Swgrclan

I believe instead of stubbornly putting up an argument, I will confide in the collective opinion that the lore is too difficult to pinpoint to one purpose. I will be closing this as "denied" as I take a better approach and rewrite it.

Explained that one to you on another medium.

The intention of the lore was to alternatively explain why holy magic hurts dark beings instead of the inconsistent explanation of because they're "tainted". That idea worked before (Anthos era and prior), when undead/Dark beings were somewhat said to be tainted, but now it doesn't really make sense and doesn't apply to all forms of creatures that holy magic is capable of harming. As it stands, holy magic hurts dark beings just because, and this explains from a half-philosophical standpoint that it harms them because Aenguls made magic to combat mortals turning into something they are inherently not supposed to be. Nothing is really ignored with this work in mind. It still applies to deities that don't give it a **** about being holy, it doesn't disregard deity magic that fights other dieties because that type of magic doesn't exist right now (still wouldn't conflict with this lore), it doesn't ignore the dark deities because it explains why they're dark (primarily Iblees and Asura, not many others to work with), it completely regards Aeriel's failed healing attempts (trying to cure dark/corrupted immaterial beings with light/immaterial magic is a contradiction), it only alternatively explains the original writing so its not inconsistent with current lore, nor does it ignore taint cleaning abilities. A majority of the lore is based on explaining humanity and how it changes when a mortal becomes immaterial as to properly portray what is objectively correct for mortals to be like in the universe.

[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BtoCvvzaLw ] “Men are craven, base creatures. Darkness is all they have ever known, and when presented with the means to shed their primordial yoke, they seek it, insatiably. For when our Lord, God forged them from His heart, they inherited the burdens of His emotional strain; the suffering of his sacrificial scars; the fleeting weight of His passion. But dark is anchored and corporeal. So many men chase after the resplendence of Light, but do not realize the boundless joy they gain through Light’s acclamation stems from the very shadows it casts. They say those known as the Old Lords accused the Gods of cursing Men with Inhumanity; for by scourging the darkness which life stems from, the Gods planted the seeds that would push Men to become something they are not. Something… immaterial. The Gods fear the dark within Men; these are the roots of our world. By abandoning what makes us mortal, our primeval design shall surge against us, and deny us the means to become deified.” Inhumanity and Immaterialism; The Roots of Our World “Life is blessed; so fleeting and short, but beautiful in its entirety. Some Men are driven by love and purpose to define their lives. Others seek peace and contentment for themselves, and their ken. Men bound by the rot are driven by hunger and madness, for life has yet to release them from its dark coils. If one to to ask truly Immaterial Men what drives them, they shall present you a farce; for they are hollow, empty. They fabricate the path of Gods to walk, but it is not their road to follow.” In the beginning of all things, two spectrums were born in this universe to ensure it an equilibrium; Light, and Dark. With half of His Soul, the Creator conceived the Primeval Ethereal; seedlings of Light comprised of his halved spirit’s countless fragments. With half of His Heart, the Creator conceived the Primeval Corporeal; the essences of Dark, too, made up of many such fragmentations. From the very beginning, the fate of these vastly differential souls were charted -- the Primeval Ethereal were to become the Gods, the Aengudaemons, and all formless spawn which ushered from them. The Primeval Corporeal were to become Men, the Mortal Descendants, and all material life beside them. The one God of Gods did not comprehend that Men would bow to their shapeless brothers, for in this world where both Dark and Light must coexist, one force cannot rule the other. It was the law of Creation, and thus ingrained into the very fabrics of this cosmos. But soon did the Aengudaemons seek to ensure their control over Men after the awakening of their material brothers. An understanding of equality was not recognized by the Gods, but rather a deep, gnawing fear, for through the ages in ancient time, before the corporeal world was even shaped, the Gods fought viciously against what they perceived as a cataclysmic, destructive darkness. The Void and its Horrors threatened to eradicate the luminescence of the Sun - the doorway which the Great Father stepped out from, and that which keeps the twisting Void at bay. Thus, Gods fear Men like they do their ancient enemy. Dark is perceived as the absence of Light to them; that without Light occupying every aspect of this universe, all will unravel and be presented to the Archhorrors beyond for gluttonous devouring-- and this is true indeed, for with no Light, Creation would lie besieged by the very aspects of chaos that it stands to defy. A realm of darkness would be a realm of Old Dark; a darkness that predates the darkness of Men, far more vile than anything that has ever existed in this cosm. Inhumanity There is a term that mortals use to describe what defines them; though the word remains the same, the meaning has changed overtime. Humanity; that is what Men are said to contain within them, and it is what they say is lost through acts of barbarism and terrible, ill nature. Humanity to mortals of this concurrent age is the acknowledgement of mercy, the will to do what is good and right, and to abstain from the evils so easily manifested within the hearts of living Men. In the old ages, humanity as a trait was described as something much more base and reflective to all those who carried the dark fragments of God within them. Humanity is darkness; it is the warmth that occupies the living, the beat of their material hearts, the breaths that escape their lungs. It is their greatest joys and their deepest sorrows. It is their unquenchable rage and their search for vengeance. It is the assurance of death one day, and the contentment found in the moment. It is birth and demise. It is the so-very-real flesh that is wrapped around Men, forcing them to become anchored to an earth that does not heed the commands of ethereal sons. To be humane is to be mortal; and when that is sacrificed, mortals lose their mortality. This has always been the way of things, embedded in every aspect of mortal enterprise, and especially Man’s knack for seeking an escape for what makes them material. In primeval ages, entities known as the “undying”, or the living dead, were the first known mortal beings that had either willingly sacrificed their humanity, or were robbed of it. With undeath, they say, the spirits of descendants are brought far higher than they ever could be in life; higher to the light of the sun, which ever beams the incandescence of the Gods. Though the sun’s rays scorn their kind, the countless species of undead that have come to rise through the eras are more closer to the heavens than any clergyman or holy warrior, and the dire reality is that for this to occur is existentially erroneous. All mortals that transcend to forms greater than what they were experience a “warping” of the soul; the natural darkness within them that defines them as material and perishable is forced to adapt and prolong its own existence, and through this feat a deep, twisted corruption festers. The humanity within undead has been known to “go wild”; that those among their unholy ranks succumb to the most base, vile evils which Men are capable of commit, riddled with the most grotesque obsessions and needs to sustain their “greater” existences. This is because that, by becoming something that defies the natural designs of their souls, this same design becomes confused and malformed and wretched, and is thrown off-balance. Through transcension, the unique psychological aspects of Men are heightened tenfold and thus induces a madness that does not subside. This is because the corporealism that still anchors them is desperate to keep the soul clinging to its natural order; so that some semblance of mortality is retained so a most foul imbalance does not occur. Alas, this existential correction only proves to produce monsters. In the later ages, there are beings that were born of Men that were so abstinent of their material makeup that they were absolved of these twisted aspects, such as Archons, the Gods-blessed Keepers and Itheral, the Wights and all of their spectral ilk. In the place of madness and debauchery and serpentine hunger is deep, harrowing emptiness; the lack of their humanity as the darkness of their souls is distorted to a grayness - an improper limbo between Light and Dark. Or, perhaps better - materialism and immaterialism. The very same emptiness is felt in all forms of undead souls, for they have taken their first step toward mistakenly shedding the warm flesh that made them whole. To be inhumane is to lose one’s sense of mortality. The darkness within Men blackens so deep that it becomes Abyssal and stagnant and foul, throwing their emotions up into a nexus of inner-cataclysmic havoc, and lacking of the perishable nature so true to mortal existence. Hunger and fury and madness is all the demi-immaterial know, and for those far closer to immaterialism, the wrenching hollowness within their bosoms is deepened infinitely as they lose the chaotic emotional drive to consume and feel whole again. But the souls that have truly reached a point of fleshlessness, abandoned of their bones and sinew and blood, are as empty as the inhumanity-riddled Gods themselves. Immaterialism “We are… corporeal. That is what defines we Men. Are we even belonging to the earth we stand upon, if we abandon the darkness that makes us material? That makes us real, and alive? The Gods were fated to be ethereal, immaterial… and when they came down to our sacrosanct plane to take shape, all they wrought was madness and mistakes. The nature of their inner-Light is betrayed as they are forced to conform to the boundaries of our realm of darkness, corrupted. The very same chaos transpires when we defy the natural design of our shadowbound souls, and seek to mimic those of the Light-laden heavens, and be free.” It is not natural for mortals to become what is known as “Immaterial”. Through undeath, the first form of distorted Immaterialism was conceived, for the undead lacked the limitations of the living. Those that followed and evolved these methods only deepened the corruptive nature of Immaterial more and more until they became something other than Men; empty, ethereal husks, riddled with cosmic power, but abandoned of what truly made them mortal. The Gods fear the darkness within Men because they knew that, through achieving Immaterialism, that their darkbound souls would go wild, and that not a mimicry of Godhood would be conceived, but monsters would. That is exactly what transpired. That is why Gods known as Aenguls, who bore the most fear among them all, sought to fabricate deific powers designed to destroy those that escape the limitations of their mortality. But their persecution is flawed, for their righteous ilk have conceived beings of the very same stock as the Dark-crazed spirits they oppose. Though holy magic scorns the Dark and the Immaterial, they do not scorn those that have become so drenched in the light of Aengudaemons that they, themselves, become Immaterial. The error of their virtuous crusades lie right before their eyes, yet the Gods are blind to them. There are those who prove that souls of one spectrum may, by some means, become apart of the other. The Old Gods, who in yore fell from the heavens as Daemons to become what they are now, sacrificed all that bound them to the Light in order to commune with the mortal world. In the end, they became as Dark as any Man that would come to walk the earth. Synopsis Humanity is the center from which all mortal passion, emotion and drive originates from. Inhumanity is the utter lack of all of these things. Mortals have humanity, Gods have inhumanity. When a mortal becomes “immaterial”, they are corrupted by the onset of inhumanity, and thus their natural humanity goes wild, causing beings like undead species to act in emotional extremities or to bear vile hungers for flesh or Lifeforce. Materialism is apart of the universal aspect of Dark. It is what enables things like mortals and their world to be corporeal and “real”. When materialism is abandoned for immaterialism, a mortal being becomes less mortal and more, as aforementioned, inhumane and ethereal. Inhumanity is hand-in-hand with immaterialism, as both are the true designs of Light and the Gods. When either side tries to become the other, their souls are corrupted, but there are few cases of some Gods in the ancient ages of the mortal world having descended to become Dark, or material, beings. Holy magic does not harm Dark entities such as undead because they are “tainted”, but because they embody a form of corrupted immaterialism. Holy magic is tailored by each individual God that grants them in a manner to harms only Dark immaterialism, which involves the entire spectrum of undeath. Voidal and Holy immaterialism are abstinent of these weaknesses. Tl;dr if you have flesh and try to live without flesh, that’s not good because that’s not what your soul is supposed to handle, and the people who exist without flesh (gods) fear the idea of people with flesh equating them in power so they created forms of magic to harm them

I explained to Smawton some time ago that the creation of Muyakelgs with ancestral spirits is practically equivalent to the creation of Liches, in that they are both mortal souls drawn down to inhabit a vessel. If holy magic harms Liches under this context, would it not do the same for Muyakelgs? For all intents and purposes, the magic used to raise whichever creature is not relevant, only the product is. The fact of the matter is that Muyakelgs are essentially undead. I must have overlooked the latter details then, so I apologize for that discrepancy.

The lack of these weaknesses in either types was an erreonous oversight, and considering how back Muyakelg lore was posted, in a time when it wouldn't have been grouped into the spook-weakness-group that it would've been now, I'm not surprised that such a mistake has been ingrained here. These are creatures made from a Dark Art, made from a spiritual entity and put into a husk of misshapen flesh and bones. "Born from malice, hate, and disgust, the creature rose, a mass of sinew bone and flesh that spawned forth plague and virulence from the many sores that covered its body. It outstretched a hand, maggots and locusts emerging forth in a blood-hungry swarm of biting insects." It even clearly outlines how "unholy" these creatures are.

Logically, these should be harmed by gold and/or Aengulic magic as well (Clerics, Paladins, etcetera).

Originally Jevex was determined as the best Spirit to have been the creator of their ritual purely based on their purpose and function. I suppose, for whatever Spirit conceived the idea of Muyakelgs, a similar feat was done for Sorvians.

The creation rituals are similar in principle, but not the product.

I would think the alternative or fringe followers of Tahariae would be more inclined to making Sorvians for their clan, but considering that Sorvians are not exactly undead and exist as tools, I don't believe he would outright reject them. Especially if they can become vessels for his faith.

Soul Puppetry has been added to the list.

I thought of the most life-relevant magics that are available to players, which consist of magics that dabble in Lifeforce (Necromancy) or parts of the body that are very ingrained (blood with Blood Magic), as well as magics that focus on healing (all Aengulic types, really -- which includes the Keepers you mentioned as "Paladinism"). Frost Witches don't focus on life, and monk magic isn't available to anyone now. May you provide logic as to why Soul Puppetry would be included?

I wrote this after a discussion with an LM regarding how dull it must be to play a character that's incapable of developing, which is pretty core to the interest of playing a character in the first place. It also removes the necessity of sacrificing an actual player character for it. Since you're one of the few who played the prior iteration, you'll only have to follow the new changes and can keep whatever history your Sorvian has had. I literally typed "black speech translator" in Google and used the first result, so I didn't use LoTC's Orcish BS variation for the ritual prayer. If this is erroneous, I can easily have it amended.

The Sorvians [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V217OrusJJw ] “I have seen the end of days; And years from now, men will say, ‘Here began the fall of the self’.” A time ago, my venerable lord, who bore little to his name, crossed a sea of sand with we few loyal mean and sought to invade a land ruled by Orcs said to bear the blood of giants. Many of their kind were slain, and from the precipices of their lairs of scorched earth, a deep secret was stolen. When my lord the king returned, the Primeval Golems materialized, and the foundations of his sovereign nation were thus risen with their conception. The faceless Golems, who are said to be men shaped with the bones of beasts and the skulls of passed mortals, rose as my lord’s military subjects. We, the victorious veterans of that savage war against the half-giants, were granted mantles of commandership so that the Golems may have leaders to follow upon the battlefield. Our neighbors, long to have snaked us and worked the venerable lord’s humbleness against him, were soon decimated under the might of these creatures. But in due time the half-giants returned to bring ruin to the prosperity their very creation, stolen so viciously, brought to us. I cannot remember how long the war lasted… but I do recall the undoing it caused. There were no victories for either sides, for our Primeval defenders fought against the half-giants so unrelentingly that it was the wear and tear of constant warfare that ensued the crumbling of civilization around us, not the conquering of Krug’s scorned bastards. The Golems… have wills of steel. They could not find it within themselves… to surrender to the misdeeds of our enemies. I have witnessed one among them nearly hacked to pieces, yet swung its blade with wild abandon and disregard for suffering and selfish weaknesses brought by mortal wounds. These beings fought for the mission of our lord without question, and in some way he was deified, until he was slain in combat by the king of those half-giant invaders. It was as though a cult was given an affirmation that their fabricated god never existed. They lost the will to fight, and those that were not broken in the resulting slaughter scattered across this world. I see them, sometimes… with their macabre facelessness obscured by masks riddled with all sorts of messages and designs. Their kind exist to serve, for without a beacon to kneel to, they have nothing. What They Are “Corpsed beasts, twisted into men… that was the nature of the half-giant’s magics. We took their Creator-mimicking tools from them and used them to achieve something greater than toying with the nascent nature of marrow and blood.” Once known as “Primeval Golems” due to the similar design of their creation to traditional Golems of the Dwed, Sorvians are creatures born from artificial bodies pieced together with the flesh, blood and bones of beasts such as wolves and elk and crowned with the skull of a truly deceased mortal. In the stolen scriptures of the half-giants, they claim the essence of the soul dwells the darkest coagulations of blood in the veins, and thus through painting the body with fresh blood, the spiritual remnants of the victimized beast’s soul regather within the vessel and incite both a reawakening and a reformation of their livelihood. The origins of the Golems was, too, mentioned in the texts of the half-giants, said to be a gift of a spirit who deified the willpower of men and their ability to draw it from even the basest of ideological fabrications. This spirit, nameless to the Orcish half-giants, taught them how to bind the bones and flesh of their bestial prey together and forge them into men once adorned with the skull of an ancestor; and when the human lord came and stole their power, the very same Golems were raised to combat the half-giants and the kingdom’s enemies, but designed in a manner much more civilized and fitting to knighthood. Even if Sorvians are the reassorted flesh, blood and soul essence of mindless beasts, they are reformed in a manner that brings them closer to the state of mortality, and thus by binding with certain concepts like religious cults or doctrine-following camaraderies, they adorn their respective aesthetic aspects. A skull-masked Sorvian assassin. It is the absolute and inescapable nature of a Sorvian to seek mortal concepts to serve, and in most cases they are not the ones who choose to do so; it is others who recognize their capabilities and thus adopt them into their creeds. Sparse tales of the Primeval Golems say that they carry no personality of their own, and by having a soul no closer to that of a man’s as much as they did in bestial life, are perpetually stuck in a status lesser or below mortal men. Yet, through their rebirth, the souls of mere animals they bear give off flashes of brilliance earned by experience and comprehension of all things they come to witness through existing as Sorvians -- and thus, like how a child grows into its own person, the same transpires for the oldest of the Golems. The craving to serve is always constant and never-ending, but something almost mortal culminates within them… a timeless contentedness, a wistful wonder in the world, and a deep, dark yearning to be apart of something greater. Because they are shaped from the bones and flesh of animals, it is impossible to fabricate the proper image of a mortal man; the repositioning and adjustment of flesh and bone, and then after rebirth, cartilage and connective tissue bids the visage of strange, almost crippled-looking specimens that, too, bear no face that defines them. This casts them into the “uncanny valley” of strange things to behold, for to have flesh wrapped around a mortal skull, yet without the features of a mortal descendant, may seem very macabre. The distorted appearance of an unmasked Sorvian. Yet despite the contortions of their form and the awkward formations of their flesh, the Sorvians are as capable warriors and adherents of beliefs they come to adopt as any mortal man. Better than the standard soldier and scholar, perhaps, for not only is their dedication unwavering, but there is a bizarre chronological “pause” set upon their corporeal coil that seems to enhance their martial capacity and ability to survive in the harshest of circumstances. The timelessness which their bodies are afflicted with is something which has its degrees of advantages and disadvantages. Mortals are defined by duration, but when put into a limbo, they simply cannot perish - to be timeless is to never have duration, by definition. So Sorvians are not foul, corrupted undead; they are merely beyond the passage of time and are not subject to its weathering. It is said of ancient Truthbearers, a lost and very old clan of the Golems, that their visages were so contorted and scarred and battle-torn because of the nature of their ideology, not because of how much time their flesh weathered. Countless blades crossed their being to no detriment to them only to carve skin which cannot change except by force, and thus by fighting these battles, the Truthbearers were lined with old wounds that eventually sealed on their own. Corporeal deter is very unorthodox within Sorvians; time or decay or illness may not be able wear them down, but direct damage does. That is why so many of them look much like some old-age Orcish brute- the Truthbearers led so many battles against their God-fearing Human foes that the strikes upon them marked them like chalk-boards. The Sorvian torturer of a Daemonic following. As a result, the wounds mortals may suffer are not suffered by Sorvians. While, in battle, their limboed coils wouldn’t be able to be hacked apart, the painful removal of extremities as bad as an arm would not incite bloodflow, nor infection, nor decay. It is the unique ability of Sorvians to, if they’re able to, collect their severed pieces and seek isolation so that, after settling torn flesh and bone and sinew in place, it may seal back upon them. This process is extremely painful for them, as is the process of being dismembered, but it keeps them together all the same. Though they are all intended to exist as “one and the same” - lacking individuality - it is the way that the Primeval Golems are shaped, and what they are shaped with, along with the desired aesthetics of their creator, that determines what they can look like. A Druidic creator of Sorvians may tend to slay elk so that they may reshape them into horned, lithe variations of the Golems, or a Shamanistic creator may reshape desert savage wolves of a more hunched, bulky frame, lined with patches of fur. Whatever beast is killed and then used in the ritual, it seems as though they are have the same capacity of physical strength and endurance; precisely the right amount, one might say. The Sorvian warrior of a savage Orcish Spirit cult. That being said, it seems as though there is a limitation to strength that all Sorvians must struggle with. At maximum, they are capable of wearing lighter platemail and longswords, though by some law bound to their form they cannot wield greater weapons such as greatswords or suits of plate armor; preventing them from matching beings such as Darkstalkers of Xannic Keepers in terms of show of might, but perhaps not in show of skill. To Create The Faceless In order to achieve the creation of a Sorvian, one must first be capable of acting as what is known as a “Life Catalyst”. A Life Catalyst is a mortal being that is at least average in skill [T3] of few specific magics that have the nature of tampering with the flow of life. Magics that qualify a practitioner as a Life Catalyst are of the following: Druidism Ascendedism Clericism Paladinism Necromancy Blood Magic Mysticism Soul Puppetry It is through being a Life Catalyst that unseen threads seem to attach to the fingers of the ritualist and, through ethereal means, tie the flesh and bones and blood of beasts together and reinvigorate their soul essences. The second aspect of Sorvian creation is what exactly is needed to piece them together. The Shamanistic half-giants, who were deeply meticulous in their mystical ways, devoted an entire tome just to the creation of the Primeval Golems alone. Yet scholars of the lost kingdom that stole this power claim that the entire book is a philosophical farce, and that such deep understanding and measurement was not exactly necessary. Thus, the ingredients that must be gathered for the ritual are of the following: - The flesh and bones of any “medium-sized” animal; elk, large wolves, cattle, etcetera. In other words, the equivalent amount of animal bones and skin needed to reshape into a semi-accurate mortal design. - The blood of the same beast slain for the first ingredient. The half-giants were wise in claiming that the blood contains the essence of the soul, for when the re-assembled flesh and bones of a creature is bathed in their blood, it activates something deep within their unmoving fragments of decay. Through being a Life Catalyst, Lifeforce is drawn back into the corpse, and through the unknown designs of the ritual, chronological pause ensues to assure there is never a deeper influence capable of distorting the Golem. - The skull of a mortal. The half-giants claimed this is what brought Sorvians so close to humane image, and grant them their sentience through rebirth from bestial life. Any skull will do, though it must be the skull of a long-dead man (permanently killed). - The ground-up hide of a snake. In old times, among more primitive tribes, men were likened to snakes because of their self-destructive nature. It seems whatever spirit that made this ritual law in the world agreed with this, for the flesh of serpents must be ground into a fine dust before being dusted upon the skull of the fabricated body. - A copy of the half-giant’s ritual-inducing prayers, written upon the flayed hide of a mortal man. Only those who know the ritual know the scripture of the half-giants. In order to initiate the ritual, the Life Catalyst sew all the flesh and bones together in the shape of a man; breaking some of the bones to adjust them, if need be. Then, the fresh blood of the same beast slain for the skin and bones must be washed over the body. The mortal skull must be dusted with the serpent dust. Then, the prayer of the half-giants must be uttered in reverence: “Beaukav ukewn inavo bur; Gijak carriun shal avhe ukoul, awaken; Spiriav riuken up from mindleukukneukuk; Willpowas ro men, avaken.” [ Beast sewn into Man, wretchedness; Blood carried in the soul, awaken; Spirit risen up from mindlessness; Willpower of Men, taken. ] The corpse will then be blessed with the rapid renewal of life, the chronological pause unique to Sorvians, and a newfound sentience cursed with the deep yearning to serve the concepts of men - however twisted they may be. One’s ability to create Sorvians does not require an MA, but must be tracked by the MT. Their Likenesses The advantages and disadvantages of Sorvians will be listed in a more summarized manner here. Guidelines are also included. Advantages *Sorvians are capable of being the perfect soldier; while they can feel pain, their capacity to tolerate is higher even to the degrees of dismemberment, and to lose extremities such as limbs fails to incite death-bringing afflictions such as shock or blood loss. At that point, pain and the general lack of limbs becomes the greatest deterrent. *Sorvians are highly resilient to the elements and the use of clandestine utilities such as poisons. As Sorvian bodies are timeless, temporal forces such as the elements have difficulty ensuing substantial degradation to their bodies, such as freezing whether inciting frostbite or flame marking them with extreme, debilitating burns. Poisons do not work because there is not a bloodflow to lead poisons to the heart. *Sorvians are unrelenting in what they believe and are incapable in faltering in this regard, much like machines and their directives. A Sorvian Canonist Priest can preach to the masses, word by word, for days upon days and with no deterrent or tire; for their will to serve their aligned way cannot be broken. This coincides with the will of soldiers as well. *Sorvians bear a greater supernatural presence within their souls known as Higher-Neutrality. It prevents their timeless bodies and limboed souls from being “corrupted”, and therefore subject to the powers of Aengudaemons, as Sorvians are just as capable of serving Orders aligned with Gods as they are darker forces. *Their tolerance for physical duress is high, much like their threshold for physical pain. These two bodily aspects go hand in hand, as their timelessness prevents their muscles from suffering from exhaustion that many mortals eventually feel while traveling or upon the battlefield. Disadvantages *Sorvians are absent of the “self”. They become “unbiased”, and have difficulty forming a new personality without being dependant on the ideologies they crave to serve. *As timeless beings, Sorvians lose a majority of usual mortal functions that correlate to the basic organic design of their bodies. They can no longer “enjoy” life, reproduce, or confide in mortal virtues until many years later, perhaps up to a century of existence. They become a blank slate, a machine, an agent, and are no longer in need of these basic mortal aspects. *While they are resistant to natural temporal forces, Sorvians do not react well at all to arcane-based ones. They react almost viciously to powers summoned from the Void, because powers summon from the Void do not adhere to the passage of time, much like Sorvians, meaning these powers and the Sorvians are put on the same “existential level”. This disparages their corporeal form in ways comparable to an undead reacting to gold or holy magic; Voidal fire easily catches upon their unchanging flesh, Voidal ice incites almost immediate frostbite, and Voidal arcane power’s kinetic forces are enough to tear them apart. *They must always depend on an ideology to follow, because if they are not apart of one, Sorvians are reduced to bizarre nomadic entities where they cannot fight, speak or bring themselves to do something for the sake of something else unless it involves them becoming aligned with an ideology. In this same fact, they are unbiased in this strange astray state, and do not have preferences toward either dark or light or good or evil ideologies. The design of them does not matter; it is the fact they are there and may be served that does. *Sorvians bear lesser souls than men, and thus are incapable of utilizing magical powers. Hypothetically, if they were capable of it, they would end up damaging themselves as their chronological stalling reacts negatively to the presence of Voidal magic in particular. *Because all Sorvians are locked into the same physical profile, their strength is limited in a way their endurance and pain profiles are not. While they are capable of being strong - as strong as a lithe soldier, at most - they are not strong enough to heft heavy armor and greater weaponry, especially not all at the same time. The most a Sorvian can wield is a heavy longsword or a two-handed battle axe or a fighting staff, and leather armor or plate mail, but never heavier weapons such as greatswords or protections such as plate suitsl or higher. Guidelines *Because Sorvians are no longer made from mortals due to lore changes, they are now applied through CAs after a person is selected OOC to play one and after the necessary steps are taken with both preparing and ensuing the proper ritual. *Sorvians are not effected by gold or holy magic because they’re not inherently unholy or godless beings. They’re designed to accommodate all ideologies, and because of this even their very origin is neutral. *Higher-Neutrality is a force implemented into the design of Sorvians by the spirit that conceived their design that prevents anything like dark or Aengudaemonic impurities from tainting the limboed soul of Sorvians, which allows for them to serve any Order without being spiritually or physically affected in long-term. *Because their Lifeforce is forced to remain inside them via their limboed state in order to eternally preserve them, they cannot be drained nor can it be manipulated within them. This means a Sorvian corpse is no corpse at all - it’s just a discombobulated Sorvian that had fallen into a trance of deep inactivity in react to it’s damages which will eventually reform elsewhere. This also applies similarly for the abilities of Blood Mages, who cannot extract Sorvian Genus because Sorvian Genus does not exist within beast blood, which they bear. *A Sorvian’s primary form of expression is a mask they are extremely inclined to wear upon creation. All Sorvians have different kinds of masks, and they are stylized further once they aligned with ideologies. Past markings upon their masks give incite to what ways they served before. *Sorvians, because their bodies can be crafted from a variety of “medium sized animals”, mary vary in form widely but do not differ in physical capabilities. Differential aesthetics may be applied to them, from being riddled with the fur of a wolf to bearing the antlers of an elk. It is said, in legend, that the king who stole the power to create the Primeval Golems once attempted to shape a champion out of the flesh and bones of a slain dragon. It is not known if he succeeded. *Sorvians get the Necrolyte race with an overlaying Sorvian race, but are not defined as undead entities. *Sorvians are for both player and ET use. [ Art credit is given to Halycon450. ]

Any kind of holy ward made by alterationists beyond Ascended were not capable of causing mortal dark artists pain or physical deterrence before, only nullifying or weakening their magic. It should remain this way.

If a character has it made out to where they're able to get ingredients that have to come from hunting down things designed to destroy them (Ascended, Keepers, etc), and have connections for Lifegems (Necromancers), and then is dedicated enough to chop someone's hand off every time they need to use one of these potions, then I'd say they shouldn't get trouble for using a switcheroo tactic, but rather I should add some drawbacks for hopping back and forth instead of a timer.

There isn't really much of a benefit from switching between undead and Incited forms - all that achieves is a waste of a Draught, demanding the user gather more ingredients to hunt for a learned Alchemist, if they weren't one already. Remember that the Draught is intended to be a reward for these kinds of efforts, and not entirely a tool, so if people think they can abuse that by getting killed as an Incited so they can be rotten or ghosty again then they're wasting their time.

The Draught restores what an undead was in life. It follows the "blueprint" on their souls or soul shadows, and so they're remade that way.

The Draught of Insight [Update I] Recent occurences and initial oversights have given me the inclination to give this lore its first update (hopefully one of few). The lore doesn't need any deeper reinforcement besides small changes and tweaks based on the aforementioned oversights brought to my attention both by some few members (Toodles, one in specific) and, again, previously mentioned occurences. This will be kept short. Changes 1a; Wraiths and Wights, following the method in which the Draught "renews" them in coordination with their husking abilities (the means to inhabit either corpses or living bodies through "possession" [Wight exclusive]), will now experience physical distortion from whatever bodies they take as their Incited souls seek to correct their form. Following the Soul Blueprint ideal, the gender of the character cannot change from what they were in mortal life. Wights/Wraiths that occupy bodies opposite of their original mortal gender will now be "scorched" into correction during the Draught's revival process, wherein the flesh contorts until they both look and function as they were originally. This also applies for the husks and possessions that differ from the soul's original race, which are scorched into correction upon a Draught of Incite's use. 1b; Their curses of undeath are herein clarified. Like other undead species who become Incited (ie "mortalized"), both will endure similar disadvantages. Incited Abyss Wraiths return to a state of "Half-Undeath", but perpetually suffer an illness where the excess of stagnant Lifeforce within them threatens to break down their body if they don't expunge it through either magical practice or meditation once per day. Using other Dark Arts in this form also does not degrade it, but puts Incited Wraiths in pain much like Strength of the Abyss' powers. Wights retain their strenuous mental illnesses and disfigurements, worsened only by the fact they are made mortal again. In addition, they suffer "spectral numbness" in the lesser parts of the body - such as the fingers, hands, feet and face, which may cause them to experience difficulty in physical balance, the ability to produce genuine facial expressions, and move without a vaguely noticeable stiffness of the form. This causes some feats, such as wearing heavier armor or wielding heavier weapons, almost impossible to Incited Wights. 2a; All Incited Undead, of all species, must bear a deep black aura. Given auras are purely aesthetic and optional when in use of roleplay, this stands as no glaring disadvantage, but stands to hint as to what the Incited Undead are. This can be discerned as a reflection of their blackened soul, and though the Draught's power "muffles" their inner-darkness enough to reverse undeath, this spiritual stygia still leaks out. 3a; The Draught's "ritual" no longer needs to be taught on top of needing an accepted FA (Further/Advanced Alchemy) application, as all the process consists of is mixing each ingredient in a clean and generally sanitary environment. Thus, all a "Further Alchemist" requires in order to experiment and discover the way to create a Draught is the necessary ingredients (Lifeforce Gem, Ichor [or "Godblood", which is essence extracted from Ascended, Keepers, Nephilim/Azdrazi, Soul Tree Druids, or Augurs], and mortal flesh of an amount no greater than a fresh hand), and an Alchemist's ingenuity. 4a; Ascended blood as an ingredient is now divided into two varieties based on "dilution". Diluted Ascended blood is defined as the ichor extracted from Ascended of Tier 3 and below. Empowered Ascended blood is defined as the ichored extracted from Ascended of Tier 4 and above. 5a; Upon the use of a Draught, an undead's racial curse which they bore in life, unless they are Soul Shadowed, experiences a "reset". Incited Humans become young again and Incited Elves may once more bear children, but for Orcs and Dwarves, their rage and greed does not fade, for they are not strengthened by the passing of time. 6a; New limitations are put in place. There is no longer a limitation as to how many Draughts can be carried, but every Draught must be recorded on a secure document (Google Docs, etc) with the date of its creation, because starting now, a week after a potion's creation, their powers fade and it becomes a bottle of dry ashes. This time limit must be followed to the T, or else there will be OOC repercussions. 6b; Undead beings are now incapable of using a Draught right after they had been killed as an Incited Undead. They must wait one week before they're able to use another. Clarifications - The Incitement of Soul Shadow Undead (Gravens, Ghouls, Paleknights) does not enable their mortal forms to be turned into any kind of creature that involves a phylactery (Liches, Darkstalkers and Wights). Phylactery Undead, or "Soulbearing" Undead, require actual mortal souls, which Soul Shadows are not. - Darkstalkers and Liches experience withering of both physical and mental health on behalf of neglegence to a usual draining of Lifeforce, and by draining a source they are rapidly propelled back into health. To define how this would function in a multi-party roleplay environment, bydraining either another living individual or Lifeforce source, the condition of the Incited Darkstalker/Lich improves drastically. For Darkstalkers, muscle mass is regained (to littleimprovement to their actual strength during the concurrent situation), but for aesthetic purpose they can be defined as "bulking up" the more they drain until their craving is satiated. The similar can be said for Liches, except they gain very little muscle mass and, rather, their mental condition improves vastly to match that of normalcy. This cannot be used to heal the Incited of any wounds or restore any kind of magic-oriented focus, if the focus had been broken by something substantial such as wounds or any form of immediate trauma. - The more an undead uses a Draught of Incite, the less painful and debilitating the restoration process is. For the first-timers, the experience of renewal would feel much like being burned alive, and for those who have died and used the Draught several times over (around 3 and above), they are able to reform into mortal beings and endure the process of regaining their flesh without an excess of suffering. - Each player is entitled to own a single Draught, whether they made one or obtained one. This means, upon obtaining a Draught of Incite, they are only allowed to hold and contain that single item until its loss or consumption. In addition, by holding an approved Draught in ones possession, another cannot be made by that character until it is lost or used. - Any differences in a Wraith or Wight's husk from their original form are forcibly changed back until they resemble what they appeared to be in life. This precedes all race and gender, nullifying them until everything is corrected.

To affirm anything of the discussion on Liches, I can point out with certainty that they do not access the Seven Skies if they were humans. Their soul is rejected when it traverses the Soul Stream to its center, and left as an outcast to roam the barren wastes of Ebriaetas.

No it won't. It was bad, you dingus.

You cannot be anymore wrong for this particular instance. There must be a means for moderation for a group like the Wraiths - just like there was before, with the previous variant. I would know, I controlled both of these groups at separate points in time.

Necromancy has no involvement with the Void and all, and as Celestials are forms of Voidal Horrors, they would have no Lifeforce- because that's the general scope of Necromancy. If something doesn't have Lifeforce, its unable to be tainted, malformed or ressurected by Necromancy, so being able to corrupt Celestials with it seems unlikely.