(no subject)

[sythyry]

Biometrics [6 Hivvem 4261]

Sorry you died, Sythyry, maybe next time you are hit by a spell like that, you won't die from it. Say, how many hit points would one have to have to be hit by a spell like that, take the full effect, and not die from it? How many do you have at full health? Could you check sometime? What unit do you use to measure that? The unit that our literature on your world uses the generic unit "life point", which is probably not what you guys use, so we will have to get the translator to do the conversions... what could you concievably do to get your hit points to be more, well, numerous? -A mathematically motivated monster

This took a certain amount of translation, but you knew it would.

What unit do you use to measure [vitality]?	We generally use Estranous -- that's "Estranou Degrees of Vitality" for long. Which were named after some very famous Rassimel doctor of ... I have absolutely no idea when. I have instructed my translator to convert to your chosen units.
How many do you have at full health? Could you check sometime?	I don't know how this is checked on your world. There are three ways to do it here, as far as I know. In order from least to most accurate: (1) is having an experienced healer stare at you a bit, and give you an estimate. (2) is a complexity-20 Kennoc Spiridor spell, blandly named Measure the Life-Force. It should be named something like How Much Can You Be Tortured?. (3) is to be titrated, which is to say, be slowly injured in measured ways until you fall unconscious, or, for greater accuracy, until you die. I've heard of criminals choosing to be titrated in front of a medical class, once, in place of three more gentle executions. Having just died once myself, I can see why: the titration would take only, oh, a ninth of an hour of torture and then a few days of misery, but the three executions would be two weeks of misery, the first of which was worse than anything I enjoyed. In any case, (2) is expensive and not done lightly. They do it when you formally join the city guard, I know, and any professional adventurer ought to have it done, but I'm an amateur -- or dis-amateur -- and have not done. (3) is ridiculous. But the healer did use (1) on me when I got back to the city. 700-750 Estranous. [12 Life Points.] For comparison, a healthy adult Orren or Cani would have about a thousand. But I'm small and not very aggressive. Oh, and about half of those Estranous looked new, like I'd gotten them by being killed. Most of the rest probably came from the time the dean broke my paw, is my guess. Zi Ri are quite small, and need not have much vitality at all.
Say, how many hit points would one have to have to be hit by a spell like that, take the full effect, and not die from it?	Some 30-40, I think. The Eye of Mimizan and Mirizan is explaining things in a way which I could probably use for a precise answer if I had taken a course in Dissecting Combat Spells, but I didn't, so this is kind of a guess.
what could you concievably do to get your hit points to be more, well, numerous?	Vitality is a skill here; it's the skill of having your soul hang on to your body. The more you exercise that skill, the more Estranous you will have. And of course the way to exercise it is to practice staying alive when you're wounded. Now, I mostly try to avoid getting wounded, so I don't have a lot of practice at it. Determined adventurers do try to make sure they get wounded on every adventure, preferably not very badly, so as to learn the skill of vitality as fast as possible. This can backfire, as when Rhedwy chose to let the stettu stab her before she killed it, and it hurt her leg to the point of limping, and then the other five stettu showed up and weren't very nice to her. Fighty monsters do the same thing. All that bloodshed between the two nendrai had several purposes, but one purpose was to give them practice in vitality. They have an insane degree of native vitality, but a monster in their position can never have too much, so they practice it frequently. Actually, when I explained about the Raven's Beak, she offered to trade bites, but I declined. Perhaps I should take her up on that. Perhaps it's a stupid idea and very much not worth it.

Comments

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Thank you! This is a much more thorough answer than I expected! Wow, what a fascinating insight into your world... I wouldn't mind living there, where you can learn how to not die when something big hits you by letting small things hit you and not dying from those... huh, neat...

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

Does the skill advance if you hurt yourself?
There is a enthusiastic crowd of self-hurters around here, and this would explain so much of how they manage to take all that abuse and LIKE it.

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

*blinks*
I am suprised there aren't BDSM clubs around? I mean, if you can hug for cley, then shouldn't there be a tavern for city guard to go be carefully hurt by skilled artisens of vitality?

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

*checks some of your old posts*
Wait, you explained the Raven's Beak to Vae, right... are you saying that you are considering trading bites with *VAE*?!

...Thats not the smartest idea in the world... I would say, practice vitality and combat with a Prime Adventurer... maybe do physical training with Rhedwy that includes vitality training? Maybe some forms of defensive fighting and dodging, as well as athletic skills? Maybe practicing attentiveness, visual and auditory acuity, those sorts of things?

You are an adventurer for sure now... maybe its time to do some of those things that adventurers do...

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well, no, I'm not going to trade bites with a monster whose mouth is bigger than my whole body.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Sure -- it's not technically any stranger to learn vitality from hurting yourself than, say, to learn Ketherian by reading books to yourself.

Enthusiastic self-hurters, though?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I daresay Tethezai would know.

I daresay I won't be asking her.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Practice dying... you have a very strange culture.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well, practicing being wounded. I cannot recommend practicing actually dying.

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

Some cultures on our world have a saying (Though it's pretty universal, I would guess)

"That which does not kill you makes you stronger."

Which really means "that which does not kill you or leave your permanently crippled in some physical or mental way may help you if the situation should ever come up again in the future." but it sounds less enlightened that way.

I don't know what they say about that which does actually kill you.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

With Rhedwy, then? I guess it wouldn't work as well if you weren't currently adventuring, though.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

No, not Rhedwy. I don't want to do it at all. Bad enough that I'm practicing magic at Vae.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

You never know. One bad cut, and you could die from that...

...technically, I probably should have lost my leg by now, but it stubornly is trying to keep growing. I think it'll be fine, but it's weird.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

"Well, there goes a fine chap. Let's go drink a beer." :'D

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

What happened to your leg?

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Why not? The line between pleasure and pain can be blurred, with enough skill... and when one is aroused, things that would otherwise hurt can sometimes feel good, if done right... imagine if one could get hurt, but in a way that feels good, *AND* practice vitality at the same time?

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I think you just described nendrai romance.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

I think that it would have been a lot more fun with Ilottat... or with some other Orren that catches Sythyry's eye...

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well, except for the "feels good" part. Getting stabbed hurts them (Vae says), and their Mutoc-based healing hurts worse. It's just a routine part of life for them though.

[yotogi.livejournal.com]

How Much Can You Be Tortured?

This would be a marvelous game-show.

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

I think I saw that on japanese TV, only I couldn't read the kanji.

[jareth-atian.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, the skill of Vitality is taught and trained among the military sect in one of my worlds as well! Rather than allowing (or causing!) injuries, however, our soldiers undergo significant periods of sleep deprivation, isolation, and physical and emotional exhaustion during their training.

Our scholars have performed studies which show that individuals who undergo such treatment are statistically less likely to go into shock upon receiving traumatic injuries.

I suppose that being injured (as opposed to merely being hurt!) regularly would achieve the same result or even greater. But us mere Monsters do not neccesarily have access to the same healing magics available to Primes...

[justicezero.livejournal.com]

Those who I deal with who practice various arts of fighting in their spare time often find that they become much more resistant to injury after a significant amount of either battering each other about with punches, kicks, and throws, or in some cases by specific exercises of self-abuse such as by rolling wooden rolling pins over their legs, striking bags of herbs, or even by specific forms of meditative exercizes. One colleague of mine in weaponless fighting whom I was in correspondence with (and my species does not posess any specific natural weapons) had a bicycle (is there an equivalency to this you are familiar with?) collide with them while it was rolling down a hill on a street he chose to cross. The bicycle was destroyed, but my colleague remained standing with only minor bruises which faded within hours.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I've been hit by bikes five times, and the only injury I ever suffered from it was when I fell down and scraped my knee and face on the gravel road once.

They're just not that heavy, so they aren't going to actually damage you unless they're going *very* fast.

[justicezero.livejournal.com]

I'd think that having the impact bend the front wheel into a wholly non-wheel-like shape and having the frame damaged after the mayhem finished playing out would imply a fast rate of speed. But I could be wrong.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

For the wheel, yeah - -those things tend to bend out of shape really easily.

Damaged the *frame* though? Eeee.

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

There's a novel called _The Practice Effect_ [by David Brin]; not very good, but contains the concept of a world where inanimate objects can improve with practice too. That Eye artifact of yours makes me think of a tool that grows in complexity as it's used, such as an eyepiece that analyzes possible threats and their weak points. Or an artifact that summons an elemental that keeps its memories between uses.

Yeah, you need to ask Strenata for combat training!

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

Oh! Is THAT what that book was called. Thank you. I read it once a long while ago and it bothered me I didn't remember who or what.
And yea, the book got VERY twinkish very fast.