Mahou Senki Lyrical Nanoha Force Manga Discussion

[Justin_Brett]

Seems like the wiser move would be to devote all of your resources to one or the other, instead of having two plans of attack that get less funding.

[mielipuoli]

then you risk that one plan being defeated, and you're left without any other options.

[00-Raiser]

Don't count your eggs in one basket until they hatch, after all.

[Kuze]

So, I was thinking about canon and fanon, I read chapter 15 in spanish, and came up with a bit of a theory about Eclipse.

Back during the bad old days of the Belkan wars, Garea went to drastic measures to fight off its rivals, and came up with a deterrence bioweapon: the Mariage. As a defensive weapon, it was highly unpopular around populated worlds of the Empire. But it was a first class threat, even in the face of the Sankt Kaiser's Cradle. Not that the Mariage could actually do anything, even in overwhelming mass to the Kaiser, or probably the Hegemon or what have you, but they were definite threats to their subjects. Dead people can serve no king other than Ixpellia. Even with the Cradle watching over a planet and blasting away, teleportation of a considerable number of small groups of Mariage from a staging area would get enough of them on the surface to be able to replenish their numbers, staggering initial losses aside.

Of course, the draw was that no one wanted to be allied to Garea (armies of zombies ruling over the living = bad publicity), and everyone in the Belkan wars would've loved to see Ix and the Empire buried forever. And someone from Garea realized that one day, there would be a king reckless enough who would attack Garea without caring about the counter attack of Marriage - and every Belkan king would jump right into the fray after them, even putting aside their fierce rivalries for a moment if it meant destroying Garea. At best, Garea would be left completely uninhabitable for humans, at worst, completely uninhabited.

So, go back to the drawing board. Previously, only dead people could be Mariage and they had no free will of their own, now it was time to allow the living to empower themselves and keep their minds. They looked at the Cradle's powerful anti magic fields, and decided that they needed to go further with mage killing powers to be able to defend their turf. Through extensive experimentation (and severe ethics violations), Garea stumbled across a variation on the Mariage transformation, in what would be the Eclipse virus and, - going off chapter 15 - , the antibodies for the virus. After all, (rather delicate) human bodies have a limit on how much transformation abuse they can take. Too much virus after all does turn them into lumps of meat, hardly useful in a war.

And thus, the Book of the Silver Cross was created to manufacture Reactors and Dividers for the benefit of the more powerful Garea officers, those would be above and beyond the shields of the Mariage, as the spears of Garea. Of course, trial and error was needed to figure out proper balance between the reactor, divider, and driver (chapter 8 of Force), and Garea did not have extensive programs for martial arts or combat training like other areas of Belkan influence.

So, two modification were made: First, the Stroseks were created in order to find someone who could just go "Have a nice heart attack guys!" on even the strongest of Belkan kings. It didn't matter too much if they had far inferior skill than their opponents, the copies of the Book provided sufficient protection and fire support, the Esquad Huckbien dimensional ship had speed and defense as a good transport (it was NOT a warship like the Cradle), all the Zero Drivers had to do was get close enough to their target to go off, like a bomb, weakening their opponents for even a few minutes to allow a good old assassination. And if it indiscriminately affected fellow infected and Mariage, well, hey, kings were worth much more than them in the balance of resources.

Secondly, the Virus gave feelings of intense hatred to those who carried it, to erase fear and give unlimited motivation for the infected to continue fighting. The Reactors were supposed to stop the process once the fighting was over, administering antibodies to the virus and allowing for self control from the infected.

But secrecy was broken, everyone decided that enough was enough, and before the Eclipse research was complete (and someone realized that treating the Strosek like things rather than like people = unproductive), Garea was dogpiled. Public executions for many, disappearances for the knowledgeable officials otherwise, and their knowledge never saw the light of day.

And that's the short version of it. Hope I wasn't too concise.

[Tiresias]

Originally Posted by Mirron

And even if it was meant for Raptors... maybe the Numbers just, you know... refused? I mean, they aren't actually part of the TSAB organization, and they may not want to be involved in combat anymore.

N2R is a TSAB unit, and as one of the raws had shown, at least some of them still wears the uniform.

Originally Posted by Kuze

So, I was thinking about canon and fanon, I read chapter 15 in spanish, and came up with a bit of a theory about Eclipse.

Spoiler for :

Back during the bad old days of the Belkan wars, Garea went to drastic measures to fight off its rivals, and came up with a deterrence bioweapon: the Mariage. As a defensive weapon, it was highly unpopular around populated worlds of the Empire. But it was a first class threat, even in the face of the Sankt Kaiser's Cradle. Not that the Mariage could actually do anything, even in overwhelming mass to the Kaiser, or probably the Hegemon or what have you, but they were definite threats to their subjects. Dead people can serve no king other than Ixpellia. Even with the Cradle watching over a planet and blasting away, teleportation of a considerable number of small groups of Mariage from a staging area would get enough of them on the surface to be able to replenish their numbers, staggering initial losses aside.

Of course, the draw was that no one wanted to be allied to Garea (armies of zombies ruling over the living = bad publicity), and everyone in the Belkan wars would've loved to see Ix and the Empire buried forever. And someone from Garea realized that one day, there would be a king reckless enough who would attack Garea without caring about the counter attack of Marriage - and every Belkan king would jump right into the fray after them, even putting aside their fierce rivalries for a moment if it meant destroying Garea. At best, Garea would be left completely uninhabitable for humans, at worst, completely uninhabited.

So, go back to the drawing board. Previously, only dead people could be Mariage and they had no free will of their own, now it was time to allow the living to empower themselves and keep their minds. They looked at the Cradle's powerful anti magic fields, and decided that they needed to go further with mage killing powers to be able to defend their turf. Through extensive experimentation (and severe ethics violations), Garea stumbled across a variation on the Mariage transformation, in what would be the Eclipse virus and, - going off chapter 15 - , the antibodies for the virus. After all, (rather delicate) human bodies have a limit on how much transformation abuse they can take. Too much virus after all does turn them into lumps of meat, hardly useful in a war.

And thus, the Book of the Silver Cross was created to manufacture Reactors and Dividers for the benefit of the more powerful Garea officers, those would be above and beyond the shields of the Mariage, as the spears of Garea. Of course, trial and error was needed to figure out proper balance between the reactor, divider, and driver (chapter 8 of Force), and Garea did not have extensive programs for martial arts or combat training like other areas of Belkan influence.

So, two modification were made: First, the Stroseks were created in order to find someone who could just go "Have a nice heart attack guys!" on even the strongest of Belkan kings. It didn't matter too much if they had far inferior skill than their opponents, the copies of the Book provided sufficient protection and fire support, the Esquad Huckbien dimensional ship had speed and defense as a good transport (it was NOT a warship like the Cradle), all the Zero Drivers had to do was get close enough to their target to go off, like a bomb, weakening their opponents for even a few minutes to allow a good old assassination. And if it indiscriminately affected fellow infected and Mariage, well, hey, kings were worth much more than them in the balance of resources.

Secondly, the Virus gave feelings of intense hatred to those who carried it, to erase fear and give unlimited motivation for the infected to continue fighting. The Reactors were supposed to stop the process once the fighting was over, administering antibodies to the virus and allowing for self control from the infected.

But secrecy was broken, everyone decided that enough was enough, and before the Eclipse research was complete (and someone realized that treating the Strosek like things rather than like people = unproductive), Garea was dogpiled. Public executions for many, disappearances for the knowledgeable officials otherwise, and their knowledge never saw the light of day.

And that's the short version of it. Hope I wasn't too concise.

Interesting. But you might want to put this here instead.

[Mirron]

Eh, I still think my point on the politics of it all stands. Not wanting to place their stuff in a group they don't really trust. But still, I think it's meant for use by TSAB grunts, not the Raptors.

[itanshi1]

i'd assume hayate thought she could handle this, heck her crew is outfitted with anti rage scream tech

[Tiresias]

Originally Posted by Mirron

Eh, I still think my point on the politics of it all stands. Not wanting to place their stuff in a group they don't really trust. But still, I think it's meant for use by TSAB grunts, not the Raptors.

Okay, here's the thing. These are the only source on the Raptors I have right now:

Originally Posted by Akiyoshi

All of this is pretty interesting but i got my hands on a little more accurate translation of the CW-ADX "Raptor" and it says these bad boys are created to be able to use he Caledfwich Techniques AEC Equips efficiently. Do you see a pattern here?

Originally Posted by Akiyoshi

According to the info the Raptor are "Humanoid Terminal Units" artificially created using "living material" for their bodies(which bring some troubles with TSAB's regulations at the beginning), similar to combat cyborgs but devoid of any individual traits or personality, they function as a mechanic terminal with automatic operation and that can be remote controlled and are(as i said before) optimized to use the AEC equipment efficiently. They are currently on the end stages of the testing phase and CW plans on manufature and release this product to the security market.

So yeah, they're basically human and fleshy lookin Gadget Drones or, if you prefer, soulless numbers.

Now, I understand that second-hand, or even third hand (?) (aki, can you re-confirm?) is not perfect, but personally I still consider it to be much better than our own theories and speculations. If someone can present a better translation on the table, then by all means, please do Until then, I'm sticking with these...

[Akiyoshi]

That's all i got, i can post the Spanish translated image if you want(unless it turns out to be against the forum rules xDU). But yeah, for all intentions and purpouses the Raptors are Terminator-like Numbers.

[Keroko]

Here's what I got from Danbooru on the Raptors

"Cared Wolf Technics (CW) maybe. I'm sure about the Wolf and Technics.

It's a human shaped terminal. Think of it as James Cameron's Avatar (probably a ripoff from that) where a person controls it from afar.

Different from Combat Cyborgs, Raptor doesn't have a trace of life forms in it. Its strength is almost 10 times stronger than a normal human, and can tolerate extreme high and low temperatures as well as operate in vicinities with Poison Gases."

[Akiyoshi]

I wonder if they're really like terminators, you know, lifeless robots covered in living tissue to make them look more human.

[Justin_Brett]

Think of it as James Cameron's Avatar (probably a ripoff from that)

The idea of someone stealing an original idea from that movie is hilarious.

[DezoPenguin]

Originally Posted by Justin_Brett

The idea of someone stealing an original idea from that movie is hilarious.

Or the idea of someone finding an original idea in that movie.

[Keroko]

But its popular! That means it must be the original!

[Kuze]

Narf, next time I put it in the right thread.

Originally Posted by Akiyoshi

I wonder if they're really like terminators, you know, lifeless robots covered in living tissue to make them look more human.

I was personally thinking that it's flash cloned tissue there to help out their basic nervous/sensory systems, especially important when they're being remotely controlled. Even Jail recognized that there are areas where the human body does show the results of millions of years of beta and hotfix, and that they haven't been surpassed yet by anything we have created.

Or he just wanted attractive combat cyborgs.

By his reasoning.

Tsuzuki's I mean.

Damn it!

[FRS]

Originally Posted by Keroko

Here's what I got from Danbooru on the Raptors

"Cared Wolf Technics (CW) maybe. I'm sure about the Wolf and Technics.

It's a human shaped terminal. Think of it as James Cameron's Avatar (probably a ripoff from that) where a person controls it from afar.

Different from Combat Cyborgs, Raptor doesn't have a trace of life forms in it. Its strength is almost 10 times stronger than a normal human, and can tolerate extreme high and low temperatures as well as operate in vicinities with Poison Gases."

So they are human shaped remote controlled drone ?

[Akiyoshi]

Originally Posted by FRS

So they are human shaped drone ?

...and each unit have a power level of 1.4 signums xD

[Skane]

Originally Posted by Keroko

Here's what I got from Danbooru on the Raptors

"Cared Wolf Technics (CW) maybe. I'm sure about the Wolf and Technics.

It's a human shaped terminal. Think of it as James Cameron's Avatar (probably a ripoff from that) where a person controls it from afar.

Different from Combat Cyborgs, Raptor doesn't have a trace of life forms in it. Its strength is almost 10 times stronger than a normal human, and can tolerate extreme high and low temperatures as well as operate in vicinities with Poison Gases."

So it's anti-Isis too? Fore-shadowing?

Tralala.

[Justin_Brett]

Isis has explosive gases, not poisonous ones.

[Keroko]

I would not be surprised in the least if she has some poison mixed in there as well.