Comment 93016

Parent Comment

Jan 29, 2018, 3:47:48 AM UTC
long and thin, cylyndrical. It's basically just a long vial of "essence" of a particular element (fire/earth/water/air/others in my setting like dream, life, death, etc) in liquid form, which adds an effect to the blade based on it's element, With dream, you can actually make your blade phase through an enemy and put them harmlessly asleep; good for those who don't want to kill if they don't have to.

Comment ID 93016

[Art] Green Elf Sketches 2
Jan 29, 2018, 10:27:45 PM UTC on [Art] Green Elf Sketches 2
Is the vial opaque or transparent? Would you put differentiating markers on the outside if it's opaque, for easier visibility when reloading? If it's transparent, what does the "essence" inside *look* like?

Replies

  • Jan 30, 2018, 5:12:27 AM UTC
    transparrent, and the essence is Color Coded for Your Convenience*, but the cores do also have labels (wouldn't be very nice to color blind people if they didn't)

    The essence is a thick, viscous fluid, like syrup. Inert, it is just a thick liquid with a ditinct color and odor based on the element (fire core might smell like ashes, earth core might smell like soil, etc, etc). Activated, it glows, and uncontained, activated essence could cause serious damage to anything it touched until the electrical charge wore off (thus why it's kept in cores and other carefully sealed containers at all times).

    Essence-based ammunition for firearms also exists. What makes melee weapons not-obsolete is the prevalence of personal shielding units which allow one to get in close enough to deal damage without being mowed down where you stand.

    *yes that is a tvtropes reference
    • Jan 30, 2018, 10:42:25 PM UTC
      ...I think Dune did that. Having shielding popular, at least among the moneyed classes, which could deflect projectile weapons, thus forcing low-tech fighting methods to be a thing. (Not that Dune wasn't seriously screwed up in a lot of ways, but some elements of the worldbuilding were fascinating.)
      • Feb 5, 2018, 5:05:15 AM UTC
        A lot of sci-fi games and other media do that too. I'm thinking magitech shielding similar in function to the personal energy shields in the Halo series of first person shooter video games (it's a very male-dominated game series, I know, but I went through a phase where I really enjoyed it; especially shattering dudes' fragile masculinity when I wiped the floor with them while using voice chat. They'd get all quiet and grumpy, like they weren't gonna say it bothered them that a girl beat them, but you could totally tell it did...well, when they didn't yell misogynistic slurs at me, but I digress)

        Anyway the point is that series had shields that would stand up to a number of hits from firearms, but could be punched through with consistent fire, and melee weapons would break shields almost immediately, so it was a balancing act between rushing someone with a sword and getting your shields depleted and shot down before you got there vs playing it safer from a distance with guns. I tended to favor the slice 'n' dice approach whenever I could get my mitts on an energy sword or gravity hammer. Esp when I would drop down from a high alcove right behind some hapless dudebro. Big Smile
        • Feb 6, 2018, 5:30:12 AM UTC
          Dune was published 1965... I wonder if that makes it old enough to be a trope-establisher?

          It makes a lot of sense to use it as a game mechanic as well though - add a little extra challenge!