Sydney hasn’t forgotten about Pixel, but I can only fit so much dialog on one page and it was getting a little crowded already. Harem’s checking on her in case you’re wondering.

I’m not sure how blood helps when making golems or other miscellaneous automata. I know in a lot of stories the blood is just a vehicle for life force, so I guess it’s used in place of a generator. I guess if the Stargate went to hell, they could use blood instead of a ZPM. That would suggest blood has a crazy amount of power in it. That’s less evident when making golems or enchanting stuff than when you’re using the blood to open portals to other realms, which seems like something that would normally take 16 power plants and/or a lens made from a slice of neutron star normally.

In this case Sciona is using the blood as a cheat, essentially a pre-written code base for programming behavior. Essentially she’s using the DNA for primitive survival and instinctual behavior, then enchanting her own code on top of it. She could do it with any piece of DNA, but something in a liquid state is easier to work with, give that she already has considerable experience as a blood mage. She’s hit the point in that school of magic where she’s realized that most of what the purists do is the hardest way to do it because they’re too dedicated to the art.

It’s like if you’re getting a weak wi-fi signal in one room, you could set up a signal booster, or hack an old router to function as a wi-fi extender, or you could rearrange the wiring in the building and move the wi-fi router… or if all you really care about is getting a better signal in one room, you could just cut a hole in the wall between you and the router. Ok, you could make it look nice if you wanted, like one of those… I think it’s called a pass-through? Like it’s a bar on one side? Anyway, Sciona’s like that. All the experts will give you the networking options cause they’re networking guys and Sciona will just kick down the wall.

This page colored by Keith.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.