Grrl Power #1410 - Trial by obeliskium (Patreon)

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Edit: As usual, I biffed the math here. People were saying 9 cc of material would make a sword that's measured in microns of thickness and I didn't understand how I messed up by so many orders of magnitude, so I sat down and measured out the sword on paper: 

Okay, let's lay it out. We'll say the sword is 5mm thick at the spine, and that 5mm thickness extends down the "flat" for 3cm, then there's a recess for the fuller that's 3mm thick, then there's another 3cm of flat to the blade, and the blade is 2cm from flat to edge, so that's 10 cm wide for 95% of the sword.

So let's say it's an average of 4mm thick for easy math. Times 10 cm width makes for 4 cubic centimeters of material for each cm of length. Okay, wow, I really did screw up Cora's estimate.

Then the question is how long is it? I think I drew it pretty close to the right scale in that first panel, so let's say the blade is 140 cm, which is just over 4.5 feet, and the handle is maybe 16 inches for some reason. I like the way long handles look on swords I guess, but we're not so concerned with the handle at the moment.

140 times 4 ccs is 560 cc?

Okay, I see what I did now. I wrote 9 cubic centimeters thinking it meant a 9 x 9 x 9cm cube, even though I know better. 9ccs is just 3cm^3. I meant 9cm cubed, which is actually 729 ccs. The funny thing is, I initally wrote 8 cubic centimeters (again, thinking I meant 8x8x8) and thought that sounded low, then revised it to 9 just before publishing the page. 8^3 is 512, which is actually pretty close to the volume of the blade. Of course, there's the handle and the crossguard, so I'll actually leave it at 9 cm cubed for Cora's estimate. I just have to change her wording slightly. 

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"Cosmic" energy is a comic book staple. In the real world there's the EM spectrum and kinetic energy, gravity, and uh... friction? Also sound, acceleration, centripetal force, but those are all variations of gravity and kinetic energy. And lightning, fire... cold. Cold isn't an "energy" though, just a relative lack of energy. Also radiation, but I think the EM spectrum covers... some of that? I know you can get into the nitty-gritty about alpha-particle emissions and ionizing this and that, but MY POINT is that in the real world, you kind of run out of interesting energy types pretty quickly when you're writing superhero and not too hard science fiction. Or straight up science fantasy. That's the category I put Doctor Who in. Weirdly, the earliest seasons of O.G. Dr. Who were borderline hard-ish sci-fi, but they got progressively... softer the longer the series ran. The new Doctor Who's are straight up fantasy in space. There's barely even a nod to science anymore.

So comics and sci-fi have to make up all kinds of crazy energy types to justify how the time traveling statue can turn back into an evil energy specter and possess that episode's lead female's father. That's hard to explain using just infrared light and uh, centripetal force.

I mention all this because Maxima's primary energy attack is a particle beam, which is totally a real thing. At least it is in a particle accelerator. I mean, a coronal mass ejection is... well, not a beam, surely, but there are particles involved. Arguably, a claymore is a particle... cone attack. It just depends on how you define "particle." In Maxima's case, there's a healthy mix of neutrons and protons, with just a dash of antiparticles thrown in for fun. It's actually a decidedly unhealthy mix, come to think of it. It's exceedingly hot and has a surprising amount of kick. And just a skosh of ionizing radiation. 

I think at some point way back, I mentioned the power scales of the Grrl-verse was more akin to the Marvel universe than the DC one. Or the DBZ one. Honestly, it depends on the writers for any given issue, but the DC universe tends to be on a much higher scale. I used to kind of limit myself to the Marvel RPG scale, but "Unearthly" strength only lets you lift 100 tons. Now, that sounds like a lot. I mean, sure, it's a lot of weight, but that's also only the weight of a tank or two. When you start talking about buildings or ships or trains, 100 tons is just dipping your toe in the uh, weight pool. So, whatever I've said in the past about strength levels, Maxima can lift Cora's ship. I have no idea how much it would weigh. It's about the size of a battleship? Maybe a little shorter and at least twice as wide. An Iowa class is 860 feet long and weighs 48,000 tons. It's made of sci-fi space materials, but like with Ultronium, that doesn't necessarily mean it weighs less than the stuff we have now. So I'm not going to put a hard number on it now, but Maxima can lift a lot. And it's a good thing her strength can scale with her power pool, because if you could lift a battleship, even using 1% of your strength to open a door would make it explode. Cause that would be 480 tons of pressure, and most doors aren't up to that spec.