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Sanctuary

I was going to mention the guns. What happened to the guns being core-based, with fire, land and lightning guns being the primary weapons? Although, re-reading it, I notice it says guns mostly use fire cores to propel bullets. ("Guns are rare, and function based off cores (most will focus on using a Fire Core to project forward a bullet).", emphasis added) I must have misunderstood it before. I thought guns would shoot fire, boulders and lightning. But I suppose that to overlook the effectiveness of a high-velocity lump of lead would be stupid of Leginia's military.

Still, why don't they have fire, land and lightning guns as well?

The Red Zephyr said Also, Iktomi defines OP. His threads apparently ignore gravity completely, are nearly unbreakable, and can form into anything.

Not to mention he can use them to kill dozens of people at a wave of his hand, and he's been using his thread-manipulating powers for the entirety of that collab post (floating not only his threads but two people too would take a lot of energy) but is yet to show much in the way of fatigue.

Sanctuary

Wow, massive post. No wonder it has been taking you so long.
And thank you, Anriu.

gamer5 said I fight back!

You do realise that acceptance into any RP is based solely on the GM's discretion, right? Challenging the GM before you've even gotten in is a bad move.

Sanctuary

Zachary had been walking out in the morning shade pushing the trolley, trying to remember his way to the skyway unit he had found earlier. He, together with Kaa'is, had been sure to make careful note of the landmark buildings and the general whereabouts of it when they had found it, but it took him some time to find where those landmarks were. For navigation Zachary mostly used any tall buildings still standing. They pierced into the sky, or at least it would be sky if the Wall wasn't there, and were generally able to be distinguished from each other. The method was not perfect, however. Shorter buildings which are close by can obscure the view of the skyline from the ground, and in the shadow of the morning and evenings, not to mention the darkness of night, the skyscrapers are difficult to distinguish or even see. Regardless, for general navigation it typically sufficed.

Zachary eventually found what he had been looking for, and it was unsurprisingly untouched since yesterday. The polarity cores are rather specialised and not especially powerful in terms of weapons or survival, so are not very useful for the average scavenger. For an engineer, however, they are marvellously useful cores. He approached the unit and took his plasma cutter out of his bag. He did not want the entire unit, with its hundreds of kilos of metal, just some of the key components. He laid his left hand on the skyway unit and allowed the image of it in his mind to guide his right hand with the plasma cutter.

While he was working away, trying to remove the parts, he felt the wind cannon being lifted out of his back. His mind immediately snapped away from the skyway unit. We've been sneaked up on two days in a row. You're getting slack.

A voice from behind him spoke. "This is a mighty fine weapon you've got here. Put your hands behind your head and give us all you've got and we may consider letting you live." The voice prodded Zachary in the back with his own wind cannon. Kaa'is probed out with his magnetic powers, just gently tugging on anything metal, acting a bit like a metal detector. Aside from the guy behind us, I can feel two others, one on each side and a bit behind. Both of them have some medium-length metal object, presumably a club or blade. Zachary complied for the moment, putting down his plasma cutter and placing his hands behind his head, but he also remotely disarmed his wind cannon by disconnecting the battery. For all the thug behind him knew, though, it was till functional.

Zachary then turned around so he could see his opponents. As Kaa'is had detected, there were indeed two more of them, although the two mentioned weapons were not yet drawn. They were all muscular and all their clothes all had tears. Some appeared to be tears from use, but some appeared to be tears from knives. The central one, who seemed to be the leader, was the oldest, around his forties. The one to Zachary's right seemed to be of a similar age. The one to the left was of similar age to Zachary. The thug who was holding the wind cannon tensed up for a moment as Zachary turned, but returned to how he was before when Zachary made no further moves. He motioned to the other two thugs and they began to approach Zachary, or more specifically his bag of tools. Before they could take more than a three steps, however, their weapons, metal bars used as clubs, rose out of their pockets and struck them on the back of their heads, causing them to collapse to the ground. The leader glanced to the side and saw this, and almost in a state of panic pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

Zachary and Kaa'is realised that this guy had realised that he noticed that Zachary must be a host, and the manner of his response indicated he was not prepared for that. "It must be broken," Zachary said, almost taunting now that he had the upper hand, "Let me take a look at it for you."

The thug instead swung the wind cannon overhead at Zachary, but he caught it with one hand, easily able to stop the metal object. The thug tried to pull back, but Zachary held the cannon firmly in place. After a few moments Zachary wrenched it from the thug's grip and wielded it himself. "Let me show you what this does." Quickly moving the battery terminals back in place, Zachary fired the wind cannon, sending the man flying across the rubble. He quickly picked himself back up and called to his partners, "He's a host! Let's get out of here!" The other two, who had just regained enough of their senses to get to their feet, heard the cry, saw the situation, and fled along with him.

As the thugs fled, Zachary leaned back, smiled and said, "That didn't go too badly."

You know what, I can't really argue. That did go alright.

Sanctuary

We understand if you can not manage to write in this RP, especially considering there is more to do in a day than just RP.

As for posting, I have been a bit busy and currently all I have to write about is my character rambling around Sovereign alone attempting to build something. I'll try to get a post up today.

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Bitten off more than you can chew, have you? That's a shame. I was hoping our characters could meet and do engineering together.

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I have thought some more, and I realise how Razor could work. I neglected to mention another feature of Kinetic Cores which makes kinetic shields work: they can in effect make a region semi-solid. The beam through which the diamond dust travels not only propels the diamond dust, but also has a similar effect to a kinetic shield, making it somewhat solid, thus holding the diamond dust in place like the blade of a saw. As such, it could work.

I think that's everything I have to say. Go make Skai happy, or even Zephyr.

Sanctuary

Of course, it would be very difficult to make a case for how such a thing could actually be practical. I think it may be easiest to just say that it works successfully because it does and we can leave it at that.

That means you can get to posting. Our activity has been slowing down, so we would all be pleased to have you join the action.

Sanctuary

@Gamer. 1. That is a very fair and reasonable point. (I never complained about the railgun because their functioning is very simple. You just run a current through two parallel beams with your metal shell between them, and because of a quirk of magnetism, the right hand rule, the shell is pushed along the rails.)

2. That would make Blaze a super-charged torch, not an actual laser (Light Amplification and Stimulated Emission of Radiation). That is not a problem in itself, but it has some implications. Light Cores are used in facilities such as light bulbs, which emit light in all directions and of a wide range of wavelengths. The strength of a laser comes from the uniformity of the photons it produces, because the identical wavelength and same polarity of all the photons means that as a whole they have constructive interference (the wave amplitudes add up, making more power). In real life this uniformity is done by exciting gas atoms in a chamber, using electricity, not light. As is the nature of excited atoms, they only emit specific wavelengths. The chamber contains two parallel mirrors, and the photons bounce between them, getting absorbed then emitted by the gas atoms until very quickly they all become uniform. Photons going in a direction other than directly between the two mirrors are either absorbed or redirected, making the laser a straight beam. One of the two mirrors is only half-silvered, so some of the photons go through it instead of bouncing back. This is the beam, and beams produced this way are at present the most effective way to create high-intensity light. Filtering the light to create uniformity will be much less effective since instead of transforming photons you're just removing them. The cooling is necessary to prevent the two mirrors and the rest of the chamber from melting, and typically cooling requires twenty times more energy than the laser itself.

Given that light cores are magical, I will concede that if you found a high-quality light core you could make it emit uniform light, and given enough power it could be strong enough to perform your task. However, directing it into a single beam would still require something, like mirrors. Those mirrors, even if you don't have something that cuts through metal, would still need cooling to prevent them from deforming. Even if you could make it work exactly how you want, where the beam doesn't need to touch anything, radiant heat would still necessitate cooling. Your pseudo-laser isn't an impossible device, you just need to recognise that it will get hot as that is the nature of such devices.

3. I am aware that diamond-tipped tools are the strongest around. I am also aware that if something is travelling fast enough it will cause significant damage. However, you are using grains of diamond. These grains are small and have a minuscule mass, so even at 100km/h or higher they have a very small momentum. They have nothing behind them holding them in place to prevent them from simply bouncing off hard surfaces other than magic. Yes, you could cut through a neck with it, but metal or stone is a whole different story. Each diamond grain won't slice right through a rock or metal sheet- it would make a small chip and bounce off, exiting the beam of control and presenting a significant hazard to the user, or it could stick in the object being cut and likewise be lost to the machine. This means you'll quickly run out of diamond dust either way. High-speed streams of grains are used in sand-blasters, and they act like sandpaper, not saws. Really, it would probably be cheaper to use sand instead of diamond dust, as if you expend diamond dust every time you cut through something expenses would be very high, and sand is still hard. And before you say anything about re-collecting lost diamond dust, kinetic cores have no way of distinguishing between diamond dust and any other dust.

Of course, you could always say 'this is science-fiction so it works by advanced technology' and 'this is fantasy so it works by magic'. That explains away how a device can work when its functioning would otherwise be inconceivable. But it doesn't explain away how it overcomes practicality issues when its functioning is known. As a last resort, you could invoke 'suspension of disbelief'. It means unbelievable things remain, but it allows very interesting albeit impossible things to exist.

Sanctuary

Zachary woke up aching. The low quality of the mattress he used did not help in easing the pain of the bruises he had received from last night's battle. Slowly, he stretched himself out of bed and headed over to where he had his showed. He had rigged up a water core over an old drain, along with a mirror he had made an effort to clean, a towel he had scavenged to dry himself with and another cloth with which he could scrub himself with. Removing his clothes, he stepped under the water core and pulled the switch to turn it on. He breathed suddenly as the cold water washed over his skin, then scrubbed down his body of sweat, dust and grime. On rare occasions he would find a dried-out cake of soap to use, but usually he had to suffice with just water and scrubbing. Finished with washing himself he took a few moments to inspect himself in the mirror. A year without proper grooming had left the hair on his head at a medium-long length, not yet down to his shoulders, and his beard had grown a lot past the neatly trimmed goatee he had once had. The rest of his body had also grown more hair, and it had also accumulated numerous scars- some from accidents and some from battles. A year of surviving in this wasteland had not been kind on anybody's appearance.

Over the year he had gradually become acclimatised to the ongoing feeling of filth, but still made an effort to remain hygienic, showering at least every few days, brushing his teeth and washing his clothes. He put his used clothes into a large drum, poured a small amount of washing powder he had scavenged in with them and used the shower to fill it with water. After scrubbing them around a bit he emptied the drum of its dirty soapy water and the clothes. While he rinsed his clothes he eyed the spots of blood on the sleeve of the shirt and his face went grim with the memory. He only paused for a moment before continuing, rinsing the clothes of suds and then hanging them up inside to dry. To aid his hygiene routine he had found a couple of other sets of clothes which fitted him, so he put on a relatively clean set of clothes. He then ate breakfast from his stolen rations and afterwards he brushed his teeth. He had found a toothbrush, but toothpaste was even harder to find than soap so he usually settled with scrubbing them with water.

Fresh and ready for the day ahead, Zachary went to remove the covering to the entrance of his lair when Kaa'is brought a noise outside to his attention. He paused and listened silently, and sure enough he heard a person outside walking around. As quietly as he could, Zachary slunk over to one of the tiny cracks in the rubble and looked out through it. At first he didn't see anything, but then he saw for a moment what appeared to be a pair of legs walking past. So Zachary waited a few minutes, listening around, until he couldn't hear the person outside any more and he was confident they were far enough away, until he opened up his hide-away and exited into the open air towing a trolley behind him and carrying his usual gear. The passer-by was nowhere to be seen so Zachary calmly concealed the entrance and walked off, heading towards where he had found that skyway unit.

Sanctuary

gamer5 said 1. Ewera actually worked in a team; most of the inventions that were made during her stay in Wintra were made with her as a part of the team. The Razor is one of the rare inventions that Ewera made by herself (as a request for a heavy-duty stone cutting tool).

I was aware of that. But that doesn't mean it takes a short period of time. For some real-life comparisons, it take 2-3 years for a company to develop a new car, 5 years to invent the M1 Abrams tank, and about 1 year to invent the AK-47. If you go into novel or little-explored technology, such as weapon lasers and immaterial blades, you can easily add a year or more on top of that. As I said, it's not quite impossible, just rather difficult. An extra two years would make a lot of difference.

On a specific note, the Blaze laser would still get hotter than a propellant firearm, especially since the beam needs to be concentrated somehow. Perhaps the heat (and damage) would be comparable to a fire core weapon instead, except being a laser it can be fired continuously but it would get much hotter that way. I'd suggest a water-core-powered liquid cooling system could cool it enough to avoid having it overheat too quickly. It would be reasonable for it to slowly cut through metal, given breaks every few seconds.

P.S. In my personal opinion, a whizzing beam of diamond dust, even with kinetic cores, doesn't sound any more effective at cutting than a chainsaw and has the con of requiring both sides of the object you are requiring to cut to be within reach. But that's just my opinion. There exists no information about the cutting power of grains of diamond propelled by magical stones.