1.6.4
on February 3, 2020
at 5:00 am
Erin really does seem the type to press ANY button labeled “only the elemental magus is powerful enough to press this button”
Aurora
A fantasy webcomic. Updates M-W-F.
Erin really does seem the type to press ANY button labeled “only the elemental magus is powerful enough to press this button”
“Hey, this catastrophic damage looks like a magic sigil. Let’s fix this without troubleshooting first!”
– A D&D wizard’s last words.
*dies of 1d4 fixing-without-troubleshooting-first damage*
You know that sceen in Wrath of Khan where Spock unscrewed the radiator cap in the reactor room of the Enterprise, sticks his hands directly inside an antimatter reaction chamber, and then dies of radiation poisoning 5 minutes later as a heroic sacrifice? Erin probably would look at that and go “pffft, what a chump.”
“Design issues when you design stuff to do unusual, counter-intuitive things” : the comic page.
The uncommon, somewhat counter-intuitive process working correctly looks a LOT like a more common process which suffered catastrophic damage. Trying to “fix it” so it works more like your expectations messes everything up!
In software parlance:
“Why is it doing things like that instead of *on paper much more sensible solution* ? Also, why is it printing messages both when things go right and when error happens? Also, why are you saving duplicate data in different tables in the same database? That’s against *common development pattern*!”
“Because it is interacting with two legacy systems and one of those legacy systems doesn’t work with *modern more sensible solution*. And the other system doesn’t do anything unless it receives ‘All done. Everything is good with the world. You can proceed now.’ message from this system. And that data is duplicated only when things are ok. When things go catastrophically wrong, one of those tables are correct, the other is not. Depending on what exactly went wrong, we know which table is correct and which is not.”
You don’t have to call me out like that, god.
Interesting how a malfunstion in something has been going on for so long that entire towns had created their infrastructure around it.
Erin assumes it is a malfunction, according to a common use case. What if… it is actually working as planned? And your assumptions about the purpose is wrong?
Prime example is Tesla Coil. Tesla has tried to make a resonant transformer and couple them for wireless power transfer. For him, when lightning would show up between two resonant transformers, it was a waste of power. Modern Tesla coils (and some Tesla coils that Tesla himself made!) are specifically designed to produce as much “lightning” as possible.
The guy looking at one with the expectations of “wireless power transfer” would see malfunctioning device wasting so much power in the form of lightning. Because the idea of designing thing specifically so it produces lightning goes against common (and original) use case of the device.
On the flip side, however, perhaps the desired effect has changed. I agree with you and others and ethically feel that Erin was wrong to try and ‘fix’ the storm, but perhaps the desire for the storm is diminished, now. Given Stormwind’s dependence on it, I doubt that, but perhaps the broken state of the pedestal is once again out of fashion, as it were.
Hi, when I said ‘Stormwind’, I meant ‘Windscrest.’
Poor Erin just wants to push all the buttons and have some fun
This was not meant to be a reply but just a comment, sorry! My phone is apparently trolling me today
I HIGHLY doubt the pedestal’s purpose was simply to emit elemental power, there’s some deeper purpose to it, I think…
Also, now I know exactly what the chapter logo in the archive page is
Also also, Erin doesn’t give enough of a crap about small towns to know what Windscrest based their infrastructure on…
You can certainly say that again! If he goes to any of the towns who relied on the storm and expects a warm welcome, he should ~probably~ think again.
The button said “do not press”. So I only did what was the only obvious right thing to do.
Erin: What’s more likely: that somebody messed up or that I, the greatest genius of this generation, see something I do not understand?
Uh oh he unleashed the Ancient powerful and unstoppable evil
OOH A DANGEROUS MAGIC STONE LEAKING MAGIC A HUNDRED MILES IN EVERY DIRECTION
LET’S TOUCH IT
ooooh, pretty colors!
I’VE WATCHED ENOUGH HIGH FANTASY TO KNOW THAT THE 6 ELEMENTS ARE CONTAINING THE SHIFTY BLACK VOID MAGIC AND ARE WORKING AS DESIRED
This particular section makes me want to facepalm, slap Erin and give up on it all for five to ten minutes at the same time.
I’m in agreement with all of the above, due to not knowing what the pedestal is for and hundreds of people relying on the storm for their livelihoods touching it should be the last thing to do. However going back to the academy to report his findings and debating stopping the storm with other people’s viewpoints is too much for his hubristic mind to comprehend.
“I just discovered the center of the centuries-long, raging über-storm with something in the middle that was undocumented, whose function I did not fully understand and what I only seen once. Naturally, I just HAD to mess with it within the first few minutes. I mean, what are the odds that the people who built this were smarter than me?”
TL;DR: the magic jar (which, having not been hollowed out, cannot function as an actual jar. Poor design, if you ask me) has had its lid broken, so it’s sucking sky and burping magic way too fast. Sicktats Narratorman decided to fix the lid, which has caused him to acquire his substandard tats.
Am I the only one to notice that Erin’s eyes are now purple?
… did he try turning it off and back on again?
Hubris kills folks! or in this case *spoilers if you haven’t read the next chapter* gets you possessed by an ancient immortal dragon god bent on the destruction of all life…
alt text: those hubristic fools plugged their powerbar into itself for infinite energy and LOOK WHAT IT WROUGHT
He obviously didn’t think about the ecological and biological consequences stopping the storm would have huh
the damage is in the shape of the void dragon rune/sigil
Today we have learned the things that can go wrong
If you push buttons just ’cause you’re mighty and strong
Erin I’m not going to doubt your prowess as a mage but this is not how a responsible archaeologist treats ancient runes with widespread effects on the surrounding area.
Icarus! you just ruined so many towns livelyhoods. Stop it! Oh, yeah, and also probalbly DOOMED everything.