Casting Fire from Food

[James McCarthy]

I'm a 45-year-old tai chi player, and when I'm in an all day tai chi workshop, I eat and eat and eat. So does everyone else, and I'm one of the youngest in the group. We come in all shapes and sizes, but eating so much during tai chi doesn't make me, or anyone I know, noticeably fatter. Tai chi moves a lot of energy. If raising fire magically were a real thing, it would burn at least as much energy as a tai chi workshop.

If magic works like tai chi does, the oldest mages would be the strongest at it. To my mind, it stands to reason that it would. The longer you've been practicing, the stronger the fire would be. Where young people are stronger is in the muscles, but this kind of exercise/energy work wouldn't engage the muscles. If anything, younger people would be at a disadvantage, because they'd try to muscle through.

I agree that the oldest would be strongest, but wouldn't they also use up their energy faster as they are able to create stronger fireballs?

 

[Ignis]

Hm~ I rather like the idea of chubby pyromancers. Shame you said that you're not going that route. Even then you might want to take inspiration from the sort of training and food that sumo wrestlers use. Despite how often they're treated as a joke they treat things really seriously over there.

Don't get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against chubby people (and chubbiness' in general) at all. It's more to do with the way I design my characters when doing character design. You do raise an interesting point though. It would be rather unrealistic if every single one of my mages were about as healthy as each other, so some of them should probably be skinnier/fatter than others as to avoid repetition in my designs.

Also, I had a look at an average sumo wrestler's diet and I gotta say that was a genius call on your part. I never heard of an effective high-fat diet in my life, but I have heard of sumo wrestlers, and why I didn't look into them sooner for this topic is beyond me.

 

[Rosemary Tea]

I agree that the oldest would be strongest, but wouldn't they also use up their energy faster as they are able to create stronger fireballs?

Maybe. Or maybe they have more energy to begin with, due to years of practice and building it up. Maybe they can create stronger fireballs out of less energy.

That's actually the way tai chi works (minus the literal fireballs). The more practiced you are, the more you can do with less effort.

 

[Ignis]

Maybe. Or maybe they have more energy to begin with, due to years of practice and building it up. Maybe they can create stronger fireballs out of less energy.

That's actually the way tai chi works (minus the literal fireballs). The more practiced you are, the more you can do with less effort.

Kinda late response, but this right here is the explanation I had in mind for justifying how my mages can turn a small amount of energy into a fairly powerful attack. Also the fireballs my mages conjure up is never the exact same size as the last one they used. It varies from being half as tall as them, to 25% taller then them (the size and amount of energy used in each fireball also determines how big the explosion will be upon impact).

 

[Chasejxyz]

As stated in my question, I don't know a lot about biology, but if weakening/destroying my thyroid results in gaining and retaining body fat more effectively, wouldn't that mean getting rid of it would be much, much harder?

It would be harder to get rid of fat the normal way via diet and exercise. as your metabolism (i.e. the energy you need just to be alive) will be much lower (which is why they tend to be/feel colder all the time). If you're literally burning away fat, that doesn't really matter.

The purpose of that question was to find out what kind of hand wavy-like explanation I would need to come up with in order to avoid the issue of the insides of my mages burning out during the combustion of their fat. Again, I haven't the foggiest clue what exactly would happen to someone if their internal fat suddenly caught on fire (other than they would die if they didn't put it out in time), but if the properties released from the burning fat have the potential to reek havoc within my mages bodies, I'll then be able to create a decent sounding explanation as to how those properties have null effect on my mages innards (or how my mages will be able to combat them). In other, more simplified words, I wanna know what harmful properties come from igniting fat tissue so I know what exactly it is that I'm handwaving

I don't think you would be able to literally be on fire from the inside due to the lack of oxygen. There's SOME air/gas inside of you but it tends to be inside the proper organs (lungs, stomach/intestines). Fat is a layer of the skin and isn't touching any of that. When people suffer burns from fire, it's either from the outside-in (burning thru skin/fat down to muscles and then bone) or inside out (airways are burned but you're dying from smoke inhalation before it's reaching any of your other organs). Perhaps your mages are able (subconsciously or otherwise) to control the amount of fuel that the fire has access to. Think of when you're driving a car, the gas pedal controls the amount of fuel that is available to be combusted. There's mechanical systems that keep the whole gas tank from combusting, why can't there be a magical system to do the same?

 

[Ignis]

It would be harder to get rid of fat the normal way via diet and exercise. as your metabolism (i.e. the energy you need just to be alive) will be much lower (which is why they tend to be/feel colder all the time). If you're literally burning away fat, that doesn't really matter.

Lol, I actually forgot my mages could basically just burn their fat away like that. I guess now I just need to come up with an explanation as to how they're able to locate their bodies thyroids and weaken/destroy them (X-rays haven't been invented yet in my game's world). Good catch though, that completely slipped my mind.



I don't think you would be able to literally be on fire from the inside due to the lack of oxygen. There's SOME air/gas inside of you but it tends to be inside the proper organs (lungs, stomach/intestines). Fat is a layer of the skin and isn't touching any of that. When people suffer burns from fire, it's either from the outside-in (burning thru skin/fat down to muscles and then bone) or inside out (airways are burned but you're dying from smoke inhalation before it's reaching any of your other organs). Perhaps your mages are able (subconsciously or otherwise) to control the amount of fuel that the fire has access to. Think of when you're driving a car, the gas pedal controls the amount of fuel that is available to be combusted. There's mechanical systems that keep the whole gas tank from combusting, why can't there be a magical system to do the same?

That's actually the exact same idea I had in mind as to how my mages fire magic work. They're basically like any fuel burning system (such as a car) in that they obtain the energy needed to create fire internally from food and guide the flames they create inside their bodies safely through the inner workings in a way that they don't hurt themselves.

Also wait, if it's not possible for your insides to literally combust, does that mean that people who allegedly die from spontaneous combustion smolder to death like a candle, ala the wick effect?

 

[Chasejxyz]

Spontaneous combustion isn't a thing in reality. What can happen is your skin/clothes/hair can be covered in some substance that can ignite very easily (alcohol, oils, various petrol products, aerosols) and sufficient heat can cause them to ignite. Almost all fire-related deaths are from smoke inhalation, not from so much of you burning up that you can't function anymore (if you do survive the fire,you're then most likely to die of infection, as your skin's main purpose is to keep fluids in and germs out. Severe burns mean no more skin and tons of ways for germs to get into you)

 

[Ignis]

Spontaneous combustion isn't a thing in reality. What can happen is your skin/clothes/hair can be covered in some substance that can ignite very easily (alcohol, oils, various petrol products, aerosols) and sufficient heat can cause them to ignite. Almost all fire-related deaths are from smoke inhalation, not from so much of you burning up that you can't function anymore (if you do survive the fire,you're then most likely to die of infection, as your skin's main purpose is to keep fluids in and germs out. Severe burns mean no more skin and tons of ways for germs to get into you)

I see. I guess they should call it spontaneous flammable property combustion, am I right? He he.

Thanks for the reply btw. Also I accidently replied to your previous post in a way that made one half of my response merge with what you were saying a page ago. Still relatively new here (enjoying it a lot so far though).

 

[S.T. Ockenner]

Spontaneous combustion isn't a thing in reality. What can happen is your skin/clothes/hair can be covered in some substance that can ignite very easily (alcohol, oils, various petrol products, aerosols) and sufficient heat can cause them to ignite. Almost all fire-related deaths are from smoke inhalation, not from so much of you burning up that you can't function anymore (if you do survive the fire,you're then most likely to die of infection, as your skin's main purpose is to keep fluids in and germs out. Severe burns mean no more skin and tons of ways for germs to get into you)

Yes it is. Spontaneous combustion is absolutely a thing.

 

[Ignis]

Yes it is. Spontaneous combustion is absolutely a thing.

I mean, no one has ever actually seen someone internally combust with their own eyes, and seeing how conceptually silly sounding the overall concept of spontaneous human combustion is, I don't at all blame scientists and biologists for dismissing it as something that could actually happen to someone in real life. With that in mind though, a ton of research and theorization has been put into understanding such a concept, and some people have even come up with fairly logical sounding explanations as to how it works, why it happens and what kind of people are likely to experience it, so whether or not it's a real thing is entirely up in the air, since there's about as much evidence to prove its existence as there is to disprove its existence.

 

[Chasejxyz]

Yes it is. Spontaneous combustion is absolutely a thing.

The only hypotheses for it have been based on outdated science, like the four humors, or has been due to other sources. Even if a spark could ignite out of nowhere, the human body is pretty moist (that's why your flame grilled Whopper isn't a pile of ash, flesh just doesn't burn like wood or coal does) so you're not going to burn up. Any reputable article or publication states that it's not a thing, just pseudoscience. You're free to have it in your writing where the laws of reality need not apply, but it's not a thing that's going to happen in actuallity.

 

[S.T. Ockenner]

"In December 2010, the death of Michael Faherty, a 76-year-old man in County Galway, Ireland, was recorded as "spontaneous combustion" by the coroner."