- Tibor: Gray roots!
- Tibor: If we eat three now, we should be safe to eat the remaining two in a week.
A Sky Full of Stars 060
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- Tibor: Gray roots!
- Tibor: If we eat three now, we should be safe to eat the remaining two in a week.
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26 thoughts on “A Sky Full of Stars 060”
Vincent
“If we eat three now we should be safe to eat two in a week”: Ah, yes, toxic food which is more nutritious than it makes you sick (I mean the benefits slightly outweigh the drawbacks). Breakfast of champions!
Vicious Sand
Safe to eat X in a few days? That sounds like it’s poisonous. Will it be a night of nausea, or woogie LSD effects? And that’s not counting for differences between Scarlet and Tibor’s digestion. She already thinks one of the main remaining food plants tastes like soap. Why is it grey? Is it made out of lead? Does it convert the soil nutrients into an industrial compound to be refined in a level of technology that Lavarel has regressed too far to use?
And I have no idea what that tower is supposed to be. I wonder how many things on Lavarel should have been turned into something useful, like electrical generators, by now, but that’s probably just me.
I wonder what the NEXT page would be like?
It’d make an easy 7 panel page. Say, a left and right series of panels.
Panel 1- Scarlet saying something like “Well, food’s food.”
Panel 3- Scarlet talking about how useful Tibor’s foraging skills are.
Panel 5- Scarlet saying how pleased she is with this turn of events.
Panel 2- Scarlet on the camp toilet, behind a lightweight shower curtain cover, both feet on the separate left-right sides of the curtain.
Panel 4- More of Scarlet visible as she’s on her hand and knees retching into the commode.
Panel 6- Scarlet trying to keep a hand over her mouth while she’s trying to pull the curtain to get back to the camp toilet with severe disorientation.
long horizontal Panel 7- Tibor sitting on the log, facing the camera, with a look of mild surprise. “I guess only foxes can eat these then.”
HKMaly
It DOES taste like soap, Tibor’s just used to it.
Lead and other heavy metals are cumulative poison. It won’t get safe to eat just because you don’t eat it all at once. And I would expect that they have more knowledge about stuff like this BECAUSE they need it, including different effect poison has on different species. Sure, Tibor explains it to Scarlet, but it’s just because Scarlet is too polite to tell him she read about it.
It would be interesting if the poison would be psychoactive, like some mushrooms.
Vicious Sand
“It DOES taste like soap, Tibor’s just used to it.” He did try to Use Rope->Self so everybody’s got a breaking point. 🙂
“Lead and other heavy metals are cumulative poison.” Yeah, there’s “safe” doses, but I agree no matter what woodsman lore Tibor thinks he knows, a bad idea is a bad idea. I mean, it’s grey. Is it grey for a reason? Is it lead grey? Is it half rotten? We don’t know if Scarlet’s read anything about this.
“It would be interesting if the poison would be psychoactive, like some mushrooms.” Alien plants means alien acid trips. I don’t think a ‘grey root’ dirt pear is going to be some sort of positive to neurochemistry. And are they going to eat it raw like idiots, or are they going to cook it? Do they think they should just bite into it like an apple? My previous post about the imaginary next page would have had a lot of comedic sound effects. 🙂 And what does the introduction of the grey root mean to greater Lavarel? Is it able to grow in places and times that the firebeets and cocorene can’t?
“Plus side- we’ve found a year round food. Minus side- you look like a Mandelbrot praying mantis and I think I’m about to throw up all my organs.”
DanialArin
There’s two kinds of “safe to eat in X days”: (1) it will _still_ be safe to eat it, and (2) it will _again_ be safe to eat it. If Novil is mapping Earth animal conventions for food toxicity in this world’s non-human people derived from those animals (and this is a _big_ “if”), then in the first case, Tibor could eat certain things that would be too far gone for Scarlet due to a carnivore’s more potent stomach. This would apply to unpreserved, unrefrigerated meat, which would go bad for Scarlet in a handful of hours but Tibor could still safely eat a day later. In the second case, Scarlet could eat a more of something that Tibor can only eat a little of, more often, due to the human omnivorous digestive system’s higher level and variety of enzymes targeting certain classes of plant compounds. This applies to things like chocolate, which has toxic compounds which humans and herbivores easily break down into harmless components but canines, felines, and vulpines have no enzymes for and could die from even a small amount. As this item is a plant, it would likely be safer for Scarlet than Tibor.
Novil
The dialog should be clear enough that it’s “(2) it will _again_ be safe to eat it.”
Graybeard
Not to let reality intrude too much here, but this is a common situation IRL, notably with some kids of nominally edible mushrooms. It’s okay to eat X number of them at a time, but if you eat 2X in that time — or sometimes just X+2 — you risk getting dangerously ill. Accordingly, you need to wait Y days or hours or whatever before doing them again. No reason at all why that couldn’t apply to gray roots.
HKMaly
It’s also true for some drugs. Paracetamol, for example, is know for having almost no sideefect in recommended dose while causing fatal liver damage in just twice that.
Problem with plants is you need to be very careful in guessing the concentration of the poison in it.
Me
Novil, the dialog IS clear enough except to a few people obsessed with over-analyzing everything. Try not to take them personally, the rest of us are enjoying the story.
thysi
So, what is that thing in panel 6? An abandoned building? A spaceship? A gigantic artwork? Something else?
Novil
An abandoned building.
FuryoftheStars
Ooooo, I want to know more about that thing! 😁
Me
From the Settings page:
“Some other plants are also edible, but they can’t be cultivated in large enough numbers or are toxic when eaten in larger quantities.”
No mention of interspecies difference. It’s just a plant they need to eat in limited quantities. Don’t overthink it.
Sekhmet
“All fungi are edible. Some are only edible once.”
(Terry Pratchett)
Here it’s edible twice, which is still better than only once…
FuryoftheStars
“Don’t overthink it.”
No kidding! It’s a freaking comic, anyway. The chances that everything (or even *anything*) are going to follow the rules of reality are slim to none!
BlackDragonSlayer
That tower is very striking.
FuryoftheStars
Indeed it is! I was hoping for more views/talk about it. 😁
Vicious Sand
There’s not enough to go on to talk about it. It’s huge, and has no outbuildings, no paved roads, no surrounding construction. Did they build it there, or was it dropped from orbit, like it was part of the spaceship? Are there still wizards living there? Was it modeled after some versions of the Emerald City of Oz, or the architecture of Stargate Atlantis? Is the cladding breaking off? If people worked and therefore lived in the area, there should be better food sources than Greyroots.
Crystalgate
Paved roads seems so far to only exist in towns and not in the countryside. If that structure is ancient and abandoned, whatever roads and surrounding buildings there was would since long be gone unless the place makes for a lucrative community today.
FuryoftheStars
“There’s not enough to go on to talk about it.”
From the *characters*….
MegaJar
Do not exceed the recommended dosage of three gray roots every seven days. In case of overdose, contact your nearest poison control center or dial 911.
Crystalgate
I must assume that Gray Root doesn’t contain accumulating poisons and that everything will be cleared from the system in one week. It’s gets interesting if they find multiple different such plants, can they be combined or do they have overlapping toxins? They are also banking on none of them being extra sensitive to the toxins of the gray roots, but considering the situation, they have to take risks. Either way, they are getting training for when the search for the machine of eternal summer begins.
Graybeard
Judging from the last panel, gray roots do not seem to fill Scarlet with enthusiasm.
Brett Bellmore
Perhaps it’s more of a “It takes a week for you to forget how awful it was” thing?
Anyway, there really are things that are safe enough to eat occasionally in limited amounts, as long as you space it out. Some toxins take a while to clear your system. I tried a fruit last year in the Philippines like that. You can eat it occasionally, but if you ate it regularly you’d get bleeding ulcers.
Shadow Threat
Grey root = senzu beans! Yes! 👍
Prince of Twinks
Beautiful artwork
Poll
Characters
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