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Obverse & Reverse Ch5 Page 8

Obverse & Reverse Ch5 Page 8 published on 57 Comments on Obverse & Reverse Ch5 Page 8

I’ve got some new stuff in the store! Do you like washi tape? I got some washi tape! Sauropods and trilobites! I also have a cross-stitch pattern! It’s a plesiosaur skeleton! All of these things cost $6 each! WHAT A DEAL.

57 Comments

OMG, I hope that Michelle really does have the knowledge that will let her back up that claim.

If not, hopefully there is an Avalon big enough to take in the dragon refugees.

You assume that father wont straight up kill her if she will fail to deliver. And even if she will fail I doubt father will just take his people to the outside world.

A dragon is not going to be able to get his grippers on the Phoenix egg, assuming that it would even work in Dis. They’re going to have to let Michelle go to the egg somehow.

I’m thinking that the dragons would leave Dis even without medallions and Father is going to have a hard time stopping all of them. If six attack at once, five could keep him occupied while the sixth blinds him.

hooh jeez, that suggestion is either going to go well or terribly depending on how well Dis Pater takes that suggestion (since it goes against the status quo that the sphinxes established with regards to “Monsters” and Medallions).

he looked mad (angry) last page, and mad (insane) at the beginning of this one
bringing back to oneself the attention of such a person, especially while being the most squishy among those present, is a courageous thing to do, especially to save someone Michelle had rather negative feeling toward, in general

what remain to see is the size of the explosion, and whether the other dragons take side quickly enough.

Even if it’s someone you barely know, a member of a group of people that you know hate your guts… most good people would not want to see another die right in front of them. Especially if they were to die over something so… (while I understand it really isn’t, I’m failing to think of a better word here) incredibly petty as desiring a better life for themselves.

She’s even more of a good person for not running away completely from the start.

Ohhhhh no…
Michele that was the whole reason for the war in the first place.
I do not foresee this ending well.

I believe the war started because the dragons asserted priority over all other species due to their greater visibility and the increase of human dragon hunts, not that the dragons were denied medallions outright.

They didn’t take ‘get in line’ very well.

Actually the dragons and several other species, including Nemian lions, where denied medallions outright because the sphinxes deemed them and other “monsters” too dangerous. That’s why the white dragon, Ddraig Wen came to Worset and Jocasta in the first place. Because Jocasta started making medallions for the lions and hoped they would also make an exception for them and their family as well. The dragons took on a mentality of “if you’re going to let us die then we will take you with us” type of mentality. They where drowning and a drowning man will cling to anything he can to survive, often taking others down with him.

Just like that, the entire situation went either way better or way worse. The only hold papa dragon has over the others is that they wouldn’t survive up above, and now that’s out of the way. Hopefully he’s a rational and caring individual….
*sees Bloodcarver’s damaged body*
… oh…oh, that’s not good…

RANDOM question, but if you stay in medallion form, does that mean your food requirement is reduced?

I get that it’s an illusion, but like, children who were born under the illusion don’t seem to have the same limitations when it comes to food, so is it REALLY an illusion?

Because the biggest problem I can see is if a dragon requires a TON of meat, will the illusion slow their metabolism so they wouldn’t have to eat a lot?

I get the feeling Michelle is just saying what he wants to hear. I think that while she actually does know how to make medallions, she knows that she won’t be able to make enough for everyone.

Hmm…
Since Michelle doesn’t have to share her power with any other sphinx, she has the entire pool at her disposal.
How many dragons are there, anyway?
A few dozen seems likely- how many eggs was dispater able to carry away?
How many have bred since?
Theres clearly thousands of medallions for other species already in existence.
Many more than the magical community actually needs, or dealers like Madam U would have no stock to sell.
This implies that medallions are not so magic intensive to make that the supply ever had to be limited.

Might be more like dragons have shown that they can be incredibly selfish, so they might fight over who gets the first ones.

in a similar vein, I also wonder whether or not she would have the physical equipment to do so even if Dis Pater went along with it, since half the trick of Medallions was casting the physical Medallion as well as all the stuff involving the lasting magic from the Phoenix eggs that the Sphinxes had. As powerful as it was / is, it wasn’t entirely by the Sphinxes magic alone that the Medallions were made (which to me brings up questions about phoenixes in this setting but I digress).

Yeah that’s what I was getting at. That she would need tools or equipment that isn’t available and Dis Asshole won’t let her leave to get them.

Her dad was a jewel smith so she has the tools to carve metal, she has the Phenix egg and she has all the magic of the sphinx race.
However she will need to go back to the mortal plane to make the medallions, both because Diss eats magic and because it would be folly to put the egg in reach of Father or the Mistress of Diss. It isn’t for nothing that the Finn, Jim’s family, has spent a thousand years protecting that egg.
But first she has to survive the next five minutes.

I like how this seems to be coming back around–Michelle’s father made jewelry for a living. Could it be that Michelle can use his old tools and stock to make the new medallions for the dragons? And, with Michelle in Dis, could she find her father’s shade and perhaps learn his art directly from him? A bit of a stretch, but not completely out of the realm of possibility.

Additionally, as far as we know all of the original medallions were made of metal, and had to be cast by hand (limitations of medieval technology, no doubt). I’m sure new ones could be made much faster with modern tech. A CNC machine to cut the medallion blanks and then magic them in batches would hugely reduce the workload. Heck, Michelle might even be able to have a factory make the blanks for her and then magic them when they arrive–like what enamel pin artists do.

I don’t think Michelle is as limited as it appears.

What creature does this to a child? I don’t want excuses. There are none.

Male bears often kill the cub they find (including their own) for a bunch of reasons
to the point that in many places female bears have adapted their schedule to coincide with tourists (that male bears avoid, but who are not perceived as a danger)
there are other examples : nature is far from innocent

@rgs Bears, felines, canids, primates, and many species of rodents – from rats to prairie dogs – have all been seen killing and eating their young. Insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds also have been implicated in killing, and sometimes devouring, the young of their own kind.

If, for instance, a mother bear in the wild gives birth to unhealthy or deformed cubs, or is unable to find enough to eat, she will typically kill and consume them. They become a resource, one she can’t afford to waste. A mother bear, lion or wild dog does the same if she can’t nurse her cubs or find food for them. And if one of her cubs dies, she’ll most likely eat it immediately. This nourishes her and has the added benefit of removing the carcass. That way there’s nothing rotting in her den which might attract predators.

Males sometimes kill infants too. Male lions are one of the most cited examples of this type of infanticide. Typically, a pride of lions includes one or two adult males who father the cubs. If other males successfully oust these fathers, the newcomers almost immediately kill any young cubs, particularly those the female lions are nursing – despite every effort on the mothers’ part to stop the slaughter. Then the females quickly become fertile again and mate with the very males who killed their cubs. From the newcomers’ standpoint, there’s no sense in spending energy or resources raising the previous males’ cubs.

Male bottlenose dolphins remember which females they’ve mated with. When a male dolphin encounters a strange female with a young calf, he’ll do his best to separate the pair and will then severely injure or kill the youngster by bashing it and heaving it through the air. If the infant dies, the mother will become fertile in a few months, giving the killer male a chance to father her next calf. If the infant lives, the mother won’t be receptive for another three to four years – a long time from a male’s standpoint. In the game of life, it doesn’t pay to wait for her to rear her kid, especially if you know it’s not yours. Better to get rid of it.

Practically every primate species engages in this type of infanticide – including, in some cases, humans. Obviously we have laws to try to prevent this type of behavior, but it doesn’t always work.

So to answer your question… almost every creature does it. Sorry to disappoint you, but Mother Nature is a brutal mistress.

Pretty much what Kefan said. A little disturbing/odd the long paragraph to justify/overexplain it though, you know? I mean, yeah, any intelligent person knows that male bears are jerks, for example. “Chicken saddles,” too, exist for a reason.

Anyone who went through high school knows that some kids make poor choices, and others go on to make poor choices through adulthood.

So I am a little confused…? XD It is not as though someone saying, “there is no excuse” is not unaware that bad things happen. It is more about recognizing responsibility.

Dragons, also, are intelligent creatures.

As a sentient, he or she has a choice. That is part of the point of being sentient, isn’t it?

And as sentient creatures, they, and we, have an additional choice in this world–to accept the jerkiness, or to not accept it and go, “but it happens, what can you do?” The world we live in is ultimately a place shaped by our own, collective, choices.

There is one interpretation of the Bible that hell is not a separate place, but instead one we willingly create here on earth, through our own choices as a species.

Some buy into it, some do not. It is an expression of responsibility, however. As sentients, we are challenged to do better, and be better.

… if she makes a Dragon medalion. you so need to make them for sale on the Shop. because god damn would i buy one in a heartbeat!

LOL Agreed! She should have knowledge, it’s a question of the tools. Dragons were targeting Sphinx’s workshops that made medallions for a reason. There must be something rare/annoying required for the crafting of medallions, otherwise there would be no point in that strategy.

The medallions themselves would be easy to make. Even other things will suffice in their place. They were just chosen because of ease of wearing, hiding, and could hold enough metal to be made quite durable much like coins are. It’s the power behind the amulet that’s the question, a force that the Sphinx’s themselves didn’t understand how it worked.

It’s a question of what did they use to imbue these medallions with that magical power or how/what they had to do it with. That would be the missing component(s). In our stories’ case, that answer would partially or perhaps fully be that phoenix egg. It does seem likely an object of great or immense power would be needed, as if the Sphinx could just do it themselves they wouldn’t even need a workshop, they would just be able to buy amulets, rings, whatever and enchant them. But that’s such a rare and immensely powerful item, that surely few workshops had something like that. Which begs the question of what they could have used otherwise and what happened to those magical items.

But that’s just a theory. XD

Okay yeah but do you really want to make HIM a medallion?

Wait… what if, WHAT IF… This was Father’s intent all along? He seems to be repeating the same song Michelle used when debating with Bloodcarver, and that would be a very devious (and unhinged, but still) strategy to make her come around out of empathy.

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