I want to revise some things in my proto-setting of the Caliphate of Azithan, the Necromancer Kingdom, the Conocation of Malqort.
A couple of major revisions:
-- Getting rid of the ten year lifespan. So long as there are sufficient prayers, the Lifeless can stick around.
-- While Priests can hold onto more lifeless, more than just priests can hold and control lifeless. Maybe I can hold onto one, Brian Ashford onto ten, and a trained priest a hundred. And the original Prophet? Essentially unlimited. Lifeless can be transferred.
-- The best Lifeless come from those who willingly give themselves at the end of their life to being a Lifeless.
-- Lifeless can be embedded with strictures and rules on their use. A lifeless cannot be made to violate these structures.
-- Each Priest / house of Priests or something shows the competency of their group with crossed Xs. Different substitutes for X's show different competencies: crossbones indicate sheer number, swords combat effectiveness, scythes, hammers, etc. The more X's the more the priest / group of priests is claiming they have specialty in.
-- Yes, still something like the tenements and designed cities, but less emphasis. Build these to attract people and their prayers, to help you build more Lifeless.
-- Absolutely there remains a minimum basic income, distributed by those who control Lifeless to those whose prayers support the lifeless.
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All sounds good. Makes sense to make the tenements and cities less structured I think. Seems more believable and allows for more variety in game.
ReplyDeleteNot sure about hard coded instructions, seems like we are headed for fantasy iRobot.
If the best lifeless come from willingly given bodies, do the very best come from willingly given healthy thirty year old bodies?
Yeah. My hoped for goal there is for the design of the lifeless to ensure specific morality, making sure our necromancer kingdom is actually lawful good as I want it to be.
ReplyDeleteI've also got this notion that holding onto a bunch of lifeless is tiring, a bit taxing. If you aren't trained in doing so and wind up with, say, your cousin Tim, raised and selflessly turned to a Lifeless, then it can really mess up your life. Hand him over to the local priest and get your life back.
ReplyDeleteOh my! Just imagine if the head priest dies unexpectedly (or from assassination...)
ReplyDeleteWhat do the local lifeless do? Do acolytes and more devout people try to patchwork grab up what lifeless are unattended, until we can manage to get another high priest?
I really like the ability to hard-code some rules (morals) into the Lifeless. Pushes it further from zombies/skeletons, and more toward guardian mummies and church grims and the like, which are underexplored in sword and sorcery fantasy.
It also makes hacking more interesting, and I always love the shadowrun angle. ; ' ]
I find myself wondering how the lifeless work. Are they treated to not rot? Does the magic preserve them? Do thier physical abilities in life have any effect on their dead abilities? Is it an honor to become one? Are those that don't want to become one seen as selfish?
ReplyDeleteSorry if you've dealt with that stuff and I've forgotten.
Jesse Cox Don't worry, your shadowrun angle will always work. There will always be ghost skulls and PDAs and such. And now, there's even more lifeless to give even more capabilities.
ReplyDeleteA lifeless without a current Priest will continue on either with its last order or revert to its base programming. Which can maybe be as complicated as "lay brick here", or "harvest wheat here". The program then is what happens when that doesn't make sense ...
If someone ever figured out how to "blank out" the rules constraints, it would be a terrible disruptive technology. In that I'm pretty sure the entire Conocation of Malqort would both suddenly be very vulnerable, and in a state of total warfare with whoever would do such a horrific thing.
ReplyDeleteMatt Johnson Probably some treatments, absolutely. Also a lot of praying, which has a real metaphysical effect of empowering priests and crap.
ReplyDeleteJoining the Lifeless is the last act of dedication that a Faithful is expected to do. It's like a sacrament.
Jesse Cox That sounds like a plot setup to me!
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