OOTS #945 - The Discussion Thread

[zimmerwald1915]

I thought of that in my spoilered reasoning above. Purify Food and Drink can purify about 4 times as much water as Create Water conjures. That would mean that supporting a city would still call for lots and lots of magic; I'm of the opinion that using decanters to remove the need to pump all the salt water out of the Rift would be the easier option, especially since it isn't limited to the amount of water that will fit through the Rift at a time.

Yeah...I posted more for the pun's sake than to add anything meaningful to the discussion

[Everyl]

Yeah...I posted more for the pun's sake than to add anything meaningful to the discussion

Uh, whoops. I guess it's too early in the morning here for me to catch puns before they're pointed out to me.

[CelestialStick]

Wait, what?

You just invalidated all the work I've put into my PhD thesis: String Theory, a study in four and five dimensions of Cosmic Strings (flax, cotton, wool, and hemp) and the Geometric Transitions of Superstrings (thread, yarn, rope, cable) into various garments and useful items (clothing, decorative macrame, rugs).

Curse you, Loreweaver15, curse you!

Any string theory that ignores the cosmic consequences of cheese is doomed to failure.

[Breccia]

The forum Snarl is coming! Make peace with your respective deities or lack thereof! Stop arguing at once!

Oh please, what are the odds that the Forum Snarl will ge--

[CelestialStick]

Oh please, what are the odds that the Forum Snarl will ge--

I really did laugh out loud at that one.

[davidbofinger]

Maybe all it wants is to hit the snooze button on the alarm.

It's the embodiment of chaos

And what is better calculated to infuriate someone chaotic, than a machine telling them to stop relaxing?

Unfortunately, last time it destroyed a pantheon and the world before it found the button.

[davidbofinger]

count me in as another reader who really likes the 'eldritch horror' feel of the Snarl's actual appearance.

I would have liked to see the Sweatsoldier, or at least his armour, being unmade. Dissolving or unravelling or something of that sort, not just impaled. I'm hoping we see that soon, though preferably not immediately to Laurin.

[Sir_Leorik]

Man, I'd hate to be playing a cleric in a setting where the Gods veto every application of divine magic that can't be guaranteed to be used only for that specific God's followers and allies. And the default assumption in D&D rules is that the cleric controls the spell - theistic and non-theistic clerics have basically the same level of freedom in how they use their magic.

Depending on the source material, that may or may not be the way Cleric spells work in 2E. In 3.X the gods don't veto your spell selection, unless you've been very naughty, and in 4E they pretty much don't care, so long as you worship them.

Wait, what?

You just invalidated all the work I've put into my PhD thesis: String Theory, a study in four and five dimensions of Cosmic Strings (flax, cotton, wool, and hemp) and the Geometric Transitions of Superstrings (thread, yarn, rope, cable) into various garments and useful items (clothing, decorative macrame, rugs).

Curse you, Loreweaver15, curse you!

Wait, you actually were trying to cross the Cosmic Strings made of flax and wool?!? Are you mad? That would release a Sha'atnez Mephit!

Modern Desalination (or "Disalinization" as you call it) can be done in three distinct ways:

Spoiler

Show

1) Heating the water until it boils, then condensing it on cool metal plates.
2) Pumping the water into a tank, then decreasing the pressure in the tank until the water evaporates (All liquids evaporate at super low pressure)
3) Filtering and chemically treating the water, then running the saltwater through special filters, then filtering and treating the water again.

Option 1 is simple, robust, and incredibly resource intensive. The amount of electricity or fuel needed to boil water for a city is ridiculous. But as a bonus this method automatically purifies water as a side effect.
Option 2 is neither similar nor robust, but takes less energy and carries all the benefits of option 1. It is easily sabotaged.
Option 3 is really complicated but energy efficient. The system of filters and chemical treatments and pumps can easily be sabotaged by simply tearing or removing 2 or 3 filter components.

All this is just for future reference.

Now we know!

And knowing is half the battle!^TM

G.I. Joe!^TM

[Stella]

No, New Topic: the 670 KM discontinuity. What the heck is going on there?

Super-diamonds!

That's a very strong statement. I would say that we know narrative conventions have some effect in some situations.

Such as "Not a chance in a million" equaling "will definitely happen." That's a very strong example.

[David Argall]

Well, the plot advances...

Our original story seems to be more or less supported, subject to that story being 2nd-3rd hand, when it isn't 5th-6th hand. There is something big and powerful on the other side of the rifts, and it looks hostile.

Now the Snarl may well be "harmless" if not "provoked". It's long stretches of inactivity suggest it is willing to do nothing, possibly forever. However we don't know what is the proper definition of provoked, not what provokes, nor how seriously, and "anything" and "A whole lot" are definitely on the table.

The theory that the party will be visiting the Snarl world is once again endangered. So is the Krogger is alive theory. The lack of any fish in the water argues there is no life on the Snarl world [which may be the Snarl]. Of course, one can argue a dwarf has never seen a fish, and if the Snarl works from the dwarven memories, it might not know to create them. But this strip definitely creates problems for either theory.
Our new plotline might go....
Laurin survives and has learned some vital info about the Snarl. This she passes on to the party for some reason. The party manages to beat up X, before or after the last gate is destroyed, and they find the soul gem containing the souls of Lirian and Dorukan. They teach the party how to make new gates, and how to battle a monster who should be immune to their attacks. The party then builds new and improved gates with the help/despite the opposition of various figures. Belkar likely gets eliminated during this process.

On lesser matters, we now can see Laurin is a fairly normal type of parent. She wants her kid/s to have all the benefits of her lifestyle, but not the drawbacks. She may not like everything about her job, but she does not really want to escape, nor to have her daughter escape.
Her daughter has a pretty good change of knowing Mom's actual job, but since Laurin wants to believe otherwise, daughter acts ignorant. She may just enjoy the perks, or not want to hurt Ma by forcing her to confront the facts. Like a mother who does not want to think her daughter is having sex, Laurin is careful not to look took close at anything that might force her to admit the truth. [It is fairly likely we won't find out which, if either.]

[Storm_Of_Snow]

Are you talking about some kind of relatively-standard D&D desalinization magic machinery here? Or about modern-day, real-world desalinization plants and water pumps? I'm assuming a fairly standard D&D pseudo-medieval tech level + SRD magic, and within that, making water sounds easier than purifying and pumping it from the rift to me.

Modern day - with their level of materials technology, the standard pseudo-fantasy D&D version would likely be even bigger and chunkier (probably cast iron rather than steel, very primitive concrete if there's any at all, lots of wood, and maybe some magical materials like glassteel where it's absolutely necessary and can be afforded).

The real problem with magic is the cost, or rather, the wages of the spell casters. If the desalination spell can be made permanent, you only need to cast it once, whilst Create Food or Purify Water potentially need to be cast multiple times per day. It may also be less obvious if something happens that renders some of those clerics non-functional compared to something causing the pumps to malfunction, which could potentially lead to civil unrest if some of the population are denied water and others (eg, the nobility) still get some. And with pumps, create and purify can then become the emergency backup plan.

For the record, your #1 has traditionally been done with sunlight. In fact, that's how survival stills work.

And that's also how some salt is produced - pour sea water out over a large area, let the sun evaporate the water, scoop the salt up with a shovel, repeat.