: Introduction
: Hypothesis: The Æther is sort of like a quantum foam, all
: things derived from it. For instance, the Earth and
: the Gods both were random creations popping out of the
: holes in the quantum foam. The Gods, being
: supernatural spirits of extreme power, then had the
: ability to create “life” on the Earth.
Great way of putting it!
: They did. Life is created by adjoining a partition or
: piece of the Æther, or perhaps snatching a spirit
: which pops out of the quantum foam, and adjoining it
: to the physical matter of the Earth, making a living
: creature. In theory, anything can have life, have a
: soul and be animated, but only organic life can
: reproduce on its own, without extraordinary measures
: being taken. This is a property of Earth, that organic
: material is self-replicating. Non-organic beings, such
: as the Trow, can not reproduce naturally, and are
: simply walking pieces of Earth that were sculpted into
: humanoid form, by Nyx, the Goddess of the Trow.
Yep
: A note on organic life: Once an organic being is created,
: such as in a womb, it then slowly begins to take in
: amounts of spirit from the surrounding Æther as it
: grows, like slowly drinking it a fluid. It goes
: through stages of spirit-hood and soul, such as
: starting at a primitive insect level and ending up as,
: perhaps, a Human or a Ghôl. The insemination of the
: spirit into organic matter is a natural process which
: requires no divination, necessarily, though they can
: do such things.
Do you mean separate souls evolving over time or one soul or body changing its form altogether.
: Conversely, death is the destruction of the physical
: matter to the point where the soul, or spirit, cannot
: be withheld inside it any longer. The spirit then is
: detached from the physical matter. Since the Æther is
: everywhere, most likely, a sub-level of reality being
: much like the spatial fabric itself, it can easily
: absorb a spirit into it again. If the spirit is
: composed entirely of Æther, it rejoins it and remixes
: with it, waiting for its volume to be used again in
: constructing a soul.
And individual souls do keep their form when returned to the ether so Shiver returns as a familiar character when SB brings her back although this may be the work of Tramist's Mirror - gathering up all the mixed up parts of her original sould and combining them together again.
: Undeath
: Then, from here, what is Undeath? or Unlife, for that
: matter? This subject is difficult to pin down as it
: has very sketchy definition. I believe the term
: “Unlife” can be disregarded for now as another term
: for “death.” We may return to it later. Undeath is the
: important one, for it is most used and logically seems
: to make sense.
Maybe Unlife - being the same as death - is how the Watcher made so many Thrall without killing thousands of humans but casting the Dream of Unlife to either kill them immediately or create thousands of dead humans from scratch then reanimate them with the ether.
Or, explained a different way, much like Undeath is death with half of life (the [artificial] soul) returned to it (a lifeless body with a soul), then Unlife is life with half of life taken away from it (a soulless body).
: Undeath seems to come after death. Death is reversed,
: made “un”, and therefore takes on some properties
: opposite to death, such as animation. A necromancer,
: which is actually a term which is vulgarized in
: meaning from simply one who communicates with the
: dead, is conscidered a riser of the dead in some form
: or another; a maker of zombies. A necromancer takes
: the dead flesh of a formerly living thing, usually an
: organic dead thing (as they are most common). He
: performs rites and recites spells, any of these
: generic magical things bridging the cap between the
: etherial Æther and the earthen world.
: Let us concentrate on the example of a Ghast. A
: necromancer will take the body of a freshly dead
: corpse and prepare it in some way or another. Instead
: of using the original soul which left the body,
: summoning it to return, the necromancer uses a
: simpler, cheeper, and more artificial process. There
: are two possibilites: He uses a piece or extension of
: his own soul to inhabit the corpse (unlikely); he
: summons and pulls a small bundle or portion of the
: Æther into the corpse (far more likely). I tend to
: lean toward the latter, and will from here on.
Likewhise
: The piece of the fluid Æther, the artificial soul, is
: joined to the corpse. This artificial soul is very
: little in size/complexity, perhaps not more
: complicated than that of an insect. However, it is
: small enough so that the corpse can sustain it. Much
: larger, and it might be too heavy and be torn from the
: physical matter again, plunging back into the Æther.
: Besides, the simpler the better as far as minions go.
Exactly, you - as a dark lord - don't want your army to start making their own decisions all of a sudden, an insect soul is perfect for zombies.
: So, the necromancer creates an “undead” creature, undead
: because the organic tissue died, and is still
: relatively dead, but yet walks the Earth again. A soul
: of sorts is animating it, along with other spells that
: include preservation, strength, stamina, etcetera.
: This walking zombie is easily controlled by the powers
: of the archmage who created it.
So, therefore, a sufficiently powerful archmage could control his army to have overwhelming strength since their muscles are not being used for that purpose anyway. Balor and his Fallen Lords •could• have created Undead with infinite strength, stamina and breath. Well at least one of these is true. Besides, any more and Myth would have been unbalanced and no fun to play and we wouldn't want that would we now.
: Killing the Undead
: Technically speaking, it seems redundant to kill
: something that is already dead. But then, how do
: Berserks and Warriors hack their way through the
: undead minions, seemingly killing them after they lose
: enough health and strength. Well, let us consider
: again what it means to die. Death occurs in any living
: creature, as we established, once the physical matter
: is incapable of sustaining the soul or spirit within
: it any longer. Though undeath is artificial, it can be
: ended just the same as with life. Once the physical
: matter, the zombie creature of a Ghast or, more
: preferably, a Thrall in our case, can no longer
: support the spirit within it that animates it, the
: spirit falls off of it, like the tether connecting to
: a lighter-than-air balloon cut or burning away. The
: spirit recombines with the Æther.
Very good and well explained point.
: The Mandrake Problem
: This comes to mandrake root problem which is prevalent to
: this sort of thing. If mandrake roots heal organic
: tissue, then why don’t they heal the tissue of, say, a
: Thrall and make him alive again (only physically, not
: spiritually)? Perhaps only living tissue can be
: healed…but then doesn’t that somewhat defeat the
: point? If my arm has been cut badly by a deep sword
: wound, or if I’m ill and may even be dieing, isn’t my
: problem dieing or dead tissue?
: Perhaps then the healing powers of the madrake root to
: life, which cause opposite affects in undead beings,
: are of a different nature. Perhaps a mandrake instead
: rights and makes more natural or correct the being
: which is being healed. For instance, the healing
: powers of a madrake root on my gashed arm make things
: correct and right again, changing the damaged tissue
: back to its natural state, of health, or flushing out
: the disease which should not be in my body. The act of
: naturalization upon an artifical life force, like a
: being of undeath, would tear the artificial soul off
: from the physical matter, and then nothing would
: animate the physical matter, it falling to the ground
: in a great heap, as we’ve delightfully done many times
: to those who would attempt a sneak Wight attack.
I think this is the most feasible option.
: Even further, maybe the madrake’s power is related to
: that of light magic, and expells dark magic. This is
: an equally compelling and resonable answer.
Great post Archer, the stuff about each kind of Undead was well explained. Hopefully this should conclude many of the arguments here. Then again, this is the Asylum...bwuahahahahaaaaaaa......|euch!
