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How Big is Nautilus? I'll tell you for an ale...

SociopathFriend·6/1/2018, 4:42:43 AM·7 votes·7,431 views

Or not- I'll do it for free! Our lovable Titan of the Depths recently got his lore update with some of the Bilgewater natives and this passage caught my eye.

The ship tipped to starboard, right-sudden. It was the weight of the Titan himself, hauling up onto the deck. Perhaps once it’d been a man, but it weren’t no man I saw that night, risin’ from the waves. I has our captain by the throat. “This is your doing!” I roared, as I chokes the bastard, his eyes wide. He can see Nautilus is comin’ for us...

So I shoves the captain away, down the slanted deck, and this thing catches him in one hand, if you can believe it! It was so big, the fingers closed completely around ‘is body and the captain weren’t a small man by any stretch.

Key part bolded. Now I'm a mere lover of numbers, not necessarily good at it, but I enjoy the process. I think that actually makes him even bigger than he was in a New Dawn truth be told. This is a tad vague of a process so exact numbers aren't something you should necessarily look for.

Now assuming the captain is average ("weren't a small man") that would mean he's 5'10. A bit of Google-fu revealed the average-height American adult male (5-foot-10) has an average hand size (measured from the tip of the middle finger to the wrist) of 7.44 inches. For the fingers to close completely around him, Nautilus' hand would have to be twice his height I thinks, since your middle finger is roughly the length of your palm. So from wrist to the end of the finger he could cover the man completely. The other interpretation I'm getting is that Naut is so large that his fingers and his fingers ONLY can cover the man's body completely, which would be roughly double again for the height.

So to convert to inches (sorry metric boys, Riot's MERICAN) an average adult is 70 inches tall with a 7.44 inch hand. Naut's hand would have to be 140 inches tall. That should make the Titan of the Depths... 1317.2 inches in height? 109 feet and 9 inches in other words. About 33 meters and change for the metric crowd. If it were only his fingers and not his palm covering the man, you'd double that result or so. Again, this is a patented ballpark calculation, but I enjoy the number-game. Can we get Nautilus into one of those robot skin lines? It's Kaiju-hunting time boys.

19 Comments

RiotBioluminescence6/1/2018, 6:53:15 AM9 votes

[{quoted}](name=Love and Peace V,realm=NA,application-id=6kFXY1kR,discussion-id=PlfXg0Mo,comment-id=,timestamp=2018-06-01T04:42:43.689+0000)

Now assuming the captain is average ("weren't a small man") that would mean he's 5'10. A bit of Google-fu revealed the average-height American adult male (5-foot-10) has an average hand size (measured from the tip of the middle finger to the wrist) of 7.44 inches...

I'm more of a personal fan of Ifneth's calculations, but there are two complicating factors I wanted to point out about the approximate size of the captain.

First, it's tricky to assume that a common captain would have the kind of nutrition that the typical American has - and so that might make the captain shorter. Hard to say though, as Runeterra has pretty heroic scales. There's some fascinating studies done into heights of populations over the centuries - and how stress and nutrition at specific pivotal points in development can have huge, genetics-independent, influence on height.

(I.e. someone growing up in a warzone with poor nutrition will statistically be shorter than someone getting the right nourishment without excess stress, even with the same genes. I say statistically, because you'll still find some short unstressed/well-fed people and some tall stressed/malnourished people, even with the same genes - but over entire populations, skewing happens.)

Secondly, I suspect that the narrator was using litotes (which is a word I just learned about in the last 10 minutes) which means rhetorical understatement. In the same way that a particularly restrained Brit might describe an incredible turn of good luck as being "Not the worst thing in the world", I believe the narrator may have used "weren't a small man by any stretch" to suggest that the captain was very much the opposite - but in this case, small might not mean height so much as girth, seeing as it is considered relevant to Nautilus' grasp.

Neat topic :D [poppy-wink]

Ifneth6/1/2018, 5:50:58 AM8 votes

Your 100 foot conclusion is based on a wrong assumption about Nautilus’ hand size. For Nautilus to wrap his hand around the Captain, it would need to be as long as he is around, not twice as long as he is tall. If the captain has a 36 inch waist, then Nautlius’ hand would need to be 3 feet long.

The 7.44 inches of an average hand is roughly 7.5 inches, which goes into the average height of 5’ 10” or 70 inches about ten times. Therefore, height is roughly ten times hand length, implying that Nautilus is 30 feet tall.

That seems about right for an Eldritch Titan in a diving suit.

RiotRiot Scathlocke6/1/2018, 3:49:51 PM6 votes

All of this is assuming, of course, that Lars isn't just some drunkard in a bar trying to get a free ale for a tall tale...

[poppy-wink]

KestrelGirl6/1/2018, 4:49:32 AM5 votes

Consider taking a look at New Dawn. He is huge in there, but not nearly that huge. His old lore still coded him as being absolutely massive so I currently have his numbers at 36 feet tall. Can go bigger but 100+ feels like a bit much.

Also, sailors' tales can be a bit exaggerated. Keep that in mind!

ModThe Djinn6/1/2018, 2:12:27 PM3 votes

And the captain weren’t a small man by any stretch.

To me this is a polite way of saying "a big man," so I'll make that assumption.

I'd also say "its fingers closed completely "around" his body means "encircling" rather than "completely covering," especially as later it mentions that "Nautilus still held the captain, squirmin’ and wrigglin’ like a stuck worm, but there were no escapin’ that grasp," which implies that the captain is visible -- something that wouldn't happen if a hand were closed around him, as he'd be invisible.

Which means we're looking at a waist size of "large," which I'd suggest that based on US sizes is probably around 38 inches.

The average grip diameter of a human hand is about 2 inches (for a circumference of about 6.3 inches), and my search for average hand size is 7.24 inches around the median point. So grip diameter is about 85% of total hand height (approximately).

I'll give Nautilus a bit of leeway and say he has some room to spare, so we'll aim for a 41 inch circumference grip, which would mean a 48 inch hand, which would make him 6.5x the height of a human, or 455 inches, or 38 feet tall.

Crow Nebula6/1/2018, 9:28:31 AM1 votes

Can anyone explain why Nautilus is so big? Is he just huge because Riot thought it'd be cool, or is there an actual story reason for it?

The Iceborn9/27/2019, 4:21:35 PM1 votes

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