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| Thread: for all those necro lovers |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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Wildbear
Hired Hero
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posted July 07, 2003 06:39 PM |
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Right, but in HoMM myth, the vampire is undead too, not a living who needs blood to survive.
There is a special ability vampires have in heroes : regeneration. If they can regenerate themselves when they suck the blood (life in h4) of their victim, this means they bind their wounds and heal themselves. When a vampire has only 1 hp, I think his body is not in a better shape than a zombie's corpse. Therefore, giving that ability to a zombie by upgrading it would 1) allow him to heal himself 2) turn him into a blood sucker. The problem : why would he be able to fly ? there's no reason to upgrade directly from the zombie to the vampire, that's why I added other upgrades between them. The ghoul would be (somehow) a lower vampire unable to fly, the last upgrade gives it the ability to fly and turns it into a vampire.
That's why I added the mutant too, there should be a necromantic laboratory (or the guild) to allow this upgrade, it's not a natural upgrade, it's somehow some genetic engineering.
There is a last point, it's very important : when you give a name to a creature, it doesn't mean it's the "real" creature. Sirens are a very good example. The names are used to describe a creature, creating new creatures is not forbidden, but creating new names is difficult. For example, with this tree, we could name the creature :
weak zombie, zombie, genetically engineered zombie, bloodsucking zombie, and flying bloodsucking zombie... Why not ? Those names are too long, giving them other similar creatures' names makes sense : trespassed, zombie, mutant, ghoul, vampire.
For vampires, for example, there are 3 common creatures : the nosferatu-like vampire, the dracula-like creature, and the common vampire bat, they're all vampires, when you see a vampire bat, you don't think "hey this is not a vampire, 'cause it has no bow tie".
Creature names are only quick-descriptions of their ability, they are not direct references to mythology.
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted July 09, 2003 11:01 PM |
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Quote:
my original objection is that zombies have nothing in common with vampires... zombies are humans under a death-like trance to the point where the zombie appears to be soulless (in HoMM myth, it is just a raised corpse...) ...vampires are the bloodsuckers we all know and love (ok, not all of us  ) and myth has it that they are humans (and maybe other races) bitten by a vampire and turned...
actually i am a firm believer that the vampires are undead (unless someone has a serious argument against it). maybe a living person can become a vampire by some magic, but the people that are bitten lie dead for a few days and then become undead. i havn't read bs-s dracula, but i have seen a movie that i think must have tryed to reproduce it as close to the book as possible, because the style of the movie was very much like old literature, and not like usual modern movies. In that movie the main character spent weeks in dracula's castle and the lower vampires sucked his blood there, and he escaped and never became a vampire because he was kept alive like a milk cow.Quote:
unless I miss something, i don't see a connection between the two... a rather interesting alternative would be to have the ghoul as a base creature that can be upgraded to zombie or vampire... (and that only if we accept that ghouls are vamp-wannabes)
what if we could upgrade zombies to ghouls instead? zombies have often been considered hungry for flesh to make them more scary (who would have something bad to say about a dead body walking around and minding his own business? except that they stink, of course). as far as i know, ghouls can be undead, actually they can be just overly hungry zombies.
so, my point is that the vampires are undead through and through. you said that upgrading a ghoul to vampire would be 'a rather interesting alternative,' so i guess that the point about the vamps being undead or not is the only serious problem here.
edit:
'zombies are humans under a death-like trance to the point where the zombie appears to be soulless'
so if the zombies aren't undead, what's wrong with them getting back some mind of their own and becoming vamps?
'(in HoMM myth, it is just a raised corpse...)'
if we consider the homm myth to be something trustworthy, imho the vamps are just as undead as zombies.. uhh?
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Lith-Maethor
Honorable
Legendary Hero
paid in Coin and Cleavage
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posted July 09, 2003 11:05 PM |
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um...
when exactly did I say that Vamps are NOT undead? ...i think that part is the only standard in all vampire mythologies... oh and don't say anything about Brahm Stoker (or whatever the spelling) ..conn may hear you
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You are suffering from delusions of adequacy.
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted July 09, 2003 11:27 PM |
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lith:
oh, you replied so quick, i hope i could edit my previous post before you read it.
it should be brian stoker, i guess.
who's conn? and what's the trouble with him?
'my original objection is that zombies have nothing in common with vampires... zombies are humans under a death-like trance to the point where the zombie appears to be soulless'
so, as far as i understand, 'death-like' is not dead. it looks like you are referring to some voodoo style thing or.. now i don't remember, was it said about voodoo or something else that corpses can be animated using elemental powers that have nothing to do with the soul of the dead person, so those myths must have had something to do with corpses, not just people in a trance (now some voodoo peole might feel like saying that the emphasis of voodoo is not on necromancy). whatever, i wouldn't go out of europe for mythology in homm context. as far as i understand, zombies were real undead in europe.
'...vampires are the bloodsuckers we all know and love (ok, not all of us ) and myth has it that they are humans (and maybe other races) bitten by a vampire and turned...'
here you said that they were just humans. now, if the zombie is undead, ghoul is undead, and vamp is undead, what's the big impossible problem with the zombie-ghoul-vamp upgrade?
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wildbear:
why do you like the words 'mutant' and 'genetic engineering' in homm context?
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Marelt_Ekiran
Promising
Famous Hero
Watcher of All
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posted July 09, 2003 11:34 PM |
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I have heard different versions about zombies, but they all seem to agree that the person must have died. In some versions, they are just animated corpses with magical puppet strings. In another version, the soul is forced back and enslaved by the necromancer, which almost makes the zombie human again. I have even heard of zombies that managed to shake of the bond with the necromancer and managed to become as good as living humans again.
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Perception is everything.
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Lith-Maethor
Honorable
Legendary Hero
paid in Coin and Cleavage
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posted July 09, 2003 11:37 PM |
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ok... let me clarify things...
when I talked about zombies and vampires, I had in mind the non-fantasy versions, the base of every fantasy creature ever called zombies or vampires...
ok, ghouls zombies, skeletons and liches are all undead... does this mean one can evolve to the other? ...nope ...that's like saying a Drow can be upgraded to a High Elf...
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You are suffering from delusions of adequacy.
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Wildbear
Hired Hero
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posted July 09, 2003 11:39 PM |
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Right, but zombies, skeletons and liches are not in the same upgrade tree.
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Lith-Maethor
Honorable
Legendary Hero
paid in Coin and Cleavage
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posted July 09, 2003 11:49 PM |
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ok, let's do this the hard way...
Skeleton: just the skeleton of a dead person, raised to serve a necromancer with no will of its own...
Zombie: (rotting) dead body, sometimes without will, raised for the same reason
Ghoul: flesh eating fiend, not always undead (for argument's sake, lets pressume the ghoul we use is undead), can think for itself
Vampire: bloodsucking undead, looking either as a human or like a nosferatu, free will
Lich: mage that decided to live forever, usually skeletal in appearance, free will...
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You are suffering from delusions of adequacy.
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Wildbear
Hired Hero
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posted July 10, 2003 12:02 AM |
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Is 'free will' a downgrade ?
Try to see the upgrade as a regeneration of the creature, it regenerates its body and therefore some of its mental capacities. It's not weird. When you're ill your intellectual capacities are lower, imagine what it can be when your rotting.
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Lith-Maethor
Honorable
Legendary Hero
paid in Coin and Cleavage
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posted July 10, 2003 03:03 AM |
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after some thought... (yeah right... :P)
I came up with this little line-up for a necro town...
using a 2/6 level template with selective upgrading, as I hope HoMM5 will be if it ever comes out...
Level 1:
Zombie: high defence melee unit, a bit slow
Skeleton: faster, more fragile melee unit, can be upgraded to
-> Skeleton Archer: same stats, no range penalties
Level 2:
Ghoul: faster and stronger than the zombie, melee unit
Gargoyle: flyer, high defence
Level 3:
Ghost: flyer, typical HoMM ghost, upgrades to
-> Wraith: more hitpoints
Mummy: casts curse, a bit faster than the typical HoMM mummy
Level 4:
Banshee: flyer, can stun enemies
Vampire: regenerating, strong melee, flyer, upgrades to
-> Elder Vampire: faster, more hitpoints
Level 5:
Death Knight: typical HoMM DK
Lich: spellcaster
Level 6:
Dark Angel: can animate slain undead
Bone Dragon: just because I couldn't think of one more unit... I hate that creature
and as a high level summon spell, the Grim Reaper 
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You are suffering from delusions of adequacy.
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted July 10, 2003 03:10 PM |
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lith:
uh?
if upgrading between ghoul and zombie or ghoul and vampire is more or less acceptable, then i get the impression that there's just some psychological barrier with the zombie to vampire thing. actually, there's no zombie to vampire upgrade, there's zombie to ghoul and ghoul to vampire. and i am not saying that a psychological barrier is an unimportant thing.
and.. imho your creature lineup is highly inflammable.
some minor issues:
1) this is subjective, but a skeleton archer would feel strange, especially with no range penalties. having no shooters is part of the personality of the town imho.
2) as far as i understand, gargoyle is a magically animated statue, and that means it never was a corpse.
3) what do you mean by typical homm ghost? and if it's the homm2 style ghost i would be scared out of my pants to see it on lev 4.
4) i just hate the whole dark or fallen angel thing, but this is probably my own highly subjective personal opinion.
5) if the grim reaper is summonable in necro and the angel is summonable in the human town, and the devil is summonable in the inferno town and the phoenix is summonable in nature town, what would be summonable in the dragon town (warlock or chaos or whatever it is called)? the dragon is highly mortal (unless the dragon is satan itself), as far as i understand. this is just a question about the problem i see with making the top level creature a summonable immprtal, rather than criticism.
and now the inflammable issues:
6) a ghost is a feeble shadow of paranoia, imho the lowest form of undead. shouldn't it be lev 1 or even lower?
7) mummy could possibly be the highest in human hierarchy and should be higher level than a noble (vamp) and higher than a noble warrior (death knight).
8) why do you make the angel recruitable and the grim reaper summonable while they are both immortal? the point of making grim reaper summonable-only was that it was immortal, wasn't it?
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as creature lineups are often inspireing (going wild here, not concerning playability or homm creature trees or anything, just trying to have some resoning behind creatures):
lev 0: ghost
homm2 style. a proportion of those disappears every day because the memory of the dead is forgotten, this keeps their numbers in check if killed mirror images etc don't become ghosts. they are very weak, so reasonably large numbers are no serious threat.
unfortunately i am a bit uncertain about how you would get ghosts, maybe generated automatically in a necro town.
lev 1: skeleton
can be recruited from old graves in necro towns. alternatively, a proportion of unupgraded zombies decay into skeletons every day.
skeletons cannot be upgraded into anything.
lev 2: zombie
can be recruited from fresh graves in necro towns.
alternatively, a proportion of enemies killed in battle are resurrected as zombies.
can be upgraded into ghouls in a ghoul building in a town (you cannot upgrade them all at once, it rather depends no the productivity of the ghoul building).
lev 3: ghoul
can be upgraded from recruited zombies in necro towns.
eats corpses to regenerate its numbers.
the corpses that are eaten are not counted for necromancy after battle.
upgrades to vamp in a vamp building in necro town.
lev 4: vampire
upgrades from ghouls in a vamp building in necro towns.
regenerates its numbers by attacking (well, it's not really a melee unit imho, so this could be made a little more complicated).
now there's a possibility that the ghouls and vamps act as one level lower if they are not fed for a period of time. i.e. if a vampire is not fed for two periods of time, it appears as a zombie in the battlefield next time and some of them decay into skeletons every day. after the battle the stack becomes vamps again.
now i don't think death knights and litches and mummies fit into the same upgrade tree very well. at least litch and mummy should have something to do with old tombs.
death knights should be servants of mummies and the litch should be the same level as the mummy, because imho the mummy represents the highest rank in earthly hierarchy and litch represents the highest rank in magic hierarchy.
lev 4: death knight:
more or less like homm3, except lower than litch and mummy. death knight might imho very well fit at the same level with the vamp.
litch:
i would like the litch to have more wraith-style anatomy with just more colorful remains of robe and some egyptian style necklace. i guess that in addition to casting homm2 style sound and appearance death cloud with homm3 effects, the litch should have something to do with raising ghosts, as the litch (at least in homm3) had something to do with preserving memory.
mummy:
mummies were buried with a lot of servants, so the mummy should be able to summon those servants and you would like to fight with the summoned creatures (maybe even death knights?) rather than with the mummies themselves.
grim reaper:
robed skeleton with a scythe, speed 0, teleport.
i agree that it would be best if it could be summoned with a spell (i didn't consider all the homm game system etc, as i said in the beginning). it would be immortal and it would kill e.g. every 7-th creature in a stack that it attacks, and maybe it should be able to raise enemy corpses as zombies already during the battle.
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imho there should be no creature growth in buildings in the form of creatures waiting to be recruited. you should mark the building as active and then it would start to recruit the type of creatures that you specify (and automatically pay the recruitment cost if you have the money). so there would be some "fleshy undead building" tree that lets you recruit zombies at basic level, adding ghouls at second level and vamps at third level.
and there would be two ways to recruit the upgraded creatures.
first way would be that you would have to recruit the basic level first and then recruit the upgraded level from among the basic level creatures. this would place the time constraints on recruiting the upgraded creatures. this way the creatures would have to be related and the upgrade tree would be a sequence of promotions.
second way would be that you recruit the type of upgrade that you specify and no recruited creatures can be upgraded. this way the creatures would be different (i.e. not related), but it would make sense that you should be able to create the basic fleshy undead that is the zombie before you can start creating the ghouls.
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and daily creature upkeep cost is a nice thing (tryed king's bounty). it would be for creatures that are in army only, i.e. no upkeep cost for creatures in town garrison. this would make the positions of towns a more important strategical factor.
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Lith-Maethor
Honorable
Legendary Hero
paid in Coin and Cleavage
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posted July 11, 2003 10:51 PM |
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Quote:
...if upgrading between ghoul and zombie or ghoul and vampire is more or less acceptable, then i get the impression that there's just some psychological barrier with the zombie to vampire thing. actually, there's no zombie to vampire upgrade, there's zombie to ghoul and ghoul to vampire. and i am not saying that a psychological barrier is an unimportant thing.
actually I'm using a mixture of two types of ghouls... the undead (WarCraft one) and the vamp-wannabe (World of Darkness version) so, both upgrades make sense... I still fail to see how a zombie can be upgraded into a vamp... no matter how many steps it takes...
Quote:
and.. imho your creature lineup is highly inflammable.
some minor issues:
1) this is subjective, but a skeleton archer would feel strange, especially with no range penalties. having no shooters is part of the personality of the town imho.
2) as far as i understand, gargoyle is a magically animated statue, and that means it never was a corpse.
3) what do you mean by typical homm ghost? and if it's the homm2 style ghost i would be scared out of my pants to see it on lev 4.
4) i just hate the whole dark or fallen angel thing, but this is probably my own highly subjective personal opinion.
5) if the grim reaper is summonable in necro and the angel is summonable in the human town, and the devil is summonable in the inferno town and the phoenix is summonable in nature town, what would be summonable in the dragon town (warlock or chaos or whatever it is called)? the dragon is highly mortal (unless the dragon is satan itself), as far as i understand. this is just a question about the problem i see with making the top level creature a summonable immprtal, rather than criticism.
lets see... one by one...:
1) i can't see why... the liches in HoMM3 were shooters... as for the no range penalties, well, skeletons have no eyes... why should distance matter?
2) of course... but it serves as a guardian of the necropolis...
3) typo: should have been HoMM4 ghost... HoMM2 one is two powerful to make it lvl3
4) you said it... I hate the bone dragons but had to include them...
5) when I say summonable, I mean by using a high mana cost spell during a battle to summon a single Grim Reaper.. maybe with a timer or something...
Quote:
and now the inflammable issues:
6) a ghost is a feeble shadow of paranoia, imho the lowest form of undead. shouldn't it be lev 1 or even lower?
7) mummy could possibly be the highest in human hierarchy and should be higher level than a noble (vamp) and higher than a noble warrior (death knight).
8) why do you make the angel recruitable and the grim reaper summonable while they are both immortal? the point of making grim reaper summonable-only was that it was immortal, wasn't it?
6) my ghosts are not shades... think of them as very annoying and scary... deadly when Wraiths...
7) human hierarchy matters not in undeath... I like the summoning of minions you propose tho...
8) are Haven Angels immortal? I think not...
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You are suffering from delusions of adequacy.
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted July 16, 2003 09:54 PM |
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'I still fail to see how a zombie can be upgraded into a vamp... no matter how many steps it takes...'
actually my own reasoning against it is pretty much the same. i fail to see why not.
they are both undead, fleshy, hungry for human flesh/blood, hate the sun, sleep in graves or coffins, etc.
looks like zombie, ghoul and vampire form a distinct group of undead and they could imho be interpreted as a hierarchy.
still havn't understood the reason why you think the upgrade is inappropriate. vampire has too much personality and looks almost alive?
'1) i can't see why... the liches in HoMM3 were shooters... as for the no range penalties, well, skeletons have no eyes... why should distance matter?'
they didn't shoot arrows or stones or something else like that, imho they shot spells. of course it wasn't spellcasting in the homm4 sense, but i don't think it would be wrong to say they were mages.
as for the no range penalties with the reasoning that they have no eyes, the same reasoning could impose an unusually great range penalty to them. so you would have to feel the enemy footsteps with your feet.. i.e. if the feet of the skeletons can feel anything.
whatever, imho the reason for range penalties is that there are turbulences in the air and unnoticable differences in how straight the arrow is held when it is shot and how tense is the bow, and what is the shape of the arrow and it's feathers, etc, that a normal shooter cannot account for when he aims the bow.
so the creature that could be most suitable for the no range penalties bonus would be the elf imho, because imho it could be reasoned that the elves are more attuned to the harmony of nature than any other creature and they do not aim their arrows like other archers do.
'2) of course... but it serves as a guardian of the necropolis...'
imho there's just a way better town for the gargoyle. btw are the gorgon masks associated with necromancy? is it so that if you have a gorgon mask (it was called gorgoneion, i guess) in your house, people think that you must be a necromancer? i.e. as far as i understand, the gargoyle sculpture has pretty much the same purpose as a gorgon mask, is it not so?
'5) when I say summonable, I mean by using a high mana cost spell during a battle to summon a single Grim Reaper.. maybe with a timer or something...'
no, the question was not about the way of summoning. the question was: what creature would be the immortal creature in the chaos town (or warlock town or dungeon town), i.e. the town with the dragons?
'6) my ghosts are not shades... think of them as very annoying and scary... deadly when Wraiths...'
well, maybe.. the ultimate insubstancial destroyers..
but where are the homm2 shades then, lol?
'7) human hierarchy matters not in undeath... I like the summoning of minions you propose tho...'
well, yeah, the pharaoh was buried with his servants in a pyramid, and after death he found that the servants that were supposed to serve him in the world of the dead were higher rank than himself..
and there was this reanimated peasant who commanded a horde of reanimated nobles and kings.. things like that just ruin the whole romantic atmosphere imho.
'8) are Haven Angels immortal? I think not...'
then why couldn't god just kill them all? no angels == no problems with rebellion. or why couldn't god kill just the rebelling angels instead of dooming them to burn for eternity? how can someone non-immortal burn for eternity? as far as i understand, the christians and others believe that even the soul of a peasant is immortal..
btw i got to know some people among whom there had been a boy who got first-hand info about the immortality of angels. there was a drinking party and he was more or less dropping off and said: 'angels never die.' btw in the morning it turned out that those were his last words. so i think we have every reason to believe that a correct angel has to be immortal.
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Lith-Maethor
Honorable
Legendary Hero
paid in Coin and Cleavage
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posted July 17, 2003 03:54 AM |
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here we go again...
this is turning int a serial...
Quote:
...vampire has ...personality...
...'nuff said...
1) true... range penalties included
2) a gorgoneion (metalic or painted head of a medusa, on a shield)
was there for decoration and to scare the opponent... nothing more... gargoyles, were used to protect a place (Notre Dame comes in mind) from demons and other hostile spirits ...they can be used by necromancers to protect them during the day
...
5) not a subject for this thread... let others figure that out... we are talking about the Necro here...
6) if you read my post, you'd notice I said it was a typo...
7) if you want to go that far, I don't think any of the servants of a pharao ever became a vampire... the two monsters come from different cultures... the minions summoned by a mummy cannot berecruited otherwise and have the lifespan of one battle (or until killed)
8) I said Haven Angels... as in HoMM4 Life aligned town... not Heaven... religion has no place in this discussion...
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You are suffering from delusions of adequacy.
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted July 17, 2003 11:31 PM |
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hmm.. anything wrong with this turning into a serial. actually i think i even like it better that way. when i come here i already know that there's probably some post to answer.
in some situations personality can be suppressed to the point that there is apparently no personality, and this might be appropriate for low rank undead like zombies. this doesn't necessarily mean that the personality cannot be present in a zombie, it might as well mean that the zombie is totally under control of the necromancer and his personality is sort of "asleep."
i like the latter version of the zombie, so if the vamp thing is just about personality, we probably remain at different opinions about it. at least it seems i got your point.
'2) a gorgoneion (metalic or painted head of a medusa, on a shield)
was there for decoration and to scare the opponent... nothing more... gargoyles, were used to protect a place (Notre Dame comes in mind) from demons and other hostile spirits ...they can be used by necromancers to protect them during the day'
there are also decorative gorgon heads used on buildings, not on shields or breastplates only. i faintly remember having read that they were used for exactly the same purpose as the gargoyle figures. actually there's no difference if they were the same or not, the difference in opinions is that imho the builders who put gargoyles on their buildings didn't include necromancers among the welcome people.
'5) not a subject for this thread... let others figure that out... we are talking about the Necro here...'
true, but if there was at least one good idea for that creature then imho it would make the summoning idea significantly stonger.
'6) if you read my post, you'd notice I said it was a typo...'
i read your post and noticed it, and still i would suggest some shades in the necro (shades the way you described shades).
'7) if you want to go that far, I don't think any of the servants of a pharao ever became a vampire... the two monsters come from different cultures... the minions summoned by a mummy cannot berecruited otherwise and have the lifespan of one battle (or until killed)'
hmm.. i didn't suggest that a mummy should summon vamps.
and there were probably mummies of lower nobles than the pharaoh, still i have a gut feeling that mummie should be associate with the pharaoh and the vamp should be associated with other nobles that are less than the high king of all the world.
hmm.. lao-zi has said something like:
the high king is worshipped and someone in between is feared and the immediate superiors are hated. the pharaoh is just too high to be associated with vampirism by the average population imho.
'8) I said Haven Angels... as in HoMM4 Life aligned town... not Heaven... religion has no place in this discussion...'
so.. does this mean that the heaven town should be able to summon something higher than angels? i would be surprised if you would suggest that they should be able to summon god.
or do you mean that only the necro should have something immortal to summon?
anyway, you saying what has a place in the discussion and what has not, especially when it's about something that is so closely intertwined with many mythological creatures, e.g. angels, makes me think that you are taking this discussion more or less personally (or something like that) and are sort of disappointed with it?
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CountZero
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 18, 2003 05:41 AM |
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Sorry to butt in but I have got one small point of order to make about the following quote:
Quote:
gargoyles, were used to protect a place (Notre Dame comes in mind) from demons and other hostile spirits ....
....imho the builders who put gargoyles on their buildings didn't include necromancers among the welcome people.
There is evidence from different medieaval cathedrals in Europe that there were stonemasons who were also satanists. Gargoyles have been found (usually in high up out of the way places) that are satanic in nature and intended to profane the sacred site. Similar wooden carvings have also been found inside cathedrals. So my point is that there are some gargoyles that would welcome a necromancer.
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted July 18, 2003 10:55 AM |
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this would be interesting. would you tell the source of this info? what did you mean by 'high up out of the way places?' the whole gargoyle topic was quite intriguing already, i.e. using demons to guard e.g. a church.
you know, not only is this info a bit surprising, but it would be better to get some confirmation about its source. an ideal case would be that pictures of those gargoyles are on some museum webpage, preferrably with some official comments. you know, if it's just some christian babbling, it might not have existed at all.
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what concerns the gargoyles in the game, i wouldn't expect this so-called satanic interpretation of gargoyles to have been the mainstream gargoyle interpretation, and thus it might not be well justified to interpret gargoyles in the game that way. and also, as far as i understand, satanists are not really necros, that's why people protested so much when the inferno and necro were united into one.
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EmperorSly
Known Hero
Destroyer of Liver
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posted July 18, 2003 11:38 AM |
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too eager to let a good discussion pass by without joining in...
Gargoyles:
Simply cannot be in a necromancing town. While the ones carved by satanic stonemasons can be tolerant to necromancers, the point is that gargoyles are stone carvings that dont move or fight. And necromancers have no means to make them move. Necromancers can take various forms of human corpses, and "re-animate" them. But they cannot do so with a lump of lifeless stone that hasnt ever known what it means to be alive. Wizards can do that, they know how to power golems, so why not also gargoyles (same thing really). So put gargoyles where they belong, that is in order town.
Zombies and Vampires:
'zombies are humans under a death-like trance to the point where the zombie appears to be soulless'
and vampires are romanian lords that mistreat their peasants and kill them too often and tax too much so that they are perceived as bloodsuckers.
but thats scientific explanations. mythologically they are both something different.
the problem why i feel its impossibly to upgrade zombie into a vampire is their different way of making. we get a zombie by animating a recently dead soulless corpse of someone that died under perfectly normal circumstances like disease or being hit on the head with a club. but vampire is got by giving special treatment (i.e. vampire-bite) to a LIVING person, so that it mutates both body and soul into a vampire. you can bite a zombie as many times you want but you wont get vampire, cause vampire needs soul and soul has left the zombie long ago.
Angels (both fallen and flying) and Grim Reaper:
Fallen angel is a nice counterpart of normal angels, but why not use its shorter name -- devil. Unfortunately, devils have nothing to do with necromancy, so in that sense grim reaper would go much better. Thers just one problem: while according to some 15th century calculations there are about 2.4 million angels, and the same number of devils, there is only ONE grim reaper. So you cant really build a dwelling and buy a pack of them. Feels ok though to summon the guy to your help, if you are really good necro. Yet the only comparable spell for haven town could be summon god, not summon angel...
Mummy:
Because devils dont suit necro and grim reapers are in a short supply, there are no better candidates available for the necro town top creature. After all, even that is serious downgrading to their rank: while still alive, pharaohs didnt take orders from random necromancers like the player, who doesnt even rule the world yet.
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted July 18, 2003 07:10 PM |
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very good post imho, emperorsly.
the point that becoming a vampire must be decided while the person is still alive (by being bitten by a vampire or by some rite) was just what we missed here.
we could of course say that in some sources they believe that the sould has not really left the body, so that some other people have to explain that just elemental forces are used to animate a zombie. maybe it's the people's desire for excitement that they like to believe that the soul is is imprisoned in the zombie under total control of the necromancer. or maybe it's that the zombie looks too much alive so that people like to think of it as a living person that is under total control of the necromancer. no matter how the zombies are "truly" being animated, what superstitions people have is imho an important factor in the way a creature has to be depicted in homm.
'Yet the only comparable spell for haven town could be summon god, not summon angel...'
about the grim reaper i couldn't agree more, but whith summon god i disagree completely. grim reaper and devil etc are all parts of god in too many religions and mythologies. i.e. god is not comparable to a devil or grim reaper, those are just manifestations of the will of god. angels on the other hand, are subjects of god like the other two. if you need the creature to be summonable to be the only one of a kind, like the grim reaper or devil or phoenix, you might just be able to summon some special angel.
i don't know too much details about angels, but the humans have always liked to think that they are just and the others are wrong. so i would suggest that the angel to be summoned could be the angel of justice.
as i said, i am not a specialist on angels if it comes to this level of details, so i am not surprised if someone has a better idea. imho the strong points of the angel of justice are:
1) as far as i know, the angel of justice should be only one of a kind.
2) it is probably one of the most well known angels.
3) it is known by it's purpose rather than it's name that could become annoying after multiple summonings.
4) it might suit the mindset of a human town quite well.
5) it would be somewhat humorously unfair from the point of view of the non-humans to summon the angel of justice to only do justice upon the opponents but not on yourself, looking like double standards or whatever it is called in english.
the only downside of the angel of justice is that as far as i know, it's probably not an archangel like the devil was. on the other hand it could be interpreted that it has the support of god that might make it comparably strong.
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and, finally, there's something funny about all this summoning thing:
what if two necro armies meet?
what if two human armies meet?
etc.
ok, grim reaper might not be the best example here, because the reaper might not be effective against undead creatures (at least this topic has not been discussed enough), so the human armies example might be better imho.
1) will there be one angel for both human armies, i.e. total of two angels of justice on the battlefield?
2) will there be a single angel of justice that will do the will of both armies?
3) will the single angel do the will of both armies only if both armies have casted the summon spell?
4) will the angel do the will of the army that was the last to summon it?
i think i would like version 3 atm.
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Wildbear
Hired Hero
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posted July 18, 2003 09:06 PM |
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If you want a "true" vampire and a "true" zombie, then I want a true golem, a true angel, a true unicorn, a true phoenix, true sirens and genies, nagas and titans, and even a true "necromancer" ! BTW, Lith Maethor remember what is REALLY a necromancer. Do you know what would be the game if developpers were taking all those things into account ? A true nightmare !
Creatures are given a name depending on what they look like or what they can do, not on what they truely are.
Imagine I want to make a game with a "super zombie", able to suck blood, to regenerate and to turn into a bat-looking creature, what name should I give it ?
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