Dark Jack

The Prophecy

People often assume that the Danish accent sound like the Swedish one because our languages are so similar (and considered mutually intelligible), or even that our accent sounds like the Norwegian one since it is even closer to Danish (which is almost mindblowingly wrong... the languages may be similar on paper, but our pronounciations are extremely different). Eh, Danish is a difficult language to compare to others (during World War II (which we prefer calling the Second World War) surfaced a popular saying among Danes and Germans that would be something along the lines of "foreigners can only understand Danish; only Danes speak Danish" because it proved virtually impossible to infiltrate Danish groups due to our language being so ridiculously hard to learn to speak fluently and practically impossible to speak without notable accent) and so is its accent, but if I were to make a comparison I'd say the Danish accent is more like the German one than the Swedish one. I couldn't even demonstrate it if I so desired, though, since as I previously mentioned my accent does apparently not sound Danish at all.
It hasn't happened for a long while now and only happened infrequently when it was the most common, but due to modern Danish borrowing a lot of words and terms from English there was a time when I'd start a sentence in Danish, reach a word borrowed from English and then say the rest of the sentence in English without even noticing it until I realized that the person I was talking to was looking at me with confusion or amusement.
I don't even try to copy accents, though... I just say things the way my brain tells me its supposed to be said, which I guess ends up (with English) being the words from US English and mostly US accent, with traces of UK English accent once in a while. Maybe? Not that it matters, since apparently my accent and dialect are both indeterminable.

The Prophecy

Heh, I have frequently been told that I speak really strangely, to the point of one such person sitting across the room and staring at me intently for several minutes until I asked him what was wrong, and he - sounding almost desperate - insisted I told him where I was from because he could not seem to figure out my dialect/accent. And this is when I speak Danish, mind you; not even other Danes can figure out the way I speak. When it comes to English... this was some years ago, but I once actually had an Englishwoman teach me English, and in one of my first classes with her she actually stopped me in the middle of a sentence to ask me where I had lived besides Denmark, because my accent didn't sound Danish at all. Apparently the way I speak is quite perplexing, which is weird because I'm not doing anything consciously for it to be so.
Curiously I never really applied the accents of people of other nationalities to the languages I already knew, even when having a conversation with such people... though I do have an occasional slip-up when I compose sentences of part-Danish and part-English, accidentally pronouncing a word from one language as though it had been from the other. I have noted that I am quite good at picking up pronounciations when I actually want to, though; when I was learning Spanish it became evident that I rarely had to hear a word more than once to be able to reproduce it with correct pronounciation myself (which was not solely a good thing, due to the way Spanish sentence-structure works that does that almost every word has at least two different ways to be pronounced depending on the context, but I digress).

The Prophecy

Yes, compete over was also the term I settled on at the end of that paragraph. It should also be noted that while plants - and beings in general - require magical energy to function in the Prophecy, it is actually an extremely small amount of it that is passively expended, so even though one only has so much magical energy to begin with (as is the case with tarken), one can live for decades without really noticing much of a decrease of energy without ever replenishing it. Plants consume even less energy than most other beings (or maybe it would be more accurate to say that they consume it far more slowly, since certain plants do live long enough to spend an amount of magical energy as large or larger than what is required for such as humans), but each reserve a portion of ambient energy for themselves to constitute an individual soul-structure, even though the energy that makes up that structure is exchanged at a constant rate with its surroundings. An area may feel almost entirely void of ambient energy despite being very lush with vegetation, only for it to seem absolutely brimming with energy after one burned down all the plants (remember how dense the ambient energy was in the Anaxim Forest before its destruction? After being burned, that area would be downright unhealthy to even pass through fleetingly due to the sheer enormity of ambient energy if that energy hadn't naturally started to disperse once the plants that had drawn it there were destroyed).

And the impossibility of causing decay externally is why I expressed myself the way I did ("to the extent that such a thing was possible"), since what can be magically accomplished at the current level of understanding will be at most to replicate or approximate the effect of decay. Not that such a thing would make much sense to begin with, though, since at the current level of understanding people don't realize that decay doesn't happen on its own in the first place and thus they probably wouldn't even try to find alternate ways to reproduce the effect...
I could try to weave some far-fetched explanation, but the fact of the matter is that the novel as it is now is relatively outdated compared to how the lore has evolved, particularly in regards to the Laws of Magic, since at the time I wrote it I had only established the first one. I didn't think there was anything in it that downright violated the laws, but it appears that I was mistaken.

The Prophecy

Shienvien said Hmm... I believe it is Jack in Zerul and Jillian's party, and Nessa again with the collab? Or does Olan or Jaelnec have something to say?
Edit: And now that Jack's posted, it is Merc/Rhae and Ink/Ashgan respectively (and still Nessa with the collab). Also, Aemoten and Gerald (well, mostly Gerald) already concluded the Withering was demonic back at the gazzeral church' ruins? Guess confirmations can't hurt, though.

Olan won't want to interrupt what is going on or jostle Thaler, but Jaelnec might very briefly point out that yes, he is indeed okay, so there's nothing major for me to post in the collab about (though I really am wondering whether there is any real purpose to separating the collab from the rest of the RP since the lower post-quality and faster posting we anticipated isn't really showing that much). Gerald did have the thought before, although up until now it has only been a theory that he suspected might have some truth to it, but which now has much more credibility than before.

Shienvien said (I imagine the original - very first - mortals were a bit less diverse in their beliefs than nowadays' mortals, too, due to being formed directly by the spirits according to their respective perceptions? How diverse you imagine Reniam in general to be? You made a couple of fairly strong statements about how the 'civilized races' would perceive something where I would have imagined very mixed opinions at best...)

When I refer to the 'civilized races', I mostly mean the ones immediately relevant to the region the story takes place in; truth be told Reniam is far more diverse than that area gives the impression of. Not only is there also civilizations to the far south, many more to the west and southwest, and even a couple to the east and southeast, but there are also a plethora of more-or-less isolated islands around Kirirak and (thus far unconfirmed but insistently assured by the seafaring Melenians) at least one other continent in the world. Not all peoples are like Rodoria and its surrounding countries... and I can pretty much guarantee that these remote lands also have their own trouble to deal with in their own way, which Rodorians will likely not learn about for centuries.
And the 'very first' mortals... well, yes, they were a lot less diverse than mortals are now, although their nature (and the circumstances under which they were created) caused them to attain diversity extremely fast, relatively speaking.

Shienvien said And yeah ... according to the story of creation (now that I am actually trying to recall it), plants indeed do not have seeds of good and evil, as they were created by Gaia alone. (Horse chestnuts are evil. Not only dominant - as many plants are -, but downright evil. Rather decorative, though... And some other plants are nice and friendly.)
- It feels strange, though, plants sharing a soul, as in real life plants existing in any sort of harmony is an exception, not the rule. Mostly, they try to very decidedly eliminate other plants in their vicinity by launching a deprivation and chemical war on them, though some will try to "flee". (It can be interesting seeing the same plant pop up a handful of inches from where you last saw it each spring...) How can beings which typically spend their entire lives brutally and relentlessly (if somewhat slowly) murdering one another share a soul?

Although Reniam plants share a soul in the sense of the word, it should be stressed that the ambient energy that connects them isn't quite the same as what a soul is for mortals or even immortals. While plants may obtain remnants of memories and feelings from other plants through the flow of magical energy, they won't actually share a consciousness unless one particular plant has grown advanced enough to force its fledging mind on others, in which case we're dealing with a Living Wood, which is a separate matter altogether. Using the word "share" perhaps also paints their relationship with the soul and each other in a misleadingly idyllic light... It would perhaps be more accurate to say that they are mutually dependent on it. The ambient magical energy of Reniam is a somewhat continuously renewed yet limited resource that they require in order to live and stay healthy, much like sunlight, water and various types of nourishment from the soil, so rather than uniting them (excepting once again Living Woods and fledging Living Woods) it's really just one more thing for them to compete over.

Shienvien said How come that mind control (and to an extent illusion magic?) and making one's body decay, both of which have been described to work with 'regular', non-favored magic, are not barred by the law of magic that states you cannot directly alter living beings? (As mind control should logically drastically alter the ongoing processes in the brain, and decay is the direct breaking down and altering the consistency of the body. Normal decay only happens due to various bacteria and other flesh-eaters - remove all bacteria, and it would simply stay completely fresh indefinitely ... or eventually simply dry up, if it is in a dry enough room. Time won't cut it.) Or is it just a matter of perception?

I don't remember having described it as being possible to cause a living body to decay through mortal magic (not saying that I haven't, though; my memory is far from perfect), but to the extent that such a thing was possible it would be a matter of using magic to affect the body indirectly, manipulating something external to cause the internal change. As for mind control and manipulation of individual perception (causing beings to hallucinate rather than actually manufacturing sensations), their fuctioning is indeed a matter of perception for most part. Mortals haven't even begun to understand how the brain actually works yet, but they consider the mind something mostly unrelated to the body (they only see the connection between mind and soul) and thus rather than changing processes in the brain, that kind of illusionary magic instead targets the relatively abstract and spiritual concept of the mind. This is also why even people who have no experience or skill in magic whatsoever can theoretically resist that kind of magic through sheer force of will, since it would just be a matter of the brain-mind forcefully exerting dominance over the manipulated soul-mind. Since the reverse can also be true, however, stronger illusions are more difficult to break; whenever the two minds desynchronize, the more confident/stubborn one forces the other to comply with it.
In a hypothetical future Reniam in which an understanding of the brain had been achieved, illusionists would be capable of directly controlling the soul-mind and the brain-mind, though, making them virtually irresistible to anyone not well-versed in magic themselves. But for the moment all they can do is to affect the brain indirectly through the incorporeal mind.

And I guess the bit on Iridiel's Favored power is okay, as is the goddess of Sulis herself. I find the concept of Sulis' Favored Ones adhering to a different ranking-system than is the case with most other deities interesting, but I guess it could actually make sense, particularly if the ones Sulis marks are actually the ones with comparatively greater souls. It's fine by me, I think.

The Prophecy

They sure turned quiet up there all of a sudden, Fixer thought amusedly, shooting a glance over his shoulder back up at the roof where Ixion and his little friend were still watching. He wished he knew what was going through their minds right now; fear? Anger? Some kind of sense of righteous justice? They had to be preoccupied with something, the Sniffer in particular, considering that they had barely even moved from the spot and not uttered a word since he had dropped down here, held his speech for Blue and started basically looting her corpse. He had half-expected at least the Sniffer to take the opportunity and try to ambush him while his back was turned and he was busy fiddling with the woman's belt and scabbard, considering the one's lack of affiliation with him and previously displayed irrational hostility. It would have been a grave mistake to do so, of course - one that would have promptly cost the Sniffer a few internal organs - but he had not been fully confident that even that one realized the true power-gap between the two of them, considering that his soul was deceptively small for one of such a fearsome role as himself; still large by mortal standards, certainly, but nothing compared to an immortal. But then, magic was not preferred mode of fighting, either; he liked being up close and personal, feeling his opponent's skin against his own if at all possible, being able to feel it every time a bone snapped and a tendon ripped. He wanted to feel warm blood on his hands, wanted to see the dread and agony in their eyes as the light faded... He did not usually use his weapons at all, either. It was regrettable that he had had to kill Blue the way he had... no fun whatsoever.
He had to remove Blue's belt entirely to free the scabbard on her right hip - the one that had held her Dirge - and remove it, after which he unbuckled his own belt and attached it to his own right hip, right next to the hoop that held his war pick in place. It was ironic, somehow, that he could kill probably ninety-nine percent of all beings in the Planes with one hand or less, but something as mundane as unbuckling a belt, putting a scabbard on it and holding up his pants required him to use both of his hands. It was only when handling his own belt that he removed his left hand from its pocket, too, and revealed that it was indeed exactly what one would expect a left hand to be: a mirrored copy of the right one, nothing more and nothing less. It was not particularly stronger or weaker than his right one, it was just the one he had picked not to use in order to give himself a handicap against lesser opponents - which was pretty much everyone - to make fighting them last a little longer and provide a little more entertainment. He liked limiting himself in different ways like that; the weaker the opponent, the less of his full potential he unleashed. Against Ixion and the Sniffer up there he would have gone bare-handed and only used his right hand, and probably only used elemental magic if they surprised him. He had plenty more up his sleeve if they turned out stronger than expected, then; his weapons, his magic, his other hand and the additional dexterity that came with it, the secrets bestowed upon him by Lysis, and of course the power he had traded his freedom to the boss for. He had never encountered an opponent that had required him to go all-out, though... but that was the dream. A worthy opponent! A truly exciting fight! Ah, it had been nearly a decade since he had surpassed nearly everyone out there, since last he had a true challenge... He might have considered challenging the Seclyrian Tournament Champion, Samuel Self-Namer, if he had not been on the boss' no touchie-list. Or the one who had just sauntered right into Cave Bear's Keep, insulted and threatened Kevalorn, the vessel of Hazzergash, told him where the Demon Prison could be found and then left; such power a man had to have to possess that kind of ridiculous confidence! Surely this person - this 'Draigen', as he had called himself - would be a worthy opponent if he ever found him.
Once his belt was back in place and his new scabbard resting comfortably against his right hip, Fixer first returned his left hand to its pocket and then sort of crab-walked sideways without straightening to retrieve Blue's demon-hilted sword; her Dirge. No one outside of Corpse Forge and the Oracle knew this, but there could only ever exist fifteen Dirges at once, so new ones could only be made once the old ones were destroyed, allowing the magic in the sword to return to its maker to be infused into a new blade. Each Dirge, despite of them being virtually identical aside from generic wear and tear, was unique and belonged to a specific tool: one for each of the nine tools of Rodorian dukes, Blue, Yellow, Red, Green, Orange, Purple, Pink, Black and White; one for each of the four tools of the Rodorian king, Gold, Crystal, Gray and Grim; and finally, one for each of the two Kirkinian tools, Fersta and Ekunda, or First and Second in Rodorian. Now that Fixer had the Blue Dirge from today, and the Grim Dirge he had taken with him from the time he still recognized Grim Tool as his own name, Corpse Forge would not be able to truly name successors to those positions among their numbers; as long as Fixer had these Dirges, there could never be another Blue or Grim. He was going to collect all fifteen.

Sliding Blue's Dirge back into its scabbard at its new home on his hip, Fixer turned his attention back to his two new friends on the roof. He had a couple of things he wanted to say before leaving, but now that the important business was over with he knew that he really had to hurry a little; Blue had made something of a spectacle of fighting against the two, and while the authorities would definitely do whatever they could to downplay and hide Blue's death to preserve the existence of the tools as a secret, dead guardsmen or civilians was bound to start sowing enmity against him among the populace, potentially making conducting his business in Zerul City much more difficult. He would prefer to be gone by the time additional witnesses arrived at the scene.
"Oy, Ixie," he called, easily slipping back into his fake Kirkinian accent despite having just spoken perfect Rodorian; all tools were multilingual, so speaking one with the accent of another had become a natural evolution of that skill to Fixer, as had knowing when to use which accent and when to speak without one. Accents had a profound psychological effect on most people, he had observed, and were yet another effective way of manipulating them into thinking and feeling exactly what he wanted them to think or feel. "Is the guy tha' pois'n'd ya still 'live?"

---

What a pair of greedy, aimless buggers his new companions were Gerald observed with some annoyance, particularly at Salas' demand in return for his cooperation. On top of it seeming like a mostly unreasonable demand from someone who had just moments ago stated that he would go along with just about anything the rest of them decided in return for him supplying his "knowledge of the use of a sword", the warlock was not even sure that he could teach him at all. He was no elementalist and had no practice in elemental magic whatsoever, so although he had once been a teacher at the Academy he was largely unqualified to teaching that school of magic. Unless he meant for Gerald to teach him arcane magic? But that idea seemed preposterous; a mute wielding a type of magic of which at least half of the standard incantation was in the vocal component was so improbable that it was almost laughable. It took a masterful sorcerer to be capable of reliably casting even simple spells with words or gestures only, so for a novice to hope to be able to use magic with only gestures was close to impossible. Using his wind to produce the vocal component of spells might work in theory, but having a flow of energy feeding his wind-voice at the same time as he was supposed to mold energy into his spell would once again require great skill and possibly necromancer-level control of magical energy.
He did not say anything in response to Salas request, however, but reacted only with a shrug of his bony shoulders; an ambiguous gesture that could be interpreted however Salas wanted. If Salas came along Gerald might try to teach him as best as he could, but chances were that Salas would never learn much from him, and at most would probably end up killing himself by failing a spell.

At least Jillian seemed more willing to cooperate this time around, although that was probably mainly because she had already been promised what she wanted in return and felt that she just had to uphold her end of the agreement, and reiterated how she had nowhere else to go and indirectly how she had nothing but this left in her life. The necromancer was still annoyed with how helpless and weak she allowed herself to seem, especially after all that bravado back in the Anaxim Forest, but he opted to ignore it for the time being. They were coming along, which meant that Gerald's chances of success increased dramatically.
"In fact I would recommend that you postpone your departure until the coming dawn and seize the peace that remains of today to rest," Crone surprisingly replied to the witch's statement, drawing her shawl closer around herself to ward off the chill of evening. "There will be nary a chance to rest once you traverse the ashen fields of the east, and upon your return the confrontation with our infernal adversary will be imminent; now may be the final opportune moment to conjure the strength required for these great goals."
"Very well," Gerald nodded, prompting Crone to look at him instead of Jillian. "We will head to Jevog Denûm tomorrow, then."
"I will not be accompanying you," the old woman once again surprised Gerald. "You will have Renold, so this task of yours should not require my assistance. I shall instead embark upon a journey of my own, to find an old friend who may be able to lend us valuable aid in our battle against Hazzergash. Walking the paths of magic, I will likely conclude my business before you accomplish yours; I will await you here when that time comes, for us to face the enemy."

"One thing," Gerald demanded abruptly, turning to face the Elder Green with a frown upon his face. "I appreciate that you will take us to an expert who may be able to give us the next clue on the Withering, if not the cure itself, but you still owe me the explanation you promised." He crossed his arms over his chest, the necklace with Hazzergash's Demon Prison still clutched in his hand. "The one about why people have been recovering from the Withering in the Anaxim Forest, I mean."
"Yes, I suppose I do owe you that," Renold admitted with a sigh. "Very well, I will tell you what we have deduced, both before you came here and after."
After? he thought, his frown deepening. Had his arrival helped them understand the Withering better?
"In short, the reason that the Withering has been dying whenever it came near the Anaxim Forest has nothing to do with the forest itself," the dragon started explaining. "I originally suspected that it might have been because of the Tree of Life, myself, until I realized that the tree does not possess any properties that should cure diseases like it did. I began to think, and became certain once I heard of your discovery on how the Withering is an affliction that drains magical energy, that the true thing that has been purging the Withering from its victims is not related to nature at all; rather, what has been curing them has been the very thing you now hold in your hand."
Gerald raised the hand holding the Demon Prison, arching an eyebrow at the dragon. "What do you mean? This is the cure?"
"Not exactly; the prison as you hold it now will not cure the Withering in yourself or anyone else, but its taint - the demonic essence that seeped from it over the course of the thousands of years it has been hidden in the Anaxim Forest, which I'm sure you noticed permeated the very air there - was strong enough to overpower the Withering."
The scholar was still skeptical. "How?"
"When two immortal forces clash, the greater force will always overcome the lesser one. I was not sure how it was that the Withering was supposed to antagonize Hazzergash's taint before, but knowing now that the Withering drains magical energy from its victims it makes much more sense. If the Withering tried to draw in the ambient demonic essence in the forest, the taint would definitely react by affecting the plague with an oppositely directed force, and since the taint in the forest was so strong, it destroyed the Withering."
"I see," Gerald nodded, seeing how that could make sense. "So the Withering is divine, then. A god is doing this to us."
"No," the Green shook his head. "I don't think so. If this was a divine affliction, simply absorbing shreds of infernal energy should have been enough to annihilate it. It did not seem like the act of absorbing the taint itself was what destroyed the Withering, but the retribution of the taint. What we're seeing is not divine and infernal energies cancelling each other upon mixing, but of one infernal energy destroying a competing infernal energy."
"Meaning..." the warlock muttered breathlessly, feeling suddenly very ill at the realization of what Renold was telling him.
The dragon nodded. "The Withering is a demonic taint. A demon is devouring the souls of thousands of mortals with the plague... but we have no idea who it is, or how it is doing it."

The Prophecy

Shienvien said Hrm... I think I am still a bit confused over what makes demons tendenced to generally (though not always) obtain mindset that might fit the general perception of evil, and gods one that might fit the general perception of good. Their instincts, which you referred to? Something about how the seeds were made by the respective spirits? If their drive makes them more likely to do things of a specific kind, then the drive probably has some kind of preset?

Ah, there's actually something like a story to why that is on top of an explanation. If you recall the ancient history of the Planes and how the immortals first came to be, it all started with the Grand Master of Evil, the first immortal and demon lord, a being that was not created by the Spirits and the ideal that laid the foundation for the creation of the other (original) demon lords. When Ismyel decided to try to replicate the Grand Master she forged completely new Seeds of Evil to richly infuse with her essence until she forced the occurrence of powerful immortal life; these demons were created entirely by Ismyel's design and shared her view on what evil was, and thus there was not much variation among them in terms of personality. This is why most of the demon lords seem archetypically evil rather than evil per an individual definition of the term, although some of the lords that came later on, such as Valderoth and Kreshtaat, and the eternal exception of the Grand Master all go by their own unique perception.
After Ismyel had created the demon lords and discarded them as being less than equal to the Grand Master, however, these demon lords went about to increase their own numbers, and they did so by hunting down mortals and ripping the Seeds of Good from their hearts, only to then infuse them with demonic energy; this was all before the afterlives had been introduced, and thus it could be done. The result of this was not more demon lords, though (clearly one demon lord cannot form another), but the first lesser and greater demons. To counter the demon lords the Spirit of Good then went and collected a number of the discarded Seeds of Good ripped from the mortals-turned-demons and infused these with its essence until they became the original gods, which then went out to turn the remaining torn-out Seeds into angels. See, while the original demon lords were created entirely by Ismyel's will, all gods that ever existed were always made from fragments of existing beings, which is why there is much greater difference between their perceptions of the alignments than with the original demon lords as they inherited parts of the being their fragments came from.
Is there a common preset between these? With some of them; the original demon lords shared the preset that was Ismyel's perception of evil, but beyond that they all inherited their perception from their origins. Under greater scrutiny you would probably have a hard time finding a god that adhered completely to the general consensus on what is "good", and it would be equally challenging to find a demon lord not among the originals - or even among those - that suited the popular opinion of what was evil perfectly, either. If any such preset exists, it would be in the form that Spirit-born deities also inherit part of the Spirit who made them, but as soon as they have components to them that did not come directly from the Spirits of Union they immediately deviate from that preset.

Shienvien said Do mortals get their seeds of the opposite alignment expunged when they get turned into demons or angels?

In a sense they do, although the process is not as simple as the deity facilitating the transformation just erasing the unwanted Seed. The Seeds of Good and Evil cannot just be destroyed by any normal means, you see, and even if a Seed was removed from the being it belonged in, it would continue to exist on its own in some manner or form (they can degenerate over time if left on their own like that, though, but that's another story). Rather than removing one Seed from dead spirits desiring to ascend to immortality, it is more a matter of their Seeds being fused together into one, which, as is so often the case, the two opposites cancelling each other out upon fusion and annihilating each other to an equal degree. The Seed that has been grown more is always the one to survive this fusion, since by the time it has completely cancelled out its counterpart it will still have some unfused growth left, though typically far less than it had before the fusion. The energy released due to the annihilation of the Seeds is part of what feeds the increased power of an immortal compared to a dead spirit or mortal, though this energy can only be contained in an amount proportional to the uncancelled growth of the newly ascended immortal's remaining Seed, meaning that the more good/evil they were before ascending, the more power they will be able to harness from the process.
Demons usually leave it at that (which is why their demonic manifestation and power-level is usually a product of how evil they were before ascending), whereas among angels the gods tend to gift them whatever power they lack so that they can manifest in accordance with the most fitting personality-archetype among the angels rather than in accordance with how good they were. There are always exceptions, though... there are demons that were so evil before ascending that they evolve into unique entities rather than manifesting as known types of demons (these are the ones termed "greater demons", which refers to demons of orlgarhi-level power and above), and contrary to what most mortals in Reniam think it is not only demons that are divided into three tiers like that (lesser demon, greater demon and demon lord); angels also have individuals so good that their initial amount of power from the fusion of Seeds is even greater than that of other angels after having been gifted additional power by their god, and these angels are the ones that fill the tier between regular angels and gods; archangels. Eh... but I digress.

Shienvien said Why do plants not qualify as mortals? I recall their souls are typically more placid, and that in this world a plant-soul can reach over multiple individual plants (though wouldn't it make them one person, rather than not mortal? what about colonial animals, especially the lesser ones?). Real-life plants typically communicate chemically (and while some of them work together, even across species, they more commonly try to kill one another off). The changes of a plant's chemical composition can also be insanely fast.

Plants do not qualify as mortals because they fail to meet two of the three criteria that determine what a mortal is. Plants do not have Seeds of Good and Evil, which is also one of the main reasons why they are considered firmly under Gaia's domain as the Spirit of Neutrality; the only kind of alignment they can have manifests when they merge with Living Woods, and even then they do not have Seeds, but only a "memory" of the Seeds of the mortals whose energy facilitated their ascendance. The other failed criteria is that they do not have independent souls, but rather share one big, organically fluctuating soul with other plants in the area. Even though plants do have awareness and are capable of communicating, and when becoming Living Woods can even be considered equal to or greater than typical mortals, they are not mortals. Eh... well, to be fair I suppose they could be considered as adhering to that second criteria by citing that all ambient energy is technically an extension of their soul, but that would mean that the soul of plants is actually the soul of the Plane of Reniam itself rather than just plants, which would be a justifiable way of looking at it, since ambient energy in Reniam always carries some memory of the plants it has been through. It's start to get really philosophical from there, but suffice to say that whatever plants are, especially if they are the soul of Reniam itself, it is not mortal.
As for colonial animals... if they have any kind of awareness and capacity for fundamental thought at all, they qualify as mortal with all the perks that come with it. Generally speaking things like amobea and bacteria and such won't be included in that due to their inability to have independent awareness and are, in this universe, actually counted as part of the same soul-structure as plants rather than being considered mortals.

The Prophecy

Shienvien said Seeing how his mother and him share the trait, making it another mutation could work, perhaps (as far as I am aware). ASTA considered it interesting, from what I know.

It could perhaps be feasible to say that whatever condition causes the souls of the del-korm to disintegrate upon becoming disconnected from their body would also allow them to cause partial (since if they went around and consumed the entire souls of beings, I sincerely doubt they would be left alone for long) disintegration of others' souls and be capable of assimilating them into themselves. If that is the route taken, all that would really be left would be to determine how - and when - this ability is used in practice.

Shienvien said How is the drive to do good orientated? Solely according to the specific individual's understanding of good and evil? (With deities getting a pass from the usual consequences of being judged by others, since their alignment is predetermined ... meaning that they can have rather twisted perception of good and evil with little repercussions aside of the disdain of fellow deities.)

A being driven to do good or evil are driven to do so based on their own perception of what those things imply, yes. A god or angel can easily be perceived as evil by others, and as a matter of fact a demon can actually also be considered good. To say that there are no repurcssions from being judged by others' view on what good and evil are would be inaccurate, though... they do not possess the Seed opposite to their own alignment, which means that this cannot store the "karmic energy" generated by their actions... but this "energy" (in lack of a better term) is still generated. I'll refer to a phenomenon mentioned a long time ago called the Flood Effect, and leave it at that.

Shienvien said - I recall you described Rilon as not understanding good (?), and being unable to act good no matter what he wanted (though it could be just the drive to do evil overpowering his conscious thinking).

Beings innately bound to one alignment and excluded from the other are incapable of comprehending the very concept of their opposite, and are generally confused by arguments based on things like that. Granted, what the opposite of their alignment entails is still determined by their personality so the good that Rilon can't understand might not be the same as a demon can't understand. Eh, it's pretty circumstancial, really, but a pure-aligned being will always try to explain others' actions based on its own moral perception, and it will be confused and potentially enraged by actions that it cannot fit into its own school of thinking (which is also why demons and gods and angels almost inevitably fight one another whenever they meet). They are incapable also incapable of acting according to their opposite morality because they have no idea how to do it, and because their instincts will usually guide them in the opposite direction.

Shienvien said (Random: what creatures do get an afterlife? Do all at least somewhat intelligent animals get one? (Animals who are intelligent enough to like or dislike certain individuals, for example?) What about plants (or, at least, poor Anaxim)?)

Any being that meet the criteria for being classified as "mortal" - which includes just about every animal and monster in Reniam, not just the civilized species - is sorted into the two afterlives unless they are convinced that there is a different fate in wait for them. Plants - even Anaxim, regrettably - do not qualify as mortals and are not granted afterlives; their energy, memories and self simply disperses upon death to be recycled and reused by other plants, or by greedy liches or Xuhrl-njok that happen to be nearby... the two latter of which will erase their memories and selves upon consumption, whereas the former will allow them to continue existing as part of themselves.

Shienvien said And I see about the deities not affecting their followers' location more specifically, and there being no division to regions present. I take that canonically, what specific deity you believe in has little effect on what your afterlife would be like?

Normally it won't no... well, not in a big way, at least. Someone who was a Favored One to a god during their life might be greeted by an angel in service to that god upon arriving there, and someone who reached the rank of either high priest or knight-paladin could even be lucky enough to be welcomed by the god itself, but beyond that it is the choice of the dead themselves how much they want to hinge their afterlives on their past religion. In the Lower Plane people who worshipped a demon lord will usually be tracked down much faster than others by the lord's demon minions and be... enthusiastically encouraged to become demon minions to that same lord themselves. And again, someone who was a high priest or knight-paladin to a demon lord might be greeted by the lord itself, for it to personally extend the offer to become a demon and join its legions. Small things, really.

The Prophecy

Shienvien said From what you have said before, I gathered it is not impossible? And even before that, you have in several places, stated that souls do evolve over generations, too, not just physical forms? I would say it could be a "racial defect", a mutation that occurred once long ago that makes their souls fall apart after death rather than stay in a condition that would permit passing on or becoming a ghost? As in, their souls actually need bodies to stay together?

Dark Jack said That aside, I'm sorry but I really need more, namely an explanation as to why they don't have afterlives.

No, it is not impossible, and yes, souls do evolve to some degree. What I want is an explanation, as I said, which "their souls at some point developed a defect that cause them to disintegrate if they aren't bound to a body" certainly is. This would be an acceptable basis for the trait to exist. I didn't say that I would not permit them not to have an afterlife (in fact I came up with reasons that this could be and told you about them to help coming up with a justification), I simply offered an alternative that could be used or not however ASTA preferred it. This explanation, while acceptable, was not among the reasons I myself gave, that is correct... but I can't be expected to think of everything myself, can I? As you mentioned yourself and is contained in the next quote just below here, we all work together on this RP, so you need to help explain new things like this in relation to established lore. I can't do it by myself.

Shienvien said (I would, in general, suggest that everything that isn't impossible should be allowed for RP purposes, lest the process of integrating new ideas becomes grueling and starts killing motivation and hampering creativity. Didn't you yourself once say that your novels are yours only, but the RP here is the collaborative creation of us all?)

I usually allow about anything that isn't impossible and have just about done that in the past, so I don't see why you would doubt me now. That actually hurt a bit, especially coming from you, Shien... is it really too much to ask for the reason as to why a thing is to the point of seeming to discourage the implementation of non-impossible things? Eh... I... no... nevermind. I shouldn't read too much into this... but even read in a neutral tone, that one still hurts.

Shienvien said Yes, they are intended use the magical energy of those they defeat/kill... The only real question is how exactly the process of acquiring said magical energy goes.

Generally speaking magical energy can only be manipulated, and thus also drained, through magic (which is a wide term in this case, basically referring to the control of energy with one's mind). Both the Xuhrl-njok and Gerald do it by touching their victim and pulling energy from it and into themselves by extending the flow of their own souls into the other's, and I honestly think that is the most feasible way to do it. I could start inventing devices that would allow extraction and transference of magical energy (much like the Chaos Engine) but that hardly seems like it would fit the del-korm at all... So if it is not an option to have them do it that way, I will need your suggestions once more.

Shienvien said What does somewhat ... puzzle me, though, is the fact that several of the gods, who are supposed to only have a seed of good each (the renegade demon lord, Rilon, excluded) are either morally questionable (Deliph) or considerably more evil than good (Frenis). Greed and selfishness are quite universally considered "evil" traits. Granted, there are many evil and/or questionable gods in various mythologies, but in those gods are (as a rule) not supposed to be thoroughly benevolent...

I think I mentioned this once before, but being innately good or evil only make them predisposed towards that alignment; it doesn't prevent them from committing acts of the opposite alignment or having a personality that fits the other more than their own. All of the gods (excluding Rilon) have an innate desire to do good, but they also have different perceptions of what "good" and "evil" is (please, oh please remember the importance of perception in this universe). Frenis may seem more evil than good to most, but that doesn't mean that he himself doesn't view his actions as benevolent. Not saying that it's morally sound on a larger scale, just that even deities (and immortals in general) may not have views that conform with the general tendency of the rest of the Planes.

Shienvien said Oh, and a point Legion did bring up: does the deity you believe in any way influence your afterlife in the canon? Assume you don't become demon/angel. (I assume most devils will just want more demon minions, though.) Do the deities have sort of regions for their specific followers that they designed (and which said followers are free to migrate out of), for instance?

Not really, no; where you geographically appear in your earned afterlife is determined partly of your geographical location in Reniam (locations in the four main Planes are somewhat loosely related) and partly by the location of any beings one once knew that may be present in the Plane you appear in, as one's soul will instinctively shy away from or be drawn towards these beings (appearing in their actual presence is rare, though, unless someone you want to see happens to be very close to the area in the afterlife that matched the place where one died). Migrating from area to area is freely permitted and easily accomplished in the Upper Plane, whereas the Lower Plane... well, freedom isn't really a concern there. Dead spirits there are hunted down no matter where they are, though, so I guess they are as free to migrate as they are to stay.
There are no domains bound to the gods in the Upper Plane, and followers of demon lords aren't going to appear in their lord's territory as a matter of course.

The Prophecy

I didn't say (or didn't mean to say, at least) that the culture of your del-korm was anything less than credible, I only meant to say that the culture itself not necessarily made them incompatible with the Prophecy afterlife. As I also explained they, due to their culture, would not harness as much... let's call it "bad karma" for doing the things their culture permits as others would, and it would be much easier for them to counteract this with deeds that earned them "good karma"; it would still be a bit of an uphill struggle for them to be prominently good and earn access to the Upper Plane, but this would only support the need for them to do as much during their lives as they could, basically to gain enough reverence from themselves and their own kind to balance out the innate revilement of the other civilizations.
Not that any of this matters if you're determined for them not to have an afterlife, I was just trying to bring the point across that it was possible to work out a compromise on their side rather than ditching the concept of eternal souls.

What creatures do not have afterlives... Well, one of two criteria has to be met for a being not to have an afterlife. The first is the most easily achievable one and was included in the very first question I asked when I learned that the del-korm would not have afterlives: faith. If a mortal firmly believes that they will not have an afterlife but has an idea of what will happen with them instead, then their own conviction will cancel the Wanderer's duty to bring them to the traditional afterlife and instead enforce the fate they believe they will meet. In other words, if the del-korm take this route they not only need to have no doubts that they will not have afterlives (they need to know it), they also need to be confident in what will happen to them instead.
The other criteria is simple and is the most common reason to beings not being entitled to an afterlife in the first place: they are not mortal. Only mortals have afterlives. Now, "mortal" in the Prophecy refers to beings that meet their own set of particular criteria, and failure to meet even one of these will land them in a different category of existence. One: they have both of the Seeds of Good and Evil; lacking either will drastically affect their psychological composition and leave them with an innate desire to satisfy the Seed they have, or no desire to do anything at all if they have neither. Two: they have independent souls composed of mortal energy, drawn from other mortals, ambient energy in Reniam and/or from the Spirit Realm during their sleep. Three: they must be bound to a living physical body, which excludes beings like ghosts and true undead (vampires, contrary to popular belief, are not counted as undead in the Prophecy, but are considered mortal)... and I think that's about it. Straying from any of those three criteria will make a being unfit for an afterlife and will render it a different existence altogether.

The Prophecy

The del-korm culture sounds a lot like the tarken one, actually, in the sense that they feel an urgency to do as much with their lives as they possibly can, and more specifically with the tarken outcast, the frehken, who endeavor to become as good and accomplish as much as they can during their (very short) lives. Traditional tarken culture would have them neglect personal glory like that and live and breathe for the sake of the tarken people as a whole, though, teaching them that the individual must indeed seek glory, but must only do so for the sake of all of them, never themselves.
That aside, I'm sorry but I really need more, namely an explanation as to why they don't have afterlives. Even if you have a cultural reason for it (one that I do not necessarily agree with; it seems like your del-korm would have no moral compass with the way they work, meaning that their pursuit of "carving one's legacy into the fabric of time" could just as easily (or more easily, even) be accomplished by acts of cruelty as it could by acts of glory) (to say that a "treasured afterlife awaits" would probably also be a grossly mistaken assumption for any mortal dweller of the Planes to make, since if they are judged as more good than evil then yes, they will be able to go to the Upper Plane, but if not they go to the Lower Plane, which is essentially a fate that means either being eternally hunted and tormented or allowing one's self to be erased), this is a high fantasy setting which I painstalkingly designed so that almost everything has a reason for being the way they are. Mortals have afterlives, other beings don't; if the del-korm are to be the only exception from this rule, there needs to be a good IC reason for that. I'm trying to be as accomodating with these new ideas as I can, but there really does need to be a mechanical justification to cram something operating on remarkably different principles than other beings into the world.

Shienvien said Doesn't necessarily have to be eating the heart (as that more specifically has only been a thing due to harvesters somehow gaining more strength for it), I think; there just has to be something to stand in for the voice-consumption aspect present in his own canon. They do indeed tend to eat their dead since they believe it will give them the strength of the dead one ... and partly because they require a lot of food to sustain themselves and cannot afford waste. Er ... yeah. Would something else be more easily explainable?

I've been pondering this myself, but with the mechanics in place for this universe a true mortal creature, magic is always fueled by magical energy... and magical energy can only be increased by affecting the soul. For them to have anything akin to an ability to consume their opponents' voices to increase their own power, it would probably need to be explained as draining magical energy from them. Nothing can substitute magical energy, which makes it so difficult.

Shienvien said A moral overlay that strict kind of bothers me, to be fair... And I think it [existence of seeds of good and evil] was one of the main reasons ASTA went from being unsure about afterlives to "Nope. They definitely don't have them." The same, I have simply ignored the seeds in actual character writing aside of the demonspawn and as a gimmick that determines your afterlife. Since people simply do not change in the way the seeds would suggest they should.

...I have to admit, part of me wants to take offense to that, although I'm trying hard not to let myself be bothered by it. As I pointed out further above in the post, you can't just decide that you don't like part of someone else's universe and discard it altogether like that. It's not something that is constantly relevant, no (in fact I did decide that the Seeds do not affect a being's personality unless one or both of them are missing, but are indeed solely a mechanic for determining afterlife and, in some cases, manifesting an aura of one alignment or the other in beings who exhibit exceptional growth of one of them), but they are there. It is a fundamental mechanic of the Planes.
As for the "moral overlay" being strict... Firstly, I may not have expressed myself clearly enough the first time around, so let me rephrase it: in lands where what you are doing would not be considered good or evil but it would be perceived as so by the world as a whole, the growth of the Seeds would be markedly smaller than in lands that shared the tendency of the world, and in some cases local perception can completely outweigh the tendency of the world, so although one Seed may grow because of it, the other may grow more. Secondly, the lack of a moral overlay on a world-wide basis would result in the requirements for fitting into the Upper or Lower Planes would be drastically different depending on the area, meaning that one culture may be sending off their generous, selfless pacifists to Heaven while another may send off bloodthirsty sociopaths (I go into extremes here, but technically it would be possible). There needs to be some kind of tendency - not a strict set of rules as enforced by religions on Earth or a particular ruleset as seen in the D&D universe, but just a general trend - to what kind of behavior will get you where... otherwise the Upper Plane wouldn't be a very nice place to be at all.

Shienvien said Oh, and we were thinking Legion/ASTA could let their characters meet and do some plot, and Aemoten&co would be picking them up right before Zerul, whenever they get to that point?

Another stop on the way there?... I suppose it can be done. I just hope it'll be a short stop for once...

Shienvien said Edit: Is it Jack or Nessa in the collab?

I have a feeling that I certainly could and should post, but at the same time I don't think there's anything in the way of Nessa posting, either. Whoever gets to it first does it first, I'd say.