Extremely old character

So maybe he tried to remove a "curse of immortality" from someone and botched, where the "specific tailoring" for his version excludes Warping so he experiences the full impact of the curse as a human?

I had thought of it, but I seemed to remember it was Infernal...

I just dug out the good ol' South of the Sun.

  • Lords of Dis/Collossi: Unclear if this tradition is aligned with the Magic or the Infernal realm. With their focus of calling and binding demons though, Infernal is probable. It the 5th edition, would probably just use the Goetic Arts from RoP: I.
  • The Dreamers: Appears to be a magical tradition. Content-wise (if not mechanically), appears to be very similar to the Nightwalkers of HMRE.
  • Order of Juno: Explicitly a Magical tradition. Mechanically very different from Hermetic Magic.

EDIT:
Shamans from 1993 also predate the Lion of the North (1994), at least with respect to publication.

What about using Sihr and the Al-Ixir to reduce his age?
It'd be a bit of stretch to have made it that far south, but it'd almost make sense to flee out of the British Isles.

Actually, your character doesn't need to have that far south - the secret of the Sahirs comes from Al-Khidr who taught Moses, travelled with Alexander the Great and attained immortality. Khidr wanders the world, so there is no reason your ancient sorcerer and an immortal sorcerer who knows many secrets couldn't have met up. Why the immortal one decided to teach the secret of long life to a strange possibly vengeful wizard is left as an exercise for you to complete for your saga.

Other alternative - the "water of life", always discussed as being very far away and in some hard-to-reach foreign place, is in fact reachable from Scotland - maybe sailing to the west like St Brendan or heading to the frozen north may lead to a hidden source.

What I came up with for a companion idea (and so is SG's decision in your saga) three years ago (and just digging it to answer this thread) was the combination of those virtues:

  • external soul, including unaging
  • lesser blessing x2
  • greater malediction
  • fickle nature

In roleplay terms, the character is an artist which due to some circonstances has gained some kind of external soul. That soul is conserved in some kind of poem describing himself as the hero of his own journey.
Due to the first blessing, the decrapitude points are stocked in that poem and do not affect the character as long as the poem original version exist (a bit like the Dorian Grey story, which I'm not remembering a lot, only that it is a painting). That was loosely based on incantation/consumption base 40 power: "permanently transfer a decrepitude point from a target to a victim" with the caveat that this is not permanent, and that the victim is just the "spirit" of the character, due to the great malediction here under:
The great malediction makes that with time, his personalities becomes more dark. Due tot Fickle nature he has two main conflicting personalities: sad and happy. He also is proud. and with the decrepitude transfered to the poem, the perosnality becomes more and more dark. (In gameplay terms, each point of decrepitude transfered to the work is counted as 1 XP and the personality traits are used as abilities : at the age I was intending to make him enter play, he would have gone from:
proud +2, sad +4, happy +4 to proud +3 (31), sad +4 (+66), happy +3 (34) (and have a warping score of 4 (59).
That makes the character sound more and more dark/bitter/sad (whatever you can think of) as he ages.
The second blessing gives a bonus to aging roll equal to the esthetic quality (Q/2). It was build considering the fact that a lesser power would give 25 levels of power, and that there is a guideline for the learned magician who gives -1 to LR per base level, which I considered using sun and constant (for -10). In place of a pure -10 bonus, I convinced the SG to use a bonus based on the Esthetic quality which would give the character a reason to become ME's greatest and most legendary poem-writer.

Wow ExarKun, that's an amazing companion concept!

I love it; when reading it I realized that most of the suggested virtues to deal with decrepitude weren't appealing to me as they didn't inspire me any story arc. Well, to be able to stop aging when inside a forest could help explaining why this character is so reclusive and emerges each other century, and also suggest a way to deal with it (I can guess our Flambeau scratching his head, thinking "hmmm, sooo he is hiding inside a whole lot of flammable material... let me check my grimoire one second...", but that's all, and I really wouldn't like this to end just with a forest on fire). Death Prophecy still stood as my favorite choice because, even when stretched out of the PC's range of benefits for that virtue, was also a way to force characters to be unable to face the story straight, to do a lot of research, and when discovered, a huge neon sign pointing how to deal with him (or her? Is it stated somewhere that Dav'nalleous was male?).

But that virtues & flaws combination also serve for that purpose: you have to get to know all about your enemy, and only then find the external soul, find the decrepitude storage, and then decide what to do about that: kill him? Trying to tame that walking huge source of XPs?

Only one thing worries me though: what happens when the poem gets 10 decrepitude points? Nothing? Because I can figure out some people around the table claiming for such a character than the poem would be reduced to dust once it reaches these 10 decrepitude points.

The Greater Malediction, making the character darker and grimmer, is something I'm definitively stealing.

Hi Ouroboros,
I'm glad you like it :slight_smile:.

For the decrepitude, all what is stocked in the poem would go back to the companion if the poem is destroyed. If the score > = 5, you would die immediatly.

I take it that you are aware of the standard House Diedne will return fear, because they are hiding deep in a (Faerie) Regio, where one day there may be 100 years outside the Regionne. Now I want to research when the legends of Brigadoon started.

OTOH what is Mythic Europe's opinion on re-incarnation?
eg Dav'nalleous makes a deal with a Dark Spirit to have his soul re-incarnated in, say the 7th son of a 7th son, descended from himself, who was born during suitable omens of greatness (a Full Moon on Halloween perhaps, or Crom Cruach's dolmen is appeased, or a lynchpin dolmen at Stonehenge falls), or whose parents and/or midwife consecrates the newborn babe to the same dark spirit...

Hi,

A Learned Magician could do this for himself though.

Anyway,

Ken

Yup. I'm doing that which is what made me think of it for the Gruagachan.

Well, there are initiations for Learned Magicians, the only problem is the western tradition, out of Bologna, is only a couple of hundred years old.
It is said to have had precursors in Greece and Egypt, but that isn't the worlds biggest problem, as "Greece and Egypt" has influence of almost all organized magic traditions anyways.

As a side note, what are the consequences of living as a transformed being via Virtue?

You don't age, you don't gain warping for a constant effect, you have might 0, with whatever that entails for you. And you'd need to dedicate some time each "cycle" to remaking your "Amulet of Being Transformed".

A magic being with 2x Ritual Power dedicated to Grant Major Virtue could just transform you though, permanently.

Well, that take is just so easy; to spend time "hibernating" in a slow time Regio (regionating?) is just so easy (as reincarnation would be, mechanics aside). There isn't any milestones to overcome to deal with decrepitude, warping and such. Also the time-slowing rate should be so tailored that sounds quite artificial to me. And about House Diedne, our Diedne don't hide in regios precisely, but inside House Merinita. Remember that that House fostered many Diedne apprentices right after the Schism War. At some point some of them probably just meet and decided to honor their heritage. In our Saga estimations 10-20% of House Merinita are actually Diedne magi (for a total of around 10-20 in all Mythic Europe... not enough for a revenge comeback, yet)

Anyway at this point my biggest problem is Warping (we can deal with age through many virtues, but they warp). But ExarKun brought The Infernal in, and then I re-read the Demonic Blood virtue: it grants Infernal Might (of 5), 30 levels of powers (which can handle the Lesser Blessing to cast Decrepitude into some object), and makes the character immune to warping!

So it seems that Demonic Blood is perfect. It crashes against my feeling of leaving the Infernal and the Divine out of this, though. It's a shame that Magic Blood doesn't deal with Warping in the same way, but by looking at the virtues that could be just because Demonic Blood is a major virtue and Magical Blood is a minor one. So now what I'm thinking is making the equivalent of major Magical Blood virtue. It could fit the theme as well, as Dav'ie was known to be hanging around with a bunch of giants (so magical beasts).

So now my dilemma is either to create that major virtue or to bow to the Infernal, which promises me exactly what I need (now I'm starting to worry about my soul).

Or you could overlap Chartae.

I'm not so sure about that. The Incantation/Consumption guidelines is level 40.

Right! I'm a bit average on durations though.
Does that mean it would need to be Moon since the other durations available, Season and Sun, don't have overlap periods?

I thought it was 25. And felt it too low!

Anyway after a night of nightmares about my condemned soul surrendering to the works of the Infernal I wake up thinking that the magical version of the virtue I would like to adapt is not necessary having already the Transformed Being virtue.

Then there would be the problem of how to increase the might of such a character, but as qualities & inferiorities can be used to buy virtues & flaws I've noticed that for magical beings the division between virtues and qualities (and between flaws and inferiorities) is practically non existing. So maybe he can develop initiations to get might at the cost of 1 point per minor virtue, or even more (infernal virtues grant 2 might points per minor virtue, and faerie virtues are even more efficient).

What about some variant on Greater Elixer, from Mysteries. I've always liked the idea of alchemical immortals.

Yes. Although Chartae don't allow Season.

What about taking advantage of transformation, while a transformed being, to gain a major virtue, in this case transformation?

Or could you try and convince your familiar to gain a ritual power to grant you the virtue?