Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Almost all were there for the first day of training, including Talarius.
Talarius only came down that first time, same with Reggie since he is technically in service to his Voluptuous Mistress [biggrin] and can’t be relied on to be available. Although, I suspect he now wishes that he’d stuck around since his god’s daddy is down there.
Antefalken and Estrebrius sort of wander in and out, Antefalken has been very busy with his writing. You are right about him helping Vaselle quite a bit.
Boggy and Zelda have been here all along, as has Tom and other new D’Orcs and myself.
And again…this actually comes up in Book 4 and beyond–and in Oak Orks and probably again in COA.
As we will learn, some immortals Phoenix Cycle; others–do other things. And the perspective of truly old beings is very different than much younger ones….
Immortals are very much aware of this–they are literally existentially aware of this and so have ways to cope and deal–one is the Phoenix Cycle. Others may do smaller versions of the PC.
Some bi-furcate themselves or even tri-furcate and come up with dualities and trinities to experience life on multiple levels simultaneously. Sort of like incarnating as a mortal with partial or nearly complete amnesia to pass the time and all sorts of things like that.
If you look at the history of Astlan, there are quite a few immortals, demonic or otherwise, who spend time on the material planes pretending to be something they aren’t.
There’s an entire gamut of possibilities of how to kill an eternity.
Well, I do sometimes worry I might accidentally rend him limb from limb in frustration at his slowness. I’m afraid he might type even slower without appendages…
But I am practicing patience.
Yep that’s all generally true, perhaps a few nuances.
Shamans are a bit more nervous of demons than you indicate, but otherwise this is true. Although, again, this is also colored by race. Orc shamans are pretty much exactly how you describe shamans to be, los alfar shamans see demons similar to humans, or perhaps more rationally as enemies and evil–a lot more of this will come out in later books. The Dok alfar on the other hand are similar to orcs in outlook. But again they respect and are nervous of them because you never know exactly what mood or ‘history’ a demon might have. So I think it’s safe to say that most shamanic groups treat demons on an individual basis, some good, some neutral, some bad, some just NFW. But, yes not that differently than other spirits–just the most dangerous kind (and later books have more on spirits).
Also, note that D’Orcs were not considered demons by the orcs. They really are more like Saints, since the orcs know where they come from and that they come from the mightiest warriors. The whole religious aspects of the Doompire were sort of a thin edged sword. Officially, the orcs are shamanistic and naturalists without worshiping gods–but that didn’t mean they didn’t accept the existence of gods–and Orcus rather pushed the limits on many fronts. I could go and on about the heated discussions on this topic.
The thing to also keep in mind is that there was an intermediate time period of early wizardry where there were aniwizards—who where proto-wizards emerging from animages. So the process in Astlan was several thousand years.
HOWEVER, you also need to keep in mind that the peculiar aspects of the planet Astlan also apply to the other planets in the same localverse. They have the same laws of magic, and the same myopic view of certain Earths. And some of those have had wizardry far longer than Astlan–and even in Astlan, rune magic predates modern wizardry, so a very long time ago, there were rune aniwizards that would use a combination of rune magic and animagic will to summon demons.
So your description of how animages and wizards deal with demons today is very accurate–the actual historical development is a bit more complex or nuanced and the excessive demon conjuring by various groups in Astlan and it’s localverse has been going on a lot longer than what one might expect from the posted timeline for the development of wizardry. It’s been going on for an incredibly long time.
But, yes, right now, and for the last thousand or so years, they’ve been in overdrive. Particularly in terms of the most powerful spells…those are far newer than the spells for lesser demons.
By and large, regardless of method or profession, if you force a demon to come to you and make irrational demands and try to force them to do your bidding, and don’t want to pay you a living wage–they will try and kill you. On the other hand, if you request their presence nicely, and offer payment for services, you will probably live, whether or not they decide to do business with you. Obviously there are various error bars on this statement where things sort of go wrong.
Well, I think that’s a matter of perspective…
[biggrin]
You say “sucks” but I say, sometimes a demon “catches a break.”
And as to, someone’s gotta do it…I am pretty sure most demons would disagree with that statement.
Of course, as you may recall, Antefalken and Damien discussed the problems with demonic procreation (specifically two demon parents) and so, from the point of view of demonic population growth, someone does need to do it. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have very many new baby demons.
I guess the wizards in Astlan etc are just lucky that the Earths have a good supply of demon weed.
:-$
I bet you are onto something with shaman’s vs wizards.
Particularly because wizards would very tightly guard the true names of demons they new. I would suspect shamans would hand them down a bit more, both to their apprentices and to others. In particular if the demon was known to be amenable to deals in exchange for payment. You could see them having an entire lore of demons to summon for certain causes and reasons.
I personally have never been summoned by a shaman, and to be honest, it’s been a very long time since I’ve been summoned, except by my current Accursed Master, Gastrope’. I think he was the first wizard to summon me in aeons. Which is a bit odd…
I know, I know, you probably think I’m just being paranoid. It’s not like the wizards have a “do not call list” for demons; do they? Sometimes it feels that way. [sad]
Even if they did, I mean, why would I be on it? I’m like the most helpful demon I know!
As for where I was, well at first I was singing and leading the band, and since I knew I had to be going, I put together the set list for the rest of the battle.
I then had to head over to the Citadel to get Rede. That took me a while since, having not been there in probably six thousand years, it had changed a lot and grown a lot. So, I got a bit lost for a while. Place is like a giant maze with multiple levels. And I had to be very stealthy because, what with all the Five Sibling priests and avatars running around, if I’d been spotted, there would probably have been a freak out. If you hadn’t noticed, they generally don’t like demons that much.
I am so glad you like my singing! :d/
It’s odd how few people have complimented me on that. 8-[
As to where I was, [SPOILER]I had been there, but Arg-nargoloth and I headed to the Etterdam Doomalogue when we found out it was under attack, which was before Orcus was slain. Unfortunately, it was a long flight, even at Arg-naroloth’s maximum flight speed of about 50 leagues per hour, (I can go a little faster but can’t carry him)
So we got there a bit late, just in time to chase her (and her army) out…after the fact and then we had to assess damage, and since the Doomalogue was already down/offline, so we didn’t realize when the entire system went down.[/SPOILER]
The answer is yes, and, no, and sometimes/sorta/depends.
It’s all about the planes and the physical laws there. You generally have to work within the physical laws.
However, on planes that contain humans, elves, dwarves, orcs etc. There are certain underlying meta-characteristics that work across the board.
So for example, on an Earth like yours–magic can be done–used to be done. It is a lower Entropy plane so it has always been more complicated/difficult to do Astlan style magic–but there are ways to do it–different spells, different combinations, different rules–but you can do it–particularly animage stuff [i][u][b]if you have the mana.[/b][/u][/i]
The fundamental problem with “Earth” is that it used to have a lot more mana (and the rest of its localverse generally does). But a few deities and their followers sort of got together (I won’t mention their names, but one started out lighting bushes on fire, and another group revolved around a certain chubby bald dude, and then a few cranky ancestors and…) and had/have their priests hoovering up mana at a ridiculous rate, making what wasn’t a lot of mana, even less mana.
So, can Tom go to your Earth and use the Rod to access the fire portal and roast an entire town? Yes, yes, he could. It would be expensive and taxing, but he’s got a lot of horsepower.
Now, all that being said, there are places in the multiverse where the immortals you and I know, are very hard pressed to even exist without lots of preparation and effort. Of course, these parts tend to have their own immortals, although, oddly enough, as far as we can tell–not that many–or maybe we just can’t conceive of or recognize them…
Hmm, possibly, prossibly. My guess would be that their specialization and powers would probably give them the insight to go further into realms that others can’t–but that would be more a matter of having the skills/knowledge/insight to get there and survive than anything too.
Most of the “normal” immortals I know are of *noid” type, meaning humanoid, orcanoid, elvanoid, dwarvanoid, monkeynoid, etc. noid. Related to or based on things we know about/see in our normal going about.
Denubians are pretty out there, but they are still pretty mainstream in that they obey similar laws of physics.
The next group of Immortals are still rather normal, even though not necessarily *noid based. They are a bit further out there, and much much much older–more about them in Book 4. They make the Titans look like babies, cosmologically speaking. But I think they are close to the normal range of biology–just a very early version of it.
Now, Tartibsizlik might be someone who go further, and the Knights probably can, both are rather weird. So, yes, thinking on it, I am now sure there are some that can go further, but I think my above statement applies. Either that or they’ve somehow ‘naturalized’ with more extreme regimes. Eris is an Olympian so she’s what I would call “of common origin” so probably has some limits.
That being said, all their limits, and demon’s limits are far beyond what mortals can deal with. What I am talking about is stuff that is literally ‘inconceivable’ and rather ‘unknown’ since we can’t really explore those parts of the multiverse and much of it is hypothetical. We only have glimpses–some horrifying.
Let’s be clear, by ‘weird’ I mean something much stranger than say the difference between carbon and silicon based life forms. While one would think a significant difference, it really isn’t, both can exist in the same localverse, and generally do.
Sorry about that, there is a post that should be sticky on the avatars…will need to dig it up.
Avatar’s used to work normally but when the site was moved behind a new FW the avatars started having weird problems….
What works best is to use a [url=http://www.gravatar.com]gravatar[/url]
Create a free account using whatever your favorite email address is.
Once that’s created you can add other email addresses (you have to verify them by clicking on an email link)
Then upload an avatar and attach it to the email address you use for this site.
It should work pretty much immediately.
Puffing on it some more…I also seem to recall that you need to make sure your local avatars are blank/set to nothing.
I would check both the forum and the main account (which are tied, but which have 2 different places to set avatars–there’s like (supposed to be) a 3 way cascade, main site, forum, gravatar…the first two need to be blank)
If not for crazy firewall, the other two would kick in.
