Author Topic: Magus' red staff  (Read 4627 times)

Chrono45

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Magus' red staff
« on: March 30, 2012, 04:58:39 am »
As many of you may know during the first battle with lavos, magus tears of his cloak, unsheathes a person-ish sized red staff, strikes lavos with it, and then marvels at its failure.  My wonder is why would magus expect it to work? Is it possible that this red staff was made from dream stone? That is my only conclusion, otherwise I am not quite sure why he assumed hitting a giant creature like lavos with a red staff would cause a significant amount of damage.

maggiekarp

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Re: Magus' red staff
« Reply #1 on: April 19, 2012, 02:33:20 pm »
Instead of postulating on what the stick was made of, we should probably start looking at how he used it, which looks like animation that had more effort put into it. Maybe more than the weapon not working, he was surprised that striking behind the neck and causing a big gash between head and shell didn't work. Usually cutting the head off of something works! So we can either interpret that as a sign that Lavos is more than what he looks like on the outside (yes) or that Magus is just completely unable to beat Lavos on his own (also yes).

Thought

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Re: Magus' red staff
« Reply #2 on: April 20, 2012, 02:28:25 pm »
I've generally interpreted that "staff" as his scythe. That is, at least, the same animation as when he uses them. Other than that, I'd go with Maggiekarp's interpretation, which seems to be bolstered by the realization that a blade was probably involved.

Chrono45

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Re: Magus' red staff
« Reply #3 on: April 20, 2012, 09:12:59 pm »
Well... Lavos' "head" is definitely not a head as would be defined in the animal sense. Theirs a whole lot of biology that I don't really want to get into, but the basic reason why animals die when you remove their head is because their root nervous system (brain) is disconnected from its Vascular system (heart and stuff). The brain is a necessity for large mobile creatures in earths atmosphere. This arrangement is called a cephalacaudal design and is highly efficient and largly advantageous for our current biosphere. However, if you may notice lavos' "head" is really just a mouth (one would actually probably think this is closer to the beak of the squid family). The whole thing opens up exposing a digestive track of sorts, really this depends on if it even eats things it may very be well used for something else. But it being hollow is a good indication that a brain does not reside within the cavity (or anything for that matter).  It is more than likely that all of Lavos organs reside within his shell, this is confirmed by going in his shell and being only able to kill him by destroying the right bit. Furthermore from Magus' perspective whence Lavos yells at him and Magus is able to get a good view that this "mouth" is much like a digestive cavity he would probably thinking cutting it off would do as much as cutting his own mouth off.

Second, It appeared as though magus had reason to his attack, as if he had planned it out before. And never having seen Lavos prior would indicate that he wouldn't have been able to prepare the head-mouth separation technique. But I agree with Thought, upon further review it is more than likely that Magus did attack Lavos with a scythe. However, I dont think slicing technique was really magus' plan to defeating a creature as large as Lavos.

utunnels

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Re: Magus' red staff
« Reply #4 on: April 20, 2012, 10:17:01 pm »
While there's no hint in game what the staff is supposed to be, we can only guess.

1. The staff does not have to correspond with what he's actually using. The game only shows us Magus is attacking Lavos. So they used the attack animtion. They should have designed some cool magic effect or other details, but they were just too lazy at that time and even forgot to give the scythe a blade.

2. Like Chrono45 said, it could be a dreamstone weapon. Maybe Magus believed the material had special effect against Lavos. Consider he had disguised himself as the Prophecy for a long time, he had all the benefits to get material he desired.

3. Some magic enhaned weapon, consider he had been a magic user and a decent weapon wielder...

Xenterex

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Re: Magus' red staff
« Reply #5 on: June 30, 2012, 09:03:42 pm »
Might be a bit of a thread necro, so I apologize for that, but I do have something to answer the posed inquiry.  The animation used when Magus tries to melee Lavos is not his attack animation, its his missing animation.  When Magus tries to attack a target and the attack is going to *miss* (like on creatures that physical attacks don't work) that's when the bladeless-scythe shows up and he does that animation.

So the 'red scythe' isn't anything special, as far as I know, that Magus prepared before hand, its just a visual affirmation that the attack was ineffective by using the 'your attack missed animation'

It's just like how all the other playable characters have animation variations when they attack and miss (like Marle giggles)

Satoh

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Re: Magus' red staff
« Reply #6 on: July 01, 2012, 05:21:30 am »
My assumption, having finally understood the animation sequence(it looks odd without the blade animation attached), is that it was meant to be a sort of Iai style attack...

The basic premise of Iaido is, unsheath your weapon and strike a single fatal wound with it in one swift motion, and then resheathe it... Since your strike is a guaranteed kill if executed properly, you've no more need of a weapon and the battle is over.

This type of attack is common in anime, and is generally accompanied by a 'failure to see the strike hit, but then sudden wound appearing anyway' style of animation. Another example of that is the Hien style attack, where two figures rush toward each other and are shown attacking, seemingly missing... and once they rest for a moment, one dies... often again accompanied by a delayed wound appearance.

If you notice his strike, we don't see his blade, however, we do see a large energy 'curtain' appear in roughly an arc spreading from behind Lavos' mandibles. This to me is meant to represent the effect of the strike, since the blade is never seen.

If we assume his strike was meant to be of the Iai variety, he likely practiced that technique for years (as it is a dangerous maneuver to use unless completely mastered). It would certainly be surprising if your time tested masterful execution of a sure-kill strike... failed to do any real harm.

Also, I believe Janus was present to witness Lavos once, wasn't he? Be that the case, he could certainly have ingrained the structure of the beast into his mind and expected the severing of the "head" to be an effective attack.

Also, you call it a mouth, but I see no opening... I see an eyeball inside a well protected eye socket. Lavos, for whatever reason, reminds me of flea or mite...only of a meteorically large stature and covered in spiny plates... It also appears to be covered in vesicles of some sort, which may contain its offspring or be the method it uses to consume/absorb matter (in this case probably energy and DNA).
(Don't cite the anime cutscenes, they don't hold water in my book)

Whatever the case, being that it is at the front, contains a mouth/eye/something, its reasonable to assume just by looking at it that this is a 'head.' Furthermore, the primary neural bundle is generally located at the dorsal anterior of a creature's head... or in other words, at the base of the head, and generally close to the top or back of the creature depending on its body orientation... If we assumed that was Lavos' head, we could reasonably get the impression that the space above and behind is where the spinal cord would be... We know Magus is proficient at shadow magic, including attacks that use vacuums or attempt to banish things to some other space... I doubt he would try to do such a thing to Lavos' entire body mass, as such a spell would likely require more energy and preparation time than he could afford... so instead he may have augmented his physical attack (opening up the shell) with an intense vacuum/negative energy/pressure or simply tried to banish the nerve column itself... thus we see the energy I previously mentioned as an effect of his strike...

As I recall, his weapon is normally bladeless in battle, and when he is recruited is that same red color(or it may be yellow and that red is the color of his sprite without a palette attached). We could make up some even less well based fanon than my explanation and say he prepared a special dreamstone weapon... but if that were the case, why then would he not have it when we recruit him?

My opinion is that it was an artistic style of showing his fighting skill and possibly his ability to use magic and physical attacks in unison.

He is surprised it didn't work because he put his whole being into mastering the 'perfect, instantaneous, surprise attack.'

Consider... Indiana Jones: In a scene, he is confronted by a highly skilled swordsman, and is seemingly defenseless for a moment...(Seeing the parellel yet?) Before the sword-wielding man can move to attack, the ever hatted hero quickdraws a pistol and shoots-him-dead, surprising the crowd and audience, as that was a completely unexpected move, and was completely decisive at the same time.

This is essentially Magus' plan... or his effective action at least... Now consider how surprised Indie would be had the blade-using man he shot not been affected at all by it... Generally people die when you kill them.

Lavos did not die when it was killed. This is the matter of contention for Magus.

That is how I see it.

(Before realizing Magus attack was actually one animation without a blade effect sprite drawn over it... it just looked to me like the game eff'ed up and draw a bunch of random Magus sprites while depicting magic which was clearly not cast using the casting animation... I  always hated the scene for being so confusing... before anyway.)