intermixed
@dot_Sp0T Ah, I see what you mean. My apologies.
@Green in that case the answer is 'it depends' I'd say. Smoking and drying meats to preserve them is something that seems to be done almost universally though I think; there's traditional smoked/dried meats in each and every country and region I dare wager
But you buy them in supermarkets and they're industrially made
19:20
@dot_Sp0T Ah, that's less fun then.
There's butchers that make them themselves naturally, as they make sausages which have much tradition around here and again over most of the Europe
But what meats are used, what spices are used highly differs between individual countries and even regions.
Can only speak for my surroundings/country; but here mostly you did meat yourself only if you are/were a butcher or come/came from a farmer family
It appears it was wise to bring the question here first.
Never smoked meats myself but I helped out an uncle who's a butcher :)
@dot_Sp0T Smoked meats smell amazing. Like, amazing.
@James which question?
fat wizards...
19:27
I'd say smoking/preparing your own meats, etc. is most likely more prominent in eastern europe, say poland, hungary, croazia, etc.
@James Bring your questions here any time. I'll be happy to fatten them up for you. :)
@Green So I am thinking I still want fat to be useful but I like the idea of using heat to limit how much is valuable.
@James Is there the potential to borrow energy from someone else's fat reserves?
...if so, it's the ultimate fat burning approach. Fat people, who don't want to be fat, gather around the wizard and have their fat burned for them.
@Green and yes they are. Sadly I do not think I could send you any per post due to import restrictions
@Green The Wizard and his Glutton
@dot_Sp0T Yeah. Importing meat is a huge problem.
@dot_Sp0T Bingo@!
19:31
@Green but if you ever come to Switzerland you'll be invited to join me for dinner with lots of meat and cheese and bread and fruit and nuts and so forth
@dot_Sp0T Hooray! Same if you make it to Boston!
@Green Shipping out to Boston YEAHEAHEAH
@Green ...I'm torn on that.
story wise I think I have to say yes, that is how the whole giant crater thing happened.
@James you were able to speak German?
@James There's ways to limit that too. The ability to gather fat from someone else depends on how close they are to you. Inverse square law <or some junk>.
19:36
@Green Makes sense.
A wizard in a tallow factory would be god-like.
Though thats almost exactly how it works in Eragon.
@Green It would have to be living material.
@James oh god, imagine living tallow farmtories
@James Okay, a slaughterhouse then.
Maybe the first question should be, what biological equivalent makes the most sense for powering spells?
19:38
@James Why?
@Green I want it to feed on the caster's life...not their biology directly...but...hrmm..
not sure if I can do one without the other.
lipids seem a solid energy source
@James I don't know how you'd do that either. The molecules that make up a person aren't alive.
@Green What if I make it an equivalence...so you have an amount of magical power = to the power in the body and going over has ill effects...hrm...
I think I started thinking about this to deeply.
@James As is usually the case around here :)
@James At that level of abstraction, sure it would work. Getting into the nitty gritty....gets ugly.
What if you had someone who's fat didn't work like usual. He could be as big as a house but all his fat wouldn't power even a tiny tiny fireball?
19:58
@Green I am not even sure where to begin to answer that question.
(Another) What if...what if you went with the amount of glycogen stored in the muscles and liver? It's less energy available than body fat. However, the more interesting limit is on how big your muscles are.
Anyone can get super fat. You just have to eat. But, it takes effort to build significant muscle.
@Green what about atp being the main source?
or perhaps only source?
oh ffs, why do websites always have to implement custom printing dialogues for recipes and such? They create horrible sh*t in most cases while just letting the browser do its thing would be way better....
@Green So I got a hold of my dad to get the name of the law book I was trying to remember:
The Commentaries on the Laws of England are an influential 18th-century treatise on the common law of England by Sir William Blackstone, originally published by the Clarendon Press at Oxford, 1765–1769. The work is divided into four volumes, on the rights of persons, the rights of things, of private wrongs and of public wrongs. The Commentaries were long regarded as the leading work on the development of English law and played a role in the development of the American legal system. They were in fact the first methodical treatise on the common law suitable for a lay readership since at least the...
@James I don't know how much ATP is actually in muscles. It may not be very much. Glycogen stores are a more accessible number.
@James Also, ATP would be a proxy for any energy source, be that fats or carbs.
20:18
@Green I should have stopped thinking about it this morning...
I was so sure I had it figured out...
@James Don't worry. That's why we have these discussions.
20:48
@James is this question about the how to power that giant explosion question you had a year or so ago?
@Green Only ~15 seconds worth.
You can just about do a 100 meter sprint on ATP stores. After that you need to start respiring.
@Bellerophon ah, that's right. ATP fuels anaerobic activity.
I used to power my spells by ATP like you, then I took an arrow to the knee
21:16
@Green In part, that event basically killed all living things in a not insubstantial radius to power itself (including the unwitting casters) so I am trying to get a good understanding of the underlying principles of the magic system...at this rate I may just end up saying "its magic so it did what I said it did" and be done with it...but that makes me itchy.
@James is there a reason you do not want to use body-fats as an energy source for continuous or complex casting?
@dot_Sp0T The idea of all the casters being super fat does not appeal to me...
I suppose I could make a rule that says "you can only do low level and over time spells" with fat resources but that seems just as arbitrary as "because I said so"
@James what can your magic do and whatnot? Maybe being super-fat would be counterintuitive for the average mage as they still need to be able to fight hand-to-hand or just do things such as travelling long distances, hunt, etc. Fat people have it hard moving around without making too much noise for example, also fat people start sweating very quickly when moving which means emitting smells that prey can easily catch on
Have you ever read Reimond E. Feist's The Magician ? (If you have not and see yourself blessed iwth free time you should def read it)
Magic in my world is based on will and instinct...which is tricky. So if a mage raised a hand to block a blow or a sword a magical barrier could stop/deflect the attack without a need for conscious thought. This is the apex though, a weaker caster would rely on conscious effort and practice/study. Magic is also innate, and while learning can improve your skill it doesn't make a normal person a caster.
@James you might definitely profit from reading this book / these two books (depending on the version) then
But regarding the fats: You could simply approach it from the vector of metabolism. Fats are used for long-time energy storage, they take longer to break up. While eating an energy bar would release sugar into the blood on which a caster could draw when fighting?
Which would give validity to the only being able to do over-time spells from fat reserves
21:26
How much energy do spells take?
Anyone already seen the new Star Trek Discovery episode?
@Bellerophon As much energy as it would take to do them in a mundane manner, but with perfect efficiency, so lifting a big box would take the same effort minus the effort of balancing your self etc. so basically what it would take in a purely mathematical way.
So just base it on the bodies existing energy reserves with magic probably using liver glycogen. So casters would eat a lot but wouldn't be fat as they would burn most of it.
Imagine old egyptian casters: Scores of magicians that spent years building up fat reserves in order to erect pyramids over the process of one continuous week-long spell
"WAIT! We can't start the battle yet! We haven't had our orange slices!"
21:39
American WW2 Battleship casters, lean mean killing machines almost constantly consuming bowls of sugared oats while blasting shell after shell out of these huge turrets
If it was modern you'd just have a bunch of casters walking around with an IV of glucose in each arm.
...what're the odds they'd all end up diabetic?
@James oh that is even cooler
but I still like imagining a guy standing on the deck of anhuge battleship with empty bowls of oats around him and people bringing more while behind him shells blast off into the distance
"Bring me a batch of Strawberry flavoured ones!"
...how would endothermic reactions work? How would you go about pulling heat from a body?
"What, chocolate AGAIN?!"
@dot_Sp0T Yeah definitely going to stick with a medieval theme...that would get ridiculous.
...a lucky charms and coke smoothie.
21:43
@James it's almost as disgusting to think about as those raw-egg-white shakes
@dot_Sp0T I quite like an egg-white in my gin drinks.
It gives a gimlet more body and a smoother feel.
@sphennings I wouldn't have thought otherwise
@sphennings That's disgusting and you should feel bad about yourself.
3
I almost snorted!
:| =0
that's barf and a puddle for reference.
back later :D
21:47
@sphennings you just wrote taht to mock us, right? You're not doing it for reals, are you?
@James Is this heat from the caster or heat from other people?\
@James I do. Just not for eggwhites in drinks.
@Bellerophon So say you wanted to freeze someone to the point they died...or couldn't move, whichever comes first.
@sphennings ...I still think you should but fair enough.
22:02
What can the magic do? Just physical moving of things?
I guess reducing the pressure around someone would be the easiest way to cool them but I doubt it would be a quick process. Or maybe place a super-cool and very efficient conductor on the person. Or just reduce the vibration of atoms either in their body or in the surrounding air.
@Bellerophon No its pretty all encompassing. You could alter thoughts, enchant items (because what story isn't better with a sword that can start on fire) uh...fireballs, launch ice spikes, heal.
etc etc etc
basically it can't create something that violates physics. No time altering...unless I suppose you were powerful enough to stop the universe from moving...
So essentially magic allows you to reorder the physical work remotely...if that makes sense.
@James imagine the fat-reserves you'd need to build up!
@dot_Sp0T I was just wondering how much fat it would take to stop the universe for 1 second and the answer was disgusting.
@dot_Sp0T There's the creepier version of what I had...
22:16
@AndyD273 Meet the Spartans in case you wondered
Also I am off for today, need to continue reading Heinlein
@James You just need to cause the human to lose 24 million joules of energy.
Not sure what you do with all that energy.
@James (without looking up the question again) if memory serves, the explosion was a megatons event. Chemical bonds aren't going to be worth that much. You're going to need nuclear bond level energies to make that happen.

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