Hard sci fi and rule of cool

This sorta reminds me of Lelouch of the Rebellion with Code Geass. He mostly had inferior forces most of the time and won via his super human command abilities. They made it believable enough at least, but then the super hero warriors got more and more ridiculous as the series went on, when you had single guys who could take on entire battalions.

As far as battles go, I just prefer that they end up in a realistic manner. If you have an inferior force, I expect something else to bolster it when I read/watch so that you go, "Okay that makes sense".

I wanted to have a battle of a far superior state against a much smaller state but if you looked only at numbers it'd be a pure curbstomp. But there's plenty of plot-important pieces to make it the total opposite. Provinces that refuse to deploy troops, civil unrest and lack of coordination between generals that are sitting in different political camps turning the war from being a curbstomp to a confused deployment of troops without proper logistics. Then a small focused state with a brilliant general can win the war.

It also depends on who has "home court advantage" (a man who knows the terrain laughs at armies) and how well trained they are.

Sometimes all the tech and superior numbers in the world is not going to save you from a smaller, well-prepared force who know the land and are bloody good at killing - all they've got to do is make it not worth your while, in losses and expense, to continue pushing against them.

edited 6th Aug '11 8:06:13 PM by Wolf1066

Thought about creating a new post but figured that this was related to what I'm interested in.

So, let's say you're interested in writing about vampires but you want to break down their supernatural abilities scientifically. Like, for example, immortality. Physiologically to our knowledge nothing can live forever (this is definite for humans), but how would you go about trying to explain that? I know that at some point you will end up having to hand wave with the idea that this is something fictional and couldn't happen, but when do you know when you've reached that limit? Or, more to the point, how do you go about creating an explanation for something that is accepted in-universe as scientifically factual and researched to be?

I wouldn't be so overly concerned except that what I'm currently working on involves some basic understanding of the science behind a "supernatural" phenomenon—that's basically the plot.

Also, if anyone's worked on anything related to this, are there any books or resources that you've consulted that discusses this topic? I'm specifically looking for guides on making the impossible possible on paper, or at least enough to be sound for that universe.

Bleergh, going crazy here, but I've been scratching my head over this for some time.

Barring violence and accident, this jellyfish is a counter-example to that idea; for more information, take a look at the Wikipedia article on "biological immortality".

Applying that to vampires, you might work it into the idea of vampiric "torpor": every however-many-years, vampires retreat to some dark corner and enter a state of suspended animation; in this state they rejuvenate, and emerged renewed.

Finally, one approach that I think that I've seen taken with immortality is to replace it with very high longevity: from the point of view of a shorter-lived species, the longer-lived might seem close to immortal, especially if the shorter-lived has limited knowledge of history.

More generally, it might be worth looking at which elements of vampiric lore you want to keep. You've mentioned immortality, and since these are vampires I presume that you want blood-drinking; do you want cold skin or lack of heartbeat? What about conversion of humans to vampires? Stakes through the heart, holy items and sunlight? And so on.

My Games & Writing

What about zombies and werewolves? I know there's a lot of information about their abilities but not so much why they're able to survive. The closest thing I've come to finding things about them are viral infections, but not so much about the actual process which makes their transformations possible (I mean, we're talking about a living corpse and an energy-draining body mutilation here).

As for vampires, I am thinking about blood for sure (craving for blood isn't something too crazy for me to explain for some reason), and I could probably explain heat sensitivity with an extreme form of photophobia. Things like methods of killing are not as much on my mind, although I'm trying to think of ways.

edited 16th Jan '15 8:34:10 PM by Coujagkin

Some thoughts I had on "harder" vampires and werewolves were to have them vulnerable to things that would logically kill any complex creature - starvation, suffocation, thirst (in addition to traditional things such as beheading, fire, total destruction of the heart) - but immune to certain other things due to Iron Constitution or accelerated healing.

Werewolves require a bit of a Hand Wave because, face it, being able to shape-shift is pretty "out there" with no really plausible mechanism, so it's recognised as "magic" but Conservation of Mass is in effect so as wolves they are pretty big - Canis Dirus big - due to massing at least twice as much as a natural wolf.

Werewolves are genetic. If you get bitten by one, you don't suddenly develop bones and tissue that can change shape, you need to be born with the genetic and magical (which is also genetically passed) propensity. I drew up rules and tables about how it was passed on and what happened if you had one parent who was a fully functional werewolf and one who was a normal human...

The vampires have to eat and drink just like everyone else. There is insufficient nutrition in a diet of blood alone (not exactly all the food groups there) and the blood is only necessary for their accelerated healing (there's something about the chemicals in blood that enable them to heal). Theirs is "viral" - a blood-borne contagion that turns the recipient of vampiric blood into a vampire if certain conditions are met and can cause other effects if they are not.

Werewolves and their part-human offspring are immune to the vampire virus.

Certain plants contain chemicals that cause aggravated wounds to vampires (garlic, rose and others), silver is completely harmless to werewolves.

Silver compounds are extremely toxic to werewolves to the point that touching tarnished silver will cause burns on the skin and, due to the way werewolf blood reacts with silver, silver bullets or silver inlay on dagger blades can do some serious fucking damage that takes quite some time to heal from.

Both are immortal as both can "heal" from the effects of age. Some of the werewolf/human hybrids also have this healing ability.

Vampires can't breed as the virus renders them sterile.

Of course vampires cast reflections and can be photographed/filmed because the laws of light don't alter and they're not harmed by sunlight (though it can be rather bright for their sensitive eyes so sunglasses, broad hats or parasols are popular).

Vampires are technically resurrected corpses so they would decay without regular amounts of blood (needn't be a lot) to heal from that corruption (more blood needed to heal from serious physical damage). But they are not "corpse-like" - they oxidise food and pump the nutrients around their bodies like living people so they are warm-blooded.

They do have a faint odour of decay that werewolves can smell (even in human form) and humans could smell if the decay progressed too far (if they don't heal regularly).

Just some thoughts I had on Hard SF and fantasy creatures

Is there any reason why vampires are portrayed as sterile for the most part? Currently I'm thinking that it involves lack of reproductive cell development (assuming that vampires are living corpses as you mentioned).

Also, on the subject of genetics, DNA can change through environmental factors, so how far-fetched would it be to say that viruses can alter gene expression? Like, maybe if you're bitten by a vampire/werewolf the viruses might develop a "haven" in the body and remain dormant, and then at a certain time maybe they leave the haven and affect gene expression in cells.

Much of the science I'm currently exploring has to do with the transformation process from human to monster/infected being. I tried looking at the Federal Vampire and Zombie Agrency (www.fvza.org), but they seem more focused on one-way transformations than multiple changes in one's lifetime.

I made mine sterile because it was enough of a nightmare working out werewolf/human genetics without working out vampire/human genetics and I really didn't want to explore the ramifications of a baby born carrying the contagion.

Ah, I see. I guess at some point there is only so much one can do about the genetics. I've figured the basic trait inheritance for my monsters although only at a very basic level, although I'll likely modify things to account for additional traits.

Another thing I'm sort of worried about it the speed of transformations and whether or not it would kill the person changing. At this stage I think I'm going to have to hand wave most of it, (even with conservation of mass) but there are still things that I can't quite shake off, like not being bent out of shape and having enough materials for hair.

One way I've tried to resolve this is the "super resilience" comes in handy for werewolves (and vampires although it's not relevant to their transformations), which would naturally be a product of their genetics and overall muscle structure. So, with this example, how much would be a relevant to NOT hand wave? Like, even if I could go on and on at some point it might not be as relevant to the story.