The Red Hall 024
└ posted on Tuesday, 20 December 2011, by Novil
- Ilias: Isn’t it a little early for lunch?
- Ars: No, no, no. It’ll never be too early for lunch! Ars will have it right after your test.
- Ars: Alas! Will you have a look at the mess your predecessors will leave!?
- Ilias: We’re happy to wait until you’ve tidied up.
- Ars: No, no, no. While Ars will tidy up, you’ll do another part of the exams.
- Ilias: What should we do?
- Ars: Will you see this dummy? It’ll be protected by a large number of protective spells. Ars will give you ten minutes to bring him the wands with the correct reversal spells.
- Ryn: Which spells are available?
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Looks like they’ll have to use ALL the spells. Most likely the last one on the shelf will be the one they need, it always seems like it
Is Ars just speaking in a different way, or is he really saying that the dummy will be protected, but isn’t yet? In a battle, it would make sense to attack the enemy mage before he can cast his spells…
Ars is PRECIOUS!
Ars’ll be recurring character in comic. Yes, yes he will…. please?
Ars should hope he doesn’t fall off that railing and onto his Ars! XD
Kishou like Ars. Ars is amusing and witty. He’s right; it’s never too early too early to make lunch.
Also… ALL the spells? That’s… well, crap.
@ AmbiValent:
Yes, that WOULD make sense, but I doubt that’s the case, since the test is figuring out what spells counter which protective ones, and it would likely make it fifty times easier to pass if they heard Ars casting the spells on the dummy. Plus, keep in mind how Ars talks (GOSH I can’t take that name seriously. It sounds too much like the A-word to do so! XD )
I’m going to say this AND ONLY THIS “Don’t trust an imp” -_-
I bet the spells to reverse it will be simple, obvious ones that you’d think of if you had common sense; but most magic users would go for the fancy ones, just because noob wizards like to make thing big and loud rather then practical. That would be a good test, actually.
He said to bring him the ones to reverse it. He never said not to bring all of the other ones as well.
Oy, that’s a lot.
Wow… that will be pain in the… disentagling protective enchantments… That needs to be peeled away layer by layer.
And well unless one can really se lines of power… or how the enchantment is actuly entagled from magical energies it more or less falls to trial and error aproach… and that is lot of wands for 10 minutes…
though… how about using ALL the wands simultanously….
@ Paeris Kiran:
It would probably destroy the dummy, I may not be a wizard but it would seem likely that at least some of the spells shouldn’t be used at the same time.
Ars said to bring him the wands, he never said to use them. I see three obvious options, they are supposed to take all the wands, testing their ability to think outside the box, the enchantments will actually be very simple ones, testing their ability to think logically and not to over think things or they are really asked to identify and reverse the spells, testing their ability to well identify and reverse spells.
@ illeatyourself:
Maybe it’s a trick?
Ok, so from what I’ve gathered, there’s some sort of military academy that trains students in the art of martial combat and magic. The students are grouped in two-man squads, and generally seem to be teenagers and youths.
But I wonder, what is this academy that’s training these warrior-mages? What sort of nation established it? And to deal with what threat? Monsters? Enemy nations? Is the academy independent (like Vatican City)? Why is it only youths seem to be trained?
Above all, I really want to know WHO is funding such a large combat training facility, and WHY.
I’m gonna stick with this comic, I really can’t wait to see what direction your going to take this
I agree. This has got to be a situation where the real trap is overthinking things or panicing. There will be a simple solution to the problem that will be easy to overlook.
@ Rocktopus:
basically is the same reason we attend to schools, just that instead of learning thins like math and stuff like that, they learn to use pointy sticks and staffs.
Rocktopus wrote:
Who is paying mages in warcraft? Kirin Tor is pretty much independent but smaller schools are ran by guild that are usualy funded either by kingdoms which enlist their services, or get money idependently by providing services of whatever way comertialy.
Mage guilds and organizations worked pretty much the same in Baldur´s gate world.
So there is generaly lot of ways how can such organisation rise enough resources to fund itself. Besides it is better to teach mages than to let them discover their skills alone… unskilled beginer can lay waste to city even more easily than an archmage. And generaly it is convention that mages are protected by rules from angry mobs with torches. And for that they have some duties to kingdom.
And well wealthy parent can definitely pay up for education if his child is gifted, but it would just be too dangerous to leave even poor child untrained if he has the ability. Not to mention you actualy do need them do kill demons, set up wards… etc…
@ Hineko:
That would be rather cleaver.
Though Ars appears to make a habit of making a ‘LL’ sound allot so he might not be speaking in pass tense.
I think the people who are confused about the School should check the site more carefully. The essays on the setting are quite thorough in explaining away why the School is tehre and why they are training warriors, mages and maybe even warrior-mages…
As for the test? I bet it’s something along the lines of identify and know the official counter.
Trick could be something really simple among the layers that takes keen senses to notice. (Something like an anti-tickling spell ward, after all, if you have siblings, you might find an use for the anti-ticklign field… And siblings would find use for the counter…)
“There will be several spells on this inert object. (Protective spells, because those don’t do anything outwardly crazy so I don’t blow it up or anything like that.) Figure out which ones they are. (You should have covered this in detail in class!) Then go to this indexed and sorted shelf and get the spells that counter those. You should have memorized those, too! It’s open book, so there is a time limit. It’s a strict limit, because you really shouldn’t need to look any of this stuff up.”
This… doesn’t seem like an unreasonable test, especially for two people working together. It shouldn’t need any “outside of the box” cheats. It seems pretty equivalent to some of the tests i’ve taken. The “simple solution” is to have done the freaking homework and studied.
@ TLein:
Yes, that is rather close to many DnD worlds but it still stands. However “creating” new spells is usually much easier in most lore (not contrary game systems). Warcraft mage does have memorized spells, but if need arises he can conjure spell on the spot too… when Khadgar was developig his divination spells in Kharazan he practicaly rebuilt “farseeing” spell from scratch.
It is really just question of willpower and some skill in wowing energies together. (those are mostly “arcane”) “divine” magic are more persuasion and belief where simply mind conjures desired result in conjuction with deity… or something else but not by pure desire.
@ AmbiValent:
it seems Ars always talks in 3rd person and the future tense (his favorite contraction seems to be combining verbs with “will”), which requires whomever he’s talking to to have a slightly better understanding of the situation, like when he says to look at the mess their predecessors will leave. In other words, he’s saying that the dummy is already enchanted with protective spells.
Cast all at once! It’ll be like Michael Bay is directing the webcomic.
@ TraderInTown:
We would need more explosions and bad jokes for that.
I should totally add a character who talks like Ars in the next RPG I run.
As for the test, seems fairly simple to me.
1- Attack the dummy
2- Watch what happens and identify the defenses
3- Grab the appropriate wands
4- Profit!
You know, reading what Ars says… They don’t need to counter the spells, just provide the wands with the appropiate counterspells on them. Guess he Imp is lazy and doesn’t want to recast all the protective spells after they get dispelled?
@ SteelRaven:
After or before all the spells are cast at once, they can say,
“This wand spells your doom.”
“Even a dummy like you can spell disaster!”
“Need a light?”
“You didn’t bring enough protection!(wink)”
“More spells than you can counter!”
“Here’s a s**t ton of magic in your face!”
I’m bad at puns, alright?!
I like ars. He seems so happy with himself in the last panel. Go ars!
Eeney, meeney, miney, mo…
I’d assume that different protective spells are effective against different types of attack and have different levels of effectiveness – as JZ stated back in December it’s probably stuff they’ve already covered in class so they should be able to work out fairly quickly how to determine what spells have been used so they can grab the appropriate wands.
@ TraderInTown:
Wow, those [i]are[/i] bad puns.