So especially after the Prism Pentad, L-P apparently genuinely wants to reforest/restore green to the world, but isn’t willing to try to actually reform like Keltis/Oronis did.
So it occurred to me… would it be possible for her to essentially convert animal energy to plant energy? Use her dragon abilities to draw spell energy from animals/people (maybe in an area with no plants around), then use that energy to power a spell to create plants?
I know the default, rulebook versions of the rejuvenate, prolific vegetation, and prolific forestation spells are preserver-only, but maybe L-P could develop unique defiler-compatible versions through spell research? For a normal defiler they’d be pointless (since you’re destroying plants to make plants, and presumably losing something in the process), but with the dragon ability to draw on animal life…
I think the spell once researched could be learned by any wizard (or any defiler if you buy Veiled Alliance’s statement that defiler and preserver spell books are different), but it would be worthless to a defiler who didn’t have an alternate energy source… destroy X plants to restore a little less than X plants. The spell would technically function but not be useful.
But in addition to dragons, it could be used by defiler shadow wizards and Ceruleans who also have an alternate energy source.
I guess Necromants too technically but that just feels really wrong… it’s death energy.
One of the non-plot things from the PP that I am most adamant about keeping is that defilers and preservers are the same class, just with different ways of dealing with energy.
Though, I suppose it could tie into my alternate magic sources idea… blood magic not just to prevent defiling (a la EAFW and clerics), but also to undo defiling.
I wonder if a preserver could create a “heal defilement” spell… borrow life from one spot to revitalize another.
(My Next Kings Age had Lalai-Puy unable to undo dragon metamorphisis, but she did figure out how to become a druid)
Yeah the “spellbooks are different” thing doesn’t make a ton of sense to me either. But TSR did publish it, so I thought it was worth mentioning.
Yeah I think so. If you were using your own life energy only, you might not need to be a dragon… Though obsidian would probably still be needed, at least if you’re doing it via arcane magic rather than elemental/druidic.
Although avangions might be doing something similar, pulling from an internal reserve, and they don’t need obsidian. So maybe not.
I think that’s basically what the rejuvenate spell is/does.
Just, as written it’s preserver only, so L-P would have to research her own dragon-compatible version.
Yeah, I saw that. I personally still see L-P being way too evil for a SotL to accept … Her desire to reforest the world is to be the forest goddess to everyone not just Gulg. It’s still tied to power hunger.
If she can use dragon magic to power rejuvenate type spells from animals rather than plants, I’m not sure she’d see any reason or desire to undo the dragon metamorphosis. It might be the “best of both worlds” for her … turn her enemies’ life energy into more forest!
I could see L-P in say FY20 Gulg executing criminals and captured foes with a spell that pulls out their life force and turns it into more plants/boosts plant growth. An incredibly lush killing field.
I believe someone speculated ages ago (maybe on the old WotC forums) that Rajaat’s ultimate plan for the Cleansing Wars was basically a supercharged version of this for the sun … The Champions eat all the life energy, Hamanu becomes the Final Champion/Dragon and eats the other Champions storing all that energy in his obsidian bones, and then Rajaat kicks the Pristine Tower in reverse and kills Hamanu to put all that stored energy back into the sun.
I don’t see why not; though I will point out that its an energetically wasteful thing to do except in specific circumstances.
Killing a herd of kanks, for instance, to regrow an area of plant life is a waste of energy (its going to take WAY more plant material to feed & raise more kanks than it will to just let a patch of plants grow on their own; this is the same argument as to why being vegan is better for the environment and one of the reasons we don’t generally eat predators).
But, draining an enemy army of life to rejuvenate a patch of defiled ground or open a permanent gate to the plane of water would absolutely be an excellent thing to do.
I think that’d be true in a general case but there ae several reasons why it might not apply:
animals are much more transportable than plants. L-P (or anyone else doing this) could buy or raid livestock from a large area, concentrate them together, and then magic-drain them. If your goal is to restore a specific area, this works well.
the real damage from defiling isn’t killing plants, it’s killing the soil which lasts way longer. Kill a bunch of grass and it’ll be back next year, but defiling damage can last centuries. What’s going on here isn’t straightforward trophic level energy transfer. If you can undo the soil damage (and a rejuvenate spell does) you can reverse the overall decline. It’s “principal” versus “interest”; sure the animals you are life draining had to eat a bunch of plants to grow but they weren’t defiling those plants - they’re living on the interest rather than touching the principal.
This isn’t an energy constrained environment, it’s soil and moisture constrained.
Yeah, 9th level wizards aren’t common, and not all of them will know this spell, but if Lalai-Puy COULD figure out a way to cast it, I don’t think she’d have trouble killing a few kanks (or Nibenayans) for it.
Oh, i agree, the alternative sources are a problem. But they exist in published material so I brought them up.
I think they can be fixed though by removing the “no impact on the environment” line. Just make their side effects as bad as defiling or worse, at least in the long term. Shadow wizardry and Necromancy weakens the planar boundaries = more shadow monsters or undead pop up. It might not be obvious in the scale of the individual spell, like defiling is, but it could be even worse for the world overall in the long run.
I’m thinking of something like the Radiance energy table from the Mystara setting’s Glantri gazetteer, where you get bad large scale effects based on X number of wizards using the power source multiplied by Y years of use.
This could even be canon compatible in that the alternative sources weren’t widely known enough for the bad effects to be discovered as of FY10/FY11… except Necromancy in the Deadlands, and “more dead people become undead than normally would” wouldn’t be a detectable effect there!
Ceruleans already have that negative problem… in addition to their personal “Tithian will eat your brain”, there’s also “Trying to control a Tyr-storm will call a Tyr-storm”, and I think “Too much or too powerful cerulean magic will call more Tyr-storms to the area” is pretty reasonable.
Of all of them, I think Shadow is likely to have the least environmental damage, but that’s partially because it is constantly negated by the Sun.
For Necromancers, I’d lean towards “Necromancers and Undead are symbiotic… lots of undead make it easier for necromancers to function, lots of necromancy attracts undead.” So places with heavy necromantic use should build up undead. Ghouls should follow necromancers, not just because they tend to kill people, but because they are attracted to the necromancy itself.
Harder to think of actual environmental damage from Shadow sorcerers.
I agree on necromancy. High levels of necromancy use in the area should also make it easier/more likely for people who die in the area to become undead, IMO, not just attract pre-existing undead. The barrier to the Gray is thinned.
Shadow … I think the same principle of thinning the planar barriers could apply. Creatures in the Black can access the area more easily. Or it could work like the Cerulean Tithian thing, opening up the user to the influence of Rajaat (or, post FY10, possibly Andropinis instead … especially for Balic’s Shadow Templars).
It doesn’t necessarily, IMO, have to be a strictly environmental consequence, as long as heavy use of it causes problems… whether that’s more people turning into minions of Rajaat or whatever.
Or, more speculatively… the Black is said to separate “everything that exists from everything that does not”. Perhaps overuse of Shadow Magic locally makes the boundaries between reality and unreality thinner, and all sorts of anomalies begin to occur. At the highest (epic/advanced Shadow Shifter) levels, maybe you get beings showing up from alternate histories of Athas… psionic masters from a timeline where Rajaat actually died (not just almost died) in that swamp and so the Green Age never ended, or squads still fighting the Cleansing Wars, or elemental/rain paraelemental servants of Rajaat looking to kill all non-halflings from a timeline where Borys stayed crazy just a little bit longer and Rajaat’s prison failed, or whatever.
Or on the really epic consequences level, a full-on alternate SK shows up… either an alternate version of an existing and ruling SK (and both versions think they are the rightful ruler of whatever city, and both have a link to the templars…) or one of the dead ones reappears from a timeline where they didn’t die. Dropping a living Sielba or Kalid-Ma (especially a successfully metamorphosed “Dragon of Kalidnay” version) into the Tablelands could be interesting … or, post PP, a living version of one of the SKs who died in the PP.
Now, here’s the question: Would you be able to “preserve” with these energy sources? Mitigate the harms by being more circumspect at the moment of casting?
No, IMO, because preserving is the default way of casting arcane spells.
To use 3.5e terms - because they’re the crunchiest - casting a spell via defiling gives you a free use of a metamagic feat (with the extra life energy pulled via defiling). Both preserving and the alternate energy sources do not grant such a benefit, because you’re only pulling as much as you need. The consequences of using alternate power sources would exist to balance the annoyances of using plant/animal energy to cast spells.
Now, if you came up with a way to pull extra energy from the Black or wherever - say with an extra feat in 3.5e - THEN you could do “defiling”, but you’d need to institute even worse consequences.
So, thinking about deleterious effects for other energy sources:
From Defilers and Preservers of Athas:
Ceruleans call Tyr-storms and eventually go crazy. They can avoid the Tyr Storms by moving 10 miles a day.
Necromancers have an aura of death (reaction penalty) and a chance to take damage and fail every spell casting.
Shadow wizards have the same problems… lower reaction penalty, but a chance that people will flee in terror (starting at level 5), and possible damage from an absence of Shadow. And a chance to take damage and fail every single spell casting.
If I were to change those up? Necromancers would have a chance, each spell cast, of summoning an uncontrolled undead spirit. Say, 1% per spell level, cumulative, with the spirit unleashed having HD equal to the spell cast that set it free?
Hmm. If there were a preserve/defile equivalent… the thing is, the official consequences (for shadow wizards and necromancers - not ceruleans) affect the wizard themselves, not their surroundings. Arguably the official version is the “preserver” version, the “defiler” version would have less personal consequences but more consequences to their surroundings instead.
The simplest option would be that repeated spellcasting weakens the barriers enough for something to slip free. Make it a % chance per spell cast, so they don’t KNOW when it’s going to happen.
Necromancy? An undead spirit slips out, with HD equal to the spell level. It is not controlled by the necromancer.
It’s for 3E/Pathfinder since that is what I play, but this may help with the alternate power sources and some drawbacks:
Basically Ceruleans are new and can’t hide spellcasting, Gray and Shadowcasters find themselves accidently drawing creatures into Athas as well as being hunted by a something from those planes. They’ll continue to use the older preserving and defiling methods because it takes awhile for them to be able to cast the same level spells with the different power source and sometimes the power source isn’t available. For preservers there isn’t much of an upside really to using an alternate power source, for defilers they wouldn’t be able to use defiler feats since those rely on destroying the environment. The primary benefactors are the defilers who don’t defile because they took that as a path to power, they defile because it’s all they know how to do.