Ep 44 of The Letters Page discussion- Blood magic

It was a bloody good episode.   Though it seems I must have missed the cutoff for questions even though I sent them the same day Christopher posted about it as I had items which I don’t feel were answered especially in relation to Hermetic.  

It sounds like they have more things to talk about, vis-a-vis Hermetic, so maybe those'll get in later?

I tell ya, all the discussion of how Sentinels vampires work got me nostalgic for my high school days LARPing Shmorld of Shmarkness, and now I want to make a rogue vampire hero for the RPG. Of course, I was always more into Shmerewolf: The Ashmocalypse...

Also, I want to know everything about Orthrus now.

Okay, but I hope I'm not the only one envisioning Christopher and Adam as Shmeavis and Shmutthead after that outro bit...

Welcome to the Court of Blood episode, featuring one brief question about Bugbear and an aside on Hermetic.

I kinda wish, rather than always saying "Go rewatch this episode", they would start just giving a 30 second abridged summary of whatever they've already covered or just resummarize it. It'd be a bit more prudent than assuming that the listeners either remember the details from previous episodes, or have the time to go back and relisten any time they recommend getting familiar on it again. (Also, for an episode that promises to cover Bugbear, for example, there was almost nothing about the guy. Even if it was a simple re-hash.) I guess it is meta to comics to constantly reference back-issues, though. *shrugs*

Also, got a laugh from the show notes that Christopher/whoever wrote them felt the need to go in-depth explaining the difference between the timestamp having hours:minutes:seconds instead of just minutes:seconds. Feel like that's probably the simplest concept to grok to give that much effort explaining.

I love the timestamp change, never even thought to ask for it and I'm glad someone did.

And, I have to say, this was defintely the court of blood episode with some highlights from some other people. Nothing neccesarily wrong with that, but we didn't even really get a lot of discussion about the hows of blood magic and why it is different from other types of magic, except that it relies upon blood which I could have told you before the episode.

I'm a fantasy nerd, magic systems are a love of mine and I hoped for a bit more.

All that being said, we now know that The Blood Countess is another major power in the world. The type to get sealed for millenia because you can't beat them. That really changes how I view her and her court, along with the offerings of power to various beings. I get the feeling she was doing something similiar to what Amit is doing now for quite some time.

Also, got to say, I love the stuff about the werewolves, that is some cool lore and I'm wondering about having a werewolf character in the game now, which I was not planning on before

I tried with my two questions! But the first answer was basically "they're all different systems" and the second answer got kinda sidetracked on Lifeline (I mean they did at least go "yeah Void Magic mainly doesn't go with anything" which is still an illuminating answer, but didn't explain why).

Though I'm less a fantasy nerd and just more of a nerd in general who loves to know how everything works. (Spoilers: I totally asked how Biomancer's powers work, too.)

The bit about Relict Dorotya was unexpectedly amusing, though. I guess I gotta respect just a tiny bit there, lady just getting her fun on with the fellas.

With the time stamps I mostly got confused whenever they swapped number reference methods in the actual show notes.

The werewolf bit was unexpected but pretty awesome.

Didn't even know we had werewolves, good to hear.

But they did give a 30 second summary of Bugbear.  Or maybe a 5 second summary - it was really fast.  But they did summarize the points from the Nightmist episode.

Lesson learned: I should be less flowery and a little more direct in the questions.

While the second question had a very interesting answer (neat to know that Bathory could effectively absorb powers by drinking blood), it wasn't quite what I was asking.

Though I think their non-answer and apparent confusion does, in fact, answer the question.

Direct questions you say?  That's absurd!
The best method, or so I'm assured,
is to spend all your time
on a quite tricky rhyme
'til your meaning is fully obscured

After one particularly large misinterpretation, I've taken to adding footnotes to my limericks to clarify what I'm actually asking outside of the constrains of meter.

If it makes it any better, I caught what you were saying and I asked the same question (back in the Nemesis episode though, I didn't submit my questions in time here).

I really thought the second Dracula was going to turn out to be Apostate in disguise the way he showed up and tried to convince people (well, vampires) that things weren't the way they believed them to be.

If it's the question I think it is, I got the impression they 100% understood what you were asking and just played coy for the sake of humor.

I'm not normally one who reacts this way, but I got squeamish while listening on the car audio and had to turn off the episode. Bah! Gonna try again on my next long commute.

Apperently we could have had a two headed lumberjack werewolf but we don't,  so now I am sad

I am kicking myself(and surpised no one asked) about if Vampires could "get close" with humans and make half vampires.  I am going to guess not, because that is a silly concept but its a podcast based on a fictional comic book world and silly stuff happens in comics all the time.  

I feel like this is something he'd do, I mean it wouldn't involve shirts.

Technically he wasn't a werewolf apparently, but yes I agree. Robbed.

#BringOrthrusBack

#BringOrthrusBack!

Plot twist: Orthrus's real name is Debbie.

Somebody asked for a YouTube video pop-up about Blood Planet?

Just now got to start listening, and I want to say thank you God for Christopher changing the listings to HH:MM:SS. 

Also, Countess Bathory is a creep.

The werewolf story is adorable and sad, I feel sorry for the werewolves, all they want is children to raise. They are now the protagonists. 

Anyone who gets this referance gets 1 *TABLE SLAP*.

As an aside, I'd love to see people's listings of their opinions on who the top 10 major powers are in this world... I eat that stuff up in the Marvel / DC universes.   

I posted a giant thing here, but now am moving it to it's separate thread now that I realize there is one.