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EDIT - Added attached version. Sorry, I apparently forgot to do that before.

I considered using the Papyrus font for the skeleton.

I gave it a go.

I did not use the Papyrus font for the skeleton.

Commentary

Spooky scary!

Sort of.

I mean, it's certainly spooky that the bones are moving when it shouldn't physically be possible, and maybe there's powerful magic reinforcing it, or... Something? It seems like the amount of magic needed to make them the least bit effective could be better used.

One might ask "how can you possibly know how much 'magic' it would require in a general sense?" I'm going by the rule of thumb of "how much is magic being expected to do?"

In the case of a skeleton that moves on its own and is a viable combat threat, I'm considering that magic would have to hold the skeleton together, move it around, provide any of that reinforcement I mentioned, provide whatever senses are required for the skeleton to function, and who knows how much magical nonsense just to get a "nyeh" sound out of them.

Also, I just did a search, and bones are supposedly 15% of a person's total body weight. That might help reduce the magic cost (a bit, still a bunch of moving parts to hold together), but weight matters in combat. Even if someone started out 300 lbs (136 kg) of mostly muscle, that would maybe get you a 45 lbs (20.4 kg) combatant of, well, no muscle.

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Comments

Anonymous

You know, weight is pretty good argument against skeletons. It doesn't really matter how good you block if your 25kg is hit with force of 250kg

Anonymous

Where's the download link for the comic?

coredumperror

You can get the exact same file by clicking the image in the post and then saving the zoomed in version. But yeah, the link being missing is unexpected.

Anonymous

Downloading that way gives me a nonsense file name. I prefer the link.

Stephen Gilberg

Very true (I suppose), and this is one of the few times I've come close to feeling sorry for a moving skeleton.

Matt R

Relative of Skeletor?

Emtu

Odd, right-clicking and saving the expanded image (or even just the image itself) gives me the filename in the same format as past ones - np20190426-FW-009-HD.png.

Anthony Wilson

A youtuber named Shadiversity, who does a lot of videos on medieval arms and armour and whatnot, did a video on what sort of weapons and armour an animated skeleton would use. If you want to look for it, the title of it is "What medieval weapons would skeletons really use?" Not the most imaginative title, I'll admit, but some very good discussion on the subject.

Anonymous

Huh. It didn't used to do that, but I guess it's been at least several months since I last tried saving the image directly. Good to know.

Anonymous

Font nerds' hatred of Papyrus is second only to their hatred of Comic Sans.

Anonymous

{Darn it} "The only reason to use Papyrus is menus in an Egyptian restaurant."

egscomics

The attachment version is optional and I apparently forgot to add it. Fixed now.

egscomics

This got me thinking about how much a medieval sword weighs. The average is 2.5-3.5 pounds, so let's say 3 lbs. So if the skeleton of the a formerly 200 lbs fellow would be 30 lbs, and they were to arm themselves with a sword, it would 1/10 of their total body weight.

Anthony Wilson

Yeah, I think that was one of the things Shad talked about. Been a while since I watched the video, though, so I can't remember what he said on that aspect. That whole Fantasy Rearmed series of his has actually been a real help for me with a science-fantasy novel I've been working on, both for what sort of fighting styles and such particular species' would use but also actually convincing me to make one of the prominent species in it a naga-like snake-person species.

Anonymous

Which is why Undertale used those two fonts for the two comic relief skeletons

Sunblaze

This comic is soooo darn geat! So many good memories. Me: "Wait an ambush of 2 critters against my 6 person heavy-armed-group." Just why? Please stop being sad and suicidal. :D

Dan Merget

Technically, 250kg is mass, not force. But I know what you meant. But I think that trying to approach this logically is a bit of a lost cause. A lot of magical thinking (outside of the EGS-verse) is based on how things LOOK. If someone stabs a voodoo doll, the thinking isn't, "There's a magical sensor array around the doll that causes a corresponding injury to occur on the real person". It's more like, "The doll LOOKS like the person, therefore it IS the person, therefore stabbing the doll is the same as stabbing the person." Applying the same pseudo-logic to skeletons, the thinking is like, "This skeleton is from a 90kg man, therefore if we breath life into it, it will act like a 90Kg man." It doesn't make scientific sense, but we're talking about mindsets that predate modern science.

Anonymous

...so what you're saying is, if a skeleton is magically-strong enough to wield, say, a great hammer, then it could theoretically pull a Thor and "fly"/leap by throwing the hammer and not letting go?