The Lost - Sorcery?

[Tim Nutting]

>So they are disciples of a god, are changed from humans into unnatural
>creatures, are perverted by sorcery, use magic of night and darkness,
>but are unable to cast elven magics, and live for at least "hundreds of
>years"
>
>They don't sound like standard wizards to me.
>Could they instruct others in their ways? (The Raven (in the Shadow
>World) seemed to be aided in his possession of Warlord Tusilov by the
>mage Clemedh in Cerilia.)
>
>Anybody done any work on this?


Some, a while back, but my drive with most of my work crashed and the best
recovery price I could find was 1k plus... big sigh.

I created a variant of the Al-Qadim Ghul Lord kit and it was posted on the
Netbook (darkstar's) the last time I checked. (Look for Sorcerers)

As far as being unnatural, well, any being of that time to receive the gift
of divinity such as a blooded noble of Cerilia receives would have been
considered unnatural. I use them as examples of the first blooded scions,
with very powerful lines (all True, all 200+ points) and some very strong
powers. Most of the lost would also be peoples of the tribes that populated
Cerilia, though a few might be Adurians.
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[Tim Nutting]

[Stephen White]

After my questions regarding the lost, and the answers I have received,
has anybody looked at a Sorcery character class for them?

Apart from the Raven (BE), who if truly one of The Lost seems to have
"possessed" a blooded character and so is entitled to true magic, are
they wizards?

To quote from the BoP (p121): "Eventually, Azrai caused the gem to fall
into the hands of a proud, young chieftain called Atar. With its power,
Azrai began one of the most sinister of his works before the War of
Shadow: the perversion of humans to the power of sorcery. Atar was the
first of Azrai's unnatural creatures, the disciples (of?) the evil god
who were later known as the lost. Azrai taught them to wield the powers
of night and darkness, knowing that elven magics were unsuitable for
humans."

(I can't help thinking of a similarity to the sorcerers in David
Edding's Belgariad, who studied under a god.)

So they are disciples of a god, are changed from humans into unnatural
creatures, are perverted by sorcery, use magic of night and darkness,
but are unable to cast elven magics, and live for at least "hundreds of
years"

They don't sound like standard wizards to me.
Could they instruct others in their ways? (The Raven (in the Shadow
World) seemed to be aided in his possession of Warlord Tusilov by the
mage Clemedh in Cerilia.)

Anybody done any work on this?

Yours,

Stephen.
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[Cobos]

At 10:29 22.07.99 +0100, you wrote:
>
>After my questions regarding the lost, and the answers I have received,
>has anybody looked at a Sorcery character class for them?
>
>Apart from the Raven (BE), who if truly one of The Lost seems to have
>"possessed" a blooded character and so is entitled to true magic, are
>they wizards?
>
>To quote from the BoP (p121): "Eventually, Azrai caused the gem to fall
>into the hands of a proud, young chieftain called Atar. With its power,
>Azrai began one of the most sinister of his works before the War of
>Shadow: the perversion of humans to the power of sorcery. Atar was the
>first of Azrai's unnatural creatures, the disciples (of?) the evil god
>who were later known as the lost. Azrai taught them to wield the powers
>of night and darkness, knowing that elven magics were unsuitable for
>humans."
>
>(I can't help thinking of a similarity to the sorcerers in David
>Edding's Belgariad, who studied under a god.)
>
>So they are disciples of a god, are changed from humans into unnatural
>creatures, are perverted by sorcery, use magic of night and darkness,
>but are unable to cast elven magics, and live for at least "hundreds of
>years"
>
>They don't sound like standard wizards to me.
>Could they instruct others in their ways? (The Raven (in the Shadow
>World) seemed to be aided in his possession of Warlord Tusilov by the
>mage Clemedh in Cerilia.)
>
>Anybody done any work on this?
>
>Yours,
>
> Stephen.
>
Not really but I would just like to add that El-sheigul the mysterious
leader for the Black Spear Tribes in the Zhainge Valley in Khinasi is also
rumoured to be one of the Lost ones.. From that description I've also
speculated that the Lost would be some sort of really nasty type of Lich ??
But this is just me... also El-Sheigul can't leave the Shadow World that
much somehow and for some reason...

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[Olesens]

> They don't sound like standard wizards to me.
> Could they instruct others in their ways? (The Raven (in the Shadow
> World) seemed to be aided in his possession of Warlord Tusilov by the
> mage Clemedh in Cerilia.)
>
> Anybody done any work on this?

I was thinking about a Shadow Mage class for Birthright but I don't have the
enthusiasm to write it up. Basically, they don't use the meghable as a source
of power but instead use the Evaneresence, drawing on tiny amount of (IMO) the
dense magical power of the barrier (which IMO is formed by the meghable of both
worlds getting sucked into the gap by a sort of magical gravity that exsists
between two close planes). The power of the magic is so strong, however, that
it tends to eat at its controller. Add in the Shadow World's taint on it's
half of the Evaneresence and you get a really corrupting bent. Of course,
Shadow Mages are far more powerful than standard mages (excepting the
corrupting downside). IMO, Siebharrien learned a bit of Shadow Magic (Which
I'd say had a diffrent name before the Shadow World and the Lost) but didn't
know enough so that when he released it in Sideath it kept going (killing
everyone instead of just the Gorgon's guys) and ate up all the Evanerecense in
Sideath, resulting in the overlap in worlds.

I'd write up the class but it would require lots of new spells to make it look
nice.
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[John G Williams]

On Thu, 22 Jul 1999, Stephen White wrote:
>
> After my questions regarding the lost, and the answers I have received,
> has anybody looked at a Sorcery character class for them?
>
> Apart from the Raven (BE), who if truly one of The Lost seems to have
> "possessed" a blooded character and so is entitled to true magic, are
> they wizards?

I believe so. Let's go down to the next section and I'll get into my
opinion on the Lost.

> To quote from the BoP (p121): "Eventually, Azrai caused the gem to fall
> into the hands of a proud, young chieftain called Atar. With its power,
> Azrai began one of the most sinister of his works before the War of
> Shadow: the perversion of humans to the power of sorcery. Atar was the
> first of Azrai's unnatural creatures, the disciples (of?) the evil god
> who were later known as the lost. Azrai taught them to wield the powers
> of night and darkness, knowing that elven magics were unsuitable for
> humans."
>
> So they are disciples of a god, are changed from humans into unnatural
> creatures, are perverted by sorcery, use magic of night and darkness,
> but are unable to cast elven magics, and live for at least "hundreds of
> years"
>
> They don't sound like standard wizards to me.

I think they are wizards, although possibly specialists (Necromancy, most
likely--the "powers of night and darkness" are an appropriate fluff
description of the Necromantic sphere).

Think about the description of the Lost as "unnatural creatures." That
sounds similar to the Awnsheghlien, doesn't it? My theory is that the
Lost were the first Awnsheghlien, corrupted not just by Azrai's sorcery
but by the very essence of the god himself, and as such transformed into
monsters, just as the champions of Azrai were. The Lost were simply
exposed to godly energy in a more controlled form, allowing Azrai to
grant them the shapes and abilities he chose for them.

I imagine the Lost as being immensely powerful, monstrous beings, at least
in their original (transformed) states, privy to the full powers of the
blood that would later be haphazardly granted to the scions of Cerilia
with the death of the gods. However, this raises the question of what
became of the Lost in the destruction of Deismaar. After all, you'd
think that the chosen disciples of the Shadow would be closer to the
ideals of Azrai than Belinik or Kriesha, right? So why didn't they
become gods?

Here's a theory: Suppose the power Azrai infused into the Lost became
such an integral part of their beings that it actually connected them to
him, making them extensions of his physical form in a very real way.
This explains why he'd want to do it; in effect, they were his avatars,
allowing him to operate in multiple areas at once while still retaining
the free will necessary to adapt to a given situation. When Azrai
himself was killed, the Lost were so strongly connected to him that they
died too.

From a friend's reading of Planescape, he informs me that the Shadow World
is actually the border ethereal of Cerilia, infused with the remnants of
Azrai after his destruction. (Azrai must've been pretty dang big; there's
bits of him all over the place!) If the Lost were very much a part of
Azrai, they could have been discorporated and drawn to the Shadow World
along with their master. This would explain why el-Sheighul is "just" a
lich, and not a malformed monster, if he's one of the Lost: He has lost
his original body, but has found a way to manifest on Aebrynis as an
undead, if only for a limited time. Same goes for The Raven, who has to
possess a human body in order to remain in the material world.

In particular, this would also go a long way towards explaining The
Raven's fear of/interest in the Shadow World; he's been imprisoned there
before by the loss of his body, and the new one is a makeshift
replacement at best. But if that's really part of Azrai floating out
there in the border ethereal, then maybe he could make himself a new body
out of it--if he could find a way to gather enough of it together and
separate it from the mass. A fully empowered Raven would be an even
greater threat to Cerilia, especially since, without the fear of
banishment to the Shadow World, the kid gloves would be off, so to
speak.

As far as the whole "elven magic was unsuitable" thing, I tend to think
that's mostly a question of semantics. After all, elves had war magic
just as humans did, but before the humans came, I'd wager a lot of their
magic was utilitarian in its nature, along the order of Tenser's floating
disc and so forth. Elves use magic like modern day humans use technology,
as I see it, and Azrai knew that teaching his disciples to use magic to
create street lights wouldn't cut the mustard as far as world-conquering
goes. No, his boys had to be lean, mean, killing machines; no wimpy
unseen servant for them when there's a magic missile to be had. :) It's
also likely that animating the dead, and the necromantic sphere in
general, was largely unknown to the elves, simply because that sort of
disruption of the natural cycle would be anathema to their culture.
Zombies, from the elven perspective, would be double-plus ungood.

> Could they instruct others in their ways? (The Raven (in the Shadow
> World) seemed to be aided in his possession of Warlord Tusilov by the
> mage Clemedh in Cerilia.)

I would believe so. In fact, The Magian has already made steps in that
direction, by creating a spell which infuses a subject with the essence of
Azrai, thus creating an Awnshegh. Such a person could use true magic, and
a further refinement of the spell--or another step in the process--could
allow the caster to control the transformation, creating a wholly new
creature to his specifications, just as Azrai did. If The Raven could
take that a step further by imbuing the target with a fraction of his
*own* power, and make the subject an extension of himself, he'd be truly
frightening. That might require that he acquire a new, permanent body
first, however.

As to Clemedh, I've got no idea how he fits into this, unless he was a
servant of The Raven's, who sought to free his master, like the wacko guy
you always see in fantasy novels and movies who's trying to bring the
Nameless One (tm) back from the great beyond, and invariably winds up
getting munched for his trouble. Heck of a pension plan these mad
cultists have; kinda makes you wonder if they at least get major medical.

> Anybody done any work on this?

I have no comment at this time; some of my players read this list. :)
As you can see, though, I've put some thought to this, although some of
my conclusions may be flawed as I don't have all the source material.

> Yours,
>
> Stephen.

Later,

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[Pieter Sleijpen]

Stephen White wrote:
>
> After my questions regarding the lost, and the answers I have received,
> has anybody looked at a Sorcery character class for them?
>
> Apart from the Raven (BE), who if truly one of The Lost seems to have
> "possessed" a blooded character and so is entitled to true magic, are
> they wizards?
>
> To quote from the BoP (p121): "Eventually, Azrai caused the gem to fall
> into the hands of a proud, young chieftain called Atar. With its power,
> Azrai began one of the most sinister of his works before the War of
> Shadow: the perversion of humans to the power of sorcery. Atar was the
> first of Azrai's unnatural creatures, the disciples (of?) the evil god
> who were later known as the lost. Azrai taught them to wield the powers
> of night and darkness, knowing that elven magics were unsuitable for
> humans."
>
> (I can't help thinking of a similarity to the sorcerers in David
> Edding's Belgariad, who studied under a god.)
>
> So they are disciples of a god, are changed from humans into unnatural
> creatures, are perverted by sorcery, use magic of night and darkness,
> but are unable to cast elven magics, and live for at least "hundreds of
> years"
>
> They don't sound like standard wizards to me.
> Could they instruct others in their ways? (The Raven (in the Shadow
> World) seemed to be aided in his possession of Warlord Tusilov by the
> mage Clemedh in Cerilia.)
>
> Anybody done any work on this?
>

If I remember correctly El-Sheighul is also one of the lost and I have
depicted him as a shadow wizard as per the specialist from the PO's. He
can teach people a certain type of magic, namely the Al-Qadim shair -
Ghul master. Channeling the dark energies of the Shadow World in this
fashion seems to work very well the few times the PC's met them. They
are just magicians with the power to cast 'shadow' and 'necromantic'
magic. No other schools are allowed.To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com
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