tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7370162161693557709.post5088919436371548511..comments2023-06-08T08:26:07.304-05:00Comments on Advanced Gaming & Theory: Occult Lore: The Control of Evil & the Secrets of the DeadRipperXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03506064393275174920noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7370162161693557709.post-76472699468073967042009-03-15T12:14:00.000-05:002009-03-15T12:14:00.000-05:00Ripper, thank you for the kind words and for the g...Ripper, thank you for the kind words and for the great offer about linking my blog. I have one, Notes From Midlands, just click on my avatar. It's a lot of theoretical stuff to give AD&D new depth any discussion or criticisn is welcome.Brooser Bearhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08487438364129415650noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7370162161693557709.post-22806565567112304412009-03-13T14:05:00.000-05:002009-03-13T14:05:00.000-05:00I would appreciate it if nobody would flame anybod...I would appreciate it if nobody would flame anybody on the blog, but thanks for at least keeping it PG.<BR/><BR/>Brooze: Turning undead comes from the fiction and mythology. What it looks like is completely up to the DM. Personally, for my games, a priest shows his holy item and attempts to control the undead in the name of his god. The power of the god effects them and they are forced to flee. "THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!"<BR/><BR/>Once a priest gets high enough levels, capable of destroying minor forms of undead, then a bright light is issued from the priest using his holy item, he is even more terrifying to the creatures of evil, but essentially the cleric is armed only with his faith. <BR/><BR/>Not all religions are capable of turning undead, as this is a very powerful ability which should only be used for nonviolent religions; In other words, Clerics to gods of War or who allow blades shouldn't have access to this ability. <BR/><BR/>In regard to creating your own blog, I think that my wife may have stumbled upon an idea! You certainly have a lot of ideas and content. Blogger space is 100% free and who knows, you might have some fun doing it! Let me know if you do decide to do it and I'll make sure to link you.<BR/><BR/>That is exactly how I started, I would write these long posts to Chatty over at Chatty's blog, and his readers told me the same thing. It's been almost a year now and I think that I'm finally getting the hang of it ;)RipperXhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03506064393275174920noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7370162161693557709.post-45672692012031716632009-03-13T13:01:00.000-05:002009-03-13T13:01:00.000-05:00Oh, in the real world it makes no difference who y...Oh, in the real world it makes no difference who you are, I just destroy... But I am guest here and I shall depart quietly, with all due respect to Ripper for all his great writing.Brooser Bearhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08487438364129415650noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7370162161693557709.post-61765737180347877112009-03-13T10:07:00.000-05:002009-03-13T10:07:00.000-05:00Brooze, if I was you, I would watch my tongue...I ...Brooze, if I was you, I would watch my tongue...I happen to be Ripper's wife. <BR/><BR/><BR/>Next time, know who you're threatening first before you run your mouth.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7370162161693557709.post-56769391682595288782009-03-13T07:10:00.000-05:002009-03-13T07:10:00.000-05:00Anonymous, I was merely discussing the underlying ...Anonymous, I was merely discussing the underlying concepts concerning the undead. I don't blog much, wasn't aware of this etiquette, and besides, this is Ripper's page, not yours but I will take it under consideration. <BR/><BR/>As to you, Anonymous, me you got no balls, no brains, got nothing of substance to add, hence you hide behind etiquette. If I ever meet you in the woods, I will dismbowel you, tear your face off, and urinate on your remains so that the whole world would you to be my kill.Brooser Bearhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08487438364129415650noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7370162161693557709.post-6496548644417552952009-03-12T10:57:00.000-05:002009-03-12T10:57:00.000-05:00@Brooze the Bear-Dude this is a comment page, not ...@Brooze the Bear-<BR/>Dude this is a comment page, not a soapbox or your own blog page. Comments on somebody's blog are cool, but when you start rambling about stuff, then who the hell cares. Especially when it takes up a whole page and is damn near longer than the original post. Make your point and move on for crying out loud.<BR/><BR/>Me thinks you suffer from diarrhea of the mouth...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7370162161693557709.post-57805119381291292122009-03-12T06:51:00.000-05:002009-03-12T06:51:00.000-05:00Ripper, the writing of the examples is awesome. Th...Ripper, the writing of the examples is awesome. The undead, evil, and turning has never been adequately explained by Gygax. If you have an empty shell, where the rationale behind the invented phenomenon should be, then the undead will appear as just another opponent wearing a zombie costume and not the drastically different that it really is. <BR/><BR/>In Midlands (my gamneworld) the undead is rooted in the fabric of reality of that world. Magic in this world only works in minds of the people, self and others. Careful before you consider it hypnosis or illusion. 75% of all illness and siease is psychosomatic, and so you better respect that witch doctor with a bunch of figurines carved from bark and feathers in his medicine bag. You do not have to believe in it, know him, or fea him for him to touch you and either heal you or seriously hurt you. In real physical terms! <BR/><BR/>Having sais that, Haitian Zombification process as was uncoverd in haiti was basically a community ritual of social control, a chemical lobotomy. prime example, the one zombie who the western psychiatrists have recovered in the 1950's was young woman who was a fish merchant at the village market. She was staying open for oe hour longer than other merchants and was underselling them to gedt their busiess and to buy flashy clothes for her. Local Chriostian Priest talked to her about social responsibility. Her parents were warned and they talked to her. Finally, she was publically cursed, panicked, had nowhere to run, was turnd into a zombie (drugged, buried, recovered with severe brain damage affecting higher brain functions and motor skills), old to work on he plantation cutting sugar cane. Her parents were paid blood money.<BR/><BR/>This one will not bite you and will not need to TURN her with a cross. She has alread been TURNED by her community. Which was more evil? Turning her into a zombie and selling her into slavery or her forcing a fish merchant or two out of business and forcing theit families into poverty in a society where death from stavation is a very real threat? In historic European medieval legends, it was human cannibals, who came back to life as ghouls cured feast on the decaying dead in the graveyards. My guess to keep canibalism from developing during starvation. I guess, undeath happens only to evil people...<BR/><BR/>Real world be as it may, magic and the undead of course exist in my fantasy world. In that world, tere has to be soemthing different about the physics of it at the level of subatomic particles to make it possible for a magic user to produce a very real fireball that will blow out the windows and set the house on fire. And no, it's NOT a medieval handgrenade!<BR/><BR/>In our own mundane world, thre is a connection between aesthetic and spiritual for most people, hendce the grandeur of the cathedrals. In our world, in the spheres of psychological and social science, anythiung imagined is real in its consequences. In D&D world, emotional energy a being feels can be transformed into physical energy. Perhaps it is because the deitires that thought the D&D world into existance are so much closer to the mortal beings that inhabit it. In our world landscape and weather can bring out and change the mood the person is in, hence the appeal of landscape painting. In the D&D world, if the emotion is powerful enough, if enough people feel it, if it is channeled correctly, then the mood will affect tha landscape.<BR/><BR/>But here is more. In this world, it is Light, not the Energy, that can not be created or destroyed. That's why crystal balls work, but yiou need gems to focus that light and aid in the recovery of light from past and from faraway places. Perhaps the D&D world exists in the minds of the beings that created it and light is stored in the positive energy plane where things are cerated out of it. It flows throug the reality and drains through the negative materia plane into ocean of light in which the cosmic conscousness floats. Enterig the Positive energy p[lane is lioke entering the Sun. Entering the Negative matrial plane is like entering the Black Hole. When a dead person lives i the memories and in minds of the peple as a hero or villain, that person remains linked to that D&D world after death. hence tghe power of the spirits and ancestor worship. Very evil, cruel tyrants will be summoned back fro the afterlife as monstrocities. Necroimancy is that branch of magic that deals with the Darkness. Possesion of bodies by these spirits is one of the features of this gameworld. Good will not become undead because the Good is selfless and can let this world go after its death. If summoned by the living, the good spirits are kind and unselfish enough to endure the temptations of the material life and ignore, entertain, or escape from the pleas of the living. Maybe it's not unselfishness, but the unplesantnes and sickness of possessing a dead body that repels good fro doing it. <BR/><BR/>The evil and selfish are weak, insane and depraved enough to start competing for the corporeal body orforsome sort of an existance as the undead. It is not a pleasant existance. These beings are unstable. They forever feel freesing cold and can not find warmth or comfort. Whatever binds tem to this world keeps driving them through the haze of exhaustion and nausea. Their body ios crumbling into decay, they have to struggle to keep it in one piece, feel no pain, save the pain caused to their own spirit. Injuries to the unead body cause them pain because the undad spirit feels tremendous fear of going through death again. It is that that causes the undead pain and not the physical discomfort of the dead body. More pwoerful demonsa and undead creatures exert mental and emotional control over the weaker undead spirits, and Necromancers can actually splinter spirits and enslave spirits to make the weaker undead - skeletons and D&D game zombies. With the undead there is an interaction between the "natural" undea ecology - spirits brought forth by the colective unconsciousnes of humanity, and the unnatural - Residue of Necromantic experiments, Liches, and the slaves of the more powerful undead.<BR/><BR/>With regards to the mchanics of the undead and the "energy drain". (BTW the description of the Tunred paladin as a broken man is an accurate descrioption of hat happens during level drain by the undead.) In this world, the only substinents we need is physical nutrition, we eat, we drink, we breathe we live. We might cerate and reproduce. In the game world The living beings are integrated into the game reality and hence, the Light flows through them, is yrasformed through the actuons of the living and flows into the negative material plane. The undead are not part of that Light cycle. Tey are not part of the gameworld and light does not flow through them. A living being inthe gameworld is like a faucet - Light flows through them like water. The ndead is like a Pot with a hole in the bottom - unless you keep refilling it, the spirit will leave the world leaving its undead shell behind.And the way the higher and conscious undead keep themselves alive is by consuming the Light of Beings in the world. Bound by the forms imposed on the undead by the undead ecology and collective beliefs, this feeding migh take the form of blood drinking by the Vampires. Mutant ghoul, who are still in their own bodies, but are slowly eing sucked out of them. Their bodies metabolize putrescin the way the livng bodies metabolize glucose. <BR/><BR/>There is a plane of the Undead, its is a spiritual shadowy existance on the Event Horizon threshold of the Black Hole that is Negative Material Plane. The weakened undad spirits fall through the floor into the Darkess never to be seen again. That's where destroyed undead fall. The rest are trying to escape the plane by latching on to a body in the gameworld and becoming the undead. <BR/><BR/>When the Prist of Good turns the Undead, s/he channels forth the Light of the Consciousness of the Deity that the Priests worships and focuses that Divine Awareness on the abomination that is the Undead facing the priest. Light Of the World flashes on the Undead and sepaartes the physical body that is part of tghe game world from the shadow that lurks within it. The Shadow is cast into Darkness, where it belongs, into which it dissolves, the great cosmic non-being. To the udead it's like a searing flash of white light and burnig flame, from which it tries to get away.<BR/><BR/>Whenghe undead feeds on the living, it takes away the Light that is preceived by the character that life is good and that it is good to be alive and keeps people from committing suicide, Undead take that, and to them it feels like a little bit of warmth. To a wight, the zerlo level man will feel like a cup of ho coffee into a bath filled with cold water with ice cubes floating on he surface. The grater the power of the being and the more damage they do, the warmer the undead feels. If they kill a creature equal to their level, they get a fix. the feel warm and comfortable for a time, and the feelings of insecurity and rage and fear leaves them wth a high, which usually means that the undead will be sleeping like the dead until the Cold wakes them again. Undad ar addicts in the last stages of addiction to Life. <BR/><BR/>For the livjng that has been drained, te efects are primarily spiritual and psychological. In the world where belief can alter the phyhsical reality and Gods are real and present, the Living get a a glimpse into the mind of he undead, in wich there is only cold, hunger, fear, misery and terror ofthe darkness and non-being (The living wouldn't have the fear of motality that we have since their beliefs are so much stronger sine religion gets such stronger reenforcement). IIn this world, the Light, the Spirit cosists of emnories and feelings assocxiated with all the strong deeds that build character - good or evil, and it is reenfirced by the feelings of others who know the person. Undead, however, see none of this, to them it's just basic food, a fic of morphine or heroin to take away the pain. Undead seek MOMENTARY RELIEF. Because of that, the traumatic daage they do to their pey (victims) is tremedous. Recovery fro this is based on how much the drained vicitom is loved by others, Priests and Clergy can restore the lost faith, compassionate comrades in arms can restole the lost confidence. The Living heal, undead decay. If the victoim is alienated and weak, s/he will not struggle to live and will give up all of its light to the undead predator. Undead will then have captured the entire Soul and some undead can ride it so that they are removed from the Black Hole. Even if slain, the spirit of the powerful ndead will remain in the spirits of the undead which it created. With enough undead under their control, certain undead are as removbed from darkenss as the living, and if slain, will come back in soem other incorporeal form.<BR/><BR/>One of the reassons that Necromancy is forbidden i the fantsasy world as witchcraft was in this on, is because Necromancers experiment on living human beings and try to master the technique of this Light/Level drain. It is conceivable that priests of evil religions can "TURN" Paladins. If the evil Priest or Wizard has mastered the technique of the life energy drain and will drain enough Spirit from a Paladin to Break their faith, but you wouldn't be able to turnthe Living the way Undead is tuned. But that's just my world... heh-heh...Brooser Bearhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08487438364129415650noreply@blogger.com