March 18th, 2013
This week's vote incentive is a silly extra doodle that raises more questions than it answers!
Y'know. The usual.
Vote Incentive for This Comic.
Yes! I want to know this too! Would there be laws forbidding runewriters from dyeing their hair?
posted at 12:11am on March 18th, 2013
The short version to both this and the head-shaving question is ~~~IT'S MAAAAAGIC~~~
but it sounds like I have a good prompt for next week's vote incentive! xD
posted at 12:25am on March 18th, 2013
I, too, was wondering if there are not natural black- or red-haired people in this world.
posted at 4:00pm on March 18th, 2013
Or shaving their heads... Wait. How would only the tips be black? What about when the hair was growing in? Is it linked to actually casting runes somehow - you use the rune and then your hair shows it?
posted at 12:22am on March 18th, 2013
So .... there are no people in this world with naturally black hair?
posted at 1:45am on March 18th, 2013
What if...people with black hair became witches? They'd be impossible to detect. (Until the people checking got their hands on a duck...)
posted at 6:51am on March 18th, 2013
THE PERFECT DISGUISE
posted at 2:22pm on March 18th, 2013
"...We should be fine, though." He says, tentacle protruding from his sleeve. 'course, he doesn't have black-tipped hair, so the NMP field should keep this from being an issue? Hopefully?
posted at 5:48am on March 18th, 2013
"We should be fine" were the adventurer's last words. If this isn't a jinx I'll be majorly surprised.
posted at 8:03am on March 18th, 2013
"We should be fine", almost as bad as "What could possibly go wrong?" or "This plan is foolproof." At least the 'should' makes it non-absolute.
posted at 5:39pm on March 18th, 2013
This actually reminds me of something I've been wondering for some time. Basically, is there any consistent logic to the colour/magic-type correlation? Or is it more of a: "Whelp! This colour hair looks good on him... I guess his kind of runewriting is associated with this colour now."?
posted at 8:31am on March 18th, 2013
IT'S A BIT OF BOTH actually!
There is a consistent logic in-world -- anyone with form magic gets green hair, for example; Sev is a shapechanger so he gets green hair, if there were a character that could transform objects Edward-Elric-style they'd also get green hair, etc.
But as for "WHY is form magic green", MY META-REASONING VARIES. Sev and Jonan were the first characters I invented, WAYYYY before I knew what I was doing with the world -- Sev was given green hair before I knew why it was significant ("HE'S MAGICAL, HE GETS WEIRD HAIR"), and Jonan was given red hair before I even knew what kind of magic he had (I think originally he could pretty much do anything, so let's all be grateful he's slightly less of a Mary Sue now). The other types followed later, after I'd assigned those two to their magic types and decided that each type of magic should have a different colour, so after that it was less about matching specific characters and more about developing the world!
posted at 2:31pm on March 18th, 2013
I don't know if you've already answered this question, but are the rune words that runewriters shout English?
I'm going mildly crazy trying to translate them. I've got 23 unique letters, but when I try to pair the frequency with letters in English, I'm getting wierd nonsense 'deishat tr?tiato' for Severan or 'lniiota nutede' for the guardwoman. It all looks sort of pronouncable so are they just actually shouting nonsense that happens to have fancy lettering or do I need to work on the correlations further?
posted at 1:21pm on March 18th, 2013
Well, it might not even be a cipher. I wouldn't put it past Shazz to have a at least a psuedo-language constructed, though I think that's unlikely in this case. I know If I'd made one, I'd probably plaster it everywhere I could. It's possible to have null characters (I forget the technical term) inserted into to a coded message as part of encryption, but that seems like an awful lot of work to me (doesn't rule it out though). My bet is that it's a syllabary rather than an alphabet, so... wait, wait.
...
Dangit. Page 2.31 (index =81) seems relevant. So, yeah, probably doesn't correlate to English.
posted at 1:56pm on March 18th, 2013
OH MY GOSH I'M SO IMPRESSED THAT YOU'RE DOING THIS. It's a cipher, but it isn't English! c:
(ahhhhhhh no dude I don't do conlang, that is just not my specialty at all xD )
posted at 2:33pm on March 18th, 2013
Okay, I took a look at Sev, Johan, Iavin, the earthbender, and the lady from the Agorath Order's incantations, and I've got only 18-20 unique characters, though I'm not counting any of the written runes yet. I thought the '#|' pair was a single character until I noticed that third "word" of Johan's, so now I'm wondering if the same is true for the 'backwardsF I' pair. Hmm.
I feel kind of conflicted about this too, in a Am-I-just-spoiling-this-for-myself sense, but I guess I'll get over it?.
posted at 1:50pm on March 19th, 2013
OH WOW I AM A HUGE DERP. Hahahahaha thank you for catching that -- that is a single character and Jonan's activation phrase should be fixed on both pages now. xD
But as I've said before, the phrases can be translated, but in the world, they are basically just like "abracadabra" or Harry Potter latin -- knowing the etymology of the magic word is cool, but it won't tell you anything extra or secret. :") Don't worry about spoiling anything!
posted at 3:37pm on March 19th, 2013
Okay, so, in a fit of nerdery, I put together an Excel spreadsheet to compare the activation phrase glyph frequency's to other languages. Since the sample size is only about 93 characters, the correlations aren't very decisive, but might help narrow things down some if anyone cares to take a stab at it.
Frequency Analysis of Activation Phrases
posted at 7:35pm on March 21st, 2013
html...skills...developing...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/86wayh2ez8ni11h/Runewriter's%20Phrase%20Analysis.xlsx
posted at 7:50pm on March 21st, 2013
Dropbox killed the old link, so here's a new one. Has it been two years already? Yikes.
posted at 4:34pm on April 1st, 2015
'JAB!' = the ultimate language of "GET UP AND MOVE"
D'awwwwwwwww, he gave Sev a clooooak. :3 He's not so evil, after all. (Although I suppose it's possible he had ulterior motives such as regifting, BUT I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE IN HIS GOODNESS).
DUDE, what is that cool octopus-headed thing in panel 4 and 5? THAT LOOKS AWESOME. :D Thought it was a dude at first until I saw more of its nose in panel 5 and realized it's like an elephant thing or something. I LOVE made-up fantasy animal things! =D (I've only made up, like, 50 of them myself, so yeah. XD)
posted at 3:08pm on March 18th, 2013
Ahhh thank you! :"D It doesn't have a spiffy name; people just call it an elephant. BUT THE ALAQAN ELEPHANTS ARE MY FAVOURITE OF THE WEIRD ANIMAL THINGIES I'VE INVENTED I WON'T EVEN LIE TO YOU.
posted at 3:07pm on March 19th, 2013
I can see why, they are super cool. I want to see their cool tentacly ears up close.
posted at 3:45pm on March 21st, 2013
Poor Jonan. He's probably definitely getting hungry/thirsty now. ;A;
posted at 8:12am on August 17th, 2013
Comment by Jeweleya
Yay early update! Man, I'm not sure if it would be awesome or awful to be color-coded depending on your runewriting ability. It seems like something people would try to hide - do runewriters ever dye their hair to hide what they do?
posted at 12:02am on March 18th, 2013