Grrl Power #1414 – Smaug, minus “a”
I may have mentioned this before, but for some reason, jokes about things 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 can fully see Egoma letting Gaxgy TRY to get the first hit in and dodging for an hour… casually… while eating a burrito… Until Maxima forgets that Gaxgy can actually try and accidentally swings full power at Sydney.
no no, just let Sydney battle him :P
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.
– 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.
The simple one is that Max was walking through areas with people that shouldn’t know about her, but Gaxgy is safe to know.
They are in public and don’t want the double identity to leak out.
Probably why Cora sugested to eat with the crew in the ship.
Onboard the ship, she can read him in on the situation and why the seemingly frail, if golden-looking, human is more than a match for him.
My guess here is that they’re simply trying to keep the number of people in the know at an absolute minimum. If Gaxgy’s suggestion of a fight is rejected, that’s going to already tell him something weird is going on (I don’t think any Stygan would pass up a chance to fight a dragon and see how far they could get). If it is accepted and she wipes the floor with him, he’s going to know for certain something really weird is going on, plus there will likely be more witnesses seeing the same (“Hey, someone’s fighting Gaxgy, and looks like they think they can win! Let’s put down bets on how long she’ll last!”). Cora attempting to diffuse the situation by informing him he can’t beat Egoma will give him the same information as experiencing it himself, albeit with less certainty, while preventing others from finding out, so is probably the best route (“This Stygan is strong enough to defeat a dragon” is probably less problematic than “That’s not a Stygan at all!”).
Since his proposal about a ‘fight’ was basically ‘I promise to be so very gentle and respectful while you lose, and not turn it into a foreplay-tickle-fest at ALL after I have you pinned, unless that’s what you’re into….’
I’m thinking Egoma wouldn’t have lost any face by simply saying that she’s not here to flirt with Cora’s employees.
That ship sailed (literally). Egoma, that is Max, has already flirted with him. My guess is that Max is, indeed, going to get some, finally. Just not the way Gaxgy imagines (yet).
Isn’t she still dating a human in her ‘civilian’ life, though? It’s not like Maxima is Cora or Dabbler, she doesn’t seem like the sort of girl to maintain multiple paramours at the same time, especially not without telling them about each other.
They planned to drop her into a super-powered brawl with monsters and what-not. True, the original plan was under a different disguise, but still… When had everything go perfectly the same way, as it had been planned for?
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
Just do the fire extinguisher thing. Have a reservoir with high enough pressure to maintain liquid carbon dioxide, and you can spray dry ice (minus 100 degrees F or so).
Dry ice nothing. If you have that sort of pressure capability, just the Ideal Gas Law means that ‘exhalation’ will cause a drop in temperature.
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.
they were originally going for an electron beam to ionize the path until they found out
not portable
short range
low conversion efficiency.
I ws thinking something similar, but without the laser. Dragon creates an electrical charge in their breath somehow, blows that charged air out like you would blowing out a candle, then send the millions of volts down that freshly created Path Of Least Resistance. “Lightning Breath gets a relatively easy path to follow, Dragon gets to look awesome, and for bonus points, they can forget to create/breath out the charged breath, creating a Tesla Coil effect…
Ooh! Ooh! You just triggered my old DM reflexes.
I am now imagining a Tesla Dragon.
… which is apparently already a thing, if not as awesome as my imagination painted it.
https://ar.inspiredpencil.com/pictures-2023/dragon-city-tesla-dragon
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.
His confidence, and assumed battle experience, should inform you as to the average tier of power of his environment.
If he’s so confident that, without very advanced power armor, he would win handedly then obviously all of the things you mention are either; not able to be condensed to infantry scale due to the limits of technology, non-viable because of weird magic rules, or vanishingly rare.
*Assuming Gaxgy is being mostly truthful and isn’t delusional.
More likely, he is evaluating her as a Stygian wandering master. Which she isn’t.
His belief that he can easily trounce ANY Stygian wandering master is likely true…for 99% of Stygian wandering masters.
The fact that Cora said he still couldn’t beat her has him positively giddy. I don’t think intimacy is his primary goal anymore. While I wouldn’t call it a kink, I think he’s the kind that has been so far removed from an actual challenge that someone who can not only keep up but beat him is a novelty to treasure and savor.
aka Goku mode activated
Someone like Maxi (or Superman)
This is a universe where there’s a fighting tournament that allows mechs etc. as participants. And also people in their skivvies. Presumably the ones in their skivvies have something that the guys in mecha don’t, and can’t easily reproduce. Or all participants would be doing it, since that’s a lot easier to accommodate in a reasonably sized arena.
I don’t think Max is going to be able to pull off pretending to be in a mech that produces equivalent power. So she’s going to be fighting in a disguise that is more or less Max-sized and -shaped. I.e. she’s going to be in the “skivvies” class.
The thing about dragons is that they’re both powerful and arrogant. Otherwise they aren’t really dragons.
I suspect a lot of the people able to compete in their skivvies have quite an easy time reproducing, actually.
Sure, but not on an industrial scale. Also, getting to the point of being able to compete in a galaxy-wide tournament in your skivvies requires more than a good lineage – there are long, grueling years of training to be done under proper experts that cannot be mass-produced either.
(it was a sex joke)
“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.
Eels doe the boring type of electricity emission, not a nice aimable lightning strike.
For that you need to preionise a part of the air to send the electricity through.
Your cold solution has this problem too you just get a cold breeze and some snow instead of interesting effects like the shaping of ice spikes.
For that you need to provide water with something approaching direction like dust to cling to.
Above this thread a lot has already been said about how to achieve these things from physics perspective.
An evolutionary excuse is of course also fun.
Cold dragon:
The creature should live in a ecosystem with access with a lot of gwihabaite in the ground and drink from the local water(ammonium nitrate is a salt).
I also need an excuse why the creature isn’t using the ammonium nitrate for its much more usefull exothermic properties.
I would say because it’s an amphibious creature and that doesn’t work under water.
The electricity dragon.
generating is indeed easily explained away, but why would the creature evolve to aim it through the air.
It lives in a mountainous terrain with lots of metal in the ground, but also many craters.
It hunts creatures that hide in deep spelunks, but sit normally close to the outside, because they photosynthesize.
It hunts by hitting from a distance close to their hiding places, so it doesn’t have to reveal themselves and the electricity is conducted through the metal in the ground to its prey.
When the prey is fried it pries out of the spelunk if it didn’t flee.
If you are willing to forgo the visual arcs of electricity, you could have your dragon spit a stream of electrified saltwater at its target
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.
If he were facing a real Stygian, he would likely be correct; however, his current assumptions are based on misinformation. Hopefully, once they get aboard the ship and within a more secure environment, he can be read into the situation. IE, the human with the gold skin is more powerful than Cora’s whole ship.
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.
Dude does have a point, which kinda makes me wonder just how long Cora and Maxima hope to keep up this charade. I mean, in a galaxy where people presumably KNOW that hard-light costumes (or whatever they’re wearing) exist, it shouldn’t be that big of a stretch to think that someone could disguise themselves as a different race.
Just to take this to an extreme example, suppose you have a race of tribble-people that’s mostly known for being fluffy and it’s love of glitter, and then one of them starts throwing around tanks and shooting laser-death-eyebeams, or something. Are people going to assume that that’s been a race-wide conspiracy to hide this abilities this whole time, or that someone just picked a really shitty costume? (shitty because those abilities very clearly do NOT belong to a tribble-person)
You forgot that actual Stygans did not think that Egoma(xima)’s abilities were outside of the realm of possibility for their race. Or their parting after the ‘four on one’ lesson would have been a lot less amicable.
The question is if ‘upper level of Stygan ability with a little side of speedboost cheating’ is enough to best a dragon.
Neither of them is going to pull out the big guns for this friendly sparring (and booty call) match the dragon is pushing for. Cora will want to have a station and crew remaining after the fight. They do not want to hurt each other either, so they are both expected to stay well below their actual upper power and ability levels.
The dragon simply is mistakenly convinced that even with him holding way back he is still stronger than a Stygan who goes all out. He may also have convinced himself that Egoma wants said booty call and thus will not fight entirely seriously. The fight could (in his opinion) just be to preserve her ego.
Maxima on the other hand is just teasing the dragon. She should have told him in no uncertain terms that even if there /is/ a fight and even /if/ she loses, there still will not be a follow up wrestling match of the horizontal (and classical Greek) kind.
Of course, like the clan boy, Gaxgy is arrogant and convinced of his own superior ability. Maxima may, just like before, actually want to fight and is just goading him into issuing a challenge. It would therefor be funny if Maxima cannot defeat the dragon without revealing abilities she wants to remain hidden. Of course there will be no follow up shenanigans from such a defeat as this is not that kind of comic.
I am not sure what you have been reading, but this is definitely IS /that kind/ of comic, even if it doesn;t all happen in panel.
The lack of follow-up shenanigans is more an artifact of Maxima’s personality.
I mean, we had a whole group orgy sequence.
I think there’s two pages/scenes that have actual (if censor-steamed) nudity (that are not shower scenes)
And one where there’s sound effects and commentary from the peanut gallery.
That is not much on a 1400 page comic.
Clearly shenanigans are not the focus of the story (nor even a theme) and the level of explicitness is kept way beyond what would require a PG rating (though I am from a region that has considerably different standards of what would trigger a PG rating, so my opinion may be somewhat different).
But, I think I am not unreasonable to stand by my conclusion that this is not ‘that kind of’ comic.
The plan isn’t to disguise her as a Stygan when she fights in the gambling ring, but as some advanced robot.
There’s no race wide conspiracy needed to hide these abilities just trade secrets.
Try harder, you “dragonborn” prat. I’ve read Flight of Dragons. Real dragons are just organic, hydrogen-filled, semi-rigid airships, with all the “grace” and less actual durability than the Goodyear blimp. Similar figures too, and their muscles are like butter for their size.
You certainly don’t want one making your meals for you unless you enjoy eating limestone.
Never read that book, but I remember well the 80’s animated movie (that was also partly based on another book).
“My strength…” Max just adjusts her pool, and shakes his hand like a man at the gym.
next.
I want to see his face when she spanks him.
You know, human fart is flammable (hydrogen, methane, whatever else), and I have read about bored soldiers having competitions of burning it. This in mind, dragon firebreath could be as simple as a burb/belch of hydrogen/methane/whatev and an ignition mechanism.
I have to wonder how many of us lit our farts as teen age boys. Or girls if you will. I only ever knew of one girl who would admit to having tried it. After all, ladies don’t fart. If you feel inclined to try make sure you are wearing clothing such as jeans. A buddy did it while in his tighty whities and managed to singe the hair on his backside.
….So Maxima is (unintentionally?) using various holographic disguises to amass a harem isn’t she.
THIS.
Max doesn’t need a disguise to amass a harem if she wanted one. She has plenty of would-be suitors if she were open to that kind of thing.
Since we’re talking about a Dragon here, her real skin colour would be much more attractive to him.
Hm, If I was a dragon, declaiming my quite formidable list of achievements, while the audience remains completely unimpressed, I might start to wonder.
He is right about the different tiers though, just not in the way he deigns to think.
Please tell me we are going to get a friendly sparring match between these two which ends in a very friendly hot and steamy encore to ease bruised egos? It’s about time Maxima worked off some tension in all ways.
Maxima is already the ‘Canadian stuntwoman girlfriend’ of a firefighter boyfriend back home.
And we know that she is not the type to even consider that currently being over well over 10 biliard (long scale because I am to lazy to try to figure out what 10^15 is in short scale) km from said boyfriend is a permission to cheat on him.
And, in the comic there have been a handful of instances (most by dabbler, but also one by Harem and one by Maxima) where it was heavily suggested that steamy shenanigans had occured in the near past. In neither case was anything shown even remotely relating to said shenanigans.
Wait, I stand corrected. The most resent example involving Hoss and Dabbler did in the afterglow reveal that Dabbler’s stripes do in fact go all the way down her body. Oh well, this is still not a story which comes withing a galaxy’s diameter distance of PG content :)
Actually, I’d say that the rating as softened slightly, with Sydney tending more toward creatively eloquent maledictions and less toward The Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television. (I approve; the latter is available to any old idiot but the former requires style.)
We’ve already seen Max’s @ss, and there was that one time she was naked with Hero, but the boyfriend thing is a point well taken.
God I wanna see Max pancake this guy now (in a fight?)
Balloons can be load bearing. Have you ever heard of active support? It’s one of the ways we hope that we can build a tower large enough to reach the edge of space.
Granted, that one’s supposed to be inflated with magnetically accelerated bullets.
Aah, Space Fountains, been a while since I’ve seen anyone mention those :D
Screw it. Arm wrestle him real quick just to prove the point.
Lower left panel.
Sydney is making a fist but her glove has a flat finger.
SHE’S ORBING!!!
Has to be the CommBall doing a Truesight.
To me it ooks like she’s touching Gaxgy’s elbow spike with her index finger.
You’re right.
The color of her glove nearly matches the color of the spike.
It looked to me as if her glove was deformed.
What would a glowbod look like to Sydney’s truesight? Based on the rules we’ve seen so far (truesight defeats illusions but can’t see through actual solid objects), I’d guess it looks like the bodysuit in “off” mode (https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1400-so-breed-me-maybe).
She’s poking/proding his elbow spike. :)
How long until gaxgy realizes that Max isn’t an alari? Even a powerful magic user probably wouldn’t be as sure a win as Maxima, and Max was introduced as a martial master, so I imagine he’s going to figure out she’s using a hologram to disguise herself.
Stygian. Alari is the race of Deux’s enthusiastic girl Friday.
OOF yeah I gotta not comment after waking up. My point stands, though, in that Max’s apparent race shouldn’t stand a chance.
My view on Dragons that spit lightning bolts. Very long retractable tongue, full of an excess of the things that electric eels use. In short, a built in mega taser.
I saw a video on electric eels recently. Most of its body is the organ that generates electricity; all the vital organs are crammed up near its head so they don’t get electrocuted.
Also…. The Electric Eel is not immune to its own power. It hurts them too!
One of Heinlein’s novels, Glory Road, had dragons that breathed an inflammable chemical with some sort of weird enzyme that ignited it as it left their mouths. Think he described it as a “hypergolic enzyme” which is a little odd since it’s usually fuel that’s hypergolic.
I need to see a female of that species, respectfully.
When you have draconic arrogance, but you’re also adorkable, so it’s all right.
OK, his official nickname in my headcannon is now “Smug The Dragon”
Uteruses (or uteri) are also load-bearing! ;)
Is that dude an actual dragon or more like a dragon born from D&D?
He’s succeeding effortlessly.
It’s going to get worse if he sees Max without the disguise. She’s a *shiny gold* woman, and he’s a dragon. The dragon affinity for gold is well-established. That’s a supernormal stimulus if ever there was one.
“I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”
“Oh, is that rig..”
“Now hold on. You might have misheard me. Not ‘Half as hard’, not some arbitrary percentage. I want you. To hit me. As hard. As. You. Can.”
Yes, I’m sure most of you know where this comes from. I also think it could apply here.
The organ that produces dragon breath weapons in D&D is called the Fundamentallum. Note that Dragon Breath Weapons are Supernatural, and an Anti-Magic Shell will hold them at bay, although they can’t be Dispelled.
One of the Forgotten Realms books also made it clear that ALL dragons except the white can actually breathe fire, but if they aren’t a Fire Dragon, it’s much less effective (half power compared to their own?).
He could totally be a dragon in humanoid form, too. Would actually be surprised if he’s not a shapechanger.
Reminds me of Math there at the end.
Little does he realize, he’s right on the money… but in the opposite way of how he expects.
It will be interesting to see a match between Gaxgy and Maxima
I feel like the match would go about as well for Gaxgy as it did for Thothogoth (Tom).
With the exception that Maxima seems to sort of LIKE and be into Gaxgy.
Yeah, Max is going to fuck him isn’t she?
He may just be sturdy enough to survive even her levels of snu snu.
I personally LOVE the load-bearing gag. Full disclosure, I also memorized “The Engineers’ Song.”
Just wait until he finds out she’s also golden.
How soon until Sydney calls him “Gary”?
Don’t you mean “Ryga”?