A candle flame can be seen reasonably to about ten meters away. A lighthouse needs to be seen at a pretty good distance. One kilometer is probably too close, especially since it needs to be seen well in inclement weather, so we’ll call it ten kilometers. This is 1000x further than the candle,but the light is unfocused and thus spreads out equally in 3 dimensions, so we need to cube this number. This puts our minimum brightness at roughly one billion candles worth. If a candle is one watt, that means that our lighthouse is going to need roughly about…
…One point Twenty One Jiggawatts!
…but in all seriousness a gigawatt is probably more than enough to do even a mirrorless lighthouse, but it’s so absurdly much energy that you really, *really* should just get some mirrors. We’re talking about using an entire nuclear reactor just to power one light.
If you just want a point source of light, a candle flame can be seen several kilometres away in good conditions. Also, a lightning strike provides enough energy to run a standard 250W lighthouse-spec halogen bulb for two years, even before accounting for inefficiencies in the bulb that might not be present in the magic version and mean that only 10-20% of the power is useful light.
I’d assume those horns have something to do with directing the light from the house. A lens that big would be quite heavy and expensive, and I’m not sure they have a Fresnel to invent the Fresnel lens
A judicious use of air magic should be able to form a refraction-based lens, I would think… haven’t we seen someone do this to make a limited-range “telescope” even, already? Or am I hallucinating that?
Short answer – if you just want a known point for ships with charts to navigate by, not very. The Ptolemies had a pretty decent lighthouse that ran off a bonfire, remember. 24 candles will give a decent light that can be seen about 20km away in good conditions, and that’s generally good enough if you have the charts to be able to navigate to port given a known fixed point. ‘That fixed light is X, it’s Y distance above the horizon so we’re Z distance away, which puts us here on your chart’ sort of thing.
Long answer – turning energy into light into an image in someone’s head is the sort of complicated physics question that looks simple but actually ties into a lot of other areas of science. For example, the human eye is more efficient at detecting some wavelengths than others, so answering this question properly actually requires knowledge of the inner workings of Aurora’s host star, even assuming that the divinely-created people here have retinas that work exactly like the naturally-selected hodge-podge of humans in reality.
She’s a Light
HOUSE
She’s migh-tay migh-tay
With amperage you can’t doubt, ow
She’s a Light
HOUSE
Her joules are stacked, and that’s a fact
Ain’t holding nothin’ back
It’s more of a dick move to drain the lighthouse without striking it and leave them stranded, so of course he’ll pick that option. Besides, he could have struck other buildings with lightning
Also, very happy to see other people think the last storm was Tynan and that’s not just me being terminally mystery-brained
I get y’all’s train of thought here, but surely if Tynan was the last storm to blow through here, the town would be having MUCH BIGGER problems than just a drained lighthouse??
Like, the way I remember it, Tynan doesn’t exactly f*** around with just people’s fear of NORMAL storms (at least, not since he was a newborn). When he decides to mess with a city, he’s never just gonna strike a few buildings, rattle some windows, and call it a day. The reason he’s infamous is because he WIPES CITIES OFF THE MAP. You can tell he didn’t come through this city, because it still exists!
He was traveling incognito until he got to Zuurith. Being subtle like this makes it less likely for people to realize that particular storm is anything unusual and ruin the surprise.
The light-house in Argist, it’s lacrima vast,
Of it’s lightning was drained by the last storm.
Tess, metal-caste, volunteers to give it charge-
She’s glad of the chance to perform.
A storm that didn’t strike the lighthouse, drained it dry of lightning, and just continued inland? I wonder what cumulus-haired murderous theatre kid would do such a thing?
Tess may have joined the party, but that doesn’t mean her solo career of wandering righter-of-wrongs will stop; since there’s no dragons to punch here, she found a lighthouse to slap. Tess has proven by her actions time and again she’s here to help people; she got into trouble in Zuurtih specifically because she was trying to help them.
I wonder what the rest of the gang is doing. Dainix getting some warmer clothes for the cold trip? Alinua shopping on Erin’s wallet again? Kendal admiring the ocean Vash could never have dreamt to see? Falst tagging alongside one of the above and making snarky remarks as he does so? I’m interested to find out.
There once was a conductor of lightning
Who could have been super frightening
It she wasn’t a himbo.
With arm akimbo
She calls power, the lacrima brightening.
I’m assuming you meant to comment on @Called by Magic’s poem, but I see your point. The himbo character usually is male, but it’s a personality rather than an intrinsically gendered thing. So Tess can very well be a himbo and a woman.
I have an important message to write for yall aurora fans who are also rwd fans: Tess and Kyana
– Upbeat personality
– Kinda new to having agency
– Gold and purple theme
– Punched at least two dragons
– Magic punches
– Loves wandering about
– Red self-insert??????? (this one’s a joke)
Almost immediately upon meeting Tess, I started hearing her as sounding exactly like Red in a good mood and having fun, all the time. IDK about self-insert, but it’s just the perfect voice for Tess. Also, those little “hup!” sounds Red makes every time she rolls a die on the podcast.
Okay the link someone has sent above to the tumbler post about the developmental processes of Aurora contains snippets from a “toolbox” of ideas for plot points within the story that can be used at Reds leisure. However we can see some text above these, and I have jerry-rigged WordPad with a window opacity thing I installed, so I can type out what I think it says and lay it over the cut off letters we can see. This is what I have found.
“Light Dragon is the Great White Mouse, their mother goddess”
“one ran away ???? at age 10”
The missing spot could very well be “from” but it doesn’t make any sense grammatically.
Anyway here’s the link to the post, have fun, and may you have better luck than me!! https://www.tumblr.com/comicaurora/734989041151492096/out-of-curiosity-how-far-ahead-are-you-on-the
Ack! I don’t know if I’m OK with this… Couldn’t you, I don’t know, help transcribe runes, or catalog all the background extras, or something, instead of trying to pry more info from Red than she’s intentionally releasing?
I see your point… Ill be honest I didn’t think of this until you pointed it out. I will say some of what I have done is already done in the comments of the post itself, but that isn’t an excuse. I don’t really know how to delete a post though, so all I can do is say sorry.
Honestly, I think if Red didn’t mean to give that away she could have just cropped it out entirely instead. She doesn’t seem careless enough to leak anything important like that.
To clarify what I mean, I don’t see how Red can spend hours and hours drawing and not take a couple seconds to double check her crop job before posting it to Tumblr. I think it was intentional to get people excited for what is to come.
I love Red’s worldbuilding so much. The careful consideration toward fundamental necessities of cities and ecosystems, and how certain events end up influencing the world around them in these uniquely interesting ways. It’s so good.
For mobile readers.
Alt text: lighthouse more like LIGHTNINGhouse
Image source: juice
Also, I’m guessing the other four are here. https://www.tumblr.com/comicaurora/734989041151492096/out-of-curiosity-how-far-ahead-are-you-on-the
Tumblr text: it was a BIG rock
Twitter text: and what’s Tess up t- oh yea that makes sense
Hmm, how bright does that lightning stone have to be to have no lenses and no mirrors redirecting it?
if you know the required physics, you could calculate a fermi estimate of that. i don’t so…
Hrm… I could take a stab at it.
A candle flame can be seen reasonably to about ten meters away. A lighthouse needs to be seen at a pretty good distance. One kilometer is probably too close, especially since it needs to be seen well in inclement weather, so we’ll call it ten kilometers. This is 1000x further than the candle,but the light is unfocused and thus spreads out equally in 3 dimensions, so we need to cube this number. This puts our minimum brightness at roughly one billion candles worth. If a candle is one watt, that means that our lighthouse is going to need roughly about…
…One point Twenty One Jiggawatts!
…but in all seriousness a gigawatt is probably more than enough to do even a mirrorless lighthouse, but it’s so absurdly much energy that you really, *really* should just get some mirrors. We’re talking about using an entire nuclear reactor just to power one light.
If you just want a point source of light, a candle flame can be seen several kilometres away in good conditions. Also, a lightning strike provides enough energy to run a standard 250W lighthouse-spec halogen bulb for two years, even before accounting for inefficiencies in the bulb that might not be present in the magic version and mean that only 10-20% of the power is useful light.
I’d assume those horns have something to do with directing the light from the house. A lens that big would be quite heavy and expensive, and I’m not sure they have a Fresnel to invent the Fresnel lens
A judicious use of air magic should be able to form a refraction-based lens, I would think… haven’t we seen someone do this to make a limited-range “telescope” even, already? Or am I hallucinating that?
You’re right, I think Erin made a microscope/magnifying glass to inspect GoH!
It might actually be an arc lamp in which case it would be bright enough to damage your eyes if you looked at it too long.
Short answer – if you just want a known point for ships with charts to navigate by, not very. The Ptolemies had a pretty decent lighthouse that ran off a bonfire, remember. 24 candles will give a decent light that can be seen about 20km away in good conditions, and that’s generally good enough if you have the charts to be able to navigate to port given a known fixed point. ‘That fixed light is X, it’s Y distance above the horizon so we’re Z distance away, which puts us here on your chart’ sort of thing.
Long answer – turning energy into light into an image in someone’s head is the sort of complicated physics question that looks simple but actually ties into a lot of other areas of science. For example, the human eye is more efficient at detecting some wavelengths than others, so answering this question properly actually requires knowledge of the inner workings of Aurora’s host star, even assuming that the divinely-created people here have retinas that work exactly like the naturally-selected hodge-podge of humans in reality.
Lighthouse by the sea
Can be charged with some lightning
Tess can do for free!
What a haiku! Lovely.
Tess is so cool
Tess has upgraded from being an illegal public menace to a legal public menace
She’s a Light
HOUSE
She’s migh-tay migh-tay
With amperage you can’t doubt, ow
She’s a Light
HOUSE
Her joules are stacked, and that’s a fact
Ain’t holding nothin’ back
Love the adaption! If Red ever does an animated film they use the song with your lyrics for this scene!!
You have won my attention, admiration, and curiosity for this.
I love Tess.
Have I said that before?
I have said that before. And I’ll say it again.
Tess is SO DAMN COOL <3
Tess was the third mc to appear all the way back at the wind town in if i remember correctly chapter 3. red new the strong suits of the comic
Chapter 4.
Please tell me you mean “main character”, because none of any of the abbreviations I know, or can find in dictionaries, otherwise matches.
Cool! Tess putting in some volunteer work can only help the team.
Well, until the giant lacrima shatters because she took “as much as you can give it” seriously.
Tess is so friendly and helpful but so prone to doing things her way…
One of the most relatable forms of helpful. Love her characterization for that.
Yesss! Tess is back and naturally being awesome!
So, how is Tess going to hear that she’s being told to stop over all that noise?
Can’t imagine it’d be safe to touch her either.
None the less, Tess is truly impressive here. Basically a living lightning bolt!
Seems like a Tess solution, hit it with lightning until it works/stops working depending on the need
Really Tynan, I’m surprised. I’d have thought you’d jump at the chance to terrorize some unsuspecting mortals
It’s more of a dick move to drain the lighthouse without striking it and leave them stranded, so of course he’ll pick that option. Besides, he could have struck other buildings with lightning
Also, very happy to see other people think the last storm was Tynan and that’s not just me being terminally mystery-brained
I get y’all’s train of thought here, but surely if Tynan was the last storm to blow through here, the town would be having MUCH BIGGER problems than just a drained lighthouse??
Like, the way I remember it, Tynan doesn’t exactly f*** around with just people’s fear of NORMAL storms (at least, not since he was a newborn). When he decides to mess with a city, he’s never just gonna strike a few buildings, rattle some windows, and call it a day. The reason he’s infamous is because he WIPES CITIES OFF THE MAP. You can tell he didn’t come through this city, because it still exists!
Not if Tynan is leaving in defeat by Vash (again) and just sleeking back to exile again. (snicker)
Tynan didn’t exactly go much of anywhere. Tahraim made sure of that.
Thank you! I forgetting important plot points!
He was traveling incognito until he got to Zuurith. Being subtle like this makes it less likely for people to realize that particular storm is anything unusual and ruin the surprise.
He killed that one god in his first on-page appearance, but yeah, he was going straight for Kendal
The light-house in Argist, it’s lacrima vast,
Of it’s lightning was drained by the last storm.
Tess, metal-caste, volunteers to give it charge-
She’s glad of the chance to perform.
Flips a big ‘days since Tess last hit something with lightning’ sign to zero
When has it ever not been zero?
A storm that didn’t strike the lighthouse, drained it dry of lightning, and just continued inland? I wonder what cumulus-haired murderous theatre kid would do such a thing?
Tess may have joined the party, but that doesn’t mean her solo career of wandering righter-of-wrongs will stop; since there’s no dragons to punch here, she found a lighthouse to slap. Tess has proven by her actions time and again she’s here to help people; she got into trouble in Zuurtih specifically because she was trying to help them.
I wonder what the rest of the gang is doing. Dainix getting some warmer clothes for the cold trip? Alinua shopping on Erin’s wallet again? Kendal admiring the ocean Vash could never have dreamt to see? Falst tagging alongside one of the above and making snarky remarks as he does so? I’m interested to find out.
Falst is wandering around with one of the above- *cough cough* DAINIX *cough* 🙂
Tess be out here doing side quests.
Lighthouse Lady has a familiar color pallet
shes fucking iconic
Tess is so very metal! (wink, wink)
I love how everything Erin does is for the Main Quest, and then Tess is here looking for every Side Quest she can find and punch.
And we absolutely love her for it <3
“I came here to do punch dragons, and punch anything else problematic.”
“And Y’all are plum out of dragons.”
There once was a conductor of lightning
Who could have been super frightening
It she wasn’t a himbo.
With arm akimbo
She calls power, the lacrima brightening.
A lighthouse has died in a part of the port
So Tess Volt Tackles it, with some moral support
but isn’t himbo the male…On second thought if Tess catches me asking that question I better stop there or get a knuckle sandwich to the face! (Bzzzt!)
“Himbo” can be prefaced with “female” or “woman,” or just treated as a term that’s ascended beyond its original gender.
I’m assuming you meant to comment on @Called by Magic’s poem, but I see your point. The himbo character usually is male, but it’s a personality rather than an intrinsically gendered thing. So Tess can very well be a himbo and a woman.
TL;DR: *Cracks knuckles* Lemme give ya a hand with that.
“The last storm that blew through drained us dry and didn’t strike it once”
“Yeah I know that storm, he’s an asshole.”
I have an important message to write for yall aurora fans who are also rwd fans: Tess and Kyana
– Upbeat personality
– Kinda new to having agency
– Gold and purple theme
– Punched at least two dragons
– Magic punches
– Loves wandering about
– Red self-insert??????? (this one’s a joke)
Almost immediately upon meeting Tess, I started hearing her as sounding exactly like Red in a good mood and having fun, all the time. IDK about self-insert, but it’s just the perfect voice for Tess. Also, those little “hup!” sounds Red makes every time she rolls a die on the podcast.
That is a large lacrama
Anonymous Aurora Question #41: What are other creative ways someone could exploit ambient magic?
Define “exploit.”
Like the lighthouse, you know? Just, use it to your own advantage? Benfit from it? I think that’s what it means, I’m no english native speaker.
Okay the link someone has sent above to the tumbler post about the developmental processes of Aurora contains snippets from a “toolbox” of ideas for plot points within the story that can be used at Reds leisure. However we can see some text above these, and I have jerry-rigged WordPad with a window opacity thing I installed, so I can type out what I think it says and lay it over the cut off letters we can see. This is what I have found.
“Light Dragon is the Great White Mouse, their mother goddess”
“one ran away ???? at age 10”
The missing spot could very well be “from” but it doesn’t make any sense grammatically.
Anyway here’s the link to the post, have fun, and may you have better luck than me!!
https://www.tumblr.com/comicaurora/734989041151492096/out-of-curiosity-how-far-ahead-are-you-on-the
Ack! I don’t know if I’m OK with this… Couldn’t you, I don’t know, help transcribe runes, or catalog all the background extras, or something, instead of trying to pry more info from Red than she’s intentionally releasing?
I see your point… Ill be honest I didn’t think of this until you pointed it out. I will say some of what I have done is already done in the comments of the post itself, but that isn’t an excuse. I don’t really know how to delete a post though, so all I can do is say sorry.
Honestly, I think if Red didn’t mean to give that away she could have just cropped it out entirely instead. She doesn’t seem careless enough to leak anything important like that.
To clarify what I mean, I don’t see how Red can spend hours and hours drawing and not take a couple seconds to double check her crop job before posting it to Tumblr. I think it was intentional to get people excited for what is to come.
I’d say this is clearly a Heterodyne creation, but it hasn’t tried to eat anyone yet…
I love Red’s worldbuilding so much. The careful consideration toward fundamental necessities of cities and ecosystems, and how certain events end up influencing the world around them in these uniquely interesting ways. It’s so good.