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Author Topic: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-36 Decisions, Decisions  (Read 656657 times)

escaped lurker

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-24
« Reply #1935 on: April 03, 2015, 03:43:14 am »

With all our vitality experiments so far we've been implanting things with vitality from other things, right? Never our own? If it's true, then implanting a rock, for example, with our own vitality than with the vitality of a tree might get us different results. It is our vitality, after all, and we're controlling the thing that has our vitality.

I remember us becoming wounded. I think it was us overtaxing ourself, or a haywire spell, but taking vitality from our creations was able to heal us - albeit not fully.
Thus, forcing vitality out of us, which is a reasonable possiblity, would definitely cause us damage.

To avoid taking damage, but still having enough "energy" to create vast hordes of undead, is why that big desert exists - the necromancers of the past sucked all life out of it. Or maybe still do, else that somesuch abomination in it would not have endured the ages.
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Parisbre56

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-24
« Reply #1936 on: April 03, 2015, 03:50:21 am »

So far, drain vitality has shown us no difference between our own vitality and someone else's. When we healed the children, for example, using our vitality didn't give us any control over them. So it appears that pure vitality does not get "tainted" by its source, there's no difference for where it comes from. We'd have to use a different spell, something that retains the properties of vitality.

Deep Waters

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-24
« Reply #1937 on: April 03, 2015, 01:53:26 pm »

Have we asked Eko if he's heard of, or even think it's possible, for a necromancer to be, you know, good? Ranging from helping with his/her magic the way we want to, or just living their life on a farm, maybe with some golems to do the hard work, but otherwise not going all crazy world-dictatory-genocide? I seem to remember *someone* having an answer to that, and his answer to the "Possible?" one would be enlightening, depending on how rabid/incredulous he seems when he says no. There's a difference between the "No"'s of "I... don't really see how it is..." and "That's insanity, how could a necromancer be good?!"

And if he actually DOES say "Yeah, but I've never heard of one," or something positive, that's fucking spectacular.

It'd be relatively easy to ask, since we're supposed to be students of magic, and we can go "I've read about all these different magic schools, and they all have their good apples and bad apples, but necromancy seems the odd one out, and I don't really get why. Obviously the whole 'dead people' thing is a mark against it, but from what I read, necromancy isn't only about dead people. I've heard of constructs made of wood in the necromancers armies, and those... probably aren't made using dead people. No one really seems to know how it works. There's probably some other things they can do, maybe some form of divination from dead animals and entrails? So why do you think there's such a difference? Where are the necromantic 'good apples,' is that even possible?" or something like that.


THAT SAID: What about divination from dead animals/entrails? Have we tried that? It IS the main historical thing people used for divination, after all...

I had some quotes in one of my last posts. This one is the closest thing I've found to Eko stating the belief that Necromancers don't have to be evil:

Quote
   "By killing every Necromancer you can find?" You ask. "I don't know... it seems to me that the Necromancers go on their killing sprees because they are so heavily persecuted. If they weren't killed for being who they are, wouldn't they just keep living peacefully in their villages?"
   Eko barks a short laugh. "You know, it's funny... I had a similar conversation with Cikul not too long ago. It's hard to argue against the weight of the prophecies, and the High Priests say that the influence of the Death Gods would lead to war and destruction in any case. If the policy seems harsh, remember that it was implemented in the wake of the Golgothan War. The Necromancers of the world had just proven incapable of peaceful coexistence with the Empire, and then a dire prophecy warns that they will attack again in the future? An attack that will destroy the Empire, and maybe the world? I can't fault the decision that the Emperor made."

And maybe this as well:

Quote
   Eko stares into the fire, nodding slowly. "Yes... it was so different from anything I had done before, anywhere I had been before. It was hard to adapt, at first, and I'm afraid I didn't make the best first impression. Still, it's been almost ten years now; I've gotten used to life out here." He looks up, smiling. "At the end of the day, people are people, whether they're village goodwives or wizarding acolytes or merciless merchants."

It's more an implication than anything else, which means telling him the truth isn't entirely without risk. I think there's a strong chance that we can convince him, though, if we play our cards right. In any case, convincing Eko to join us isn't our main concern right now. We need to focus on ways to find this Necromantic creature and end its curse.

As for the other things you mentioned, I vaguely remember someone from Yicelafo mentioning that Necromantic golems were known, although dwarves could also craft golems. I think it was Pevo, a sage, so it's hard to tell if that'd be common knowledge. I don't know about the divination.
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[23:14:34] <GameMaster> And so (...) a one-armed dwarf and a mage wearing a blanket walk into a tomb.
[23:14:42] <GameMaster> Sadly, that isn't a joke.

[20:42:03] <HailFire> our wizard tower just got smoked by projectile cats from space

RAM

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-24
« Reply #1938 on: April 03, 2015, 02:09:27 pm »

Based on the source materials, there is a small chance that Order actually has a practice of brining dead spirits back amongst the living. But only rarely and only former heroes of their own faith who are presumably volunteers. They may also have the ability to cause someone to burn up the life force of the whole rest of their life in a brief burst of activity. In one of the source materials, Order was probably the most necromantic of the faiths other than Death.

As far as transferring vitality around though, an elf would use Life magic, which is the opposite of Death magic, but deals with many of the same themes. Damaging undead directly and putting vitality into things should be easy to pass off as natural, but taking vitality out of things(with the exception of undead, as that can be passed off as Life inhibiting Death, probably, I would assume that Order can inhibit Chaos directly...) or cursing them doesn't really seem like a Life thing. Life seems more about creating and correcting vitality, Death seems more about moving and altering vitality. So there should be a range of things that we can do and pass it off as life magic.

It is interesting to note that we have an unusually large mana pool, this may be inherent to necromancy compared to Life. Maybe it represents a difference in methodologies of magical use.

Ohhey, wasn't there some sort of Death entity loitering in our dreams? I wonder if it is like some sort of Death god, perhaps it can be unfluenced by our nature, maybe we could turn it good...
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Parisbre56

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-24
« Reply #1939 on: April 03, 2015, 02:25:10 pm »

I remember there being three schools of Life magic, one of which focused on using life magic to cause damage. So using life magic to hurt people isn't that strange. And if Eko uses his divinations and detects necromantic energy, we can blame it on the monster.

The problem would be how magic looks. We have our necromantic sight, which makes everything necromantic look purple. Including our spells. Would using a  necromantic spell look purple for others? Can they see the vitality we draw out of things? We should probably use Omo to check. Or ask him if he saw anything strange when we gave vitality to the kids.

And probably ask Eko if he has any passive abilities like our  necromantic sight, something that could reveal what kind of spell b we're using. But not directly. We should ask about if he's heard about passive abilities in general.

Deep Waters

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-24
« Reply #1940 on: April 03, 2015, 02:40:13 pm »

Based on the source materials, there is a small chance that Order actually has a practice of brining dead spirits back amongst the living. But only rarely and only former heroes of their own faith who are presumably volunteers. They may also have the ability to cause someone to burn up the life force of the whole rest of their life in a brief burst of activity. In one of the source materials, Order was probably the most necromantic of the faiths other than Death.

As far as transferring vitality around though, an elf would use Life magic, which is the opposite of Death magic, but deals with many of the same themes. Damaging undead directly and putting vitality into things should be easy to pass off as natural, but taking vitality out of things(with the exception of undead, as that can be passed off as Life inhibiting Death, probably, I would assume that Order can inhibit Chaos directly...) or cursing them doesn't really seem like a Life thing. Life seems more about creating and correcting vitality, Death seems more about moving and altering vitality. So there should be a range of things that we can do and pass it off as life magic.

It is interesting to note that we have an unusually large mana pool, this may be inherent to necromancy compared to Life. Maybe it represents a difference in methodologies of magical use.

Ohhey, wasn't there some sort of Death entity loitering in our dreams? I wonder if it is like some sort of Death god, perhaps it can be unfluenced by our nature, maybe we could turn it good...

We have an unusually large mana pool because we're an elf. I don't know if we have large mana pools even for elves, though-- it was mentioned that we were once identified as having a lot of magical potential, until we demonstrated having absolutely no ability to learn even the most basic of Life magic. Also, source materials? What source materials? I don't recall any of that being mentioned in the thread itself.

As for the death entity, that would be Fale Packunions, a fellow Necromancer. They're supposedly the servant of Morka, the last and most powerful god of Death in Urak. They've at least got Curo Nightroar on their side, and probably the Pirate King as well (assuming Fale isn't the Pirate King him/herself). We refused their offer to teach us in exchange for joining them in their quest to make the world a safer place for Necromancers-- by conquering it, of course. Now that I remember that, we can also dreamwalk apparently. I wonder if that's a common ability amongst all mages or if it's a purely Necromantic ability. Maybe we should ask Eko later. Anyways, considering how they reacted to our refusal, they're expecting us to turn to their way of thinking, not the other way around. I think they got the impression that we were a lot more naive than we are.

I remember there being three schools of Life magic, one of which focused on using life magic to cause damage. So using life magic to hurt people isn't that strange. And if Eko uses his divinations and detects necromantic energy, we can blame it on the monster.

The problem would be how magic looks. We have our necromantic sight, which makes everything necromantic look purple. Including our spells. Would using a  necromantic spell look purple for others? Can they see the vitality we draw out of things? We should probably use Omo to check. Or ask him if he saw anything strange when we gave vitality to the kids.

And probably ask Eko if he has any passive abilities like our  necromantic sight, something that could reveal what kind of spell b we're using. But not directly. We should ask about if he's heard about passive abilities in general.

Hm, I didn't think of that particular problem. We were, in fact, able to identify some other types of magical energy-- at least, we were able to detect the change when our mother was identifying that artifact amulet. We couldn't tell what it was, exactly, but we can't depend on Eko being as inexperienced as we are. He does have a Detect Magic ability, but it's not passive. I really should reread the entire thread at some point instead of skimming through it to see if we're asking questions that have already been answered before...
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[23:14:34] <GameMaster> And so (...) a one-armed dwarf and a mage wearing a blanket walk into a tomb.
[23:14:42] <GameMaster> Sadly, that isn't a joke.

[20:42:03] <HailFire> our wizard tower just got smoked by projectile cats from space

monk12

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-25
« Reply #1941 on: April 03, 2015, 09:05:25 pm »

Instead of Steal Vitality, maybe we can work on creating Transfer Vitality or Give Vitality? See if we can transfer the vitality of a living leaf to a dead leaf directly. See if we can give our vitality to a dead leaf and see how well we can control that leaf compared to simply raising one.
If no one else can think of anything to do (literally anything), I suggest that, as a last resort to keep from utterly wasting time while waiting, we read Eko's copy of A Study of Aloclesno-- or, if that's not possible, study more of our copy of Prestidigitation for the Beginning Practitioner.

   You awake just before dawn, judging by the wan light filtering through the trees. Eko seems to be sound asleep, but Omo is nowhere to be seen. Quietly leaving the tent, you step outside and find your friend sitting on a log by the campfire.

   "Good morning, Nym." Omo greets you softly. "Sleep well?"
   "Mm. Well enough." You lean back inside the tent long enough to grab your pack. "I'm going to go get changed. Freshen up."
   "Maybe wake up a little, huh?" Omo's teasing grin is quickly replaced by a solicitous look. "Do you want company? I considered looking for fresh water when I woke up, but I figured we shouldn't wander alone into the haunted forest."
   "That's very thoughtful of you, but I think I've got this. I don't need you hovering over my shoulder while I do... stuff." You stride off toward the treeline.
   "Don't go too far!" Omo calls after you.

   A short walk brings you back to the mossy log where you did a bit of experimentation yesterday; it's a good place, not too far from the clearing but with plenty of trees and low branches to give some privacy. You change into a clean set of clothes, using some of your water to cleanse your face and hands. Once your assorted personal hygiene tasks are completed you're ready to return to the clearing... except...

   You take another look around, ensuring nobody is coming from camp to check on you. You haven't had as much privacy as you're accustomed to this past week, which apart from being a bit wearing in its own right has also minimized your opportunities to experiment with your Necromancy. Yesterday's "experiment" wasn't so much practice Necromancy as it was failed hobby crafting, and you've thought of something you can try real quick that could be quite educational.

   The forest floor is virtually covered in dead leaves, many of them broken and dessicated from the abuses of winter. It's not too hard to find one in good condition, and you compare it to a nearby tree full of healthy leaves of the same kind. Your thought is that maybe you can drain the Vitality from one leaf and put it in the other without using Steal Vitality; something more efficient, something with less waste. When you try, however, you find you don't know another way to manipulate the Vitality short of pulling it out of the leaf and towards you- essentially beginning to cast Steal Vitality. It is rather like you had two buckets, one full of water and one empty; you can't work out a way to get water out of the full bucket without picking it up first.

   You have another plan, however, one that you're pretty confident will work; it's basically what you did with the Animate Golem spell, after all. First, you begin to Steal Vitality out of yourself the same way you did to heal Nelti when you left Aloclesno on that night; you need much less Vitality for this trick, however, so you only deal 1 damage to yourself and spend 1 Mana to get a pittance of Vitality which should be sufficient for this leaf-sized experiment. Ignoring the minor pain of the act, you force it into the dead leaf.

   Unlike the Animate Golem incident, you do not feel any great resistance to this act, nor do you feel the spell change at all; no further Mana is drawn from you into the process. Instead, the Vitality seems to settle comfortably into the leaf. With your Necromantic Sight (improved since the last time you did this) you can see the Vitality flowing through the three major veins of the leaf, fanning out into smaller veins as it flows to the edge of the leaf. You don't feel any sort of kinship or ownership over the leaf due to the fact that your own Vitality is animating it, but perhaps that is because you don't know what to do with a leaf; it's pretty useless on its own.

   You don't notice it right away, distracted by the more interesting patterns of Vitality in the veins of the leaf, but the tiny amount of Vitality you imbued the leaf with is dissipating- quickly. By looking closely, it seems that the Vitality flowing around inside the leaf ebbs around the base of the stem; before you can properly react (or think of a way you could react) the Vitality is gone, and the leaf is once again lifeless.

   You scratch your head, examining the leaf as you try to work out exactly what just happened. The leaf was dead, but you animated it without casting Raise Dead or Animate Golem; indeed, the only spell you cast was that pathetic Steal Vitality. Then, the Vitality in the leaf faded away rapidly; you don't know as it even lasted a full minute. It seems like there is some insight to be gained here to the relationship of those three spells, but you don't know what it is just yet.

   Resolving to think about it more later, you return to camp. Eko has also arisen, and is staring into the fire blearily. Omo sits opposite him, tucking into his breakfast. You take a seat beside Omo, eating your own meal.

   "Ahh." Omo sighs in satisfaction, wiping crumbs from his fingertips. "Alright then, what's our plan for this forest?"
   You're only halfway through your own breakfast, and answer around a mouthful of hard cheese. "Eko, you brought that book about that guy who went to Aloclesno before, right?"
   Eko yawns as he breaks into his own provisions. "Yes. A Study of Aloclesno has the account of Kiros Muleclenched, the last priest to enter Aloclesno and the only one to travel within scrying distance of the heart of the forest."
   "Right." You swallow your mouthful, washing it down with lukewarm water from Omo's waterskin. "Let's read that. Maybe we can see what prevented him from finding the source of the Curse."
   Eko shrugs, digging around in his pack until he withdraws the book. Opening to a page marked with a ribbon, Eko begins skimming the text. "Let's see... he cast a Sanctuary to use as his base camp, then quaffed a Mana potion to cast a Minor Ward on himself and followed up with Detect Undead. Five mile radius, not enough to cover the whole forest but enough to comfortably cover areas of the forest not reached by castings on the border. He spent the rest of that day exploring his local surroundings on foot, found some plants, found some antique weapons..." Eko thumbs forward a couple pages. "The next day he sent with more conventional divinations; Clairaudience, Clairvoyance, See Invisible, Detect Magic, Scrying..." Eko glances up at you. "Scry is quite a powerful divination, and beyond my own abilities. It essentially let him use Detect Magic and Detect Undead at ranges beyond himself, covering much of the forest. Anyway, after that night the Sanctuary ran out, so he cast another Minor Ward on himself, one last Detect Undead for good measure, and left."
   "So he was covered the whole time, and never drew the creature to himself?" You ask.
   Eko shrugs, returning to his breakfast. "He didn't know there was such a creature, but even so his Divinations should have found it."
   "The same way your Divinations should have warned you about the zombies that attacked the other night." Omo asks pointedly.
   Eko's face darkens. "That's different. Perhaps the rest of the zombies were just outside the range of my spell; I am not as gifted as Kiros was supposed to be. My spell worked fine on the zombie I had."

   You gaze idly into the fire, finishing your breakfast. Kiros never encountered any Necromantic creature in the forest, even though you know there is one roaming about now. Could it have been smart enough to know to hide from Kiros, or was there a flaw in the priest's method? What can you do to succeed where Kiros failed?

Spoiler: Author's Note (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: You (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Your Spells (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Omo Thunderjaw (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Eko Cleanvise (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Eko's Spells (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Notable Figures (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Planned Experiments (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Maps (click to show/hide)

Baffler

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-25
« Reply #1942 on: April 03, 2015, 09:19:16 pm »

It lives!

The Curse didn't affect the priest before, but he was warded the entire time and used indirect methods to try to find it. We can't rule out that it has some means of concealing itself. Almost everyone else who goes in, unprotected, must be attacked by it at some point because they rarely return. It's risky, but we may have to eschew the protection of the wards (specifically designed to conceal people under its protection from the undead) and lure it out of hiding to have any hope of finding it. Ideally some protection to step into wouldn't be far away. Also worth noting is that the only attacks that we know details of occurred at night. It chased us out of the forest after dark, and the children fled into the forest from a zombie attack the night before. Again, it's risky, but it's worth considering.
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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-25
« Reply #1943 on: April 03, 2015, 09:30:03 pm »

I wonder what the shape of a divination typically is, maybe they are squashed-out and do not extend much vertically...

For me, the obvious approach would be to just spend our time, personally, outside of the ward, but close to it, and remain alert for as long as we are able. If it shows up, the three of us throw all our divinations at it and retreat to the ward.
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endlessblaze

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-25
« Reply #1944 on: April 03, 2015, 09:39:07 pm »

yhea might be best to sit outside the ward.... if siting does not work, then walk around, snap branches, throw rocks. make a disturbance.   then.......if that still will not work move further from the wards, it may be smart enough to stay away and not attack us when we are close to safety.
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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-25
« Reply #1945 on: April 03, 2015, 09:41:48 pm »

I wonder what the shape of a divination typically is, maybe they are squashed-out and do not extend much vertically...

For me, the obvious approach would be to just spend our time, personally, outside of the ward, but close to it, and remain alert for as long as we are able. If it shows up, the three of us throw all our divinations at it and retreat to the ward.

...Above


What if the creature has a means of flight? It could avoid both sharp eyes and careful wards is it could fly or levitate high enough above the trees, while a passerby lucky enough to look up would mistake it for a simple bird or even a dot.

Honestly if it can fly at all it could avoid detection as high as the forest is wide. and swoop down suddenly on potential prey.
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endlessblaze

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-25
« Reply #1946 on: April 03, 2015, 09:43:40 pm »

...............tree.....climb.....now.
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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-25
« Reply #1947 on: April 03, 2015, 09:55:05 pm »

...............tree.....climb.....now.

...............tree.....climb.....now.

+1 also where exactly are we again? Sorry it's been a very long while for me and I want to know about the situation we are in.
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Parisbre56

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-25
« Reply #1948 on: April 03, 2015, 10:01:11 pm »

Hmm... So the leaf has some property that allows it to store vitality and utilize it, as if its body has that information stored in it, at least in a basic way (perhaps in a way linked to the leaf's biology). More than that, it wants to have vitality in it, it accepts it. But without something to bind the vitality there, because the leaf is damaged, the vitality just dissipates instead of animating it. It is like doing a blood transfusion to a corpse that's missing a limb.

So the raise zombie spell must somehow either seal the vitality inside the zombie or magically repair some of the damage done to it or supplant the functions of the body. Maybe all three at once. And it uses the information stored in the body to do so. That's why the headless ant got a magical purple head after being raised.

And the animate object does something similar for inanimate objects. Only now the problem is that inanimate objects don't naturally support vitality, so again you must seal it into them. And then you can do similar things to what the raise zombie spell does, you can alter its vitality network to add functions the body is missing, functions that imitate life.

At least that's my interpretation of that. A bit sleepy now and I still haven't finished rereading...

Good experiment Andres.
« Last Edit: April 03, 2015, 10:03:37 pm by Parisbre56 »
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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-25
« Reply #1949 on: April 03, 2015, 10:02:11 pm »

I'm busy right now, so I can't analyze this situation deeply-- but it would be prudent to consider that the creature might be neither physical nor undead. Perhaps ask if Detect Magic can also detect creatures that are derived from magic?
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[23:14:34] <GameMaster> And so (...) a one-armed dwarf and a mage wearing a blanket walk into a tomb.
[23:14:42] <GameMaster> Sadly, that isn't a joke.

[20:42:03] <HailFire> our wizard tower just got smoked by projectile cats from space
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