Awwww Why God!!!!

[Madmoonie]

The way things are going, he's going to need a deus ex machina just to get him close to the sword again!

Purples step and say "Here kid, we realized we were wrong. Here's your sword and a nice suit. Have a nice day."

[Bigdude]

OK. That was flat-out hilarious .

However.

Ralph. Let's finally have something go right for a change? A certain furball needs to catch a break here.

[GrayTiger]

Who else thinks that Quentyn and Maribeth end up married?

[Sharuuk]

If not married, at the very least partners.

S'aaruuk

[Skip Sanders]

Poor Quentyn can't even leave town to hide out, he can't be that far from the sword.

How long will it take for the rather powerfully-lux drawing sword to manage to charge up, even when covered by silk, hmm?

And, should it happen to have gotten a charge by now, how will it react to THIS emotional storm?

[TGIF]

An interesting thought - we have a gathering of very high class people, and Meribeth is there as one of the guests.

Either she is supposed to be part of the entertainment (unlikely), or she is from a much higher class than we were led to believe up until now.

Maybe she is from a high level of their society and her working as a barmaid is just "slumming" on her part?

TGIF

[Tbolt]

Those eyes! Those poor, pathetic eyes!



I'm going to have to print this one out and hang it in my "office" (read: non-climate controlled pile of discarded computer junk hidden in an obscure area of the building that no one else wants)

Whenever I think I've had a horrible week...

This helps enormously, Ralph!

[Astral]

Why do I get the feeling some one will reword that to say "Why Ralph, Why!", and only too right they would be. As prodicted he's just had the life embarrased out of him and been caught by the authorities again.

[RHJunior]

or maybe she's just a relation.

a lifespan of 250 years, you'd tend to have a lot of kids, grandkids, great grandkids, great great grandkids.....

And having lots of aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, etc. would be more than common.

[Astral]

Dose it matter? It looked like her, there for it 'was her' to Quintyn, who will probably now just want to find a nice dark corner to curl up in and die
I doubt that in those few moments of total humiliation, the thought that this might only be 'a realation' to the actual bar maid scearsly had time to cross his mind.

[RHJunior]

no, I meant that Meribeth was a relation of the lady hosting the party, and was invited while she was in town.

[Astral]

Ohhh sry Got total the wrong end of the stick there

[SolidusRaccoon]

Well they really got a show this time.

[The JAM]

[...unWARP!!!]

Good evening.


Well, at least we know that neither Kestrel nor Nessie were in the audience. Now, I wonder if Meribeth is going to comment on whether she....um...liked what she saw, lol.


I will give Quentyn one smidgen of good that came out of this. How much does that POTTED plant weigh? Was it watered? How many people here, (everyone obviously taller than 5 feet and in more or less average good health), would have to make a larger-than-average EFFORT to lift a potted plant weighing (plant + dirt + water + ceramic pot), oh, say......20 kg....some 44 lb?

And now, a THREE FOOT TALL Rac Connan, not only picks it up from the floor, FROM A COLD START, but also: either FLINGS IT OVERHEAD, or at least gets a good spin going, like a hammer/discus throw, in order to throw it AT LEAST 10 m/30 ft in order for it to reach the nearest window, AND THEN IT KEPT GOING another 3 m or 4 before it crashes outside?

And THEN still have enough strength left over to throw HIMSELF out the same window?

Yeah, yeah, adrenaline can cause you to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but even an adrenaline-lux-muscle power combination seems quite a stretch for this feat of strength.

Run, Quentyn, while you're still adrenaline-charged!! No one can stop you now!!!!

How many think that he'll squeeze through that hole in the wall again, preferring to take his chances with that gang than face Meribeth?

[Shyal_malkes]

How long will it take for the rather powerfully-lux drawing sword to manage to charge up, even when covered by silk, hmm?

And, should it happen to have gotten a charge by now, how will it react to THIS emotional storm?

I don't recall it ever being confirmed that the sword actually responds to Quentyn's emotions, maybe more to his actual situation. while it may seem believable to think it reacts to emotions, it still may not. just a thought

And now, a THREE FOOT TALL Rac Connan, not only picks it up from the floor, FROM A COLD START, but also: either FLINGS IT OVERHEAD, or at least gets a good spin going, like a hammer/discus throw, in order to throw it AT LEAST 10 m/30 ft in order for it to reach the nearest window, AND THEN IT KEPT GOING another 3 m or 4 before it crashes outside?

And THEN still have enough strength left over to throw HIMSELF out the same window?

Yeah, yeah, adrenaline can cause you to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but even an adrenaline-lux-muscle power combination seems quite a stretch for this feat of strength.

I have always wondered about the rac cona strength to size ratios, if you please... Consider The Following:

an ant can lift approximately 50 times its weight. this is accomplished not with advanced muscle tone or unique chemical placement but by the mere properties of strength to weight ratios, I've seen a mouse survive with minimum damage from a three foot drop, that (by relative size from the mouse to human standards) is like surviving a 6 story fall without so much as a nosebleed!

take a good sized piece of clay and make a four legged animal with it, have it stand on all fours and watch what happens, nothing right? well make it larger in proportions, as it gets larger it gets weaker and eventually needs non-clay materials to support itself.

or the plant could have been fake... no water (which weighs a lot) would make it easier

this has been another... Consider The Following...

[Astral]

It dose react to his emotions in part Shy, think about when they tested it. When he's angry or pissed at something it seems to react more agressivly/eraticly, perhaps some of the logic gates are controled by rudimentory emotional states along with the general happenings around him?

[Kerry Skydancer]

The Raconiverse seems to follow most of the same basic physics that ours does. Keeping that in mind, the square-cube relationship implies that a species half our height but built to the same plan would have one-quarter our strength but only 1/8 of our mass - and an object such as a potted plant on the same half-height scale would also have 1/8 of the mass we'd expect. The Raconans are therefore about twice as strong as we would be relative to their own artifacts.

Since buildings would also be half as tall per story, and their smaller bodies would be more durable under impact hyperacceleration than ours, a three-story fall for a Rac'conan would be equivalent to a one-story fall for a human, again scaled to their own artifacts.

Throwing distance and running speed are more complex. The limiting factor for most humans is not strength but leverage. (This is why bicycles work. It's actually harder to pedal a bicycle than it is to run, but the wheels allow for conservation of momentum to work for you once you've gotten up to speed and also allow you trade the extra force available in your leg muscles for speed via the rotary lever of the differential gearing. Running limits you to how fast you can move your legs, rather than how much strength you have in them.) Very rough BOTE leads me to believe that the Rac'conans could run at about three-quarters the rate of a human and throw things about 1/3 as far (2/3 relative to their own scale) but able to throw things that we'd think too heavy the same distance as lighter objects. (That is, they could throw a Rac'conan-sized shotput as far as a baseball.)

[GrayTiger]

*blinks and looks at Kerry's pointy ears*

Are you part vulcan or something?

[Bigdude]

Physics of size and falling:

You more or less can't kill a mouse by dropping it. Rats can scurry off from a 40 story fall 9 times out of 10.

Veterinarians in New York often treat cats that fall out of high rises. The worst that usually happens is they'll break their jaws (poor kitty, but it's fixable). I had a cat jump out a 2nd floor window, all that happened was a very slight scrape to the chin and he never did THAT again .

As size goes up, landing ability goes down. Quentyn is TWO feet high, not three, with minor practice he could probably pull off a 2nd floor (OUR height second floor) tuck'n'roll no sweat, more in extreme situations.

Other than the obvious (Lux) Ralph hasn't messed with physics too badly. He's even gotten the barrel lengths needed for black powder reasonably well down, plus no handguns (too much recoil for the necessary power levels).

Actually, these recent "strips" (pardon the pun) point out another question: these guys are all dressed quite a bit for the heat! They're furry, right? And they're in a climate where Gatoroids can do OK, so the temps aren't very low at all. They should be sweating like pigs and otherwise pretty uncomfortable in some of those getups! I'm not talking nudity here, I'm talking "tropical weather clothes" at a minimum. Ralph modeled styles on northern Europe/England apparantly but that was a cold climate...

[Kerry Skydancer]

The bat chirrips happily. "Awww... what a nice thing to say."

I've spent 15 years of my life teaching physics at various levels. It's just kind of automatic by now.

8)

Bigdude's got it right - the second major effect is terminal velocity. In other words, the smaller you are, the quicker you'll hit the point where air friction balances gravity and the slower your impact speed will be. Combine that with the materials in use being more durable relative to their mass at that size and you get the Elephant Effect.

I describe it to my students as follows:

A mouse hits terminal velocity at 10 mph. It'll walk away from a fall.

A rat hits terminal velocity at 25 mph. It'll limp away from a fall.

A human hits terminal velocity at 120 mph. S/he'll be lucky to live through it.

An elephant hits terminal velocity at 250 mph. It will splash.