• mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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      10 hours ago

      Elemental magic gets broken down into actual atomic science (albeit with mithryl and latinum and so on), and despite having all their mysterious koans reduced to chemistry equations, the elves are happy for the humans’ contribution to their understanding.

      But then the hairy little bastards pull out some bullshit like quantum chromodynamics, and they’re not even sure what matter is anymore. They just found out light has a speed, and now those fuckers are playing with round-trip direction to make their arcane blasts land first. The elves lost the plot when one human tried lining up peasants with intent to launch a scrying orb out of the sky (as if the sky just ends) and their obvious failure accidentally proved that aethyr is a fluid. Now he’s asking for animated quills to do math, but he wants a whole bird’s worth, and honestly, how complicated could viscosity be?

        • i_need_your_bones@piefed.social
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          7 hours ago

          And inside, a portal to the water dimension.

          Finally, another portal from the fire dimension to the mortal realm.

          Water turns to steam inside the fire dimension creating an insulation layer of steam and a layer of water between the two fire dimension X mortal realm portals. Sandwich of chicago-portal->water->latvia-portal. Boom, cheaper than air travel.

          Water gets hotquickly still, so you only keep it all together for a small period of time, but jump through and you’re a steaming wizard coming out of a portal wherever you want

    • Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      20 hours ago

      My guess would be it’s a play on how every time humans develop some new method for generating electricity, it always comes back to boiling water and turning a turbine with steam.

        • Lupus108@sh.itjust.works
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          18 hours ago

          What about wind turbines? They use wind, which mainly is generated by the Sun unevenly heating a vast body of fluid, creating pressure gradients that set it in motion, which… in turn drives a turbine… goddammit.

        • Albbi@piefed.ca
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          19 hours ago
          • Photovoltaics

          There’s also solar thermal where you redirect sunlight to a central reservoir to heat up water to yada yada yada.

          • DarkSirrush@piefed.ca
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            14 hours ago

            Big ol’ tower of fucking mirrors, designed to turn natural light into a fucking laser who’s entire purpose is to generate steam… To spin a turbine.