Grrl Power #1414 – Smaug, minus “a”
I may have mentioned this before, but for some reason, jokes about thinks being load-bearing always land with me. Probably because the only ones I’ve heard are absurdist. I think Brooklyn 99 did one about a balloon arch being load-bearing. Knees are, evolutionarily speaking, load-bearing. All bones are, really. Maybe not the skull, or the lower mandible. I suppose that depends on how you define “load.” But knees are inarguably load-bearing, so my little joke meets my own standard for being absurdist, therefore, I made myself laugh with this one.
Also, not to keep patting myself on the back, but “the most structurally reinforced of women’s knees” (which is an awkward sentence, but I think it’s grammatically correct?) also makes me laugh, because, yes, of course, there are such things as knee braces and in the advanced galaxy, powered armor, but the first thing my mind conjures is something like a woman wearing 6 pairs of pantyhose, or some kind of stocking and garter and flying buttress affair.
In some settings, dragon fire would be just some napalm-ish goo stored in a gland and it’s lit by the dragon clicking their teeth together when they have some flint stuck between their molars. That sort of biological dragon can account for the acid and chlorine breathers, but doesn’t allow for the kind that breath lightning or “cold.” In magical dragon settings, there’s probably more to the breath weapons than some goo in a gland. So dragons would probably have a name for it that sounds cool. Soulfire was the best I could come up with. Which probably happened at a Dragon council meeting, and the Red and Gold and Magma dragons were like “I guess “SoulFire” is the best we can come up with.” And all the other dragons who breathe cold or tornadoes or avalanches or starlight or whatever were all “No! It must be inclusive! EnergyForge!” “What are we? Dwarves?” “How about DragonCore!” “Ug, that sounds like an exercise trend for douchey nobles and High Elves.” “Okay, fine, SoulFire it is, but must we do intercaps?” “The Time Dragon says it will be easier to Duck Duck Go, whatever that means.”
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.
when do we get to the part where she proves him very very wrong? lmao
When DaveB get the jokes out of his system and want an action scene.
I mean, the dragon isn’t completely out of line. He’ll have to ask Cora a couple of times to check his math and repeat that ‘Egoma’ can still take him, and if she keeps saying that, he’ll probably get close enough to the truth eventually, to wit, that Egoma is not a Stygan wandering master.
Honestly, the fact that Cora said that at all is pretty clearly blowing ‘Egoma’s’ cover. I’m hoping Cora had a good reason for why Maxima should wear her Egoma disguise to this meeting, but shouldn’t bother keeping her dragon-slaying abilities secret.
Hypothetical non magic cold breathing dragon could have two glands, both spraying a different chemical that only meet just outside the mouth due to the angle of things. That when mix are a highly endothermic reaction.Something like a better version of ammonium chloride and Barium Hydroxide
As how a “biological dragon” would breathe cold.
The solution is to breathe an endothermic mix or something colder than its surrounding.
Actually kinda comparable to heath and flames.
flames and heath are spread by spreading material undergoing an exothermic reaction.
Do the same with an endothermic reaction and you’re done.
water and ammonium nitrate should do the trick
For a lightning breathing dragon one would need to prepare and aim the path of lightning, since lightning moves through preionised air this possible by preionising a path and thus determining the path of least resistance.
The best method I can think of is a low phased laser(yes, this has been tested in military applications).
The best mechanism I can think of for this is using the leaving air from the beast to focus the light in a co2 laser fashion.
Dinner on the ship is going to be fun. Like that one time a previous employer finally brought his mom to the mostly secret lair in. A. Mall. (he had this thing for hiding things in the open, well except when he had us on a job then it was different) Oh that was priceless. SMH “But shop here all the time!” and so on, then getting on him about decor, security and when is she getting grandkids and so on. Eh, dinner was lovely. He never told her the crew cooked that dinner for her because we all liked his mom. He told her he got a chef in town to do it. Oh and stay frosty out there future evil overlords and super villains. You never know who has an eye on you.
I’m not sure why this scaley fella seems so confident that she wouldn’t be wearing high powered armor – or be sporting internal augmentations made of far more advanced and durable materials than his own bulky hide (depending on how augmented he is himself).
He also lives in a world of sci-fi wormhole portal technology – can he take a blast from a ship-mounted cannon that fires into a portal that she opens in front of her hand?
How does he know she doesn’t fight while operating a giant mech or something like it?
Also, if his scales outdo contemporary sci-fi tank armor, why are contemporary sci-fi tanks not armored with synthetic or mass-cultivated dragon scales layered much thicker than they are on him?
If magic is part of the equation, why are contemporary tanks not using their greater carrying capacity to also be enchanted? Even if it requires a living component you could add living components to an otherwise mechanical tank, like the Halo Covenant’s Scarabs/Hunters aided/operated by Lekgolo worm colonies.
“That sort of biological dragon can account for the acid and chlorine breathers, but doesn’t allow for the kind that breath lightning or “cold.””
Electricity is pretty easy. We literally have eels that do that. Not a hard chemical process. Just need to turn that into a biochemical process.
Cold is tricker, as it is actually just the absense of heat. Maybe a insulated gland with a biological heat pump, that cools down something like nitrogen into liquid? It probably can’t evolve naturally, but it should be within genetic enigneering.
Skill can overcome a power gap, which is kinda Math’s niche in the team, but at some point the gap becomes too large for even skill to overcome. Of course with what we know, even without knowing Gaxgy’s level, he is not on the side of the power gap that he thinks he is.
Interesting thought occurred to me recently regarding the Nth people and a possible connection to Supers showing up on Earth: What if the dinosaur killer (obviously connected to Sydney’s Orbs) was some piece of Nth related material the Nth people kind of forgot about? Someone tried and failed using the Orbs to block or divert the comet and the reason for this was the core of the comet was an Unobtanium laced Nth space probe they forgot about.