Posted In: comic
– Just so you know, I’m having dental surgery this week. I’m not sure how long it will take me to recover, so the newxt Pirate strip may not be till Friday or even next Monday. I have some filler stuff to post, so please come back and check that out.
– Also, this is the last week to order the Pirates shirt. Just $20! Available in White, Red, Green and Blue. Order here.
It’s hard to pass a stealth check when you have to speak to make your weapon appear.
The thing that gets to me here is that it bounced. I suppose that is why they are employed as soldiers. They are bulletproof, even when someone powers up the attack with mermaid magic.
Unless the mermaid used nonlethal bullets via her magic. Possible, but unlikely, since we established this is a STABBIN’ chapter, and the author could have had it hit the shoulder if he didn’t want to kill the character.
Yeah, Fairies are VERY tough. You can knock them out (that’s what happened here), but they’re very hard to kill.
That’s a pretty pathetic gun if the bullets bounce off
Raccoon is just that tough.
I’m guessing that mermaid magic was used to dry the gunpowder?
That’s exactly it. I couldn’t figure out a good way to indicate that, so I just hoped that people would realize this is what she’s doing.
A ‘suck’ sound effect and water drops might have made that a little clearer
A silent grumble in the panel “Gotta dry this junk each and every single freakin’ time”.
Mermaid Magic, makes Guns actually LESS effective.
But he had two hands when he was at the tavern.
No wonder Racoon has trouble remembering what he looks like.
How about it turns out in Yeld his kind can regenerate limbs but he wants to look like a cool pirate so he secretly wears a hook over his hand, and his eye is fine but you Gotta have the look I mean that’s what being a pirate captains all about!!
Raccoon the Medusa: *STAB* Oh… was I supposed to do that?
Mermaid: *gasp* NO!
Raccoon the Medusa: Oh, sorry!
Raccoon (picking himself off the deck): *sigh*
>:=)>
Sometimes, it’s just that hard to hit an armor class that high. Back in my day, raccoons only had an armor class 10… NOWADAYS they just give em like 30 AC. Bull tarter.
?
When I used to play AD&D, Armor Class 10 was an unarmored human… so 30 would be a REALLY bad armor class.
Armor class 0 was kinda the base, hence THAC0 – number needed To Hit Armor Class 0.
I must guess that your Armor Class of 30 is some other system?
More recent D&D uses a “higher number is better” scale.
In the AD&D first and second editions, Armor Class 0 (zero) was the equivalent of full plate armor and a shield. It went all the way to -10 (negative ten), which… were super armored and hard to hit gods and things.
Fantastic panel! 😀
Now they’re going to get a mermaid on the crew… eventually.
(Sorry if this ends up being a repeat I posted a reply to a comment but I haven’t seen it appear, please delete this one if that is the case)
You could explain away the captains reappear in hand on the fact that due to this being a magical world his species could have regenerative powers, but he keeps the eyepatch and hook because well he’s the pirate captain, gotta have the look!!
I decided not to delete this because its a good opportunity to explain that comment s dont appear until I approve them.
It used to be that the comment would be displayed when posted, but only on the browser that posted it. So the original poster would see their comment, but it would not be visible to anyone else until Jake approved it. Then something changed, and the comments stopped being displayed even to the OP prior to approval.
Are you sure about that? As far as I know no comments have ever been posted without being approved first. Or do you mean that they were only visible to the poster?
That’s what I said, and yes: my comments would be visible to me immediately after they were posted (that’s how I knew on those occasions when I had messed up my HTML tags), but it soon became obvious that they were not visible to anyone else, and nobody else’s comments were visible to me, until they had been released. The main giveaway: quite often the comments would appear empty when I posted, but I would come back later to find lots of comments posted before mine now visible.
I can’t remember when the change came now, I think it was around a year ago, but the system stopped displaying my comments back to me when I posted them. I did wonder, the first time it happened, whether my comment had been eaten, but decided to wait it out.
Interesting. I wasn’t aware of that at all.
I want to do some math on this, but I’m not very good with math. But…
According to Wikipedia, a flintlock rifle would typically fire its bullet at 800 feet per second, and the bullet would weigh about 214 grains.
A modern bullet in comparison travels 2,500 feet per second, and weighs between 115 grains, and 147 grains. Taking the lesser weight, and doing a little math, the difference in energy is…
171,200 joules(?) compared to 287,500 joules(?) Wow! (Not sure if joules is the right metric here.)
Raccoon doesn’t really seem to reel back from the bullet. It strikes his face, then the force of the bullet is spread out over the face (as seen by the ripples in his cheek). This rippling effect is probably what saved his life. The soft part of his cheek caught the bullet, slowed it down, and dropped it harmlessly to the poop deck.
Bullets are made to spread out when they strike a surface. This is how they kill soft, squishy targets like people, or actual raccoons. It takes a lot of force, and spreads out that force over a wider area on impact… but it’s also the weakness of a bullet. A bulletproof vest has many layers of fabric that dissipate that force over many levels and spreads it all out.
So, in short, Raccoon was saved due to many layers of skin that spread out the energy the bullet was supposed to punch into him. Yay! Science trumps mermaid magic!
That sounds about right.
Ha! Yeah… if you’ve ever been shot while wearing kevlar, the bullet may not actually enter your body, but it will crack ribs and leave a huge bruise and generally hurt like hell.
It’s not an experience I recommend to anyone. It’s a lot better than having a bullet pierce you, but I really recommend neither, just on general principal alone.
So don’t get shot? Ha! Good advice!
Neat! This give me more food for thought on the biology of the fairies of Yeld.
In Yeld, the fairies seem to have many layers of skin. I’m betting that what looks like fat are actually many layers of skin. This is what makes them resilient. This makes me wonder what kinds of creatures they’d be similar to in real life.
Tarantulas. Fairies are like tarantulas.
A tarantula will shed her skin a multiple of times throughout its life. I’m betting that Yeldian fairies do the same thing. As they get bigger, they will molt and shed their skins. When they get to maximum size they probably don’t shed as much, but have wicked nasty dandruff that gets everywhere.
Mind you, I’m applying science to a fictional, magical creature. But it’s what makes sense to me logically.
I’m betting Raccoon is going to wake up with a massive headache, and lots of flaky skin on his cheek. It may even look red and raw.
To learn more about bullets, click here!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXv5KcLFn5w
To learn more about tarantulas, click here!
Um this is interesting thanks! However, I think there may be a little mistake in the calculation.
Kinetic energy (which is what matters here) is (0.5)mv^2. It looks to me like you forgot to square the velocity.
For the flintlock that 68.5 in energy units of “mega grain feetsquared per secondsquared”
For the modern rifle thats 359.4 in the same units. More than five time more potential for destruction. So yes, by any measure, a modern rifle is much more deadly and destructive than an old flintlock.
That “velocity squared” thing comes into play in many ways in real life. For example, a collision at 60 mph is much more than twice as likely to kill you than a collision at 30 mph.
By the way “Joules” would be the right unit if we converted velocities to meters/second and mass to kilograms. But that’s not really needed for purposes of comparison.
Thanks! I was about to type that I knew that I was forgetting something, except I wasn’t forgetting anything since I literally had no idea what I was talking about ^_^;
But I feel kinda good knowing that I was somewhat in the same ballpark. Woot!