‘Furry delays’ sounds like an illicit act!
…No? Just me?
Re: new copy-editor, great news! It’s good things are moving smoothly, after that rocky plateau of writing. Delayed good karma?
@WayWalkerLeigh Hurray!! Glad to see all the good news! Keep up the writing while we all cheer you on with our fabulous virtual pom-poms!
When it comes to guns/mundane technology in fantasy, I’ve always seen it as a risky but worthwhile long-term investment. A musket is mostly inferior to a bow, and certainly to magic. A machine gun or a tank is another story.
It really comes down to if someone with enough vision and resources comes around and manages to start an industrial revolution without being killed by a mage-supremacist. Even if a trained mage can take on an entire squad of soldiers, in the time the WW PC has been at Tar’citadel so far, hundreds of men armed with machine guns and bolt or semi rifles could be trained and deployed.
As soon as you hit WW1 tech, magic becomes an outdated method of waging war, useful only for support at best. Magic or no, crossing minefields to storm trenches while under artillery bombardment is still going to result in horrendous casualties. The amount of mages you’d need to make a difference is just unfeasable.
Say you have mages shielding the troops from artillery. Leaving aside the fact that most magic barriers in fiction can be broken by repeated sword strikes, what if they wander into a minefield? And what about the actual attack? All of that danger was from just walking towards the enemy.
Then you’ve got chemical weaponry. And all of this is just WW1 level technology!
Anyway, rant aside, glad to hear things are going well. A stealth mission sounds fun, after all, one of my characters is Rhean.
@Yamato – machine guns and tanks do not have as great an advantage in the WW world as you think. Keep in mind, a Mage wouldn’t take on a single squad-- a single mage can take-down hundreds of men with machine guns, simply by telekineticly taking away their guns, and firing them back at them. Mages can fly. In fact i hope to teach it to the students by the third part. Mages can also teleport. they dont need to cross mine fields under heavy artillery. The can just be *there*. Chemical weaponry can get nasty, and it is used in WW-- though not in conjunction with more powerful long range missiles. And don’t underestimate a Mage’s Ability to attack from a distance. Combine that with the Precognition of knowing where and when attacks will happen and, well, the bug guns Just Don’t Work. 
ANd thats not even considering High Mages, Red Mages or Avatars.
@Yamato Whether “magic” or “technology” is superior really depends on the power of magic in the world. There is no reason why magic can’t be as powerful or even more powerful than technology if the author desires, in which case even nuclear weapons may be weaker than their sorcerous equivalents. Think about it.
@WayWalkerLeigh Read your blog. Sorry to hear about the furry wars, but yep, they’re to be expected whenever you introduce a new cat to an existing cat colony without any kind of advanced warning. I’m glad things are starting to improve. And your bf gets points for having a kitty of his own. 
BTW, did you try “site-swapping” the kitties? Giving them alternative times of day when they have the run of most of the home? It’s useful to give them a chance to adjust to each other’s smell before meeting. It also helps them set up a “time-sharing” agreement regarding favorite pieces of furniture later when they all have run of the house together.
@Yamato Since magic doesn’t actually exist in the real world, you can invent it to be however you want it to be in a fantasy world, and as P_Tigras said, it can be superior to any sort of technology if the creator of the world wants it to be. That’s part of WHY it is magic!
Besides, there are plenty of ways to counter any attack you listed with magic. “There’s a tank? Oh, cool story, bro. Let me just cause a giant fissure in the ground to swallow it up.”
“Missiles? I’ll just magically change the path so that it turns right back around and lands on the people who dropped it.”
“Airborne chemicals are no problem- we’ll just cause a mighty wind to throw it all at our attackers or just bottle it all up and throw it away into an extradimensional space.”
“Oh there’s an army there? I’ll just summon a demon that can only be hurt by an alchemical compound that isn’t used in their bullets.”
And as WayWalkerLeigh said, if there’s a minefield or any of that stuff, a wizard will simply get behind, within, and all around the enemies in a blink of an eye and not need to go through the hassle of crossing it.
Wizards can be as powerful as they are imaginative since they can apply magic to anything they want. You just need to have clever magicians who know how to use magic well.
EDIT: @P_Tigras That seems really odd! I’ve never had cats go at each other like that and need to have any sort of time allotment agreement, and I currently have five cats at home, all introduced at different times except for two who are brothers. That’s so weird to me that you would think of that, but I suppose that’s just because I have never really had cats that didn’t get along with each other!
@WayWalkerLeigh I think they’ll get used to each other eventually on their own, but I suppose if they are interfering with your work, you could try to do something to help them along.
See, the biggest problem isn’t the modern weapons in and of itself, it’s the industry that comes with them, and the sheer scope of what they can do. Magic is just too rare, too time-consuming and hard to learn. Mages are people, people make mistakes, mistakes are lethal in war. One fully trained combat mage catches a bullet, they’re not getting replaced any time soon.
How many mages can teleport in, yank hundreds of gun, spin them around, and pull the triggers? Before someone just shoots them with a sidearm or goes at 'em with a knife? I imagine armies would include “teleporter drills” in basic training.
Flying is suicidal, no cover, airburst flak and MG fire’ll cut you down. Teleport dodging is just as likely to teleport you into another blast as it is to save you.
As for Precognition…people seemed pretty surprised when everything went down at the end of WW. Jun had a vision, yeah, but Jun’s not an average Talent. Exemplary at the very least. Maybe even an Avatar, though that’s not exactly a logical conclusion yet.
I’d imagine being a magical killing machine is tiring. A single bullet imparts over 2000 pounds of kinetic energy in an area of a foot. Imagine a normal, non-Avatar or Red Talent trying to shield against multiple bullets. And then trying to play grand theft machine gun. After having just teleported a sizable distance.
It’s like the Me 163 Komet and J8M Shuusui rocket interceptors. Nigh-unstoppable at it’s best, but insanely expensive to make, and with a four minute fuel supply. And just like those planes, they may make it home with seconds of fuel to spare…only to die on the runway to artillery or bombers. Even the infinitely superior Me 262 Schwalbe jet fighter had the same problem. The Allies knew they were outclassed, even their jets were inferior to the Schwalbe, so they cheated.
A tank, I suppose a mage could teleport inside it, but what if it’s moving? What if the crew weld some random metal bars onto the inside? Teleport in at a bad angle, get bisected.
Also, I hope I don’t come off sounding all “your world is dumb raaar,” it’s just Magic vs. Technology is a theme I love, to debate and in general.
Missiles have killswitches to prevent that, gas is designed to disperse with distance. So it’d be like, “Okay, that one’s gone, next.” Either the mages run out of juice, or the enemy run out of missiles. A mage does not = a country’s industry.
And that’s assuming a Precog/Exemp is around and lucky/skilled enough to see it coming.
@Yamato good thing one of us did the homework. If i may say that there are not very many avatars and this is a point stressed at the start of the game. plus, like Yamato said, magic is a very costly thing and cannot hold against a heavy and continued assault. it also depends on what level of magic we are referring to here. if its the, “i can create an entire army out of air and destroy planets by mumbling abracadabra” than yeah, tech is screwed. but if its WW or life of a wizard we’re talking about here than thats something to debate. so @Galador, if you want to whine and say that you’ll just use some badarse magic and blow us all away than i will borrow this quote from the greeks, “we are the race of iron. we will endure. we can be be broken. but we will come back to fight another day” Even if you’ve got a deep bag of tricks at your disposal and win the battle we will see those tricks and write them down. And the next time you come we will be ready with the counter measures to your new magics. we might even find the trick to fighting your trick mid-battle and still pull it off. or see your magic and have an idea to produce similar effects affects with science. thus combatting your magic with our own “magic” that, unlike your wizard. will not tire.
back to you Yamato
@Galador A lot of it depends on how well socialized they are to other cats as kittens. Other important factors are an ample, regular food supply and the personalities of the individual cats. A cat that was taken away from its mother and litter-mates while very young and raised alone isn’t going to “speak cat” very well. On the other hand a kitten that was raised in a living space with a lot of other cats, both kittens and adults, is more likely to have good feline social skills and a more relaxed philosophy regarding their territory. Some cats are also just plain more easy-going than others, especially when food is plentiful.
@God_of_Demonz Golems don’t tire either. Neither do demons for that matter.
BTW, with a name like yours, I’m surprised you aren’t on the other side of the debate. You’re @God_of_Demonz, not @God_of_Robots.
Who says that I hate magic? I think it’s a nice debate and decided that I’d be on the tech side for the start. But @Galador, if you’re going to summon a demon against a human army than make it a gaseous one. Unless they brought flamethrowers. Than summon water demons. Those would be very difficult to kill for a non Mage since electricity doesnt hurt them. And also, summon fire demons, metal demons. Demons of every element to counter the attempts of humans to use the opposite element and cancel out the demons. Finally, summon me(only if you offer enough sacrifices though). my dark powers and high intellect would allow me to create a very good anti missile defence system. Like a turret demon that has a radar informing it of any incoming missiles. And possession demons would be useful in sabotaging anti magic research. Plus all the other demons that have many talents that would all be very usedul in a war. Not knifing you in the back @Yamato. Just evening it out a little. (I should probably just sit on the sideline and make some good points. Which I will now do)
@P_Tigras Hmm… I can see all of those aspects affecting things. Perhaps they all tend to get along because there’s always plenty of food (They actually all know which bowl is their own, and it’s really cute when they all line up at their bowls to eat!) and there are many places to sit that are all desirable for a cat. The thing is, none of them were actually with their parents before we took them in, and none of them had been socialized with other cats before. Maybe since none of them had, they all got along as if all of them had? I’m not complaining! I can do without fur flying everywhere!
@Yamato I actually enjoy debating magic v. technology as well, so I as long as we are both enjoying this and neither of us get at all malicious (yes, I AM including myself in that! LOL!), I’m good to keep going!
As for mistakes, yes people make mistakes, and wizards ARE people, but people who program technology also make mistakes, and they are no less lethal to themselves. Also, just because they have guns does not mean they are failproof. Guns can malfunction, or people can simply suck at aiming them.
You have neglected invisibility, one of the staples of wizardry. There’s always a way for a wizard to be unseen, making cover irrelevant. Whether it is a way to reflect the light in all sorts of random directions to make sure none of it reaches the wizard as Eragon did once, a disillusionment charm from Harry Potter (or, of course, invisibility cloaks), or just a flat out spell of invisibility that hides a person from mundane vision, scrying, infrared, and any other kind of sight like in D&D (I believe that particular version that protects against all types of vision is “Greater Invisibility”), and there are many other “versions” of wizardly invisibility, they can surely avoid being seen. Now, SOME of these do have the issue of losing the enchantment after the wizard attacks and becoming visible once more, but some do not. And there are plenty of other ways to move about without the fear of being killed. Turn a wizard incorporeal or ethereal, and things will simply pass harmlessly through.
I’ll admit that the scenario you present about teleporting, ripping hundreds of guns from hands, spinning them around and shooting is a bit impractical no matter how powerful the wizard (Except for maybe Elminster Aumar… LOL, nobody will get my reference without Google…), but suppose the wizard sends down a shower of meteors from the sky on top of the army instead? Or causes an earthquake or a tornado?
You are correct in that teleport dodging a bullet is absolutely not going to happen, UNLESS of course, the wizard happens to have a “Contingency” spell in place with the conditions of “if a bullet is coming at me, teleport me to (insert safe destination here such as “home”).” That would remove them from the battlefield however, so they are still effectively taken out of the battle even though they can reappear to fight again later.
As for Precognition, a wizard doesn’t need to be precognitive to look up in the sky and see a missile coming down. To know of one coming down BEFORE it is on the way, however, would require a Precognitive, or a really talented wizard spy to infiltrate the plans. Or one who is simply skilled in Divination magic who can scry them because technology can’t protect against magical sight and hearing, unless it is done by means of Extendable Ears from Harry Potter, of course… Also regarding missiles, just because a killswitch is flicked doesn’t meant the wizard is moving the missile using its own gas power, although that COULD be what they do during the time before the switch is flicked. What about having an Air Elemental carry it away? Or simple telekinesis? Or they could just divert it from its course and let it hit the ground anyway, just not at the intended location, not actually “hurting” either side. That would take a lot less energy from the wizard.
Why would a wizard teleport inside a tank? LOL! Anyway, in SOME versions of teleportation, the wizard has to have seen the location or had it described in great detail to them before for them to be able to accurately teleport to the location, so teleporting inside such a small and unknown target would not be a good idea, not unless they were simultaneously divining the inside of the tank and teleporting. I’m not sure how teleportation works in Way Walkers as far as that goes, so I don’t know how relevant this part is anyway. But the original question of why a wizard would teleport inside a tank- they wouldn’t. They would simply cast their charm from afar and take control of the driver’s mind or turn them into and ally and not have to worry about actively controlling their mind, depending on what sort of charm is used. In D&D terms, you could sort of equate that with the difference between a “Charm Person” and a “Suggestion.”
As far as magical shields and barriers go, MOST versions of a shield will indeed shatter after a certain amount of damage has been done to it in the same manner a mundane steel shield would (just A LOT stronger, of course), so weak wizards who are intending to fly above an entire army and be within shooting range will die because they are stupid. Deflecting bullets, on the other hand, would cause a lot less damage to the shield because it is not absorbing the hit, but using its own momentum to send it off in a different direction. Other versions of a shield, however, absorb damage on the wizard and do not go away, but neither do they completely protect the caster. That would be fine to use against maybe an individual combatant, but if there are three dozen people firing guns, yes, that wizard will die as well. So basically, the wizards would need to avoid getting hit as much as they possibly could. This, they could accomplish with any number of glamours, illusions, and mind-affecting spells. They could produce mirror images of themselves so that people do not know which one is the real wizard, they could displace their form and have themselves appear to be a couple feet off of where they actually are so that only the REALLY BAD shots that come nowhere near their image will have a chance of hitting them (since, of course, who in their right mind is going to aim AWAY from the target?), or they could simply cause illusions of creatures attacking the army, and as any fantasy nerd knows, illusions can kill just as surely as a real attack as long as the ones attacked don’t disbelieve in their existence. Even knowing for a fact that an illusion is an illusion, however, can still be difficult to disbelieve and conquer.
Also, golems are wizardly constructs, so the wizards are allowed to construct those and use them in war just as surely as the normal humans are allowed to construct and use tanks and missiles and planes and jets and whatnot. This brings me to other magical constructs. Wizards can craft wands, staves, rods, rings, amulets, necklaces, cloaks, robes, all manner of equipment to store magic that can be used for later. That way, a wizard doesn’t have to tire out of three fireballs because he has a wand that can cast fifty of them at no expense at all to the wizard.
And flying- why is it any less dangerous for a jet to fly than a wizard? The wizard is a much smaller target in the air and wouldn’t even be able to be seen with naked eyes when they got high in the air. They could, indeed, fly that high because wizards would never go out without their enchantments to resist the elements.
@God_of_Demonz Of course there will be demons summoned! Demons, elementals, devils, angels, any extraplanar creature you can name! Those were some… odd and creative(?) examples you used, but your point is valid. Anyway, I believe I already mentioned demons earlier. It is a well-known fact among us fantasy nerds that demons and other extraplanar creatures must be hit by only very specific types of attacks. Some require silver to be harmed (similar to werewolves and other lycanthropes), most can only be hurt by… MAGIC! Actually, in D&D I believe ALL outsiders must be hit by at least a +1 weapon or a spell to even be affected. Sucks for the people who don’t have access to magic, doesn’t it? Yes, a demon can be strapped to a missile and sent out into space, but demons are incredibly strong (usually) and/or can teleport anyway most of the time. If they aren’t strong enough to break out and can’t teleport, they’ll have another way out, even if it is temporarily shrinking themselves. If on the off chance one actually makes it to space, that demon is pretty much taken care of because it will need to breathe eventually (depending on the demon, of course) and will die somehow. Then they (of course, depending on what sort of demons you prefer to have in this world) cannot return to this plane for a hundred years since demons can only be killed permanently on their home plane.
That also brings up a different form of summoning (even though it isn’t really “summoning”). Undead. When an army is finished, the wizards (all who are capable, at least) could go to the battlefield and raise whatever dead they could as zombies (weak), ghasts, ghouls, wights (moderately strong), and specters, wraiths (very powerful), and even other creatures more powerful! Not to mention that there are wizards who would willingly turn themselves into liches to fight the humans. That would entail putting their soul into a phylactery, of course, but liches are incredibly powerful casters and they don’t tire, unlike normal wizards, because they are not alive and are made with magical essence. They also cannot be killed except by destroying the phylactery. Yes, their bodies can be destroyed and annihilated, but they simply rest in their sentient phylacteries unable to do a whole lot until they find a suitable dead (or sometimes living) body to claim as their own and have their powers not at all diminished from the ordeal! And their physical bodies can take QUITE the punishment!
You might say that I have been “researching” magic my whole life since my love of and obsession with fantasy and magic was ignited when I was only four years old and has only come to burn brighter in the meantime.
@P_Tigras Thanks for the golem/demon support!
@Galador, I did not mean arifical magic. What i meant was a powerful substitute and I did not mean to insult anybody in the slightest. I am sorry if my argument offended you for it was not my intention. Please forgive any ingnorance or insult i have shown/caused. I did not think very hard before i posted and will do what I can to avoid that mistake again. Also, though I am withdrawing from the argument I feel as though this question should be asked. The wizards in this argument are allowed to use technology to what level? If I’m not mistaken that’s an important factor isn’t it? Though feel free to shoo it away.
BTW, shouldn’t this argument be a thread so this one can be dedicated to the WW:U sequel like its supposed to?
@God_of_Demonz Well, it appears that we are both guilty of hasty posting, and I realized my mistake less than a minute after I posted! I’m sorry to you as well because I know for a fact that I had hurtful things in my post that didn’t seem to matter to my conscience when I posted them but I immediately regretted. Once again, I am sorry for that.
And yes, I totally agree with you about the different thread, for we have derailed this quite enough! LOL!
Well, on the subject of demons and golems…
Elements aren’t just rock-paper-scissors. A hot enough flame, we’ll say Napalm or Chlorine trifluoride, will consume air, evaporate water, melt metal and stone. Also, I’d assume summoning and binding demons or creating golems takes effort. Can a few mages summon faster than an entire industry can build weapons and arm the populace? Probably no shortage of volunteers when your enemies are dehumanizing THEMSELVES.
As for demon radar…in Harry Turtledove’s “Worldwar” series, the Lizards spot an incoming contact on radar. They launch intercept missiles, which fail utterly. The alien mothership is destroyed in a single shot by the Wehrmacht Dora Railway Supergun. They saw it coming, but it was just too much firepower to stop.
Possession demons could possibly be stopped by mandatory psychological tests/brainwave readings. Or even holy water showers, if demons work like that in this universe. May seem unscientific, but isn’t science just throwing things at a wall to see what sticks?
Agh, stop ninjaposting me!
Anyway, I’m fine with making a seperate thread.
@Galador It sounds like you were very lucky then. Not everyone has as easy a time of it as you do. BTW, are your cats purely indoor? Or do you allow them to go outdoors as well? And were they all fairly young when you became their guardian?