#ipswich fairfax

[dimespin]

Reference for a humble three armed man

[dimespin]

If the accident had gone differently, would it have been possible for the duplicator to create an entirely separate Ipswich?

I know he really hates the idea of his parasitic twin gaining sentience. But if there was just another him that's not physically attached how would that play out?

The spell was written to duplicate non-living objects and as usual, magic does it's best to make do when faced with an unexpected hiccup like a living thing in the ceramic bowl copier, but this spell's version of making do is treating the living thing as inert.

If it had managed to pull a complete and completely separate copy out of him, he would have been forced to get a good look at his own corpse laying beside him, born with a heart that never once beat and a brain that never once produced electricity.

During the incident it briefly seemed to behave as a living thing, but only because it was being puppeted by the magic building it, which is why the thought of that thing being sentient freaks him out. He thought that was what was happening at first.

[dimespin]

So ipswich was trying to do magic/magic was happening to him, and that caused his twin. What was the intended affect of the spell that made him such an interesting fellow?

Ipswich worked in a factory sometimes handling industrial magic - industrial magic is different than bespoke magic like what Hyssop does, the spells are written, installed and sealed into hardware that allows people who do not know anything about spellwriting to use the spell over and over to accomplish the same task repeatedly.

Ipswich himself is completely ignorant of how spellwriting works, his entire understanding of magic begins and ends at maintaining and running these industrial mechanisms.

The factory Ipswich worked at had an industrial grade duplicator to augment production of the objects they produced (I waffle on what, but let's say ceramic dinnerware) and this thing was 1. old 2. slowed things down severely to perform maintenance in a safe manner 3. clogged with junk regularly making maintenance necessary

Ipswich ended up inside that thing while it was running due to bad workplace management and unsafe practices.

The spell performed completely as expected.

[dimespin]

How well-known are Hydras outside of their native range? Because I can imagine Ani and Adler being mistaken for a sufferer of Magical Matric Malformation by people unfamiliar with with hydras while they were taking case histories. Relatedly, is MMM the term for what Ipswitch has?

Alligator hydras are semi well known outside their natural range, at least during the era I'm usually depicting. The majority of people have at least vaguely heard of such a creature existing, though a lot of them could not tell you a single thing besides that they're two headed and scaly.

They regularly shock people with their vocal mimicry for example, because not everyone is aware that's a thing they can do, even though it's an inescapable fact about them for locals who live near hydra populations.

And even then, sort of like how many animal lovers find themselves shocked to be the person telling another person for the first time about the existence of animals they took for granted as an "everyone knows about those" type of animal, Ani and Adler regularly run into people who have never heard of such a thing at all.

Most people don't know much about MMM it's considered basically a rare medical condition, people know about it only when they need to (like learning about it in medical school or because they or someone they know has it) so people usually don't jump to that conclusion upon seeing anyone - those in the know, like professionals, know that the human face is usually somewhat preserved even if other structures change drastically, so Ani and Adler don't look like the usual expected stereotype for the condition in any case.

What Ipswich has is a bit different but somewhat related. Book animals like him (the fellas that look like furries) basically have something akin to an artificial MMM but medically it still wouldn't be called that. Probably in the literature Ani and Adler would call what's going on with book animals something like "typical inherited zoomorphic magical matrix"

But the condition he acquired is separate from that, it's an acquired magical disfigurement, sort of like a scar from a burn. People with MMM are born that way, as are book animals, but Ipswich ended up with a third hand and second tail as an adult due to a work accident.

But because he was born a book animal, there's no part of his body that can just have magic purely removed to fix the issue. A similar disfigurement on a standard human may have been fixable, but they couldn't remove magic from him without basically melting him to cell goo, so he has to live with it.

(and anyone curious about where Hyssop fits on this scale: he could probably have his spell removed, but while it wouldn't kill him, he'd be worse off for it and wouldn't be able to use the ability he paid so dearly for - and he wouldn't be bright orange any more either and we can't have that)

[dimespin]

Bad night

[dimespin]

I felt like designing Ipswich’s parents

[dimespin]

Gradient map experiment with ipswich

[dimespin]

What exactly is happening in the Ipswitch comic? Is the parasitic twin gaining sentience or something?

Basically, the parasitic twin is more magic than the rest of him is and is hooked up to his nervous system in weird and convoluted ways, so nerve impulses crossing the gap don’t always translate correctly.

It’s not intelligent but it’s sort of almost intelligent, but not in a conscious way - it can enact some basic behaviors (like grabbing things) without him feeling like he told his hand to do that, but nothing more. The twin has no brain, but it has some brain stem and can send it’s own senseless impulses, in addition to signals just getting confused or garbled.

Throw in weird brain activity due to dreaming and things get weird