RE: [HoE] Partially digested answers

["Ed Murphy" <ford@jps.net>]

AJSolis@aol.com wrote:

> > The Reckoners couldn't send Stone back with a time machine because mad
> > scientist gadgets are powered by manitous which is why they all stopped
> >  working when the ghost rock bomb was invented.  Now if it took a
> > significant amount of power from the Reckoners to send Stone back, there
> > is no way that minor demons like the manitous can power a time machine.

>     Actually, no.  At least as far as I know, mad scientist inventions
were
> simply inspired by the Manitou, not powered by them, one of the major
> differences between the mad science of the mad scientists and the
technomagic
> of the junkers.  Well, other than the ghost rock power source of course,
but
> it would seem the Manitou really don't get much choice in that sort of
thing.
>     As far as I can tell, mad scientist inventions are real science, based
on
> real principles, even if the mad scientist was told that principle by the
> souls of the damned.  So a time machine is a real piece of technology,
just
> like a type writer, and the Manitou deciding they weren't going to play
> anymore should not have affected it one way or another.

Some mad scientist inventions, at least, are powered by manitou.  Someone
once envisioned a non-mad scientist carefully studying a mad scientist's
blueprints, realizing that it couldn't possibly work, and thus stumbling
upon the arcane nature of mad science...

Assuming this to be the case, then gill2158@epix.net's points were:

1) Backward time travel is so difficult that the Reckoners can only
   pull it off once.

2) Thus it's well beyond the capability of any manitou.

3) Thus, by definition, it's beyond the capability of manitou-powered
   mad scientist gadgets.

As for July 3, 2063, it's not that all the existing gadgets suddenly
stopped working; it's that the mad scientists' (manitou-whispered)
ideas suddenly dried up, and lots of 'em just couldn't take it.


--
Ed Murphy <ford@jps.net>     Intern at the Elephant Hill Graveyard
http://rivendell.fortunecity.com/meridian/309/deadlands/pine_box.html
Next event:  Gamex '99 (May 28-31, LAX Westin Hotel, Los Angeles)