Rip Them To Shreads - Page 3

SkepticJ · #61 (**permalink**) 10-February-2005, 10:16 PM

Well I've been getting input at Blade Forums for a few days now. I'm thinking about the blades now being about as thick as a aluminum can or maybe photographic film that tapers down to a single 2nm in diameter carbon nanotube edge. The tube runs the length of the edge still like on the old claw design. It won't be effortless cuting for the deathdealers but do you think a kilo of force behind the blade could slice through hardened steel and so forth? Please help me, I'm not a scientist or engineer.

SkepticJ · #62 (**permalink**) 15-February-2005, 07:05 PM

How about an animal that evolved a lens to focus light to catch stuff on fire?

How about an animal that evolved several speakers and thus can play any sound back it hears? A musical animal, how neat.

nomuse · #63 (**permalink**) 15-February-2005, 11:10 PM

Do you know there's six different species of "mimic birds" in Australia that have been going around imitating cell phones?

But that's nothing to the Lyre Bird, which has been known to imitate camera shutters, chainsaws, and according to one NPR correspondent, a diesel truck horn. (Not a sound you expect or want to hear when you are curled up in your bag somewhere in the Outback).

SkepticJ · #64 (**permalink**) 15-February-2005, 11:16 PM

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Originally Posted by nomuse

But that's nothing to the Lyre Bird, which has been known to imitate camera shutters, chainsaws, and according to one NPR correspondent, a diesel truck horn. (Not a sound you expect or want to hear when you are curled up in your bag somewhere in the Outback).

I've heard of those. Very funny birds. I do wonder why they evolved that ability though. Do they fake mating calls to trick other birds into coming and eat them?

nomuse · #65 (**permalink**) 16-February-2005, 12:41 AM

Apparently, breeding sucess for these birds comes from being "hip." The bird with the new sounds is the bird that attracts the ladies.

Sock Munkey · #66 (**permalink**) 16-February-2005, 06:45 AM

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Originally Posted by SkepticJ

That sounds pretty neat.

Thanks, I originally created them for D&D an went so far as to create customs and society but never got a chance to use them.

Anyhow, one of the reasons I bring them up (other than showing off) is to point out that when I started creating them I realize that even though everone wants an uber-race to roleplay it gets lame quickly resulting in a great deal of eye-rolling. By compromising and keeping things within reason one can still have an ***-kicking species. While I dislike discouraging someone's creativity the way the deathdealers are coming out is somewhat comic-book like.

Giving them several incredible abilities is not neeed to make them terrifying. Killer bees aren't really different than our everyday bees in ability, the thing that makes them dangerous is that they are hyper-agressive. That's all it takes.

SkepticJ · #67 (**permalink**) 16-February-2005, 04:36 PM

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Originally Posted by Sock Munkey

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkepticJ

That sounds pretty neat.

While I dislike discouraging someone's creativity the way the deathdealers are coming out is somewhat comic-book like.

What about them is that way? It's not like they have telekinesis or psionic beams from their eyes. Just a modification to what electric eels have to let it work in the air out to a few hundred meters and two really sharp claws. If you saw one and it didn't kill you you'd see an animal not any weirder than other Thebann animals. And I'm making Thebannese animals familiar to. They aren't energy beings made of magnetic fields living in a prominence of a star. Just carbon based life with some different enzymes and maybe a different genetic material than DNA as we know it.

nomuse · #68 (**permalink**) 16-February-2005, 08:31 PM

Y'know, I think what gets me about the Death-dealers is that most animals are specialists. That's part of what finding an eco-niche is. So look at this guy; it has the ability to paralyze or kill a prey from a distance. Why would it need claws after that?

I'd imagine the death-from-a-distance ability to belong to something fairly slow and fumbly. And the claws to belong to something large, fast, and unsubtle. They are such different strategies, it really makes the Death-dealer look like it stacked the deck during the genetic lottery.

SkepticJ · #69 (**permalink**) 16-February-2005, 09:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nomuse

Y'know, I think what gets me about the Death-dealers is that most animals are specialists. That's part of what finding an eco-niche is. So look at this guy; it has the ability to paralyze or kill a prey from a distance. Why would it need claws after that?

I'd imagine the death-from-a-distance ability to belong to something fairly slow and fumbly. And the claws to belong to something large, fast, and unsubtle. They are such different strategies, it really makes the Death-dealer look like it stacked the deck during the genetic lottery.

I wasn't having it shock them to death although I guess I could have them generate enough amps to do that. The reason for the claws is the prey can run and dive into stuff where it can't paint them with the twin UV lasers. A log, rock outcropping, dense exobamboo forests etc. This ability also makes them a threat if they can claw through metal doors and such to the high-tech Thebannese. I'm changing my mind posssibly and trying to set it about 400-500 years later than before. The Deathdealer Continent is off limits to Thebannese. Only robots go there. The layout of the continent was unknown until they invented aircraft(or perhaps breed giant petrosaur-like animals to ride on) that could fly above the laser's range to map it.

nomuse · #70 (**permalink**) 16-February-2005, 10:52 PM

I've been thinking on what we mentioned earlier about mimic birds, and before that, on the possibilities once you have an organic UV laser.

Image something that was smart enough to learn, and that could copy to a great deal of accuracy electronic signals (electromagnetic, or if the high-tech's are particularly unlucky, they are using IR diodes for everything wireless).

Subtler and more interesting....a swarm of bugs that use the same "novelty" idea to attract mates. Thus whenever you introduce electronics into the area, it gets swarmed first by female bugs seeking a mate, then male bugs loudly spoofing the signal. At best, you've got intelligent jamming. At worse, you have to switch off all your electronics to keep your ship and self from looking like DC during the seventeen-year-locusts.

SkepticJ · #71 (**permalink**) 16-February-2005, 11:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nomuse

I've been thinking on what we mentioned earlier about mimic birds, and before that, on the possibilities once you have an organic UV laser.

Image something that was smart enough to learn, and that could copy to a great deal of accuracy electronic signals (electromagnetic, or if the high-tech's are particularly unlucky, they are using IR diodes for everything wireless).

Subtler and more interesting....a swarm of bugs that use the same "novelty" idea to attract mates. Thus whenever you introduce electronics into the area, it gets swarmed first by female bugs seeking a mate, then male bugs loudly spoofing the signal. At best, you've got intelligent jamming. At worse, you have to switch off all your electronics to keep your ship and self from looking like DC during the seventeen-year-locusts.

You know what would be funny? If in centuries in the future lyre birds make these noises, passing them down via one copying older birds and someday long after future "humans" have forgotten except in data files few read what these noises are. Where did these birds hear them?

nomuse · #72 (**permalink**) 16-February-2005, 11:20 PM

I'll go you one further. How about writing a present-day thriller in which a mimic bird has "recorded" a key code sequence?

I'm remembering a couple mysteries involving parrots, including a wonderful one on "Abarenbo Shogun" in which a parrot hears the last words of a man trying to stop a ginseng-smuggling ring ran by a minor noble, is found by a young girl dying of fever, and spends most of the episode squawking "Ginseng! Ginseng!"

Sock Munkey · #73 (**permalink**) 18-February-2005, 01:22 AM

With such a deadly hunter as the deathdealer the prey are going to have to be just as tough to keep from being hunted to extinction leaving the deathealers with no food. Perhaps some animals are covered with mirror-like scales?

SkepticJ · #74 (**permalink**) 18-February-2005, 04:20 AM

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Originally Posted by Sock Munkey

With such a deadly hunter as the deathdealer the prey are going to have to be just as tough to keep from being hunted to extinction leaving the deathealers with no food. Perhaps some animals are covered with mirror-like scales?

Good idea. Maybe there could even be ones that have a.....well whatever those skin things on those Australian lizards that unfurl really big. Anyway a deer-sized animal with a thing like that but is as shiny as a mirror and they use it to reflect light into the deathdealers face blinding it's vision.
I also posted about the quills. A deathdealer could drop one of the animals but wouldn't want to try to eat it. It'd get stuck with many deadly poison pumping back-barbed quills.

Another possibility is their prey breeds really fast. Like rabbits so to speak.

nomuse · #75 (**permalink**) 18-February-2005, 04:43 AM

Superconducting slime. That's what I want to see as a defence against the Death-dealers. An animal that exudes superconducting slime to coat its own body.

Sock Munkey · #76 (**permalink**) 18-February-2005, 10:04 PM

Yep, burrowing would be a great defense too.

SkepticJ · #77 (**permalink**) 20-February-2005, 09:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nomuse

Superconducting slime. That's what I want to see as a defence against the Death-dealers. An animal that exudes superconducting slime to coat its own body.

How would this protect it? It'd have to be super high temp also because Thebann's climate is like Earth's was in the Cretacious(sp?) About 10 times the amount of CO2 in the air than Earth has now.

SkepticJ · #78 (**permalink**) 20-February-2005, 09:21 PM

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Originally Posted by Sock Munkey

Yep, burrowing would be a great defense too.

Like meercats. Lookouts could warn the grazing clan to dive back into the underground city of tunnels and chambers. The burrowers would need to be fairly small though otherwise the deathdealers could fit into their tunnels. But What would keep a deathdealer species evolving smaller to get at them? Nothing. There are already ones not much bigger than large house cats living on islands offshore of the Deathdealer Continent. Kind of like how lots of other animals get small on islands.

SkepticJ · #79 (**permalink**) 20-February-2005, 10:25 PM

So what can I do about weapons? I'm going for robotic because when the Thebannese have technology at 2300-2700 C.E. level they won't be risking their biological bodies, they might not even have any anymore. Just an expanded brain in a goo tank life support machine somewhere.

I have my polypedal grenades, pyrojelly, electrovapor grenades(work on biology only unless they could shock machines into not working), poison robot flies(against biology again), nanite injecting robot flies(great against machines and biology) then the not mine laser tasers that already exist and inspired the deathdealer's hunting adaptation. Could such a thing be connected to a tesla coil to really fry electronics from two or more km away and kill biology?

What do you think of laser "blades"? The beam would be so small you can't even see the dot with the unaided eye even if it wasn't IR. High powered and vaporising such a small amount of material would allow it to cut through thick metal and rock walls with just a fast swipe wouldn't it? How small could such a laser be in three-hundred years?

What are these clean fusion bombs I hear about?

What about anti-gravity? How plausible is this likely to ever be? Would it take power to maintain or just to turn it on and off? I'm thinking of flying machines that never land even millions of years after these events. If no power would be needed to maintain it it could work. Air plants and vine-like things growing on them as they drift with the wind all over the planet for eons. Even animals that have speciated to survive on these flying "islands".