A study of the geo-political effect of industrial firearms in Furrae (long post)

[Dressari]

Actually didnt jyrras once say that filtering out the magical residue from an item is a long and tedious process. I'm starting to wonder how he would even mass-produce such weapons with the magic already filtered out. Filtering out from already manufactured itema seems rather inefficent. He would probably have to start with the base materials. And i can't imagine filtering out magic from large clumps of ore, long reels of fabrics or the likes to be quick and easy. There still been no revelation on how he is even doing it and I'm curious to know.

[Mao]

I think someone else in this thread mentioned it, but I've often wondered if the removal of magic from something is where the real revolution is going to come from.  Potentially a revelation in the nature of magic and it's behavior that leads to a complete shift in things.

[Eboreg]

Got it Mao.

@Dressari: Jyrras has stated that the more natural an object becomes after 95%, the harder it is to apply magic. I was under the impression that should he ever make a 100% natural item, it would become impossible to apply magic to. What this would mean is that filtering an object with a 100% natural item would not do anything to the filter and remove the magic much more efficiently than if the filter were not 100% natural. What that means is that making a 100% natural item would be trivial if you already had 100% natural items. Jyrras doesn't, that's why he runs into trouble.

[Tezkat]

Actually, I think you should keep going.  As long as others are interested, of course.  Me not responding does not mean the thread should die.  More just that I don't think we're going to agree any time soon and that I'm not sure I've got the ability or patience to debate this any further than I have.

This started off as a kinda cool worldbuilding discussion. The OP was a reasonably well thought out "If B then Q" analysis. I challenged it primarily on the basis that no viable path from A to B existed, so the assumptions underlying the initial proposal were flawed. But from there the debate devolved into some kind of irrational gun fetish, making further discussion seem pointless.

Shall we try again?

@Tezkat: I should note that during all of the major revolutions of the 19th century, the very first action the revolutionaries committed to start the war was always breaking into the armory and stealing all of the guns.

Nothing about that scenario suggests a paradigm shift. Guns needn't significantly alter the dynamics of combat in a universe where fireball tossing is already the norm. How is breaking into an armoury full of guns different from breaking into an armoury full of magic wands and swords? Indeed, if we accept your groundless assumption that firearms' competitive advantage lies in outranging magic, that only limits our pool of useful revolutionaries to marksmen already skilled with these initially alien weapons. That would either indicate a world that's had widespread access to such weapons for generations (and thus reasonably developed ways to deal with them) or a coup by specially trained soldiery (with dynamics that depend much less on the weapons themselves).

Non-magical firearms have the potential to alter the logistics of warfare by removing the dependence on magic for production and resupply, but that requires that the knowledge and ability to manufacture them (or at least their ammunition) be widely distributed. Mind you, there's little evidence that modern non-magical chemical engineering technologies are widespread in Furrae. Refining materials for gunpowder the old fashioned way is a process that can take years. We know that that explosives tech at least has taken a backseat to magic in this world and likely wouldn't be very mature.


Amber had an interesting comment on the wands vs guns issue a while back...

If you get the option to buy a wand that can shoot small beams of energy at the command of your voice or will of thought and is guaranteed to hit its target due to its magical nature...or a relatively new and unstable device that requires you to have precise aim and needing to handle it a certain way in order for it to activate and might not even hit the target, which would you choose?

Also, superhuman speed, strength, endurance, and senses will not stop the bullet of a gun. It may give a slight advantage but only slight. And one may not consider blown off limbs a major injury but he will think very differently about a perforated heart.

Even accepting the assumption that natural armour provides no defence against firearms, it strains credulity to suggest that shrugging off hits to non-vital areas, reacting faster, outmaneuvering and outlasting opponents, and magically impairing the ability to detect you (all mainstays of the standard Demon power set) would provide negligible advantage in gun battles.

I still maintain that Furraean magic is not as effective as industrial firearms. Think about it, Daniel Ti'Fiona, an experienced and successful adventurer, exclusively used swords and cast no magic during that period. If magic had been effective as guns, he wouldn't have even lasted his first adventure. Also, the robe that he used would sure as hell not stop a bullet. That shows mainly one thing, either his robe effectively stops all magic attacks or magic is either so short range or slow-using or both that he could easily close and be done with it.

Dan's robe wasn't designed to stop bullets. It was designed to negate magic. You don't don a bulletproof vest against fireballs, just as fireproofing is unhelpful against bullets. There are shielding spells designed to block projectiles instead, which at last word from Amber are pretty effective against bullets.

But we saw the robe in action, so let's do a little math:

Dan is fairly lean and buff, especially in more recent "Amber finally learned how to draw muscles" depictions, plus he has wings, a tail, and (in the Dark Pegasus flashback) substantial clothing adding several kilos to his frame, so let's guesstimate his total mass as at least 80 kg. The blast he took from Dark Pegasus sent him flying into the wall with enough force to instantly knock him unconscious. That would require a minimum velocity of what... 10 m/s? (Maybe more, as Dan does have an exceptionally thick skull...) So we have a lower bound of about 4000 J for the residual impact energy after the robe negated the lethal magical damage. For reference, that's twice the muzzle energy of an AK-47. It's not obvious whether the distribution of force resulted from the robe's absorptive capabilities or the nature of the spell. (The dark magic that killed Devin was definitely a more concentrated, penetrating type.) The damage component cancelled by his robe should have "torn him in two", which (depending on the mechanism of action) could have indicated an order of magnitude more energy being absorbed by the protective enchantments. Even in the most conservative (and in my opinion, unlikely) case where the robe worked by converting entirety of otherwise deadly magic energy to kinetic energy and distributing the impact, DP would have been effortlessly tossing out the equivalent of high powered sniper rifle rounds with (literally) a wave of his hand. Less conservatively, it compares favourably with antitank munitions.

Certainly, anyone under a few hundred kg would not be standing after being hit by even a glancing blow from one of those, and anyone not magically protected would be dead or dying.

The lower level magic (we assume such due to both the implied inexperience of the casters and the fact that they were spamming it freely) featured in the Abel's Story fight easily punched melon-sized holes in a heavy wooden wagon at a range of... we said about 50 m. (The blasts didn't look particularly weakened by transit through the barrier, either.) Although modern firearms also fare decently against wagons, these spells visibly exceed power levels expected of small arms fire.


It's also important to remember that Dan wasn't a Being with a magic sword and robe hunting dangerous Creatures. He was a Creature--a mere two generations removed from a Dragon-slaying, city-destroying demigoddess--hunting fellow Creatures. Being Adventurers generally can't take down the targets he did alone.

Either of these makes magic compare unfavorably to industrial firearms since A) any armor proven to stop a bullet is either too heavy for personal use or too unreliable to be practical

Then why do we even bother outfitting our soldiers and law enforcement officers with body armour?

and B) I triple-f***ing dare you to take out a machine gun nest with a sword.

Teleport in. Slash with typical anti-Creature sword able to slice through solid steel like a hot knife through butter. The machinegun and its gunners are divided into cleanly separated halves in the blink of an eye, which generally makes further resistance difficult. These abilities are commonplace in DMFA (the comic, at least, if not the world in general). Do your "industrial firearms" have a special defence against that?

There are two explanations, either Jyrras is so blimming smart that it should be considered a superpower or a Mab was somewhat involved.

Well... the comic clearly establishes that both of those are true.


Given that firearms technology will remain centuries behind modern Earth without Jyrras's involvement, your argument depends on him enabling your bloody revolution.

I have made the assertion that Jyrras does not have what it takes to be an wartime arms dealer.

What character development do you foresee taking place in this comic that will transform him from the timid, sensitive, fiercely loyal little geek into the cold blooded merchant of death needed to support your scenario?


Here's one alternate scenario: Mab's little tech revolution is about simple self-determination. In contemporary Furrae, the ubiquity of magic in daily life makes Beings dependent on Creatures. It's thanks to magic that your swords are strong enough to fend off Demons. It's a magical crystal ball that you use to call for a healer after the fight. It's a Creature's cart that flies you to the hospital. And a magic brew that cures your injuries. Technological alternatives, for the most part, don't exist, because they've never had to and the Creatures in power have a vested interest in keeping it that way.

But a super-genius like Jyrras can pull his roorat ex machina to circumvent centuries of research and development. None of his products need to be strictly better than their magical alternatives. They merely need to good enough and not require magic. Just giving Beings the power to say that they no longer need the magical establishment to survive and thrive could radically shift the balance of power. That's revolutionary in its own right.

[Eboreg]

@Tezkat: I'll have to admit that you have a point but we still know too little about magic to make any final judgements. Admittedly, the "because Mab said so" argument kept me going during most of the debate and after that was shot down in flames, it was time to eat some humble pie.

[Dressari]

Got it Mao.

@Dressari: Jyrras has stated that the more natural an object becomes after 95%, the harder it is to apply magic. I was under the impression that should he ever make a 100% natural item, it would become impossible to apply magic to. What this would mean is that filtering an object with a 100% natural item would not do anything to the filter and remove the magic much more efficiently than if the filter were not 100% natural. What that means is that making a 100% natural item would be trivial if you already had 100% natural items. Jyrras doesn't, that's why he runs into trouble.

Forgive me I had to read this a number of times, the explanation is rather hard to follow.

In simple terms from what I can gather you trying to say is: If Jyrras made something with 100% natural items that were already filtered of magic, than any item made with those items is also considered 100% natural and already having the magical filtered out?

So taking a natural filtered machine that can make sheet metal for example, would essentially say that any metal's processed by this natural machine is also 100% natural and already filtered because the natural machine is removing the magic?

That sounds logical. And it also brings up my earlier point about Creatures being able to use completely natural made items, if this would be the case and nature cancels out magic in such a way. Then it would probably mean that creatures and any beings with magical abilities will likely not be able to use said natural items effectively. Either they would malfunction or not work at all I would gather.

Now... I wonder... can Jyrras filter out magical residue from a living creature...

It's also important to remember that Dan wasn't a Being with a magic sword and robe hunting dangerous Creatures. He was a Creature--a mere two generations removed from a Dragon-slaying, city-destroying demigoddess--hunting fellow Creatures. Being Adventurers generally can't take down the targets he did alone.

Well to be fair, Dan's Cubi abilities have only recently come into play. And given that the Cubi have neither the strengths of the Demons nor the Dragons in magic and physical capabilities anyway, it's unlikely they would have given him much of an advantage over either, Demons can mop the floor with a Cubi very easily from what Amber said. So Dan WAS for all intents and purposes a Being with wings, mistaken for an Angel. The fact he was only two generations away from Cyra makes little difference as a Cubi's power increases with age, the number of members in a clan and the presence of their clan leader. Again at the time, Dan didn't have his abilities yet and had no connection to the clan. Cubi heritages simply "pop" over the original genes and take over from there.

So really, yes at the time Dan was an adventurer he was a Being.... a very lucky and perhaps skilled Being with a magical defensive robe and a magical sword. He was useless with magic as he explained to Abel so I doubt he relied on that at all. I would like to think Dan is far better in a fight than given credit for and probably a lot smarter too than we've seen. After all wits can often win a fight more often that brute force or magical powers.

NOW he's an adventurer trained Cubi going to school to learn about his abilities pretty much making him incredibly dangerous in both swordplay and wing-play once he gets the jist of it.

[Eboreg]

@Dressari: The big problem with filtering out magical residue, as I take it, is that the filter will have some of the residue filtered out stick to it making the process an arduous leap-frogging. The deal with a 100% natural material is that the magic won't stick, even during the filtration making it a much simpler process than a filtration with a material that has some magic in it.


Although, I just had an evil thought, what if a 100% natural material is actively repulsive to magic dispelling it in an area around the object. Oh ... the possibilities

[joshofspam]

@Dressari: The big problem with filtering out magical residue, as I take it, is that the filter will have some of the residue filtered out stick to it making the process an arduous leap-frogging. The deal with a 100% natural material is that the magic won't stick, even during the filtration making it a much simpler process than a filtration with a material that has some magic in it.


Although, I just had an evil thought, what if a 100% natural material is actively repulsive to magic dispelling it in an area around the object. Oh ... the possibilities

Of coarse, we have to consider that 100% natural material might only be resistant to magical residue for a certain amount of time and a certain level and type of contamination.

If the two exist combined, then why would separating the two keep the two separate for any more then a certain amount of time. For creatures that their entire genetic make up has magic encoded in them, it might be a natural process to create and vent off magical energy as they use it, just as much as they use the magic in the environment around them.

[Tapewolf]

Of coarse, we have to consider that 100% natural material might only be resistant to magical residue for a certain amount of time and a certain level and type of contamination.

Quite.  It's unlikely that a single bullet would be able to de-magic a Creature.  What would most likely happen IMHO is the Creature becomes slightly depleted in the area where they were hit, and the bullet becomes 5% magical.  You'd only expect passive effects - if something was able to aggressively dispel magic, it would by definition not be 100% magic-free.

[Lying Foo]

I'm not sure... a lot of the time you get very different behavior between a very small quantity and literal absence.  It could be that a totally non-magical object would act like a magical black hole, drawing infinite magic from the environment if not isolated somehow.  Basically (as in, syntactic purists will crucify me), x*inf = inf.

[Tezkat]

Well, we do have a precedent for anti-magic in Furrae: A Were's human form not only prevents them from employing magic but makes them immune to even the power of the Fae.

What if the underlying mechanism for this phenomenon involves an innate ability to alter the flow of magic within their bodies? When they transition to human form, they drain 100% of the magic from their flesh (presumably sequestering it in some protected reserve). Morphing to their primal form would involve the opposite effect; the reserve floods their bodies with magic, making them much more magically potent than usual.

We do know that this type of anti-magic isn't contagious. The description fairly explicitly indicates that human form Weres don't drain the magic from anything around them. They're merely the eye of the storm, untouched by the magic affecting their surroundings.

There are two potential ways I see that working in terms of universe mechanics. In the first case, magic can only interact with magic. So a 100% natural object would be invisible to magic forces, much the way neutrinos largely ignore regular matter. Magic would have no way of targeting and grounding into it. The second possibility, subtly different, is that magical energy requires a magical medium through which to flow. In this version, 100% natural matter is instead perfectly insulated against magical energy--it can't get through to do its thing.

The distinction has powerful implications for weaponizing 100% natural objects. In the natural as magic insulator scenario, for instance, 100% natural clothing could armour the wearer against magic, whereas in the natural as magic transparent case it would simply remain untouched by the fireball that burns its wearer to a crisp (though the natural heat of combusting bodies might set it on fire through natural means).

Either possibility should allow a 100% natural bullet to penetrate purely magical barriers. However, its effect on magically enhanced matter (such as a Demon's hardened skin) is less clear and probably depends on the underlying mechanism of the enhancement. Inability to affect magic in its surroundings could prevent it from breaking magically bonded matter, for instance, but it should ignore any protection stemming from microscopic magical barriers. The converse is similar; a magically sharpened sword may or may not be less effective at cutting a 100% natural object depending on whether the magic actually alters the sword's molecular structure or merely powers some kind of sharpness field around it.