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- Singapore
But does it have to be called necromancy?
Because first thing that comes to mind is zombies.
General Exalted Thread
Because first thing that comes to mind is zombies.
Morphic Tide
Crazy Brainstormer, Munchkin and Wannabe Min-Maxer
- Location
- MI, USA
Necromancy translates, roughly, to 'death magic' or 'soul magic.' The idea of it being focused on Zombies is a Christian thing, because Christianity was painfully strict. Seriously, the iconic Horned Devil look came from Pan, the Greek Satyr god of partying. Music, booze and sex aplenty were his themes.
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
It's from the Latin niger, meaning Black. It's Black magic. The etymology is easily available online, no need for misinformation.
- Location
- Singapore
No it doesn't.
It means divination via dead bodies. It came from greek.
Frakir's brother
Goodbye.
- Location
- The Sea of Trees
Black, yes, bbut not magic. It's Divination.
That is exactly what they don't need, because that gets you a grab bag of powers that will vary between being useless and being far too advantageous depending on the precise balancing of the effects.
Sorcery has a well-defined niche - it is a strategic scale power that does mass-scale damage, summons and creates minions, and provides long-term buffs. Together these form "strategic" magic, compared to the tactical-scale magic of Charms. Sticking things in sorcery "just because it doesn't fit anywhere else" pollutes that niche.
Hence, yes, sorcerers should be able to turn into animals, as part of the "long-term buff" element of sorcery. Therefore it should probably involve ritually flaying an animal over a number of hours and treating the skin, to create a skin imbued with power that you can put on to assume the shape of the animal in question. However, that is completely different from a tactical-scale shapechange power.
Meanwhile, "necromancy" honestly doesn't have much of a point as being a thing separate from sorcery. Indeed, mythologically witches and the like consulted with the spirits of the dead as one of their big things. Sorcery is already a black art that summons demons, turns rivers into blood, turns blood into boiling oil and curses people to vomit up maggots if they try to say things you don't want them to.
And cutting things away from Abyssals to give to necromancy seems to be rather putting the cart before the horse to me.
NonSequtur
a body
Also nobody really cares about etymology besides pedants? Like, maybe if Exalted had been aiming for a fake-out like with Malfeas/Hell neomah/succubi etc. but I don't really have any sense that they were trying to play off the common perception so that there'd be a reveal of a more nuanced truth underneath. It's just exactly what it sounds like.
Dynamesmouse
Bzzzzzz
Is there a way to turn off alerts from this thread?
Sorcery doesn't. Necromancy simply needs a better definition and implementation.
However, so do abyssals, and the disagreement here is regarding what should be added to Abyssals is why people just don't want to do that. They're redefining them.
Incidentally, Lunars being werewolves has been a bit of a drag on the slpat for two editions now. So that tie might be best if it was lost or diminished.
- Location
- Singapore
Unwatch it.
Because if you want to give a character splat cool powers, maybe it works better if you don't need to have a specific build to have cool powers?
Also Abyssals as Zombie Vampires is old and uninteresting, especially since it takes a lot of design space away from everyone else. I don't always agree with the design decisions in 3E, but I can see why they made them, and oftentimes they do so because there's a real problem they're trying to fix. The decision to tie Abyssals to Deathlords exists because Abyssals As Zombie Vampire Emo Solars is lame and unfun. Doubling down on that by making anything interesting not innate to Abyssals but part of necromancy is not going to somehow fix their problems.
I had a half-written post about how the Terminator could be represented in @EarthScorpion and @Revlid's musings as an Abyssal, and I don't think that's a bad thing, any more than being able to play Captain America as either a Solar (if you emphasize the Human Excellence and Paragon) parts or an Alchemical (if you emphasize the Fruits of Human Labor and Champion of the State components) is bad for Solars or Alchemicals. If you emphasize the dispassionate, inhuman relentlessness of the neither-living-nor-dead T-800, it should be a valid Abyssal.
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Brainstorming for Resistance; Ox-Body alike that gives a bunch of extra health levels as a base. Charm to prevent wound penalties from being a thing. Charm to make your skeleton super strong and fight for you, so you only take damage when you're down to your skeleton, mechanically giving you another health track that gives you penalties if you get into it. Charm that lets you recover health levels by eating dead bodies. Charm that lets you play dead really well (So you can play dead and get back up later).
Also, thinking of starting an Exalted quest based on Mazrik's narrative based system.
Also, thinking of starting an Exalted quest based on Mazrik's narrative based system.
Yeah. Honestly, while I'm interested to see what they end up doing here (I don't take a preview literally years before the actual book as conclusive of what the Charms may look like, before anyone brings up a certain unfortunate preview set of Charms), part of me wonders if they should have tried tying them to the Neverborn, rather than the Deathlords.
This is of interest to me, given I'm about to start an Exalted quest myself (yeah, Alchemical Quest is happening). Mind linking?
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Speaking as someone who gave the Neverborn distinct names, identities and world-bodies in his old Underworld write-up, I'm of the view that so much as naming the fuckers was a mistake which led down the slow slide of treating them as "Primordials, but even more METAL". They should be formless, shapeless echoes, disembodied memories that still groan with enough power to crack the salt soil of the Underworld as it erupts with the horrid extrusions of the Labyrinth. They are dying thoughts cast beyond reality, and where they drift against it, scrabbling in their hopeless hate, it fizzes like acid on iron as old fears and dreams slough into shape from the sluggish stuff of the deadlands.
Their worshippers give names to their aspects in order to praise them, and are hated for their unwitting mockery. The Bishop is at once their high priest and arch heretic, erecting great skeletons of soulsteel to pin the twisting Labyrinth into the shape of echoing tomb-temples, vast architectural dreamcatchers for the phantasms of dead gods, giving the futile impulses of the Neverborn false sympathy shapes through which to more fully appreciate their torture.
The Neverborn are not the source of Whispers. They are one and the same. They are not the masters of the Deathlords, but their source, a foul and bitter corpse atop which the tree of the Underworld was planted, and which still twitches with the squirming of maggots and the festering of forgotten grudges, and the trees whose roots drink of its flesh bear fell fruit indeed.
So I'd shy away from customizing them as sources of inspiration for Abyssals as a splat.
You are talking about a walking skeleton sent to murder a woman because of a prophecy about her child. Terminator is literally a murderous zombie with futuristic aesthetics. Plate him in metal all you like, but he's drawing from Abyssal stories, not Alchemical ones.
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Sorry, wasn't clear- I meant to the narrative system.
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
I'm not sure if it's actually written up anywhere, so I'll just write it here.
Skills and Abilities: Incapable → Untrained → Beginner (Requires 100 XP and trainer) → Adept (Requires 200 XP) → Skilled (400 XP) → Veteran (Requires 800 XP) → Master (Requires 1600 XP) → Grandmaster (2400 XP)→ Absolute (Requires 3200 XP).
Skills go as above. You also have traits. If someone wants to do something, look at their skills/abilities/traits and decide what happens. If two or more people come into conflict, look at both their skills/abilities/traits and decide what happens. This can be modified by things like plans by the players, you can add in dice rolls if you want, and things like that. It's pretty basic, but it works well for shonen quests, since it's easy to add on things like super-moves, it shows growth from zero to s class in every area, and so on.
Skills and Abilities: Incapable → Untrained → Beginner (Requires 100 XP and trainer) → Adept (Requires 200 XP) → Skilled (400 XP) → Veteran (Requires 800 XP) → Master (Requires 1600 XP) → Grandmaster (2400 XP)→ Absolute (Requires 3200 XP).
Skills go as above. You also have traits. If someone wants to do something, look at their skills/abilities/traits and decide what happens. If two or more people come into conflict, look at both their skills/abilities/traits and decide what happens. This can be modified by things like plans by the players, you can add in dice rolls if you want, and things like that. It's pretty basic, but it works well for shonen quests, since it's easy to add on things like super-moves, it shows growth from zero to s class in every area, and so on.
I wouldn't call the Terminator a zombie. There's definitely some serious unquiet dead aesthetics going on with the Terminator-but it doesn't seem to touch upon, at the very least, 'modern' zombie fiction and how the zombies tend to be more of a metaphorical or outright literal plague. The Terminator is a slasher movie antagonist and that speaks of slightly different things.
I recall someone mentioning that when talking about Terminators the description that always comes up is not 'methodical' or 'mechanical' or anything else suggesting distant, inhuman robots. The one-word description is relentless. And honestly I think that's a good place to stick the Abyssal's niche in. Inevitability. Relentlessness. It comes up in all the inspirations being used. The people who were all so wronged so they can't die until the wrong is righted. Batman, the Terminator, all the other examples which came up. It might be fast and furious, or slow and methodical, but there's a sense that when an Abyssal shows up, whatever it sets out to do-will get done.
mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There's a line from a few pages upthread that more or less sums the topic all up in one sentence.
"What are you going to do, kill me?"
"What are you going to do, kill me?"
Ah, right.
Nah, doesn't quite work for what I'm going for with this Quest, I think, but thanks anyways.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
I was referring specifically to the classic zombi - the dead man enslaved by a black magician as a tireless, unfeeling servant, often of murder, whose deathly nature is not immediately obvious.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Necromancy is from Necyomanteia, meaning roughly "dead-communication".
It is in fact, older than latin as it was a Greek concept.
- Location
- Singapore
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Why can't it also be my concept?
I feel oppressed by your neglect of my four Charms of which 50% are Solar clones, and 100% are literally just writeups of ideas @EarthScorpion came up with.
These Charms make me completely indispensable to the project, for it is simply impossible for either he or @Revlid to write those specific four Charms for an outdated, Attribute-using paradigm of the Abyssals.
You are oppressing me @MJ12 Commando.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
