Grrl Power #1047 - Deployment abroaaaad (Patreon)

Thanks so much for your support! For serious!

Ah, quite a few semi-centennials/quinquagenarians out there (plus or minus a few years anyway). Thanks for also being alive at roughly the same time as me, and saying so. Also thanks to everyone else for being the age you are. We're inclusive here at Grrl Power Heavy Manufacturing Concern.

I decided that while a demon saying "Where the here are my keys?" ("here" referring to "hell") is funny, they probably wouldn't really do that when they're not actually on their homeworld. (Which is called Infernus, not Hell anyway.) So, why not make them reference other planes? I didn't think Tom would say "They pack a Heaven of a punch" or "…an Elysium of a punch," but Pandemonium seemed reasonable. Granted, this is an ESL speaker (more likely English is his fourth or ninth language), or at least he's speaking through some translation spell, so who knows how the lookup tables for colloquialistic substitutions are arranged? Fortunately he referred to a plane that English has a name for, and not one like on the prior page like "The Plane of No Matter How Much You Wipe, There's Still Poo." Some of us occasionally visit. I'm told.

"War Mage" can mean a range of things, here Tom is referring to someone who casts Giant Strength, Stoneskin, Flaming Touch and Haste all at the same time and wreaks absolute havok for 15 minutes. Other various spell combinations work as well, but they focus primarily on physical enhancement to become a Upper Lower to Mid-Middle tier Superman. Supers usually have fewer abilities outside of power stunts, but their "mana pools" as Tom says, are much much deeper. Supers can definitely wear themselves out using their powers, but most of them can keep at it for several hours at a time, depending partially on what they're doing. A geokinetic shuffling around dirt to help with planting could do that all day, whereas holding the concrete together on a crumbling dam could wipe them out in minutes. Power levels vary quite a bit, but most would be able to outlast most mages.

I like Sydney not being sure if she should be offended or not by Deus and Tom's deal. Certain segments do seem to like to be vicariously offended by things - I don't think it's an unreasonable instinct though, just like wanting to step in and protect someone who needs help. Of course, there's a difference between keeping a little kid from being pushed around and a marginalized group needing social acceptance and/or political intervention. Sydney's like "I should be offended because of historical racism and slavery, but maybe I shouldn't be offended because if we were talking about soldiers from a predominantly white country it wouldn't even occur to me to be offended but wait, doesn't that make me racist oh no I'm trying so hard to not be a racist but I think I'm a tiny bit racist!"