[OOC] The Prophecy

[Shienvien]

I think Yoshua might have to revise his post a bit before anyone else posts with what Jack's said about the realism of saying the rather long incantations perfectly in less than handful of seconds (or some kind of cascading failure of scene integrity might occur).

As for Merc's questions, though:
1.) Yes, vampires do have souls.
2.) ...Blessed? What do you mean by "blessed" - as in containing divine energy more specifically? To that, the answer would be "no," as far as I'm aware. They do contain magical energy of some description, though, so yes, they are magic-imbued.

[yoshua171]

I'm at work so I can't ask the questions I'd like to or even edit my post. I can type this though.

1.) Can he preform a simpler spell similar to the AoE one mentioned rather than preforming 2.

2.) Merc could you wait till I can edit I'on's post please?

[Shienvien]

1.) Can he preform a simpler spell similar to the AoE one mentioned rather than preforming 2.

The issue was mainly the speed at which he seemed to do it all - look at your computer's clock and try to say all those words out without failing a single letter in English within the three or so seconds Jack estimated it took from Morgan shoving the blue-haired sister around and the pillar impacting with the ceiling. It's I'd say impossible, and as Jack pointed out, the arcane language tends to be rather difficult for humans to pronounce. I'd say even using just one spell, he'd finish not when the pillar hits the ceiling (unless it only contained a handful of words post-edit), but rather shortly after the pillar has already turned into a wall and the masked sister has shouted out at Morgan not to touch her sister.

[yoshua171]

I'm fine with that timeframe shift. I just need to figure out why I'on would know such a spell. It won't be too difficult given his variety of life experiences.

[Mercinus3]

2.) Merc could you wait till I can edit I'on's post please?

@yoshua171

I was planning on waiting until the post was corrected :)

M3

[yoshua171]

I shall correct it tomorrow as I just worked a 10.5 hour shift and biked home (I also biked to work, as I must do every time I work). So yeah. Just waiting for the adrenaline to wear off so I can sleep.

[Mercinus3]

No worries.

@Shienvien: ah ok. I'm often familiar with the undead kind, so I'm not 100% sure if that was the case this time around. As for the Bane, I am not 100% sure if they are divine or not though I know that they were imbued with the Stones of the Doom Mage so it contained magic. Just unsure if that would be classed as 'blessed' or not.

M3

[Shienvien]

Prophecy-vampires are living ... though it's a bit of a moot distinction, since Prophecy-undead also have souls.

Stones of the doom mage are made with mortal magic, as far as I know. (Similarly, I reckon "blessed" is restricted to objects imbued with divine energy.)

[Dark Jack]

Uh...

1) Since this spell is practically instantaneous, as well as... "homing?" I guess is the correct adjective? I am wondering if it's at all avoidable physically. Naturally, I assume the average human (or even skilled human) would be unable to dodge it, but since Morgan is a vampire/sniffer, the combination might give him the reaction time/speed to avoid the magic. This of course, is assuming that he was able to recover quickly enough to realize that he was being attacked by I'on and not focusing solely on the masked sister.

Rhaevnn Xeno

Though I wasn't familiar with the properties of that spell (meaning how fast it was moving and how effectively it was tracking), it could - in theory - be dodged. In theory, anything direction-based can be avoided, which includes manifestations as projectiles, though obviously there may be cases where movement is so stupidly fast or artificial intelligence is so single-minded that it isn't practically doable.
Actually, now that we're on the subject, it's quite unusual for a mind-affecting spell to be direction-based. Such spells are usually target-based, which effectively renders them unavoidable to the target.

2) Would Morgan be able to sense I'on's particular use of magic. It's true that Morgan would have already sensed a build up of his sigils and such, but can a sniffer realize the exact time magic is dispelled from its user? Or would the sniffer have to be quite skilled in his craft to realize such an occurrence is happening?

Rhaevnn Xeno

Yes, he would notice that the spell was being invoked; a sniffer's innate sense of magical energy is so keen that I'd say that any sniffer, no matter how inexperienced, would be aware of magic being cast near them. Sensing magic is what sniffers do, and no one does it better than them.

1) Do vampires have souls?

Mercinus3

Yes, they do. As Shien said, Prophecy-vampires are not undead (which is also correctly stated to be a moot point, since undead have souls (or at least magical energy, in the case of reanimated dead), too).

2) Do Banes count as blessed weapons or are they just magic-imbued ones?

Mercinus3

Bane weapons are not blessed, no (and ironically, in the Prophecy, a thing can be "blessed" by gods and demon lords alike; the property here actually describes a certain kind of ownership of the blessed object or area to the deity bestowing this blessing, which can in some cases cause the implied presence of said deity to disrupt adjacent unstable energy-structures, but more importantly renders the blessed thing very difficult to interact with to other deities (on that note, vampires are, in fact, unaffected by blessings from Rilon, just as demonspawn are unaffected by blessings from Himyth)). Bane weapons are made by fusing weapons with Stones of the Doom Mage, which are in turn made (primarily) through black magic, so their nature is (primarily) the result of mortal magic.
Now that I think about it, it occurs to me that I never mentioned that Banes are cold to the touch... and the areas near them in the immediate vicinity of the inserted Stone(s) is very cold.

1.) Can he preform a simpler spell similar to the AoE one mentioned rather than preforming 2.

yoshua171

I'd say Shien's answer was pretty adequate, so I'll leave it at that.

[yoshua171]

The first spell, which I have outright removed from my post as the AoE was far more encompassing and effective anyways, was not tracking. Though it was very fast. I figured he could have dodged it, but he would have been quite aware that the spell was unable to cause harm due to his sniffer abilities, I'd imagine.

Ego Subduction on the other hand is not something I'd expect to be dodged considering it has a fairly large AoE.

Yeah, I'on named the spell Ego Subduction. It seemed fitting.

Also, I have clearly edited haha. Hopefully this is more acceptable. I even gave reason for his having created the spell. I should probably write the spell down in a document and call that document "I'on's spellbook," haha. My apologies on the...lack of universe integrity in the previous format of the now edited post.

I'm still kind of experimenting with this magic system.

[Shienvien]

Ironically, in the Prophecy, a thing can be "blessed" by gods and demon lords alike; the property here actually describes a certain kind of ownership of the blessed object or area to the deity bestowing this blessing, which can in some cases cause the implied presence of said deity to disrupt adjacent unstable energy-structures, but more importantly renders the blessed thing very difficult to interact with to other deities (on that note, vampires are, in fact, unaffected by blessings from Rilon, just as demonspawn are unaffected by blessings from Himyth)).

So this is how you define "blessed" in this world? Huh... Admittedly, it doesn't really seem to correspond with my general interpretation of the word... I'd actually taken blessed to be so in the more conventional sense of the word, so just as an object containing divine energy. (Such as weapons given divine weight by Deliph could be considered "blessed"...) The infernal equivalent of that, then, would be "damned" or "cursed" or something along those lines. (Though you could perhaps argue that at least the second one of those words is more likely to be used for the results of certain kinds of harmful mortal magic.)
Eh... In any case, the world which seems more fitting for the given use of "blessed" - in my mind, at least - would be "sanctified".

...On another note, I am also very inclined to call demon lords "devils" in my mind, rather than "demon lords", simply because "demon lord" just strikes me as a classification that somehow should be far inferior to "god", whereas "devil" has always been the equivalent of "god" (and similarly to how many religions have many gods, they often also have many devils, whereas demons are either not present or exist as lesser evil creatures under them).
But that's my and my interpretation of words, and my brain occasionally making strong, but not necessarily always-apt associations. ((There was a book with a female character named "Nikita" I read once - and Nikita is a male-only name for most of the world, but especially Russian-speaking regions... So I consistently kept picturing this burly Russian guy whenever she came up, and retroactively correcting my mental image of the scene. That was a fair bit more distracting than it had any right to be...))

@yoshua171: Looks fine to me now, I think. On a random thought I got from reading the post, though, has I'on never had dealings with sniffers before?
I'm also not certain sniffers would be able to detect the nature (in the given case, harmfulness or harmlessness of a mind-control-type spell) with any significant accuracy. Jack?

[yoshua171]

A few, perhaps. I'm really not sure. I admittedly was considerably less skilled a writer when I joined this RP and have improved leaps and bounds since I made I'on. So I ended up leaving his history a bit more vague in certain areas than I previously thought. However, given him being worldly it's likely he's encountered some. Which may be giving him hints into part of Morgan's nature. Why do you ask?

[Shienvien]

@yoshua171: Mainly for this bit here:

He had yet to encounter individuals who could detect the spell, or the point where its effects ceased. However, it was surely possible that some could.

To which I thought that he should know at least one category of people who definitely can - as sniffers aren't that rare, especially in Zerul City, the city of mages, where I'on, a mage himself, has made his home. It's occasionally used as a punishment for certain heavier magical transgressions, though some people also volunteer for it, and at least larger collectives of mages (and mage-hunters) generally tend to have a few around.
(He's most likely still unaware that Morgan's a sniffer, though, what with him being covered head to toe and never stating it. Ixion did inquire the sisters about whether a sniffer would be more able to detect anything in regards to Gaath, but that's all mention there has been of sniffers. Could have been a general inquiry, from what I'on knows.)

[Dark Jack]

Ah, sanctification is also a thing in the Prophecy. While a blessing is like a "lightweight" invocation of the protection of a deity on that particular item - one that may cause discomfort for those directly related to other deities or even hurt them somewhat - and is usually very temporary, sanctification is sort of the heavier version of a blessing. Not only does it usually take a lot longer to sanctify something than to bless it, and it requires much more elaborate rituals to make it so, but sanctification is often permanent or near-permanent, and can only be removed through desecration of the sanctified item or area. The effect of sanctification is also much stronger than that of a blessing, though it won't affect as wide a variety of things (it can't disrupt energy, for instance, and won't particularly affect vampires beyond making them slightly uncomfortable), but will outright prevent other deities from acting against that which is sanctified at all. Places of worship are often sanctified, which also why Rilon needed Thaler to steal the White Rose for him, since he is literally incapable of acting within the Cathedral of Reina himself. Demonspawn are also somewhat affected by sanctification, as long as it is not in Himyth's name, since they possess the blood of a deity; for them, entering a sanctified area is not only nauseating and slightly painful, but weakens their powers and hinders their movement.
Objects that contain the energy of deities are not actually referred to as blessed in the Prophecy. Rather, an object containing the energy of a god is "divine", and an object with the energy of a demon lord is (you guessed it) "infernal". The term "cursed" is indeed used about harmful enchantments, usually caused by mortal magic, and "damned" is (as one might naturally assume) the opposite of "blessed", and can also be caused by gods and demon lords alike. In other words, it is that a deity decides to invoke their disapproval of a thing, which ironically also makes it difficult for other deities to affect the damned object. The main difference is that, whereas a blessed object will be under implied protection of a deity, a damned object will be rendered significantly more fragile and vulnerable.
It was actually my original idea to name the demon lords "devils", but it didn't end up that way because the term "devil" came to mean something else; a distinction not usually made by mortals, but is considered moderately significant in the Underworld. "Demon", to them, is basically the vast majority of demons, which is those created from dead spirits. "Devils" are the demons created by Ismyel in the Dawn of Time, the first of their kind and those whose definition of "evil" is derived directly from that of Ismyel, and as such represent the very worst of their kind. So yeah, demonic deities ended up being demon lords.

And yeah, the post is much better now. Sensing the nature of a spell, though? They can to an extent, yes... They can sense a lot about a spell just by how it feels (though comprehension of what they sense may not be instant, mind you; the ability to analyze what one senses, and doing so quickly, is something that needs to be learned), and in this case a sniffer would certainly be able to tell that it was a mind-affecting spell being cast... but not whether it was harmful or not. The energy-signature of the spell quite simply doesn't reflect that.

[Shienvien]

"Devils" are the demons created by Ismyel in the Dawn of Time, the first of their kind and those whose definition of "evil" is derived directly from that of Ismyel, and as such represent the very worst of their kind.

Original devils, devils whose nature embodies being a fully evil devil the most - archdevils? (As by nigh the definition of arch- as a prefix.)

[Dark Jack]

Original devils, devils whose nature embodies being a fully evil devil the most - archdevils? (As by nigh the definition of arch- as a prefix.)

Shienvien

Eh, to be honest I'm not even exactly sure what you suggest "archdevil" would denote. For starters, Prophecy devils are not all deities - in fact the vast majority of them are just the kind usually classified as greater demons - and not all evil deities are devils (with some instances of this being quite obvious, such as with Kreshtaat, who is, by Prophecy-definition, a demon). If "archdevil" were to denote devil deities, then, I would probably have to call the demon-deities "archdemon", which would also be the common name for all of them, since "demon" is the wider of the two terms. And somehow, especially archdemon, but to an extent also archdevil, at least makes me associate them more with archangels than with gods, which would still make them sound as "less".
I think that if I was making the Prophecy-universe today - because I'm quite beyond being willing to change it - my personal way of handling it would be to simply forgo distinction between the two opposites and refer to all of them - good and evil - as "gods".

[Shienvien]

That was just a random apt-feeling thought I got as I was reading your reply to me, which I then quickly jotted down after briefly checking the prefix against a dictionary, just in case it also had other meanings in addition to those I was personally aware of. (It was also about five minutes before I left the house, and I more or less haven't had the chance to use a computer since.) In essence it was an idea on how one could potentially distinguish a "regular" devil (in the sense of any evil deity-level entity) from an Ismyel-created devil. - An Ismyel-created non-deity-level entity would be archdemon, by that same logic: any non-deity infernal entity would be a demon, any deity-level infernal entity would be a devil, and if either was one of the Ismyel-created ones, then it'd be archdemon or archdevil respectively.
I was unaware that there were non-deity-level Prophecy-devils before your last specification, though (that's even odder thought, devils which aren't even deities; while "demon lords" have predominantly been significantly below deity-level, there is certainly also a very strong assignment of "devil" to a minimally deity-level entity or primary force).
Ehh... Semantics, we meet again.

[Dark Jack]

Eh, I guess the significance of the word "devil" can vary quite a bit. I mean yes, generally in religions of Earth "devil" is used about the primary force of "evil" or "sin" or whatever negative attribute is assigned to it, but even then I don't think I've ever perceived any "devil" as being at the same level as the god or gods of the affiliated religion, except by people worshiping the devil specifically. Usually the devil is created by the god(s) in question, and/or is reduced to a subversive role with little to no power beyond what it can exercise through the corruption of mortals. So while "devil" does usually describe a counterpart to a supposedly "good" deity (though I'd say that the "unsullied goodness" of the gods of real-world religions is at least as questionable as that of the gods in The Prophecy), I would in no way put the two as equals. The only case where a god and devil are equals that I can think of would be in Slavic mythology, and it's not even called the devil in that, so that's ultimately not even applicable. Eh...
And that is even just in regards to religions. Folklore from different parts of the world - I know that this is the case at least in Scandinavian folklore - "devil" is often used about relatively minor disruptive creatures that aren't even necessarily evil, but just mischievous. And if we delve into popular fictional universes - which is perhaps just as relevant, considering that's what the planes is - Dungeons & Dragons makes a point of demons and devils being equal in power, but engaged in eternal war with one another for dominion of (insert name of whatever name that realm/those realms was here), where the main difference between the two was (if I recall correctly) that demons represented "chaotic evil" and devils "lawful evil".

On a side note, because this got me thinking about it, I guess that if one had to assign that kind of alignment to the demonic factions of The Prophecy, Kreshtaat and the Death Clan would be "chaotic evil", and the Grand Master and the Infernal Empire would be "lawful evil".

[Shienvien]

We had these mischievous-evil things, too, many kinds of them, in fact, but we don't call any of them "devils" (incidentally, what I presume you're referring to as "devils in the Scandinavian folklore" get translated to one or several of those in Estonian, since I've never even seen anything called a "devil" mentioned in relation to Scandinavian folklore, Estonian ot English - when I've read about Scandinavian folklore, then almost always in Estonian, granted -, but I've seen some of these other things mentioned) ... the devil didn't exist in Estonian folklore before early Christian influences (devil as in the same word as the Christian devil, and deity-level entity or primary force in any other context), and then he was - depending on the story and region - either pretty much fully omnipotent, or the contract-bound, but otherwise omnipotent soul-collector sort (god, in turn, always remained strangely absent and never actually did anything whatsoever). And there is another rift between the stories where the corresponding figure is actually referred to as a devil, and the later variety, in which he again isn't called as such.
The actual Christian devil ... is what he is; while he isn't considered a deity by other than satanists, he nevertheless is the closest thing the other side has and also the superior of all demons. Granted, if we start talking of what different cultures see different entity-classes as, it often just ends up being a matter of what word you map to what other word in another language... Often enough, it can consequently vary immensely by which translation you read.
(As far as gods always being painted as supreme beings goes, a "tormented/starving soul" is any entity at the lowest wheel-of-life state of existence where they exist in utter suffering, and "god" is actually any entity at the highest wheel-of-life state of existence where they have everything and are awesomely powerful in some branches of Buddhism - once interpreted to English, anyway. And in this instance, "god" isn't necessarily a deity... Meanwhile, non-god deities are at least referred to (be they implied to be real or just personified-for-story-purposes phenomena), though never worshipped, in other places of the same branch of the religion, often even in the same scripture. I don't think I've seen any other word but "god" used in that case, in Estonian or English. So... Yeah, there absolutely are interpretations of the word "god" which are either non-deity or at least nothing to look up to, one example given. And then there are the countless very minor and/or mortal gods found in various religions...)
- Admittedly I can't speak much on D&D ... I've wanted to try it, on and off, but it never worked out on the organization-side, so there it has been left, and I don't know much of the lore hence. (Unless you want to count playing Baldur's Gate II, which I don't know how canonical is...)
Not sure where I wanted to go with it, but I guess the point is that your interpretation may vary depending on whose lore (and which translations ... perhaps especially which translations) you've read... Mine just have happened to cement "devil" as a handful of orders of manitude more powerful than anything called a demon (including devils slaying them and their higher orders by tens of thousands), and ranked gods and devils as equals...
As a sidenote, Estonian folklore didn't have gods, either. There were untold spirits, though...

On a random thought, given how many mythologies have their original creators eaten/slayed/imprisoned/stripped of power and/or damned eternally by their successors, who created who might not be the best way to determine rankings or relative power...

[Dark Jack]

Oh, I've never actually played D&D either. I'm mainly familiar with it through its wiki (which I occasionally browsed for a while some time ago for some unfathomable reason) and the Neverwinter Nights-series.
I know that both Danish and Norwegian folklore have devils (plural) in them that are somewhat similar, though Danish folklore does occasionally have some very odd ways of labeling things. Nearly every creature in it is called either "troll" or "witch", with rarer mentions of dragons (such as in the legend of Beowulf) and devils. The labels don't mean much, though, since the descriptions vary so wildly that one can't really say what any of them are supposed to be. A witch can just as easily be a human as a completely inhuman monster, and trolls can be everything from humanlike forms to serpents. Going further back in time, our folklore instead starts to feature a lot of giants, jotun, lindworms and, to a much greater extent than relatively recent folklore, heroes. The only "dragon" we originally had was Nidhogg (which pretty much doubled as the Norse version of Hell, as it ate the worst criminals); the rest were lindworms, which were every bit as formidable as any dragon I've ever read about (perhaps even more so, as some lindworms are stated to be unable to die, spurring the Christian saviors (oh yes) to built churches on top of them and hallow the ground around them in order to weaken and imprison them). There were a lot of other old Norse creatures of myth and legend, of course (such as draugr, which the world was reminded of recently), but none appear as often as those.