How Did Familicide Stop?

[Nettlekid]

Sorry if this has been done to death (haha...ha...) but after deciding to reread the comic for the fourth time or so, and coming to Vaarsuvius' fairly recent lamentations when s/he first realizes the scope of the damage done by the Familicide spell (in Girard's temple), it set me to wondering: Exactly how did Familicide stop at all? Was there a certain number of iterations, of "once-twice-thrice removeds" that it killed off, before stopping? When V says that the spell kill Tarquin's wife, and if she had borne a child it would have slayed the child too, then logically the magic would have then slayed Tarquin, and thus Elan, Nale, and Elan's mother as well, right? If it can so easily get into another continent by just one remarriage, I would expect it to...well, wipe out the world, pretty much. I know that the magnitude of the spell is why V was cowering in shame, but it looks to me like it should have done EVEN MORE damage than it seems to have done.

[NZNinja]

I believe this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12856280&postcount=1034) has the details you're looking for.

EDIT: For clarity, Familicide doesn't jump by marriage, but by blood. So Tarquin's wife's (Penelope) child was killed because she (it was a daughter as best I recall?) was related to the Ancient Black Dragon by virtue of her Draketooth father. Penelope was then killed by Familicide's second step, which is to kill anyone related (again, by blood) to anyone killed in step one.

Tarquin was never in danger; neither was Elan, or Nale. But many more Humans could have been killed if the Draketooths hadn't already been isolated from the general population for several generations.

[rodneyAnonymous]

When V says that the spell kill Tarquin's wife, and if she had borne a child it would have slayed the child too, then logically the magic would have then slayed Tarquin, and thus Elan, Nale, and Elan's mother as well, right?

Incorrect. Step 1 killed the child Penelope had by Orrin (because it shared blood with the black dragon that V cast familicide on), and Step 2 killed Penelope (because she shared blood with the child killed in Step 1). If she had a child by Tarquin, it would be the slain child's half-sibling, and Step 2 would have killed it also.

[Nettlekid]

Oh, so it does only stop on the second iteration. I thought that maybe it would go like "A black dragon is killed because it is related to V's Dragon. Orrin is killed because he is descended of that black dragon. Penelope's child is killed because it is descended of Orrin. Penelope is killed because she shares the blood of the child. Penelope's non-existent child with Tarquin is killed because it shares the blood of Penelope. Tarquin is killed because he shares the blood of that child." And so on. Basically, if you share the blood of a victim, you die. But I guess that's not the strict case?

[rodneyAnonymous]

No, that's not how it works. There are only two steps. Orrin and Orrin/Penelope's child were killed by the same (first) step. Penelope was killed by the second step, and if she had any other children, they'd have been killed by the second step also.

[B. Dandelion]

It might be simplest to explain it this way: The only people who died were either themselves Draketooths (killed in step 1) or had living Draketooth relatives (killed in step 2). The spell makes no further iterations after that.

Penelope isn't a Draketooth. So a hypothetical child of Penelope and Tarquin is also not a Draketooth. Tarquin has no Draketooth relatives, and thus he doesn't die. Penelope and her hypothetical child die because they do have a living Draketooth relative in Orrin's daughter.

[EmperorSarda]

Penelope isn't a Draketooth. So a hypothetical child of Penelope and Tarquin is also not a Draketooth. Tarquin has no Draketooth relatives, and thus he doesn't die. Penelope and her hypothetical child die because they do have a living Draketooth relative in Orrin's daughter.

Though had Tarquin and Penelope had a child, then Tarquin, Nale, Elan and Elan's mother would have been killed as well.

[Douglas]

Though had Tarquin and Penelope had a child, then Tarquin, Nale, Elan and Elan's mother would have been killed as well.
No, they would not.

Step 1: Kill everyone who has a common ancestor with the target, living or dead, reaching all the way back to the original creatures spawned when the world was created.
Step 2: Kill everyone who has a still-living common ancestor with, or is an ancestor of, anyone killed in step 1.

Trace back far enough, and the Ancient Black Dragon shares an ancestor with the Draketooth clan. Thus, the entire Draketooth clan dies in step 1. This includes Penelope's Draketooth child.

In step 2, as things actually happened:
Penelope is an ancestor of her child, and dies. Her parents, if they are alive, would also die. Her siblings, if any, would die if and only if at least one of her parents was alive.

In step 2, with a hypothetical child of Penelope and Tarquin:
Penelope dies as before. The P/T child has a living common ancestor with P's Draketooth child (namely, Penelope herself), and dies. Tarquin does not have a living common ancestor with the Draketooth child, however, and the existence of his child with Penelope does not change that so he lives. Nale, Elan, and all the rest of his family also survive untouched.

The short version: breeding with someone only opens you up to Familicide if your partner is a step 1 target. Penelope was a step 2 target.

[EmperorSarda]

No, they would not.

Step 1: Kill everyone who has a common ancestor with the target, living or dead, reaching all the way back to the original creatures spawned when the world was created.
The Giant actually specified that if the common ancestor is dead, the relative survives.
It is possible for some cousins to survive if all older generations were already dead (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=12856280#post12856280)

I think it depends on if it is recursive or iterative. Because if the spell places Mama Dragon in step 1 and targets everyone who can claim direct relation with them before recursively calling each and every one of those direct blood relations, we eventually get to Penelope and a theoretical child with Tarquin. Penelope in step 1 gets killed because her Draketooth daughter, and then the spell targets all relatives of Penelope; parents, uncles, cousins, etc; placing them in step 1.

So if the theoretical child of Penelope and Tarquin gets targeted, that child gets recursively called to be in step 1, thus slaughtering Tarquin in step 2.

Also:

Think of it as killing everyone descended from (or siblings to) any and all still-living ancestors of each secondary target.

[Draconi Redfir]

someone really needs to draw a familicide family tree or something. maybe that will make explaining this easier:smallbiggrin:

[Douglas]

The Giant actually specified that if the common ancestor is dead, the relative survives.
That was for step 2, not step 1.


I think it depends on if it is recursive or iterative. Because if the spell places Mama Dragon in step 1 and targets everyone who can claim direct relation with them before recursively calling each and every one of those direct blood relations, we eventually get to Penelope and a theoretical child with Tarquin. Penelope in step 1 gets killed because her Draketooth daughter, and then the spell targets all relatives of Penelope; parents, uncles, cousins, etc; placing them in step 1.
There is no recursive call. There's step 1, and there's step 2. That's it. Neither step says "repeat" or "invoke step X again".


So if the theoretical child of Penelope and Tarquin gets targeted, that child gets recursively called to be in step 1, thus slaughtering Tarquin in step 2.
A hypothetical child of P and T being targeted in step 1 would require either P or T to themselves be targeted in step 1. P is a step 2 target, T is not a target at all.


Also:
Ok, so P's siblings are dead regardless. Whether her aunts and uncles were targeted did depend on whether her parents were alive, though.

[Nilehus]

From my understanding, the spell would start with the dragon, travel down the Draketooth family line, and end with Penelope and Orrin's child, since that's the last blood relative in that particular chain.

Step 2 would kill Penelope, her mom, her dad, and anyone related by blood to them. If that's all right, Tarquin would be spared, since he has no direct blood connection with Penelope (thankfully) and no blood relation to any members of the dragon family we know of.

That's my understanding, at least. If that's the case, though, that still leaves a bunch of people that would be upset that their spouse dropped dead.

[The Giant]

There is no recursiveness or whatever. Penelope's actual child was targeted in Step 1, Penelope was targeted in Step 2. Penelope's theoretical child with Tarquin is also targeted, because that child and Penelope's actual child have shared ancestors. Tarquin, however, has no shared ancestors with the actual child, so he's safe. The spell does not check for people with shared ancestors for people killed only by Step 2.

EDIT: Nilehus and douglas have it right.

[EmperorSarda]

There is no recursiveness or whatever. Penelope's actual child was targeted in Step 1, Penelope was targeted in Step 2. Penelope's theoretical child with Tarquin is also targeted, because that child and Penelope's actual child have shared ancestors. Tarquin, however, has no shared ancestors with the actual child, so he's safe. The spell does not check for people with shared ancestors for people killed only by Step 2.

EDIT: Nilehus and douglas have it right.

Ah, well good to know then.

[Sniffnoy]

There is no recursiveness or whatever. Penelope's actual child was targeted in Step 1, Penelope was targeted in Step 2. Penelope's theoretical child with Tarquin is also targeted, because that child and Penelope's actual child have shared ancestors. Tarquin, however, has no shared ancestors with the actual child, so he's safe. The spell does not check for people with shared ancestors for people killed only by Step 2.

EDIT: Nilehus and douglas have it right.

Oh, I see now! By "shared blood with", you meant "has a common ancestor with". I had interpreted that as "has some chain of blood relations to" -- so e.g. having a common descendant would count, and there would be no need for a second step as the recursivity is incorporated into the first step. But with that more limited definition it makes sense.

[Silver Swift]

Okay, so if the familytree looks like this before the familicide:

http://i1325.photobucket.com/albums/u628/PeregrineCrow/2a97ca91-a3e3-482f-b81b-f8fa81d2efdf_zpsc1e77fb2.jpg

With blue being the target of of the spell, green the people still alive at the time of casting and grey being the people that are already dead, then afterwards the tree would look like this:

http://i1325.photobucket.com/albums/u628/PeregrineCrow/PostStep2_zps3d76248d.png

Where red dots are the targets hit by step 1 of the spell and orange dots are the people hit by step 2. The people on the left side are shielded because the only common descendant with the step one targets is dead, but the people on the right side all die because the bottom right red dot was still alive when familicide was cast. Is that accurate?

Edit:So the reason familicide would eradicate all life on earth if it was cast in our world is that step one skips over dead relatives. Step 2 would do relatively little damage, but that doesn't matter because everyone dies in step 1?

Editedit: Scratch that, step 2 would also kill all life on earth if anyone was hit in step 1.

[Thrillhouse]

You probably would eventually exterminate all life if you went beyond step 2...and it might not take very many more steps.

[ChristianSt]

Okay, so if the familytree looks like this before the familicide:

http://i1325.photobucket.com/albums/u628/PeregrineCrow/2a97ca91-a3e3-482f-b81b-f8fa81d2efdf_zpsc1e77fb2.jpg

Blue = Target
Green = Living
Grey = Dead at start
Red = Dead Familicide Step 1
Orange = Dead Familicide Step 2

I think the result should be this:
http://i1363.photobucket.com/albums/r704/ChristianSteu/Familicide_zps4e26efe6.png

Reasoning: Step 1 kills all that shares blood with the target (=having common ancestors). So it even kills the distant ancestors-group (C), but doesn't kill A, because they only have a child, but A doesn't share blood with the target.

Step 2 kills A (because of sharing blood with a child of the target - if the children would have been dead, A would survive step 2) and the rest of the orange-marked persons (because they have common ancestors with people killed by step 1). Person B survives because there is no common ancestors with any step 1 target. (That would be a possible spot for Tarquin if he had children with Penelope - Penelope was a step 2 target).

If none of the persons would have been dead before Familicide, the only living person besides B would be D, because all of the grey persons would have been Familicide step 1 target, and so all of the other survivors besides D would have been step 2 target.
If the four person group E would have been dead before Familicide, all of the orange persons F would have lived, because the other step 1 targets wouldn't share blood with them.

That is the outcome if the given tree is complete. If there is more to tree that is not shown, than the outcome could be more devastating (most notable variable: number of original humans. If you say that all humans are descendants from one couple (say Adam & Eve), then ALL living humans would be step 1 targets, because they all share some amount of blood with each other - namely some part of blood they inherited from Adam & Eve)

[Silver Swift]

Wow, lots of clumsy errors :smallredface:, but thanks for the explanation, it helps a lot.


That is the outcome if the given tree is complete. If there is more to tree that is not shown, than the outcome could be more devastating (most notable variable: number of original humans. If you say that all humans are descendants from one couple (say Adam & Eve), then ALL living humans would be step 1 targets, because they all share some amount of blood with each other - namely some part of blood they inherited from Adam & Eve)

We have word of the giant that the world was created fully populated, so we know that there is no Adam & Eve scenario going on. Of course, even then every generation vastly increases the amount of damage familicide would do, assuming no incest whatsoever (which admittedly is a fairly ridiculous assumption in this case) the number of step 1 target doubles every generation.

[Douglas]

Blue = Target
Green = Living
Grey = Dead at start
Red = Dead Familicide Step 1
Orange = Dead Familicide Step 2

I think the result should be this:
http://i1363.photobucket.com/albums/r704/ChristianSteu/Familicide_zps4e26efe6.png

Reasoning: Step 1 kills all that shares blood with the target (=having common ancestors). So it even kills the distant ancestors-group (C), but doesn't kill A, because they only have a child, but A doesn't share blood with the target.

Step 2 kills A (because of sharing blood with a child of the target - if the children would have been dead, A would survive step 2) and the rest of the orange-marked persons (because they have common ancestors with people killed by step 1). Person B survives because there is no common ancestors with any step 1 target. (That would be a possible spot for Tarquin if he had children with Penelope - Penelope was a step 2 target).

If none of the persons would have been dead before Familicide, the only living person besides B would be D, because all of the grey persons would have been Familicide step 1 target, and so all of the other survivors besides D would have been step 2 target.
If the four person group E would have been dead before Familicide, all of the orange persons F would have lived, because the other step 1 targets wouldn't share blood with them.

That is the outcome if the given tree is complete. If there is more to tree that is not shown, than the outcome could be more devastating (most notable variable: number of original humans. If you say that all humans are descendants from one couple (say Adam & Eve), then ALL living humans would be step 1 targets, because they all share some amount of blood with each other - namely some part of blood they inherited from Adam & Eve)
Assuming the E group is the four red circles near the letter, I believe this is correct in every detail.

[The_Final_Stand]

I thought of it like this:

Step One. From the Target, move up the family tree only. Select each individual that the target is directly descended from and is still alive. (parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc.)

For each selected individual, kill them and any direct descendants (children, grandchildren, great grandchildren).

This would, for instance, if cast on me, kill my aunt on my mother's side (related via my grandmother), and my cousins, but leave my uncle, who is not by blood related to me, untouched.

Step Two. For each individual killed in Step One, repeat step one. Find all direct living ancestors, then kill them and their descendants.

This step would kill my uncle, as he's the parent of one of my cousins killed in Step 1, and his parents, brothers, sisters, etc as long as someone's still alive for there to be a bloodline. The husband of his sister, even if they had a child, would be untouched (other than the grief of losing his child, wife, extended family...)

So yeah. Pretty murderous spell.

[Silver Swift]

So yeah. Pretty murderous spell.

I think that sums it up pretty nicely. Makes you wonder what Haera designed it for in the first place, other than randomly wiping out significant portions of the world populations, it doesn't seem to have a lot of uses. Of course, she was an epic level necromancer so to her, that might be a valid use (lot's of materials to work with, not a lot of competition), assuming you have some way to prevent yourself from becoming collateral damage.

[gamephil]

It's probably irrelevant to the story (the Terrible Trio are around, so she *might* make a second appearance), but I like the idea so much that the creator of this spell accidentally killed herself with it that I'm just going to assume that's true until proven otherwise. It's not merely evil, but stupidly excessive.

[Grey Watcher]

Blue = Target
Green = Living
Grey = Dead at start
Red = Dead Familicide Step 1
Orange = Dead Familicide Step 2

I think the result should be this:
http://i1363.photobucket.com/albums/r704/ChristianSteu/Familicide_zps4e26efe6.png

Reasoning: Step 1 kills all that shares blood with the target (=having common ancestors). So it even kills the distant ancestors-group (C), but doesn't kill A, because they only have a child, but A doesn't share blood with the target.

Step 2 kills A (because of sharing blood with a child of the target - if the children would have been dead, A would survive step 2) and the rest of the orange-marked persons (because they have common ancestors with people killed by step 1). Person B survives because there is no common ancestors with any step 1 target. (That would be a possible spot for Tarquin if he had children with Penelope - Penelope was a step 2 target).

If none of the persons would have been dead before Familicide, the only living person besides B would be D, because all of the grey persons would have been Familicide step 1 target, and so all of the other survivors besides D would have been step 2 target.
If the four person group E would have been dead before Familicide, all of the orange persons F would have lived, because the other step 1 targets wouldn't share blood with them.

That is the outcome if the given tree is complete. If there is more to tree that is not shown, than the outcome could be more devastating (most notable variable: number of original humans. If you say that all humans are descendants from one couple (say Adam & Eve), then ALL living humans would be step 1 targets, because they all share some amount of blood with each other - namely some part of blood they inherited from Adam & Eve)

I would only add to the verbal description that the spell (as I understand it) works based on common ancestors or descendants (unless there's a usage of the word "ancestor" that I'm unaware of that encompasses both :smallconfused:).

[Doug Lampert]

I thought of it like this:

Step One. From the Target, move up the family tree only. Select each individual that the target is directly descended from and is still alive. (parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc.)

NO! See the Giant's post in this very thread! Step one goes back to the creation of the world and the original ancestral dragons and cares nothing for alive or dead.

That explanation is clearly given in various posts by the other douglas, and is specifically stated to be correct by the giant.

Step two is the one that works only on living links.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Suddenly, Mitochondrial Eve is a lot more terrifying as a concept.

Also, to revise V's analysis, it isn't casting a fireball in a marketplace to kill a thief. It's meteor swarming the whole village.

[Silver Swift]

Suddenly, Mitochondrial Eve is a lot more terrifying as a concept.

Also, to revise V's analysis, it isn't casting a fireball in a marketplace to kill a thief. It's meteor swarming the whole village.

And then meteor swarming another few random villages just to be thorough.

[ChristianSt]

Wow, lots of clumsy errors :smallredface:, but thanks for the explanation, it helps a lot.



We have word of the giant that the world was created fully populated, so we know that there is no Adam & Eve scenario going on. Of course, even then every generation vastly increases the amount of damage familicide would do, assuming no incest whatsoever (which admittedly is a fairly ridiculous assumption in this case) the number of step 1 target doubles every generation.

I know that the Giant stated the world was fully populated with a certain amount of original humans. I wanted only to add that it could potentially wipe out one species if the right circumstances are given. (With an Adam & Eve scenario being the easiest one; but with enough interbreeding (over time) it isn't the only option.)


I would only add to the verbal description that the spell (as I understand it) works based on common ancestors or descendants (unless there's a usage of the word "ancestor" that I'm unaware of that encompasses both :smallconfused:).

From what the Giant said about it earlier (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12856280&postcount=1034) it doesn't really care about descendants, but more about shared blood (sure a person shares blood with all of his/hers ancestors/descendants, but you can have common descendants with someone you don't share blood with; but you share some amount of blood with each person that has a common ancestor with you, because you both have some blood of that common ancestor).
So the best way to figure out who "shares blood" is to start with the original humans, label them all with different labels (perhaps "1"..."N") and each born human has all labels off his/her parents combined (and that's the point where Familiced can get really ugly, because if you don't add new original humans (thus adding labels), it is quite possible that (given enough time/interbreeding) there will be humans with all labels).
In the first step Familicide kills simple all humans that share a label (equal to sharing blood) with the target. In the second step I'm not that sure, but from "Step 2: Kill everyone who shares blood with any of the people killed in Step 1." I would simply do the same once again, starting with the combined set of labels of all victims of step 1, but with the explanation that Rich added about living ancestors, maybe it could spare some of them.

Sure having a common descendent with someone targeted by Familicide will kill you, because the target shares blood with the descendent (killing it step 1) and then, because you share blood with the descendent it will kill you in step 2 [if you are not killed by step 1].

* I said humans, but it would be better to replace it with given species or something other, because we know that Familicide doesn't exclude non-humans, but talking about humans is easier.

[Doug Lampert]

I would only add to the verbal description that the spell (as I understand it) works based on common ancestors or descendants (unless there's a usage of the word "ancestor" that I'm unaware of that encompasses both :smallconfused:).

Bloodline actually, which the Giant used in comic in the description of the spell.

[Grey Watcher]

Bloodline actually, which the Giant used in comic in the description of the spell.

I was referring specifically to ChristianSt's explanation, which, aside from that one small issue is very thorough and clear.

I guess I just prefer using terms like "ancestor" and "descendant" over "bloodline" or "sharing the blood" because the former are more specific and therefore, to my mind, clearer. :smalltongue:

[Belkar<3]

BAH! Stop this argument, and stop being lazy and just look up the Giant's description of the spell.

[gamephil]

I didn't really notice a lot of arguing, rather some people struggling with and discussing the consequences of a spell with a deceptively simple description but very complex results. Kind of like Go.

[jere7my]

I know that the Giant stated the world was fully populated with a certain amount of original humans. I wanted only to add that it could potentially wipe out one species if the right circumstances are given. (With an Adam & Eve scenario being the easiest one; but with enough interbreeding (over time) it isn't the only option.)

There are critters in D&D that were, according to some, created by mad wizards (e.g., owlbears, bulettes). Presumably familicide could wipe out all the owlbears, if the wizard made only a single breeding pair.

[Chronos]

Quoth gamephil:

It's probably irrelevant to the story (the Terrible Trio are around, so she *might* make a second appearance), but I like the idea so much that the creator of this spell accidentally killed herself with it that I'm just going to assume that's true until proven otherwise. It's not merely evil, but stupidly excessive.
It also resolves the question Xykon brought up: If these guys were so incredibly powerful (and Haerta must have been extraordinarily powerful, to be able to cast a spell like that), why are they dead? It's hard to imagine any creature in the multiverse capable of killing Haerta... Other than Haerta herself.

[rodneyAnonymous]

I think the idea that "Haerta accidentally killed herself with familicide" has verisimilitude. Headcanon accepted.

[137beth]

It also resolves the question Xykon brought up: If these guys were so incredibly powerful (and Haerta must have been extraordinarily powerful, to be able to cast a spell like that), why are they dead? It's hard to imagine any creature in the multiverse capable of killing Haerta... Other than Haerta herself.

This is my vote also. It ties in well with Xykon's idea: Haerta had a ton of super powerful spells, but she didn't have the wits to avoid getting herself killed. Because a big pile of spells aren't enough when the other guy has a big pile of spells and a high enough wisdom not to kill himself with his own spell:smallsmile:

[ChristianSt]

I'm haven't played D&D, so I can't guarantee that my reasoning is correct in the D&D-framework.

But we have virtually zero information about the three splices (they are Epic, but I don't think we have really that much more information other than class/some spells). We even don't know whether they lived on the same plane as OotS (probably not). Familicide is surely a somewhat overpowered spell (but from my understanding Epic spells tends to be that), but it is also a really dangerous spell. In my eyes it is something of the equivalence of a magical nuke. Sure, totally possible that she tested that nuke and killed herself. But if it is possible that the target shares blood with the caster, I wouldn't want to try it (so maybe if I would invade another plane, or with another species - but even that can be risky), because it is nearly impossible to figure out your odds to survive (or kill people you care about). And with that drawback I could imagine that it makes the spell somewhat easier to research/cast.

Other than killing herself there are other options, too. Simply dying of old age is always a possibility (and maybe the splices didn't tried lich-dom or other stuff to dodge afterlife), or simply screwing up (heck, Xykon dodged that bulled numerous time, surviving Soon was pure luck, and SOD-Spoiler:Lirian basically the same, she could have killed Xykon if she wanted, but screwed that up with her being "nice"). Another possibility would be just that they made really bold moves (e.g. trying to attack the twelve gods - I think against actual gods the splices would have had still no chances). And then there is even the option that on whatever plane they originated from the overall power was greater (and equally powerful god guys existed).

[David Argall]

Familicide was designed to be impressive, not logical. It's logic, logically followed would wipe out several species, humans probably among them.

The basic point is compound interest. You are the descendant of every human who was alive 1000 years ago [except those who had none]. You have two parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents.... You reach a billion by the time 1000 years has passed.
Dragon ancestors are not too common in our OOTS world, but we are assured they are not rare either. We need only 1 successful mating a thousand years ago, and just about all humans have dragon blood. We don't know there was such a union, but all we have argues for there having been several such cases. It is thus likely that Tarquin also had dragon ancestry. [Any objection that he had to have black dragon ancestry falls to the sheer weight of numbers. He would likely have ancestry from all dragon types.]

[Math_Mage]

Familicide was designed to be impressive, not logical. It's logic, logically followed would wipe out several species, humans probably among them.

The basic point is compound interest. You are the descendant of every human who was alive 1000 years ago [except those who had none]. You have two parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents.... You reach a billion by the time 1000 years has passed.
Dragon ancestors are not too common in our OOTS world, but we are assured they are not rare either. We need only 1 successful mating a thousand years ago, and just about all humans have dragon blood. We don't know there was such a union, but all we have argues for there having been several such cases. It is thus likely that Tarquin also had dragon ancestry. [Any objection that he had to have black dragon ancestry falls to the sheer weight of numbers. He would likely have ancestry from all dragon types.]

First, that's bad math because it assumes every member of your ancestry is unique, when in fact you'll start seeing the same person showing up at many different points in your family tree if you go back far enough; this phenomenon is called pedigree collapse. Overlapping ancestors makes the time scale a bit different.

Second, that math doesn't work both ways. If, for example, each of the unions between man and dragon results in an isolated clan in the desert somewhere (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0842.html), and these clans die out for some reason, then none of the humans on the rest of the planet will have dragon ancestry. I'm not saying that's exactly what happened, just pointing out that the numbers are obviously not inexorable in the direction of descendants the way they are in the direction of ancestry. In fact, in the real world the identical ancestors point for humans (estimated at 5-10,000 years ago) is the point where all humans alive at the time were either common ancestors of everyone alive today, or not our ancestors at all because their lines of descent died out. So even with guaranteed common ancestry (which OotSworld doesn't have), there is not necessarily a point in time when all humans were common ancestors of everyone alive today. This is even more true in OotSworld, which is why all the ABD's ancestors are in the pedigree of only 1/4th the black dragon population.

Third, we don't have great data on the rarity of dragons in OotSworld, or the frequency of human-dragon pairings, so when you talk about the 'sheer weight of numbers', I find that hard to reconcile with the lack of actual numbers.

In conclusion, your claim that Familicide wasn't 'logical' because it didn't wipe out several species...isn't logical.

[Silver Swift]

The basic point is compound interest. You are the descendant of every human who was alive 1000 years ago [except those who had none]. You have two parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents.... You reach a billion by the time 1000 years has passed.

There are two problems with this line of reasoning:
1) Ootsworld is not our world, it was created less than 2000 years ago (if I recall correctly, it was certainly a lot less than the 5 billion years our planet has had). Add to that the fact that dragons reproduce very slowly so it might have been centuries before the bloodline of the ABD mixed with humans (we don't know how common half dragons are in ootsworld) and the numbers are starting to look better.

2) More importantly, while yes, the number of ancestors increases exponentially the further back in time you go, due to inbreeding there is going to be a lot of overlap in your ancestry. It is hard to calculate mathematically how much of an effect this has, but I would doubt that even on our world, where long distance travel has been widespread for a number of generations now, everyone can trace their ancestry back to say, Julius Caesar.

There is no doubt that Familicide is a massively powerful spell, but I don't find the damage that is being shown in the comic to be that much of an underestimation.

[David Argall]

First, that's bad math because it assumes every member of your ancestry is unique, when in fact you'll start seeing the same person showing up at many different points in your family tree if you go back far enough; this phenomenon is called pedigree collapse. Overlapping ancestors makes the time scale a bit different.

[QUOTE=Math_Mage;15433904]
Second, that math doesn't work both ways. If, for example, each of the unions between man and dragon results in an isolated clan in the desert somewhere (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0842.html), and these clans die out for some reason, then none of the humans on the rest of the planet will have dragon ancestry.
V suggests that only half the Dragontooth clan was at the gate. While she/he has no particular way to know that, there are a host of reasons to think this is more or less accurate. The ability to persuade all of your kin to move out to the sticks, and stay there, is rather a stretch. And the clan did need a lot of contact with the larger society. [Food is the obvious case. While there are ways to have magic food, most references suggest magic food is more good for you rather than good to eat. So the outpost likely got a fair amount of mundane food.] The party notes some of the evidence of this. An idea to consider here is that the clan was able to judge magical talent in the very young and merely kidnapped the children of high potential, while others were left in the larger society and used for mundane needs. And if we had those visits to the brothels, we can expect some unknown branches of the family tree.
And of course, we have no reason to think this was the only case. So the chance of all partial dragons being blocked is probably pretty low.



I'm not saying that's exactly what happened, just pointing out that the numbers are obviously not inexorable in the direction of descendants the way they are in the direction of ancestry. In fact, in the real world the identical ancestors point for humans (estimated at 5-10,000 years ago) is the point where all humans alive at the time were either common ancestors of everyone alive today, or not our ancestors at all because their lines of descent died out. So even with guaranteed common ancestry (which OotSworld doesn't have), there is not necessarily a point in time when all humans were common ancestors of everyone alive today. This is even more true in OotSworld, which is why all the ABD's ancestors are in the pedigree of only 1/4th the black dragon population.
If the ABD is in the ancestry of 1/4 of a slow breeding population, it would be present in a much higher percentage of the ancestry of the faster breeding humans. [If our dragons have litters, the descendents could spread faster, but litter size is related to survival rate, meaning it does not greatly speed up the generation growth speed.]



Third, we don't have great data on the rarity of dragons in OotSworld,

We know there were at least 60 black dragons of breeding age killed by the spell. We assume it was much larger than than that as we get no hint of a limit on the number of generations, and so additional generations were killed, but there was no room to show them.



or the frequency of human-dragon pairings,
Both dragons and humans cross-race pairings are described as "well-documented", which gives us a picture of relatively common. Given that half-elves and half-orcs are rather common, our assumption has to be for large numbers of half-dragons, and great number of humans with dragon blood.



In conclusion, your claim that Familicide wasn't 'logical' because it didn't wipe out several species...isn't logical.
We are shown that teenage male dragons are teenage boys [and of course females have this annoying habit of saying no all too often]. So a lot of species are apt to get some dragon blood. But we have both posited that does come a time when everybody who has any descendents is ancestor of everybody. You have merely said the time is longer. So when we talk about creatures that have generations every 5-6 years instead of 30, we are both saying the spell might get every member of the race.
However, my contention was that the spell was not intended to be logical, just not obviously illogical. It was largely intended to be impressive, and logic was at best a secondary goal. That means trying to deduct the logic of the spell is just a foolish game, of the sort we play a lot of around here, but any conclusion reached is likely to be useless. [I don't think anyone deducted that the spell would kill a lot of humans until we had a room of dead humans.. Instead we argued on points that never affected the plot.]

[Math_Mage]

No, no, no, no, NO. The number of misunderstandings in your post makes responding point by point completely pointless, so I won't bother. Instead, let me give you my position on everything relevant, in unambiguous terms, so you cannot misunderstand.

1. Ancestry is not a binary tree. Just because you have 2 parents does not mean you have 2^50 grandparents-to-the-49th-degree.

2. Descent is not exponential. Just because we can point to some group of people in the distant past and say everyone alive today is descended from them, does not mean we can point to any time in the distant past and say everyone who was alive then is a common ancestor of everyone alive today. And that's in our world, where common ancestry actually happened. OotSworld is explicitly not that sort of world.

3. Therefore, a black dragon and a human having a child in the distant past does not give us any idea of how many living descendants that half-dragon has. We do not know that any people with black dragon ancestry were alive at the time of Familicide, except for the still-living members of the Draketooth clan.

4. No, we still have no idea how many human-dragon pairings there have been--not that it matters, given point 3. V may have said what you quoted, but he didn't know of any human-dragon pairings before now. And there is absolutely no value to an extrapolation of half-orcs and half-elves to half-dragons.

5. No, the ABD is not in the ancestry of 1/4th of the black dragon population. The ABD and all of its ancestors are in the ancestry of 1/4th of the black dragon population. Again, this doesn't matter much, given point 3.

6. The Familicide spell is not ambiguous. It is not illogical. We know exactly how it works. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12856280&postcount=1034) It did exactly what it was supposed to, and it logically did not wipe out several species. Every time you claim otherwise, you are only demonstrating that you have some catch-up reading to do.

So, let's try this again. If you'd like to dispute any of the points I brought up, feel free.

[rodneyAnonymous]

You are the descendant of every human who was alive 1000 years ago [except those who had none].

That is not true. I am the descendent (in that sense) of some fraction of the humans that were alive 1000 years ago, but to many of them I am unrelated unless you go farther back than that. 30,000 or so years ago the human population bottleneck was so small and localized that we may be related to most of them, but how many evolutionary dead ends from there? It's not just individuals who didn't have children that you're not related to, what if none of their children reproduce, or none of their grandchildren?

[hamishspence]

That would come under "those who had none"- that is, those who had no descendants that survive to the present day.

It's also something of an overstatement that it was a mere 1000 years ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_ancestors_point

the figure is estimated to be more like 5000-10000 years ago, not 1000.

[Wraithlord]

Okay, so I believe I understand how familicide operated in Oots-world. However, how much of humanity in our world would be eliminated if the same spell was cast on a random member of the newest generation?

[137beth]

Okay, so I believe I understand how familicide operated in Oots-world. However, how much of humanity in our world would be eliminated if the same spell was cast on a random member of the newest generation?

All of it. In the real world, all humans are related to all other humans, and familicide is not affected by how distant the relation is.

[rodneyAnonymous]

Okay, so I believe I understand how familicide operated in Oots-world. However, how much of humanity in our world would be eliminated if the same spell was cast on a random member of the newest generation?

Not just humanity, but all life on this planet (possibly restricted to animals, since it is about blood). The spell wasn't cast on this planet; and anyway Rich is not a biologist, it works how it worked.

[Chronos]

Alternately, none of it, because our world is in a dead-magic plane.

[Silver Swift]

Alternately, none of it, because our world is in a dead-magic plane.

Nitpick: then it wouldn't have been cast in the first place :smallsmile:

[David Argall]

2. Descent is not exponential. Just because we can point to some group of people in the distant past and say everyone alive today is descended from them, does not mean we can point to any time in the distant past and say everyone who was alive then is a common ancestor of everyone alive today.
That was not said. A substantial percentage had no descendants. But if we go far enough back, the ancients are one of those two groups, ancestors of everybody or ancestors of nobody.



And that's in our world, where common ancestry actually happened. OotSworld is explicitly not that sort of world.
A created world has several logical problems [for example, how did those first babies get fed?] So it is quite common to posit that it was created as a going concern, that a thousand year old world has a ten thousand year old empire in it. [and that a host of "mothers" were nursing their babies that they had not actually given birth to.] And that an ancient black dragon could have "descendants" who were older than the world.
For the purposes of this spell, "mothers" would be the same as mothers, and deaths become universal.



3. Therefore, a black dragon and a human having a child in the distant past does not give us any idea of how many living descendants that half-dragon has.
You are demanding surety. Such is a good idea sometimes, as at a criminal trial, but much more often, we go with the odds. We are given one case, with no reason to deem it unique, or even rare.



We do not know that any people with black dragon ancestry were alive at the time of Familicide, except for the still-living members of the Draketooth clan.
We also know of none that are definitely not. The vast majority of the population falls in the maybe category. Our one case suggests a whole lot of other cases, even if we can only guess at the number. [Of course we do have a world where one in ten is pretty unlikely, but 1 in a million is almost a sure thing.]



4. No, we still have no idea how many human-dragon pairings there have been.
But we do have an idea. It is more than 3. And the odds we know of all of them? We are on much safer ground to assume a lot of them.



V may have said what you quoted, but he didn't know of any human-dragon pairings before now.
Quite the contrary. When we have a half-dragon in the story, and V's own remark, we would assume the elf knows of several. V reacts upon learning of the black dragon ancestry not with any amazement it happened at all, but as if it was the sort of fact one forgets. They clearly are not common, but "documented" is the sort of word you use about the rare, but not unique.



And there is absolutely no value to an extrapolation of half-orcs and half-elves to half-dragons.
"Absolutely no..." Now we can't make any precise estimate, but V puts humans and dragons on a plane. That is very unlikely to be precise, but we have no good reason to think half-dragons are rare. The number of human halflings gives us at least a hint of how many dragon halfings.



6. The Familicide spell is not ambiguous. It is not illogical.
Given the amount of posting on the point, this is rather debatable. [Of course, our more unkind posters have suggested the illogic is not in the comic.]



it logically did not wipe out several species. Every time you claim otherwise, you are only demonstrating that you have some catch-up reading to do.
You need to present evidence on the point rather than argue against the person.

[Mammal]

It also resolves the question Xykon brought up: If these guys were so incredibly powerful (and Haerta must have been extraordinarily powerful, to be able to cast a spell like that), why are they dead? It's hard to imagine any creature in the multiverse capable of killing Haerta... Other than Haerta herself.

The idea that Haerta's death was collateral of her own spell has a certain poetic justice, but there's a thousand things that could kill her. She could have fallen down the stairs, choked on a grape, etc. It's even possible she died of old age, but appears as a young woman because she thinks of herself as such.

[B. Dandelion]

A created world has several logical problems [for example, how did those first babies get fed?]

Are you suggesting the gods created everybody as kids? If OOTS creation is like most creation stories, the gods would have created the first beings as adults, not babies and eggs. The adults would have bred and then fed their children the normal way.

[Porthos]

If OOTS creation is like most creation stories, the gods would have created the first beings as adults, not babies and eggs. The adults would have bred and then fed their children the normal way.

As an example, D&D lore often has the first elves springing fully formed from the blood of Corellon Larethian (usually from his battle with Grummish).

[Math_Mage]

That was not said. A substantial percentage had no descendants. But if we go far enough back, the ancients are one of those two groups, ancestors of everybody or ancestors of nobody.
Only in our world, where common ancestry is guaranteed. In particular, we aren't randomly introducing lines from completely separate genetic pools.


A created world has several logical problems [for example, how did those first babies get fed?] So it is quite common to posit that it was created as a going concern, that a thousand year old world has a ten thousand year old empire in it. [and that a host of "mothers" were nursing their babies that they had not actually given birth to.] And that an ancient black dragon could have "descendants" who were older than the world.
For the purposes of this spell, "mothers" would be the same as mothers, and deaths become universal.
So, the argument strategy is:
Step 1. Posit a world in which your argument is true.
Step 2. Assert without evidence that your hypothetical is reality.
Step 3. Claim the truth of your argument on that basis.

Sorry, I'm not buying it.

No, there is zero reason why a created world would have common ancestry.


You are demanding surety. Such is a good idea sometimes, as at a criminal trial, but much more often, we go with the odds. We are given one case, with no reason to deem it unique, or even rare.

We also know of none that are definitely not. The vast majority of the population falls in the maybe category. Our one case suggests a whole lot of other cases, even if we can only guess at the number. [Of course we do have a world where one in ten is pretty unlikely, but 1 in a million is almost a sure thing.]

But we do have an idea. It is more than 3. And the odds we know of all of them? We are on much safer ground to assume a lot of them.

Quite the contrary. When we have a half-dragon in the story, and V's own remark, we would assume the elf knows of several. V reacts upon learning of the black dragon ancestry not with any amazement it happened at all, but as if it was the sort of fact one forgets. They clearly are not common, but "documented" is the sort of word you use about the rare, but not unique.

"Absolutely no..." Now we can't make any precise estimate, but V puts humans and dragons on a plane. That is very unlikely to be precise, but we have no good reason to think half-dragons are rare. The number of human halflings gives us at least a hint of how many dragon halfings.
All of this boils down to "In the absence of evidence, assume I'm right." Which, when you're the one making the claim, is not the correct assumption.

There is zero, zip, nada evidence that every human in OotSworld has dragon ancestry. There is zero, zip, nada evidence that every human in OotSworld is related to someone with dragon ancestry (to a close enough extent that Familicide applies). In fact, there is evidence AGAINST this claim, namely, that Familicide's effect was limited. You attempt to dodge this by claiming that Familicide wasn't executed logically, even though the author went so far as to lay out the exact logic of the spell for us. What can I say to such denial?


Given the amount of posting on the point, this is rather debatable. [Of course, our more unkind posters have suggested the illogic is not in the comic.]
There was a lot of posting on the point before the author laid down the exact logic of the spell. That does not make it reasonable to call it illogical AFTER the logic has been laid down.


You need to present evidence on the point rather than argue against the person.
Evidence like, say, the description of the spell as laid out in exact terms by the author? Yeah, I did that. I shouldn't have HAD to do that, since it was in the second post on this thread, and it's kind of central to the whole discussion, but apparently it's new to you, so I guess it counts.

[137beth]

You need to present evidence on the point rather than argue against the person.
I love irony.

[hamishspence]

Are you suggesting the gods created everybody as kids? If OOTS creation is like most creation stories, the gods would have created the first beings as adults, not babies and eggs. The adults would have bred and then fed their children the normal way.

That's the way it looked like the goblinoids (and other humanoids) were created in Start of Darkness's origin story for them, at least.

[F.Harr]

Sorry if this has been done to death (haha...ha...) but after deciding to reread the comic for the fourth time or so, and coming to Vaarsuvius' fairly recent lamentations when s/he first realizes the scope of the damage done by the Familicide spell (in Girard's temple), it set me to wondering: Exactly how did Familicide stop at all? Was there a certain number of iterations, of "once-twice-thrice removeds" that it killed off, before stopping? When V says that the spell kill Tarquin's wife, and if she had borne a child it would have slayed the child too, then logically the magic would have then slayed Tarquin, and thus Elan, Nale, and Elan's mother as well, right? If it can so easily get into another continent by just one remarriage, I would expect it to...well, wipe out the world, pretty much. I know that the magnitude of the spell is why V was cowering in shame, but it looks to me like it should have done EVEN MORE damage than it seems to have done.

Because their world is only a little more than a thousand years old. It came fully-populated, so not everyone of a species is related.

"BAH! Stop this argument, and stop being lazy and just look up the Giant's description of the spell."

That only answers part of the question.

[F.Harr]

That's the way it looked like the goblinoids (and other humanoids) were created in Start of Darkness's origin story for them, at least.

Redcloak is a shepherd of his people. Of course he thinks of them as such.

[Tragak]

OK, let's say that The Giant DIDN'T specifically explain how Familicide worked (spoiler alert: he did), let's say that his campaign world was old enough that everybody was related to everybody (spoiler alert: it isn't)...

Perhaps Haerta made the spell weaker then it would otherwise have been to reduce the Spellcraft DC (much like Raising an Island (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/raiseIsland.htm) over the course of 2 months instead of a few minutes) so that she can do it in the first place.

"Hm, let me see: spell that will kill a bunch of people when I use it, or spell that would kill even more people but I can't use it?"

[137beth]

Because their world is only a little more than a thousand years old. It came fully-populated, so not everyone of a species is related.

"BAH! Stop this argument, and stop being lazy and just look up the Giant's description of the spell."

That only answers part of the question.

There calender is only a little more than a thousand years old. We don't know how old the OOTS world is.

[David Argall]

Only in our world, where common ancestry is guaranteed. In particular, we aren't randomly introducing lines from completely separate genetic pools.
Ah, definitionally, we can't introduce lines from completely separate pools because they are no longer separate. And once we do mix them, we again eventually end up with the two groups. Either all members of a group are now descendants of everybody in either group who has descendants, or no members are.



So, the argument strategy is:
Step 1. Posit a world in which your argument is true.
Step 2. Assert without evidence that your hypothetical is reality.
Step 3. Claim the truth of your argument on that basis.

"I know you are, but what am I?"
Your own arguments are at least as subject to your charges as mine. So the argument has to be rejected.



Sorry, I'm not buying it.
As noted before, your judgement is not evidence.



No, there is zero reason why a created world would have common ancestry.

And again as noted, there are a host of reasons why they should be considered to share ancestry even if no such ancestors ever existed. We have already noted that the world would be created as a going concern. We have looked at the case of babies, which we adopt the going concern concept by saying some adults are created at the same time. But we need lactating mothers, which means no births for 9 months, or some women were created pregnant. And while most of us don't go around killing children, we don't often go to the extreme trouble of raising a rugrat unless it is ours. We expect buildings that were never built. And political states that were in place from the start, with political divisions based on events that never happened....



All of this boils down to "In the absence of evidence, assume I'm right." Which, when you're the one making the claim, is not the correct assumption.

But evidence of various sorts has been presented. You just keep rejecting it.



There is zero, zip, nada evidence that every human in OotSworld has dragon ancestry.
Since we know that some humans have dragon ancestry [and really do have no evidence that others don't], we obviously do have some evidence. Inadequate maybe, but definite evidence.



There is zero, zip, nada evidence that every human in OotSworld is related to someone with dragon ancestry (to a close enough extent that Familicide applies).
But our basic math and simple fact that there have been some with mixed ancestry, means we do have evidence.



In fact, there is evidence AGAINST this claim, namely, that Familicide's effect was limited. You attempt to dodge this by claiming that Familicide wasn't executed logically, even though the author went so far as to lay out the exact logic of the spell for us. What can I say to such denial?

That it must be judged by the facts.
Claiming the author didn't know what he was saying is a bold claim, but has been shown to be true many times, at least once in the case of our author [He protested that he have never shown V to be good. Several of us pointed out he had done exactly that with Unholy Word, and he admitted his error.] So saying the author made an error in this, or any other, point is on the table even when we have a presumption of innocence.



There was a lot of posting on the point before the author laid down the exact logic of the spell. That does not make it reasonable to call it illogical AFTER the logic has been laid down.
It is in fact easier to call it illogical after the logic has been laid down than before. That is when the logic can be studied and judged, and possibly found wanting. Prior, the point must be found illogical under all possible justifications, not just the one used. [Joe shoots John. We can not call it illogical without knowing more since we know people get shot. But when the author says that was because John was stepping out with Mary, we can object that Joe didn't know this, and would not have objected, and/or,,,]



Evidence like, say, the description of the spell as laid out in exact terms...

Go look at any law book and you will see that the short amount the writer wrote on the spell simply can't be exact. All words, being mortal, are inexact, and routinely very much just approximations. We can also look at the time spent on the comic, and deduct that only a few minutes could have been devoted to the wordage of the spell. We can agree that the writer does a very good job in general, but he remains mortal and subject to error.

[Aldrakan]

Argall, if we have "presumption of innocence" for the author it is blindingly obvious that Familicide would not wipe out human life because everyone isn't dead, and a situation in which it wouldn't have killed everyone has been clearly presented to you. What you appear to be doing is assuming that he got it wrong, creating a hypothetical situation in which he would have been wrong, and then claiming that's the most likely scenario based on evidence that you yourself just admitted is inadequate.

[137beth]

But our basic math and simple fact that there have been some with mixed ancestry, means we do have evidence.
No, we have evidence that some humans in OOTS have dragon ancestry. We have none whatsoever that they all should.

[ChristianSt]

I don't have exact parameters on the OotS-world (and I think even the Giant has hard enough numbers made up to really discuss this), but for me Familicide is perfectly plausible.

First of all: even with dragon/human-breeding being "common" it doesn't really matter. We know that 1/4 of all black dragons died to Familicide. Even if 1/2 of all black dragons breeded with humans, it could be that no human related dragon was killed by Familicide (but we know that isn't true, since Girards bloodline was effected by it - but it could certainly the only one).

But we don't know how many different bloodlines existed at the start of the OotS-world (it could that there would be thousands or even much more), and how slowly/fast they mix (depending on many factors, like how far humans travel, how fast they start getting children, or how long a typical marriage holds). It could certainly be possible that Girards bloodline was relatively local and didn't mixed with many other before it got mixed with the dragons. So it is certainly plausible that Familicide could have operated how it did.

If there would be a comic stating that in OotS there is an Adam & Eve, then you could say Familice is illogical. But with the information we have it could certainly be possible.

For the problems with the world-creation: We have gods that created it. I think it wouldn't be hard for them to make it and simple start it (sure there would related persons, because there are families, but there is simply no need to relate all of them (or maybe there weren't families and they organized much faster to settlements and cities than real world humans. We haven't any clue about how the OotS-world started)). Applying real-world science to a (D&D-)fantasy world often doesn't make that much sense.

[B. Dandelion]

There calender is only a little more than a thousand years old. We don't know how old the OOTS world is.

Seems to be the implication. "A thousand years and more have passed in the world of mortals," (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0275.html) the last event referred to being the creation of the planet. So "a thousand years and more since the creation of the planet" had passed when Soon's wife died.

I mean I guess you could argue "and more" means any number of centuries or millenia but "a thousand years and some change" seems the more likely reading to me which lines up with the established calendar (1184 in #489 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0489.html)).

[David Argall]

No, we have evidence that some humans in OOTS have dragon ancestry. We have none whatsoever that they all should.
There are 10 X. If we posit that all X are Y and we test one and find that to be true, do we have evidence?
If we test two and find both are true, do we have evidence?
If we test three and find all are true, do we have evidence?
4? 5? 6? 7? 8? 9?
Evidence does not mean absolute proof. It often does not even mean proof. It means we have some indication of what the situation is, and enough evidence will be proof.
So if we find that some humans have dragon ancestry, we have evidence that all do. It may or may not be convincing evidence, but it is evidence.
Now in many cases like this we have the rule that 1 white buffalo beats 1000 non-white. That is the proposition that there are no white buffalo is provent false by 1 white buffalo no matter how many non-white are considered. And finding 1 human with no dragon ancestry would disprove the proposition that all humans have dragon ancestry. But we don't know the ancestry of any humans enough to say they have no dragon ancestry.
We merely know some do [or rather, did] have dragon ancestry. We can not reject the proposition that all do.

[Aldrakan]

Evidence does not mean absolute proof. It often does not even mean proof. It means we have some indication of what the situation is, and enough evidence will be proof.

We merely know some do [or rather, did] have dragon ancestry. We can not reject the proposition that all do.

Actually we can, because as people have told you many times, there is obvious evidence that not everyone has the ancestry you claim: they are alive.
You have concocted out of nothing the idea that Familicide wasn't enacted properly, and then based on this nothing argued that all humans should be dead because they must have dragon ancestry. You have no actual evidence that everyone has dragon ancestry, you just say that because it can't be proven that they don't, they must have, and therefore they should be dead, and therefore Familicide wasn't enacted properly. Do you really not see how ludicrous this is?

[jere7my]

There are 10 X. If we posit that all X are Y and we test one and find that to be true, do we have evidence?
If we test two and find both are true, do we have evidence?
If we test three and find all are true, do we have evidence?
4? 5? 6? 7? 8? 9?
Evidence does not mean absolute proof. It often does not even mean proof. It means we have some indication of what the situation is, and enough evidence will be proof.
So if we find that some humans have dragon ancestry, we have evidence that all do. It may or may not be convincing evidence, but it is evidence.

You're talking about inductive generalization. If you sample a population and find that x% of your sample has a certain attribute, can you extrapolate that x% of the population probably has that attribute? Answer: maybe. It depends, in a complicated statistical way, on the size of the population and the size of the sample. If the population is large enough and the sample is small enough, then you can't draw any conclusions at all—you're falling for the hasty generalization fallacy. Trying to use that "evidence" to support any conclusion is statistically indistinguishable from random guessing.

In this case, the sample size is one (because the Draketeeth are not independent from one another), and the population size is probably some millions. Two people could use the same methodology to simultaneously find "evidence" that all sentient beings in the OotS world are elves and that they're all goblins. That weakens the word "evidence" to meaninglessness.

[Nilehus]

One family out of thousands of families does not make for good statistical evidence.

The Draketooth clan is the only family line we've seen that we know has dragon ancestry. The Greenhilt family? No evidence. Elan's family? No evidence. Haley's? No evidence. V's? No evidence. Belkar's? No evidence. Durkon's? No evidence. And that's just the main cast. Of all the humanoids, the only proven dragon bloodline is the Draketooth clan.

Extrapolating that all humans have dragon ancestry from that is the equivalent of saying that all humans are Lawful Good, since the entirety of Roy's family is Lawful Good.

[Porthos]

I might remind people of this bit of posting (12856280) from The Giant:


But if it worked like that, it would have [insert obscure effect proven with math]!
Yeah, well, it didn't. Why? I don't know. But it didn't. I guess that makes me a crappy writer because I didn't think of whatever implication you just thought of, but there it is. I'm not a biologist or a mathematician. If it makes you feel better, just assume that all the laws of heredity and genetics work differently because It's Magic™.

I hope this will end the endless debates. It's really quite simple, and if you're getting to a point where it seems utterly complicated or recursive or whatever, you're probably thinking about it more than I did.

I think the comment about 'laws of heredity and genetics work(ing) differently' is a sage one. After all, who the hell is to say that the people in OotSWorld even have genetic DNA/RNA? Yeah, that's how it works in Real Life. But nothing says it has to work that way in OotSWorld.

Maybe The Essence that binds families together (which Familicide attacked) is passed down from generation to generation. But The Essence becomes weaker and corrupted and changed after several generations. So much so that after what we would consider 6 generations a person is literally no longer related to their great great great great great uncle three times removed. Because the Essence that ties to two people together is gone.

Or maybe in some families The Essence is stronger (this, not coincidentally, is shown in families that take great pride to list all of their ancestors from the last 500 years).

"Genetics and Heredity don't work that way, Porthos", I hear you say? In RL, yes. In a world of D&D where the Germ Theory of Disease might very well be a bunch of hokum*? Who can say?

* It is clearly caused by ill-humors that take precise magical incantations or imbibements to get rid of. :smalltongue:

Besides, I tend to think in world where you have naturally occurring Half Elf/Half Dragons, things like DNA and the like left town in disgust a long time ago. And if that is the case, then it isn't that big of a leap to suggest that, after a while, people aren't related anymore when enough time (and magic) passes.

Can it be a cop out to say A Wizard Did It? Sure. But sometimes it is just pointing out that, yes, a person might just be over thinking this a bit. :smallwink:

[Math_Mage]

Ah, definitionally, we can't introduce lines from completely separate pools because they are no longer separate. And once we do mix them, we again eventually end up with the two groups. Either all members of a group are now descendants of everybody in either group who has descendants, or no members are.
We surely can introduce lines from separate pools. The pool of dragons was completely separate from the pool of humans prior to the first interbreeding. From that point onward there is no equal ancestors point among humans until either all humans have dragon ancestry or none do--and if another interbreeding happens with a different line of black dragons, all bets are off again. Indeed, the very existence of the Draketooth clan suggests there was no equal ancestors point among humans until they were wiped out.


"I know you are, but what am I?"
Your own arguments are at least as subject to your charges as mine. So the argument has to be rejected.
Not at all. See, step 2 of my argument is to point out that the consequences of my hypothetical are exactly what we see in the comic. Step 2 of your argument is to assert that your hypothetical is correct despite that the consequences would be markedly different from what we see in the comic. The only thing I have to reject is your absurd false equivalence of these two lines of argument


And again as noted, there are a host of reasons why they should be considered to share ancestry even if no such ancestors ever existed. We have already noted that the world would be created as a going concern. We have looked at the case of babies, which we adopt the going concern concept by saying some adults are created at the same time. But we need lactating mothers, which means no births for 9 months, or some women were created pregnant. And while most of us don't go around killing children, we don't often go to the extreme trouble of raising a rugrat unless it is ours. We expect buildings that were never built. And political states that were in place from the start, with political divisions based on events that never happened....
Thus proving once again that you need to go read what the Giant wrote about Familicide:

Wouldn't that spell kill everyone of the original target's species?
In our world? Maybe. The OOTS world is not ours, though. It was created fully populated, even with black dragons. So there could be 100 original black dragons who (as V noted) breed slowly over the relatively-short span of time the current world has been in existence, leading to one-quarter of them being wiped out. If it had been cast on a human first, it may well have taken half or more of the population with it, depending on how many Original Humans there had been and how much interbreeding had occurred. Good thing that's not what happened, right?
Good thing black dragons don't have hypothetical shared ancestry, right? Otherwise they'd all be wiped out. So much for the world being created as an ongoing concern.


But evidence of various sorts has been presented. You just keep rejecting it.
Ah, and here you mistake *any old fact* for *evidence*. Facts only constitute evidence if they go some way towards proving your point.

For example:

Since we know that some humans have dragon ancestry [and really do have no evidence that others don't], we obviously do have some evidence. Inadequate maybe, but definite evidence.
This is utterly wrong. We know that some humans are descended from one specific dragon-human pairing. We also know that most humans are not descended from that pairing. The existence of that one pairing is therefore not evidence of dragon ancestry, inadequate or otherwise, for anyone outside the Draketooth clan.


That it must be judged by the facts.
Oh, that's rich, coming from the person whose first reaction to finding that his interpretation doesn't fit what happened in the comic is to dismiss the events of the comic, rather than to reconsider his interpretation. Please, tell me more about how you impartially weigh competing claims about the comic according to the facts. :smallannoyed:


Claiming the author didn't know what he was saying is a bold claim, but has been shown to be true many times, at least once in the case of our author [He protested that he have never shown V to be good. Several of us pointed out he had done exactly that with Unholy Word, and he admitted his error.] So saying the author made an error in this, or any other, point is on the table even when we have a presumption of innocence.
Time for some Bayesian analysis.
Rich has been correct about 99.9% of what happens in his comic. So let's generously assume your arguments for your position have been as strong as mine have been for mine. This is ignoring your wanton abuse of the word 'evidence', your demonstrated ignorance of what the Giant has actually written, your naive understanding of biology, etc. I'm still 99.9% likely to be correct.

Don't like that analysis? Then don't premise your arguments on the assumption that Rich got it wrong.

(Btw, Unholy Blight affects both Good and Neutral targets. Granted, it doesn't sicken Neutral targets, but it doesn't prevent Good characters from moving, either, and we see it doing that to the Order, so we already know it's not strictly RAW. How, exactly, is this evidence that V is Good?)


Go look at any law book and you will see that the short amount the writer wrote on the spell simply can't be exact.
Nah, f*** that. Rich isn't writing a law, he's writing pseudocode for the execution of an algorithm (the spell). Go look at any program and you will see that it is perfectly possible to write an exact statement with few words.

[ChristianSt]

There are 10 X. If we posit that all X are Y and we test one and find that to be true, do we have evidence?
If we test two and find both are true, do we have evidence?
If we test three and find all are true, do we have evidence?
4? 5? 6? 7? 8? 9?
Evidence does not mean absolute proof. It often does not even mean proof. It means we have some indication of what the situation is, and enough evidence will be proof.
So if we find that some humans have dragon ancestry, we have evidence that all do. It may or may not be convincing evidence, but it is evidence.
Now in many cases like this we have the rule that 1 white buffalo beats 1000 non-white. That is the proposition that there are no white buffalo is provent false by 1 white buffalo no matter how many non-white are considered. And finding 1 human with no dragon ancestry would disprove the proposition that all humans have dragon ancestry. But we don't know the ancestry of any humans enough to say they have no dragon ancestry.
We merely know some do [or rather, did] have dragon ancestry. We can not reject the proposition that all do.

But we have proof in form of the comic, that not all humans have dragon ancestry (with dragon ancestry being to to black dragons relevant to Familicide. It could be possible that all humans have dragon ancestry to other (even black) dragons), simple because there are still living humans (unless you say that all strips after 639 are an illusion/afterlife/whatever). So you can gather all evidence you like, it doesn't make that proof wrong (until you find something that contradicts that proof).

So why does the fact that there is one (or more) human bloodline that haves dragon ancestry (again of the Familicide black dragon type) change anything about that proof? (Unless you say that the Familicide description is wrong, but I would find it much more likelier that Familicde is correct and your assumptions about the OotS-world are wrong. So if there is a possible scenario that is consistent with the facts provided by the author, I think you can't say: "But that doesn't work, because If I assume x,y,z (which by the way you didn't say anything about whether they are correct or not), then clearly the events shown cannot be happened that way!", If I assume that magic doesn't work than I can clearly say that nearly the complete comic doesn't make any sense, but the comic doesn't operates under that assumption.) And even with the assumption that the Familicide description is wrong there is not a single piece of evidence that states that all humans have dragon ancestry, since we can't really apply real world genetics/science to the OotS-world.

Familicide is plausible with the given explanations from Rich, so I can't understand why anything about Familicide needs to be illogical.

If you have a problem with a world crated with multiple different bloodlines (because the gods liked it that way), then I'm really surprised that you have no problems with magic of all kinds.

[David Argall]

You're talking about inductive generalization. If you sample a population and find that x% of your sample has a certain attribute, can you extrapolate that x% of the population probably has that attribute? Answer: maybe. It depends, in a complicated statistical way, on the size of the population and the size of the sample. If the population is large enough and the sample is small enough, then you can't draw any conclusions at all—you're falling for the hasty generalization fallacy. Trying to use that "evidence" to support any conclusion is statistically indistinguishable from random guessing.
In this case, the sample size is one (because the Draketeeth are not independent from one another), and the population size is probably some millions. Two people could use the same methodology to simultaneously find "evidence" that all sentient beings in the OotS world are elves and that they're all goblins. That weakens the word "evidence" to meaninglessness.
You are still confusing evidence and proof. Any one fact, no matter how insufficient to prove a case is still evidence. In our given example, fact #1 is insufficient, but so are facts 2-9 individually insufficient. If we say 1 fact is no evidence, then 9 facts are no evidence. 9x0=0. But in our case, 9 facts are highly convincing. In many cases we would have stopped well short of 9 and made our conclusion. So each fact is evidence. Insufficient in many cases, possibly all, but insufficient is not "none whatsoever".

[Math_Mage]

You are still confusing evidence and proof. Any one fact, no matter how insufficient to prove a case is still evidence. In our given example, fact #1 is insufficient, but so are facts 2-9 individually insufficient. If we say 1 fact is no evidence, then 9 facts are no evidence. 9x0=0. But in our case, 9 facts are highly convincing. In many cases we would have stopped well short of 9 and made our conclusion. So each fact is evidence. Insufficient in many cases, possibly all, but insufficient is not "none whatsoever".

How very lawyerly of you.

Have your Fact 1 for the Draketooths if you wish. Where are Facts 2-1,000,000? Nowhere, right.

But if you feel arguing over whether your fact is 'no evidence' or merely 'drastically insufficient evidence to the degree of being negligible' will help you make your case, I won't stop you.

[jere7my]

You are still confusing evidence and proof. Any one fact, no matter how insufficient to prove a case is still evidence. In our given example, fact #1 is insufficient, but so are facts 2-9 individually insufficient. If we say 1 fact is no evidence, then 9 facts are no evidence. 9x0=0. But in our case, 9 facts are highly convincing. In many cases we would have stopped well short of 9 and made our conclusion. So each fact is evidence. Insufficient in many cases, possibly all, but insufficient is not "none whatsoever".

No, you're confusing evidence and data. Evidence has to support a conclusion. [Edit: it might be more precise to say evidence must incline toward a conclusion.] Evidence of everything is evidence of nothing.

If I wake up and see my cat, I do not have evidence that every being in the world has been turned into cats.

[ChristianSt]

You are still confusing evidence and proof. Any one fact, no matter how insufficient to prove a case is still evidence. In our given example, fact #1 is insufficient, but so are facts 2-9 individually insufficient. If we say 1 fact is no evidence, then 9 facts are no evidence. 9x0=0. But in our case, 9 facts are highly convincing. In many cases we would have stopped well short of 9 and made our conclusion. So each fact is evidence. Insufficient in many cases, possibly all, but insufficient is not "none whatsoever".

So we have enough evidence for to proof that all humans have dragon ancestry and we have at the same time proof that not all humans have dragon ancestry? (And even if we didn't have that proof, we would have equally enough evidence to claim a proof).

So only way to resolve this problem of Schrödinger's ancestry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat) is to just measure the ancestry to get the result ... oh wait, we had such a measurement (the whole comic after 639).

Applying that logic you could nearly "proof" anything you wanted: Here, I have proof that all humans can survive a 10km free fall, because there is at least one human who did survive it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_fall#Surviving_falls). (Disclaimer: please don't try this at home)

[F.Harr]

There calender is only a little more than a thousand years old. We don't know how old the OOTS world is.

O.K., let me take this seriously. OotS is not Arda from Tolkien's work. Mr. Berlew did not spend decades fiddling with a fully-developed and indepent world for his own enjoyment. This is a parody so we've got no reason to assume that things are other than what they seem to be. If the date is 1189 we can reasonably assume that it's "anno mundi", as it were. This is because one of the things being parodied is roll-playing games and roll-playing games come with worlds that intended to be fully-functioning and as full of as many characters as the imagination of campaign designers, D.M.'s and players can come up with. There's no Earthly reason why it HAS to to be an older world becasue it doesn't take place on a world like Earth. It takes place in a world like Dungeons and Dragons including a slew of creater-gods.

Also, as has been noted, the Giant (in his booming, inhuman--'cause he's a giant, see--and occationally irritated voice) has stated that the world the OotS'ers inhabit was created "fully populated". That sounds to me like "in the beginning" there wasn't a thousand or two mew critters of each species, but hundreds of millions. Undoubtedly, some bloodline have run out. Others expanded. Still others stagnated. But unless they intermaried, they are seperate. What V did was extinguish all bloodlines related to one dragon. Assuming that there are millions of sapient bloodlines out there, as horrendous a thing as V did, it's still a vast minority of all that exist.

"There is no recursiveness or whatever. Penelope's actual child was targeted in Step 1, Penelope was targeted in Step 2. Penelope's theoretical child with Tarquin is also targeted, because that child and Penelope's actual child have shared ancestors. Tarquin, however, has no shared ancestors with the actual child, so he's safe. The spell does not check for people with shared ancestors for people killed only by Step 2."

O.K. That makes logical sense.

"Suddenly, Mitochondrial Eve is a lot more terrifying as a concept."

Thank god, spells like that don't really work, huh?

"I guess I just prefer using terms like 'ancestor' and 'descendant' over 'bloodline' or 'sharing the blood' because the former are more specific and therefore, to my mind, clearer."

I can see that.

"2) More importantly, while yes, the number of ancestors increases exponentially the further back in time you go, due to inbreeding there is going to be a lot of overlap in your ancestry. It is hard to calculate mathematically how much of an effect this has, but I would doubt that even on our world, where long distance travel has been widespread for a number of generations now, everyone can trace their ancestry back to say, Julius Caesar."

That's a fair point and one that's easy to forget. There's actually a Straight Dope collumn touching on that.

"I am the descendent (in that sense) of some fraction of the humans that were alive 1000 years ago, but to many of them I am unrelated unless you go farther back than that. 30,000 or so years ago the human population bottleneck was so small and localized that we may be related to most of them, but how many evolutionary dead ends from there? It's not just individuals who didn't have children that you're not related to, what if none of their children reproduce, or none of their grandchildren?"

That's much in the same vein. Cool.

[137beth]

O.K., let me take this seriously. OotS is not Arda from Tolkien's work. Mr. Berlew did not spend decades fiddling with a fully-developed and indepent world for his own enjoyment. This is a parody so we've got no reason to assume that things are other than what they seem to be. If the date is 1189 we can reasonably assume that it's "anno mundi", as it were. This is because one of the things being parodied is roll-playing games and roll-playing games come with worlds that intended to be fully-functioning and as full of as many characters as the imagination of campaign designers, D.M.'s and players can come up with. There's no Earthly reason why it HAS to to be an older world becasue it doesn't take place on a world like Earth. It takes place in a world like Dungeons and Dragons including a slew of creater-gods.

Also, as has been noted, the Giant (in his booming, inhuman--'cause he's a giant, see--and occationally irritated voice) has stated that the world the OotS'ers inhabit was created "fully populated". That sounds to me like "in the beginning" there wasn't a thousand or two mew critters of each species, but hundreds of millions. Undoubtedly, some bloodline have run out. Others expanded. Still others stagnated. But unless they intermaried, they are seperate. What V did was extinguish all bloodlines related to one dragon. Assuming that there are millions of sapient bloodlines out there, as horrendous a thing as V did, it's still a vast minority of all that exist.
*sigh*
Sabine purports to be more than 2000 years old. There's no reason to expect that she is lying, any more than we should jump to the conclusion that the world is less than 2000 years old. We don't really know how old the OOTS world is.

[NCoffin]

Wasn't the age of the world discussed at some length in another thread? I seem to recall this conversation happening nearly verbatim already.

[hamishspence]

*sigh*
Sabine purports to be more than 2000 years old. There's no reason to expect that she is lying, any more than we should jump to the conclusion that the world is less than 2000 years old. We don't really know how old the OOTS world is.

The gods are much older than the world. They hid after the Snarl wreaked havoc (destroying a previous world), before creating the new one. No reason why other outsiders could not have done the same.

[Rogar Demonblud]

One family out of thousands of families does not make for good statistical evidence.

The Draketooth clan is the only family line we've seen that we know has dragon ancestry. The Greenhilt family? No evidence. Elan's family? No evidence. Haley's? No evidence. V's? No evidence. Belkar's? No evidence. Durkon's? No evidence. And that's just the main cast. Of all the humanoids, the only proven dragon bloodline is the Draketooth clan.

Extrapolating that all humans have dragon ancestry from that is the equivalent of saying that all humans are Lawful Good, since the entirety of Roy's family is Lawful Good.

Incorrect on two points. Enor is half blue dragon, half ogre. And Julia Greenhilt is True Neutral (or at least was at the time of the Cliffport arc).

[137beth]

The gods are much older than the world. They hid after the Snarl wreaked havoc (destroying a previous world), before creating the new one. No reason why other outsiders could not have done the same.

Yes, it is entirely possible. But we don't have any proof of such--it is quite possible that the OOTS world is substantially older than Sabine, and it is quite possible that it is not. We don't have proof of either claim.

F.Harr seems convinced that we are definitively certain of the age of the OOTS world. This is false.

[Math_Mage]

Yes, it is entirely possible. But we don't have any proof of such--it is quite possible that the OOTS world is substantially older than Sabine, and it is quite possible that it is not. We don't have proof of either claim.

F.Harr seems convinced that we are definitively certain of the age of the OOTS world. This is false.

On the other hand, we are definitively certain that the author has made the world young enough that the black dragons aren't all related yet. Thankfully, this is enough, and we don't need F.Harr's stronger conjecture.

If I had Races of the Dragon handy or knew anything about dragon life cycles off the top of my head (other than that they reach Young Adult at 50yo and Adult at 100yo), we could use the Giant's hypothetical of 100 initial black dragons to guess at how old the world might be now. Of course, it'd be completely pointless since it's just a hypothetical...but hey, it's an excuse to do math.

[137beth]

On the other hand, we are definitively certain that the author has made the world young enough that the black dragons aren't all related yet. Thankfully, this is enough, and we don't need F.Harr's stronger conjecture.

If I had Races of the Dragon handy or knew anything about dragon life cycles off the top of my head (other than that they reach Young Adult at 50yo and Adult at 100yo), we could use the Giant's hypothetical of 100 initial black dragons to guess at how old the world might be now. Of course, it'd be completely pointless since it's just a hypothetical...but hey, it's an excuse to do math.

We don't need an excuse to do math, it is its own excuse:smallbiggrin:

[Porthos]

We know that other worlds exist. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0633.html) No reason we can't presume that Sabine kicked around on some of them.

[David Argall]

Actually we can, because as people have told you many times, there is obvious evidence that not everyone has the ancestry you claim: they are alive.
But that is the proof that the spell is being used illogically. The spell should kill a great many people, possibly all. Having nearly all survive produces a contradiction.



You have concocted out of nothing the idea that Familicide wasn't enacted properly, and then based on this nothing argued that all humans should be dead because they must have dragon ancestry. You have no actual evidence that everyone has dragon ancestry, you just say that because it can't be proven that they don't, they must have, and therefore they should be dead, and therefore Familicide wasn't enacted properly. Do you really not see how ludicrous this is?
Here again we have that tendency to deny evidence by claiming none exists. It can be an effective rhetorical device, but it is almost without exception wrong. The evidence is often weak, but it is rarely completely absent.
Here we have a claim the spell kills all descendants, with no limit on generations. That makes math evidence. Each generation the number of descendants about doubles, until we start duplicating ancestor, and eventually all members of the group are descendants of all ancients who have any descendants. So the math is evidence that this is the case.
Now we can expand on that. 639 tells us that at least 60 breedable dragons were killed. That is clearly a minimul figure. Now we can note that 3 of these dragons were half dragons. 842 gives us 3 more half-dragons, who are not in 639. So inter species sex is not rare among black dragons.
Adding to that figure is that these half-dragons will be living shorter lives than the full dragons. So our 6 half-dragons are all born in the last century or so, and each previous century would have their own half-dragons who are now deceased [but left descendants in many cases]. Not nearly as large a percentage of the dragons would die before the spell could get them. So half-dragons will appear in good numbers.
And the half-dragons breed into the general population even more so. We note in our case that the unions only happened a century or so ago and the descendants numbered in the dozens. We start considering half-dragon born several centuries ago, and our descendants reach the millions each.
Note too, that the spell hit world-wide. Unlike a pure human case, where all of population A would have dragon blood, while population B, on the far side of a mountain range, might have none for a substantial period, here we would have dragon flying over the mountains, and infecting both populations. So we would have a case much closer to the pure mathematical doubling each generation. Among the short lived humans a very large percentage would be vulnerable to the spell, and any shorter lives species would be wiped out. So the sight of creatures not dying is proof of a logical flaw.
Now for most purposes, this is not too serious. Our writer wanted a dramatic effect, which he got, and and a reason why the party has to be more than mere messengers. indeed need to do just about all the heroics, which he also got. [He may have some other reason as well of course, but these are enough.] All he needed of the logic is that it sounded plausible. Mere logic error were not worth bothering about, particularly when you need a stripe out tomorrow.
However, for us that means that deep logic chains are routinely faulty. We are not able to prove that NPC 2349 had 17 grandkids instead of 16.

[hamishspence]

The spell should kill a great many people, possibly all. Having nearly all survive produces a contradiction.

Or- your assumptions are in error.

Not to mention that step 2:


Step 2: Kill everyone who shares blood with any of the people killed in Step 1. Think of it as killing everyone descended from (or siblings to) any and all still-living ancestors of each secondary target. So if Penelope had a grandfather on one side and a great-grandmother on the other side who were still alive, every person who could trace their blood back to either of those people would be [/B]dead, because Penelope's daughter carries both of their bloods. If a person can only trace their blood through (say) Penelope's already-dead great-great-great-grandfather, then they're safe. Thus cousins and second-cousins and the like are all dead, but more distant genetic relations are not. It is possible for some cousins to survive if all older generations were already dead, yes, but Vaarsuvius wasn't really likely to take the time to make that distinction while sobbing on a dungeon hallway floor.

allows the chain to break, if an ancestor is already dead at the time of Familicide.

[Math_Mage]

But that is the proof that the spell is being used illogically. The spell should kill a great many people, possibly all. Having nearly all survive produces a contradiction.
And we're back to the 'postulate a world where my claim is true, assert that we're using that world in contradiction of the author's description of his own world, and claim victory' line of argument.

You keep asserting that the author is deliberately ignoring logic for dramatic effect, despite that the author has explicitly laid out his logic. Isn't that, y'know, completely ignorant? And insulting to his effort at explanation? If he was ignoring logic for dramatic effect, why the hell would he bother explaining his spell's logic? Your disconnect from reality is simply jarring.


Or- your assumptions are in error.

Not to mention that step 2:


Step 2: Kill everyone who shares blood with any of the people killed in Step 1. Think of it as killing everyone descended from (or siblings to) any and all still-living ancestors of each secondary target. So if Penelope had a grandfather on one side and a great-grandmother on the other side who were still alive, every person who could trace their blood back to either of those people would be [/B]dead, because Penelope's daughter carries both of their bloods. If a person can only trace their blood through (say) Penelope's already-dead great-great-great-grandfather, then they're safe. Thus cousins and second-cousins and the like are all dead, but more distant genetic relations are not. It is possible for some cousins to survive if all older generations were already dead, yes, but Vaarsuvius wasn't really likely to take the time to make that distinction while sobbing on a dungeon hallway floor.

allows the chain to break, if an ancestor is already dead at the time of Familicide.

No, hamishspence, you haven't grasped the mind-boggling delusion at work here. The argument is that every human MUST have black dragon ancestry tracing back to ABD, and would therefore be wiped out in Step 1 of the spell. This is the level of ignorance you are dealing with.

[jere7my]

Here we have a claim the spell kills all descendants, with no limit on generations. That makes math evidence. Each generation the number of descendants about doubles, until we start duplicating ancestor, and eventually all members of the group are descendants of all ancients who have any descendants. So the math is evidence that this is the case.

It's really not. Populations are not homogenous. We don't know how much contact the various groups of humans have had. If the world began 1100 years ago with a thousand geographically isolated and spontaneously created villages, and they only started coming into contact and intermarrying a hundred years ago, the bloodlines will still be largely distinct.

If, on earth, the gods had created year-one populations in South Africa and Australia and Poland and Siberia and Thailand and Chad and Mexico and Chile and Canada, then sat back and watched until the middle ages began, how many people in Chad would share a common ancestor at that point with someone in Canada?

What if the first dragon-human crossbreed happened about a century ago? What if it was culturally taboo for black dragons to mate with humans until then, and then suddenly it became trendy? Would that affect the "math evidence"?

The math evidence is insufficient. We need to know the details of the history, and we don't.


Mere logic error were not worth bothering about, particularly when you need a stripe out tomorrow.

Mere grammar and spelling error were not worth bothering about neither, apparently.

[The Giant]

Oh, guys, you should know by now that David Argall has a long history of deciding I'm wrong and than badgering everyone about it with passive sentence construction until they give up arguing with him.

So, just to be clear:

1.) The people created at the moment of the planet's creation were all unrelated to each other, or perhaps only related in small groups—a family of 5 or 10 might have been created, but with no relation to all the other families being simultaneously created. Why? Because.

2.) There is no reason to think that just because the comic shows something that it is statistically likely, or that the number of panels I draw of something is intended to be a statement about the frequency of such a thing. I do not draw the comic based on statistics or demographics, I draw it based on what looks good.

3.) Yes, the proof that not all humans have the blood of that specific black dragon is the fact that they didn't all die. Things aren't errors just because they don't support your preferred assumptions. It just means your assumptions are wrong.

4.) Explicitly, I am going to say that no black dragon, ever, in the history of the world, ever mated with any human being until Girard's grandparents. Some black dragons mated with other species, and some other colors of dragon mated with humans. But black dragons and humans? One time only in the history of OOTS-world. That's canon now. Done.

It's now impossible for any humans to have died other than the Draketooths and the families they intermingled with in the last 5 generations. And since Step 2 of the spell requires a LIVING link to keep the chain going, humans that have no living ancestors with those people are safe.

So, yeah. The spell works exactly as I explained, it's just the world that works differently than assumed. Which is exactly what I said the first time I explained how it worked.

[Math_Mage]

Ah, duly noted. In all respects.

[factotum]

One time only in the history of OOTS-world. That's canon now. Done.

Ah, if only mere Word of God were sufficient to stop these never-ending arguments--nice try, though, will be interesting to see how they try to work round *that*. :smallsmile:

[137beth]

Ah, if only mere Word of God were sufficient to stop these never-ending arguments--nice try, though, will be interesting to see how they try to work round *that*. :smallsmile:

Oh, that would be easy. I'd guess that Argall would say something like "so now we posit that there have been several matings between black dragons and humans. We therefore conclude that the Giant's comment could not have been accurate":tongue:

I mean, when you are willing to go to extreme lengths to deny really obvious in-comic proof, it isn't that hard to make up similarly silly reasons why the WoG is just as "wrong" as the comic. No, I don't expect the Giant specifically settling this dispute to actually end the dispute, even though it should:smallamused:

[Torrasque]

Oh, guys, you should know by now that David Argall has a long history of deciding I'm wrong and than badgering everyone about it with passive sentence construction until they give up arguing with him.


Well he is a Troll in the playground :P

[Aldrakan]

Looking up black dragons, it's not hard to imagine that very few humans would want to mate with, much less have an extended relationship with one that wasn't pretty abnormal.
Going from the description they're sadistic, cowardly, skull-faced, and of course live in swamps and eat rotten meat, and don't really seem to have any ambition beyond hurting people at random and collecting treasure they store in filthy water. Even for evil people, these are not very attractive qualities.

[ZerglingOne]

Editedit: Scratch that, step 2 would also kill all life on earth if anyone was hit in step 1.

On Earth? Maybe. You have to consider that in the world created by the pantheons of OotS, many families of specific creatures were created at the same time. This makes it possible for only some of any creature to be killed off by Familicide.

[pearl jam]

On Earth? Maybe. You have to consider that in the world created by the pantheons of OotS, many families of specific creatures were created at the same time. This makes it possible for only some of any creature to be killed off by Familicide.

From the wording I can't tell if you saw it or not, but the Giant gives the definitive answer to these issues on the previous page (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15461169#post15461169) of this thread.

[hamishspence]

I'm wondering- did Girard bring the children of his aunt, his uncle, and his siblings, into his organization, as well as his own children?

(The siblings of his half-dragon parent look like an aunt and an uncle here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0842.html).)

[factotum]

Looking up black dragons, it's not hard to imagine that very few humans would want to mate with, much less have an extended relationship with one that wasn't pretty abnormal.

Because a normal human would just love to get it on with, say, a blue dragon? :smallsmile:

Seriously, you kind of have to assume that the dragon was polymorphed into a human for the purposes of consummating the relationship--I don't think I need to explain why, do I?

[Silver Swift]

On Earth? Maybe. You have to consider that in the world created by the pantheons of OotS, many families of specific creatures were created at the same time. This makes it possible for only some of any creature to be killed off by Familicide.

Uhm, yeah I know. That was kind of my point in that first edit (the one I corrected in the edit you quoted).

Also, I don't think there is any maybe about it, all life on earth shares a common ancestor somewhere way back so if any living being on earth was targeted by either of the steps everything dies. So yeah, good thing we don't have any epic level evil necromancers running around :smallsmile: .

[Valtiel]

Because a normal human would just love to get it on with, say, a blue dragon? :smallsmile:

Seriously, you kind of have to assume that the dragon was polymorphed into a human for the purposes of consummating the relationship--I don't think I need to explain why, do I?

The breadth and depth of human sexuality is pretty astounding. I could probably find someone who'd just love to get it on with a blue dragon in a couple of hours, if I wasn't at work.

[pendell]

Didn't someone actually write up familicide as programming pseudocode awhile back? Didn't the giant approve it as correct?

ETA: Found it. Halaku's Familicide simulation (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=280163) . And the giant neither approved nor disapproved it.


Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Aldrakan]

Because a normal human would just love to get it on with, say, a blue dragon? :smallsmile:

Seriously, you kind of have to assume that the dragon was polymorphed into a human for the purposes of consummating the relationship--I don't think I need to explain why, do I?

I think black dragons are probably the least visually appealing in their true form, and I wouldn't rule that out as a factor entirely. Just because they can polymorph into someone pretty doesn't necessarily mean a mate is going to forget that they really spend most of their time soaking in foul water. It's not an attractive image.

Still whatever the fantasy equivalent of rule 34 is aside, I was referring mostly to the personality and location aspects. Most humans don't like to hang out in dank swamps, most people don't find sadistic cowards attractive from a personality standpoint, and even evil humans have standards.
I know that all dragons have high Charisma by default (of course by default red dragons are intelligent), but black dragons seem like the most repellent and least impressive of all the chromatics.

Compare blue dragons, going by the description here http://dragons.wikia.com/wiki/Blue_Dragon_%28Dungeons_%26_Dragons%29.

They're quick to battle anyone they think doesn't respect them, even when this means fighting dangerous foes, and strength is something a lot of cultures respect. At the same time they're capable of living as peaceful neighbors to humanoid communities, and they like having people around to serve them. They don't favor eating sentients over other creatures, they don't do things just out of cruelty, and they base their treasure hoard based on what they think is beautiful instead of just piling up a bunch of coins. They are overall less unpleasant and more impressive in basically every way.

Sure it's still not going to be all that common but yes, I think that a lot more humans would want to get it on with a blue dragon than a black one.

[NCoffin]

Could a shapeshifted black dragon not simply lie about their true form to avoid the isue of unappealing swamp-dwelling habits?

[pendell]

Quite so. How about a one night stand? Dragon polymorphs into human, goes into town, meets a member of the opposite sex at the singles bar, segue to a motel room, they never see each other again. If the dragon is female, there's a chance her partner would never realize that his partner was not born human but simply polymorphed into one.

Or maybe ... I may express this wrong -- in the real world there are transsexuals?

Well .. what if the same thing happens in a fantasy world across species instead of merely across genders? What if you have a dragon that believes with all its heart it should have been born a human? If s/he has access to polymorph magic, s/he can actually make him/herself into a human permanently without surgery or hormones. He/she can live his/her whole life as a human, never letting on to other humans that they are human by magic rather than by birth, falls in love with a human, and then the issue only comes up when the offspring are .. .born? Hatched?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Aldrakan]

Could a shapeshifted black dragon not simply lie about their true form to avoid the isue of unappealing swamp-dwelling habits?

Certainly. I'm not speaking in absolutes, and indeed we know that there has been a stable human-black dragon relationship. It's just that adds another barrier, and makes it less likely to happen.
Also black dragons seem very unsociable compared with some other dragons. They're less likely to seek out a human for companionship. And given their sadism I think any coupling has a decent chance of being (a) coerced and (b) ending with the human's death.

The point is that Girard's grandparents were likely the result of a very unusual situation, a very unusual human, a very unusual black dragon, or some combination. Not impossible, but rare, which is why it's only happened once in a thousand+ years.

[Doug Lampert]

Certainly. I'm not speaking in absolutes, and indeed we know that there has been a stable human-black dragon relationship. It's just that adds another barrier, and makes it less likely to happen.
Also black dragons seem very unsociable compared with some other dragons. They're less likely to seek out a human for companionship. And given their sadism I think any coupling has a decent chance of being (a) coerced and (b) ending with the human's death.

The point is that Girard's grandparents were likely the result of a very unusual situation, a very unusual human, a very unusual black dragon, or some combination. Not impossible, but rare, which is why it's only happened once in a thousand+ years.

Polymorph is level 4 the earliest a blacks can get it is at very old (600 years); blue and green at old (400 years); red and the metalics at mature (200 years), white at anchient (800 years).

Three of the matalics get alternate form younger than they could cast polymorph and without spending a precious spell known.

So we're looking at a kinky unusually social black dragon, physically very old (601+ years), and that chose polymorph for one of its 2-4 (depending on age) level 4 spells. Which few dragons particularly interested in combat will since there aren't many better forms for a dragon to assume than "dragon".

[Aldrakan]

So we're looking at a kinky unusually social black dragon, physically very old (601+ years), and that chose polymorph for one of its 2-4 (depending on age) level 4 spells. Which few dragons particularly interested in combat will since there aren't many better forms for a dragon to assume than "dragon".

Okay that sounds pretty rare. Although could one use a scroll to do this earlier and with less penalty?

[Shale]

True, but then you'd need "kinky, unusually social, and willing to expend money and/or time and effort in the interest of polymorphing to a human for purposes of nookie." Which would still be pretty rare.

[hamishspence]

Maybe it was like with Therkla's parents?
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0555.html

[F.Harr]

*sigh*
Sabine purports to be more than 2000 years old.

Really, where?


There's no reason to expect that she is lying. . .

Well, she IS evil


. . . any more than we should jump to the conclusion that the world is less than 2000 years old. We don't really know how old the OOTS world is.

Hmmm. Intersting. Is it possible that she was created BEFORE the world as the OotS'ers know it?



F.Harr seems convinced that we are definitively certain of the age of the OOTS world. This is false.

Actually, I'm convinced that we are have a reasonable guess on the age of the world. One I'd confidently lay a small amount of money on.


We don't need an excuse to do math, it is its own excuse:smallbiggrin:

That's true.


It's really not. Populations are not homogenous. We don't know how much contact the various groups of humans have had. If the world began 1100 years ago with a thousand geographically isolated and spontaneously created villages, and they only started coming into contact and intermarrying a hundred years ago, the bloodlines will still be largely distinct.

If, on earth, the gods had created year-one populations in South Africa and Australia and Poland and Siberia and Thailand and Chad and Mexico and Chile and Canada, then sat back and watched until the middle ages began, how many people in Chad would share a common ancestor at that point with someone in Canada?

What if the first dragon-human crossbreed happened about a century ago? What if it was culturally taboo for black dragons to mate with humans until then, and then suddenly it became trendy? Would that affect the "math evidence"?

The math evidence is insufficient. We need to know the details of the history, and we don't.


Huh. That's a fairly good point.


Oh, guys, you should know by now that David Argall has a long history of deciding I'm wrong and than badgering everyone about it with passive sentence construction until they give up arguing with him.

That's a shame. I've stopped reading his posts, by the way.


1.) The people created at the moment of the planet's creation were all unrelated to each other, or perhaps only related in small groups—a family of 5 or 10 might have been created, but with no relation to all the other families being simultaneously created. Why? Because.

It's what a game creator would do. Why make a world where everyon is a second cousin?


2.) There is no reason to think that just because the comic shows something that it is statistically likely, or that the number of panels I draw of something is intended to be a statement about the frequency of such a thing. I do not draw the comic based on statistics or demographics, I draw it based on what looks good.

As well you should. Thank you for that.


4.) Explicitly, I am going to say that no black dragon, ever, in the history of the world, ever mated with any human being until Girard's grandparents. Some black dragons mated with other species, and some other colors of dragon mated with humans. But black dragons and humans? One time only in the history of OOTS-world. That's canon now. Done.

Awwww, too bad.


So, yeah. The spell works exactly as I explained, it's just the world that works differently than assumed. Which is exactly what I said the first time I explained how it worked.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'd call that definative. If you place this spell in that world, you get the effect portrayed. You need both parts to understand what is now explained: How familicidie stopped.

Everyone cool, now?

"Going from the description [black dragons] sadistic, cowardly, skull-faced, and of course live in swamps and eat rotten meat, and don't really seem to have any ambition beyond hurting people at random and collecting treasure they store in filthy water. Even for evil people, these are not very attractive qualities."

That explains a certian amount. But apparantely, they DO live this hatchlings.

"So yeah, good thing we don't have any epic level evil necromancers running around ."

Word. Double-word. Tripple-word-score.

"Or maybe ... I may express this wrong -- in the real world there are transsexuals?

Well .. what if the same thing happens in a fantasy world across species instead of merely across genders? What if you have a dragon that believes with all its heart it should have been born a human? If s/he has access to polymorph magic, s/he can actually make him/herself into a human permanently without surgery or hormones. He/she can live his/her whole life as a human, never letting on to other humans that they are human by magic rather than by birth, falls in love with a human, and then the issue only comes up when the offspring are .. .born? Hatched?"

Wow. THAT would be wild.

[jere7my]

Hmmm. Intersting. Is it possible that she was created BEFORE the world as the OotS'ers know it?

If Rich uses standard D&D cosmology, the planet on which OotS takes place is one speck on one of an infinite number of prime material planes. The Abyss, and the other outer planes, could very easily predate the OotS world—and almost certainly do, since the gods had to live somewhere before they made the world. As a native of the Abyss, Sabine could certainly be older than the planet.

[hamishspence]

Given that Ganonron is supposed to have conquered "world after world"
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0633.html

and given Roy's description of the Outer Planes here:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0669.html

it is possible that it is at least based on the standard D&D chronology, even if it may vary in the specifics.

[Aldrakan]

Well .. what if the same thing happens in a fantasy world across species instead of merely across genders? What if you have a dragon that believes with all its heart it should have been born a human? If s/he has access to polymorph magic, s/he can actually make him/herself into a human permanently without surgery or hormones. He/she can live his/her whole life as a human, never letting on to other humans that they are human by magic rather than by birth, falls in love with a human, and then the issue only comes up when the offspring are .. .born? Hatched?

Brian P.

There are people in our world who feel this way, who identify themselves as partially or entirely nonhuman who have been born in the wrong bodies. Called Otherkin. My knowledge on this topic extends to "these people exist", so I'm not going to say any more about it.

However, it seems unlikely that the dragon Girard is descended from felt that way, as the family tree portrays him in dragon form.

[SaintRidley]

It's now impossible for any humans to have died other than the Draketooths and the families they intermingled with in the last 5 generations.

So what you're saying is that there there are five generations of Draketooths.

Good info. For what I don't know, but still good.


Quite so. How about a one night stand? Dragon polymorphs into human, goes into town, meets a member of the opposite sex of their human body at the singles bar, segue to a motel room, they never see each other again. If the dragon is female, there's a chance her partner would never realize that his partner was not born human but simply polymorphed into one.

Slight addition there, since we can't rule out the possibility that our dragon went with a sex different from its own. It's something shapechangers tend to do, if Sabine is any indication.

[Porthos]

Given that Ganonron is supposed to have conquered "world after world"
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0633.html

and given Roy's description of the Outer Planes here:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0669.html

it is possible that it is at least based on the standard D&D chronology, even if it may vary in the specifics.

Yeah, people keep forgetting about things like Spelljammer and Planescape specifically allow for multiple (campaign) worlds. Even if one ignores that, in non-Planescape/Spelljammer books there was discussions of of infinite prime material planes. They even had guidelines for low/high magic and low/high tech worlds back in the day.

Allowing for multiple worlds also allows for Familicide to go off somewhere else without it nuking OotSWorld.

[rodneyAnonymous]

Depending on the setting, there may be many material planes but there can only be one prime material plane. The inhabitants of each material plane refer to their own plane as the "prime material plane"; but there is no perspective from which it is appropriate to refer to multiple planes as "prime", except for references such as the first clause of this sentence. One material plane may contain multiple worlds.

The More You Know.

[Fish]

Oh, guys, you should know by now that David Argall has a long history of deciding I'm wrong and than badgering everyone about it with passive sentence construction until they give up arguing with him.
"First, assume the cow is a sphere..."

[jere7my]

Depending on the setting, there may be many material planes but there can only be one prime material plane. The inhabitants of each material plane refer to their own plane as the "prime material plane"; but there is no perspective from which it is appropriate to refer to multiple planes as "prime", except for references such as the first clause of this sentence. One material plane may contain multiple worlds.

I think the "prime" distinguishes it from the elemental planes, which are in a sense "secondary material planes" (though I don't remember them ever being called that). Certainly there have been plenty of references in D&D to parallel prime material planes and so on.

[Nimrod's Son]

Man, this thread takes me back.

(Specifically to here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102983), a discussion so stuffed with epic Argallments that it's still burned into my memory four-and-a-half years later)

[Math_Mage]

Man, this thread takes me back.

(Specifically to here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102983), a discussion so stuffed with epic Argallments that it's still burned into my memory four-and-a-half years later)

ogodthatthread

so painful to read >.<

[SaintRidley]

This one will forever be a favorite of mine. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80556&page=3)

[The Giant]

OK, OK, knock it off.

Thread locked.