Grrl Power #1410 – Trial by obeliskium
Edit: As usual, I biffed the math here. People were saying 9 cc of material would make a sword that’s measured in microns of thickness and I didn’t understand how I messed up by so many orders of magnitude, so I sat down and measured out the sword on paper:
Okay, let’s lay it out. We’ll say the sword is 5mm thick at the spine, and that 5mm thickness extends down the “flat” for 3cm, then there’s a recess for the fuller that’s 3mm thick, then there’s another 3cm of flat to the blade, and the blade is 2cm from flat to edge, so that’s 10 cm wide for 95% of the sword.
So let’s say it’s an average of 4mm thick for easy math. Times 10 cm width makes for 4 cubic centimeters of material for each cm of length. Okay, wow, I really did screw up Cora’s estimate.
Then the question is how long is it? I think I drew it pretty close to the right scale in that first panel, so let’s say the blade is 140 cm, which is just over 4.5 feet, and the handle is maybe 16 inches for some reason. I like the way long handles look on swords I guess, but we’re not so concerned with the handle at the moment.
140 times 4 ccs is 560 cc?
Okay, I see what I did now. I wrote 9 cubic centimeters thinking it meant a 9 x 9 x 9cm cube, even though I know better. 9ccs is just 3cm^3. I meant 9cm cubed, which is actually 729 ccs. The funny thing is, I initally wrote 8 cubic centimeters (again, thinking I meant 8x8x8) and thought that sounded low, then revised it to 9 just before publishing the page. 8^3 is 512, which is actually pretty close to the volume of the blade. Of course, there’s the handle and the crossguard, so I’ll actually leave it at 9 cm cubed for Cora’s estimate. I just have to change her wording slightly.
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“Cosmic” energy is a comic book staple. In the real world there’s the EM spectrum and kinetic energy, gravity, and uh… friction? Also sound, acceleration, centripetal force, but those are all variations of gravity and kinetic energy. And lightning, fire… cold. Cold isn’t an “energy” though, just a relative lack of energy. Also radiation, but I think the EM spectrum covers… some of that? I know you can get into the nitty-gritty about alpha-particle emissions and ionizing this and that, but MY POINT is that in the real world, you kind of run out of interesting energy types pretty quickly when you’re writing superhero and not too hard science fiction. Or straight up science fantasy. That’s the category I put Doctor Who in. Weirdly, the earliest seasons of O.G. Dr. Who were borderline hard-ish sci-fi, but they got progressively… softer the longer the series ran. The new Doctor Who’s are straight up fantasy in space. There’s barely even a nod to science anymore.
So comics and sci-fi have to make up all kinds of crazy energy types to justify how the time traveling statue can turn back into an evil energy specter and possess that episode’s lead female’s father. That’s hard to explain using just infrared light and uh, centripetal force.
I mention all this because Maxima’s primary energy attack is a particle beam, which is totally a real thing. At least it is in a particle accelerator. I mean, a coronal mass ejection is… well, not a beam, surely, but there are particles involved. Arguably, a claymore is a particle… cone attack. It just depends on how you define “particle.” In Maxima’s case, there’s a healthy mix of neutrons and protons, with just a dash of antiparticles thrown in for fun. It’s actually a decidedly unhealthy mix, come to think of it. It’s exceedingly hot and has a surprising amount of kick. And just a skosh of ionizing radiation.
I think at some point way back, I mentioned the power scales of the Grrl-verse was more akin to the Marvel universe than the DC one. Or the DBZ one. Honestly, it depends on the writers for any given issue, but the DC universe tends to be on a much higher scale. I used to kind of limit myself to the Marvel RPG scale, but “Unearthly” strength only lets you lift 100 tons. Now, that sounds like a lot. I mean, sure, it’s a lot of weight, but that’s also only the weight of a tank or two. When you start talking about buildings or ships or trains, 100 tons is just dipping your toe in the uh, weight pool. So, whatever I’ve said in the past about strength levels, Maxima can lift Cora’s ship. I have no idea how much it would weigh. It’s about the size of a battleship? Maybe a little shorter and at least twice as wide. An Iowa class is 860 feet long and weighs 48,000 tons. It’s made of sci-fi space materials, but like with Ultronium, that doesn’t necessarily mean it weighs less than the stuff we have now. So I’m not going to put a hard number on it now, but Maxima can lift a lot. And it’s a good thing her strength can scale with her power pool, because if you could lift a battleship, even using 1% of your strength to open a door would make it explode. Cause that would be 480 tons of pressure, and most doors aren’t up to that spec.
Kobold Sydney vote incentive! Is finally done!
So… you know, check it out. Oh, and as usual, Patreon has a scales only version.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
I recognise those Obeliskium Pillars from The Dark Crystal, the “trial by stone”.
Fun reference.
“TRIAL BY STONE!”
Also, I find it funny that as far as ‘particle beam weapons’ go, Zarya from Overwatch is actually one of the MOST accurate. At least with the early particle beams, the energy released with the beam would ionize/disrupt the atmosphere around them, and create a violet purple glow around the beam- and the beam, after leaving containment, would only go for a few feet or so before becoming too diffuse or getting absorbed.
That said, if Max’s beam has that much energy and that little bit of antimatter annihilation going on, it makes sense that what we’re seeing is actually a combustion effect occurring around the exterior of her containment fields, rather than direct radiation reactions. In other words, the ‘gold and purple’ theming of Maxima and her beams is, in a way, scientifically sound.
Hey, it’s Heavenly Sword! I wonder how she’s doing.
Last I saw her, she was working for Deus, over in his economic powerhouse of a country.
You sure? Don’t recall seeing her over there
Is that Heavenly Blade (or something like that idr) in the last panel?
Never mind. I just saw the Who’s Who on the side. Thanks anyway.
If I estimate the length of the blade to be 1.2m and it’s width to be 5cm, it being only 9 cubic centimeter of material means it’s 15 micrometer thick. That’s thin enough to cut on the cellular level (as in cut a cell apart). I think.
If it’s THAT thin and Maxima can use it without fearing breaking it than the fact this material is almost 30 times the density of steel isn’t enough to make it hard to use. That’s an incredible material. Also conventional sword design would cut the sword’s weight almost in half, making it in a perfectly viable weight range for 2 handed swords.
Wait, it’s 32 kilograms, not 2 kilograms. Never mind.
Two kilograms is a much more usual mass for a (long) sword.
32kg is much more than a barbell (standard mass 20kg). It’s stupidly heavy for a sword. Unless it’s moving really fast you might actually be pushing the target away rather than cutting into it.
If the material is strong enough you could make a sword that masses 2kg which would be absurdly thin. Which would be hard to draw, basically a line. But it would act like a sword, whose purpose is to cut or stab, not crush.
Stupidly heavy was the point. She’s strong enough to swing it, but it weighs almost half as much as she does (assuming a reasonable weight for a fit 6ft-1in woman). As mentioned, she’d have to use her flight powers to keep her body from reacting to the inertia of the sword while swinging it.
Also I’m sure the nine cc is a typo. 32kg/9cc is 3.56 x 10^5 kg/m3, or roughly 150 x the density of Osmium. Going with the above size estimates, 9 cc / 120 cm / 5 cm = 0.15mm. About as thick as really thick paper or really thin cardstock. Maybe it was supposed to be ninety cc? This would be 1.5mm thick and 15 x Osmium. Still crazy dense and strong for reality, but more feasible using “superhero physics”. Also easy to edit the text bubble to add “ty”.
Maybe it’s honeycomb on the inside? It looks like it’s not just 2 dimensional.
I mean, it could be absurdly strong, and at that thickness it would still wave around like a piece of paper. A sword shaped piece of paper that you couldn’t tear, and that would deal out horrific paper cuts, but it would still be floppy.
But if it was nowhere thicker than about 5 microns, but honeycomb on the inside, or even a fractal support shape, you could make it work, it would just outwardly be slim, not 2 dimensional.
Or maybe it’s just ultronium plated on top of some less dense filler material like Osmium?
It IS a fair complaint. In anime you’ve got a lot of characters with swords that probably weigh on the order of several hundred pounds at the least, and maybe they’re strong enough to swing something that heavy around like a wand, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re swinging arounds something that outweighs them. And they don’t move like that’s what they’re doing.
I always thought that was a missed opportunity in the choreography. I could absolutely see a ‘pint sized powerhouse’ with a weapon that masses as much or more than them, using the counterweight principle to move unpredictably. Maybe someone with a ‘lock in place’ power letting them gain leverage for swings, but then being able to release it and fling themself around the barycenter of their self-weapon system.
Yes, I totally biffed the math. I’ve revised the page and added a comment explaining my special brand of brain dumbness.
9 centimeters cubed is an unusual way of phrasing it, but she is an alien (sort of) so it would actually make some sense for her to measure things in ways that aren’t standard on Earth. It’s no more innately wrong than how we measure things.
A very fun idea, with a good bit of clever thinking. The first dialog box feels a hair clunky with how it’s getting out exposition admittedly.
Still, Super sword for super hero is often fun. Hope she gets a cool scabbard to wear.
Trail by stone ?
Better than trail by breadcrumbs!
That’s less than one cubic inch and just over 4 pounds. Are you sure, DaveB?
Irl swords are much lighter than many people think. 1kg is already pretty heavy for a sword close to the size Maxima is holding. Not sure about the cubic inch but metal swords that are not display pieces are very thin.
1 kg is not heavy for a sword, even arming swords and rapiers would often weigh 1 kg or more. (average weight for both is a little over 1 kg)
And those are one handed swords.
Maxima’s sword is 2 handed.
Wight of 2 handed swords:
Katana: 1.1-1.6 kg
Longsword: 1.2-2.4 kg
Zweihänder: 2-3.3 kg (for functionally ones, heavier ones was made but probably not used in combat)
I was also tripped by that but Cora is actually saying the sword weights 32kg, not 2kg.
Yeah, I messed it up. I meant 9 CM cubed, not 9 cubic centimeters. I’ve updated the post and comic.
But she still struggles to open the pickle jar..
That’s a weird thing to say, I don’t think she does.
I can say though from personal experience that having enough strength to rip open the package can make it hard to open stuff that twist open like jars. Maxima has incredible control over her powers but I can see someone like Stalwart or Anvil struggling to apply the right amount of force.
MAXIMA IS EMPEROR!!!
Now, by the law, who’ll get naked?
Dabbler.
Like some of my super characters, she could cheat a bit on the “lift”…
The Dare family can apply their flight power to whatever they are picking up so it effectively doubles their lift rating, it also keeps the vehicle or building from snapping like a rotten twig from it’s own weight…
It’s been postulated that Max’s strength may be telekinetically enhanced, as when she lifted the ambulance early one, she did it 1 handed by the bumper, and the whole vehicle lifted as if it was a cardboard model and not bothered by mass distribution.
So this lets her use Cloud’s Blade Beam? Cool
It’ll be awesome to see at some point, but if that’s when she gets home I don’t anticipate seeing it for a while.
Is it just me, or does the art on this strip feel a lot “Crisper” than the previous strips?
While flying can extend reach by surprise
Would it means the strenght under the swing will stay?
as Maxima divides her “status points” as shown in the “parking lot fight arc”… woulnd’t that actually weaken the swing… hmmm
o well, it’s for show anyway
iirc, she has enough points to more or less max out 2 stats at a time and still have some left over; well “max” them out, she can go all in on any one stat if she really wanted to, but unless you’re strapped in a stasis field or another sort of highly specific situation, it’s a waste to go all in like that.
It’s also worth noting that when it comes to the ability to cut or pierce, SPEED matters a lot more than strength. All she has to do is keep enough invested into strength in order to to lift and move the weapon whilst also keeping a grip on it. Strength is only really useful for lifting and handling, and generating the inertia so that the blade won’t just bounce off of what ever is hit.
And this is all assuming she’s hitting someone like a juiced up Vehemence or maybe a Concretia in an Obeliskium body. She’s the resident flying brick – the things that can take a hit from her are in a whole weight class of their own. AND EVEN IF she has to rebalance her distribution and take away from strength in order make use of flight, maintain defense, and keep up a speed, the sword is still a force *multiplier*. It’s more like she’s taking a -5 from her 100, and in exchange, getting a x1.2, maybe closer to a x5 accounting for how she can channel her powers into the blade, apparently.
Using flight power in a swordfight is Further delved into in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight archives.
Was a cool matchup then also.
A cubic centimetre is a millilitre. Is that sword really only using a third of a fluid ounce of material?
I think Cora miscalculated the math in her head. think she is off by an order of magnitude or so.
to be fair, she’s not used to earth measurements.
“Was that cubic METERS or Cubic MILES?”
“Real types of energy” really depends on how much you want to get into it. We basically lumped everything into the Strong Force, the Electroweak Force, and Gravity. Also we are having trouble getting gravity to play along with the other two. Maxima seem to be affected by gravity normally (her hair falls regardless of how she flies, she is affected normally by inertia, she has constant mass…) which to me imply that her powers are all about the Strong and Electroweak forces.
On the other hand, if you want an interesting and specific type of “beam” you can just take what it’s made of and rename it to sound cool. “Geothermal hydraulic attack” could be making a geyser hit someone. Maxima’s beam, by your description of what it’s made of, is a random mix of very generic stuff and those usually get a letter, like X-Rays and Alpha radiation. Might as well call it “M-Rays”.
Yeah, I thought the same. High school taught strong, weak, gravity, and EM forces. But I guess those are forces that affect particles rather than the only types of energy. Nowadays, they classify energy into either potential or stored energy vs kinetic or in motion. Not a physics geek and my physics knowledge is long since out of date.
You have to distinguish between energy and forces. Forces aren’t types of energy, and gravity isn’t technically a force, it’s the curvature of spacetime. Let’s see if I can list types of energy, at least with basic physics. I’m not getting into the stress energy tensor.
Mass energy, which is the energy equivalent of any particle with rest mass, using the familiar E=mc^2
Kinetic energy, which is the energy of motion, given by the familiar (m*v^2)/2
Potential energy, which is commonly comes in the form of gravitational, chemical, elastic or electric potential energy.
Electromagnetic waves, also called electromagnetic radiation, which is energy imparted to the electric field by moving electric charges. It’s quantized into photons.
Gravitational waves, which is energy imparted to spacetime by moving masses. It has only recently been detected by LIGO and other gravitational observatories (which are basically giant Michaelson-Morley apparatuses) from when black holes orbiting each other spiral in and merge.
I assure you Dave that there are enough “energy types” to play with in the real world.
Every half assed particle a particle physicist comes up with to make their theory fit in the standard model can be used for this.
A few suggestions:
Kryptonite behaves like bèta radiation(electrons).
slow neutrons go through anything, but have limited range and trun anything they touch radioactive
fast neutrons go through anything and have limited range(no radioactive trace)
neutrinos go through anything, but require special focusing to meaningfully affect anything.
Alpha radiation can do a lot of damage to really close things.
Gamma radiation weakens from obstruction.
Cosmic radiation(mix of particles thown from cosmic objects through the universe) is generally fast and heavy as such it does a lot of chemical damage if it hits something sensitive, but it barely ever hits things.
Micrometriorites
Alpha radiation is known for being damaging if ingested, but also being blocked by a piece of paper or your skin. As long as you don’t swallow (or otherwise do immensely stupid things with) an alpha emitter, you’ll be OK.
Flying in a sword fight is completely unfair. Well, it’s more unfair since Maxima has ranges attacks and if she is deigning to fight you with a sword, it’s only to let you save face. ANYWAY… I was sparring with a guy at Pennsic and I couldn’t figure out how I kept winning. He was more skilled than me, stronger than me, and faster than me. But I kept kicking his ass. Eventually I figured out that because he had a limp, I could back up faster than he could advance which let me control the range, and that was all it took. I pointed that out and mentioned that if he was less aggressive I could never beat him. He shrugged and said he knew but this was more fun.
If Maxima has a “particle beam”, from where do the particles originate? Is she shooting off parts of herself?
“Weirdly, the earliest seasons of O.G. Dr. Who were borderline hard-ish sci-fi, but they got progressively… softer the longer the series ran. The new Doctor Who’s are straight up fantasy in space. There’s barely even a nod to science anymore.”
The early seasons were for children, so they were supposed to be somewhat educational. IIRC the first “companions” were a pair of actual children; the Doctor was in the role of “eccentric uncle”.
They removed that, so the science went away.
The first companions were his granddaughter and a teacher
Dabbler’s been hiding a bit about her abilities. One of her swords weighs 32kg. She can afford to be picky enough about her weapons to bypass those she could not use.
“Parmesanium”?
That must be an extraplanar element, from what we call the Emmenthal Plane of Cheese. Much of it is ruled by one we call “The Grand Fromage”, though not to its face.
Something like in Scalzi’s “When the Moon Hits Your Eye”?
“An atmosphere of mildly thick intrigue” is now I will describe my dinner parties from now on.
32 kg is also the weight of janitor Anatoly’s mop, surely this is not coincidence.
BTW, I just noticed: Given that Cora has access to a fricking Star Forge, what the heck kind of bets is she making on Maxima that makes this trip even worth her time?
Like, is she and Dabbler betting the Star Forge itself and getting rulership of a populated planet if she wins?
Something with that much mass, being swung by someone with the strength and stability to do so, is going to go through just about damn near anything. The F=MA on that puppy is gonna be totes ridonk, as the kids these days say.
Re: The last panel.
RE Druin uses that idea a bit in https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/49030/the-power-of-ten-book-four-dynamo. Basically, it’s a super universe with a way to shut down all non-physics based flight. But the powers still work close enough to the body that grounded fliers are still insanely maneuverable on the ground.
Max you can already destroy anything opponent in close range.
You don’t need a way to hit harder.
You need a way to hit farther, better, in more places.
also that sword has a density of around 3555555,56 kg/m^3(around a hundred times denser than the core of the sun).
That swords appears to be Maxima’s length, which is 185,928 cm or 1,85928m
It’s also approximately 2,5 Cora fist thick(do your own pixel measurements if you consider this insufficient).
Assuming she has average woman hands that’s 7,87cm*2,5 = 19,675cm
Assuming a 1dm width for the sword(I’m too lazy to calculate heft curvature)
It weighs around 1300670kg, which by comparison is around the weight of a medium sized flying, but empty plane.
Max you can already destroy anything opponent in close range.
You don’t need a way to hit harder.
You need a way to hit farther, better, in more places.
also that sword has a density of around 3555555,56 kg/m^3(around a hundred times denser than the core of the sun).
That swords appears to be Maxima’s length, which is 185,928 cm or 1,85928m
It’s also approximately 2,5 Cora fist thick(do your own pixel measurements if you consider this insufficient).
Assuming she has average woman hands that’s 7,87cm*2,5 = 19,675cm
Assuming a 1dm width for the sword(I’m too lazy to calculate heft curvature)
It weighs around 1300670kg, which by comparison is around the weight of a medium sized flying, but empty plane.
We’re told that the sword’s mass is 32 kg; the unknown but (roughly) calculable variable is how dense it is.
As for how useful the sword would be to Maxima… even if it doesn’t make her a significantly better fighter, as long as it doesn’t make her a significantly *worse* fighter it would fit right in with her “scare the crap out of would-be supervillains so they behave themselves” approach to crimefighting.
I can’t remember, has it been established/stated that Max’s so called “strength” is zero range telekinesis or not? It obviously is, same as Superman’s, because we’ve seen her lift things that SHOULD have just crumped under her hands when she tried, but instead she could pick them up and even throw them.
Makes me wonder how that interacts with inertia and the conservation of angular momentum.
Yes, in the first Dabbler’s Science Corner, between comic’s 67 and 68:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-dabblers-science-corner-1/
urg… I have no idea why that errant apostrophe is there. One of my grammatical pet peeves, and I did it myself. I need to proof-read more better.
Science Teacher mode on
All Energy is either kinetic (energy doing stuff) or potential (stored energy waiting to do things). The potential energy forms are:
Chemical
Gravitational Positional
Elastic / Spring Potential
Electromagnetic Positional
Static Electricity
Weak Nuclear Force
Strong Nuclear Force
Mass (E=mc², Higgs field)
Typical kinetic energy forms are:
Translation / Kinetic
Rotation
Vibrational / Waves, including Sound
Current Electricity
Electromagnetic Radiation (Light)
Heat / Thermal
Ionization Energy
All forms of energy are some version of these or a combination of these forms. Cold, quiet and dark are not energy forms, but they are names we have given a relative reduction in energy in a given volume.
Science Teacher mode off
480 tons of pressure? I have seen a door that is supposed to be able to handle that. It is the main door at a NORAD site near Colorado Springs, CO. There is another door like that at a museum in Carp, Ontario, whose main door is only a little less capable.
Would you be referring to one of the main blast doors at the Cheyenne Mountain complex?
You left off gravitational waves, which is understandable.
Whoops, and also dark energy, which is even more understandable. And there’s also vacuum energy, which is a form of potential energy.
Panel 2 should be “single-edged”, not “single-bladed”. All of the shown swords (and more narrowly defined swords in general) only have a single blade. But that blade can have a sharp edge on one or both sides (ignoring mixed forms like a sharpened false edge, or exotic shapes with multiple sharpened sections), commonly referred to as “single-edged” and “double-edged”.
While a double-edged sword’s back edge can potentially pose a danger to the wielder, those instances mostly come from cases where the opponent manages to push your blade back against you, and usually aren’t very severe due to the lack of force. Maybe if you’re incredibly reckless and try to swing it around very close to your body you might slice yourself, I guess. Though that partially goes for single-edged swords as well, just with 50% less dangerous surface.
The bigger danger is from stuff like over-swinging your cuts combined with pool legwork, where you may end up cutting into your own leg with the front edge – which you can do just as easily with a single-edged sword.
To be fair though, that’s easy to chalk up to Max not being very versed with sword terminology and technique. My nerd brain just wouldn’t allow me NOT to point it out.
Dave, if you’re concenr3ed about what scale your comic setting seems to operate from or which comics group it’s scale most closely resembles, I’d recommend taking a look at the various RPGs, after all Maxima is an obvious nod to Hero Systems’ Champions games and it’s Multipower pool power build option.
The 80s Mayfair DC Heroes game fetured a revolutionary (at the time) logarithmic scale on Stats, such that each point was conceptually twice as strong as the one before it, so a person with strength 5 was literally twice as strong as str 4. This worked out great because by using such a scale, you could actually stat out classic Silver Age Superman and Batman both on it. Sure, Batman had a 5 and superman had a 25, but it worked.
Mutants and Masterminds and the M&M derived DC Universe game from a few years ago (excellent sourcebooks btw) also uses a version of this type of scaling on stats, and is a point buy system and also features it’s own version of Maxima’s Multipower called a power array, and are a bit more commonly seen on may characters rather than a dedicated build choice like in Champions.
I’d say you started pretty close to classic Marvel scale, but quickly zoomed way past it without care, some time ago.
Nowadays, even Marvel isn’t in that range, they are also way beyond it, it’s just that the majority of Marvel Characters don’t operate anywhere near the high end, unlike DC where multiple popular herpes and villians do (and some of them somewhat nonsensically, Batman anyone?).
Yeah, the density of that sword isn’t plausible. It’s about twice as dense as the core of the sun. You’re not getting that density without degenerate matter, and degenerate matter won’t hold an edge (degenerate matter is a fluid). It’s also going to explode. The sword’s volume (9cc?) also fails the eyeball test. Make it 900cc and you get an at least plausible density.
People saying it’s dense as star core material are a bit off.
for a weapon with a volume of around 729 cubic centimeters to weigh 32 kilos, it only needs to be a bit more than twice the density of Tungsten, which would weigh around 14 kilos in a blade that size.
Star core material is an extreme exaggeration.
The original comic had 32kg and (9 cm^3), which is 150 times as dense as osmium. All the comments regarding the density of the sun were based on that math. It was corrected to 32kg and (9 cm)^3, which as you said is (729 cm^3).
You have another (minor) math error in your explanation, Dave.
9 Cubic CM is not 3 centimeters, Cubed. It is 2.008 Centimeters, Cubed.
3 Centimeters cubed is 3x3x3, which is 27 cubic centimeters.