Panichonn is one of those names that just comes to you, and sometimes I'm suspicious of such because I wonder if its from a book I read long ago. But its a good name for another reason.
Pan=Pain.
Panic=Panic
Chonn=chain
Often times the evil guys in a story have a fairly obvious name that indicates 'evil scum'. The Distroyaks are probably not up to any good thing as their name sounds similar to Destroyer.
There are five groups of magicusers in Panichonn. The Hedge Mages are limited to 3@2 or less magic of various types (not by any world limit but by limitations of understanding and a great deal of jealousy and betrayal amongst their numbers. Its a saying amongst the peasants that a 'a tall hedge gets clipped as soon as it loses all its fruit' which means that the apprentice magi murders or injures his master when he's certain he's learned all he can.
There are also White Stars who worship the Astral Guardians, and used to have great powers of healing and protection from the undead, but they have become seriously corrupted.
True Bards and Phoenix Lords also exist, but I think it might be better if I described the mages in the context of the world.
Panichonn is a continent that runs from the temperate zones on the north to the equator and to the subtropical zones on the south. The Great Jungle divides the north and the south except for some water-borne trade. But there is little of that.
Some time ago, a new form of magician came to the Republic of Vilar, and its surrounding nations, the larger Sultanate of Wallam, the similar sized Tribunes of Xantib, the smaller Underlords of Yengling, and the quite small but not inconsequenial, Vicar of Zanar.
For mnemonics, thats V, W,X,Y, Z for the place names and R, S, T, U, V for the gov't forms.
The magican was the Necromancer brought in from the South where they were said to be quite common. Eventually trade with the South ceased. Meanwhile, the necromancers tried hard for two hundred years to cause rebellions, start fires, plead their case....trying in whatever way they might to gain power. But most people found them contemptible.
Their magic was such that they could only raise the dead who died by suicide.
And then the great Antonin showed the way for Necromancers to prosper as they had in the South before some inexplicable disaster like in the Old Country before the South destroyed them all. (Of course, its not inexplicable. But to the Necromancers it is. They can't see that they are the Problem. The Necromancers got control of the OC, and the South, and then promptly went to war with each other, and anything not dead was quickly made that way. Even now, centuries later, zombies roam the ruins of the OC looking for any sign of life...and killing it. No blade of grass is safe from the ancient death curses of dying necromancers.)
The new job was to infiltrate the various institutions that controlled society, and bend them. One of the first to get corrupted was the White Stars. They hated the Necromancers, but they were not that eager to turn away new candidates for the office of Starvoice who came with enthusiasm, if sometimes a bit more enthusiasm for unwholesome practises than teh typical trainee. By the time anyone got seriously worried, the first High Teachers were infiltrated by Necromancers. And when one guy did raise the warning, he died. And it was found that the 'new doctrine' was preferred by the people and the rulers because the former Star doctrine had the uncomfortable aspect of forcing one to meet divinity face to face. The new doctrine put the Astrals in a smaller box, and gave more authority to the rulers.
The method of dealing with the True Bards was more simple. They bought a number of publishers through fronts, and began to give awards to shocking new writers. And when they found someone so popular that they could not shut him down, they tended to get him drunk and then dead in some ridiculous scandal. After the first wave of purges it was easy. Sure people complained, but the Bards assured them that elsewhere, especially in the large cities people liked the New Tales. Some renegade True Bards remained, but they tended toward the stereotype created. Drunken bum with a gift for a silver tongue. Anyone who could not be squashed by rejection, or bought out by offers of writing a new tale, and had major talent tended to meet the same fate as his predecessors.
The White Stars guarded their souls, and the True Bards gave them a vision of justice, and honor, and love. With these aside, the Necromancers began to attack the Phoenix Lords. A PL must nearly die to to 'recharge his well of mana', and suffer some sort of change in his character in order to do his magic. But his magic is the most obvious of all. Any great public work, or walled castle, or factory with a water wheel was likely built by a PL. They took a people from nearly starving by the end of winter too having plenty of food for all, even if some of it really doesn't taste that good.
The Necromancers did three lines of attack on the PL.
1. They made dramas about the sufferings of wives married to PL's. Because a PL would often change his personality quite a bit after a recharge. This made for an odd relationship.
2. They appealed to the sons and daughters of PL's who were wealthy. They appealed obviously to their guilt at the unearned wealth, and to their fear (inobviously) at not being able to best the old man by saying that enough was enough. Such magic needed to cease.
3. They also claimed that such magic angered the gods, and by this time, they had enough tame Starvoices to agree with them.
Eventually the PL's in the Republic of Vilar gave up, and the Necromancers had their Glorious Change.
The end result is that Vilar is ruled by a council of high level necromancers. Everyone who suicides becomes a zombie. Everyone else works in painfully hard conditions in chains. Various measures are taken to ensure that the option of suicide is used. Bribes, torturing to death a criminal unless he voluntarily does himself, threatening family members for some of the Dark Lords (notably cruel ones), offers to have a year of pleasure in exchange for life. On the stick side, the medical care is practically nonexistent, rivers are dumping grounds for excrement (which teh White Stars banned two centuries ago), and generally every little way one can think of too make life annoying is engaged in.
Yes, teh Necromancer Lords have people who's sole job is to breed mosquitoes.
Now, one would think the neighboring countries would band together in a group and burn the place down. Or at the very least bar themselves off. Instead, the Dark Lords extend their tendrils into other countries.
They continue to use the techniques they have used. But they also criticize the White Stars for being hypocrites (which they frequently are these days), and there are few among the White Stars who have genuine power these days.
Another technique is to 'train' or add extra spells to a female zombie. Toss in some Hedge Magic glamourie and the undead thing that died tragically young starts to look kinda perky. If your mind is not working. A new Necromancer initiate will typically 'run' five or six of these a night, adding in special conversation when the preprogrammed commands are not good enough.
These are bribes to traitors (although they do not see it that way), or influencers to the dumb, and spies, and just a good all around thumb in the eye to moral concerns in teh surrounding countries where they operate.
With relatively little magic, and with a leadership class that is in most countries, at least a quarter traitorous, the eventual victory of the Necromancers seems likely.
...the larger Sultanate of Wallam, the similar sized Tribunes of Xantib, the smaller Underlords of Yengling, and the quite small but not inconsequenial, Vicar of Zanar.
SoW has a Sultan who is full of hatred for zombies and makes loud speeches, but 1)His merchants like pretty z-girls. 2)He unlike his dead brother is a complete idiot when it comes to military matters. Unfortunately, he thinks he is a genius, and that his generals keep sabotaging him. So he keeps killing them. But the real problem is that the merchants won't allocate the funds for an all out war. So perhaps he's just a blowhard.
The verser could convince the Sultan to follow his ideas, and perhaps turn the military into a force to be feared. He would probably have to get the Sultan to turn the Army loose on teh merchants who were stiffing the army.
The Tribunes used to be known for their impartial justice and their love of the Stars. Now they're known for how much it costs to get a 'good judgement' out of their courts,and how swiftly they stomp on any 'vigilantism' or actual justice. They do refuse z-girls in their land as the twenty Tribunes have more than enough money to have several mistresses in palacios each. Their land used to be the most abundant with PL's, but after the PL's made the land wealthy, the Tribunes descended to looting them in legal tricks.
There are several dozen PL's of mostly mediocre or untrained talent and some very good libraries and some underused factories. The PL's hate what the Tribunes have done to their society.
Alternately, a good lawyer could tie the Tribunes up in their own brand of illogic by using the law against them.
The Underlords of Yengling are sympathetic to their people who have to mine in dark and hot mines because other than minerals there is not much about Yengling to love. It used to be a land of poets and heroes and hardworking stiffs, but now its just miners with despair. The Underlords figure that if they let any suicides be used as mine workers it will ease the burden on their populace. There are rumors of a very powerful White Star far up in the mountains of Yengling.
Unlike in other countries, there is a sizable percentage of the people in this land who are dead serious about their gods. They know little having perhaps 1@2 understanding. But they know the Stars hate the undead.
The Vicar of Zanar is a tiny country that began as a dock extending from Wallamsport. Due to a quirk of the law, the city of Wallamsport's legal authority ended at the shorelne. This was because ancient sultans were afraid Wallamsport might seccede if it had its own navy.
So with a pier outside the city, or at least its taxes, but in easy proximity, things started to happen. A century later, and there are seventeen miles of piers extending out into the ocean even, and eight artificial islands created from rocks.
The Vicar is whoever has the Sceptre of Zanar, some forgotten deity, but with still considerable power in the sceptre. The laws tend toward the anarchic except for laws about destroying the piers or uncontrolled fires. Those tend toward the prompt and final...the Guard would toss the offender into the harbor with his belt tied about his ankles and his arms broken. The other law is that contracts must be upheld.
The problem for the Necromancers is that Zanar is so anarchic. If someone doesn't like someone else,like say a Necromancer, then the offended party yells 'Duel' and chops off the Necromancers head. There are a lot of people who don't like Necromancers even if all the elites say they should accept them.
If say the PC were to get the Sceptre and say "everyone undead off the piers now,or face me in a duel with me carrying the awesome iceblasting power of the Sceptre' he might be able to enforce it. He'd probably have to turn a couple Necromancers at least, into ice cubes first though.
I'm suspicious of such because I wonder if its from a book I read long ago.
For what it's worth, E. R. Jones has that problem sometimes. We had to do a minor rewrite of NagaWorld because he had named the major psionic artifact for a psionic artifact in a book he forgot he read (mercifully he retold the design to a friend who had also read that book before we went to print), and then had named the extinct race for the artifact. So I had some replacement work to do.
But, also for what it's worth, I don't recognize the name, other than that its basis in "panic" is obvious and I wonder whether it's the name of a new convention.
Often times the evil guys in a story have a fairly obvious name that indicates 'evil scum'.
Let me say that this is a really good way to do it in a game scenario, because it's an obvious mnemonic; but it is not that good an idea for a story, because its very obviousness makes the characters and the story somewhat two-dimensional.
I find that particular limitation both interesting and confusing.The Hedge Mages are limited to 3@2 or less magic of various types
Part of my feeling about it arises from the fact that most 2@ magic is healing magic, and healing magic is almost never arcane, and thus the provinces of priests. This has the incidental impact that those pursuing magic as secluded holy men learn to heal and get through the second level fairly easily, while those who want to be wizards almost by necessity need a teacher to get them from level one to level three because of the bias shortfall. It's certainly possible that your world has a group of arcane healers, and it's possible that your Hedge Mages jump from upper level one blessings and protections to low level three object manipulatives (adding or removing impurities, shaping liquids non-telekinetically), but the nature of the limitation has me curious--I'm wondering if it's just an arbitrary number, or whether you had some specific skill limitations in mind when you chose it.
The other aspect of it is that when you say they are limited to 3@2, I wonder whether that's a ceiling or a curve. That is, I can understand that to mean all 1@ skills including 1@7 Memory Effects NOS, 1@8 Curse, and 1@10 Torture Spirits, plus all 2@ skills including 2@10 replacing lost attributes and 2@8 regrowing lost body parts; or I can take it to define a curve of 5 under which the line is drawn to include 2@3 countering paralysis but not 2@4 curing disease, 1@4 bonusing and penalizing checks but not 1@5 countering fear.
So what were you specifically attempting to accomplish with this limit?
Good mnemonics.For mnemonics, thats V, W,X,Y, Z for the place names and R, S, T, U, V for the gov't forms.
Their magic was such that they could only raise the dead who died by suicide.
That's a fascinating and challenging limitation. Granted that the suicide limitation is going to get some bonuses, my chief concern is that such a skill has such a high bias that it would be almost impossible to learn without building toward it. Any magical restoration of life is a 13@10 skill. That's -140 on the chance to learn. By definition, a character who knows no magic has a 0@0 bias for skill learning purposes. If we assume the impossibilities that all adepts of this group have a 3@10 BRA, learn from a mentor with a 3@10 SAL who is a trained teacher with a 3@10 BRA and 3@10 SAL in teaching or training, and that the world bias in magic is 15@, the maximum positives you can get is +155, so such a character has a 15% chance of learning such a skill--and it is so doubtful that those conditions exist, we can knock -25 off that just to get from impossible to unlikely in the extreme (2@10 BRAs for both teacher and student, 2@10 SAL in teaching, other numbers the same). You can overcome this to some degree by building the ritual with a lot of bonuses, but you're already looking at a skill that takes an hour at the baseline and has increasing penalties for those dead more than an hour.
I can think of at least two shortcuts for this, but they're both rather difficult.
That's not what I would understand byEveryone who suicides becomes a zombie.
raise the dead"Raise the dead" means "resurrect", "restore life", cause the one who died to awaken and return as himself, as if he had been sleeping and now awakens. Zombies are the result of an animate dead process. That's "only" 13@8, so you've got a 2% better chance to learn it, and everything else said about raising the dead applies, including the one hour time factor, except that it doesn't matter for how long the subject has been dead--skeletons are as easy as zombies.
This suggests that the necromancer can do more than just raise or animate the dead--the addition of skills is probably another magic skill.Another technique is to 'train' or add extra spells to a female zombie.
Interesting detail overall.
--M. J. Young
Its somewhat yanked out of the air as sounding fairly low. I probably need to relook at the magic list and pick a 'bit of magic, but not much number.' In this case, the village wisewomen and other types of low-level magic workers have a variety of magics which would definitely include healing of various sorts.
I probably should move it to 2@7 because in fantasy stories the local medic might be able to break a fever or bring someone back from the point of death, but they certainly could not replace a chopped off arm. And this would make it a limit, not a curve.
What I'm trying to accomplish is have the typical background every other village has a minor magician useful for a few tricks and some healing that is in some fantasy. I also want to give an excuse for the 'glamourie' used on the z-girls, and for a very worrisome possibility I had not mentioned already.
Worrisome possibility: Often the verser arrives in a world with strange magic, and this offers him a benefit. And with such a highly specific form of zombie making, these Necromancers struggle under a load. And the other major forms of magic the Necromancers know off don't like them. But if the verser were to do strange but powerful magic, some of the Necromancers are smart enough, and of the right mindset to wonder...why can't I do that myself? And that could open a door for a world of pain.
I'm not sure how I want to have the training stack for the Necromancers go. I could simply do the +100 chance to animate dead thing. I do want Necromancers to be Necromancers. Sure, they can have other spells, but not many and the ones they have should be dark, and nasty, and undead related as much as possible.
Now I could make up a lot of that with some bonuses.
Good teacher 2@5
Good Example 2@10
Must be from suicide
Must be within four days of death
Must awaken the undead on the intersection of two ley lines which tends to be in the town square of towns.
Must be done at night
Must have sacrificial dagger of black obsidian
Must form circle of power.
If do not form circle of protection properly, a gate to the underworld will form and the magician will get eaten by shadows.
On your low-level magic users, it's probably best to make a list of skills they actually know, and assert that these skills, and these skills only, are handed from teacher to pupil, generation to generation. You could probably quirk it a bit by making a two-part list--probably every magician has healed diseases, but only a few ever faced poisonings, so a lot of them didn't learn countering poisons from their mentors, and so on with a few others. Be selective, be specific where the book descriptions are broad, and choose which skills you want included.
I have a short-circuit for your necromancers. It requires that the ones who take apprentices are fully "trained". The last skill they learn is a M15@4 Permanently Confer New Abilities. They get their skills not by studying them but by being the subjects of a six hour ritual in which their master confers upon them a new skill. I would imagine that the first skill conferred would probably be a M13@3 add special abilities skill specific to necromantic animations, so that the apprentice can work with the master in creating new undead with special abilities, followed by the M13@8 Animate Dead, and then (unless there are others), the 15@4 Permanently Confer New Abilities.
It leaves an opening for a backstory, but my guess is that some powerful wizard discovered how to animate dead and use them to further his interests, and then he learned to confer abilities on others, and decided that he could use an assistant whom he could keep as his assistant as long as he never actually taught him about magic generally but simply conferred upon him the needed abilities and kept the power to confer abilities until he was ready for the assistant to head out on his own. He thus went through several assistants, each of whom started their own program. The assistants never knew any of the lesser magic, so they never taught any of it either.
It's an odd design for a wizard--can't change the light or heat levels in a room, for example, even though he can do stuff that's much more potent--but it has some potential.
--M. J. Young