Jenn’s Diary

[Maou]

I just assumed that demons had means of observing things other than light. Just because we need light to visually perceive things doesn’t mean all beings would need them. Sharks have 6 senses supposedly so their is nothing limiting demons to the five that humans have. Also humans tend to have very poor senses in general and are visual dominated. We can distinguish more colors than most animals, but have a harder time seeing things from a distance, or in the dark. Most of are other senses are joke in comparison. Demons just don’t seem so limited. Many animals can perceive things we can’t, but for reference what is the difference in sensory detail between humans and demons.

[Tizzy]

You are correct sir!

Pretty much everyone can see better than a human!

[list][*]Wizards have Wizard Sight (spell)

Priests typically have a couple different seeing rituals they can do.

Animages…well depends on what type of animages they are, but Seers see it all…or just enough to be frustrating

The Alvar and many of the other Sidhe have SidheSight (pronounced SheeSight)—they often like to use their SidheSight to See SeaShells by the SeaShore…over and over again.

Dwarves and goblins have extremely good low light vision and a few other differences in acuity.

The Aetos have extremely sharp vision, similar to an eagle/human hybrid. Oddly enough.

Demons of Demon Sight and can see Animus and in some cases mana and telescopic and microscopic. Plus several other frequencies. Some demons even have Heat Vision like Superman (which really makes no senses as it’s not at all a vision related thing)
[/list]

Now, however, to Rosver’s point.

Certain types of radiation are particles and some are waves. And at the root of reality, particles are also waves but..we won’t go into that here.

So from a nuclear explosion of various sorts you are going to see Alpha and Beta radiation (particles) and Gamma radiation (waves–e.g. light aka Hulk food)

His point was they human eye can’t detect particles due to the eyes’ size. The authors point was, correct you can’t actually detect the particle with your eye, but you can detect the particle by the secondary radiation that it emits when traveling faster than the speed of light through the liquid in your eyes, so you could detect it (depending on energy level–how fast it was going), but it wouldn’t look like normal light.

Similarly, radio waves, tv waves, wifi waves, cordless telphone waves, microwaves are also light. However we can’t really detect them either because the length of the waves (i.e the distance from the start of the wave to where it repeats) is much longer than the size of the eye so we can’t “see” the whole thing at once. You might be able to detect it going through, but you’d need a physically different sort of “antenna” to capture and measure the wave. The rod and cone mechanics wouldn’t work (not as they are in humans)

Now this doesn’t mean a creature can’t have “radio vision” or Beta Ray vision or something, it might, it just wouldn’t be using the normal rod/cone method for detecting it, it would have to have something else.

In the case of Wizard Sight and Priest Sight the spell is translating the thing detected into vision or maybe a “feeling” (see truth spell).

Dwarves, Aetos, etc those are truly enhanced normal sight. Same is true for Infravision (infrared) and (UV light detection)

Seeing animus and mana like Sidhe and Demons do (and wizards/priests do with a translation spell) may like be something different that’s tied to “vision” since what the “see” is superimposed upon their vision. But I’m not an expert, I’m just an ordinary demon. I’d ask a trained Animage. I suspect whatever it is that the Animages do, that’s what demons are doing. Demons might have ‘rods/cones/towers’ and whatever towers are detects animus, but I know that animages wouldn’t since they are otherwise mortal (human, elf, dwarf etc).

That being said, Animages have to conciously try and see animus and mana. Demons have it on by default, all the time, it’s just that they may not always be paying attention to it. So again, might not be the same.

[Tizzy]

Hmm,

I suppose you are correct…I did mention nuclear technology. But then I’ve traveled to a lot of different planes and hung out with Denubians who happen to have warp drive technology.

Tizzy

[Tizzy]

That seems to be what he’s implying. I find that very insulting…if he thinks that’s what I’m doing, then I’ll ask him to store it for me!

I’m thinking though that he just doesn’t have “PipeSight” and so can’t always see my pipe!

After all we’ve talking about SidheSight, DemonSight, WizardSight so why not PipeSight?

[Rosver]

I’m thinking of expanding the thread to asking about objects in astlan.

Tizz how does the Oorste­moth crystal store the ‘video’ record? VHS does it with themagnetic field in the magnetic ribbon, CD with groves on its shiny surface. The crystal in what way?

I’m also quite interested in how flying carpets work.

Maybe in the future Tom can reproduce their effects and create something like those?

[Tizzy]

Well, I’m not a wizard so I can only talk from the point of view of what is “common knowledge” You know, as a consumer.

You’ve actually got a couple truly “popular” technologies for video recording and transmission. Crystal Balls and Mirrors. Crystal balls store 3D moving images within the lattice structure of the crystal itself. Thus, the bigger the crystal, the more footage it can hold, and they hold a lot. Mirrors also have crystals to store stuff in, but they’re smaller gems usually in the handle or the back of the mirror. Being smaller they have less capacity, and mirrors being flat, they can only record 2D video. Crystal balls being spheres they can record in a 360 degree range (Except where the baller’s hands are).

Apparently the store the data digitally in the crystalline lattice by creating “holes” of some sort. It’s sort of Alchemical in nature and I’m not an alchemist so I can’t explain it very well.

As far as Flying Carpets, those are made by Enchanters who are experts in manipulating the element of Air. But basically they create a higher pressure region below the carpet than is above the carpet and this pushes it up. They can then sort of “tilt” those pressure zones below the carpet, or for finer control, versus curled up parts of the carpet, to push it along in the direction they want to go.

You can see this more clearly if you follow carpet racing. You know how when you are watching a carpet race and they are booking along at break neck speed and all the carpets are tilted with their back end much higher then the front end and sometimes the carpet is sort of shaped like:
/
__+_/

where the + is the driver, that’s to give the air behind the carpet something to push against.

Again, not an Enchanter, or an Aerial Engineer, I fly the old fashioned way on my wings.

[Rosver]

Wow! I also think that they doesn’t only store videos in there but much much more. Those crystal balls sure packs a serious GB of data. Way better than hardrives. Love to have one of those. Such device would revolutionize data storage. I would become even more richer than Bill Gates if I have a monopoly on those.

Hmm. How Enchanters make the carpets fly is very interesting. So it seems that they work in terms of air pressure. The fold at the back doesn’t seem to be aerodynamic though. Would cause a lot of drag at high speeds. Not to mention the wind would push it downwards making the carpet spin. Well, maybe the enchanters has some tricks to solve the problem.

But then, when there is the need for high speed., I think pyromancers is the best for the job. I read pyromancers making booms, but they doesn’t seem to really understand the full nature of these bangs aside from doing damage.

Modern technology has long harnessed the powerful nature of explosions to the human’s benefit. Let just called it controlled explosions. One of these are the guns. The explosive power of gunpowder is used to propel bullets at high speed and create damage. Another is the car engines. Car engines uses the explosive power of gasoline and air mixture to move the pistons, which in turn turns the wheel. You literaly create hundreds of explosions when you drive your car to work. Controlled explosions are very convenient isn’t it?

But when it comes to air travell, nothing beats the jet engines. Jet engines essentially creates continous explosion. Instead of a [b]BOOM[/b] it goes [b]BOOOOOOOOO…OOOOOOOM[/b]. Really, they are very noisy. Of course it doesnt send the explosion in every direction like a bomb, the jet engine is designed to direct the explosion in one direction. This ‘directional’ explosion creates the thrust to push the jet planes. And with jet engines you could get speeds that is faster than sound! Awsome!

If only pyromancers are able to controll their booms like how jet engine does (continous and directional) then they could make a device similar to the enchanter’s flying carpets and be able to travel very, very fast. So in terms of air travel, Enchanters to Pyromancers is like propellers to jet engines. Pyromancers win it easy. But then, pyromancers are slobs, only content on making booms and breaking things. They aren’t really very creative or innovative.

But then jet powered flying carpets is extremely dangerous to your life! I think, even demons would die in such contraptions.

Well, a wizzard who wants vengence on Tizzy would love to strap Tizzy on such device and watch Tizzy disintegrate in the air. :-”

By the way, are there other magical devices in Astlan? I was not able to see much magical devices in the book really, aside from the crystal, carpet and the magically locked book. Wait, there is Tallarius’ armor, sword and dagger; and the arrows of the Rods. Might have missed more. I’ll do some searching.

Looking forward to findinging more of such devices in the next book!

[Rosver]

Hey wait a minute!!!!!!! I remembered something. To their way to Hoggens­forth you, Tizzy, vissited Tom and Rupert in the cabin and mentioned steam engines and [b]Nuclear[/b] turbines. I’m sure! I checked it’s there! You are hiding something. [-x

Maou these radiations (gamma, alpha, etc.) aren’t electromagnetic radiations (like light, UV and infra red). These radiations are made of particles (protons, neutrons, electrons) shooting from the unstable . They don’t behave like light does. There is no such thing as a ‘camera’ (and our eye is a camera) that could focus these particles and form retinal images. The common way of detecting and measuring these radiation is using geiger counters. As in its name, it’s a counter, it counts. When a particle (say a proton) hits its detector it gives a clicking sound. The more radiactivy, the more particles, and the more it clicks. A common device that uses such rays to ‘see’ is the electron microscope. It is a very complex device that actually ‘scans’ the object under it and display the result onto a screen than ‘see’ the way our eye does.

I was also thinking that in can’t be because Tom see mana. From what I learned objects (radioactive substances like Uranium are objects) doesn’t contain mana. Looking at a chunk of Uranium would not be that different from looking at an ordinary lump of metal in demon sight. I think.

[Rosver]

No I didn’t. Jets use Newton’s third law of motion: “To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction” or formaly called as Jet Propulsion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_propulsion. It also works just as well with water. The law also works with solids but throwing solids to propell yourself isn’t really practical.

By the way, manipulating air pressure directly seems nonsensical. Pressure is the force applied to a unit area of surface. Pressure is pressure no matter what the sorce of the force is. Now there is an equation that describes the nature of pressure (P = F / A). If you change/manipulate Pressure directly, as aeromancers do it seems, then the equation would be broken.

To illustrate, imagine a bottle resting on the table. It would exert pressure on the table because of its weight (force) it exerted on the table. Now imagine there is a magical study called bottlemancy (:d/ ). If it is similar to aeromancy then it would directly control the ‘bottle pressure’ so to speak. Now you could then increase the pressure a hundred times. Now this situation is ridiculous. We have a bottle that exerts a hundred worth of bottles of pressure on the table. Or say you change the location of the pressure to the other side of the table. Again another ridiculous situation. We had a bottle that exerts pressure not on the surface it was on but on the other side of the table. You know what I mean?

Also about this air shield, doesn’t it create drag too? Shields blocks things and blocking air essentially creates drag. For that, I had a suggestion for Aeromances. Instead of blocking the air/wind like how the shield does, why not push them to the side making the air flow around, very much like how the ship prow cut and pushes the water to the side. This method creates less drag and thus requires less energy to maintain. What do you think?

By the way I’m quite human. The saying is quite disturbing. I much rather prefer skinning oranges thank you.

[Tizzy]

I’m not an electromancer so I don’t know.

However, they claim that they need the lodestones to translate the electricity into motion. Apparently lodestones produce magicnet fields or something like that, which interacts somehow with electricity to produce motion.

See you admit your boom is really all about changing air pressure, like I said earlier…Enchanters can change air pressure without needing a boom. That’s what the air shields are, concentrated high pressure regions. Or so I am told. The best method depends on which uses less mana: changing air pressure directly or indirectly via booms. I’m guessing it can vary.

There are multiple ways to skin a human as the saying goes. (Bess does not approve of alternate versions of this saying.)

I am also told one can pedal a bicycle with one leg, although it’s a bit herky jerky.

[Maou]

Magic can allow one to do things that would otherwise be impossible and one could simply use strength to accomplish what they want. A smart mana wielder would use the most efficient design in a given situation but this would originally involve somebody very knowledgeable in the field in which they are manipulating, but how things would eventually play out would very between the various groups. Wizards are set to auto and have the spell do everything for them. They often don’t see how the magic reacts at every step and simply see the end result. If one can’t use a spell they are simply to weak. It also takes a lot of time and effort to make new spells, so they normally study in their field. Animages use a manual manipulation and would require extensive knowledge in the field from which they are manipulating.

Also will Tom take an actual liberal approach to animagic and ask to be tutored in other fields? He looks young and know enough to look partially taught, but not enough to appear trained. He could claim he was apprenticed to an animage who died during his training while he was still young, but after he had learned to read. This would be less suspicious than a liberal who avoids masters of other crafts. Though using linkamancy to unbind himself and astralmancy to visit astlan would be a nice combo. If demons could open and close portals at will they could just assasinate any body who could oppose them or increase their numbers with mortal women, as most of the energy is provided for by demons with that method.

[Tizzy]

Hmm, Ok, I may have to reveal some more info about myself and my travels…

You see, it’s not quite as simple as “booms” the part of “booms” that make things move, including the pistons in a car engine are changes in air pressure. That and some spells created by the ArchDemon Newton.

For example the little explosions in a piston create extremely high pressure inside the cylinder which pushed the cylinder down. The pistion is on a funky rod connected to other pistons, so when one goes down, another goes up, and then the explosions are timed sort of like foot action on a bike peddle, so they explode alternatively and this drives the car, so it’s high pressure plus low pressure repeated over and over.

To really get super powered carpets you would need someone really good with both pyromancy and aeromancy (Encanter)

Basically pyromancer creating the boom, Enchanter funneling/channeling the force. Clearly this would have to be a device as it would be very tricky to do adhoc as a set of spells.

But to get to the point of aerodynamics, the Enchanter can guide the airflow over the top of the carpet, and in fact, they have to or it would get really windy for the occupants. Enchanters tend to be very good with “air shields” or air force walls if you will. So in reality there is also a focewall bubble that you can’t see on the top of the carpet, protecting the passengers. For slow carpets it’s not that strong, but for racing carpets they put a lot of power into it, and create an aerodynamic roof.

Gunpowder is alchemy, a very iffy science at best. Typically you want a Thaumaturge working with you to keep from blowing yourself up.

And not to defend pyromancers, being evil wizards after all….but not all pyromancers go boom. There are electromancers which are a specialization of pyromancy focusing on electricity…a lot of these guys do work with sending electricity down wires and making devices that use it. But again, this works best with help from a thaumaturge who can find these weird rocks that interact with electricity and attract metal to themselves.

[Rosver]

Hmmm. Quite interesting bit about the Enchanters. Especially the air shields. Though how air could shield you from anything is beyond me. It is like making a shield out of party balloons. Yeah, couldn’t really make any sense of it.

Also, still for me, it is the boom (euphemism for explosion) that make things work. The boom happens because when substances burn they create gases. Volume of gases created from explosive substances are often many times larger than the volume of the substances itself, sometimes in the factor of hundreds. So when these substances burn (almost in an instant) they turn to gas and expands to hundred times their volume. This expansion creates the boom. This expansion (explosion, boom) gives the power for your bombs, guns, and car engine. As I say, in another sense, air pressure to explosion: propellers to jet engines. They just not the same.

By the way, you can create a combustion (car) engine with just one piston but it is close to useless. It vibrates a lot, as in, bone shattering vibrations. All car engine is designed with multiple pistons not only for power but also for smoother operation. The pistons are timed and placed so that they cancel their shaking causing motions. The timing of pistons to act like your bicycle pedal analogy is just an added bonus from having multiple pistons, but is not really necessary for a working engine.

Hmm. Weird rocks, you mean lodestone? Wow, they are more advanced than I thought they were. But then, you know you can make these devices (or one of similar function) without the stone right?

[Maou]

We should talk about Rupert more often in this forum as Jenn obsessed over Rupert for some unknown reason, and he should start aging himself again Tom knows what he should kind of look like as they do look alike, and Tom will claim to once more to be cousins. How would people react to Rupert being a rank 4 half demon and how are they viewed in general. Demons are evil, but what of the half demons. Tom does however look awful suspicious by circumstantial evidence. No definitive proof mind you, but the circumstantial evidence is just so damning that without viewing things from Tom’s perspective I would find it difficult to believe.

Circumstantially he is a centuries old demon who is greater than a fourth with a child who is a fourth that has figured out how to steal the power of the gods and did so after desecrating a temple of one of the most zealous gods, provoking the oorzomothians who even made a legal treaty with the abyss. And did so by making a large spectacle of the thing in a fashion that would make him the most feared demon currently on the plane. Fear is an emotion that might bring animus to him. Not sure how that works.

Still I cannot wait to discover their real relation and I hope Tom’s efforts to escape boredom and slavery will award him with power beyond imagination that will cause him to live up to Rupert’s expectations as some form of demonic messiah towards freedom and better living conditions and Jenn’s expectations of an ancient horror with power beyond comparison and thoughts and plans outside mortal comprehension that seeks to overthrow the gods, which should be done for power and it’s what all the demons do in VG that tom likely read of.

[Tizzy]

Well Maou if Rosver keeps wanting me to respond with answers no demon should know the answer to, you might be able to figure Rupert out…

Hint hint.

I think the misunderstanding with what I am saying and you are saying Rosver is “what exactly is the boom” what is the “force, and what is it acting against” in terms of Newton’s third law. F=dp/dt = dm/dt+dv/dt and most people forget the dm/dt part.

If you want to talk an explosion/boom, then I would argue the boom that makes a [i]rocket[/i] go vs a jet, then I’d be more amenable to that. A rocket works in space by transforming the mass of it’s fuel into a gas and then expelling it in a directed manner. However, it is also the dm/dt that’s happening here, so it literally is the explosion (or more precisely the conversion and expelling of the gas)driving the rocket. But both are “pressure booms” in a way.

The boom is the gas pressure change and expelling of gas in a directed manner, not the fire or pyromancy part. All the pyromancy is doing is changing a liquid or solid to a gaseous state that takes up more space, thus creating a high pressure region (which is what’s doing the pushing)

In the case of the jet, the turbine is sucking air into the combustion chamber, combining it with jet fuel, converting the liqued fuel to a vry hot gas. Thus in the combustion chamber you now have a very hot (hotter gas==higher pressure) that seeks equilibrium and rushes out the exhaust expanding into a lower pressure region, basically you are creating a small high pressure region at the end of the engine that’s pushing the plane forward as the gas heads the other way to the lower pressure region. That’s Newton’s third law, it’s the quickly changing gas pressure pushing the jet.

What I am saying in all of this is that there are other ways to change gas pressure and cause a carpet or other item to go than just combustion. Aeromastery is the literal direct manipulation of gases with mana.

And Maou is correct in what he’s saying about most efficient design, the air shields are uniform and relatively solid and nicely shaped, like an aerodynamic car. Thus you can create a nice airflow over the top of the carpet, if you design the shield properly, then you can even reduce air pressure on top and increase lift. The key to an airplane wing is that you want the air on top of the wing to move faster than the air under the wing. Given that the true overall velocity of the carpet is fixed, if you require the air on top of the wing to travel a greater distance than the air under the wing, it “travels further” in the same time and thus creates a lower pressure region and lifts the carpet by sucking it up.

So of course, part of Maou’s question is: how the hell do they know this? Well a lot of trial and error, but more importantly aeromancers can sense and manipulate the air directly, something Earth scientists can’t do. Thus creating wind tunnels and other simulators for practice and very direct observation is much easier in Astlan.

As to tutoring? Who’s he going to ask without revealing himself? That will be tricky. Also, having time to sit down and study will be hard to come by…but I am sure that will be his plan once he gets time to create a plan.

I think Jenn is concerned about Rupert because he’s a kid, she was basically in charge of the kids and Rupert is/has been an oddball that requires more attention. Particularly lately. Remember Trisfelt took the other kids to safety and so she was left protecting just Rupert, who was not making it easy for her.

Half demons are evil too. Clearly.

[Author]

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