Last night, I watched Dancing with the Stars and Castle in the living room, right next to the fireplace in my home. There was a spare lighter there, so as is my wont, I picked it up to play around with it. (I am notoriously bad at keeping my hands to myself; I always like to pick up objects and fiddle around with them. Be it paperclips, pencils, pens, bobby pins, rubber bands, or so on and so forth.) It once again made me think of Marie, from Disease, who can manipulate existing fire yet not create it herself. (A bit like the mutant Pyro in that regard.) She uses a lighter to create the fire, though, and from there, she can expand it and manipulate it, even engulfing her whole body in it.
I was just thinking about how she'd make the most of it. Part of the setting is that many people share the same powers...yet they're separated in half into "scarce" and "dense", with "dense" being stronger and more raw, yet more exhaustive, and "scarce" being more precise and efficient, yet lacking in energy reserves. (Or to put it into trope terms, dense = UnskilledYetStrong, scarce = WeakYetSkilled.)
She has dense, obviously, in that she requires an existing source, but can do much larger-scale things with her flames. And I was just thinking about how she would be able to use pop-cultural sources of big-time fire users to grant her better powers, especially when combined with some scientific knowledge. In short, while a "scarce" user would always be able to more finely control the flames, I want her character to be able to make the most of the bigger-scale things that can be done, simply by having been made aware of what her power truly is.
Which comes into play in a theoretical battle (and knowing me, theoretical battle = now that I've thought about it is near-guaranteed to become canon no matter how much I must stretch events to make it so) against a scarce pyromancer. I think the battle would be incredibly interesting--the scarce pyromancer wouldn't be protected from flames burning over their whole body (because that's too large a scale for them to control for a prolonged period of time), but would be able to prevent her from creating flames via extinguishing the small flames she makes before she can expand them. He'd be able to control heat on a microscopic level, yet he can't indefinitely create that zone control (via his limited reserves of energy). He'd also be able to, on a limited scale, control fire of his opponent, AND make sure that his flames can't be controlled by Marie...so much so, that he'd actually be able to pierce through her own protective engulfing flames and cause harm, the flames piercing into her body and erupting, like a blade puncturing with a poison that shoots through her body.
...Yet she's resilient enough for that to not kill her if it doesn't hit a vital area, and she can create flames that are dense enough to act as physical blunt force on impact, launching him back. She's also no slouch in the cutting department, if she has flammable material around. (Most things are flammable under the right conditions, mind you.) While he can also melt material, and can actually melt things better than she can, Marie can actually control molten material which he cannot do, and having liquefied steel slash at you is going to be nearly-impossible to deal with.
(She first displays most of her flame powers, by the way, in the desert, when being chase. By engulfing herself in flames and making intense enough flames to singe their pursuers, she slowed them down. She noticed, though, that the sands her flames were burning reacted to her, and that halted the chase altogether.)
The powers of the two would be nearly-equal, yet obviously, Marie gains the upper hand since she's not your typical blind-force fighter. In fact, the guy thought it'd be a one-stroke battle because he shut down every source of flame she had available, and knew he had complete control of his own...yet as he launched his attack, Marie was able to 'rant' at the flame, chastising it, and asked for it to grow much larger. It did, she controlled it, and the above resulted from it. (-Mancy means more or less 'speak to'. Hydromancers ramble to water, letting their thoughts drift away. Geomancers talk to the earth, engaging in meaningful conversation. Aeromancers more seem to muse with the air, listening to it yet not seeming to say much. Pyromancers snap at the flames, having a little bit of a vitriolic-buddies relationship with their element. Technomancers, by the way, do all four, depending on the circumstances.)
You might wonder why I speak about that from yesterday. That's because, other than some stuff about HotR, I have literally nothing to talk about from today. There was something, yet I'm not comfortable disclosing it. My day has been surprisingly (and alarmingly) short.
I was just thinking about how she'd make the most of it. Part of the setting is that many people share the same powers...yet they're separated in half into "scarce" and "dense", with "dense" being stronger and more raw, yet more exhaustive, and "scarce" being more precise and efficient, yet lacking in energy reserves. (Or to put it into trope terms, dense = UnskilledYetStrong, scarce = WeakYetSkilled.)
She has dense, obviously, in that she requires an existing source, but can do much larger-scale things with her flames. And I was just thinking about how she would be able to use pop-cultural sources of big-time fire users to grant her better powers, especially when combined with some scientific knowledge. In short, while a "scarce" user would always be able to more finely control the flames, I want her character to be able to make the most of the bigger-scale things that can be done, simply by having been made aware of what her power truly is.
Which comes into play in a theoretical battle (and knowing me, theoretical battle = now that I've thought about it is near-guaranteed to become canon no matter how much I must stretch events to make it so) against a scarce pyromancer. I think the battle would be incredibly interesting--the scarce pyromancer wouldn't be protected from flames burning over their whole body (because that's too large a scale for them to control for a prolonged period of time), but would be able to prevent her from creating flames via extinguishing the small flames she makes before she can expand them. He'd be able to control heat on a microscopic level, yet he can't indefinitely create that zone control (via his limited reserves of energy). He'd also be able to, on a limited scale, control fire of his opponent, AND make sure that his flames can't be controlled by Marie...so much so, that he'd actually be able to pierce through her own protective engulfing flames and cause harm, the flames piercing into her body and erupting, like a blade puncturing with a poison that shoots through her body.
...Yet she's resilient enough for that to not kill her if it doesn't hit a vital area, and she can create flames that are dense enough to act as physical blunt force on impact, launching him back. She's also no slouch in the cutting department, if she has flammable material around. (Most things are flammable under the right conditions, mind you.) While he can also melt material, and can actually melt things better than she can, Marie can actually control molten material which he cannot do, and having liquefied steel slash at you is going to be nearly-impossible to deal with.
(She first displays most of her flame powers, by the way, in the desert, when being chase. By engulfing herself in flames and making intense enough flames to singe their pursuers, she slowed them down. She noticed, though, that the sands her flames were burning reacted to her, and that halted the chase altogether.)
The powers of the two would be nearly-equal, yet obviously, Marie gains the upper hand since she's not your typical blind-force fighter. In fact, the guy thought it'd be a one-stroke battle because he shut down every source of flame she had available, and knew he had complete control of his own...yet as he launched his attack, Marie was able to 'rant' at the flame, chastising it, and asked for it to grow much larger. It did, she controlled it, and the above resulted from it. (-Mancy means more or less 'speak to'. Hydromancers ramble to water, letting their thoughts drift away. Geomancers talk to the earth, engaging in meaningful conversation. Aeromancers more seem to muse with the air, listening to it yet not seeming to say much. Pyromancers snap at the flames, having a little bit of a vitriolic-buddies relationship with their element. Technomancers, by the way, do all four, depending on the circumstances.)
You might wonder why I speak about that from yesterday. That's because, other than some stuff about HotR, I have literally nothing to talk about from today. There was something, yet I'm not comfortable disclosing it. My day has been surprisingly (and alarmingly) short.
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