Shienvien

The Prophecy

Domhnall McRaith

The young lad offered him a smile and a quick nod before jogging off, allegedly to fetch the rest of his and his master's party. Lots of trust to be put in a couple of strangers, he supposed ... that, or alternatively his faith in said strangers' self-preservation instincts and the dekkun's ability to relieve anyone who dared harm his human of their limbs and lives was unwavering. The forestfolk could feel the noble beast's watchful eyes on him, even as his his own followed the squire's departure and then turned to the sleeping or unconscious man. He was probably a taller and stronger - when healthy, anyhow - man than Domhnall himself, and certainly of the warrior-sort, but now he just looked ... harmless, somehow. Granted, hardly anyone looked particularly impressive when they were asleep - mostly people just assumed whatever position their limp bodies had ended up in. Still breathing, the least.
"You better be right about just needing rest, ya know?" the male éireannach commented, though not quite loudly enough to be heard by anyone but himself. More just to fill the silence left in the wake of the black-eyes. "Quite fond of my head, myself." He shot a look in Etakar's direction.
The beast did not actually look hostile - if there was a way for eight thousand pounds of bone and muscle to not look hostile -, more so simply idly curious. Nevertheless, he abstained actually showing a discernible grin on his face despite his last remark being not entirely serious (he hoped). Who knew how the beast would interpret it.
Iridiel remained up in the tree, quietly praying to herself as her fingers deftly moved to braid a lock of her hair to mark her recent achievement of dealing a killing blow to the grey brute. - It was an old tradition amongst Éireannach hunters to mark big game kills on their persons, whether it was by braiding their hair if it was long enough as Iridiel was doing now, daubing themselves in paint, or, in instances where the kill was of truly impressive, giving it a more permanent form in a tattoo. He had been a hunter longer, yet had little to show for it ... never mind he often used various contraptions and traps to aid him, rather than getting up close and personal.
In any case, it was best to let the highlander pray and rest in peace. Healing did not seem to affect her as much, but using the divine lightning appeared to left her drained. Something about having all this energy coursing through your body and directing it, perhaps.
On another thought, it appeared that something had perturbed her. She was talking to herself - or her Goddess -, but that in and of itself was not unusual, especially when she was praying. It was more the tone of her voice, which was somehow agitated, as if she were arguing with herself of some unseen entity. Agitated and ... nervous? He could not quite make out the words from here...
No time to ask, though; it seemed that the guy had been right about not taking long, as the rustling of branches announced the arrival of both the squire and two more individuals, another black-eyes, though this one was notably older than the first - at least middle-aged - and a lithe white-haired woman who looked to be about in her mid-thirties, leaning on the older black-eyes. Her eyes were empty, milky-white instead - an aspect of her appearance that somehow stood out much more than the uniformly black eyes of two of her companions. And then there was a raven riding a donkey. Iridiel was distracted by the arrival of the rest of the small party enough to cease her muttering. He would probably have to ask what the matter was...
As the others drew close, the male forestfolk swung his leg back to the ground and got to his feet (seemed appropriate). The squire took it upon himself to introduce the remainder of the party Olan (just Olan, he guessed) and Thaler, yet another member of the thus far unknown (to Domhnall, anyway) order. The woman looked a bit embarrassed at the introductions.
"And I'm Domhnall McRaith - just a travelling hunter -, and she'd be Iridiel Taileflaith Caomhánach, marked by Sulis herself," he announced. Might just as well match the amount of flair these folks (minus their incapacitated leader) seemed to be adding to their introductions. "Well met."
Regardless of his enthusiasm with the introductions, he remained a bit concerned.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Huh... Looks like my logout issue has corrected itself with some Firefox update. That, or it was some odd fluke, and it'll be back the next time around. Remains to be seen.

The Prophecy

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...

The Prophecy

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.

The Prophecy

"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.)

The Prophecy

@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.)

The Prophecy

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?

The Prophecy

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.)

The Prophecy

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.

The Prophecy

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.