Tom’s power level
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Well, working out certainly enhances any skill, and practice is important for anyone.
But if you are talking body building? Not sure how many have tried. For those powerful enough, shapechanging is easier, for those not powerful enough, they might be able to build muscle/thin down, but as soon as they were summoned again, people expecting them to look like a fat slob would see a fat slob.
So it’s a question of whether you are working out a skill/ability or literally trying to reshape your body. Practice helps, body building is problematic as described early on in Book 1 with any changing of shape.
Not in my experience, the only time this group will thing really makes a big difference is during the construction of the mana body and this is correlated to it’s ability to hold mana/animus.
There have been a lot of groups that have severely wished for a demon lord to wither away and die, but they don’t. If they notice, they usually in fact get ticked off and start slaughtering said individuals.
Now…on the other hand…gods do seem subject to this affect…in that their power is directly related to how many worshipers they have.
I have no evidence that this affects them directly/personally, but their relative power on a given plane is dependent on the number of worshipers and their belief.
For example, I have seen instances where on one plane a particular deity is a major god, but on other planes he/she is a minor god.
Not sure how this works, at all.
My theory on the affects of worshiper to god power levels is that the prayers they get from their followers are somehow converted into God Mana and absorbed by the god in question and can be used by that deity to affect the plane it is getting the mana from. This would at least explain why a god’s power level would change from plane to plane. It would also mean that by tapping into that mana and absorbing it from the god itself by pulling the mana through the channel the way Tom did would probably seriously piss off said deity.
Yes, I think it is something like that. As we see in Book 2, priests etc are called illuminaries…avatars have illuminaries that feed them mana they harvest from worshipers etc. Illuminaries are like pipes, the more pipes you have on a plane, the more mana you have locally to draw on without having to pull it from distant places.
I’m thinking it has to basically be a logistics problem, i.e. a mana supply line/train etc.
Still, Tom should consider a more invisible means of doing what he is doing. Even if you keep silent about it, the mechanics is quite obvious. Bringing attention to it by using very vissible arrows isn’t really going to make it confedential. Arrows just basically say LOOK HERE. He really need to develop a more inconspicuous means of doing it.
Yes, he does. But the point of this was, and no one but Tom (and I and the readers) know is that he was using the arrow heads (they are really more like golden darts at this point–at least compared to his size) and it’s the magic of the arrow heads that allowed him to break the “encryption” (see–analogy from narrator–it’s not really encryption but like that) that keeps the mana flow sacrosanct between illuminaries and avatars.
So doing it without the arrows will/would take a lot of work/practice…and practice would probably be dangerous.
And may I say, from one of the people holed up in this cave with the house guest, he’s not a pleasant guest. He is surly and ungrateful and really not that fun to be around.
Plus it’s getting crowded in here, with Tom, Rupert, Boggy, Antefalken, Me, Talarius, the Incubus and Boggy’s friend. For one thing, there’s no Denubian Choco-Coffee[i](TM)[/i] Tom is NOT an accomplished host…I can tell you that.
OK, to be fair, I don’t think there would be room for a band, and no electricity for a stereo…and apparently Antefalken only wants to play his own ballads…
Aside from this though, the Abyss severs higher level links between priests and their gods. This is, in particular the reason that any mortals that die down here are stuck down here, they can’t get to their afterlife from here.
Plus, Talarius isn’t a priest. <"[color=darkred][b][i]FOR THE LAST TIME, I AM A NOT A PALADIN--I AM A KNIGHT RAMPANT[/i]![/b][/color]"> “[color=darkblue][b]Stop interrupting my imaginary conversations, knight rampager![/b][/color]”
Sorry about that, as I was saying the guy is a real pain in the butt.
Well here is my list:
1. The stench. When Tom first arrived in the Abyss, he tried breathing with his mouth to avoid it. While we are talking about it, I also noticed an inconsistency. People who arrive there (Jenn, Gastrope, Maelen, Rupert) never note it. A minor thing but still a flaw.
2. Lack of amenities. Even though there are amenities for demon kind, most of it is in the Court of Chaos, which means humans would not be able to use. There is also a decidedly lack of water.
3. Hostile terrain. With its lava, fires, jets and fireballs; the land is decidedly not a human would like to thread.
4. Demons. Humans fear demons in Astlan, any idea of visiting the demons land is out of question.
5. The heat. Even though some like Tallarius has an armour to protect him, and wizards could cast a cool spell, none of this would be comfortable or practical in the long term. Wearing the armor all the time just isn’t practical and the catnip spell would soon give out.
Picky picky picky, you are starting to sound like Talarius.
That is an interesting point on the stench. At least, so I’m told, after this long, I’m sort of acclimatized to the smell of brimstone, sulfur and similar nasty chemicals.
However, to be fair…Tom’s cave is pretty high up and there aren’t a lot of fireballs happening there or near there so the sulfur and brimstone would not be so bad…plus there is some sweet rotting dragon scent and musk left in the air.
However, I think it was the heat that had most of their attention so the stench wasn’t such a big deal, but yes…it is strange, given how much they like to whine, that they didn’t whine about that.
Well clearly the stench comment would have been made or thought by the humans (maybe not Rupert)
So that is clearly the fault of T-A-G.
Common, where is your sense of adventure?
OK, maybe you aren’t ready to emigrate there, but a vacation perhaps?
We have great beaches! (Almost all beach, very little water) And if you think Earth has great hot water springs, you should see the Abyss’s mountain hot springs are even better!
I would love to go there just to meet you and Tom and Rupert. If I have more resources, I would also like to make and expedition there and study the Abyss. The nature of those fireballs would have been great interest to me.
Is the Abyss even a real physical place? Or would it be more akin to the Umbra from the World of Darkness or the Fade from Dragon Age*? If the later, most of what you see and feel in the place if just sort of an image placed upon the world by those around (the demon lords in this case) and/or what is in the real world nearby. It could also be something akin to the upper planes and astral domains of many D&D worlds, in which case it is physical, but highly mutable by those powerful enough to pose their will on the region. In those worlds you can litterally have freezing ice wastes directly next to boiling hot rock deserts.
* Granted, physical beings like humans normally have difficulty entering these places physically (most often accomplished through dreams), but there are powerful magics which it as can certain beings that are both spiritual and physical (werewolves in the World of Darkness).
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