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Author Topic: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-36 Decisions, Decisions  (Read 656497 times)

3man75

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-25
« Reply #1965 on: April 06, 2015, 12:16:31 am »

I  so confused..
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Parisbre56

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-25
« Reply #1966 on: April 06, 2015, 06:10:08 am »

There's a google doc?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sYTX9fyWuzwRnnVOFps6reyE2miT6JmgH9ousjSV3tM/edit?usp=sharing
Not an official one, just some notes I take while rereading about things I should not forget (currently on page 28). I thought it would be nice to share. I've got a list of experiments and info about how some spells work close to the bottom. And some people came by and said hello and talked a bit on the chat, the two I talked to were DeepWaters and monk12 (mostly DeepWaters).

EDIT: It's just notes though, so it's a bit untidy. We could do something better looking if people are willing to help. Some sort of expanded reference.

EDIT EDIT: Oh, and we should definitely try using see vitality while raising a zombie or stealing vitality if we get a chance, so that we can see if we can find out where vitality comes from and why it is lost. For the steal vitality part, if we do it on a zombie, then we probably don't need to cast see vitality, just watch carefully, since we can see the vitality inside the zombie. Would also be interesting to see if dead things or things like the soil have vitality in them.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2015, 03:00:49 pm by Parisbre56 »
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Shadestyle

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-25
« Reply #1967 on: April 06, 2015, 04:57:52 pm »

The most obvious solution to this strange dissonance between necromancy and life magic would be if your method of moving vitality was by creating Vacuums of it to "drag" it around so to speak. This would mean that Necromancy does destroy vitality, but common usage makes the effect negligible. Life magic creates life, Necromancy destroys it, The only difference is that Necromancy's power is used indirectly.  An easy way to test this would be to well... Destroy some vitality. Find something living, and instead of drawing it into yourself, or moving it in any way, to just destroy it.

The only reason that i am making this theory is because it seems Very Off that Life magic creates Life, and necromancy merely moves it Sideways. Seems like if that were the case, Then there would be a third school of magic devoted to the destruction of life anyway. Just a little theory.
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Parisbre56

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-25
« Reply #1968 on: April 06, 2015, 05:42:09 pm »

We have no evidence showing that life magic creates life. All we know is that it enhances it. We have no evidence showing it creates vitality out of nowhere, it simply makes the existing vitality stronger, makes it grow faster and better. From what I understand, it needs life to already exist. Look at the three schools of Life, for example:
Quote
Growth is the most basic of the disciplines, and involves encouraging the development of living things.
Healing is another widely practiced discipline, and focuses on strengthening the life in a particular part of the body to facilitate rapid recuperation.
The third, smallest discipline within Life magic is Imbalance, and is the use of Life magic as a weapon. Mages who specialize in the discipline can cause normally innocuous diseases to become life threatening illness, and can interfere with the biological mechanism of life by accelerating the growth of one area of the body without increasing the capacity of the body to handle the imbalance.
All three take something that already exists and make it stronger, causes it to grow and multiply. There's no mention of creation anywhere.
Creation could be possible and we might just not know it, but with no life mages around there's no way to know for sure. And it sounds like something that would be mentioned.

I find it much more plausible for Necromancy to create life, what with our ability to raise corpses via mana alone. Which makes it very interesting to find out where exactly does vitality come from in the raise zombie spell.

Not only that, we know that we can seal vitality inside things that were originally not meant to hold it via Animate Object, which means we must have some way to directly interact with vitality.

Oh, other fun experiment: Try sealing the vitality inside a dead leaf with Animate Object. Does the vitality stay an undirected ball or does it take the shape of the leaf? Is it even possible to cast animate object on something that was once alive?

EDIT: Reading back, I just noticed this:
Quote from: Grek
At no point should we outright state "I'm a Necromancer, Omo."
Quote from: monk12
"Nym. What exactly are you saying?"
"I'm a... uh, Necromancer. I'm a Necromancer, Omo."
Heh. Monk/Nym is a troll. I laughed.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2015, 09:57:07 pm by Parisbre56 »
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monk12

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-26
« Reply #1969 on: April 08, 2015, 04:11:14 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.
...............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.
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?
We should also ask if there are any known patterns about the curse. Is it more likely to occur at night? Does it prefer certain victims? Or certain locations?[/b]

   You dust the crumbs of your breakfast from your fingertips, looking around the fire at your companions. "I think we should do some searching outside the protection of the wards; perhaps the monster is smart enough to avoid them. The wards seem to be the only difference between Kiros and the victims."
   Omo grins. "Right. And we want to be victims."
   You scowl at Omo. "That's not what I meant and you know it. Kiros didn't encounter any monster, but the victims did. We'll stay close together, and we'll be very careful, but we need to meet this monster if we're going to solve anything."
   Omo holds his hands up defensively. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding! It's a good plan. Let's go."

   Omo rises from the campfire, returning to the tent to grab his pack. You follow his example while Eko hastily finishes his breakfast. Within a couple minutes you are all prepared for your stakeout, and strike off into the forest.

   You do not travel very far beyond the safety of the Minor Ward before Omo finds a likely enough area; the trees are a little thinner and the branches a little higher, giving as much line of sight as you can expect short of finding another clearing. Following Omo's advice, you arrange yourselves in a triangular shape; you and Omo climb trees closer to the heart of the forest, while Eko remains on the ground closer to your base (muttering not-quite-quietly enough to himself about nonsensical tree-climbing Elves.) In this way, you expect to detect the creature coming from either the ground or the trees, and gain an advantage on it.

   All that remains is to wait for the monster to arrive.

   Time passes. Eko sits down against a tree and closes his eyes, while Omo seems to fade into his tree beneath his mottled Ranger cloak, holding his staff across his knees. You... become bored.

   "Hey, Eko." You call out softly.
   Eko opens his eyes, abandoning whatever inner thoughts he was entertaining. "Yes, Nym?"
   "I've been thinking about what you said about ethereal creatures, and other non-zombie undead from the Golgothan War." Grabbing a low branch, you hang out from the tree to get a better look at Eko. "Do you know anything more about them? Is there a way to detect them, in case we're wrong about the Curse being a physical monster?"
   Eko runs one hand through his thinning hair. "I do not know very much, but I suppose I know more than nothing at all. When it comes to ghosts, shades, wraiths... the majority seem to be creatures of Necromancy. Nobody knows if those are creations of Necromancers or if they arise through some unknown natural process. However, some ethereal creatures are simply projections from the Spirit World, and appear in places where the boundaries between our world and theirs is thin."
   "Spirit world?" You ask.
   Eko sighs. "Right. Urak is just one world among many; they are not a separate location, exactly, but instead lay across our world like the layers in an onion. In some places the separation between layers is thin enough to bridge if you are sufficiently powerful, and in very rare places even common people can slip between the worlds if they are not wary. The Great Temple of Order is built on a thinning between our world and the world of Order, where Atal and the other Order gods reside. Order magic is easier to cast there, and has more powerful effects impossible elsewhere."
   "Really?" You reply, intrigued. "Are there similar places of power for the other Magical Faiths?"
   "Perhaps." Eko shrugs. "I do not know of any, but I did not make such topics a focus of my studies. I always did rather poorly in metamagical training." He stretches. "How long do you intend for us to sit out in the woods?"
   "I don't know. I suppose we should give it until noon before giving up." You squint upwards, trying to judge the position of the sun between the trees. "Another couple hours, anyway. Are there any patterns to the attacks? Does the curse only manifest at night, or in certain parts of the forest, or anything like that?"
   "No, no." Eko shakes his head. "Anyone who ventures deeply into the forest is never heard from again; sometimes parties which skirt the edges suffer the curse, and sometimes the emerge unscathed. There is one sensationalist tale of a party of woodcutters who claim to have seen their comrades consumed by the forest before fleeing themselves, but it's unconfirmed since they refused to lead anyone to where they were logging, and nobody was willing to explore for the missing woodsmen on their own."
   "Well, I suppose we'll just have to wait. If it doesn't show, we'll just have to try something... else..."

   You wander off at the end, distracted by what your Necromantic senses are telling you. About fourty feet away you can feel a source of Necromantic energy, three vitality's worth, same as the night you rescued the children from Aloclesno. Scanning the forest quickly, you find it; low to the ground, about the size of a large dog and moving at a trot. You're too far away to get a good look at it's Necromantic structure, and there are too many trees and obstructions in your way to get a visual of it, but it seems to have 6 legs; definitely not a zombie dog. It seems to be approaching from towards the heart of the forest; it is closer to Omo's corner of the perimeter, and is angling directly towards him.

   "Nym." Omo calls out softly, remaining perfectly still. He's seen it, and may be trying to get a jump on it. The creature will be on you quickly. What now?

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)

Parisbre56

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-26
« Reply #1970 on: April 08, 2015, 04:26:11 pm »

Damnit, we should had at least prepared a physical trap. Well, no use now.
Looks like it's at least partly physical.

Anybody think it might be possible to communicate with it?
We probably can't control it, since we lack the empathy for that. No reason we can't try though.
It's too far away to attempt to impair it, but we can try when it gets closer. But there's always the chance it will still be able to attack, even if it is unable to move. We can try damaging its eyes and hoping its attack isn't AoE.
We can try to steal vitality and look at its corpse later, if it leaves one, but there's always a chance it won't work. Plus, we have to wait for a good shot, since we know steal vitality does not need line of sight but it might need a line clear of living creatures.
We can have Eko cast one of his anti-necromancy spells, but it might not be powerful enough to work.

The existence of a spirit world is interesting. Maybe this is where the creature is from. If it is smart and merely trapped here, do you think we could help it go home?

Also interesting that at least some of those ghostly creatures are related to necromancy. Maybe creatures made out of vitality held together by necromantic energy? The necromantic energy providing them with a body made out of magic?

Whatever we choose, we should definitely have Omo run and hope that like most predators it locks on to what it chases. Don't know if we and Eko should run too. Probably yes. Then again, we do have a good vantage point.

I've almost finished rereading this and have made a lot of notes, I'll put the Google doc in my sig a while later for anyone who wants it.
« Last Edit: April 08, 2015, 04:38:00 pm by Parisbre56 »
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endlessblaze

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-26
« Reply #1971 on: April 08, 2015, 04:40:53 pm »

don't attack yet! for all we know the children's "souls" are still inside it!

look at its vitality, if we don notice anything odd, drain it!
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Parisbre56

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-26
« Reply #1972 on: April 08, 2015, 05:07:07 pm »

But if we kill it now, we learn nothing. Plus we probably expose ourselves to Eko.
The only thing we gain are higher chances of keeping our life.

Shadestyle

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-26
« Reply #1973 on: April 08, 2015, 05:36:01 pm »

don't attack yet! for all we know the children's "souls" are still inside it!

look at its vitality, if we don notice anything odd, drain it!


+1
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Parisbre56

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-26
« Reply #1974 on: April 08, 2015, 06:14:02 pm »

Even though the creature looks like an ambush predator, in the case of the children it didn't look like there were any signs of struggle. One child lost its soul on the spot and the other run and then ended face first into the dirt with its soul gone. So we know that it takes some time to steal a soul or to recover after stealing one, but the process almost immediately incapacitates the one attacked. Even if Omo can one-hit-KO the creature and even if he can resist the attack for a few seconds due to his high vitality and training (unlikely, since soldiers didn't have much luck with it), we shouldn't risk having him fight the creature. So he should definitely back off to a safer height/distance or if we can't convince him to do so, at least convince him to not attack.

Eko should also be warned about the direction it's coming from so that he is ready to cast a necromantic abjuration to keep the creature away. Still not sure about whether or not he should run with Omo so they can help each other (Omo with navigating the forest, Eko with abjurations).

And now that we do not have line of sight and cannot attack the creature, we should try commanding it. Imagine being a creature with 6 legs, trotting through the forest, seeing the souls of 3 humanoids in a way similar to "see vitality". If it turns out the creature is easily controlled, we should make it stop while we decide how to proceed. If it resist or if it is intelligent, then we should try to convince it with simple feelings and mental images that we mean it no harm and that it should not hurt us and that we're a necromancer that can help. Or if that doesn't work we should convince it (again through simple feelings and mental images) that we are powerful and we can kill it, like Balkoth, so it should obey us, essentially intimidating it and associating ourselves with people we know it didn't hurt. We should generally focus our mind on our need/desire to communicate and exude a feeling of peace, stillness and being in control during the entire Command procedure. We should keep it simple, in case it is an alien low intelligence creature like the ones Eko described.

Once we get line of sight and if we have failed to control it, we can try impairing its eyes and then its legs, since it is one of our invisible spells.
Only steal vitality if it is getting dangerously close and impair does not work. Even then, try not to steal all of its vitality unless it looks like if we won't kill it it'll hurt one of us, so we can study it.

If things look like they are not working, we and the others should be ready to run away.
« Last Edit: April 08, 2015, 06:25:40 pm by Parisbre56 »
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Baffler

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-26
« Reply #1975 on: April 08, 2015, 07:25:55 pm »

Even though the creature looks like an ambush predator, in the case of the children it didn't look like there were any signs of struggle. One child lost its soul on the spot and the other run and then ended face first into the dirt with its soul gone. So we know that it takes some time to steal a soul or to recover after stealing one, but the process almost immediately incapacitates the one attacked. Even if Omo can one-hit-KO the creature and even if he can resist the attack for a few seconds due to his high vitality and training (unlikely, since soldiers didn't have much luck with it), we shouldn't risk having him fight the creature. So he should definitely back off to a safer height/distance or if we can't convince him to do so, at least convince him to not attack.

Eko should also be warned about the direction it's coming from so that he is ready to cast a necromantic abjuration to keep the creature away. Still not sure about whether or not he should run with Omo so they can help each other (Omo with navigating the forest, Eko with abjurations).

And now that we do not have line of sight and cannot attack the creature, we should try commanding it. Imagine being a creature with 6 legs, trotting through the forest, seeing the souls of 3 humanoids in a way similar to "see vitality". If it turns out the creature is easily controlled, we should make it stop while we decide how to proceed. If it resist or if it is intelligent, then we should try to convince it with simple feelings and mental images that we mean it no harm and that it should not hurt us and that we're a necromancer that can help. Or if that doesn't work we should convince it (again through simple feelings and mental images) that we are powerful and we can kill it, like Balkoth, so it should obey us, essentially intimidating it and associating ourselves with people we know it didn't hurt. We should generally focus our mind on our need/desire to communicate and exude a feeling of peace, stillness and being in control during the entire Command procedure. We should keep it simple, in case it is an alien low intelligence creature like the ones Eko described.

Once we get line of sight and if we have failed to control it, we can try impairing its eyes and then its legs, since it is one of our invisible spells.
Only steal vitality if it is getting dangerously close and impair does not work. Even then, try not to steal all of its vitality unless it looks like if we won't kill it it'll hurt one of us, so we can study it.

If things look like they are not working, we and the others should be ready to run away.

This is sensible, but I'm not sure about the diplomacy. It's not something we've tried before, and the rest of the plan would only leave us with 1 mana. We don't want to risk using too much to drain all of its vitality at the end if we need to. Otherwise +1.
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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-26
« Reply #1976 on: April 08, 2015, 08:00:18 pm »

PTW; I had thought this dead!
« Last Edit: April 08, 2015, 08:02:37 pm by XXXXYYYY »
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Andres

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-26
« Reply #1977 on: April 08, 2015, 08:06:28 pm »

PTW; I had thought this dead!
It was...but...you know...necromancers and all...
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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-25
« Reply #1978 on: April 08, 2015, 10:45:54 pm »

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.
Vacuums. The trick isn't to get the water from the first bucket into the second - the trick is to get the water from the first bucket to get itself into the second bucket, or have the second get the first's water. I don't know, I'm not good at physics.
Anyway, this line of thinking has led me to another. What if we're not actually controlling vitality itself? What if we're simply pushing it around? My hypothesis is that life mages move around water itself (vitality) but necromancers move around the buckets or create new ones as needed using mana. With Steal Vitality, we're using mana to create a bucket and scooping out the vitality with it.

Don't mind me. These are just some random thoughts I had.
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3man75

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Re: You are a Necromancer! Chapter 2-26
« Reply #1979 on: April 08, 2015, 11:07:39 pm »

Even though the creature looks like an ambush predator, in the case of the children it didn't look like there were any signs of struggle. One child lost its soul on the spot and the other run and then ended face first into the dirt with its soul gone. So we know that it takes some time to steal a soul or to recover after stealing one, but the process almost immediately incapacitates the one attacked. Even if Omo can one-hit-KO the creature and even if he can resist the attack for a few seconds due to his high vitality and training (unlikely, since soldiers didn't have much luck with it), we shouldn't risk having him fight the creature. So he should definitely back off to a safer height/distance or if we can't convince him to do so, at least convince him to not attack.

Eko should also be warned about the direction it's coming from so that he is ready to cast a necromantic abjuration to keep the creature away. Still not sure about whether or not he should run with Omo so they can help each other (Omo with navigating the forest, Eko with abjurations).

And now that we do not have line of sight and cannot attack the creature, we should try commanding it. Imagine being a creature with 6 legs, trotting through the forest, seeing the souls of 3 humanoids in a way similar to "see vitality". If it turns out the creature is easily controlled, we should make it stop while we decide how to proceed. If it resist or if it is intelligent, then we should try to convince it with simple feelings and mental images that we mean it no harm and that it should not hurt us and that we're a necromancer that can help. Or if that doesn't work we should convince it (again through simple feelings and mental images) that we are powerful and we can kill it, like Balkoth, so it should obey us, essentially intimidating it and associating ourselves with people we know it didn't hurt. We should generally focus our mind on our need/desire to communicate and exude a feeling of peace, stillness and being in control during the entire Command procedure. We should keep it simple, in case it is an alien low intelligence creature like the ones Eko described.

Once we get line of sight and if we have failed to control it, we can try impairing its eyes and then its legs, since it is one of our invisible spells.
Only steal vitality if it is getting dangerously close and impair does not work. Even then, try not to steal all of its vitality unless it looks like if we won't kill it it'll hurt one of us, so we can study it.

If things look like they are not working, we and the others should be ready to run away.

This is sensible, but I'm not sure about the diplomacy. It's not something we've tried before, and the rest of the plan would only leave us with 1 mana. We don't want to risk using too much to drain all of its vitality at the end if we need to. Otherwise +1.

+1
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