Magic and Technology of MGLN

[Jimmy C]

It would have if Deici's shot had actually hit.

[Drethillsh]

Well, maybe, maybe not. Vivio was unconscious at the time, and we don't know if it would have activated by itself or not. And depending on how it activates, it might not have been it time (like putting up a shield after you've been hit).

Though you're probably right.

Edit: But then, Nanoha blocked it maybe 2, 3 meters from Vivio. If it got that close and the Armor didn't activate, it's possible they just meant its latent defense, rather than active defense.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Saint's Armor, from the way it was spoken of in the series, seems most like an inherent 'super toughness' bonus than any kind of special defense that would be active, or inactive, or whatever would be imagined when you read the word 'armor'.

Something like DBZ characters tanking Ki blasts and walking out of the smoke clouds with nary a scratch.

Remember, they don't use the terms for things in quite the literal sense.

Silver Curtain is hardly silver... or a curtain.
Deep Diver has nothing to do with water.
Ride Impulse sounds more like something with a motorcycle than a power that makes Tre move in supersonic blurs.

Saint's Armor is not actually 'armor'.

[Drethillsh]

Well, I see it as being two different things: a natural toughness when inactive, and an actual "super-barrier-jacket" armor when active.

We don't really know, though. There's not much precedent in the Nanohaverse of latent or always-active powers (the closest is the Barrier Jackets, and they still need to be active to be useful).

And while things aren't given literal names, they are usually descriptive ones. A "curtain" would hide things, Sein does literally dive into things, and both "ride" and "impulse" are words associated with speed.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Very true, but saint's Armor doesn't have to be litteral armor (Barrier/Field OR Physical) to be protective. Which is where I think people here are going a bit nuts.

There's nothing showing Saint's Armor to be a (meta)physical armor of any kind. We just know it's some seriously UBER protection.

But people seem to be applying it for the litteral meaning of armor in the last few posts of arguments... I thought I'd just point out... it's probably something different where the use of 'armor' as a term is more metaphorical than litteral.

[al103]

Heh. What i liked in Sacred Cluster description is that it ends all that "nanohaverse magic do not kill" bullshit. It DO. By itself, not just by elementalism or side-effects. If you are not protected at least.

[Avatar_notADV]

Even if Vivio had survived the shot, she'd have then been the only thing alive (well, maybe Subaru too, she's plenty tough) in the wreckage of a fallin' helicopter. We don't have a really good description about what the Saint's Armor protects against and doesn't protect against, just that Nanoha can theoretically beat it down going absolutely hurt-myself all-out.

(Of course, that was Vivio in the Cradle, which is quite likely more powerful than normal-mode Vivio. We also don't know if the Saint's Armor is the sort of thing that gets better as you get stronger.)

We'll probably get details as Vivid goes on. Looking forward to that...

[Tormenk]

Wasn't the Arc-en-ciel a good example in-universe to disprove that?

If not, I'm pretty sure it was covered before magical damage can be set to non-lethal settings.

---

Anyone else is wondering about why Reinforce's SLB did nothing to the city it was unleashed on? I mean with all she said obviously her spells would be set to lethal damage..which I'm not even sure falls into the "stun" setting considering Nanoha's own SLB has been proven to destroy physical material on stun settings.

[Keroko]

Animation budget.

Seriously though, back when the whole magic damage was still being debated I suggested the barrier raised around the city helped prevent damage.

[Jimmy C]

To the actual city, yes. That one was not under attack thanks to the barrier. The one inside the barrier on the other hand will stand or fall based on physical-damage effects.

[PhoenixFlare]

Originally Posted by Jimmy C

To the actual city, yes. That one was not under attack thanks to the barrier. The one inside the barrier on the other hand will stand or fall based on physical-damage effects.

Which also didn't fall following that humongous explosion created by Reinforce Ein's Starlight Breaker. I remember flying debris and stuff and Nanoha and Fate putting their all into barrier spells to prevent damage to themselves along with Arisa and Suzuka, but not a single building collapsed even after the effect died down.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Originally Posted by Tormenk

Wasn't the Arc-en-ciel a good example in-universe to disprove that?

If not, I'm pretty sure it was covered before magical damage can be set to non-lethal settings.

---

Anyone else is wondering about why Reinforce's SLB did nothing to the city it was unleashed on? I mean with all she said obviously her spells would be set to lethal damage..which I'm not even sure falls into the "stun" setting considering Nanoha's own SLB has been proven to destroy physical material on stun settings.

Arc-en-ciel is not a pure magic weapon like the others. It's a dimensional distortion weapon powered by magic.

Remember the operating principle? It rips a dimensional new-one in the local space and lets the space-time stresses dump an ungodly amount of energy into the target area... Enough to completely vaporize everything in a 200 kilometer diameter sphere.

You even get to watch is pull open a hole in spacetime on the screen when it's used.

[Drethillsh]

Originally Posted by AdmiralTigerclaw

Very true, but saint's Armor doesn't have to be litteral armor (Barrier/Field OR Physical) to be protective. Which is where I think people here are going a bit nuts.

There's nothing showing Saint's Armor to be a (meta)physical armor of any kind. We just know it's some seriously UBER protection.

But people seem to be applying it for the litteral meaning of armor in the last few posts of arguments... I thought I'd just point out... it's probably something different where the use of 'armor' as a term is more metaphorical than litteral.

Ah, then I just wasn't being clear. By "active", I meant it was it being specifically used as a defensive ability, instead of being a natural protection. That is, it's "active" if Vivio is aware of the attack and prepared for it, "braced for impact" if you will. Unless it works completely differently than any other defensive magic we've seen, it would be less effective when under an unexpected attack.

Unless it's not a magic effect at all (or even the pseudo-magic used by the Combat Cyborgs), in which case we really have nothing with which to determine its effects, except that it's really strong. But I hope that's not the case, we've already got enough ways that characters can do really nasty things to each other.

[al103]

Originally Posted by AdmiralTigerclaw

Enough to completely vaporize everything in a 200 kilometer diameter sphere.

Enough to affect things in 200km diameter sphere. In what diameter there is vaporisation is unknown. Like with nuke there is direct application of explosion and "side-effects".

[Drethillsh]

Another thought about Vivio's powers that's been running around the back of my mind for a few days now: Is the Saint's Armor the only genetic weaponry Vivio has? It's true that the Combat Cyborgs were all pretty much "one trick ponies", but the Sankt Kaiser line had a lot more time to gengineer themselves than Scaglietti had to make the Cyborgs, as well as more experience and resources. If there's another DVD booklet out there for this, I'd love to see it; otherwise, I guess I'll wait and see if it comes up in ViVid.

[Keroko]

They were the only people who could get the Cradle moving, were supplied limitless amounts of power through the Cradle, and form what we've seen from Vivio they also had a way of assuming 'optimal battle forms'.

That's all we have so far though.

[al103]

What we know about her learning skill? It's most likely genetic too...

[Keroko]

Good point, I had forgotten about that one.

[Drethillsh]

Originally Posted by Keroko

They were the only people who could get the Cradle moving, were supplied limitless amounts of power through the Cradle, and form what we've seen from Vivio they also had a way of assuming 'optimal battle forms'.

That's all we have so far though.

That's really just the Cradle though, not so much the Sankt Kaisers' ability. I hadn't considered the "data scan" thing as a genetic ability, but thinking about it, it probably is.

Originally Posted by al103

What we know about her learning skill? It's most likely genetic too...

That's more general ability than what I was thinking about. It stands to reason that they'd start with the super-smart/fast/strong/etc. first, before gengineering magic effects into their DNA. But I had this feeling that it became a trend for each Kaiser to give themselves (and their descendents) a little extra something.

Hell, maybe if you had sibling Kaisers, they'd each gengineer unique powers, eventually creating several distinct, possibly even competing bloodlines with entire genetic armaments belonging only to them. After all, royal families are noted for infighting; why not make sure your heirs have as many chances to overpower their rivals (and thus continue you own bloodline) as possible? Maybe they had servitor houses customized for certain roles, like a family of spies having illusory powers in their genes, or a family of advisors having divinatory abilities (maybe that's where Carim got her skills), or a family of bodyguards having guaranteed expertise in barrier and shield spells, and so on. Perhaps the minor royals (dukes, counts, etc) have a hierarchy based on how many powers they have from the Sankt Kaiser bloodline. Genealogy records could become closely guarded information, for fear of revealing your abilities to others. Sinister orginizations kidnap royal scions to breed superwarriors. Evolution through natural selection starts moving faster than Fate in Sonic Mode, as those with weaker customizations fall by the score in the wars. Creepy people start gengineering the "perfect body". Crime syndicates run a thriving business of acquiring DNA samples of famous war heroes and perform dangerous (and highly illegal) surgeries to insert them into bodies of anyone with enough money and bravery. Rival kingdoms perform unspeakable experiments on prisoners of war, hoping to unlock the secrets of genetic manipulation! Truly mad and brilliant scientists go far behind human genes, twisting wild animals into living war engines! And perhaps, in some dark, hidden corner of Belka, a driven and relentless savant labors to create-
No. No one would dare...
Or would they...?!

...Ahem.

This would be a good way to give the Hegemon Ingvalt powers equal to, but different than, Vivio, to make the battles more interesting. Although now, I'm kind of hoping they don't, because then I can use all this for a story of my own.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Er... Genetic Engineering doesn't quite work like that.

The entire trope of changing someone's DNA and actively changing their body and its function is a myth and one of the worst Sci-Fi tropes in existence... up there with Nanites and super nano-machines like the Borg have in Star Trek.

People tend to forget about cells being individual components when dealing with a macro-scale system like an organic body.
You HAVE to remember that EACH CELL has a set of DNA in it. That's billions of complete DNA strands.

DNA is the blueprint of cellular construction, not a computer code that can be altered on a whim. DNA is the instructions on how the cell is to be formed and how it operates. Once it's built, changing the DNA won't change the cell's fundamental form.

A VIRUS reproduces itself by latching onto cells and injecting its own DNA in order to hijack the systems of a cell for energy and protien nabbing, but it cannot alter the cell itself beyond making it a host for reproduction.

Modifying a living person's DNA would have to be done universally to every cell in the entire body all at the same time while simultaniously completely reforming the cellular structure... Just to even hope to get any kind of interesting effect. At that point it's not even genetic engineering as much as it's complete organic matter rearrangement/ material metomorphosis.

Otherwise all you get stuck with is some cells that aren't like all the rest, and probably start growing out of control and causing all kinds of problems and are attacked by the immune system anyway...

We call this CANCER. Cancer has, as far as the record goes, not been benificial to a living organism... In fact... last I checked... it tended to malform and KILL them.

If you're going down the Gene-Engineering rout, it has to be done on a proto-form of the life-form. As, even with the excuse of magic and uber-tech, you can't geneticly alter an adult life form and expect the prodedure to get you anything other than cancer.
Not even the excuse of saying the process is EXTREMELY dangerous is good enough to bypass the fact that it just plain won't WORK... period.