“Why did the price go up?” “For wastin’ my time, kid.”
I’ll be at BwPCon this Saturday! If you’re in Portland, stop down at Ladd’s Addition for a fun outdoor comic treat!!
“Why did the price go up?” “For wastin’ my time, kid.”
I’ll be at BwPCon this Saturday! If you’re in Portland, stop down at Ladd’s Addition for a fun outdoor comic treat!!
19 Comments
Swallowing one probably wouldn’t work as a long term solution, after all, it’s most likely going come out again in a fairly short term period.
Seeing as they all seem to keep their piercings etc, a better long term solution for the paranoid would be to have it surgically implanted.
Assuming of course that the medallion will still work from the inside.
depending on what you are you could store it in your appendix. Our human one is tiny, but many animals have much bigger ones, and can influence what goes in there and how long it stays. And if they can control turning on a very deep level, they might just keep their large appendix as humans to keep their medallion safe…
I presume that there’s the risk of the medallion moving around in unexpected ways between shifts if it was surgically implanted, or otherwise inside the body. Compared to around the neck, or an earring, or so on, where there’s open air space.
… I don’t think it’s gonna kimble out of the skull again … :-3
This line of questioning is going to end with medallion being shoved where the sun doesn’t shine, isn’t it?
…put a flange on it…?
You know what? Sure. Let’s get him to swallow one of the medallions Madam U can’t get to sell. What’s the worst that could happen?
That’s only going to work for a couple of days and you’re not going to enjoy the retrieval process.
Although, if a medallion can technically be anything, could you infuse the magic into a microchip and do a sub-dermal installation? Like those folks who put their house keys in their wrists? …or like how you chip your dog?
Okay, so if we’re getting technical, implanting or swallowing (or putting a flange on it and using it as a plug, whatever), absolutely would not work long term, unless whatever magic is present in the medallions also works to preserve the medallion itself. Even human bodies are acidic enough to wear away metal just through skin contact over time, and exposure to stomach acid/enzymes/blood would eat away the metal much faster, especially since some Skin Deep folk are creatures with crazy strong stomach acid.(Side note: I can’t remember if all medallions are metal. If they’re made of bone or wood, then the erosion process would be sped up even further.)
Since we know that medallions can be broken, can we assume that they could also be eaten away by some sort of acidic solution, even milder acids like those found in living creatures?
Has anyone gone down that particular rabbit hole of what happens when a medallion wears down over time to the point where its structural integrity is compromised?
(I love that I’ve been reading this comic for so many years and this is the thing that makes me jump into the conversation, lol.)
ooo consider bio-compatible medallions specifically meant to be implanted. They would be single user but once bonded the magic could infuse into all the connecting tissue. Meaning the whole person’s skeleton or other parts could be used as medallion material. While kinda gross, it’d be a way to honor a particular person and create a set amount of medallions.
[pictures their descendants wearing them as an exoskeleton as the only way to pass the “medallion” on to subsequent generations]
Daaamn. That’s a cool idea. Lots of cultures have used bone relics of their ancestors for various purposes. If they could figure out the magic for something like this, that could have some amazing benefits.
Aaaalso some drawbacks, though. The motivation for hunting down magic-infused creatures whose entire bodies could potentially be harvested and sold for parts might be a little too tempting for certain nefarious individuals. Assuming that the Skin Deep world has things like black market hunters.
Ceramics might be a good choice then. Though I don’t know if they had any tough enough back when they were originally made.
Not even surgical steel. Gold would’ve been their best bet, but it’s also not the sturdiest material. Picture golden medallion vs. a centure of gentle Nemean claws …
A thing to bear in mind is that digestion isn’t so linear if you’re a ruminant. And while instinct does drive things in a particular way, we do have conscious control of everything from the stomachs forward. Many goats, in particular, get highly practiced at gastric juggling, and the crafting of artisanal bezoars is a fairly common hobby from middle age on.
And it is possible for humans to learn to do basically the same thing. Various performers and yogis have used it over the centuries as a way to astound their audiences.
Is Ike asking for money, or offering?
Are the Black Shuck or the Barghest a thing?
As has been noted a time or two, the artwork shows a medallion throwing a disguise layer over the wearer or pulling it back off. That might not function properly from anywhere inside the body.
the mbmbam reference in the description warms my soul