Death Prophecy and Aging/Deprivation

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

If a character with a Death Prophecy manages to avoid the cause of his/her death indefinitely, do they have to worry about death from Aging and Decrepitude? From Deprivation?

I am trying to do something other than "lost in a Faerie Regionne" to introduce an unpleasant foe from the time of the early Order. He has the Death Prophecy - "May only be killed by a member of his own Bloodline" and I am thinking also giving him Unaging (I have a vague justification that would fit the character concept). My original thought was that he was punished by being sealed in an iron bound box and dropped at sea, and now a couple of centuries later a storm has washed the box ashore.

2

It explicitly says that he can't die of old age, but that he is injured as normal. If he's not unaging, this means when he reaches 5 decrepitude he becomes bedridden, but he won't die. As time continues to advance, he will continue to gain aging points, which means his stats will continue to fall, and his decrepitude will continue to go up. In Greek legend, if you gain enough decrepitude, you turn into a cicada. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithonus I have no idea if that's current in 1220.

But you were smart and made him unaging, so while it might be amusing to have more decrepitude than Flambeau has Ignem, it doesn't affect him.

Also, being trapped in a box, he will suffer deprivation as normal, which means he will first lose all fatigue, then suffer a light wound, which will advance to a medium wound, and so on until he has a single incapacitating wound. No, I lie, three incapacitating wounds, one for air, one for food, one for water (that is, if he's at sea. Bury him in a lake and he has plenty of water to drink). He makes two recovery rolls each day to avoid dying, which he cannot fail, because of his death prophecy. Every time he fails to get better, though, he gets -1 on the next roll. If he has a decent stamina he will regularly make rolls of 9+, his three incapitating wounds will become heavy wounds, and the penalty to his recovery rolls will be reset to 0. But in 500 years he's going to blow it eventually, and let a penalty develop to his recovery rolls that he simply cannot overcome by himself. Like, -100,000 to his roll. But like Miracle Max says, there's mostly dead and there's all dead. There are plenty of ways to heal a wound without having to roll recovery for it. For example, a CrCo ritual, or a demon who's been waiting for an opportunity to make him an offer. Or maybe a fairy glamours him into health long enough for him to cast his own crco ritual, just for giggles.

If you really need him to throw off his casket and rise up on his own, there's "Greater Immunity (Deprivation)" from RoP: M, but I don't have that book, I'm just seeing it in the unified virtue/flaw index. The downside to that is he will be horribly, horribly awake while underwater, which WILL drive him insane.

3

Nice analysis TBox :smiley:

Doesn't seem like a downside at all....

4

That is rather comprehensive. Thank you.

One of this NPC's schticks is that he can Bind creatures/spirits with Might.
One of his main "stockpiles" of monsters bound until he calls them to service, was in a Magic Regio now occupied by the PC's covenant. That hook has to be used sometime.

All I have to say is that he had managed to bind a Magic Spirit so that it would do him a single healing-related favour when he called. He managed to call upon it after being put in the box and the favour he asked was "when next I am breathing unfettered and illuminated by the light of the Moon, that you grant my return to hale and hearty".
Obviously this means that he had no spirits bound to him that he could call upon to free him from the box.

5

Or he did not WANT to be released from the box. Not yet :smiling_imp: Patience is one of the main assets of Bad Guys (TM).

Really nice opponent. Are you using a Summoner with all the Goethic Arts? Sounds like it, but just to be sure.

Cheers,
Xavi

6

There is a bit of arm-waving involved, but basically a Goetic-type sorceror who is/was aligned to the Magic realm and "fertility/virile" spirits. The quick notes as follows:

From a cadet line of the Merovingian Sorceror kings. Started off career suppressing Druids, was in careful discussion with a powerful visiting Pictish Wizard who claimed to be looking for allies against Druids, when Druids suddenly gained advantage due to alliance with renegade Hermes-worshipping Roman wizards.
Joined with Davnalleous by mighty magical oaths to battle spreading menace, learning more Chthonic magics. D waged war while my NPC made/mapped strategic stockpiles behind enemy lines to support eventual counter-attack.

Captured by renegade Roman wizards with soldiers who mocked the fallen Merovignian dynasty, interrogated but disposed of when they thought he wasn't a member of D's army. Captors in too much of a hurry to recruit powerful wizard, too cruel to kill him quickly.

Now very angry, bound by ancient magical oaths and influenced by too many Chthonic bargains into seeking reckless vengeance. Blames the Roman wizards for everything that went wrong.

Does that make sense or have I overlooked anything?

7

Sounds cool. I specially like your hint that Davnalleus might be another gray dude, not a corrupted infernalist out for the killing and nothing more. Your idea is cool, and it actually matches with the original (LotN) idea of "pictish dude out to fight the druids encroaching on Scotland" much better than the current line of "well, he is Bad Dude, you know, and does Evil just because, being infernal and all that". Well done :slight_smile: We planned to use Davnalleus in our manx saga, since he is our favourite villain of all time, but got sidetracked fighting dragons and trying to survive the ravages of mundane politics, so we dropped that story arc in the end.

No longevity for this guy, so he does not get warped, right?

Cheers,
Xavi

8

Davnalleus at the time my NPC met him appeared mostly good. Though was able to teach my NPC Chthonic magic.
But war changes people, and even my NPC made some unpleasant bargains. I expect that by the end of the war Davnalleus may indeed have become a corrupt infernalist.

Basically I am trying to resolve the Covenant Hook of unknown mystic stuff, which I decided was an old wizard's stash. The fun bit is the old wizard coming back for it.
But "lost in a faerie regio" seems so trite (been used before).

So I was trying for something else to explain nasty old wizard suddenly re-appearing. I have been playing with the idea of Death Prophecy - only by own bloodline for a while, from that Beggar King in "Lion & Lilly". Add in Unaging from some Fertility-related spirit/faerie, and a one-off boon of Healing and I can have the wizard re-appear after being isolated for so long.

Making an immortal (ie capable of being around in a couple of centuries) character is difficult in Ars rules.
Actually, as the last sorceror of the Merovingian royal line, would that qualify him as an Immortal Sorceror King?

9

For true immortality under RAW you have to become a supernatural being with a Might score. The trick of unaging + death prophecy to avoid dying suddenly is really cool, though. I was made extremely aware of the power of the Unaging virtue by the freebie posted by the subrosa guys. I had never considered that virtue much before, specially since magi are effectively Unaging most of the time anyway, and we like the rotation of the companions and grogs to create bloodlines in our own covenant :slight_smile: However, using it to get some semblance of "longevity potion" among non hermetics and (specially) villains is a really good trick. :smiley:

Merovingian bloodline can be quite spread after a few centuries. They will be unlikely to be in positions of power, but heirs to minor Merovingian pricesses married to nobles and the classical bastard unrecognized Merovingian offspring are bound to be fairly common. Their blood is likely to be quite diluted by the XIII century, but it i9s still there. There can be quite a few hundred (or thousands) of people able to kill him.

However, you can go for the other (restrictive) approach and have him only killable by siomeone that inherited the "true" powers of the merovingian. It was listed in L&L as being able to cure some stuff (plague?) and worked unless you got your hair cut. Given that most people is likely to have his hair cut, the bloodline dude is likely to be totally unaware of his own powers.

Cheers,
Xavi

10

I once used Davnalleus as my main villain. He wasn't an infernalist, but a gruagach and in his opinion, the order was the infernalist/expansionnist powerful army which was corrupted. I speak here about it.

I find all the ideas depicted here excellent. Good job !

11

+1!

12

Wow, this guy must be really strong-willed. Because, you know, "killed by a member of his own bloodline" would seem to allow suicide, and after a few years of suffering all the torment off suffocation, starvation and dehydration you would think he would find a way to commit suicide...

13

I was thinking deprivation would have rendered him unconcious pretty quickly, so there wouldn't be much time to contemplate suicide. But yes, suicide is one means to satisfying the Death Prophecy. The Merovingian bloodline is relatively easy to define, if you have the red birthmark, you have enough Merovingian blood to count for the Death Prophecy. You usually have to look out for your own children (it is a fertility/virility related magical tradition).

This thread was merely to determine if Death Prophecy and Unaging could work. I may have to start another thread to explain this NPCs home-brewed magical tradition, if this interest continues.