Friendship is Dragons
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Page 643 - The Dream Job, Part 4
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Newbiespud
5th Sep 2015, 6:00 AM
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I appear to be first. In that case, story time: Tell of a time when rocks fell as an essential part of the party's plan. Not necessarily moon-sized rocks, but rocks.
There was a D&D adventure where the PCs led the battle plans on the defense of a castle. Dropping boulders and boiling oil was part of the plan when the invaders brought ladders.
Does that count?
Does that count?
I once watched a game played where the party was scoping out a stronghold for an attack. They were not being stealthy about it, one player even took time to taunt the enemy. The DM then had the defenders fire a catapult at him with a PERFECT dice roll.
The player got squished like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Hilarity ensued.
The player got squished like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Hilarity ensued.
Not quite rocks that fell, but something that fell upon rocks.
This one time, the party was fighting a golem at the bottom of the main shaft of a temporarily extinct volcano. (Long story. Short version: a planetary cannon crafted to shoot away an incoming moon.) They were getting mauled by the boss, when they heard a whistling sound, slowly growing louder.
The party had a large robot chocobo they had been riding. They'd left it outside, but it wanted to join them. The only tunnel large enough for it was the volcano's main shaft, so down it jumped.
It landed on the golem, not quite defeating it but putting it in a world of hurt. The party was easily able to mop up the rest.
This one time, the party was fighting a golem at the bottom of the main shaft of a temporarily extinct volcano. (Long story. Short version: a planetary cannon crafted to shoot away an incoming moon.) They were getting mauled by the boss, when they heard a whistling sound, slowly growing louder.
The party had a large robot chocobo they had been riding. They'd left it outside, but it wanted to join them. The only tunnel large enough for it was the volcano's main shaft, so down it jumped.
It landed on the golem, not quite defeating it but putting it in a world of hurt. The party was easily able to mop up the rest.
In the last campaign, we did provide targeting information that the Inquisition used to drop a derelict space station on a Hive City. The shockwave was cataclysmic, and killed the half of OUR army that weren't fortunate enough to be standing next to shield generators.
I do not like the Inquisition.
I had a group of bad guys set up shop in a cave, with an orc on watch just inside the entrance. One PC lured him out, and the others dropped a big rock on him. It was messy.
I remember hearing a story (might have been here, might have been elsewhere) about a party climbing a cliff to escape a rock golem. One player fails an athletic check and falls directly on the golem, turns out he was high enough that him landing on it was enough damage to kill it. DM said, "You fall, rocks die."
The Psion gets a power at level 7 called Metamorphosis that lets you tranform into a creature with many restrictions.
Alternately, it lets you turn into an inanimate object with almost NO restrictions, including to specify size. So you could jump off a ledge above your enemy, and literally transform into the moon to crush them to death, provided it was a moon with Hardness less than or equal to 15.
I never thought to try this in game when I had the chance but...
Cowabunga, dude.
Alternately, it lets you turn into an inanimate object with almost NO restrictions, including to specify size. So you could jump off a ledge above your enemy, and literally transform into the moon to crush them to death, provided it was a moon with Hardness less than or equal to 15.
I never thought to try this in game when I had the chance but...
Cowabunga, dude.
I about died at AJ's inventory comment for the space program. Haha, Spud this page is comedy gold. That last panel perfectly executes a lampshading joke.
"...and other sciency stuff", asked the flying pony.
^_^
^_^
One word: Magic.
As someone who takes an enjoyment in astronomy and physics, I can tell you that if gravity worked right in this world canterlot would have crumbled centuries ago.
As someone who takes an enjoyment in astronomy and physics, I can tell you that if gravity worked right in this world canterlot would have crumbled centuries ago.
Magical re-enforcement, also, probably an indecent amount of internal structure support.
Just how light is the moon that seven ponies and a baby dragon can win a tug-of-war with it? Or make that six ponies, since Pinkie's not pulling.
I bet Sunbutt, and Moonbutt, are taking care of the mass issues.
That's almost explicit? Luna's straining on a spell but the only thing glowing other than the rope (which is purely Celestia's color) is the moon itself.
This comic raises a bigger issue (err, pun not intended) about the moon. Look at panel 5.
From the planet-side when Luna raises the moon it just rises up from the horizon. But this panel indicates it is a large body in orbit around the planet. So when Luna moves it, does she rotate the moon to the far side of the planet?
And we don't see the sun, so it's likely farther. Being a brighter object it is probably bigger too. If it is like a dwarf-star size, what exactly happens when Celestia raises and lowers it? Is she actually moving a small star through space or...?
This is why this comic arc bugs me so much! :D
From the planet-side when Luna raises the moon it just rises up from the horizon. But this panel indicates it is a large body in orbit around the planet. So when Luna moves it, does she rotate the moon to the far side of the planet?
And we don't see the sun, so it's likely farther. Being a brighter object it is probably bigger too. If it is like a dwarf-star size, what exactly happens when Celestia raises and lowers it? Is she actually moving a small star through space or...?
This is why this comic arc bugs me so much! :D
If there's one thing I learned from the great Sir Pratchett, it's that magic steps in when science isn't watching and does things that science strongly disapproves of, and then science returns the favor.
The science moon and the magic moon are very contradictory, but the observed moon is both of them at the same time and exhibits at any time a mix of properties of each depending on what magic is being applied to it. Consistency is only an illusion that can result from not looking closely enough.
The science moon and the magic moon are very contradictory, but the observed moon is both of them at the same time and exhibits at any time a mix of properties of each depending on what magic is being applied to it. Consistency is only an illusion that can result from not looking closely enough.
What happens is that it's a television show, for children, and doesn't have to follow rules.
@terrycloth: If that's true, then what's Twilight doing?
Twilight's pulling on the rope, or boosting her friends, maybe. Nothing is glowing in Twilight's color, so it's not obvious what she's doing.
That said, the ponies pulling looks like a catalyst, that the Princesses are amplifying greatly.
That said, the ponies pulling looks like a catalyst, that the Princesses are amplifying greatly.
I BEAT RAXON!! I CAN DIE HAPPY!
Oh by the by all the evidence we have on Equestria suggests their sun and moon are much smaller than ours and much closer. Clearly the sun revolves around Equstria, Celestia/Luna(and once Twlight) literally lift and lower it. Also Rarity flew too close and her wings burned. In real life as you get higher in Earth's Atmosphere you don't get appreciably closer to the sun. What you do is get to where the atmosphere is thinner and holds less heat. If anything her wings should have frozen solid and shattered but they didn't.
It's still crazy they can pull it in but that moon is much smaller than Earths according to all the given evidence.
Oh by the by all the evidence we have on Equestria suggests their sun and moon are much smaller than ours and much closer. Clearly the sun revolves around Equstria, Celestia/Luna(and once Twlight) literally lift and lower it. Also Rarity flew too close and her wings burned. In real life as you get higher in Earth's Atmosphere you don't get appreciably closer to the sun. What you do is get to where the atmosphere is thinner and holds less heat. If anything her wings should have frozen solid and shattered but they didn't.
It's still crazy they can pull it in but that moon is much smaller than Earths according to all the given evidence.
When they're actually on the moon, it looks really large, like near the size of Earth's moon.
Up where the atmosphere is thin, there wouldn't be enough air molecules to drain the heat away from Rarity's wings, let alone ones that are cold.
That's where radiative heat transfer comes into play. Conductive moves energy from one thing directly to another, convective moves it by indirect transfer through other molecules in motion, and radiative is directly releasing that energy (mostly through infrared photons).
not sure if it counts, but here it goes...
I was in a BESM d20 game that was a space opera setting, and we started out as lowly guards for a mining convoy that was run by an evil megacorp (aren't they all). The problem was that the planet that was being mined was unstable, and overmining was causing it to break apart. While we were trying to get the last of the miners into the transport away from the planet, we ended up getting zapped by an ancient device that was hidden in the core of the planet, which lead to us finding 2 members of the precursor race that created humans, and becoming insanely rich. So we quit our jobs working for the corporation and went into business for ourselves.
this, as you can imagine made our, now former, bosses very unhappy. So they decided we had to die. Especially once they found out that we had all been granted super powers by our exposure to the ancient technology. They wanted the tech, they figured we knew where it was (we didn't), they knew the aliens (remarkably human looking aliens) knew where it was (they forgot over the millions of years being sealed away from the rest of the universe). Any time they cornered us and asked us where the tech was, we told them the truth. They never believed us.
So we started our own planetary mining company, that would reduce a planet to metal, rocks, water, and biological matter sorted into nice neat organized groups. This got the megacorp's attention, so they would come along, buy the planet from us, and then we would buy the component parts of the planet that weren't alien tech (and we still made money off the deal).
What did we do with the bits of planet? We built a Ringworld. To distract the evil megacorp from our real goal.
That's how rich we were.
in the end we succeeded in driving the evil megacorp out of business, bought the company, and fired most of the board.
(we also turned the space pirates (lead by a captain ersatz of Don Karnage from the Disney cartoon TailSpin) into the space police.
I was in a BESM d20 game that was a space opera setting, and we started out as lowly guards for a mining convoy that was run by an evil megacorp (aren't they all). The problem was that the planet that was being mined was unstable, and overmining was causing it to break apart. While we were trying to get the last of the miners into the transport away from the planet, we ended up getting zapped by an ancient device that was hidden in the core of the planet, which lead to us finding 2 members of the precursor race that created humans, and becoming insanely rich. So we quit our jobs working for the corporation and went into business for ourselves.
this, as you can imagine made our, now former, bosses very unhappy. So they decided we had to die. Especially once they found out that we had all been granted super powers by our exposure to the ancient technology. They wanted the tech, they figured we knew where it was (we didn't), they knew the aliens (remarkably human looking aliens) knew where it was (they forgot over the millions of years being sealed away from the rest of the universe). Any time they cornered us and asked us where the tech was, we told them the truth. They never believed us.
So we started our own planetary mining company, that would reduce a planet to metal, rocks, water, and biological matter sorted into nice neat organized groups. This got the megacorp's attention, so they would come along, buy the planet from us, and then we would buy the component parts of the planet that weren't alien tech (and we still made money off the deal).
What did we do with the bits of planet? We built a Ringworld. To distract the evil megacorp from our real goal.
That's how rich we were.
in the end we succeeded in driving the evil megacorp out of business, bought the company, and fired most of the board.
(we also turned the space pirates (lead by a captain ersatz of Don Karnage from the Disney cartoon TailSpin) into the space police.
By the love of everything, DID YOU HAVE TO do an adaption of the "Luna wasn't evil! She was just possessed by an alien parasite!" :-(
One thing that has bothered me about the last couple of seasons is how stupid they have made Rainbow Dash. She was a lot smarter in season 3. I would figure she would know what she said here, but as of season 5 it seems very unlikely unfortunately.
This actually happened in the comic?
It's just... seriously, WHAT?!
So what if it breaks the laws of physics? Its good story telling. Now where did I leave that popcorn....
And from this moment on, the GM found he could never use the tried and true "rocks fall everybody dies" tactic.