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A Certain Gravitational Villain (A Certain Magical Index Quest)

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chocolote12 said:
For science, would being a mass of nanites that aren't allowed to replicate themselves beyond a certain amount be a viable choice?
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Actually, if you're going to go that route, it would probably be better to just make a star trek style replicator that can dismantle garbage, turn it into raw materials, and then re-assemble it into whatever form you want. Or something simpler like a bunch of 3D printers capable of self-replication, or a factory capable of manufacturing all of it's own components.

Imagine building some sort of Omni-Factory which has all the equipment to break down garbage or stuff into raw materials, it can then manufacture all of the equipment/material to make an exact copy of itself, or build anything from cars, to computers, to plastic baby dolls that wet themselves, to handguns and bullets.

We could make loads of money by building one factory, then having it build more factories (or at least all the materials and equipment so that we don't have to pay for those) and then getting contracts from other businesses to manufacture their products cheaper than in competing factories. Just add in that the factories cause lots of weird pollution or nano-particles and we've got a ready-made source of potential villainy.

Regarding the nano-particles link: Consider that self-replicating nanites and replicators supposedly create things by breaking matter down into incredibly tiny pieces and then reassembling them into the finished product. However, anyone who's worked in a factory before knows that there are inefficiencies in the system, and some of those particles will get blows away, or some of those nanites will wear down and break apart. The result is that if you're making a metal object, soon you've got clouds of nano-sized metal dust blowing out of the manufacturing area. Considering these particles can be smaller than living cells, it's possible someone (or something like an animal or a plant) could inhale this dust and get tiny bits of metal poking into their cells and causing all sorts of trouble. In fact, for every object you make, you can end up with clouds of ultra-fine dust of whatever material is used in it's construction. Lead, silver, ceramic, copper, etc.

Basically, unless you've got the whole area 100% clean down to the atomic scale (which you can't) then you'll essentially have clouds of asbestos building up in the air. Made up of particles so fine that no existing air filter would be fine enough to capture all the particles. Your finished products should be fine, but the area around the factory would start to show problems at least a little while after you've made your fortune.

Fortunately, we should be smart enough to create a cure to keep ourselves healthy once this becomes apparent. We could even sell the cure to anyone afflicted by it... for a modest fee of course.


Edit: Just realize you said being a swarm of nanites instead of building nanites. In that case, gonna mention this:

 
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Rossum said:
Actually, if you're going to go that route, it would probably be better to just make a star trek style replicator that can dismantle garbage, turn it into raw materials, and then re-assemble it into whatever form you want. Or something simpler like a bunch of 3D printers capable of self-replication, or a factory capable of manufacturing all of it's own components.

Imagine building some sort of Omni-Factory which has all the equipment to break down garbage or stuff into raw materials, it can then manufacture all of the equipment/material to make an exact copy of itself, or build anything from cars, to computers, to plastic baby dolls that wet themselves, to handguns and bullets.

We could make loads of money by building one factory, then having it build more factories (or at least all the materials and equipment so that we don't have to pay for those) and then getting contracts from other businesses to manufacture their products cheaper than in competing factories. Just add in that the factories cause lots of weird pollution or nano-particles and we've got a ready-made source of potential villainy.

Regarding the nano-particles link: Consider that self-replicating nanites and replicators supposedly create things by breaking matter down into incredibly tiny pieces and then reassembling them into the finished product. However, anyone who's worked in a factory before knows that there are inefficiencies in the system, and some of those particles will get blows away, or some of those nanites will wear down and break apart. The result is that if you're making a metal object, soon you've got clouds of nano-sized metal dust blowing out of the manufacturing area. Considering these particles can be smaller than living cells, it's possible someone (or something like an animal or a plant) could inhale this dust and get tiny bits of metal poking into their cells and causing all sorts of trouble. In fact, for every object you make, you can end up with clouds of ultra-fine dust of whatever material is used in it's construction. Lead, silver, ceramic, copper, etc.

Basically, unless you've got the whole area 100% clean down to the atomic scale (which you can't) then you'll essentially have clouds of asbestos building up in the air. Made up of particles so fine that no existing air filter would be fine enough to capture all the particles. Your finished products should be fine, but the area around the factory would start to show problems at least a little while after you've made your fortune.

Fortunately, we should be smart enough to create a cure to keep ourselves healthy once this becomes apparent. We could even sell the cure to anyone afflicted by it... for a modest fee of course.


Edit: Just realize you said being a swarm of nanites instead of building nanites. In that case, gonna mention this:

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While I appreciate the cleverness of the idea, it feels lacking somehow.
Like, is super asbestos the best we can do? Just make doom robots instead. More effective, less complicated.
 
EternalStruggle said:
While I appreciate the cleverness of the idea, it feels lacking somehow.
Like, is super asbestos the best we can do? Just make doom robots instead. More effective, less complicated.
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Super asbestos isn't the evil plan. It's a byproduct of our non-evil plan. It just guarantees that if we decide to take a break from villainy and make eco-friendly cars for sale, that every car we make pours super-toxic dust into the environment that mutates squirrels and gives trees cancer. Or, if we make an army of doom robots for the military (or ourselves) then we get the added bonus of polluting the environment.

Besides, too many sci-fi settings assume that nanotechnology will be some kind of magical eco-friendly pixie dust that people can just sprinkle on garbage to turn it into iPhones and solar panels. Imagine a big black imposing factory thing spewing pollution into the air even as it churns out all the fancy knick-knacks that society needs to keep itself distracted while an army of oppression-bots are loaded into trucks in the back.
 
*Begins to compose reply-*
Rossum said:
Imagine a big black imposing factory thing spewing pollution into the air even as it churns out all the fancy knick-knacks that society needs to keep itself distracted while an army of oppression-bots are loaded into trucks in the back.
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All right I'm convinced.
(Can you tell I am easily convinced by the aesthetics of industrial oppression?)
 
You know what, I have the perfect idea. There should be an OCP option for each side. Something that doesn't follow previously set conventions or rules. Powerful, if only for being completely unanticipated. Such as someone that's so phenomenally skilled they can fake being supernatural for the Normal side of things.

A Being that's actually natural to the universe on the magic side, a being that didn't "Retroactively" come into existence, it was always there, it was the single unicorn in the garden before other people started adding a herd of unicorns. The Brother to Imagine Breaker, while Imagine Breaker is the purifier, he, is something else.

And on the Science side, obviously it's an Alien. What did you expect? Something complicated?
 
Malbutorius said:
You know what, I have the perfect idea. There should be an OCP option for each side. Something that doesn't follow previously set conventions or rules. Powerful, if only for being completely unanticipated. Such as someone that's so phenomenally skilled they can fake being supernatural for the Normal side of things.

A Being that's actually natural to the universe on the magic side, a being that didn't "Retroactively" come into existence, it was always there, it was the single unicorn in the garden before other people started adding a herd of unicorns. The Brother to Imagine Breaker, while Imagine Breaker is the purifier, he, is something else.

And on the Science side, obviously it's an Alien. What did you expect? Something complicated?
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No aliens.
 
RexHeller said:
No aliens.
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So that's the one that breaks your SOD huh? Not the dude with the power to do anything that anyone has ever done with their right hand, not the gods (That were apparently created by humans?), not the super powers that "Aren't Magic but actually in reality are". It's the Aliens, the one thing that actually has some likelihood of existing in reality and doesn't actually require breaking any setting rules.

I find your opinion to be hilarious.
 
Malbutorius said:
So that's the one that breaks your SOD huh? Not the dude with the power to do anything that anyone has ever done with their right hand, not the gods (That were apparently created by humans?), not the super powers that "Aren't Magic but actually in reality are". It's the Aliens, the one thing that actually has some likelihood of existing in reality and doesn't actually require breaking any setting rules.

I find your opinion to be hilarious.
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Or, the GM just doesn't want to write up aliens.
 
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