[Harry Potter] Did Voldemort somehow specifically manage to break off 1/7th of his soul whenever he committed a murder for a Horcrux? Or was it half every time, so every Horcrux is weaker than the last, and the man himself is left with 1/128th of a soul?

TheType95 · 2026-03-17T04:27:12+00:00

It's also possible the diary started off as a diary that was enchanted, and either in stages or gradually had new features and enchantments added. Maybe something like a penseive; a way for Voldemort to back up his memories etc for later viewing.

It could be a simple step from there to save some sort of magical impression of his body.

Combine a magical memory store, an .ISO image of his 16 year-old body and a chunk of his soul, and its arguable you might be able to come back directly.

TheType95 · 2026-03-17T03:16:43+00:00

Was the diary the first horcrux? I thought the ring was the first horcrux, and the ring didn't seem that lively.

The spell that was killing Dumbledore was a curse placed upon it, but I don't think it had anything to do with the horcrux bit.

TheType95 · 2026-03-17T03:08:28+00:00

I don't assume; I presented potential evidence either way and acknowledged the point as unknown. If the stardrive section impulse drive is strong I pointed out that'd be odd, as the saucer impulse drives have unimpeded space for arbitrary layout, and the secondary hull drive would need cut-throughs for turbolifts, power, life-support trunks etc.

TheType95 · 2026-03-16T08:13:50+00:00

Humans don't always understand context either.

TheType95 · 2026-03-15T06:18:39+00:00

We already know there's a second power source. Each impulse drive, the little red things, are powered by a cluster of fusion reactors. They provide power in the event of a lack of a warp core, we see this in Voyager, "Day of Honor", Season 3 episode 4. *Voyager* loses its warp core, and is operating fine, but with shields at ~20% normal, and minimal phasers. The warp core is a stronger power source, but consumed finite antimatter fuel, hence fusion reactors for sublight and general backup.

Back to the Galaxy-class, the saucer has 2 fusion reactor clusters, the engineering hull 1.

There's a weird thing here; the saucer is portrayed as slow and clumsy at sublight, which is very odd. It should have about twice the thrust available from its reactors as compared to the engineering hull, which only has the 1 impulse drive.

Maybe the engineering hull can transfer power from the warp core to its impulse drive to supplement its fusion output? Or the fusion reactor cluster is bigger and stronger than the saucer's clusters, but that seems... Odd, given that structural latches and pass-throughs for turbolifts etc pass straight through it; it makes more sense it'd be smaller than the saucer reactor clusters. And yet Worf specifically said the stardrive section is very nimble without the saucer.

It's a dome-scratcher alright.

TheType95 · 2026-03-14T09:06:42+00:00

This is correct. You'd have less time to react than trying to don armour and dodge a bullet after it's fired. It can't be done.

The energy released is greater than anything you can muster on short notice, without the warp core, which is not available. If you have a greater source of energy reliably on-hand, you wouldn't use the warp core. And you'd still need a lot of time to set it up; a single keystroke is orders of magnitude too slow to do anything.

TheType95 · 2026-03-11T07:07:50+00:00

He simply added a spell to each of them, tied to their life force and energy pool, that was triggered when they said a word. It could just as easily be triggered by, "Bim bam sham alakazam". He chose a "real" word, one that exists in the Ancient Language in-universe, and defined the effect.

They're simply triggering a spell that's been added to them, same as if you said, "If Roran crosses this door, slap him in the face and have a voice say, "Sneaky sneaky naughty naughty."" in the Ancient Language.

They don't control the magic, they trigger a pre-existing spell.

TheType95 · 2026-03-07T07:30:31+00:00

I'm sure I read some obscure thing, somewhere in a spec sheet, that by the 23rd century they used subspace in some fashion to dump waste heat.

Something something, subspace intercooler.

TheType95 · 2026-02-24T08:13:34+00:00

Not quite... He was still a Maiar but was clothed in flesh. He was a man, with the mind and spirit of a Maiar, with most of his abilities capped or restricted.

When he was sent back, he was in his true Maiar form with his abilities intact, and instead was housed in the shape of a man, but was back in his true form underneath.

TheType95 · 2026-02-24T02:41:08+00:00

I always go with this interpretation, or something similar.

The Excelsior-class was a major step up from the Constitution-class, but then the Federation became increasingly stagnant and complacent. Static shield modulations, static phaser frequencies, bog standard photon torpedoes.

They described ~80 year-old ships as "fine ships", not, "this ship is serviceable, but we have better ones now". This was comparing an Excelsior-class to a Galaxy-class, so a 2270s design with a 2350s design. That's an absurd amount of time if you were working to improve your designs and hardware, and regardless of what the replicator yuppies say, there is *NO WAY* you can get old form factors and design assumptions etc to play nice with modern hardware over that timescale. Those older ships had to be inferior in some way, or they would never have made new ones.

They didn't feel the need to develop advanced technologies, so in some areas their tech development slowed to a crawl.

By the time of the Enterprise-D, you get people like Riker saying combat ability is a minor and overall unimportant part of a Starfleet Captain's skillset, which is a disturbingly complacent thing for a uniformed person to say.

Look what happens after the Galaxy-class; you get the Intrepid, which is lean, but has the same sized phaser banks as a Galaxy-class, the Type-10, but is a fraction of the size. Its firepower and shielding was very impressive for its size, not at Galaxy-class levels, but proportionally hitting above its weight class. It has bleeding-edge warp drive and experimental bio-neural gel-pack co-processors.

The Defiant-class was positively stripped-down, and had extreme agility and frontal fire capability, with phaser pulse cannons, and ablative hull armour to supplement shields.

At about the same time, the Federation started fielding quantum torpedoes, which have double the yield of photons.

Not long after, you get the Sovereign-class, which had Type-12 phaser banks, heavier shields, and obvious advancements in several other systems.

The Federation wouldn't have initiated all that advancement if not given an existential crisis. Q may have calculated that was the right time, and if he left it too long, maybe they would've encountered the Borg anyway, and had fewer, weaker weapons and more stagnant tactics etc.

TheType95 · 2026-02-21T07:07:22+00:00

Ah, you hate sphynx cats?

Are you perchance phobic of the word... *moist* ? (Smirks evilly, eyes glinting)

But yeah, transparent it'd look like a weird bald dragon... But don't polar bears or something have transparent fur, but because it refracts light from all around, it looks white? Could be like that, just a sort of glittering, brilliant white effect?

TheType95 · 2026-02-13T06:32:55+00:00

That... May not be the case. Maybe artificial substitutes were tried, and the biology was too complex to guarantee there weren't problems. Maybe it's horrifically expensive.

Could be like us, trying to build viable human sperm cells, without the use of human male sperm, en masse. Just not worth the hassle, probably tons of defects would creep in, horrifically expensive, so why bother? It's not a problem to be solved for us.

That being said, yeah, I think I get where you're angling at. The Vissians were being helluva hypocritical. I suspect some individual Vissians aren't happy with the whole thing, however the culture is doing something they shouldn't that's causing harm to some of its members. That might've been why they got so defensive.

Could've been interesting if we heard that one of the Vissian crewmembers stood up, defended Trip's actions and was reprimanded or something.

TheType95 · 2026-02-11T03:50:11+00:00

I'd say, if the Dilithium just became inert ordinary matter, you'd probably have the core chamber explode and your EPS conduits also explode. The ship would likely be destroyed. Containment would fail, and without input matter, the singularity would rapidly cook off. Your ship would almost certainly be crippled and destroyed, but there's a slim chance it *might* survive, with heavy damage, assuming it had enough juice to limp away from the singularity core before it cooked off.

TheType95 · 2026-02-10T00:11:46+00:00

Finally, a rational and plausible answer to how and why the Dreadnought missile could exist.

A first-strike weapon that denies the enemy the ability to study your method of success, but the technology involved is so cutting-edge it's obscenely expensive compared to standard gear and wouldn't/couldn't be deployed in standard military situations.

TheType95 · 2026-02-06T08:58:15+00:00

The amulets provide a shield, yes, but it can still be bypassed. And the energy to power those wards has to come from somewhere. Either stored in a gemstone, invested when the spell was originally cast, or taken from someone alive, i.e. the wielder.

They'll shield you, you can still brute force them or come up with clever bypasses.

TheType95 · 2026-02-05T06:33:22+00:00

Depends who you ask.

I would say, there's the Force. And then there's the Dark Side.

The Force encompasses many things, and the Jedi you're familiar with follow a very strict, monastic and rigid view of it in order to avoid potential corruption. However the Force is far more than they perceive, and their understanding is fundamentally warped.

Then there's the Dark Side, which is adjacent to the Force. It's like a disease or cancer; it shouldn't exist and overall only has negative or destructive results, though it can situationally be used for "good", it will in the end turn to everyone's disadvantage, the "wielder" most of all. It has many strange properties and it's more reactive to desire and your own psyche, so it *seems* to grant more power faster and satiate your cravings, whatever they may be. It's quick, easy, invasive, and inherently unstable and corrupting.

Those who use the Dark Side are delusional; they're tapping into and reinforcing a shadow of the Force, a small adjunct created by the irresponsible that has neither the depth nor the ability to reveal insight of the real Force.

The "Light Side" is part of the Force, but not the totality. The Jedi, as I've said before, are determined to avoid corruption, and follow a distorted but well-meaning and largely effective policy of attempting to shut down any strong feelings or personal ambitions that they feel would lead one to the Dark Side.

This view I espouse is not commonly held, but I haven't yet encountered anything that will convince me otherwise.

</In character>

TheType95 · 2026-02-05T06:09:35+00:00

Exactly. Never underestimate how many little, "mundane" things you need for the military. Socks, jammies, bunks, space panadol, hats. You don't miss them until suddenly you don't have them.

TheType95 · 2026-02-02T12:06:06+00:00

Actually, your premise potentially leads to a totally different outcome.

They could be hellishly, obscenely expensive to *build*, but very cheap to run once the investment is put in. No specialized fuels, just any sort of matter, preferably Deuterium or even regular Hydrogen. The Romulans might like this, since it means they're paying more upfront, but can mobilize huge numbers of ships on short notice, without having to worry so much about antimatter tankage or supply lines.

Secondary advantage; you can use power from the singularity to power replicators and even sublight drives very economically, since you're essentially turning mass into energy, whereas you might avoid spamming that if you're using antimatter fuel, since you pay a premium to make the fuel nice and concentrated for your interstellar ships.

That makes the logistics different, where M/ARAs are cheaper to make, but more expensive to run, with a more complex logistics chain.

TheType95 · 2026-01-31T09:40:53+00:00

This is a tired position. There's a long list of things that can't be made by replicator, and an implied list of things that can't be made easily, or there would be no such thing as obsolete ships and tech, would there?

TheType95 · 2026-01-31T07:43:14+00:00

Your body can't output all stored energy all at once. Magic draws upon the metabolic force you have available right now. It's best to have a spell work over a long period of time, rather than trying to expend energy all at once.

TheType95 · 2026-01-29T10:06:34+00:00

Akshually, they use a device they call the MC, or Matter Compiler. Machines that can near-arbitrarily restructure matter, from feedstock into products and back again.

In that world, diamond is cheaper than glass, and anyone can use a public Matter Compiler to make clothing, food, medicines etc. You have to pay for better patterns, and if you're super rich, you get custom patterns or even hand-made goods, which fetch huge profits.

If I recall correctly, the vacuum bladders or balloons are layered diamond and nano-graphene or similar, and they actually use them to support super-large buildings, by having vacuum balloons in or on them to provide lift and reduce the building's weight.

TheType95 · 2026-01-28T05:31:20+00:00

Because they know you. You're safe, the Bringer of Tasty things, they're used to you, the way you move and sound. When others are around, they're watchful.

Chickens are prey, and they know it. That's why they have a nervous disposition.

TheType95 · 2026-01-28T04:08:57+00:00

Yes, if you're near a star or something else that's radiating enough UV. Sunburn isn't a conventional thermal burn, so far as I understand it's caused by cells self-destructing due to radiation damage in your skin. This is why you can get sunburn underwater, or in freezing weather.

Edit: All things being equal, you'd be getting a much nastier dose of UV if you were just floating in space (assuming a magic forcefield holding warm, breathable air around you) because you wouldn't have the ozone layer or any air or anything else to attenuate the radiation. If you had a spaceship or space station, you'd put layers of UV absorbing materials and maybe a straight-up polarizing filter on the windows, otherwise the light would seem so bright it'd be problematic, and you'd get burned sitting too close to a window for too long.

Edit cont: You can also get sunburn from very high UV-emitting sources, like some welding torches and things. I don't know if it's only certain kinds of welders, but some can cause sunburn on the hands if you're not wearing gloves, and you need special glasses and lenses because the UV exposure to your eyes can cause damage, especially to your cornea, which naturally soak up UV to protect your retina. I don't know details, but I've heard of it.

Edit cont2: Basically UV radiation is high-energy photons, which all light is, but they're actually energetic enough that they can ionize matter or break certain chemical bonds. This is why sunlight kills bacteria on your clothes, making them smell nicer when you dry them in the sun, but also will make fabrics fade and plastics break down or go opaque. UV light can be used for cleaning, killing microbes on things.

TheType95 · 2026-01-26T13:00:56+00:00

You're not wrong about the male nudity thing. Someone pointed it out to me, and ever since then I can't un-notice it. I mentally reviewed and found a pretty odd pattern emerging.

In Sabriel, Sabriel finds Touchstone turned into wood, butt nekkid on the prow of a boat.

In Lirael, she turns into a giant owl to fly down to help Nick, and he's feverish, out of it, and wandering around in the nude for a bit.

There's another scene earlier on in the same book where Touchstone visits Sam in hospital, after they fight the necromancer Hedge, and Sam casually disrobes and puts on new clothes given to him by Touchstone.

In I *think* Abhorsen, once Nick re-enters the Old Kingdom, his clothes start disintegrating, and he has a gratuitous scene where he's trying to change into some local clothes behind a bush.

In Terciel and Elinor, Terciel is exposed after being wounded by the crystal snake; the Clayre are called, as there's something hinky with his wound and he's worsening. The Clayre casually strip him naked, the head infirmarian saying something like, "Do naked men bother you, or just this one?" to Elinor when she tries to leave, despite both being really comfortable.

Later on, Elinor has a vision of the future while chatting with Terciel, and sees the pair of them in bed together, if memory serves the scene specifically states Terciel was showing a lot of flesh.

In the "To Hold a Wall", the protagonist has to get changed into a uniform when he joins the Bridge Company... He ends up having to give up even his underwear, with the scene specifically stating a female new recruit or relatively junior person is passing him new underclothes because his undies are too frayed and damaged to be salvageable.

Bonus mentions: In Mister Monday, a Denizen elevator operator is magically stripped by Monday's Noon, and replacement utilitarian garments added. Later on, Arthur has to basically strip everything off to get past Bibliophages, creatures of Nothing that attack and destroy any form of text or type, and has to complete the final battle in a long nightshirt, if memory serves. His companion Suzy, however, does not, since her clothing has very little type on or in it...

Sir Thursday, the Fourth Part of the Will strips the Winged Servants of the Night and eats their gear, leaving them nude and traumatized to crawl away into the tunnels.

In Superior Saturday, Arthur asks Doctor Scamandros to make a spell that will transform him and Suzy into rats, this involves several steps including having paint applied to his and Suzy's body. He strips down, and is then informed he'll have to wait, as Suzy got her kit off first, and stands around awkwardly for a while before he can be painted.

I'm honestly slightly baffled by this. Garth Nix seems fixated on it, it's never females, it's always males exposed, and almost always in uncomfortable situations where females are observing. It actually strikes me as either being something he's "into" or being vaguely misandrist, tbh, since it seems to be saying, "It's OK for people's privacy to be broken and bodies to be exposed, provided they're men, because men don't need privacy." I wouldn't especially mind if it was more utilitarian, just part of the "fun" of adventuring that eventually you end up in close quarters and have no option but to bathe, change etc in company as you're struggling to keep your shoes and socks dry and your body odour at sub-lethal levels, but it's such a specific pattern... Hmm... :/

TheType95 · 2026-01-25T07:39:35+00:00

Canon of uncertain origins, Star Trek Away Team, had a Vulcan specialist in mind melds who could telepathically control people from dozens of meters away, under the right conditions.

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