Familicide Mega-Thread

[Jay R]

The really important question is: How much XP does V get for that?

You only get xps for encounters that are challenging. V gets xp for the ABD, but anybody who was killed with no saving throw, without ever knowing about V, and who V never encountered, does not represent an actual threat. Therefore there are no experience points.

[Emperor Flumph]

I understand how genetics work, but the thing is V said: "any creature that directly shares your bloodline is dead". http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0640.html

I don't interpret that as including cousins, but okay then, I accept that it is the only way to make it work. Cousins do share genes (blood) after all even if they are not in the same line.

But it doesn't help much, because now there is no way to add a "trough living" clause. Cousins share blood even if their grandmother is dead. Given a thousand years of interbreeding, it has to have a cutoff where the amount of genes shared are to low, if not then it would still depopulate the species.

Hmm, you're right. The fact that both the human and dragon species (and whatever other races black dragons have interbred with--we know at least one blue dragon was into ogres) aren't extinct does mean that mean that the definition of "familial link" only stretches so far. Given that the sudden deaths of people around the world at the same moment wasn't immediately noticed, I'd guess it only goes up to second or third cousins--people who share the same great- or great-great-grandparents. Any further and it would most likely be worldwide panic.

[Yogi]

I understand how genetics work, but the thing is V said: "any creature that directly shares your bloodline is dead". http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0640.html

I don't interpret that as including cousins, but okay then, I accept that it is the only way to make it work. Cousins do share genes (blood) after all even if they are not in the same line.

But it doesn't help much, because now there is no way to add a "trough living" clause. Cousins share blood even if their grandmother is dead. Given a thousand years of interbreeding, it has to have a cutoff where the amount of genes shared are to low, if not then it would still depopulate the species.

Remember, the initial target of the spell was a Dragon, and dragons live for centuries and breed significantly less often than humans. Therefore, the spread of the family tree would not be as bad. 1/4 of all Black Dragons die anyway so it's clear that the interpretation of "relative" is pretty liberal.

[Yogi]

I'm starting to think that Familicide is being picked to death (no pun intended) way too much.

Mind, I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't analyze what was said about Familicide. Far from it. But, and I think this is my main point, treating what has been said about Familicide as Crunch rather than Fluff might be a bit of an error, and is, IMO, what is leading to most of these arguments.

We can still analyze it though. If we assume that "direct bloodline" means "share your genetic code" and that all members of a species do not have a common ancestor, then that explains everything that happens in the comic.

What people need to realize is that when they say "Well, if we define the spell THIS way then it doesn't make sense." it means that that definition is therefore wrong.

[Gorm_the_DBA]

Also note that by the time you get out to 10th cousin, there's a *lot* of intermingling between bloodlines...so you might kill 1/100th of that number, but probably significantly less...you'd just be killing someone for not only being Jim Bob's cousing, but Joe Bob's as well, not to mention Jill Bob and Joan Bob.

Still makes em deed...but doesn't rack the score nearly as fast.

[BaronOfHell]

In your example, all in pink should be orange. Penelope's family falls not because of Penelope, but because of her child, whom they're all blood related to just as much as Penelope is.

I don't think anyone affected should be pink. Pink is going one step to far as I see it.

Thanks for taking the time to make this cumbersome graphics btw. I for one appreciates it a lot!

[hamishspence]

Hypothesis- maybe "directly related" has a different degree of closeness required, than "directly shares your bloodline".

If "Directly shares your bloodline" means something different, then all the Draketooths, including Penelope's child, could "share a common ancestor" with Mama Dragon,

but because "directly related" works differently, it doesn't kill everyone who "shares a common ancestor" with Penelope's child.

[ralphmerridew]

It's not like Western Continent has Internet.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0739.html

[androkguz]

You misunderstood something. I was responding to a claim that familicide works in infinite recursion. So it kills a first wave, second wave, third wave, and so on until it's killed everyone who has a direct link to anyone in any previous wave. I wasn't claiming that Familicide worked that way, I was pointing out why it couldn't work that way.

Ohh! My bad then

[Adama]

Look at this as a numbers thing. We saw what, 22 dead Draketooths? Let's assume that counting people off panel and who were doing other things at lunchtime, that there were 40 family members in total. Each of those represents a connection outside the family, to another parent. V specified that anyone directly related to the bloodline would be offed, so parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, possibly half-siblings and cousins depending on what's considered a direct relation.

Now let's assume that for each connection, the spell killed an average of 20 people. An average, mind you; that means for every one where it killed only 5, you have another where it killed 35.

That still means that you're talking about 800 dead--out of a population of how many on the western continent? Millions? Without much in the way of police or news services, would you notice if 800 people mysteriously dropped dead across your home state? Particularly in an environment where that sort of thing is a lot more common, what with vengeful spellcasters, oppressive governments, and a general lack of regard for life.

[Killer Angel]

You only get xps for encounters that are challenging. V gets xp for the ABD, but anybody who was killed with no saving throw, without ever knowing about V, and who V never encountered, does not represent an actual threat. Therefore there are no experience points.

Pendell wasn't serious about that one, I believe...

[BaronOfHell]

Well, I believe the universe of OOTS is around 1000 years old, give or take, which translates into 30 generations, generously assuming 33 years per generation.

I think you're overshooting big time here. The target was an ABD, and let's assume the 25% of that population being terminated was correct.

Since we don't know at what time after the beginning of the current world that any BD of this line had procreated with a non-BD we can't really evaluate through generations very easily.

In stead I suggest we look at it differently. Let's assume all dragon descendents are sorcerers (unless some kind of half-dragon) and that there is an equal amount of each species of dragons in the world and they're pretty much equally sorcerer ancestors.

I don't know how many different types of dragons there exists, but I'll just guess at 25. So we've less than 1/100th (some of the BD's were destroyed because they'd given a child to the wrong BD family) of all sorcerer families wiped out and all families of whom at least a single member had a child with this particular family is wiped out as all.

Now I've no clue how many of all characters in this world are sorcerers, but from what I've heard of SoD, it's really not that many. So I'd not be surprised if Girards family were a large percentage of the families affected by clause 1.

Now regarding clause 2. I don't know how specific the mural is supposed to be, but taking it for what it shows, the Draketooth family were maybe, what, 3 generations of human looking people? With 4 children pr. generation that's 64 families destroyed assuming no two non-draketooth parent was from the same family (which is unlikely given that they'd have to venture further and further away to find new families, that it's the single family member they rob and not the entire family and finally that there's most likely a limited amount of acceptable families [read wealthy]). On a continent of constant war, how many in that specific family were still alive at that time? Even if it's 20 people, we're barely out of a thousand victims from this part alone. All in all, the kill count is likely to be in thousands, tens of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands if unlucky, but I highely doubt we'll get even close to a million exactly because it was an ABD which was the target.

Further more, it's important to note that in comic 640 V states that every living creature in the bloodline is dead and every living creature directly related to any of those creatures is also dead. This can very well mean that despite clause 1 well go through the entire blood line, clause 2 might also be restricted to only affecting the families of those who were not already dead. Which will likely lessen the kill count a lot more as well.

Which mean not even 1/100th of all sorcerer familes were affected due to Black Dragon being a non-uncommon encounter for adventures.

[Alagaesian]

Besides, the world is only about 1100 years old, and dragons don't breed that often. I estimate that there are no more than 11, maybe 12 generations of black dragons present in this world. Since the ABD was so old, I estimate that she was probably somewhere in generations 3-4, giving her no relatives farther away than 4th cousins. Both her and all her cousins share blood with a common set of great-granddragons, and therefore her cousins are all blood relatives. Even if the ABD had only one offspring, her cousins give the spell enough linear area in the family tree for the spell to affect a lot of descendants, but not so many as to completely wipe out the dragon population.

If we assume that the Draketooth-tree black dragon was one of the cousin's descendants, then it would make perfect sense for Draketooth's entire family tree to be wiped out on account of him sharing a direct bloodline with the ABD. Then Penelope, being related to one of the Draketooths, gets killed by Part 2 of the Familicide spell. Part 2 then further goes on to trace up her entire bloodline to her oldest ancestors, probably about 50 generations ago, then trace down through all his or her ancestors. If you assume that each generation births two people, then you'd have roughly (# of oldest ancestors)*2^50 people killed.

Massive depopulation bomb? Not so much - I doubt there's that many people alive on even Earth right now, and we've had waaaay over 50 generations. The key here is that blood relatives start inbreeding massively once they spread out enough. This is compounded by the fact that this is a medieval setting where only the few rich/magical people would ever be able to move out of their town/village. Thus, Penelope's bloodline probably traces into whatever town she grew up in plus maybe a few scatterings of people who moved into other places and bred with other people.

So, yes, possibly two-dozen bloodlines died of as a result of being related to the Draketooths, but that means that only maybe 15 towns at a maximum were affected due to overlaps. Any town without much relation to the Familicided Draketooth-lover probably only had a scattering of people die. Any with a strong relation might have been completely eradicated. So, in the places where there weren't many deaths, there wasn't enough deaths to panic about. Anywhere else, there was no one left to panic.

[BaronOfHell]

He couldn't have been happy as a clam! Look at what the Draketooths did to him! That Weepie's demise is the saddest thing in the history of this comic!

He or one in his family had a one night stand with some draketooh woman who, after the act was done (or before?), stole some of their wealth... Yeah poor guy. It's not like that hasn't happened to at least half of us

[Ron Miel]

Except that there was a state funeral for Penelope. It would therefore be common knowledge that she died in mysterious circumstances. And then you'd get other people who'd notice that their friends died ion similar circumstances at exactly the same time. They'd figure it out pretty quickly after that.

[rbetieh]

Also, Tarquin wasn't especially curious about how Penelope and her family died, because he thought he already knew: Nale did it.

No, he didnt even know Nale was in town for over a week after Penelope died. Failing to autopsy seems extremely strange for Tarquin anyways.

[Mastikator]

Plenty probably noticed. Tiamat for one. OotS only haven't because they have no dealings with black dragons, even indirectly, except for Gigard.

[Snowbluff]

No, he didnt even know Nale was in town for over a week after Penelope died. Failing to autopsy seems extremely strange for Tarquin anyways.

Keep in mind it was an [Epic] spell. That means 2 things. First, that the spell is probably indistinguishable from the normal [Death] effect that it would most likely be seeded from. Second, the spell was probably an unique creation of the Wizard V was gestalted with at the time. Identifying and tracing it back to the dead Wizard would of lead to a dead end.

[rbetieh]

Keep in mind it was an [Epic] spell. That means 2 things. First, that the spell is probably indistinguishable from the normal [Death] effect that it would most likely be seeded from. Second, the spell was probably an unique creation of the Wizard V was gestalted with at the time. Identifying and tracing it back to the dead Wizard would of lead to a dead end.

I wonder..what is a Death effect in D&D. Heart Attack like in Death Note? Stroke? Freak Annuerism? It would have to be some bodily failure that hits without warning and is untraceable by non-magical means... Oh well I will puzzle this for a few hours.

[Quild]

I've thought about this a lot, because I wondered how the Giant would justify it didn't killed all mankind.

Assuming Familicide kills everyone who is blood-relative to someone killed by familicide or to the target (which is much discussed, but I don't think the spell would have killed Penelope otherwise since ABD had no other son, and that I don't think her father or grandfathers were Girard's grandfather) :

V thinks she killed one quarter of the black dragons.
=> The world is one thousand years old, dragons have a long lifespan and low reproduction rates. So maybe we can assume there is something like 3 or 4 generations of black dragons in this world, and a few broken links since dragons tend to be killed by adventurers or others dragons. V's assumption seems quite fair.

Now, did V thought aboud crossbreeding?
=> It seems that not. But anyway, crossbreeds between players races and BD may be rare and I guess that at this point, V didn't give much about monster races. By killing one quarter of a specific color of dragons, V may not have considered really likely to hit humans anyway.

Still...
=> Crossbreeds have a long lifespan too, short reproduction rate too (the three crossbreeds made 6 childs (no risk to hit their mates whom are dead long ago, and thus, no risk to hit their mate's families) which is low considering their lifespan). To hit a black dragon with 4 generations of descendants without the first or second (Girard may be really old, maybe it's fair for his father to be still alive) generation to be dead in order to break the chain of kills, is really ill luck. With less generations, there would be less effects on mankind. With more generations, there would have been a broken link (like the grandchild of the BD).

So what?
=> So yeah, it affects mankind. But maybe not that badly, since Girard's mate, his brother mate, his sister mate, his cousin's mate, may be dead long ago. Also the clan didn't spread much, and stayed on Western continent, breeding with rich families whom may not spread much as well.
So yeah, big collateral damages, but not apocalypse.


In conclusion :
=> Even considering the (almost) worst spell definition of Familicide (since I consider that someone already dead breaks the chain), we can make theories about why it didn't wiped out all life on earth without considering a lot of consanguinity.

[Hbgplayer]

I am going to guess that it is still too early for people to discover the full extent of the deaths. It has only been two weeks since the mass group of people died, and they were spread across the entire continent, of which only a third is controlled by a single organization.
It would also take much more than the year that many of the nations have been around to set up a fully functional and efficient law enforcement/investigative service (if they set one up at all) that could connect all the dots in such a short amount of time.

[Snowbluff]

I wonder..what is a Death effect in D&D. Heart Attack like in Death Note? Stroke? Freak Annuerism? It would have to be some bodily failure that hits without warning and is untraceable by non-magical means... Oh well I will puzzle this for a few hours.

I read it as you die. Everything your body stops working enough for you to be dead. It's a flavor thing, really.

[Eldray]

Does he get XP from them?

Maybe next comic there will be a Wile E. Coyote moment when V realizes that and suddenly turns into an epic-level wizard.

[ThePhantasm]

In various threads people have been wondering how the deaths of so many at once weren't noticed worldwide, how V's spell didn't result in the deaths of millions, etc. I think a few points need to be borne in mind:

1) V remarked just after casting familicide that black dragons have a low reproduction rate (which is why she estimated that she had killed 1/4 of them).

2) Humans have a larger reproduction rate, but the Draketooths remained fairly secluded on one continent and only journeyed out of their canyon to mate with outsiders, then take the baby. That means that generally the familicide was restricted to the Western Continent. Also, the hassle of going off, courting one person, having offspring with them, and then kidnapping said offspring probably means each Draketooth only had one or two children per person... not a huge growth rate.

3) Dragons have a propensity to breed outside their species, but not all dragons are black dragons, and we have no indication that this was common for BDs, just that it was possible.

All of these factors limit the scope of familicide substantially.

[Hallavast]

Does he get XP from them?

Maybe next comic there will be a Wile E. Coyote moment when V realizes that and suddenly turns into an epic-level wizard.

Considering his ECL was probably something between 70-90 (this is assuming the soul splice simply adds up each caster's level with V's), then probably not.

[rbetieh]

He or one in his family had a one night stand with some draketooh woman who, after the act was done (or before?), stole some of their wealth... Yeah poor guy. It's not like that hasn't happened to at least half of us

Lucky guy, I have no red-headed sorcerous illigitimate children. I feel left out...

[Psyren]

The really important question is: How much XP does V get for that?

Not much, if any at all.

[Math_Mage]

In various threads people have been wondering how the deaths of so many at once weren't noticed worldwide, how V's spell didn't result in the deaths of millions, etc. I think a few points need to be borne in mind:

1) V remarked just after casting familicide that black dragons have a low reproduction rate (which is why she estimated that she had killed 1/4 of them).

2) Humans have a larger reproduction rate, but the Draketooths remained fairly secluded on one continent and only journeyed out of their canyon to mate with outsiders, then take the baby. That means that generally the familicide was restricted to the Western Continent. Also, the hassle of going off, courting one person, having offspring with them, and then kidnapping said offspring probably means each Draketooth only had one or two children per person... not a huge growth rate.

3) Dragons have a propensity to breed outside their species, but not all dragons are black dragons, and we have no indication that this was common for BDs, just that it was possible.

All of these factors limit the scope of familicide substantially.

Here's the thing, though...black dragons have only had a few generations to interbreed since the world was created. We can infer this from the generational gap between ABD and YABD. There aren't that many Clause 1 dragon targets, there aren't that many Clause 2 dragon targets. The spell still took out a quarter of the black dragon population.

Humans have had fifty or more generations to interbreed. Every Clause 1 target (a Draketooth who stole a child from a consort) generates a Clause 2 family line stretching out fifty generations or more, which is a massive number of people even after accounting for redundancy in the family tree AND factoring out the dead people. There's a lot of room for numbers games, but I would find less than, oh, 500,000 deaths (or a large enough fraction of the Western Continent that we start getting a lot of overlap between Draketooth consorts' family lines) implausible.

Even ignoring the possibility of other instances of human-dragon interbreeding, this is a LOT of humans who should be dead. That's why people are so eager to place SOME kind of limit on the scope of Familicide's blood relations.

[Herald Alberich]

Never understood that saying, by the way. Clams don't seem all that happy to me.

The full saying is "happy as a clam at high tide." Clams are safe underwater at high tide, and harvested for food when exposed at low tide. Why that illuminating phrase was dropped I'll never know.

He or one in his family had a one night stand with some draketooh woman who, after the act was done (or before?), stole some of their wealth... Yeah poor guy. It's not like that hasn't happened to at least half of us

Unless the Draketooths know fertility magic (possible, especially since Roy was the product of a failed contraception spell), it wasn't just a one-night stand, but a love affair until the redheaded lass was sure she was pregnant. I'd say the poor Weepie had a decent reason to be depressed.

[ThePhantasm]

Every Clause 1 target (a Draketooth who stole a child from a consort) generates a Clause 2 family line stretching out fifty generations or more

May I ask why so many are assuming that it is fifty generations or so? From what I can tell there are maybe five generations on the family tree. The Clause 2 family lines add more to that but they still haven't had a long time to produce generations... maybe about 50 years, which broadly makes fifty cultural generations but would be much less than fifty actual familial generations. I have no doubt that the kill count is high but I think some are overestimating it.

Plus it needs to be taken into account that the Western Continent is a very bloody war-torn continent in constant upheaval, so a good chunk of the people involved in Clause 2 family lines may have died long before familicide. I suspect the life expectancy on the WC is not that great.