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Checkmating Limelight (SPOILERS!)


Goatborn

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A sniper catching him unawares would also work quite well - and could probably instantly kill him.

 

 

I really think some of us are overrating prof´s powerlevel.

 

A snipershot in the head, sure, the shield would block part of it, but likely not enough.

 

Are you two saying that getting shot by a sniper is worse then getting your skull and brain completely crushed? That would be enough to kill anyone else instantly and yet Limelight survives.

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"skull was chrushed in on the left"

 

Hardly completely crushed, and hes down for, well, almost a minute or so? Steelheart and David chats abit. ;). but if a shot through the head and brain, if it keeps prof down for 5 secs its enough, thats plenty of time to send 5 more bullets through, and then you can have ppl clearing it on close range(cutting the head of is a safe bet, even if he would survive wich i really doubt, he wouldent be able to move without a body....) and since he isnt super strong, and his tensor only seem to work forward from the hands, he can easily be tied down aslong as your careful.

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I think that many of us are underestimating the power of the shield.  When Abraham got shot in that duel in the understreets only a fragment of the bullet got through.  If Prof only had this much protection then he would be quite vulnerable.  However his abilities with the Tensors exceeds that of anyone that was gifted the powers.  I suspect the same may hold for his personal shield.

 

This is speculative, and I will admit that there are other explanations for Prof being better.  For example one could argue that Prof is better with the tensors because of ability rather than power.  However, I would not discount the possibility that Prof can take a sniper shot to the face without feeling so much as a tap on the cheek.

 

I suspect we may get more information in Firefight or Calamity when they come out.  But for now I will assume that Limelight would be classified as a High Epic under David's system.

Edited by MathEpic
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Yay! MathEpic agrees with my assessment that he's a High Epic!

 

I don't think an instant kill would be possible with Prof - that healing factor - so I think follow through is a necessary part of the plan. I'm glad everyone weighed in on this as it's added a few more angles to my thinking on the topic.

 

Do you guys think that he'll go Dark Side in future books? I can see how it would happen, but then I add in the Sanderson factor - I'm generally pretty surprised by where his stories go.

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I mean if you're able to get him retrained or momentarily incapacitated (take him down with a big hit somehow) I do believe it takes a few moments for him to regenerate. So just treat him like a Feruchemical gold compounded. Just keep killing him and killing him until he stops. Completely destroy the body if possible. I don't think the can regenerate if there's no body at all.

But capturing him like that would prove very difficult. Would have to make sure he's not around really any inorganic material... which might be nigh impossible.

 

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Just to get this straight, the weakness disables the powers by the Epic's personal weakness, but checkmating is simply doing something that the powers themselves can't cope with? Because sometimes the line seems blurry, like with the sunlight, which might be something that dispels the effects of NW's powers, but might also be his personal weakness.

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In the book the term "checkmate" was only used in relation to precogs.  A checkmate is when you defeat a pregog without disabling their foresight.  All other kills fall under a different descriptor.

 

The name comes from the fact that in order to kill a pregog you need make all possible futures one where the target is going to be dead.  The name refers to the fact that in chess the king cannot be taken simply because the player did not see the threat to it.  If making a move would place the king in danger, then it is an illegal move.  Therefore in order to win you must set up a situation so that every move you opponent makes leaves your opponent's king in danger.

 

Most Epics are not checkmated.  For example Steelheart could have just thrown the gun away and blasted David and Prof.

 

This is all semantics though.  The point is that we want to speculate on how we could kill one of the most powerful epics in the first book.  (Even if he is on our side.)

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I still think that there should be a distinction between the weaknesses of a power (using the clear space in a smoky room to observe indirectly the location of an invisible Epic or forcing that Epic to make noise, as her powers do not conceal her in these situations) and the weakness of the individual (the Epic loses her invisibility entirely at the touch of smoke totally negates her invisibility, having five people trying to kill you totally invalidates invincibility)

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He. I´v been thinking about this all wrong. Go okham and simplify. Best way to deal with limelight is likely simply to send in a group of people skilled at wrestling without any weapons or armour in an open space. He´s not superstrong, and his powers are kinda useless if hes just wrestled down by a group of ppl. He can´t really do rust if he´s tied up either, as long as your careful to point his hands right directions(since he seem to only be able to use his tensor ability in the directions of his hands.)

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Limelight sees the attack and decides to even the odds a little.  He takes his tensors and digs straight down 20 feet.  Then he digs to the side.  Then he makes his sword.  Now the attackers are facing a choke point that involves a 20 foot drop.  Their advantage in numbers is almost completely neutralized and Limelight can dig himself out in any direction he chooses.

 

I would not count on 20 unarmed marshal artists taking down this particular epic, even if living people can bypass his shield.

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We didn't see much of the fight between him and Steelheart, but it seems reasonable to assume he got punched if there were any possibility of living matter being able to bypass an Epic's shield, since Steelheart isn't exactly stupid. If he actually managed to avoid fisticuffs with Steelheart until the end, then he'd be able to do the same to normal humans. Even assuming the shield is kinetic-energy triggered, attacks below the threshold without a non-kinetic source of damage probably couldn't overcome his healing

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The term checkmate is used in reference to Nightwielder's takedown - the idea that he was put in a situation he couldn't escape from. I agree that the term is most relevant to pre-cogs, but I tend to think of it as a guaranteed kill, regardless of how it is achieved.

 

We've looked at options that involve exploiting limitations, speculated upon his weakness, but I can't think of anything more effective than putting him on a snake-filled plane flying into a volcano...

 

Quick question - do you guys think that Prof's shield is conscious or unconscious? (Can he turn it on and off?) If he can have it deactivated, catching him in a situation where he needs to have it down would be a good first step - while he's doing his taxes, or we bait the trap with a wounded 5th grader...?

 

And does anyone remember Prof seeming under the weather? A healing factor might not necessarily correspond with a heightened immune response. Ebola, anyone?

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I am not sure the jackets are automatic.

 

What if the activation of the jackets required some amount of conscious effort to activate.

 

True, the subject can be very wrong about the source of the magic shield, but in the books they were always aware of the jackets whenever they were active.

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The term checkmate is used in reference to Nightwielder's takedown - the idea that he was put in a situation he couldn't escape from. I agree that the term is most relevant to pre-cogs, but I tend to think of it as a guaranteed kill, regardless of how it is achieved.

 

We've looked at options that involve exploiting limitations, speculated upon his weakness, but I can't think of anything more effective than putting him on a snake-filled plane flying into a volcano...

 

Quick question - do you guys think that Prof's shield is conscious or unconscious? (Can he turn it on and off?) If he can have it deactivated, catching him in a situation where he needs to have it down would be a good first step - while he's doing his taxes, or we bait the trap with a wounded 5th grader...?

 

And does anyone remember Prof seeming under the weather? A healing factor might not necessarily correspond with a heightened immune response. Ebola, anyone?

Alright, you can find and maim the 5th grader - I don't want prison time and a guilty conciounce

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I am not sure the jackets are automatic.

 

What if the activation of the jackets required some amount of conscious effort to activate.

 

True, the subject can be very wrong about the source of the magic shield, but in the books they were always aware of the jackets whenever they were active.

 

The jackets seem to trigger on unexpected threats like sudden falls. If they had to be actively triggered, they would be of questionable value in more chaotic situations. Plus, the jackets don't seem to interfere with what the user is doing, even in large battles, so it doesn't seem likely that the active state of the shield prevents harmless contact, meaning no particular reason to ever turn it off.

 

I suppose the jackets might only trigger when the wearer perceives a threat, but I doubt it. If that were the case they'd be ineffective against surprise attacks, and there's no evidence that is the case. While the Reckoners might have missed that because it's lost in the noise of the jackets being a tad unreliable, I think Prof would have told them about it and claimed it was a neural interface.

 

The general unreliability of the jackets probably has to do with Prof redistributing power between the users and/or needing to recharge. We see one partially block an entirely anticipated attack that's apparently below the maximum threshold, so it probably isn't based on triggering condition. I'm not sure why Prof wouldn't have given that group full power, but it's possible he channeled some extra to Davis. Or maybe he was more worried someone would attack the hideout while they were out.

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You guys are going about this wrong. Instead of treating him like an Epic with the ability to escape from anywhere inorganic, shield himself from high kinetic damage, (Wait--What if it shields from ALL high energy? Explosions can be thermal AND kinetic, yet it still shielded. By by lasers/snipers.) and uber-Wolvering healing powers, think of him as a person trapped in a cage of maybe the hardest organic material on earth. http://news.discovery.com/tech/print-body-armor.htm Tougher than stainless steel and even the previous record holder, bulletproof Kevlar, a new, transparent material developed by scientists in Israel is the hardest organic nanostructure known to man.

It is also incredibly tough. Only a diamond-tipped probe could penetrate the material -- and to make a dent the probe needed to use twice the pressure of what it would take to make a mark in Kevlar. 

Ladies, gentleman, aliens form other planets, THAT is what we need to trap him with. Shoot Tia in the leg and put her in the center of a stadium. Have the floor be made of the organic material (similar to Alzheimers brain plaque, the link says), have holes in the floor that allow glue through, and soak the entire stadium after he gets in. He will be stuck for a minute or two, as he would have to vaporize a whole path to the exit, not to mention that the organic material might shield the glue a bit. In the meantime, have a hidden team in the stands with bullets made of the organic structure. Have them shoot him as much as they can to distract him. Detonate a brilliant flare of light overhead to blind him momentarily, and have people with sunglasses or something similar to shield their eyes rush in with water (to wet the glue and allow them to get to Prof) before ducktaping his eyes. If he can't see, he can't focus the tensors, as humans use sight more than other senses. Cuff his hands with the organic material, and use the organic material as a chain to--you guessed it-- MORE organic material than he can move. Mix the organic material with used chewing gum (seriously, that stuff is REALLY annoying/sticky), and paste it over the rest of his hands so that he can't break his thumbs to get out of the cuffs. Seeing as how there is nothing in the book about an increased pain tolerance, if you put a swarm of army ants from the Amazon onto him, then he should be in too much pain to do anything. If he still isn't dead, make him force-swallow three of those universal blasting caps and shoot him with the gauss gun. Set the caps off immediately before firing the gun, as hopefully all of his vital systems flying through the air would allow the gauss gun to bypass the shield.

Edit: I know this sounds a bit extreme, but if he goes super-evil corrupted Emperor from Star Wars, this should take him down.

Edited by Rade
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Alright, you can find and maim the 5th grader - I don't want prison time and a guilty conciounce

 

Fiiiiiiiine. But I get the glory of taking down Prof. Too bad all the people I knew in 5th grade are grown up now.

 

I'm still laughing at Rade's plan. Very extreme. The main flaw would be the effect of the tensors - do they carve through any inorganic material, or as you're suggesting, do they have an upper limit?

 

I'd still like to incapacitate him long enough to grow a tree around him... The perfect organic prison!

 

If Prof goes Dark Side, would he care about Tia, or anyone who wasn't essential to his personal survival?

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Maybe he would still care about people who were very close to him, I mean, he didn't kill David/Megan after fighting the mechs in the street where he almost went dark-side, same with the Steelheart fight/explosion. Also, we know for a fact that he can only use the tensors from his hands, because otherwise he would have just vaporized the whole area in the fight against the mechs with David/Megan, he could have evaporated the mechs, all the guns, armor, etc, and THAT would have been more dramatic for Limelight, so I think he would have done it. Also, it would have greatly imporved his chances of not getting shot in the face (although he doesn't really care about that.).

Edit: Simple: Tie him down with the glue/ducktape/organic material and all that, then plant some bamboo under him. It has been proved that it can grow through people tied down over it if they have enough time, and it could grow up around him into a pure, organic prison. 

Edited by Rade
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Edit: Simple: Tie him down with the glue/ducktape/organic material and all that, then plant some bamboo under him. It has been proved that it can grow through people tied down over it if they have enough time, and it could grow up around him into a pure, organic prison. 

 

Now I really want to form some kind of trap where ducks are used like tape.

 

And bamboo's a good call!

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Dang it, I found a problem: They described him several times in the book as being like a machine, yet we never see him work out to form the type of endurance or strength he would need to do some of these things. That raises the question: Does the healing also help with his reaction time, renewing his stamina, oxygen, and all of that? Because if it does, he could just litterally tear and tear and tear away at everything with his bare hands and, as he would be able to heal them and his ability to tear away, he would have to be constantly imprisoned within new layers. Either that or you have to make some kind of shrink-wrapped prison to him. HOWEVER, if he gets in enough pain, might he just give up and stop using the healing powers and all that?  If he would, then we would have a win.

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