[Video]

[stinglikeabat]

Does anybody else remember that Yuri fellow who used to live here? He's been showing up in quite a few of my memories. Clearly I know him better than I thought I did! He was some sort of globe-trotting adventurer back home. I'm still not sure exactly what we were up to, but there were plenty of ruins. Not to mention all the monsters! They're not exactly out of the ordinary back home, but I don't remember being swarmed like that before I fell in with that group.

It was a pretty strange group at that! An old man and his puppet, a lady soldier with a flaming sword... And I think we had a dog. Yuri was... sort of the leader, but he wasn't all that into it. After we rescued a princess, she more or less took over in any case. For the record, real princesses are a lot bossier than the kind you read about in storybooks!

((3% on his part in Twilight of Russia, 2% on the first half of Reunion. 16% total.))

Comments

[ridethelightning]

[Sigh.]

[stinglikeabat]

...Am I missing something?

[ridethelightning]

...It's just...I've never met a person who knew what a car was, but not what propelled it.

[stinglikeabat]

I may be a lot of things, but I'm not much of a scientist.

[ridethelightning]

Neither am I. After all, all machinery that consumes fossil fuels was banned nearly two centuries ago in my world.

[stinglikeabat]

...Fossil fuels?

Are you telling me those things run on seashells?

[ridethelightning]

...Are you familiar with oil?

[stinglikeabat]

Of course I am!

I have used lanterns before, after all.

[ridethelightning]

Oil is a fossil fuel. It came about from the fermented remains of prehistoric life, just like coal.

[stinglikeabat]

Nice try, but you won't get me that easily!

Even a child could tell you that it comes from whales!

[ridethelightning]

...That's a different kind of oil.

[stinglikeabat]

Well, why didn't you say so?

[ridethelightning]

It hadn't occurred to me. We stopped using whale oil nearly a century before we stopped using petroleum.

[stinglikeabat]

Why did you stop using it, anyway?

[ridethelightning]

Because we found another source of energy. One that couldn't be depleted, and had no negative impact on the environment.

[stinglikeabat]

That sounds handy to have around!

What's it called?

[ridethelightning]

The people who discovered it dubbed it "magic."

[stinglikeabat]

Magic? That's an ancient craft where I come from.

[ridethelightning]

If you don't mind my asking, how does it work in your world?

[stinglikeabat]

I've never really thought about it. And I'm not sure where to begin, either.

There's more than just a few kinds, after all. I know about Crest Magic, but that wasn't how Gepetto moved around that puppet of his. And I have no idea how you'd go about running a car on it!

[ridethelightning]

Well, magic in my world is different from most people's definitions of the term. Like I said before, it's primarily used as an energy source.

[stinglikeabat]

How does that work, anyway?

Do you just... pick up some magic in a bucket and pour it into the hood?

[ridethelightning]

We don't use them to power automobiles; those have long fallen out of use. We use it to provide electricity and for mass transit, though.

It's...a very complicated process, I'm afraid. It took me three years just to learn it, and I wouldn't consider myself a master.

[stinglikeabat]

Electricity? Like that attack you hit that... whatever it was with?

[ridethelightning]

Yes, I specialize in lightning magic. It would have taken me much longer to master had I not had a natural predisposition toward it.