2008-09-08 "So Awesome!"

[Slamlander]

Well, one point here ...
It's more like 100,000 times faster. I had another point but lottsa wine erased it. I'll remember it by my morning, I'm sure of it.


Ciao folks, my wife needs to sleep and she can't do that without me

[runic]

I highly doubt it. Misa is out of the loop big time, her best source info on time magic is from the never-shuts-up Sara, so unless she gets a first hand demo, I can see her not knowing about time magic until Sara takes out five guys before she can blink.

Misa's out of what loop? She was the one bringing Ensigerum gossip to the embassy. And she's Viradior.

My low-probability prediction: Misa has not only heard of "and she moved really fast! weird!" but is in top-secret elven R&D (they can't all sulk all the time, can they?), and in fact means "I'll keep up" quite literally. Because it'd be funny if Miss Bubbly kicked Ensigerum ass right now.

Given the general surprise, such R&D would be very top secret and possibly not even official -- perhaps one of the Great Houses, or some revolutionary cabal, trying to get an advantage for the next war. (They're immortal. There'll be a next war.) No matter who, Sarine would be out of the loop, with her "spend days per century in the city" policy.

Even lower-probability, cruel and unusual division: the Ensigerum monk who "invented" time magic actually got it from a sympathetic or meddling elf.

FWIW, I note that Sarine recognized the time magic *as* time magic, and not "move really fast" magic, and Poe has told us Tsuiraku mages kill themselves trying the things the Ensigerum thinks are impossible. So there's something odd about "time magic as superadvanced secret of one tiny group".

Oh, and how is it that "blatant crush" is not part of the thread title?

the elves aren't likely to persue time magic as an avenue because it is a religious taboo for them. they could, they choose not to. at least those that try to keep face with their community.

and i believe that poe said that time magic was the ensigerum's baby.

[RubberBandMan]

I don't follow the "Elves invented everything before everyone else" theory. Might as well say that they could of made guns, but choose not to. Sure, they may be the strongest mages one-on-one, but its not like they have a iron grasp on any sort of magical devoplment. For example, we've never heard of them having Battle Golems like Tsuiraku has been implied to have. Why would they need manual labor in the form of humans if they can make five or six golems that could be watched by one elf?

Then there is that god-construct of Luminosita, which fake or not, is without a doubt a rather effective weapon, even if its not a pure energy blast the elves are fond of. I could see in a few decades groups of five or six strong mages make their own, not as a god so much, but as an extra body guard to throw at things while they run away. It surely would be strong enough to take on your average group of robbers and thugs, if groups like Tsuiraku and the Ensigerum got a hold to the exact details used to make one.


If you ask me, Elves are the best at pure magic/Magic use, in terms of using Magic to counter Magic that was used to counter Magic, while humans tend to be more applied and outside-the-box uses for magic.

[mindstalk]

Thing is, the elves are presumably of human intelligence, and have apparently been around for tens of thousands of years. One would expect that to add up to a lot. Not necessarily inventing everything, but picking up most low-hanging fruit. Which some stuff might not be; it's all magic, so pretty arbitrary from our POV.

Going against them are possibly small populations and static culture, or more plausibly for me a culture doing other things than inventing stuff. OTOH the population of human *mages* isn't that big either, especially outside Tsuiraku -- if the Ensigerum guards (and is fed by) a "village", I expect the # of time monks to be a few dozens, or a few hundred at most.

Of course the elves do have their own unique innovations, and I've got an elf bias, so I won't claim anything's clear, but I pick at the worldbuilding anyway.

[Sareth]

You also need to account for the fact that cultures can stagnate, even regress. Remember, the fall of Rome plunged the Western World into a 1000 year long regression where we lost things like concrete and had to re-invent them. The collapse of the Elven people at the end of the Errant War, combined with the lost of most of their population could easily have resulted in the loss of many key skills, setting them back vastly. Add in that they live thousands of years and there may be no particular urge for them to race to recreate things, especially if they are far more concerned with just trying to survive those massive losses.

Add into it a tendency for many topmost cultures to conclude "Everything important has already been discovered..."

It's believable to see the elves as having been top, but failing in light of troubles.

[RubberBandMan]

I think it may be clearer that what the elves do have is the very best of its type, but they haven't been inventing entirely new things, only countermesures and improvements.

Look at say, Combat Robots today. At the moment they aren't really useful, or are only starting to be used as practical tools. If five years ago the major inventing powers (Say, Japan, USA, Europe ect. ect.) had some sort of massive population kill off, what would they have over the next five years? The best tanks, rifles, jets, radios, and so on. Currently existing tech, but all top-of-the-line compared to other countries who may of been saved the mass-nukeage.

Now, over the next ten years in this theory, I have no doubt that the USA, Japan, and so on would invent entirely new things, but if all they did was build stronger tanks, better body armor, cheaper stealth aircraft and improved tactics, while other countries did things like cyber-warfare and progressed robots and military networking, you'd have what we have currently in ES, which is that the Elves are the best at what they do, but they are getting left behind as simply having the strongest spells and best counter-spells for those spells are becoming less important then say, Guns or Asymetrical warfare and economic pressures and expendable magic constructs.

[pillar_of_hate]

Actually, it's pretty clear at this point that the Ensigerum are basically a one-trick pony. It's quite clear (to me, at least) from watching Sarine and Jon fight Sara and Warrel that the Ensigerum don't go for much in the way of battle tactics. They rely on time magic,and to a lesser extent fighting skill, to do all their work for them. Remember, Jon outsmarted Sara once and Warrel twice in a single sequence of combat, and Sarine easily beat Sara in a fair fight, owing partly to Sara's use of a particularly moronic weapon (though Anita is reported to be more formidable, it remains to be seen whether she's actually any good with a live weapon). If their time magic advantage is taken away from them, either by Sara sharing it with Sarine or Misa, or new magic is developed to neutralize it, the Ensigerum, as a collective, won't last very long.

Poe, please, for the love of all that is (un)Holy, let the fight evolve into a lesbian sex three-way when Sarine walks in.

[RubberBandMan]

One trick, without a doubt, but consider: This ONE trick has let them do have a major-super power suck up to them, have cold-hearted assassins running in fear, and be a creditable threat to almost anybody. Us gamers and comic-book fans may look down on having one gimmick, and it may be becoming much less useful, but is there any other trick besides God-Sucking that has been used so effectively with almost no fail? Sure, its screwed them over a few times, but almost any tactic will. The question you have to ask is why it hasn't failed more!

I wonder if 'sparring' is a typical first date among elfish fighters? Sarine may not be upset at Misa, but at Sara for playing the field, because she assumed that the Ensigerum had kept that 'practice' in effect.

"Live weapons" may not mean what we think it means.

[mindstalk]

And Sarine was quickly coming up with reactive force barrier countermeasures in case Sara simply tried to attack her on release. Just knowing about the existence of time magic will probably let enemies nullify a lot of the advantage. And how many monks are there? Anita's domination plans seem insane, modulo having Ian around.

[AdamZero]

I think we're just gonna get blind sided by a display of irony and something will screw everything up.

also, has ian made it back to the Ensigerium village yet?


also I'm on the top of the forum! SO AWESOME!

Rubberbandman, my opinion? Recall the spar with the Imperatrix against the 'young' and 'rookie' monks. She said they were better because they didn't assume they were all powerful badass just cause they had one little trick. They also didn't have, hopefully, an ego-plex like That monk Sarine and John plugged.