Ghouls

[Bradyman]

In Nysegard, curing ghouls seems like a pretty regular occurrence. No one was surprised that Hilda cured Vampires, which is a much more difficult feat.

Melissance was mad that Talarius didn’t cure her, and instead left her for dead, when she could have easily cured herself if she still had access to Tiernon’s mana.
We know her mana is still attuned to his, because that’s how she was found in the abyss. Was there no way for her to gather mana from her followers, like the rod members on the Inferno did? Or was it a time sensitive thing, like the demon offered her the deal when they were all moments from dying?

Also, when we first meet Talarius, he is killing ghouls and lamenting that there is no cure. He is completely distraught, though still doing his job, that there is no way to cure them but death.
Did he forget somehow?
Or was he just never taught about the cure? It seems like a cure would be a major help to his job.

I know his knife was corrupting him ( I can’t remember how to spell the name), could it have somehow made him believe it was incurable? It makes a lot more sense than him believing that his love chose to be a ghoul.

He also didn’t have any epiphany type moments in Nysegard, and I can’t believe that he didn’t see some hints of ghouls being cured. If not just because no one was crying about having to burn a recently infected loved one on a stake, which would have to be a pretty common occurrence in Nysegard if there was no cure. This would make sense if it was the knife making him believe it was incurable.

Or I guess it could just be something that was missed between the two books.

[Bradyman]

Wow, that was a long response with a lot of answers in it.
I’m really excited about the undead attacking Freehold. It should be an interesting fight. Lenemare’s super wards can probably be attuned to repel unlife specifically and the city has a lot of fire power. I’m also interested to see if the animage backup that maelen asked his boss to get ready will show up. I hadn’t notice that he called about backup right before he saw Ramses until this read through. It would be awesome to see a bunch of pyromasters just lay waste to a field of zombies, while healers sweep in to save any wounded.

I bet an animage healer could figure out a secular cure to ghoulism.

[Bradyman]

Speaking of Talarius. One thing that I find hilarious is his change in attitude towards undead. When he first heard about Tom, he is excited to deal with an enemy that is pure evil, he is tired of dealing with the uncertainties of the undead. Having to kill the infected and the turned, all of whom were once good people was really taking its toll on him. But, when they went to nysegard, he was more than willing to return to the “simplicity” of dealing with undead instead of the demons.

[Bradyman]

Ghoul stuff

[Tizzy]

I am sure it depends on the god(s) in question as well as pantheon.

I don’t know any actual rules, everything I am saying about who can or can’t do something is pure speculation, unless we’ve seen them do it.

1) Tiernon is a Fire God, Justice and War
–>This means kill first, heal later, resurrect if a mistake was made.
2) Hendel is the Healing god, his priests heal first, so maybe rules are different for them.

Now here’s the thing

A) Undead are “dead” first.
B) Vampires are definitely dead
C) Curing any undead (vampire, zombie) is generally going to be similar to resurrection
1) and we will see more discussion of this in COA:ITW, turns out the Kristof’s maternal side (non-Etonian) do quite a bit of Resurrection and in that book the rules are discussed to some extent.
2) In a normal fesurrection, finding the soul is usually the hardest part, and may be impossible. This is why in general, you want to only resurrect someone of your own religion. Assuming your religion has an afterlife, it should be straight forward to pull them out of it. Now–think about trying to steal a soul from another god’s afterlife. Probably impossible if you are from a different pantheon. Probably a lot of it is unethical if they aren’t the same religion even if possible.
3) In resurrection there is also the problem of recreating the body–this can be very major problem…Less of a problem with zombies, and not so hard with a vampire
4) For curing, vampires have their souls there, zombies should also, have something left.
5) What is there is also discussed more in Book 4 as Undead go to the Abyss.

Yada yada, this is going on too long.

In short you got to repolarize the soul and reanimate and heal the body.

I suspect it’s on par with resurrection just different.

Ghouls are not dead, they are just severely diseased. How do you cure them with out killing them though? That might be tricky, so you have to be prepared to have them die and resurrect them or I have no idea.

This requires a very powerful priest. In fact, normal parish priests probably can’t do this. High Priests maybe depending on the religion. Maybe higher like a Diocate. (See the library for Church Hierarchy)

Melissance was a high priestess. She thought she could cure ghoulism, or may be she at least knew it could be done and she could figure it out.

We don’t know how much of what she said was angry wishful thinking and how much was real.

Talarius is not a priest, he may have some holy abilities, but he’s not a priest and doesn’t know the lore, in his experience, maybe killing is the best/easiest answer if there is no sufficiently high level priest around????

We would really need to ask him. Who knows, there may have been different religion issues to.

Now, we have no idea what religion the vampires etc she cured were, but since they had their souls, there was no afterlife issue and she is quite powerful.

Also on Talarius changing preference—I suspect that the grass is always greener on the other side.

Also, if the Undead are an army attacking the “good guys” it’s even more clear cut that you should kill them vs cure them vs poor benighted souls like in Book 1.

[Tizzy]

Those were who I was talking about in the first lines…I just couldn’t recall the name of the profession when typing.

Because I personally know the main animancer in CoA:ITW and recently visited her in that book, I could remember animancer.

After I posted the response I went “Oh, doh! Animaster…”

BTW CoA:ITW doesn’t have a whole lot of Tom, but I’m definitely there. Rather nice to be the most powerful demon in a book for a change.

[Bradyman]

Only animancers no animasters?

[Tizzy]

COA:ITW has an animancer or two.

[Tizzy]

And of course, there are necromancers and animancers who would be quite good at it.

Except necromancers are generally in the business of going the other way…an animancer on the other hand….

COA:ITA has at least one animancer in it.

[Tizzy]

There were/are specialist animages that could (and probably still do it)

Technically, at least for ghouls, it’s much more up an animage’s alley. There are a couple of disciplines that would be involved.

[Bradyman]

Its already at the saint level. Hilda can do it. Plus Melissance claimed she could do it, and she was just a local priestess. Also, Hilda can design her own rituals, so it shouldn’t need special permission to make, maybe to distribute if it were forbidden to tell mortals for some reason.

[Lunarmage]

While I am not a God, nor do I wish to have that particular curse bestowed upon me, it seems to me to be a failing of the major faiths to have it require high level permission to cure a ghoul, vampire, or other such turned Dead. It would seem better to have it at the saint or other lesser servant of a God. That way they could better serve the needs of the people. Perhaps this is something Hilda could petition for within the Etonian Pantheon?

[Bradyman]

She claimed that she could have cured herself if it weren’t for the interdiction.

Obviously, even if Talarius believed she couldn’t be cured, he still wronged her greatly, even if just by being a dick to his dying girlfriend and victim-blaming.

It just seemed weird that he was the only one to ever mention the disease being incurable.

I honestly can’t wait for Talarius ( hopefully with Tom and some D’orcs in tow) to meet up with the crew of the Inferno. I expect a lot of violence. I can just imagine, them thinking he’s been corrupted by Tom, him upset that they came to rescue him, Melissance mad at him, Sam still mad at his copycat, the orstemothians trying to arrest everyone, the D’orcs mad at the lawyers, and Tom just standing there going, “what the fuck” and maybe saying hi to Sam. Ooh and maybe an etonian avatar could be there as Tom’s guest for some reason.
It would be the funniest clusterfuck ever.
Oh, and of course Tizzy would have to be there, making everything worse somehow.

I don’t see how the meeting could possibly end well for Talarius. If he hadn’t changed, Melissance would be pissed at him for what he did, and the knights would be happy to rescue their friend. But he has changed. She’ll probably still be extremely pissed and most likely won’t believe him, even if the first thing he does upon seeing her is prostrate himself and apologize, and the knights will think he’s possessed if he starts explaining what he has learned.

[Tizzy]

You better be careful or T-A-G might try to forcibly induct you into the Beta Program?

But “how” you say? How can he do that?

Simple.

He sends me, I have your email address, Bwah Hah! Hah! I will use that and your IP Address and come “visit” you every night, and we will talk about all sorts of things, like whatever comes to mind (my mind, mainly). Now, while I have no idea why, for some reason, most people agree to my initial proposal with one to two days.

Now, this Russian dude, Rasputin? He took 4.5 days to convince. Howard Hughes? 2.3 days. Oddly enough, Brian Wilson took 8 whole days, still not sure how that happened; he’s invited me back a couple times.

So, it is known? I don’t know, I’m a demon after all, not a Priest of Tiernon! I am just speculating. While you might think that as the “Story Dictator” (he who dictates the story to T-A-G) I might have some sort of third person omniscience–sadly, I do not.

So maybe she knows more than him? She is a High Priestess after all. I’d expect she knows more. This sounds to me like she knew of people in the Church who could perform the ritual. Iskerus? Maybe, the High Pontificate? I am sure.

Or! Maybe, psychoanalyzing Talarius? Do we think something deeper is afoot? You will, of course, recall in Chapter 148. this snippet of conversation?

[SPOILER]Beragamos beamed. “I am sure Iskerus will be quite happy to have you back in Astlan.”
Talarius grimaced. “I am afraid I won’t be returning immediately to Astlan.”
Beragamos blinked in surprise. “You plan to stay in Nysegard?”
“Perhaps, there are certainly challenges here, but before that I must right an old wrong that I have committed.” Talarius replied.
“An old wrong?” Tom asked, puzzled.
“It is a long story, a story of my personal shame that I will not go into at the moment, what with the more pressing concern of this flying cylinder. However, suffice to say, I need to rescue someone who was very dear to me from a cruel fate to which I callously and unjustly left her.” Talarius said.
[/SPOILER]

[Bradyman]

Just checked the book.

Melissance claims that she couldn’t cure herself or her flock because the knights interdicted her. aprox. location 8086 in the kindle edition of Apostles of Doom

Location 8119 AoD ( sorry I don’t know the page number) Melissance says, “Great- he gets defeated and dragged to hell, and you can’t wait to plunge into the Abyss after him. Me, I get bitten by a hasty vampire and turned into a ghoul- something for which we have many rituals to cure- and you are all hands off. Wacky Melissance, she damned herself by her actions!”

[Author]

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