General Q and A

Karbo wrote:

Jætte_Troll wrote:

Under Religions, for Seekers of Sineria, it says that they search for any information about the location of Sineria. However, it would seem from rumour that many dridders know perfectly well where she is. Even if its only a few, wouldn't any dridder be able to to figure it out from his brethren?

Ah what rumor do you mean ? o.o
There might be a confusion here, she isn't supposed to be in that mansion... it has nothing to do actually XD

It was a general assumption made earlier. Apparently a viewpoint some have carried with them. I didn't think she was in the mansion as that didn't jive with the past but it was not my place to say otherwise.

Hehe, okay. Guess it's a meta-rumour. XD

Ah, on the time-line thing again. Has the fairy kingdom always been there, if Nemyra is a Guardian? I mean, does it pre-date the Titans then?

Oh, and on my vague elf theories - I remembered that the Milkadis temple was built by elves (well, they created the magic in the place so I'm taking the leap to say they built the whole darn thing.) If they were at a time where they could invest in temple building, or temple enchanting, were they then in a position beyond their small communities of today? Was there a pre-Sagolian Elven kingdom? That would explain why they seem haughty...

Perhaps the Elven Empire based on Nature was eclipsed by the Sagolian Empire of Magic and the Dridder Empire of Technology? Hmm...

I think Nemyra predates the titans yes

As for elves, hehe good point. Indeed there is lot of ancient words coming from it so it's safe to say they were a lot more numerous in ancient times ^^

A question about languages and music.

I apologize if this has already been asked before. I was listening to Rammstein and suddenly a thought occured to me. What would happen if somebody were, say, teleported to Felarya and had an ipod, or whatever else one might use to listen to music, and started listening to something in a language he couldn't understand on Earth (for example)? So yes, basically, say you're in Negav with a monstrous audio system listening to German music, would you understand anything if you've never studied that language before?

Shadeofheave wrote:

A question about languages and music.

I apologize if this has already been asked before. I was listening to Rammstein and suddenly a thought occured to me. What would happen if somebody were, say, teleported to Felarya and had an ipod, or whatever else one might use to listen to music, and started listening to something in a language he couldn't understand on Earth (for example)? So yes, basically, say you're in Negav with a monstrous audio system listening to German music, would you understand anything if you've never studied that language before?

I believe the translation effect applies to all spoken language, no matter how you're hearing it. Im pretty sure we said that the dialogue in the movies showing in theators in Negav would be translated.

I think the only thing that does not get translated is text.

Ah yes. I was talking to Shade about it earlier and I couldn't recall if it only worked between living beings or if it applied to all spoken language.
And yes, one of the things said in the discussion on it a while back did say that it didn't apply to text.

About Necromancy

I have read through a great many of the material that mentions the obscure art, but I had some more specific questions. I know you can't raise an army of the dead on Felarya, but could you for instance cast a spell that fell into the same school of magic but instead was used for wounding or inciting fear or terror? Another musing idea that popped into my head involved Liches. I figure that performing Lichcraft or the Ritual of Endless Night on Felarya would be a no-go, but could a Lich enter through one of the portals and remain 'alive' as it were or would they simply fall apart the second they set foot in Felarya? In addition to that, if the Lich's body were destroyed, would their soul return to their phylactery (soul anchor) and then they reform as would normally occur, or would their soul be interrupted and forcefully sent onward?

The thing about Felarya's clause, which actually uses the wrong term, is that all it does is prevent from bringing a corpse back to life. That includes raising it as an undead, resurrecting it through holy magic, or reincarnating it into another creature. If it's a corpse of a once living creature, you can't bring it back. There seem to exist a loophole that you can technically bring someone back, but you must bind its soul to an inanimate body, like a golem body. Spells like wounding, as they do not fall into the "bring a corpse back to life", work perfectly fine. As for undeads, they can exist on Felarya, they simply can't be created on Felarya. A Lich can exist if he became a Lich outside of Felarya, and then came to Felarya.

Alright, in that case, if a Lich's body is destroyed, their soul goes to their phylactery and the Lich reforms over a period of several days. Would the magics of Felarya prevent this? A Lich is essentially a walking corpse, but their soul is bound to a phylactery which facilitates the reformation.

Malhavoc Shade wrote:

Alright, in that case, if a Lich's body is destroyed, their soul goes to their phylactery and the Lich reforms over a period of several days. Would the magics of Felarya prevent this? A Lich is essentially a walking corpse, but their soul is bound to a phylactery which facilitates the reformation.

Hmmm, not really sure about Liches. I always figured that any undead that fell through into Felarya would find it extremely uncomfortable. I mean, its a realm that is so saturated with energy and magic that people stop aging at their prime and all non-lethal injuries heal up at an accelerated rate. Just seems like it wouldn't be the ideal environment for an undead creature to live in.

I don't play D&D and many other fantasy-themed things though, so I don't really know how all thier little rules and stuff work.

Necromancy in Felarya is limited to raising and controlling the dead, or bending them to your will. That is the part that is just doesn't work, likely because of the healing factor and/or wierd magical nature of the place. I, personally, don't consider paralyzing touches, and other dark magics to be necromancy. They are dark and scary, sure, but they don't have anything to do with the dead. Those do work though, since they are more like curses, illusions or enchantments than anything else.

I believe there are some Shamans out there though, that can commune with the spirits of the departed that have not moved on to the afterlife for one reason or another. That is about as close to necromancy as you can get on Felarya. The only examples of those that I know of are a Neko tribe in Zoekin's early work, and the character Marken, from the mangas,.who claims that the spirits tell him things.

Felarya Necromancer, in most cases, is only applied to "Rise, ye dead of the world!" varieties, and not "Inflict Minor Wounds on Touch" or "Drain energy from opponent and apply to yourself" spells. If you applied other realms for an example, something more like The Elder Scrolls (wherein Necromancy is predominantly used for interaction with the dead, and / or animating bodies) would be appropriate than Dungeons & Dragons (wherein Necromancy covers everything from "Revive" to healing injuries and even having a party well-rested through magical means).

Though the latter bit still stands (the question regarding Liches). I think the manner of the Liches' revival would play a part in if they can generate a new body on Felarya or not. For example, if you magically fabricated your replacement body, as opposed to jacking a pre-existing body and twisting it to your needs, that would seem like it should work fine (since that's how Ghosts work, in some instances, so this would essentially be a more refined and powerful version). Meanwhile, if you did the "Jack a body, twist to needs" approach, it's a bit more iffy as - on one hand - you are animating an inanimate object, but on the other hand it can be seen as a "raise dead" ability.

This does lead me to question, though, what happens if a Liche's Phylactery is kept on another plane / another world than Felarya, and the Liche has their body destroyed there. Normal consensus is that, on Felarya, whatever afterlife you would have in your own realm (unless you're something a divine would take direct interest in, or your realm already has an "If slain in Far Realms, Spirit Returns to Near Realms" clause, or you're from a "soulless" realm wherein the inhabitants have no spirit) is immediately rendered void by Felarya and instead applied to either one of the two "major" afterlives (Heaven or Hell), or Ghost-hood. There's rumor of another, true set of afterlives beyond Heaven and Hell (those two being mimicries / falsehoods), but they're just that: Rumors.

However, back to the point, normally when dead you're either: A) Stuck, B) Risin' with wings, C) Getting chased by a pitchfork. But a Liche has an anchor for their spirit, one that prevents it from simply passing on when the body fails (provided you can't do direct damage to the spirit, anyways). However, at the same time, said Anchor isn't on Felarya. Would the Anchor work fully as designed, and take the Lich back to their home realm / the realm of the Phylactery and let them reform there? Does it work somewhat, preventing them from being snatched by the divine beings but at the same time not having enough juice to send them back home (in which case it's a matter of the Lich either going mad, eventually having their anchor destroyed, or finding a way to get a body made without returning to their Phylactery)? Or does it not work at all, and essentially - when severed from their phylactery by multiple planes [normally not a problem, since Liches tend to become Demi-Liches by abandoning their remains and exploring separate planes from their phylactery, but Felarya is a bit special], the Liche is stuck with one "life" until they can get back home / to a realm with access to home?

EDIT: And if you look one post to your north, you'll see Cliff is a Ninja.

@Cliff: We have been through this, but cemented terms for magic is not a good idea. Plus, when I spoke to Karbo, he never really thought of Necromancy (whose original meaning would be divining the future by asking the dead) would be restricted to only raising the dead and controlling them. That works fine, but the thing is, some people prefer to envision bigger than "animate a skeleton as your servant" and see it as the magic of death itself, which can range include such thing as death spells, life draining, etc. etc. Again, not exactly against that Karbo views Necromancy as "magic that make the dead walk", but just that the term for the "no resurrection" clause is a bit too restrictive.

General Lich lore varies in how they regenerate when their body is destroyed. Most accounts simply state that the phylactery recreates a new body. Other accounts (specifically ones that relate to Draco-Liches) state that there need to be corpses used as a medium. Seeing as how Liches (other than the draconic variety) don't keep their phylactery in a room full of corpses, I think we can err on the side of it making a new body. A phylactery by its very nature denies the Divine or Infernal from laying claim to the soul till the phylactery and the Lich's body is destroyed. I think in the case of being separated from the phylactery by planar realms, it would work as intended unless the entities of Felarya are that much more powerful than the normal Gods and Demons one would expect to find in a fantasy setting, or if Felarya is totally separated from other realms by some odd mechanic. Which in that case, I figure the Lich wouldn't be able to enter Felarya without their phylactery as doing so would sever the connection and the phylactery would react and prevent the soul from moving out of reach of the container. In other words, walking corpse enters, pile of decaying matter exits. Lich wakes up at home, quite irate at losing whatever relics s/he was carrying at the time.

Pardon me for intruding, but I has a question involving Leviathan Mermaids.

Quote :

Sometimes they will swallow small enough crafts, and store them in a second special stomach, a scary but perfectly safe way to travel.

So... how can the mermaid swallow and, eventually, regurgitate a boat without damaging anyone or anything? When I see a boat getting squeezed down by esophageal muscles and dropped into a stomach, I see it getting pretty damaged. After the return trip, I'd imagine it'd be nothing but a bunch of broken lumber.

Sean Okotami wrote:

@Cliff: We have been through this, but cemented terms for magic is not a good idea. Plus, when I spoke to Karbo, he never really thought of Necromancy (whose original meaning would be divining the future by asking the dead) would be restricted to only raising the dead and controlling them. That works fine, but the thing is, some people prefer to envision bigger than "animate a skeleton as your servant" and see it as the magic of death itself, which can range include such thing as death spells, life draining, etc. etc. Again, not exactly against that Karbo views Necromancy as "magic that make the dead walk", but just that the term for the "no resurrection" clause is a bit too restrictive.

I'm not sure what I told you exactly but to me a harmful touch, life drain etc.. doesn't belongs to necromancy but more to dark magic in general.
By necromancy I mean the action ( raising dead ), not a specific school of magic ala D&d.

Karbo wrote:

I'm not sure what I told you exactly but to me a harmful touch, life drain etc.. doesn't belongs to necromancy but more to dark magic in general.
By necromancy I mean the action ( raising dead ), not a specific school of magic ala D&d.

Thanks everyone! This clears up a lot of the concerns I had considering blacker magics. I am still curious about the Lich conundrum, but for now I have most of the answers I was looking for.

Karbo wrote:

Sean Okotami wrote:

@Cliff: We have been through this, but cemented terms for magic is not a good idea. Plus, when I spoke to Karbo, he never really thought of Necromancy (whose original meaning would be divining the future by asking the dead) would be restricted to only raising the dead and controlling them. That works fine, but the thing is, some people prefer to envision bigger than "animate a skeleton as your servant" and see it as the magic of death itself, which can range include such thing as death spells, life draining, etc. etc. Again, not exactly against that Karbo views Necromancy as "magic that make the dead walk", but just that the term for the "no resurrection" clause is a bit too restrictive.

I'm not sure what I told you exactly but to me a harmful touch, life drain etc.. doesn't belongs to necromancy but more to dark magic in general.
By necromancy I mean the action ( raising dead ), not a specific school of magic ala D&d.

Not everyone sees it like that.

That's the definition that we're using in Felarya.
Different people and different fantasy universes often use different definitions.

Maybe, but people from different universes come to Felarya, so by that logic, they'd use their own definition.

Sean Okotami wrote:

Maybe, but people from different universes come to Felarya, so by that logic, they'd use their own definition.

All those different universes are still within the Felarya multi-verse setting, and would still be subject to some of the same rules.

The Felarya setting is not just Felarya, it is all the worlds within the multi-verse that are connected to it too.The setting has its own rules, it doesn't bend to the rules of other settings.

But you're really just arguing semantics. Could a civiliation lump in all dark magic as necromancy? Sure. But as far as Felarya is concerned, necromancy is strictly raising or controlling the dead. All the rest are just curses, illusions and black magic. Different worlds are going to have their own terminology, we're just defining what IS necromacny as far as the dimensional plane of Felarya is concerned, since necromancy does not work there.

Point is: If you want to create that Multiverse feel, you gotta have casters from different universes use their own terms. That's my take on it and I am not going to change it.

Okay, so Felarya 'Necromancy' is "raising and/or controlling the dead." I have this filed and acknowledged. Now how would this effect a Lich's reformation? As mentioned before, when the body is destroyed (via ingestion, crushing, shooting, blasting, exploding, etc) the soul of the Lich returns to their phylactery (soul anchor). Now say the phylactery is in Felarya as well so we don't need to worry about transplanar soul travel and whatnot. Would a Lich then reform after a few days as the phylactery does what it is supposed to do, or would something else occur?

EDIT: I think I answered my own question after rereading the wiki more carefully, but answers are still welcome for clarification purposes. I'll post what I read and my conclusions though.

Quote :

"For reasons unknown, any spell involving meddling with the afterlife and calling forth a soul to inhabit a body (such as resurrection, or raising the dead) doesn't work on Felarya. A wandering spirit can still decide to possess a body on its own, or be bound to an object or a golem body, but recalling the soul from afterlife and forcing it in any way just won't work."

Basically what this means is that bringing a soul from 'beyond the veil' (Heaven/Hell/Limbo/The Afterlife/That-Big-Sandbox-In-The-Sky/Whatever), is a nono. With a Lich though, the soul never left the material plane, and is in fact anchored to its phylactery. As such it could be classified as a wandering spirit of sorts, except it has a phylactery which will recreate a body for it within a few days time. Basically, that answers my own above question.



This in turn has brought a new question though. The act of animating the dead is just that. Animating the dead. It in no way deals with binding souls or what have you. In fact the act of animating a corpse is much like creating a golem, only instead of it being made of clay or some other material, it is composed of flesh, bone, and sinew. Skeletons, zombies, and the other run-of-the-mill Lesser Undead are all mindless automatons which are basically grotesque golems. So my point then, whilst Necromancy in Felarya terms cannot retrieve the souls of the departed, can it animate their leftovers? *throws match onto tinderbox* DEBATE!

Heh, magic, particularly black magic, is one of my favorite subjects.

In terms of necromancy, in Felarya it is not viable (that I know of, so somebody please correct me if I get this wrong) to 1. recall a soul, in any form, from death, 2. replace a soul into a dead body, 3. reanimate a corpse (zombie, skeleton, ect.)

Basically, all you can do is contact the dead and talk to them. If it has died, you can't mess with it. I suppose you could "reanimate" something using a trick I call "Necrotic Puppetry", but that isn't necromancy, in reality. It's when you put a machine set or biotic propulsion into/onto the dead body and it is physically moved about by the system. The thing is dead, and the system has to be alive and present throughout the body to move it (ie, put remote-controlled skeletal system into a body and move it like that, a pervasive parasite with tendrils threaded through the body to make it move, ect.) That would be the only viable way for a dead body to move around, and it's not necromancy, as stated.

So, in essence, "a body can't self-propel", "die once, you're dead forever", and "contact, yes; recall, no"

Even the Lesser Undead can't be raised in Felarya. Even if there is no binding, ect., something that is dead is simply not able to be made into an autonomous system. If you want a skeleton or corpse to get up and move, you're going to have to physically/psychically/magically pick it up, or use Necrotic Puppetry.

MrNobody13 wrote:

Heh, magic, particularly black magic, is one of my favorite subjects.

In terms of necromancy, in Felarya it is not viable (that I know of, so somebody please correct me if I get this wrong) to 1. recall a soul, in any form, from death, 2. replace a soul into a dead body, 3. reanimate a corpse (zombie, skeleton, ect.)

Basically, all you can do is contact the dead and talk to them. If it has died, you can't mess with it. I suppose you could "reanimate" something using a trick I call "Necrotic Puppetry", but that isn't necromancy, in reality. It's when you put a machine set or biotic propulsion into/onto the dead body and it is physically moved about by the system. The thing is dead, and the system has to be alive and present throughout the body to move it (ie, put remote-controlled skeletal system into a body and move it like that, a pervasive parasite with tendrils threaded through the body to make it move, ect.) That would be the only viable way for a dead body to move around, and it's not necromancy, as stated.

So, in essence, "a body can't self-propel", "die once, you're dead forever", and "contact, yes; recall, no"

Even the Lesser Undead can't be raised in Felarya. Even if there is no binding, ect., something that is dead is simply not able to be made into an autonomous system. If you want a skeleton or corpse to get up and move, you're going to have to physically/psychically/magically pick it up, or use Necrotic Puppetry.

Sort of accurate. There happens to be a sect of elves that can reanimate after death - once. Also, they reanimate in the same place they died so it has limited uses.

Yes, but I assumed they were a kind of exception to the rule and didn't include them.