The Pub Discussion Board

I know one who is OUT of the running - the werephin.

Some of those would have been removed for other reasons, but, yeah.
The point is that you will introduce her at the appropriate point if she is going to figure into the story as you see it I am happy with what you have presented so far and see no reason to question you about hidden, foreshadowed, or implied information.

Flo and Anne have both already been ruled out, because Olissa would have recognized either of them at the time of her vision.

Eric Storm

??

Okay... a student, introduced to the readers already, within 4 years of David's age, who is non-human.

Let's break this down:

Non-human students already introduced to the readers, who are female:  Shell, Devyn

I think we can all safely say it is NOT going to be Devyn... so you're saying it must be Shell?  Oh, but wait, you also said "most likely without intimacy until this point"... which rules out Shell, too...

You've ruled out everyone.

That's it!  I've been screwing with all of you!  There is no female prime!  David just goes around screwing whoever he likes!!!!

... or not...





Eric Storm

I'd be interested to know who you're thinking of...

Though I wouldn't tell you whether or not you were right, obviously.



Eric Storm

My personal opinion, newly formed after reading ideas based on the others mentioned recently, about the attacks: The ones on Gwen and Lydia were not meant to test his skills to the same degree, if at all, they were more to distract him. The ones on Flo, Sam and Ellen are much more elaborate.

Then again, they could all have been done with the same goal in mind: Incapacitate as many of his friends and allies as possible, and reduce the time he has to prepare. They might not have been expecting hi. To be so resourcefully and, skilled, in his areas of expertise.

I'm going to throw my hat in the ring and say that you're all wrong about Female Prime.

It's clearly David's Mother. Think about it, it makes sense

Thanks for the update Eric, I can now give my refresh button a break. Been pounding it like David would Sam

(posted from the Item Information Page)

I think Sam or Emile dying would push David over the edge and way into the 'Dark Side' of his nature.  I'm not even sure Olissa could bring back from that before he'd gone full Emperor Palpatine.

Right now, my main question about story plot is:  Why isn't David preparing Castle Woodward for the impending siege/Battle?  He obviously has the resources, so why isn't he stocking the castle with food?  Why isn't he buying a few thousand rifles, sniper rifles, and maybe a few other things, plus the ammo to go with them?  A few miniguns in strategic area's would sure hurt... especially since we've already seen that it's hard for magic to stop bullets.  If he wants them, he should start the paperwork he's going to have to do to buy them through the U.S. Government.  He's found a few hidden rooms below the castle that could easily be used for storage of such things... Ok, for the food he might need to get some really big food cabinets or maybe enchant some rooms to act as food cabinets if that wasn't done long ago by Lord Woodward.  Hell, why isn't he actually finding out all of Mount Woodward's secret places and special defenses?  I'm sure Lord Woodward has a lot more tricks up his sleeve when it comes to Mount Woodward then the werefolk don't like to climb (although not sure that's true for werecats) or the lavastone steps.

By the way, whats up with the statues in the courtyard of the Castle?  David keeps stopping to stare at them, or it seems that way to me.  Is he sensing something magical about them or does he just think they are interesting or pretty?

He's preparing himself more then the castle... especially when the gargoyles admit that they can't really stop the fall of Woodward, only slow it down.  However, a few hundred students with rifles, sniper rifles, and miniguns could support the more advanced wizards.  For the really powerful elemanders at Woodward, why aren't they building more electricity generators?  I don't know how many elemandy instructors there are at Woodward, nor do I know how many teach the electricity/lightning part of elemandy, but a few dozen of those generators spread out would give the really powerful elemanders enough electricity to work with to really defend the mountain.  I suppose you could chock some of this up to behind the scenes things that are going on... but it would be nice, in my opinion, to see at least a few more things going on.  I'm willing to wait and see what Eric decides to do.  I just wanted to get that perspective out there.

David's struggled mighty hard to not go all 'Dark Side' on people... I'm not sure it's in the overall plot for David to go from overall 'Good Guy' with the occasional 'Dark Side' events to full on 'Evil Dude' for all eternity.  I just don't see any of the women in David's life dying in this story.  And from what I've read of Eric's work, I don't think it's his style to kill of major female characters.

Okay, I had a (different) long post outlined with bullet points and such, but I decided I wanted to tackle this conversation another way, so here goes.

David is doing what David is being allowed to do to prepare for the danger he sees for Woodward Academy.  Realize, though, that no one has said that Woodward will be placed under siege; there has only been the very strong implication that it will be attacked.

The king is insisting that the possibility of war be kept fairly quiet.  That means that David cannot go around building fortifications or emplacing miniguns around the school.  (I'll get to why miniguns are an RBI in a minute...) (What's an "RBI"?  A REALLY BAD IDEA.)  David also cannot prepare the other students in any way for the upcoming attack.

But the truth is that most of that would be unnecessary.  The castle itself is always prepared for war:  It was built to do that job, and it hasn't changed in the foregoing millennium.  It is still a fortress, ready to repel enemies.  It has defenses both secret and open, and we can readily assume that during Lord Woodward's training of David in castle defense, he has imparted all of the various secrets to Castle Woodward that might be useful in such a battle.  I realize that David asked Lord Woodward to train him in "siege defense", but that doesn't mean that David saw a siege of the castle, only that he wants to be prepared, just in case.

Okay, so, it has been suggested that David might arm the school with a vast array of firearms and other nasty weaponry for which the werewolves don't have good defenses.  This could be done secretly, after all, without anyone but perhaps the staff being the wiser.  There are a number of problems with this concept, the first of which being that David, having become about as fully a Dugerran as possible without being born there, just doesn't think that way anymore.  "Gun" is not his answer to a problem regarding violence.  "Wand" is what he thinks.  But, beyond that, even if he did consider buying rifles, a little thought would quash the idea quickly.

The first big problem is training.  David himself does not know how to properly use an automatic weapon.  He barely learned how to use the sniper rifle he bought to demonstrate to the king.  There is more to using a weapon than just pointing it and pressing the trigger.  If you want to be effective with the weapon, you need to know not only how to use the weapon itself mechanically, but you need to know how to apply the weapon, tactically, to the battlefield.  "Spray and pray" is not an effective tactic, and is more dangerous to you than to your enemy.  In order for these weapons to play a useful role in any battle for Woodward Castle, the people wielding them would have to be trained how.  The army's weapons qualification course takes 2-3 weeks.  Even if you eliminate some of the weapon maintenance information and cut that in half, you're looking at a week and a half.  That will teach you how to use an M-16.  Training to use larger machine guns, or tivaru-forbid, a minigun, will take longer.  The course to become a sniper takes a full 7 weeks.

The problem with that is that there will be no time to learn this.  David would first have to be trained himself.  Not a big problem here; he does have some time to go to Earth and learn that skill.  However, he then, at some point, has to transfer that information to a bunch of students.  A week and a half is probably highly optimistic for a bunch of people who are not soldiers, not attempting to be soldiers, probably do not have the mindset of soldiers, and some of which are going to be so terrified of the situation that the weapon in their hands is going to be a tool for the enemy, not your friends.  These are not people who have been in combat, or who have expected to go into combat, these are students in a college whose biggest concern up until this point was their score on this year's particular licensing exam.

But let's say we get our guys to at least figure out how to use these weapons.  Maybe we've got a couple days, we can at least teach them how to load the thing and fire it, right?  Did you have time to teach them how to clear it of jams?  Automatic rifles, especially, jam frequently.  If you don't know how to clear a jam, your gun just became a rather unwieldy club.  Did you give them time to learn to aim the thing?  Whoops, no, you didn't, because a day or two simply isn't enough time to develop that skill.

Just for the sake of argument, let's say we went down this path, took a few dozen students and were able to educate them how to use these rifles.  We gave them hours to practice, and they can, in fact, hit the broad side of a barn.  Will they know what to do with that gun in combat?  Automatic weapons aren't so much about hitting people with bullets: they're about suppressing enemy movement so that someone ELSE can hit them with bullets.  (or magic balls, or whatnot).  You can't just "spray and pray": your allies won't be able to safely move about if you do.  You have to know WHERE to fire, and WHEN to fire... and more importantly, when NOT to fire.

But... hey, any guy with a gun is better than a guy without one, right?  So we set our guys loose with their M-16 or their AK-47 and 5 or 6 magazines of ammo.  (Can't really carry more and be able to move around easily...)  So, our guys fire their 150-180 rounds...

Whoops.  Now what?  Okay, there are loads more magazines back at the armory... but the armory is back that way and up three flights of steps.  I'm in the middle of a magical battle with people twice my strength running about, and I no longer have a weapon.  Sure, I can pull out my wand... but if I was any good with my wand, what the hell was I doing with a gun that runs out of ammo???  No, chances are that the last thing that will happen to me is the werewolf I was just about to shoot, when I realized I was out of ammo, is going to tear my fucking head off.

A sniper rifle in the hands of someone who is not a sniper is worse than useless.  If you can't compensate for wind, for your own motion, your own breathing, your own HEARTBEAT, you aren't going to hit what you intend.  In the chaos of melee combat, you very well may hit the guy you were trying to protect.  Not cool.

A minigun is this sniper problem on steroids.  The M134 minigun fires 6,000 rounds per minute.  That is 100 rounds PER SECOND.  Because the M134 weighs 42 lbs, and because you're going to need to keep it close to its ammo, you aren't going to move this beast around.  That means that it would be sitting in a fixed emplacement, with the hopes that the enemy would come near it...

But if the ENEMY is near it, then so are the GOOD GUYS.  And you want to launch 100 bullets every second into ground with good guys in it?  By untrained gunmen?

How many wizards are you prepared to lose?

Eric Storm

Why do I have a feeling the sentinel trees will be featured?