I have thought of a few ways to kill it. If the deity of pain choses to he could end its existents. Another way is to have a being who also consumes souls to consume the Mogrolyth. Go to Comment

A truely nasty undead, though in my opinion, even the Divine can cease to exist, even if only at the hands of other Divine. Go to Comment

Very timely! Here's a halloween HOH! Go to Comment

An excellent undead! I like the tale of its origins and the pyre plotline. Like many powerful creatures, the party's goal has to be stopping it rather than killing it. Go to Comment

Only voted Go to Comment

A nasty and useful piece of work, perfect to throw against any undead hunter that's getting "too big for their britches."

I also particularly like the plot line you provided in your later reply; I'm thinking of using it for a one shot advneture sometime soon.

All the praise aside I did notice one small technical error with the sub:

The mogrolyth cannot be dismembered, - any object is able to pierce through the flesh, but the bone cannot be shattered or cut.

The human skeleton is not actually held together by the bones themselves, but by the tendons and muscles surrounding them. (as anyone who has dislocated a shoulder or cut up a thanksgiving turkey can attest to)

Thus after killing it, a knowledgeable char (any char that's butchered an animal for food) could dismember it with a little gruesome work and a few minutes of effort.

Of course the chances of the heroes knowing dismemberment is the only way to destroy the creature are pretty slim. (although the second time they face it they'll likely decapitate it after death knowing most chars.)

5/5 (4.5 for the sub itself, +0.5 for the extra plot suggestion added as a comment) Go to Comment

Hmm.. So no weapon can destroy the bone, eh?... Well, for some reason I like to put guys with modern weaponry and training up against fantasy-level enemies (ex: one of my mercenary characters trying to gun down a giant with an assault rifle), so how 'bout this: instead of simply dismembering the damn thing, how about pumping it so full of bullets that pretty much all that's left of their torso is their spinal column and the corn flakes they had for breakfast? Would THAT stop the monster's rampage? I really like the idea. However, I've never liked the idea of a TRULY invincible enemy. A very skilled and dangerous enemy? Sure. Invincible? Nah. Go to Comment

A truly gruesome undead. I can think of one other sub that might help put this creature down permanently: Gideon's Mercy, by dark_dragon. The person who stabbed the Mogrolyth would bring it instant easement of its pain, but would have to endure the entire force of pain that is the Mogrolyth to begin with. This could either create another Mogrolyth (thus transferring the curse to a new person), or could perhaps kill them both -- the Mogrolyth killed by being cut off from its power and the knife wielder from the shock. Go to Comment

Ive thought of a couple ways of creatively "destroying" it.

A.)A healing spell of epic proportions.

B.)An alchemical procedure that could graft the skin to it. Then kill it.

C.)After utterly destroying it you could take each seperate bone and place them each in a different plane of existance.
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OUCHIES. You had me squirming at the slicing of the eyeballs. Gruesome. Liked the journal entries. I liked the fact that it's prime mode of operation is causing pain, not hunting. Adds a bit of realism to the surreal. Very good undead creature - just what we need in the wake of all the "Twilight" and "True Blood" nonsense we are living with.

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This is a damn good undead, and a great submission. Skeletons and zombies are for pansy necromancers, to try and control one of these is true nectomantic power - but one doomed to failure. I agree with others, I dislike things that are truly invincible unless it's the terrasque. There can be only one! (Invincible thing, that is. Something has to be on top and it's sure not the gods.) The comments on this submission are great too, giving a lot of good food for thought. This community is simply awesome.

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Very interesting thoughts. Makes you sit a moment and wonder.

The ideas imply that everything would be a constant in this world which might complicate the matters a little bit. There will always be so many people with a broken arm, so many with broken leg, etc.

Going to have to mull this over. Go to Comment

Those are great Ria!!! Go to Comment

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Interesting theories. (And a great comic!)


The broken arm example is really making things too insane... we could stick to energy. If we borrow some amount of energy somewhere, the same amount of opposite kind of energy emerges elsewhere. Or to put it otherwise, we have merely stolen the warmth for the fireball from somewhere. The opposite event happens mostly in one place (more probable with most spells), and allows water vapours to condense into that chunk ice.

An interesting affair for mighty wizards could be spells of little impact but great area of effect. A spell might warm up a piece of tundra a little, and in turn cool down a piece of desert. This would not last for long, but with repeated castings may make the life in both places nicer for humanoids. (And maybe upset some other cosmic balance, but that is out of topic here...)

A healing spell really takes some life-energy, or what it is, from somewhere else. Thus the existence of healing spells, that simply transfer yours (or other volunteers) life force to others. Other spells draw carefully on the life force of plants. Still other spells rip it out of anywhere, without asking. Those using such spells should think about the morals implications.

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But Necromancy looks now a bit queer. Does it draw "unlife", effectively strenghtening life elsewhere? While this option has some irony in it (especially for the typical Evil villain), it might give a fine argument for using Necromancy. It actually heals the world, so what's so bad about it?

Hmmmm... I don't think so. Nor does the sacrificing of a humanoid to animate one weak zombie sound good to me. Let's return to the classical: animating what remains in a body after death. And as it traps a part of someones spirit, it is the good old immoral Necromancy we love and hate. The question that remains, is what kind kind of energy does it use up, and what reaction happens in turn? If it is some "binding" energy, does something somewhere become free? (In the widest sense possible... up to molecules splitting into atoms.) Not sure about it, but the actual effects may be of any kind, and may be reponsible for the association with Chaos.

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So a wizard's magic is not the force that creates something, it is the power and skill to take energy from somewhere, and shape it to a new purpose.

Should this idea be researched deeper, a list of the various types of energy should be compiled, to see what kinds of effects can be created. Of course, we might theorize there is only one kind of energy with many "flavours", that could be converted into the right one. But this should be too hard for mortals, and it is better to take warmth for fire effects, life force for healing, etc. Freely creating any effect out of any energy, and (especially) choosing where the energy will come from, could be the domain of gods. Luckily it limits gods from doing anything every day, since the energy has to come from somewhere...

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All in all, a very interesting idea. It puts magic on a quite different level, and it is no more some "power for free". It comes from somewhere, and whatever you do, you know it does also something different...

Also, magic is not the wonder itself, only the wondermaker. Can a magician do something with magic only, without influencing the world twice? The age-old Detect Magic may be the answer, as a way to detect spellcasting, and the side-effects. A special "Magic Sense" may be a part of a spellcasters repertoire, activated at any random moment by the cruel DM... Go to Comment

BUMP! An old discussion on a great topic. For those, who have the patience, there is a topic-relevant comic hidden inside. That I call a bonus! Go to Comment

I likes!

Maybe an extension: summoned/conjured things have to come from SOMEWHERE. Maybe you conjure, say, a plate of cookies, and somewhere in the world, a plate of cookies (the same plate for those not paying attention) just... vanishes. Bloop. Reverse is true for banishing/destroying things. Want to get rid of that beastie terrorizing your village? Easy. Bloop. And somewhere else, maybe very far away, beastie starts terrorising another village. Bloop.
Also brings to mind some potentially nasty things that you might not think of. You break an arm. Bloop. Your arm's fixed. Somewhere, someone else breaks their arm somehow. You use a love spell to win the heart of the girl of your dreams. Bloop. Another couple just... falls out of love. You use a mondo spell to kill your worst enemy once and for all. Bloop. Somewhere, a child is born with a black heart.
Or something like that.
I could see this working throught coincidence, although that would require that things be interrelated to an insane degree. The broken arm example: As you start casting the heal spell, someone else say, trips and falls. If you complete the spell, at the same instant your arm is healed, the other poor sap lands in such a way that he breaks his arm. The spell goes wrong or isn't completed, the person lands but doesn't break a bone.
Also, I should imagine that casting spells of opposite types of equal power at the same time would cancel each other out. I summon a fireball. At the same time, some one else summons an ice blast. Bloop. They cancel each other out, and the balance is unchanged. Go to Comment

I could not resist.

http://knighthawk.strolen.com/images/8bitexp.gif Go to Comment

"Hey, where did Charlie go?" Go to Comment

Ahhh... Realistic Thaumaturgy

Of sorts. Everything on both sides of the equasion must be balanced. The spell caster must generate the energy to create the equasion and move it upon the universe.

Laws of magic have been stipulated from time to time and tradition to tradition, from thrice bless hermes to the gamer next door. The most comprehensive and modern set came from Isaac Bonewit's classic tome, Real Magic. Currently out of print, you can only get these laws in either The Magician's Handbook OR Authentic Thaumaturgy (SJ Games).

Here are is a link that has a good article on them.


An introduction:
The Laws of Magic are not legislative laws but, like those of physics or of musical harmony, are practical observations that have been accumulating over the course of thousands of years, with remarkable similarity in almost every known human culture. Those of you who prefer to remain skeptical as to the reality of psychic phenomena and the systems of magic developed to control them will at least find these Laws an interesting and detailed guide to what psychologists and anthropologists so patronizingly refer to as "magical thinking".

Those of you who play magicians as characters will find these Laws a remarkably concise guide to the ways in which most magicians, at least on this world, believe magic to work. Most of the technical motivations of magic-using characters, before, during and after using magic, will be based on these laws. Go to Comment

Warning Slight Thread Drift

I keep reading the title of this thread and think of Sir Issac Newton's magic, rather than magic based upon one of his physical laws.

I am ignoring the Illuminati membership. I am ignorring his Mason association. I am ignoring his association with Dee or his associate (if memory serves). I am ignoring his connections to the precursors of the Golden Dawn.

I am thinking about magic of mathematics. This man invented calculus, among other things. Calculus is the branch of mathematics that deals with limits and the differentiation and integration of functions of one or more variables. (the math of altering volumes, changes in motions/ equasions). It is a method of analysis or calculation using a special symbolic notation. This is the important one for magics.

Newton once said, that the world was defined by mathematical laws set down by God. To understand God, we needed to understand those laws.

So lets say he managed to extend his understanding of math and physics to the mystical level. Using his complex equasions and calculus to solve them, he managed to define and redefine the world around him. (By embedding a derivative inside a deriviative, you would get the base delta for the world as it changed around you and define the new baseline).

Newton's magic would be powerful. It would effect the physical realm, no true mental effects. Things would move. Things would change, as if they were being reacted against. Shapes would be redefined. Things could teleport. All of this would be done by holding huge mathematical equasions in the head and altering variables to first match the movement of the world, then adjusting the variables (and their deltas) to achieve the desired effect.

Most people would need to have prework the equasion on a scroll or book page. This formula would be read and set into the mind of the "caster"/ physicist. This matrix of formuli would become the symbolic version of the world. It would also serve as the vehicle to change the caster's mental state to one of a trance like one. Then the mental manipulations would be applied to the equasion. Changes in the world would occur as the matrix was altered, to match the changes... if it was all manipulated properly.

Just a thought. Go to Comment