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Re: There should be an Effulgence thread

Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2015 5:31 pm
by Alicorn
Here is all I've got:

Pyth (Kappabeta): you can narratively provide the answer to that question, or just give it to me. XD
Alicorn: well
Alicorn: he will feel like he's got a few big holes in him
Alicorn: but this can be managed, like chronic pain.
Alicorn: or like depression.
Alicorn: and few-big-holes is a long shot better than through-the-shredder of No Imprint AAAAAAAH.
Pyth (Kappabeta): aha.
Pyth (Kappabeta): okay.
Alicorn: It will *sharply reduce* his ability to tolerate alone time, for values of "alone" meaning "without Libby" and "without anybody" both.
Pyth (Kappabeta): aha.
Pyth (Kappabeta): do you have a tag to put there, or should i edit and continue?
Alicorn: I have nothing to put there.
Pyth (Kappabeta): also, the next question is: if she uses a coin to patch this problem, will it work?
Alicorn: I'm going to rule that they can treat the symptoms but not the root issue.
Alicorn: So it'll be a regular expenditure.
Pyth (Kappabeta): how do you mean?
Pyth (Kappabeta): ...also, will having kids help? XD
Alicorn: He'll be on a regimen of, like a pentagon every other day to be decently comfortable; it's too fundamental to him being a werewolf that not having a pack is a Bad Thing for that to be just fixable outright.
Alicorn: having kids will only help if and when they activate.
Alicorn: activation is wishable, though, you don't need an actual vampire.
Pyth (Kappabeta): XD
Alicorn: they do have to be old enough.
Pyth (Kappabeta): ...is werewolfness wishable?
Pyth (Kappabeta): Could Libby hex someone wolfified?
Alicorn: …Actually, given the Quileute origin story, I'm going to rule yes!
Alicorn: You can wolf somebody with a hex.
Pyth (Kappabeta): because i just had a brilliant idea.
Pyth (Kappabeta): the brilliant idea is, make Chris a werewolf.
Alicorn: hahahaha
Alicorn: that is awesome

Re: There should be an Effulgence thread

Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 11:19 pm
by DanielH
In the Lost Pen arc (and presumably the original Dark Knight movies, but I don’t know those), Bane kills somebody who claims to be the only one who can disable the nuke. Would a triangle (if there were any of those in the universe) be able to do it? I can see it going either way: it can turn most devices off, but the nuke is complicated enough that it might require a square (I can’t see a square not doing it, though).

Re: There should be an Effulgence thread

Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 11:22 pm
by Kappa
A square might only be able to safely disable the nuke if you knew how to disable the nuke. Otherwise, what exactly are you turning off? Do you know what state the device is in and what state you want it to be in instead? Do you know what things might go wrong if your wish is underspecified and how you can avoid those things? It is very important to get all of that just right.

Re: There should be an Effulgence thread

Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 11:37 pm
by DanielH
Yes, I know what things can go wrong: all of the city could effectively disappear. But I can think of a few wishes that would probably help or at least not make anything worse.

I suppose I am making assumptions about what squares can do with some of my scenarios, though. Can squares directly vanish material like they can conjure it, or can they transmute one material into another? I’d be surprised if a square couldn’t turn lead into gold (or, as is relevant in this case, plutonium to lead). If so, in just the few minutes I’ve been thinking about it, I’ve come up with three ways to help; if not, only one.

The one is to fill all the parts of the bomb as possible with a radiation shield (which, based on my extremely limited knowledge of nukes, would probably not actually help but would almost certainly not make anything worse; a different sort of barrier probably could help but I don’t know what sort). The others are to vanish the entire bomb or just the radioactive material in it, or to transmute the bomb/radioactive material into lead. Those would both be safe to try even if they didn’t work.

Two squares could definitely do it: one to make me an expert in nukes, the second to disable it. There I’d expect a square and a triangle to be enough.

EDIT: Upon further research, only vanishing/transmuting the radioactive material might not work for all nukes. Or it might. I’m not a nuclear physicist or a nuclear bomb engineer. Obviously transmuting or vanishing the entire bomb would work. In any case, it seems unlikely to make things worse.

EDIT 2: Even further research shows that, although the main energy of fusion bombs comes from the stable element deuterium, they do use fission triggers which require radioactive materials.

Re: There should be an Effulgence thread

Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 11:47 pm
by Alicorn
I tend to assume that squares can indeed banish things like they can conjure it and that a square could just make the nuke cease to exist. (They cannot transmute, nor banish and conjure in the same wish, so you'll need a pentagon if you want to turn it into a bunny.) Kappa may differ on this subject and I don't think anything crucial hinges on it.

Re: There should be an Effulgence thread

Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 9:03 am
by Kappa
"Vanish the entire object" would be a functional solution. Unless the visible object was not the threat, but in that case turning it into a bunny wouldn't help either, except in the sense that most reasonable people will decide not to fuck with you after they have seen you turn a supposed nuclear device into a bunny.

I'm also not sure I'd trust squares to turn you into enough of an expert to defuse this particular bomb without, again, Very Specific Wishing, because apparently the recently deceased physicist thought he was the only person in the world with the relevant specialized knowledge. This suggests that your average nuclear physicist with nothing to go on but the appearance of the outer casing might not be familiar with all the intricacies. Vanishing the entire object seems like the way to go.

Re: There should be an Effulgence thread

Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 5:32 am
by Bluelantern
A square will vanish more than it can create?
Cars take a square?

Re: There should be an Effulgence thread

Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 11:11 am
by Alicorn
I don't see why you couldn't create or vanish a nonmagical car with a square.

Re: There should be an Effulgence thread

Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 1:03 pm
by DanielH
I thought a square would be too big for a square to create; I expect Bluelantern was having similar thoughts. I guess that “medium-sized” (used as a description for square effect size) is bigger than expected.

What is the approximate upper range? Could you conjure/destroy a house (assuming you had a hole for the foundation already)? A small apartment building? A skyscraper? A village? A city? A small island? A continent? The range of a square is a bit larger than radius of the Earth, but given that terraforming Mars took three stars and there was already a base to start with I’m guessing a square could not conjure or destroy a planet.

Re: There should be an Effulgence thread

Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 1:15 pm
by Bluelantern
DanielH wrote:I thought a square would be too big for a square to create; I expect Bluelantern was having similar thoughts. I guess that “medium-sized” (used as a description for square effect size) is bigger than expected.

What is the approximate upper range? Could you conjure/destroy a house (assuming you had a hole for the foundation already)? A small apartment building? A skyscraper? A village? A city? A small island? A continent? The range of a square is a bit larger than radius of the Earth, but given that terraforming Mars took three stars and there was already a base to start with I’m guessing a square could not conjure or destroy a planet.
yeah, I was thinking that "a house" sounded like a pentagon work, and normal bike would be a square, but I wasn't sure where you could place a car in that scale.