Comic Genesis Forums

I found the Tales of Questor quite by accident through the Kevin and Kell comic site. I am glad that I did though! The world is well thought out and the "Magic" system seems grounded in reality. Plus the story is well written and kept me glued to my screen for a few hours while I caught up on the story. I do have some questions about how lux works though.

If a lux pattern is more difficult to remove than add. Why do the blades of swords not have patterns in them? I understand not having it on the edge, but the center of most blades would seem reasonable.

Would a boomslang bullet or crossbow bolt made from a tapper cut through lux defenses?

Are there bigger versions of boomslangs, like boomcannons? Seem reasonable for village defense.

And where are they getting all the paper from? It looks like they are cutting down a lot of forest to make that stuff.

Hopefully my questions aren't to noobish. Thanks for any answers you can provide.

They may have a way of making paper out of cloth fiber.

They also may be able to ken paper.

I haven't put out monies for the Uber CD, so I have no answer to that.


Hm... Tapper shot or quarrels... Interesting concept. FSR I thought those lil buggers were fragil.

welcome to the forums Kreytor. um, is there any special pronounciation to that name, mine can be tricky

it's shy-all, mall-kes

and again welcome, we usually don't bite so feel free to chat up the locals (but beware of Solidus, never never feed Solidus ) and feel totally free to leave your sanity at the door when you enter, it's a lot more fun if things don't make any sense

Kreytor wrote:I found the Tales of Questor quite by accident through the Kevin and Kell comic site. I am glad that I did though! The world is well thought out and the "Magic" system seems grounded in reality. Plus the story is well written and kept me glued to my screen for a few hours while I caught up on the story. I do have some questions about how lux works though.

Looks like it's Q & A time. I'll handle this.

Kreytor wrote:If a lux pattern is more difficult to remove than add. Why do the blades of swords not have patterns in them? I understand not having it on the edge, but the center of most blades would seem reasonable.

Blades wear out though. And while the edge wears out more, there is a chance for them to be rubbed off when the blade is used to block or parry, or when used to stab or slice. Any contact with the blade tends to increase the chance of metal being rubbed off. Even putting them in the middle probably isn't as good as putting it on the hilt, where the grips can protect it from their hands, and wear and tear is less likely.

So far as I know, that's the reason for it. Anyone can feel free to add to it as they see fit.

Kreytor wrote:Would a boomslang bullet or crossbow bolt made from a tapper cut through lux defenses?

It's possible, but it depends on two things:

1.) The strength of the shield. The stronger it is, the more lux it requires to maintain.
2.) The limits of the tapper. Wildcard was going through quite a few of those things in short order; once they absorb the maximum amount of lux they can handle, they short out and are useless.

I don't know if a tapper could survive the forces involved in a boomslang. It's the medieval equivilent of a shotgun, sized down for a Rac Conan I think. A crossbow could work, but it's hard to know if a tapper flying in would affect the shield at all. It would certainly draw off some of the lux being used to maintain it, but it might take dozens just to take down one decent shield. A more shoddy one might take less; a stronger one would take more than would be worth building.

I don't really know if it'd work or be efficient enough to seriously consider. But I doubt it. Besides, the Rac Conan Daimh believe more in having a strong offense than defense, because predators grow bored more quickly with the porcupine than with the turtle.

Kreytor wrote:Are there bigger versions of boomslangs, like boomcannons? Seem reasonable for village defense.

They do have catapults and something like cannons I believe. I'd have to go over the notes in the UberCD again. But yes, they do have large weapons designated for "village defense", if you define it as "make the enemy go boom in pretty colors". The whole country is based a little off of the US, so expect to see similar attitudes between them and Americans.

Kreytor wrote:And where are they getting all the paper from? It looks like they are cutting down a lot of forest to make that stuff.

One word: hemp.

Hemp is not illegal in the Seven Villages. In fact, they don't have any laws regulating comsumption of drugs or alcohol, reasoning that if you don't have the common sense not to abuse it, it is not the problem of the state or the people.

But that's cannibus. Hemp, to my knowledge, is the "safe" version, with no mind-altering chemicals in it. The raw material to product ratio of hemp paper is far greater than that of trees, meaning it takes less to get the same amount. Thus, they can produce a great deal of paper in a short amount of time, and without cutting down trees or having to mess with toxic chemicals.

Makes you wonder why it's banned in the US...

Kreytor wrote:Hopefully my questions aren't to noobish. Thanks for any answers you can provide.

Eh, don't worry. I was glad to answer them and share my knowledge of the Questorverse. I'm not the wisest man on the forum, but I ain't no fool neither. Oh yeah... better give ya a run down of the rules...

1. Never feed Solidus. Ever.
2. You can post whatever you like, but don't expect us to pull our punches. If you say something one of us disagrees with, we will tell you off, though we'll tone it down on a case by case basis.
3. Never feed Solidus.
4. If you're a liberal, please refrain from posting anything like "Bush = Hitler" on here. It belongs on the Nip and Tuck forums, where it can be properly ripped to shreds.
5. Never feed Solidus. Seriously.
6. NEVER FEED SOLIDUS!! He bites. Hard.

Other than that, have fun!

Durn it, stop beating me to the punch!

Glad to see a warm reception. Names similar to Crater but with the Or.

I kinda envisioned the lux pattern to be a little more embedded I guess. So there must be transfer runes to make the blades of the weapons do what they need to do. Sword blades, guards and pommels usually not being made all in one piece. Interesting idea...

I didn't consider tappers fragile because when Quent landed on them they didn't break. Not saying hes a heavy guy, but even 30 pounds from 8 feet up will do damage to glass.
An active forcefield might be difficult to break through but every bit of lux removed would help.

Hemp is a possible solution to the paper thing, but thats still a lot of paper, must be a decent company running around. OR is there a spell to reuse the paper, kinda clean it? Never thought of that. Similar to recycling but done at home.

Cool, getting a handle on this thing. I ordered the CD's but they will take a while to get here. Can't wait to see the notes on creatures and areas.

And I won't feed Solidus, even if he begs

Greetings to our newcomers! Make sure your asbestos suit is on correctly!

The "tappers as projectiles" might work, depending on how long they take to absorb the lux. If they don't absorb instantly, they'd probably bounce off a "force field" of lux before they had a chance to weaken it. Still, a fun idea.
Using them as a "mine field" could work. That's pretty much what the Red Caps did..

There's all sorts of nasty things an evil mind could imagine... Like catapult rocks charged with a "wakadoo" spell and launched at an enemy. They'd explode into shrapnel on impact, I think.

Heh, well if they block the first shot, fire a second they're probably going to run out of power before you run out of ammo ^^

What about tappers in powder form so that they have an area effect?

Kreytor wrote:I found the Tales of Questor quite by accident through the Kevin and Kell comic site. I am glad that I did though! The world is well thought out and the "Magic" system seems grounded in reality. Plus the story is well written and kept me glued to my screen for a few hours while I caught up on the story. I do have some questions about how lux works though.

If a lux pattern is more difficult to remove than add. Why do the blades of swords not have patterns in them? I understand not having it on the edge, but the center of most blades would seem reasonable.

Blades break and wear out. It would be like putting the electronics for a mechanical hammer in the head.

Would a boomslang bullet or crossbow bolt made from a tapper cut through lux defenses?

The material components that go into a tapper would probably make them too fragile for such use. Plus there's a ratio of size to absorptive power.

Are there bigger versions of boomslangs, like boomcannons? Seem reasonable for village defense.

Possibly. But remember, they're kind of short on metal.

And where are they getting all the paper from? It looks like they are cutting down a lot of forest to make that stuff.

It's a mistaken notion that paper has to come from wood. In fact, wood pulp produces rather inferior paper, that needs a great deal of chemical treatment to be usable due to the short length of the plant fibers. Far superior paper, using little or no chemicals, is made from cotton, jute, and/or hemp... in fact, go into an art supply store and you'll note that most of the drawing paper prominently lists its cotton fiber content. In the case of the Racconans, they primarily use hemp.

Ah, Hemp. Possibly the real reason why MJ is still banned in the US.

The banning of Hemp can be traced back to one person, really.

William Randolph Hearst. The newspaper mogul who started the Spanish-American war to sell his newspapers.

What does he have to do with the banning of MJ? Well, lets see.

Newspapers made his fortune.
What are newspapers made of, mostly? Paper.
Where does paper come from? Paper mills.
Where do paper mills get their materials from? Logging forests.
Who owned many logging forests and paper mills?

William Randolph Hearst.

So, sneaking away and hiding the fact that not all close relatives of MJ are narcotic/chemically active, he worked closely with the government's then-anti-drug campaign and made, "Reefer Madness", a horrifying attempt to scare shitless people away from smoking pot.

Result? Enough people told their congressmen to ban MJ, congressmen looked at a fat contribution check from WRH and a suggestion to just ban everything, so they did.

No hemp paper to feed smaller newspapers that could undercost Mr. Hearst's.

And the scary thing is, hemp is cleaner, does less damage than logging, and was considered a stable of nations back in the 1600 and 1700s, maybe into the 1800s. If a nation wanted to be a strong nation, it grew Hemp - because it was so damned useful. Could be made into rope, cloth, paper, or any number of things, for very cheap. England knew it, early America grew it; hellfire, if my manager was correct (and he was on other things), Washington grew it.

Thank you Mr. Hearst, for saving up from Hemp.

Greetings. Pleased to meet you, my beautifully bi-chromatic bountifully benevolent brilliantly brainy badger buddy!

Would you happen to be a Redwall fan?

Dang it people I need to eat sometime, the pizza dude won't even come around anymore. You set one mine field and they black list you for life.
And was it my fault that I thought the Chinese deleivery person was a spy? I even heard he finally has feeling in his toes again, so it all worked out.

And welcome to the madness Kreytor, and do not worry I never beg. But I may make a few midnight raids of the trachcans.

SolidusRaccoon wrote:And was it my fault that I thought the Chinese deleivery person was a spy?

And welcome to the madness Kreytor, and do not worry I never beg. But I may make a few midnight raids of the trachcans.

Yes. Yes, its your fault. And I still don't have trashcans....don't make me sing again.

Hi, Madmoonie here! Resident graphic design....flunky? Speak your mind and we speak ours. Welcome to the funhouse....its been said alot, but beware Solidus...he bites.

Yes I am a bit of a Redwall fan, I haven't read all of the books, but I read a couple. Oh and nice alliteration there, couple of those words I haven't seen outside of the dictionary

Thanks again for the welcome, hopefully I can contribute some knowledge to this wonderful world of wackiness.

Read a few when it was new and thought they were all like that, so dropped it. Saw it in places like Wikipedia years later and decided to try again. Fell...in...LOVE. Am a newbie myself, to brush up I am a Roman Catholic and work in a group home. Born in 1958. Love science fiction and oldies music. Sure us badgers and mongooses can get along fine!

I used to read Redwall a lot, but then I read Lord of the Rings. Then Redwall seemed rather anticlimatic. Oh course with the hares, you're always in for a jolly good time wat?

*Hmms*
*ponders air-drop food stuffs*
*loads a trebuchet with some freshly caught fish, fresh rolls, and assorted other foodstuffs then launches them in Solidus's general direction.*
*Yells "Incoming!"
*hides*

*ducks for cover*
*watches in wide eyed wonder*