Jul24
Courtney:
Hey guys! We haven’t really gotten any questions over the past week that we felt we could answer at this time. So, why don’t you leave us some here? We’ll either answer them as we get them or save them for future weeks! 
The Fourth
Updated Mondays and Fridays!
The Fourth by Courtney Svatek and Victor Acuña is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Hmm…
• Everyone’s favorite color? (WOW I’M LAME)
• What …whoever fill in the blank… does in their spare time?
• Does Blank really ride a cow?
…that’s all I have, and they’re awful. I’LL DO BETTER WHEN I’M NOT TIRED-
Well, we have some confirmed favorite colors! Cyril’s is green (hence his belt and straps) and Slice likes “Gilly blue”.
Skärva’s cape gives away his heart – his favorite is deep blue.
Veronika’s is anything that’s not pink.
Lorelei has a different favorite color every week, because she’s little and life is interesting and there’s so much to learn about the world, she’s not interested in nailing down an identity yet, etc.
Floyd doesn’t have a special preference for blue, that’s just the shirt he ended up with.
That’s what I’ll give you for now. Also, character hobbies is probably worth a post on its own.
As for Blank’s cow… that was more or less just us being silly, BUT… it’s up to your imagination.
She may or may not show up in the comic ever.
Why? What is it all for? Where do we go when we die? How many roads must a man walk down before he becomes a man? Is it Maybelline, or was she born with it? When does a fetus become a person? Is there life on other planets? What is consciousness? How can you prove the existence of your own thoughts? Who is Spain? Why is Hitler? When is right? Where was that stooped and mealy-colored old man I used to call Poppa when the merry-go-round broke down? How was trump at Munich? Ho-ho beriberi. Balls! Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear? If you could talk to any person, alive or dead, how? What are the characters’ handednesses?
I wish I had an answer to these… then I could sleep better at night.
Except for that merry-go-round one, I think I’m fine without knowing.
OH but I can tell you that all of the main characters thus far are right-handed, except for Davis. I was inspired by the ridiculous old superstition that lefties are devil-spawn. It seemed appropriate.
What is the difference between dark and light magic? Is it just about the form the mana takes, or are there more profound differences? Can a person use both light and dark magic?
In Chapter 1 Skärva and Blank mentioned preparing additional forms. How does this work?
These are really good. In fact, you remind me that at one point I was writing up a proto-encyclopedia entry on the different types of magic. I think we’ll save these and maybe tackle them next week!
Hurry! I love magic systems.
Is magic much used in the arts? Are there musicians with enchanted instruments — perhaps self-playing instruments — or painters with animate brushes or who create moving canvases, perhaps? If so, how is this viewed? Is magic considered to be just another tool, or is it somehow “cheating” to employ magic in the arts? In the case of animate tools, does that colour the perception of the final work being that of the original artist?
And finally:
How many Floyds could a wood-Floyd Floyd if a wood-Floyd could Floyd Floyds?
How many Floyds Floyd a Floyd-Floyd Floyd if a Floyd-Floyd could Floyd Floyd?
Hmm, we’ll have to get back to you on this one. Leave it to you, Thaumy, to really get my brain going!
…(that was in reference to your last question
)
But in all honesty, me and Victor need to delve a bit more into enchanted objects. We’ve briefly mentioned that weapons and other objects can be enhanced by spells, but it’s an area we haven’t explored too deeply and it think would be worth its own entry, where we can cover weapons, instruments, utilitarian objects, and all that kind of stuff. I will say that magic-enhanced objects aren’t the norm and are relatively rare; I mean, it’s not like Harry Potter where pretty much everything that exists seems to be enchanted. You would have noticed already.
The story of Blanks’ teeth!w
That’ll probably come up in the comic or somewhere else. It’s totally less of an interesting and surprising story than Skärva’s black eye though.
…Yeah, sorry to keep tormenting you guys with that.
What can you tell us about the Lady Skarvas? Surely there’s a few…
Yes, but they’re too plot-relevant!
Our Skärva’s mom was pretty rad. I’ll leave it at that.
How far has medical science progressed in Idenau?
Or perhaps, how does healing magic function?
My apologies if these have been asked already.
Healing Magic accelerates the body’s natural healing, so anything that would heal over time is healed faster.
I’m interested in the hospitals though. Do they employ dedicated healers in strategic places around Idenau, or what?
Pfft, you beat me
But yeah, I definitely think we have enough ground to cover here that it warrants its own post!
Well, we’ve explained before that healing magic works by essentially jump-starting and speeding up the body’s natural functions. So it can’t heal anything that wouldn’t heal on its own (like a missing limb, or Skärva’s infamously permanent black eye). Discussing the interplay between healing magic and other types of aid and medicine would be an interesting Q&A for the future!
Although healing magic could regrow a missing limb on a Salamandrian, since they do that on their own over time. Like this. Enjoy the image of one of those pirates popping out a new arm. It IS a very useful trait in their profession…
Ah. Thank you both very much!
how old are the characters?
is the princess in charge or do her parents run the country?
is her bird magic?
The age thing we’ve tackled before. Their specific ages aren’t really important, but they fall into these ranges:
Lorelei: ???
Blank and Veronika: 18-20
Davis, Floyd and Slice: mid-20s
Ecta (upon death), Cyril, Derk and Skärva: late 20s-30 (Derk is a bit younger than Skärva)
Veronika doesn’t get to make many decisions, for the kingdom or for her own life. It’s really not fun to be her. We might talk about the royal family at some point, but we haven’t intended anyone but the princess to be relevant to the story. (She’s not one of those princesses that is for all intents & purposes a queen, but still gets by with being called a Princess, like Peach. Or Celestia. Yeah, I went there.)
You’ll find out more about her bird in time!
I like Rin’s question: Does Blank really ride a cow? What is the cow’s name? What type of cow is it?
Also, I can’t draw, but would you accept fan fic?
I do remember somewhere she said she wanted some people to do so, but I don’t recall the limitations.
Yeah, fanfics would be wonderful! The only limitation is… well, the same as for fanart. We’re a safe-for-work, “E rated” comic and if you make anything um, awkward, we won’t be able to put it on the site. We haven’t had to deal with this… yet.
We actually have one sweet little fic from way back. I wasn’t sure of how I’d put it on the site, but I think I can figure it out.
Healing magic is a form of light magic and there are offensive forms of light magic, right? Are they aligned so that one can’t have the other? If so, does the alignment make it so that individuals have different paths they get when they are born and do they keep the parents paths or can they stray into any class/subclass (for example, Lorelei has (Defensive?) healing light, while Derk has offensive light attacks, not including the parental part.)?
My thinking is that the magic might be something like this for broad classes. Correct me if I am wrong.
Class | Sub-class | (Maybe more Sub-classes?)
Defensive Light
Light{ (Maybe Neutral Light?)
Offensive Light
Offensive Dark
Dark{ (Maybe Neutral Dark?)
Defensive Dark
Woah man, forgot to put in the unicode on that graph… Uhh, let me try again for extra page space usage. I seem to be making a lot of assumptions too.
Class | Sub-class | (Maybe more Sub-classes?)
Defensive Light
Light{ (Maybe Neutral Light?)
Offensive Light
Offensive Dark
Dark{ (Maybe Neutral Dark?)
Defensive Dark
Sad face. I give up, I hate life.
Healing isn’t necessarily light. It’s sort of its own branch. But we’ll go into that later!
Also, while people might choose to specialize in offense or defense, there’s nothing inherent in a person’s spirit or mana that would prevent them from learning one or the other, provided they can use magic in the first place. Both Derk and Skärva have used shielding spells in addition to their attacks.
So they ARE a much broader scale. I think the other questions might get into more depth than I can think right now.
Yes… the question you’ve all been waiting for….
Why don’t Derk and Floyd have pupils? (admit it. you know it was coming :P)
also, are there different colors of magic? or is it just light yellow for light magic and purple for dark?
No Lurkins have pupils. It’s just part of their own curse; the gods wanted to make them look a bit scary and alien. As for Derk, well. I can’t really tell you, but some people seem to have caught on!
Yeah, that’s basically it. There’s a bit of variation depending on the individual, but it’s green for healing, yellow/light-beams for light, blue or purple for dark. All magic of a certain kind coming from an individual will manifest itself as the same color.
Say, didn’t the Sword of Stabbing glow green?
That’s true! It was enchanted. In all honesty I hadn’t really established the color schemas yet. At the time I just wanted magic colors to be based on individuals’ spirits; so Lorelei’s was always green, Skärva’s was bluish purple, etc. Not to imply the sword has anything to do with Lorelei, I just thought it looked cool at the time. These days I would have certainly made it glow with light magic and I might go back and retcon that. OR, we could make up some story about how it slightly heals its bearer throughout battle. I’ll give this some consideration.
Excalibur’s sheath provided protection to it’s weilder. You could do some thing like that.
Also, replying to something 2 years old! Wo!
Also, hi, uh, Micro!
If you wanted to be more precise, it would be Mu.
That’s true. And Mu from higher up in the comments is the same person. (…I just like the name Micro!)
I have a couple rather obscure questions…
Is there an organization that is just morally opposed to magic? Like they believe it’s a weakness and shouldn’t be used. I know some species just can’t use magic, but do some people/Lurkins/demons/whatever species that also use magic give up using it for weird reasons?
Floyd mentions the U of I where he got a degree in something about psychology, what sort of university is this and what do they teach? Is it mostly magic, or training for minion jobs or guards or …baristas I guess? Is it no like our modern college or like a ~19th century university?
And is Skärva pronounced SCAR-vuh? Cause that’s how I’ve been saying it.
I’m sorry if these have already been answered. Also you are amazing and I love you.
Oh, I thought of another one, sorry.
Is cross-species romance a thing? I don’t think we’ve seen any thing like that so I don’t know. Though that would be interesting, especially considering that Demons and Lurkin are (supposedly? mythically? for sure?) modified humans, but that was a long time ago. Is it like SUPER frowned upon or is everybody just attracted to the same species they are?
Hey Casba, I don’t think I’ve seen you around, so welcome!
As to your questions, you may think they’re obscure but they actually become relevant to some things we have planned, so I can’t go into full detail.
Although, I don’t think we really have anything planned with an anti-magic group. Idenau is a big and old society so you’ll find individuals and groups who believe all kinds of things. I can’t imagine there would be many people who are totally against magic itself, though, since magic is known to constitute people’s consciousness. So even if you don’t use it, it’s a part of you. The gods are supposed to be purely spiritual(magical) beings, too, so being flat-out against magic would be raging against both gods and all sentient beings. I’m sure there are some people who would feel that way, however fruitlessly, but not many.
Controlling magic can do both good and evil for the world, though, so I’m sure there would be people who are against using it by will. ESPECIALLY dark magic; not many people would be against light magic as it’s generally seen as a gift from the gods. (More on that to come in the “types of magic” post!) Dark magic doesn’t necessarily have to be used for evil, in fact it can be used for good (such as Floyd providing a light for his friends), and light magic can also be used for destruction (have you seen Derk go at it?) so the difference is mainly in source and how society views them and how they’re “meant” to be used. It’s not hard to imagine some groups thinking that dark magic, or even magic overall, is wrong because of equality reasons (not everyone can use it) or its potential destructive power.
However, using magic comes so natural for some species (and some lucky members of other species) that to tell them not to use it would be very strange, like telling them they must only walk and never run for their whole life. Nevertheless, I’m sure there have been some magic-users who have given it up for one reason or another. Our world is full of stories so I don’t want to say it’s always like this, or it’s never like that, you know? There have been flish-mages against incredible odds, and Lurkins born without magic and others who chose to give it up, and gods know what else
We love you too!
Thank you! I feel really welcomed.
I’m glad to see that I’m not blindly grasping at straws and things will be further expanded upon. One of my favorite parts about the Fourth is the delving into a new world. I’m excited to see where more of this goes.
Those are really good questions! Good thing you got our backs, Casaba, and welcome to the show(if you weren’t already…)!
I’d pronounce “Skärva” [skærva]. “Ä” is in most languages pronounced like the ‘A’ in “trap”.
Well, it’s pronounced like this: http://www.forvo.com/word/sk%C3%A4rva/
Minus the part where the first two letters don’t make their English sounds at all. Because this is Idenau, not Sweden. I’m sorry we stole your word, Sweden.
So roughly, “Skehr-va”
That’d be, I think, [skærva] in the international phonetic alphabet. It is also how a Finnish-speaker would pronounce the word: http://translate.google.com/#fi/en/Sk%C3%A4rva . Does it sound about right?