Grabix
Junior Member
Posts: 76
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Post by Grabix on Aug 19, 2016 17:29:58 GMT
Even if the current was magically not there and Green Man just fell right at the bottom, the arrow wouldn't end up stuck into the riverbed. This looks like the arrow not only killed him, but dragged the body all the way to the bottom and then had enough momentum left to stick itself in the ground. You don't know if it is really stuck to the ground. Maybe it is just stuck to his bones or something. Or even! maybe it's not really physically there any more. Maybe physical (and useless now) arrow is laying somewhere in that river and this is "just" it enterical aspect (because, remember, Anni is in ether and looking with etheric eyes) of that arrow. And it's presence just symbolically/etherically means that it's power still holds him there. Hm... even the body may not been there theoretically... it's just his soul.. withering... pinpointed to that place of world when arrows hit him. possibilities ...
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Post by Per on Aug 19, 2016 18:48:43 GMT
Skeleton is intact. Seaweed is waving in current. Etheric elf is ready to grab Annie's hand before she touches the arrow.
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Post by fish on Aug 19, 2016 20:36:47 GMT
Skeleton is intact. Seaweed is waving in current. Etheric elf is ready to grab Annie's hand before she touches the arrow. Hopefully just to warn her not to touch it lest she be stuck down there with him, and not to force her to change places with him or something. An etheric flashback info dump would be nice, too. Though I could easily see Annie just pulling the arrow out and taking it to the surface without any interference. Tom is hard to predict sometimes. By the way, this whole scene, nay, this whole chapter is bothering me. These schmucks just seem so unprepared. How can Annie go down there and touch an etheric soul trap without having any sort of protection herself. Some etheric gloves would be nice for example. She's been almost killed by Jeanne in the ether, been thoroughly tricked by the wisp in the ether, one would think she'd become at least a bit weary of the ether. This isn't too say I think they are bound to fail in this mission, it's time for this storyline to progress. But something is bound to go wrong at some point, and I hope there are some emergency exit plans. Edit: just skimmed the comments page; a lot of people seem to share my concerns (even down to the glove comment), which means this is probably what Tom wants us to think... can't draw any conclusions from this observation, though. There are also a lot of countdowns and the amount of people thinking this is Jeanne's skeleton is too damn high!
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Post by mashivan on Aug 19, 2016 21:06:53 GMT
Skeleton is intact. Seaweed is waving in current. Etheric elf is ready to grab Annie's hand before she touches the arrow. That actually makes a lot of sense, if the arrow trapped Jeanne down there, wouldn't it also trap his spirit down there as well. Re-reading Coward's Heart, we see etheric Jeanne right after we see her skeleton. So I'm expecting etheric elf next page.
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Post by aithecomputerguy on Aug 19, 2016 21:32:27 GMT
Skeleton is intact. Seaweed is waving in current. Etheric elf is ready to grab Annie's hand before she touches the arrow. Wait, how is there seaweed there? There's no light except from the arrow, but plants can't grow in green light.
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Post by Daedalus on Aug 19, 2016 22:01:26 GMT
Well, that can just be the force of gravity working on him, l o l. But seeing as the arrow most definitely hit a vital organ from that distance, the archer's accuracy is nothing to scoff at for sure. No, the way things would normally work in a river is: - Arrow goes through Green Man (who's at the surface) and stops there - Dead body is dragged around by the current and ends up stuck somewhere several kilometers downstream
Even if the current was magically not there and Green Man just fell right at the bottom, the arrow wouldn't end up stuck into the riverbed. This looks like the arrow not only killed him, but dragged the body all the way to the bottom and then had enough momentum left to stick itself in the ground. Through water. A LOT of water. That's not just impressive, that's bloody impossible. You'd need a siege weapon to do that. But it's a magical arrow, so I'll just go with 'supernatural'.
Yeah, that was my thoughts exactly. Let's run through some wild-ass guesses for the values here. We don't know exactly how deep the Annan Water is - my vague guess was 20 to 40 feet to account for the several panels of Annie descending - but that is a LOT of water to displace very rapidly, while the arrow is attached to a human corpse. Even a bullet can't penetrate very far through water (though that's also because of cavitation effects). Once his body is fully underwater, there aren't any buoyancy effects (more on this in a sec) but the drag is gigantic because 1) water is extremely dense and incompressible and 2) a human body falling down has terrible hydrodynamic properties. Let's throw around some numbers. My friend's textbooks on fluid dynamics suggest that a good rule of thumb is that water creates about 600 times as much drag as air. The terminal velocity of a human falling through air in a belly-to-earth position is about 150mph, so a good approximation would be that his terminal velocity (from gravity alone) would be about .25mph (or about 1 foot per three seconds). He was presumably falling much faster than that (let's say 20 feet per second). Clearly, the arrow caused his body to accelerate rapidly, and since the arrow weighed a lot less than the Green Man's body, the arrow has to be moving really damn fast (unless it has some weird etheric momentum-increasing effect). This kind of problem really should be modeled with a supercomputer (turbulence is HARD, especially at high speeds), but the simplified and probably-off-by-an-order-of-magnitude answers I'm getting suggest the arrow has to be moving at something like mach one (story-wise, slightly below mach one is also the limit, because otherwise Jeanne would have heard a sonic boom). This causes two further issues: first, his corpse would initially be going so fast that the water cavitates around him - but that wouldn't leave his skeleton intact. Second, the arrow (with its tiny cross-section) should have punched through him like a bullet, even if it hit bone ( and/or caused a messy explosion from the air turbulence and velocities involved). None of this makes any sense, or matches what we saw in the comic. I don't think there is any velocity that allows for the arrow to penetrate his corpse and pin him to the riverbed beneath forty feet of water, while also leaving his skeleton intact. My guess is that the arrow, among its other to-be-determined effects, exerts a relatively small but constant downward force (using etheric science or whatever). This would have kept him at a constant location in the river (if the force is strong enough to pin his skeleton to the ground - maybe a few tens of Newtons) while also not being subject to the normal rules of hydrodynamics we've been working under. This also would allow much slower velocities of the arrow, since it doesn't have to push through forty feet of water while carrying a corpse. This would also explain another thing that has been puzzling me: why his body didn't shift when the mud underneath it eroded. He's been there for several hundred years, and unless the arrow literally hit bedrock (which it couldn't have, given its length), he would have started floating away when the river mud started to shift. If he has a constant downward force acting upon him, he doesn't have to be literally, physically pinned to the ground. So yay, our solution has been weakly verified. I'm sure this hour could have been better spent...
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Post by Jelly Jellybean on Aug 19, 2016 22:18:21 GMT
I hope she does see the Forest Elf spirit before she touches that arrow. I don't think anything grave will happen but maybe we'll get to see that Jeanne and Parley fight. We are seeing Annie's ether vision on this page and everything looks non-etheric except the arrow and Annie's hair (EDIT and body). The Green Guy's spirit may be trapped in the arrow instead of being speared and anchored by it. On the other hand, Annie wouldn't see the Green Guy's spirit if he had already passed into the ether. My guess is that it is in the arrow because of the neccesities of plot. EDIT: Annie's ether vision doesn't extend very far right now, so I admit that the Green Guy's spirit could be close by and she might not see it. But I believe the arrow pinned his spirit in place and he couldn't wander any distance from the arrow. So I am sticking with Green Guy being trapped in the arrow and he may have company in just a second.
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Post by Per on Aug 19, 2016 22:27:09 GMT
By the way, this whole scene, nay, this whole chapter is bothering me. These schmucks just seem so unprepared. That's kinda what I was thinking at the end of the last chapter... Yeah, maybe "it's time", or maybe it's a good idea to grind forty more levels in their respective classes and pick up a whole new range of supernatural allies, acquire more and better technical and magical aids, and hone superpowers to much greater utility and control. But we have to remember Tom very early on forgot to include a character that says they don't think something is such a good idea.
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Post by Eisenblume on Aug 19, 2016 22:44:44 GMT
Countdown to catastrophe 3... 2... 1...
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Post by agasa on Aug 20, 2016 7:11:51 GMT
And I proclaim this page, without a doubt, the Best Page Ever.
Gosh, I wish we still had the GC Minecraft going so I could put this stuff on the riverbed.
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Post by foresterr on Aug 20, 2016 12:04:17 GMT
Wait, how is there seaweed there? There's no light except from the arrow, but plants can't grow in green light. Must be one of them red algae. (I'll get my coat)
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Post by csj on Aug 21, 2016 0:09:48 GMT
Looks a bit low to be right in the heart, I think? But that might be in the liver... whatever it hit, he didn't liver long time afterwards (I do weddings, parties, funerals)
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Post by fwip on Aug 21, 2016 0:55:34 GMT
And I proclaim this page, without a doubt, the Best Page Ever. Gosh, I wish we still had the GC Minecraft going so I could put this stuff on the riverbed. Skulls don't work very well underwater, I'm guessing.
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Grabix
Junior Member
Posts: 76
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Post by Grabix on Aug 21, 2016 2:15:22 GMT
What if Annie is not really going to touch it... at least by hand. Maybe she has Coyote's Blade with her? And she will just cut that arrow in half?! Gosh, I wish we still had the GC Minecraft going so I could put this stuff on the riverbed. Put what? A skeleton? Well... skeletons in Minecraft shoots arrows and are not pinned down to riverbed by arrows (important difference ).
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Post by Storel on Aug 21, 2016 6:00:07 GMT
Skeleton is intact. Seaweed is waving in current. Etheric elf is ready to grab Annie's hand before she touches the arrow. Wait, how is there seaweed there? There's no light except from the arrow, but plants can't grow in green light. It is currently nighttime. Some light probably does make it down there during the day. Edit: I think my favorite remark from the comments page is by someone called Frederik: "Is that Isildur, killed by arrow in the river when he lost the ring?" Um, yeah, sure, why not? That'll make things interesting...
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Post by Daedalus on Aug 21, 2016 6:15:02 GMT
Wait, how is there seaweed there? There's no light except from the arrow, but plants can't grow in green light. It is currently nighttime. Some light probably does make it down there during the day. Probably not much, actually. The Annan Waters are relatively narrow and extremely deep, so the sunlight will only reach the bottom of the river for a short while around solar noon. Perhaps an hour per day, depending on the orientation of the Annan Waters? Not sure if that's enough for plants to grow; we'd have to ask a marine botanist.
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Post by Storel on Aug 21, 2016 6:41:23 GMT
It is currently nighttime. Some light probably does make it down there during the day. Probably not much, actually. The Annan Waters are relatively narrow and extremely deep, so the sunlight will only reach the bottom of the river for a short while around solar noon. Perhaps an hour per day, depending on the orientation of the Annan Waters? Not sure if that's enough for plants to grow; we'd have to ask a marine botanist. If the trench containing the river runs north-south, then yes, it would get sun only at high noon. If it runs more or less east-west, the river could get a fair bit of sun during the day. Plants can grow in surprisingly hostile environments.
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Post by warrl on Aug 21, 2016 6:43:53 GMT
Some corals look very much like plants, but they are actually filter-feeding animals.
(I don't know of any freshwater corals - but I also don't know that there aren't any.)
Edit: apparently there are no known species of freshwater coral in our world. Of course, the Gunnerverse contains a number of other things not known to exist in our world... And there definitely are freshwater sponges and bryozoans, both of which have a life cycle somewhat like coral - colonies of some species of bryozoans can look somewhat like plants.
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Post by arf on Aug 21, 2016 7:22:41 GMT
A possible way for events to unravel: - Annie grabs arrow. - Kat looks up at a sudden increase in illumination from the shore - Smitty is blinded - Red and Blue panic - Rage Jeanne takes Parley by the arm...
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Post by Daedalus on Aug 21, 2016 8:49:20 GMT
Probably not much, actually. The Annan Waters are relatively narrow and extremely deep, so the sunlight will only reach the bottom of the river for a short while around solar noon. Perhaps an hour per day, depending on the orientation of the Annan Waters? Not sure if that's enough for plants to grow; we'd have to ask a marine botanist. If the trench containing the river runs north-south, then yes, it would get sun only at high noon. If it runs more or less east-west, the river could get a fair bit of sun during the day. Plants can grow in surprisingly hostile environments. Not that the Gunnerverse needs to conform to our real-world geography* but the real River Annan is roughly north-south * (I mean, where IS the Court? Some kind of folded pocket dimension? That's always been my assumption.)
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Post by csj on Aug 21, 2016 14:48:31 GMT
If the trench containing the river runs north-south, then yes, it would get sun only at high noon. It's high noon somewhere in the world.
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haspen
Full Member
Hat Kat
Posts: 131
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Post by haspen on Aug 22, 2016 6:45:10 GMT
15 minutes left, ladies and gentlemen till Monday's strip.
(and I already cannot sit still on my chair!)
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