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Author Topic: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-36 Decisions, Decisions  (Read 684013 times)

monk12

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Re: You are a Necromancer!
« Reply #300 on: January 09, 2012, 12:32:47 am »

Spoiler: Author's Note (click to show/hide)

I think should not use acutally corpses of people instead ours should be made up of animals, and skeletal bodies we construct from animal bones to further prove our goodwill.
A golem army you say? I like it in stead of using somebodies dead ancestors witch could paint us in a negative light. we use animals and inanimate objects instead...I like it.   

How very punny.  ;)

I think we should focus on the golem route. That might be seen as more natural than the zombie army route. We need to try to figure out how to make a golem that can move. I still stand behind trying clay automatons, and possibly jointed dolls. Just see whats needed to give the thing strength.

An army of trees might be nice, too. Try raising a weed (that we left out in the sun till it died, say), and see if it can be given movement

I think, from what we've seen so far, that the creation of a golem is a different part of necromancy entirely. Remember the sadness we felt after killing the first rope golem? I wonder if we are in fact creating a sentient soul. In that light, I'd feel bad about destroying any future golems, unless it is absolutely necessary. We should hide the ones we create, now that if they are found, they will probably be blamed on one of the two known necromancers running around.

So many complicated ethics!

Are there any stories about golems? Anything to draw some understanding from? Automatons perhaps? Pinocchio? Is there any way to ask an elder if past necromancers ever made minions which were not of flesh?
One more thing to note, I'm pretty sure that 3 necromancers (The one at the Jeweled Coast and Thrimesdur and us) awakening at somewhere around the same time is strongly connected, and I'm pretty sure the elders would have noted it also. This may lead to them guessing that there may be more popping up around the world. If they mention some kind of test at the conference, we should leave quickly.

As it turns out, Omo does snore- noisily. Hopefully it's just a byproduct of the wine. You toss and turn, your thoughts dashing about a hundred different subjects.

You reflect on the Necromancer of Thrimesdur, whoever he or she may be. Why is it that every story that has a Necromancer in it involves that necromancer raising an army of corpses and going on a conquest spree? You'd think there would be some variation- after all, almost all cultures have taboos about disturbing the dead, so why does it seem that such concerns never bother a necromancer? You know from first-hand experience that Necromancers can create golems, but such creations figure in only a few of the oldest stories, and are normally associated with the Dwarves, not Necromancers.

Thinking of the sanctity of burial rites makes you philosophical. Desecrating graves and corpses is frowned upon because those bodies were once alive, but what is so special about life? Elves believe in a Spirit present in all living things- Humans believe that sentient creatures possess a Soul, with much the same purpose. Is the Spirit derived from Vitality, the presence of Life, or is it the other way around? Are you recalling the Spirit to animate the corpses you raise? Are you creating a Soul for the golems you create? There must be an answer...

Golems- your golems haven't been particularly impressive thus far. A rock with no abilities, a rope doll with no mind or ability to move. It certainly seems odd you can raise a fish with the ability to see, hear, and swim about with less effort than it takes to make a rock hold Vitality and nothing else. They're both inanimate, aren't they? Why are the rules different?

The other Necromancers might know, but then again, there shouldn't be other necromancers. You don't know how things were before the Golgothan War, but everyone knows that there were no Necromancers alive at its conclusion. In the intervening millennium, a handful of Necromancers arose independently in various locations, going on various world-conquering sprees with greater or lesser success before being inevitably defeated. One at a time, with hundreds of years separating them, not three at once. Maybe it's just random chance catching up with the world, or maybe there are more sinister forces at work.

With that troubling thought, you fall into a restless sleep.

Okay, in my mind, leaving is now more important than ever. We need to convince Omo of that. If the elders do not give their approval, we will have to leave without it. With or without him. We need to make clear that it is vitally important to us, and that we can do far more good out there actually learning about what is going on than being conscripted into the army or something.
I say we leaved before the Valley is sealed. If the Necromancers army is close by we may get a chance to talk to someone with strengths like us, and maybe convince them to not attack the eleves.

You awaken early the following morning- Omo is not in the tent. You take advantage of the privacy to change your clothes, pondering your course of action. You are hesitant to leave without gathering more information, but you cannot risk being trapped in the Vale- the close quarters and strict discipline of Army life would likely not agree with your need to practice your Necromantic arts.

You flip open the tent flap, stretching in the morning chill. Omo is tending a fire nearby, frying eggs and bacon in a pan. He motions you to take a seat on a comfortably mossy log and spills the contents of the pan into a small wooden bowl, and hands it to you before dropping more meat and egg into the pan with a sizzle.

Morning, Nym. Sleep well?
Well enough, considering you snore like a drunken bear.
Hah! Well, you won't have to put up with that any longer- I've thought it over, and decided to leave the Vale.
What? Really?
Really- I don't know what is going to happen here, but I do know if I report in I'll be the most junior of the junior officers, a position that was unpalatable enough in peacetime. I neither need nor want that kind of authority and responsibility.
Great! I thought I was going to have to convince you to come with me, but this will be much cleaner if we go together!
I- together!?! Nym, you can't leave!
Oh, but I could yesterday, is that it?
Yes! There wasn't a war brewing yesterday! I can hold my own in a fight, I can provide for myself in the wild, I can take what the world throws at me.
And I can't, right? You're so much better than me?
You know I didn't mean it like that, but let's face it, Nym- you don't have the skill set to survive out there. You aren't a trained fighter, you've never spent two nights together sleeping beneath the stars, and you aren't particularly sneaky- if we run into bandits or monsters or, the Light forbid, the forces of the Necromancer, all you can do is get yourself killed.
Hey, I'm not all that helpless. Besides, you have to take me with you.
Oh? And why is that?
Because if you don't, I'll tell the Rangers, and they'll be on you faster than you can say AWOL.
...Bloody Hell, Nym! Why do you want to leave so badly?
Because I think we can do a lot more good out there in the world than cooped up here in the Vale.
Omo rubs his eyes. Ah, burn me- fine. Please don't die on me. He scrapes his breakfast into another small wooden bowl and begins eating.
Grand- what equipment do you have? We don't want to put off our departure any later than we must.
Mmm... well, I've got some camping equipment, as you can see, and the know-how to make do with what we can't carry. My good hatchet is in the tent, and my bedroll- you'll have to get your own, unless you like sleeping on rocks. Mm. Oh, and my staff.
Your staff?
Yeah, hang on.

Setting aside his breakfast, Omo unties a few ropes and the tent collapses in a heap. You realize that the staff Omo draws forth was being used to support the frame, but you're too distracted by the staff itself to give the tent's construction more thought. The staff is nearly nine feet long, made of a smooth, hard, dark wood you do not recognize. The ends are bound in a brass sleeve etched with a stylized leaf pattern. Omo beams at you.

Pretty sweet, huh? Standard issue for Elven Rangers. The wood is specially grown by the Mages to be extremely hard and durable- the brass really doesn't add much other than appearance, and making the ends a bit heavier.
Very impressive! Alright, so you've got a weapon and a hatchet- got any rope?
What do you think I was holding the tent up with? I've got a fifty foot coil.
Great! How about healing herbs- poultices and the like?
I've got nothing- healer's kits are expensive, and normally I just hit up a Life Mage if I'm feeling under the weather. Healing potions are expensive too, so those are out. If it comes down to it I can try to gather some herbs in the wild, but if it's anything serious we'll be better off finding a qualified healer.
Well, that cuts down on my shopping list a bit.
Omo goes back to his breakfast. So, what now?

Good question. Every hour you delay could cost you when trying to escape the Vale. You could hit up the Caravan to finish your supplies and find out more world news, especially as regards the Necromancer(s). You could also try to get formal permission to depart from the Elders, if they can find the time to speak with you- you'll be able to find out their official position on the Necromancer problem that way, at least. Time is ticking.

Spoiler: You (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Spells (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Omo Thunderjaw (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Notable Figures (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Planned Experiments (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Maps (click to show/hide)

fergus

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Re: You are a Necromancer!
« Reply #301 on: January 09, 2012, 12:42:54 am »

The elders probably won't give permission and if they don't we will lose any chance of escape. We don't need any more supplies and we can gather news some place less likely to trap us, so we should probably just leave. Also, what do we gain XP from? Just necromancy?
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BY THE GODS! THIS QUOTE MADE MY SIG BOX HAVE A SCROLL BAR! HAPPY DAYS INDEED!
BY THE GODS! YOU HAVE TOO MANY SIGS!

Cellmonk

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Re: You are a Necromancer!
« Reply #302 on: January 09, 2012, 12:54:22 am »

Also, which direction is Omo heading? we should plot our direction with Omo, and ask what he has planned. For us, I doubt it really matters what direction he has in mind, as long as it is isolated. We should ask him what the rangers taught him about necromancers and zombies.
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monk12

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Re: You are a Necromancer!
« Reply #303 on: January 09, 2012, 12:55:10 am »

The elders probably won't give permission and if they don't we will lose any chance of escape. We don't need any more supplies and we can gather news some place less likely to trap us, so we should probably just leave. Also, what do we gain XP from? Just necromancy?

Yeah, you gain XP for Necromancy spells, not the general ones. I'm also not going to grant you XP for doing the same thing over and over- you only got 1 XP for raising those minnows even though you cast the spell twice, for instance. You also gain a little XP for surviving combat. Omo gains XP for using his Ranger abilities and gets more XP from combat than you do.

lockman766

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Re: You are a Necromancer!
« Reply #304 on: January 09, 2012, 02:49:25 am »

I'm with Fergus we leave right away though we may want to pick up a bed roll first.
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GlyphGryph

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Re: You are a Necromancer!
« Reply #305 on: January 09, 2012, 08:13:13 am »

Ask Omo if he knows how to make mana potions - if anyone knows how, and its so quick to learn you can pick it up in a day, it would be him, no?

I honestly don't think waiting, even a day, would be that big a deal - the elves seem like a contemplative group. Deliberate, and slow to act - any IMMEDIATE preparations they would engage in have probably already happened. Waiting a bit longer and gathering some valuable information could be incredibly important, especially if we could get some idea of what we'd be up against for our escape attempt.

Also, we want to find and talk to Elana before we leave. Tell her we'll be asking to leave, despite the wars, and gauge he response. See if we can get any expensive stuff out of her, at least. Ask what she knows.

Try for common worries for nonsuspicious questions -> Why does every necromancer that shows up want to conquer the world or build a huge army? Why are there two at once? What does Elana know about them and their creations that might keep us safe if we encounter them?

Also, on Golems:
For those pushing them, how the FUCK are golems more moral than the undead? Golems require us to kill someone, or at least steal a part of their vital spirit, in order to be created. Our golems probably did not work because we used a goddamn tree spirit which only knows how to be a tree, after all (though it may not be the only cause). It seems, so far, like a distinctly less than zero sum game - We get a lot less vitality than the thing we targeted gives, after all. Of course... we can steal vitality from the undead, it seems like, but can we make golems out of that? It doesn't seem like we've actually tried. And have we tried to re-raise something we've stolen vitality from? It may be that necromancy re-awakens the soul, and steal vitality tears it away,  making those corpses we've stolen vitality from, like, ULTRAdead.

We don't know nearly enough to know if golems are the more moral choice here - all we know right now is that we need to steal life force from the living or unliving to create then. They may make for better PR, but that's the extent of it.
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Grek

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Re: You are a Necromancer!
« Reply #306 on: January 09, 2012, 09:16:25 am »

Vitality doesn't really seem to be the "vital spirit" of anything, so much as an interchangable fluid that is produced naturally by living things and artifically by Life magic. We have no evidence that it comes in different types, or that vitality is anything other than a proxy for Elan Vital. The ethical totem pole seems to go something like:

-Plant/Animal zombie
-Golem/willing demihuman zombie
-Unwilling demihuman zombie
-A vampire or something
-Undead Whooping AIDS
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GlyphGryph

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Re: You are a Necromancer!
« Reply #307 on: January 09, 2012, 10:47:25 am »

Since we do seem to have the ability to kill things what with the talk of death blasts earlier (assuming it wasn't just random talk and actually works), I wonder how focused we can make it. We might be able to offer pretty good protection against disease, infection, etc. and so on with a minimal amounts of power. A necromancer - one who can not only raise the dead but CAUSE death with his powers, would make a truly amazing healer.

This is, in fact, why I wanted to know if the fish we ate had spoiled at all despite spending most of a day wet and warm. If undeath protects against rot, that's good evidence for the value we could provide as a healer, since infection is like THE leading cause of death in most places.

At the very least we could use a blast of necromantic energy to sterilize water or transfer health directly from one person to another as a life saving emergency measure.

Speaking of which, we need to figure out EXACTLY how much damage steal vitality causes, compared to the vitality we get from it (and how much we can control that). It would be nice to know if we can offer up some of our own vitality to Omo in a life or death situation, or let him do the same. But that's based on it not doing enough damage to outright kill us.
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Grek

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Re: You are a Necromancer!
« Reply #308 on: January 09, 2012, 11:07:13 am »

We can't do death blasts. When we tried to blast something with vitality, it created Rocky, the undead rock.

Steal Vitality takes 6 vitality from the target and gives us 2 vitality to play with. We have 10 vitality, Omo has 13. We know this already.
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GlyphGryph

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Re: You are a Necromancer!
« Reply #309 on: January 09, 2012, 11:22:07 am »

We know that /happened/, yes. But what are the details?

How sure are we that this is the case?

Actually, reviewing that information would probably be a good idea - how do we know that steal vitality takes 6hp from a target?
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lockman766

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Re: You are a Necromancer!
« Reply #310 on: January 09, 2012, 02:35:22 pm »

We can't do death blasts. When we tried to blast something with vitality, it created Rocky, the undead rock.

Steal Vitality takes 6 vitality from the target and gives us 2 vitality to play with. We have 10 vitality, Omo has 13. We know this already.
Besides I'm sure there will be more than enough enemies(bandits highwaymen ect.), and undead along the way to keep our golems charged.
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GlyphGryph

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Re: You are a Necromancer!
« Reply #311 on: January 09, 2012, 03:30:24 pm »

Idea for an experiment:

We don't know the details of how the Steal Vitality spell works, and this will likely give us more info about its implementation: (Note that most of these experiments should work, if the blighted former elven homeland is what I think it is)

Requirements: Bag of fresh vegetable matter from various plants. Some sort of branch. Some sort of crayfish equivalent (maybe)

Step one:
Attempt to steal vitality from a single vegetable in the first bag. Success is assumed, and the amount of vitality retrieved would likely be minimal.

Step two:
Now attempt to steal vitality from the BAG of stuff. Basically, unfocus your attempt. Treat it as a single mass of living material, and try to Steal Vitality from all of it. Hopefully, this works. If it doesn't, move on to Step two-b, otherwise move on to step three.

Step two-b:
Target a larger area. Perhaps a field of grass. Try to achieve a very large coverage. Do we still get the same amount of vitality? Does it still cost the same? If it works, move on to step two-c, otherwise move on to step three.

Step two-c:
Put a crayfish equivalent in a bunch of grass. Stea Vitality on the area again. Does the crayfish survive, but with less vitality? In essence, does an area blast deal the same overall amount of damage, but distributed amongst it's target?

Step three:
Now try this in reverse. Focus that shit. Take our large branch (a bush would also do). Attempt to Steal Vitality from only a portion of it, but not the whole thing. If this doesn't work, did the tree it was connected to get any vitality drained? If this doesn't work and the branch source us unhindered, repeat, but while holding the severed branch against the tree.

Step four:
Attempt to steal LESS vitality, perhaps from a portion of it only. Exactly how focused can we get this?

Step five:
Rather than trying to steal a ball of energy, try to channel vitality directly into a golem - create a thread, a pump of some sort, rather than plucking it out.
« Last Edit: January 09, 2012, 03:32:05 pm by GlyphGryph »
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lockman766

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Re: You are a Necromancer!
« Reply #312 on: January 09, 2012, 04:07:40 pm »

Idea for an experiment:

We don't know the details of how the Steal Vitality spell works, and this will likely give us more info about its implementation: (Note that most of these experiments should work, if the blighted former elven homeland is what I think it is)

Requirements: Bag of fresh vegetable matter from various plants. Some sort of branch. Some sort of crayfish equivalent (maybe)

Step one:
Attempt to steal vitality from a single vegetable in the first bag. Success is assumed, and the amount of vitality retrieved would likely be minimal.

Step two:
Now attempt to steal vitality from the BAG of stuff. Basically, unfocus your attempt. Treat it as a single mass of living material, and try to Steal Vitality from all of it. Hopefully, this works. If it doesn't, move on to Step two-b, otherwise move on to step three.

Step two-b:
Target a larger area. Perhaps a field of grass. Try to achieve a very large coverage. Do we still get the same amount of vitality? Does it still cost the same? If it works, move on to step two-c, otherwise move on to step three.

Step two-c:
Put a crayfish equivalent in a bunch of grass. Stea Vitality on the area again. Does the crayfish survive, but with less vitality? In essence, does an area blast deal the same overall amount of damage, but distributed amongst it's target?

Step three:
Now try this in reverse. Focus that shit. Take our large branch (a bush would also do). Attempt to Steal Vitality from only a portion of it, but not the whole thing. If this doesn't work, did the tree it was connected to get any vitality drained? If this doesn't work and the branch source us unhindered, repeat, but while holding the severed branch against the tree.

Step four:
Attempt to steal LESS vitality, perhaps from a portion of it only. Exactly how focused can we get this?

Step five:
Rather than trying to steal a ball of energy, try to channel vitality directly into a golem - create a thread, a pump of some sort, rather than plucking it out.
We should check to see if the vitality is more than 6 otherwise it won't help anything. However trying to draw less would be beneficial.
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GlyphGryph

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Re: You are a Necromancer!
« Reply #313 on: January 09, 2012, 04:28:25 pm »

If we can spread the vitality loss across a group of things we are more likely to be able to draw more with minimal effects on each individual - or, potentially, to kill people faster if we can draw more. Getting an idea of area of effect would be useful even without that, though.
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lockman766

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Re: You are a Necromancer!
« Reply #314 on: January 09, 2012, 04:35:08 pm »

If we can spread the vitality loss across a group of things we are more likely to be able to draw more with minimal effects on each individual - or, potentially, to kill people faster if we can draw more. Getting an idea of area of effect would be useful even without that, though.
okay I see your point I think we should make this research top priority.
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