Magical Girl Home Base Quest
- Thread starter 7734
- Start date
- Original
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yeah.
We don't have the lab facilities to research a genuinely hazardous artifact safely. That's why I oppose the Kolobok thing. Don't get me wrong, magical healing is great, but we're working in a cave with a box of scraps here and we're not Tony Stark.
If a single high energy particle boops one of your molecules incorrectly, and that molecule just happens to be self-replicating DNA or a critical enzyme that makes more enzymes, you can get fucked up and cancerous because your body's continued function depends on a lot of very complex molecular machinery that is easy to fuck up.
If a magically animated plushy-golem gets a molecule booped incorrectly, it's just a plushy-golem with a misaligned molecule. The misalignment of that one molecule has minimal effects on the overall function of the plushy golem.
By the time you've dumped enough radiation into the plushy golem body that it's mechanically damaged, you've already zapped it with enough radiation that a human being under similar circumstances would be reduced to something the size, consistence, and appearance of a McDonald's hamburger patty.
Even getting the body irradiated enough to be a serious radiation hazard to others is much more difficult than actually getting a human sick. If you zap a teddy bear with enough radiation to make a human deathly ill, the teddy bear itself will not be a similarly lethal radiation hazard to others. Because much of the atomic changes caused by the radiation will not produce secondary radiation emitted by the bear, and even the secondary radiation that IS emitted will be emitted much more slowly over a very long period of time. It's like you're storing up X units of radiation in the bear in one hour, and then re-emitting it over a period of several years; you've inherently cut the threat level down by a LOT.
...
Based on intuition, there are certain kinds of things that should logically harm Jocelyn much more than they'd harm someone with a human body (such as a lit match)... but there are a lot of other things that just wouldn't harm her significantly (she could presumably crawl through a cloud of poison gas without being harmed, though her fabric might get soaked in the stuff and make her a toxin hazard).
The thing Jocelyn would have to watch out for is direct contamination with materials that are already themselves radioactive, not so much the threat of radiation exposure itself, unless radiation interacts strangely with the magic that animates her.
Radiation isn't like fire damage or anything. It fucks you up one atom at a time, and is therefore far more effective at fucking up living tissue (especially tissue that has active metabolism and cell division going on) than anything else.
We don't have the lab facilities to research a genuinely hazardous artifact safely. That's why I oppose the Kolobok thing. Don't get me wrong, magical healing is great, but we're working in a cave with a box of scraps here and we're not Tony Stark.
Does Jocelyn's spider body have biological processes such as metabolism and cell division? My impression is that it's basically some kind of plushy-golem-thing and lacks those things, hence the radiation resistance.
If a single high energy particle boops one of your molecules incorrectly, and that molecule just happens to be self-replicating DNA or a critical enzyme that makes more enzymes, you can get fucked up and cancerous because your body's continued function depends on a lot of very complex molecular machinery that is easy to fuck up.
If a magically animated plushy-golem gets a molecule booped incorrectly, it's just a plushy-golem with a misaligned molecule. The misalignment of that one molecule has minimal effects on the overall function of the plushy golem.
By the time you've dumped enough radiation into the plushy golem body that it's mechanically damaged, you've already zapped it with enough radiation that a human being under similar circumstances would be reduced to something the size, consistence, and appearance of a McDonald's hamburger patty.
Even getting the body irradiated enough to be a serious radiation hazard to others is much more difficult than actually getting a human sick. If you zap a teddy bear with enough radiation to make a human deathly ill, the teddy bear itself will not be a similarly lethal radiation hazard to others. Because much of the atomic changes caused by the radiation will not produce secondary radiation emitted by the bear, and even the secondary radiation that IS emitted will be emitted much more slowly over a very long period of time. It's like you're storing up X units of radiation in the bear in one hour, and then re-emitting it over a period of several years; you've inherently cut the threat level down by a LOT.
...
Based on intuition, there are certain kinds of things that should logically harm Jocelyn much more than they'd harm someone with a human body (such as a lit match)... but there are a lot of other things that just wouldn't harm her significantly (she could presumably crawl through a cloud of poison gas without being harmed, though her fabric might get soaked in the stuff and make her a toxin hazard).
The thing Jocelyn would have to watch out for is direct contamination with materials that are already themselves radioactive, not so much the threat of radiation exposure itself, unless radiation interacts strangely with the magic that animates her.
Radiation isn't like fire damage or anything. It fucks you up one atom at a time, and is therefore far more effective at fucking up living tissue (especially tissue that has active metabolism and cell division going on) than anything else.
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
Absolutely. Would have been on like a 1 or a 2, but yeah non-zero chance you would be doing ghetto shrapnel removal on yourself and/or lose a few weeks.
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
Is it possible to develop our workshop enough that we would have safe enough lab that researching in any way hazardous artifacts wouldn't have that risk? Or is that risk something that's always going to be there?
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Their
I don't feel like Type-Moon has much influence on this Quest, but there's a certain line from one of it's works that comes to mind:
"A Magus walks with death."
It might not be that Medicine Boy's workshop couldn't be improved to remove the risk, but that simply messing around with something that has that much conceptual weight is accepting risk in and of itself.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Well sure, though not all things that are hazardous are hazardous because they have conceptual weight. The Agent Orange comes to mind, and the radioactive healing artifact may be similar in that the radiation may be a purely mundane side-effect that we could block if only we knew how or had the right equipment.
[x] [WORK] Trinket
-[x] Level 3
[x] [GIRLS]: Partner the junior girls up with the senior magical girls; it'll probably increase their odds of survival.
-[x] Level 3
[x] [GIRLS]: Partner the junior girls up with the senior magical girls; it'll probably increase their odds of survival.
- Location
- The state of Paranoia
If it's important that Jocelyn be able to take damage from the radiation, one easy solution is to simply say that Medicine Boy was wrong and it actually is magical radiation. Just say that it sickens the soul or acts more like fire than like radiation or something.
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
The problem is the spider body is both a plush golem and Jocelyn's body at the same time, and to make that work there is a critical amount of Jocelyn's still-living tissue and general essence in said golem that's tied in there very tenuously. If it wasn't both her body and a golem, then her utility with the body would be far lower since she'd be fighting disaphorea 24/7 since the human mind does not do well with four extra limbs and six extra eyes.
The probablem is, radiation is a subset of [Light] which is related to [Chaos]. If this seems odd, remember light has a massive spectrum of energy states and varieties it can transition through, and needs to be sorted to get a specific type. Considering the amount of [Order] needed to get a golem to work, a little random noise in the operational magic quickly induces issues.
Incidentally, this is also why Witches are active at night: less noise to screw with their work.
This misses one of the minor themes of this work; that of ordinary wonder. Everything, inherently, is magic. On some level, everyone can perform magic.
Conversely, when magic takes an interest in something? Nobody is safe from that awesome might.
LostDeviljho
Flame Dragon Princess
- Location
- The glorious Pacific Northwest
- Pronouns
- Any
1 wand, plus three secondary bombs makes 4 girls equipped, which is four more than studying the radioactive thingummy will do.
It kind of sounds like firepower isn't really what's needed, though? I mean I was apparently wrong on two fairly significant assumptions on how the quest worked so I could be wrong on this too, but this seems like a character calling out that dakka isn't the limiting factor, at least for the moment.
Edit: Could just be a reflection of the good mission success rolls. Hmm.
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7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
You're, uh, looking at this kinda cockeyed. Look at how Rose describes how the hasturi are getting taken apart, and look at how many ways she describes versus number of permanent residents.
Good to know.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Well shiiiit, that's all you had to say!
[nods]
You are right and I was wrong.
M.S. in physics here and nah that makes perfect sense. Hazardous ionizing radiation is also usually the product of one of the most inherently random processes in nature, one that is by all appearances literally impossible to impose external control or even influence on. Chaos-subtype of light, thaumaturgically speaking. Yep yep yep.
Nah that makes sense. Radiation interferes with golems. Cosmic rays fuck up structured magical constructs. Gotcha.
Rose is a relatively experienced heavy hitter compared to most of the girls staying with us.
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
I thought that was made apparent in the update since (iirc) the golem was explicitly marked up with Jocelyn's blood and parts stitched with her hair. I know I rembered to throw in a chunk of sword since that's a major reinforcing connection, but yeah if the construct didn't have something to bring it animate and life with soul it wouldn't be a golem.
Incidentally, this is why traditional golems need the Name of God inscribed on their heads: it provides the soul (on loan) to make them go from 'moving' to 'self-animating'.
Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
Okay, I have been scared off the Kolobok. The last thing we need is Medicine Boy being taken out of commission while everything comes to a head. The risk has outweighed the reward.
[X] [WORK] Wand
-[X] Level 2
[X] [GIRLS]: Partner the junior girls up with the senior magical girls; it'll probably increase their odds of survival.
That said, if things are indeed coming to a head, I feel much better about partnering gis.
[X] [WORK] Wand
-[X] Level 2
[X] [GIRLS]: Partner the junior girls up with the senior magical girls; it'll probably increase their odds of survival.
That said, if things are indeed coming to a head, I feel much better about partnering gis.
LostDeviljho
Flame Dragon Princess
- Location
- The glorious Pacific Northwest
- Pronouns
- Any
TBF, blood and hair are very much not living tissue. Especially hair.
Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
If your blood is not alive, then neither is the person using it. Unless you're referring to the liquid carrier as separate from the various blood cells.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Eh, I missed a few details.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Everyon's forgetting that the Cursed Sword research was super-duper-lethal. It had a death curse that guaranteed everyone who used it dies. In comparisson, the Kolobok is just poisonous, and it's been used to heal before without lasting negative consequence. (Heck, the Witches that made it intended it to heal its users, not kill them like with the Alchemist's Sword.) Moreover when we researched the Sword, Medicine Boy built tools to let him analyze it and take it apart safely. Part of the research action itself is taking steps to make the thing being researched safer to examine.
The Kolobok is not nearly as dangerous as the Sword was, and we don't need to take an anti-radiation action because doing that is already part of doing the research action.
And if that doesn't convince anyone, I'm not above a little guilt tripping. A crit fail on the research roll might seriously hurt Medicine Boy. But meanwhile there are 12 year old children being pointlessly ripped from their homes and sent to their near-certain doom against a demon from hell. Should Medicine Boy take a risk to himself for the chance to keep many of them alive?
No. He absolutely shouldn't have to. But just like the MGs who are the only defense against supernatural evil in this city, there's no one else here who can.
I really don't think one-use tier 1 bombs count. Especially not when we have a 50% chance to get 7 new MGs this week.
BTW, if I wasn't voting for research I'd be voting to make a trinket, not a wand. A T3 trinket has the kind of tactical effects that can be a force-multiplier to multiple MGs. A T2 wand... doesn't have the firepower to deal with the threat we're facing, and we have two of Homer's T5 bombs anyways. I don't get why I haven't seen any discussion about building a trinket vs. a wand, and it's a clear vote split that if resolved could result in a crafting vote winning.
The Kolobok is not nearly as dangerous as the Sword was, and we don't need to take an anti-radiation action because doing that is already part of doing the research action.
And if that doesn't convince anyone, I'm not above a little guilt tripping. A crit fail on the research roll might seriously hurt Medicine Boy. But meanwhile there are 12 year old children being pointlessly ripped from their homes and sent to their near-certain doom against a demon from hell. Should Medicine Boy take a risk to himself for the chance to keep many of them alive?
No. He absolutely shouldn't have to. But just like the MGs who are the only defense against supernatural evil in this city, there's no one else here who can.
I really don't think one-use tier 1 bombs count. Especially not when we have a 50% chance to get 7 new MGs this week.
BTW, if I wasn't voting for research I'd be voting to make a trinket, not a wand. A T3 trinket has the kind of tactical effects that can be a force-multiplier to multiple MGs. A T2 wand... doesn't have the firepower to deal with the threat we're facing, and we have two of Homer's T5 bombs anyways. I don't get why I haven't seen any discussion about building a trinket vs. a wand, and it's a clear vote split that if resolved could result in a crafting vote winning.
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
Because everyone's still shell-shocked from the last one.
- Location
- USA
I think part of the reason people voted for wand is for mechanics? I thought Medicine Boy's maxed out his current trinket-making skills, so now people want to increase his wand-making skills.
LostDeviljho
Flame Dragon Princess
- Location
- The glorious Pacific Northwest
- Pronouns
- Any
one bomb is better than nothing at all, which is what they have without it.
Personally I don't want to make a T3 trinket because they're A) pretty expensive to make and B) tent to leave Medicine Boy completely wiped after making them, iirc. I figure a T2 wand is a better compromise between "we're broke" and "we want some of these to last a while".