Just a thought that I had, about how you could permanently kill a verser. It would require a world with a tech and medical bias equal to or greater than our own, and a damn sadistic medical team, but it could be done.
Here goes. Have a doctor put you on life support, and remove your heart. The life support system would keep you from versing out, because you wouldn't be dead. If you stayed that way long enough, your heart would not regenerate when you did verse out. Once that time has elapsed, the doctor pulls the plug on the life support. You die, and verse out with no heart. Your heart would not regenerate, so you would be dead. Permanently. Any thoughts on this one? I know it's kind of gross and off the wall, but you should know me well enough by now that the gross and off the wall is just my style.
I think what would happen is that you would keep versing out and going to new worlds until something happened, like you learned to live without a heart magically or you versed in on a medical table and they fixed you.
You won't stabilize to a form that won't survive after verse-out. This means that either:
a) you will never adjust to being heartless, despite the external life support, until you have some on-person or internal way of surviving without it; or
b) once you adjust to being heartless, you simultaneous adjust to being on life-support, and thus when the doctor pulls the plug, you verse out - but when you verse in, you're on life-support. Think of the equipment as a very large out-of-body prosthetic.
I personally think (a) is more likely, but I could see some referees going with (b). Graham also makes a decent point; even when a verser is repetitively killed, the great variety of the multiverse combined with his immortality practically guarantee his eventual revival.
I'm glad you're thinking about it, though. After all, you may have a verser as an enemy someday.
Bob the Insane Elder Verser got locked in a magic space inside a briefcase.
Tadeusz in my World a Week articles dropped a pschyopathic verser into a bubble universe which had one of its rules that no one could die in that universe. Then he threw away the key. Solitary confinement for the rest of time....theoretically the verser could take centuries to raise the nearly flatlined bias to a level enough to magically gate him out of there, but with a universe the size of a living room...insanity is likely to catch up with a pschyopath long before he's able to free himself.
I started to write this, and my computer froze and gave me a terrible time about coming back on reboot. The video still isn't right--the colors are a bit off--but at least it's running again.
Good answer from everyone; I would go with Scott's second answer. Follow my reasoning.
We're assuming that the verser's heart was removed, and that this counts as damage, but that he was connected to life support and fully recovered in that condition. Then the life support was disconnected or shut down, and he died and versed out.
"Stable form" means he is fully recovered and alive in that condition. For that to be the case, he must have all of his vital organs, or suitable replacements for them. The life support equipment must in this case be those replacements, and therefore are now part of his body. Just as with Michael di Vars' robotic arm or Joseph Kondor's Meritronics Cybereye, these external life support machines are functionally part of his body.
Further, if you were beheaded your head would go with you and be replaced upon arrival; if your heart was ripped from your chest, it would be restored and reconnected. Thus, when the doctor kills you by disconnecting or shutting down the life support equipment, you verse out, but you take your new "body parts"--the life support equipment--with you.
You might have to find a power supply for it quickly. However, I can't imagine that anyone would build such a device without an internal backup power supply hard-wired into it, so that will extend the life--particularly since it makes sense to me for that power supply to be fully charged as part of the stable form healing process. Further, I think it would recharge itself each time the character died and returned to life, so you'd probably have at least half an hour, maybe twenty-four hours, to find a power supply or another solution to the problem. Of course, our mad doctor might have disconnected and removed the internal power supply--but that might also heal itself under these circumstances.
As an aside, Bob Thomas is not in a magical space. He is in a dimensionally engineered briefcase, on the order of the interior of a TARDIS. It is important that this is an entirely technological device for several reasons. The obvious reason is that Peter Adams, who owns the briefcase, intensely disbelieves magic completely, and could not operate a magic device not consider such a thing possible. The more important reason is that being a technological device it would continue to function in its last state after versing out until someone attempted to operate it, and therefore the dimensional space would remain intact if no one opened it in a low tech world. In a low mag world, such a space would become an instant botch, as an always active mag device is a disaster waiting for a chance to happen.
--M. J. Young
...or the GM could decide to Zygote you.
Yes indeed, an obvious solution which I am embarrassed to have overlooked entirely--after all, part of the basis for The Zygote Experience is stated up front to be used when you have suffered so much damage that you have to rebuild a new body from scratch....or the GM could decide to Zygote you.
That would make perfect sense.
Thanks, Graeme.
--M. J. Young