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It was fun for a long time but towards the end it just started to drag

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Total Members Voted: 28

[wierd]

He wished he hadn't inscribed both gloves; clearly, they needed refinements on the seals powering them. They focused way too much power into the spells directed through them. He could easily kill somebody instead of healing them from the lack of fine control. If a surgeon weilded a scalpel, these were more like a chainsaw.

He powered the second glove, then tested it. Both gloves on made his head a little fuzzy from the energy raging through him. He could handle it, but it was like holding his maximum fill all at once, constantly. He would deffinately need to revise the seals.

In the meantime though, he commenced testing to see if the conversion based invocations wore him out like straight casting did.

10 for 10, the spells he created were way overpowered; one lightning spell nearly oblitterating the test target he had created for the purpose. No real discernable fatigue.  The readings on the test sensors were consistent with the values of his mussle shell experiment... he would probably have fainted trying something like this on his own.

X would surely be interested.

[WillowLuman]

[@ Eric: Concrete not making as good a fortress as Volcanic Glass? Are you kidding me? Obsidian may be hard, strong, and sharp, yes, but also very very brittle. If you had an obsidian sword, it would likely loose it's edge after parrying a steel blade a few times. Given the chance, it would be quite easy for sappers to just dig right through obsidian, and a sufficiently powerful blow (like a catapult or a large beast) would shear large sheets off. Eventually, the whole structure would become littered with hairline fractures, becoming more and more brittle.

Concrete, on the other hand... well, did you read that article on the Axis flak towers that I posted? 3-meter thick walls of rebar, able to deflect direct hits from howitzers. The largest non-nucelar American bomb might have seriously damaged one, but the towers had unbeatable anti-air defense. The Allies found them to be invincible. After the war, most were demolished... but to do that they had to place several tons of TNT inside of them. And all that did was split them in half, so they had to keep using several tons of TNT.]

[Don't forget about the healing goop, Wierd. A painless, rapid, and very effective regenerative agent. Thari used it for healing those not bound to her will, because "Like how a painter must begin with a blank canvas, a teacher of the Goddess's way must begin with a body that is whole." We didn't get the recipe for it, though. It comes directly from one of her plants, none of which we took.]

[wierd]

Volcanic glass, yes.  Ceramic glasses? Depends on the type. Some flavors have a surprising young's modulous for an amorphous material.

A combination of long glass fiber and steel rebar in a concrete structure would be quite remarkable. IIRC, they use that kind of mix in large, wide spanning bridge trusses due to its superior flex and compressive properties.

The dwarves have been introduced to glass fiber by weird previously. It isn't hard to make from molten batch.  Just draw a streamer from the pot, and spool it up on a spindle at a steady rate. Getting the glass mix right for a durable and flexible fiber is tricky though. Its been my experience that a high calcium and copper content helps considerably.

[Eric Blank]

I never said I was good at discerning the properties of a material, just configuring it into a structure, or mining through it

[Gizogin]

Gizo X looked up from his desk with a start.  His sensors were freaking out; someone must have used magic nearby, and quite a bit of it.  He knew, of course, that many of the forumites could use magic, and he'd been picking up surges and flares ever since he'd installed the sensors, but this most recent spike was something else entirely.  It wasn't that it was particularly big; he had been performing larger works regularly since he'd finished the tank a week ago.  There was something else underscoring the power, something he couldn't identify.  It was almost like how he couldn't pick up necromancy; something about it simply eluded him.

Idly, he telekinetically picked up his pen and twirled it around.  Inside, he was ablaze with thoughts, as always.  Calculations spun through his mind, numbers and symbols flying and combining at speeds that would dizzy even the brightest organic mind.  He gave the floating pen the magical equivalent of a flick, and sent it hurtling across the room, where it buried itself half an inch deep in the far wall. 


Off to the side of the workshop, on a large workbench in front of the tank, Gizogin was checking his blueprints again.  Next to him, his new worker robot whirred as it hovered over the beginnings of a second, just like itself.  Its four appendages a blur, it attached parts and welded plates at breakneck speed.  At this rate, it would have the second robot finished in just an hour, less than a tenth of the time it had taken Gizogin to do the same thing.  The robot he was currently building, a third of the same design, was still just a frame with some wiring.  He couldn't help but feel a sense of pride that his creation had turned out so well.  In fact, there wasn't much point in him continuing to work on the third droid at all, so he stopped.

He looked over to where Gizo X was sitting, in the corner closest to the door.  X'd been messing with his new magic all week, running experiments and calculations to test the limits of what he could do.  Currently, he was holding a ball of superheated plasma between his hands, squeezing and molding it into various geometric shapes.  Gizogin had read X's notes and seen all his magical apparatus, so he knew at least vaguely what X was doing.  He'd never had much interest in learning magic for himself though, and the few times he'd tried it (at X's request), it hadn't worked. 

Somehow, his thoughts turned to Hugo, and he remembered that he had to check on the dragon and give him his medication.  He got up from the bench and walked to the door to the hospital.  When he reached it, he turned to look at Gizo X again, who didn't seem to have noticed when Gizogin had stood up.  He knew better, though; not much went on in the android's presence that he didn't see.  That was one advantage of a mechanical mind; it couldn't be distracted.

[ninja'd x4]

[WillowLuman]

[Obsidian would fairly easy to mine through. That fiberglass + steel rebars in concrete would be very good. Remember; 3 meter thick (10 feet) walls of concrete + steel rebar would be practically invincible. It would take a lot longer than 2 weeks to build, but then again so would magma pump stack walls. Both would also need to be poured in small sections, the way hoover dam was, or they wouldn't cure/cool fast enough

Speaking with no experience, wouldn't it be best for the spool to be automated so as to ensure uniform fibers?]

ninja'd by Gizogin

[Now that I think of it, only about 4 of us can use magic. Eric and Wierd, Necromancers, Wierd being a well practiced one and also a healer now. Eric can put an unresistable Influence on living minds. Gizogin X, working on elemental magic,. Me, dragon, so intrinsically magical (not figured out how to breath fire yet), and also somewhat psychic before that.]

[wierd]

[Yes, and automated thread winder would have better results than say, a pedal powered one, as the fiber would be drawn more uniformly, have a more uniform structure, and a more uniform cross section. However, 2 weeks is a very short time, and the degree of flex the fibers will epndure in a concrete wall is minimal, compared to say, glass fiber cloth. Pedal powered spoolers would be easy to implement, and thus would produce useful if imperfect fiber quickly.]

Weird took the gloves off. Wearing them made him feel jittery and off-base, like being adrenalized. With them on, he could feel every dead insect for 2 miles radius. It wasn't something he really enjoyed. Power was dangerous, and while the design of the gloves prevented pushing more than the caster could handle, the revelation that he could handle that much power frightened him. He would probably destroy them, and build more refined versions later.

In the meantime, he packaged up X's papers, his notes and sigil concept drawings, and the gloves, then headed down to the infirmary. Maybe X would know better how to control the output. If the yield calculations he had been struggling with were any indication, X's precision was impeccible. His own methods were within experimental error, but sloppy by comparison.

He hoped he could get the android alone for the consult.

[WillowLuman]

HugoLuman felt something. Like and odd smell that wasn't quite a smell, or a sort of tingling in his bones. He felt it in his mind, too. When he was on the astral plane, his willpower to exist had greatly strengthened his psychic sensitivity. Regaining a physical existence had tempered them somewhat, but being a magical creature now he was still more perceptive of magic. Someone had made quite a big ripple just then. This drew his attention to another, fainter, background ripple. Concentrating, he felt with his mind that it was somewhat... mug shaped? The concussion must really have screwed up that part of his mind, then. He dismissed it.

Gizogin came over to him then. "Time for your meds."

He would have grimaced, but that wasn't really possible. He settled for "How long do you think It'll be before I can be discharged?"

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Don't worry, you will have a bit of time before the chaos begins.  It will begin in my next post, minimum.  Some things may seem ridiculous to you, but I have thought them over for a while.

The resistance's army launched forth towards the citadel, while the Slashdiver launched its barrage into the phyrexian army arrayed outside, the canisters scattering the gas that returned the phyrexians inside to normality while causing no harm to the resistance troops.  Normally, Zanzetkuken would be within the bridge, observing the battle and sending in creatures and other spells to assist the troops, but for this battle, he was in a prototypical troop-canister.  Within other canisters were some of the troops of the 6th army, the soldiers of Zanzetkuken's personal army when he was grand emporer, and who oversaw the creation of the Slashdiver, the anti-phyrexian gas, the shells and their launchers, along with other equipment.

Zanzetkuken braced himself as the compressed air slammed into the back of his drop pod, which launched it towards the mountain, spiraling.  The gyroscope kept him aligned as he braced himself when the pod slammed into the mountain, drilling into it, and eventually entering the hall in front of the doorway to the inner sanctum of the masters.  The guards moved towards the pod as Zanzetkuken kicked open the steel hatch, drawing his blade from the sheath on the door, and dispatching the phyrexis that inflicted the guards.  As they were recovering, Zanzetkuken walked towards the sanctum door, which opened for him.  The door closed as soon as he had entered, and Zanzetkuken looked upon the Phyrexis cursed masters.

They moved to attack him, and Zanzetkuken tossed his blade upward as he drew his single shot sidearms.  He fired them off then tossed the now-useless weapons to the side and caught his weapon as it fell towards the ground.  Fire destroyed the canister, but one found its mark and removed the Phyrexis from Water, who fell to the ground, soon rising to attack Earth.  Zanzetkuken dived behind a pillar as Fire's blast nearly reached him.  It split around the pillars, keeping him safe for the moment, however, just as soon as the flames ended, Air launched a focused blast that destroyed the pillar.  As he dodged the falling rubble Zanzetkuken thought, This may take longer than I expected.  If only that canister had reached him.

The mana in the blade allows it to dispatch the phyrexis, but not harm the inflicted.
The weapons used by the army work through use of air compressed by many pumps.
The shells are steel in the back, with obsidian in the front, to shatter on impact and release the gas.

[WillowLuman]

[Why would the shells need to be dwarven-tech? Evidently your forces have access to very advanced tech, as evidenced by everything else.]

Wierd entered the infirmary, carrying a large paperclipped stack and a few other objects.

[Gizogin]

[Hugo, the Gizogin that went out to check on you wasn't Gizo X.]

[WillowLuman]

[Hugo, the Gizogin that went out to check on you wasn't Gizo X.]

Oh well, edited.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

They are close to the civil war level of military technology currently, but made by abusing physics and using magic for what they cannot do that way.  The Slashdiver and it's core are the exceptions for that era, but still made possible by abusing physics and using magic for what they cannot do that way.

Other tech areas are the close to the same level as the revolutionary war.

[WillowLuman]

Lethal compressed air guns would require fairly advanced tech, especially if you intend on reloading. If you have sufficiently powerful magic, then at least militarily you can compensate for lack of some tech. Seeing as the revolutionaries broke from the citadel that was full of magitek, I'd assume that they managed to steal some advanced pieces (like the components of the slashdriver.) Presumably with the size of the army they would have been able to build some of their own manufacturing facilities. That's why I assumed high-tech.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

The air guns do not require much (I think).  Just think of a paintball gun and that is what the troops basically have.  These were worked on for my entire term of office at another facility, so these were built, but never seen by the regular populace.  Of course, the civil war era is what you would get if you averaged everything out.