While time travel is a possibility, I like this better. Oronis could still have invented the spell as described, not knowing of any earlier example.
[quote=“redking, post:18, topic:4071”]
This can be accomplished by making him a dragon king, rather than avangion. He may have invented the avangion path, but his own dragonhood is irreversible. One day this will put him on a collision course with the avangions that he creates, when they decide that once the other dragons are defeated, Oronis is too dangerous to exist.
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Dragon Kings does say the transformation is irreversible… which is what I like least about Oronis. I tend to think an attempt to reverse the transformation would lead to a dead former-dragon. It might be more interesting if Oronis is some third thing, not an avangion because he can’t get rid of his dragon levels, but now progressing as something else based on an unique metamorphosis spell he created. (So instead of being a 24th level / stage IV avangion, he’d have 2 stages/levels of dragon and 2 of some new thing he invented.) Maybe elemental or paraelemental in nature, beginning to change the dragon traits into those of a drake? Maybe Oronis as a “Rain Dragon” (dragon + rain drake)?
I’ve said for a while that every dragon and every avangion is unique; defilers, specifically, must study works never studied by another defiler, while avangions develop themselves in isolation. So, while Rajaat might have started his champions on the same path, any that hit a higher level would have done so on their own. I’m also of the opinion that “cannot be undone” is practically meaningless in the context of a high-level wizard.
Doesn’t mean undoing it isn’t hard, or dangerous. I lean towards “changing almost killed him… or did, and he was able to revive”. He became something like the standard avangion, though whether it’s identical is an open question.
I think they are definitely unique to some degree, though IMO still recognizably dragon vs avangion in nature.
Certainly the PP suggests that each SK’s true form is distinct, and the idea of individually researching the metamorphosis epic spells / psionic enchantments would support that. The Dragon Kings descriptions also say that the exact changes vary, though it sounds like they’re all reptilian rather than the more extreme variation (lion-like, bird-like, etc) of the PP descriptions. Borys also implies that the SKs choose their form, while Dragon Kings says the exact changes are “unpredictable and uncontrollable”.
Hmm, the idea of the reversed metamorphosis killing Oronis but his returning (maybe by Clone spell or a Wish or Raise Dead cast by an ally) makes me much more comfortable with the idea of reversal. I do think that, especially if the metamorphosis was designed by Rajaat (I know there’s a conflict between sources on Champions vs. dragons), it’s probably meant to be irreversible; but there might be ways around that with sufficient magical power. A Wish or variation on Clone used to re - create a version of his original pre metamorphosis human body and transfer his soul to it, allowing the dragon body to die, sounds workable - maybe in combination with some item like Borys’s soul gem or the Orbs of Kalid Ma to do the soul transfer.
In the first one, you run into a chicken, who is a wizard’s apprentice changed by a cursed item. The mage comes up with a way to turn him back, but it involves reincarnating while he’s still alive. It may not work.
Indeed Wumpus, those are two homebrew great elementals. They have deep but subtle backgrounds in my campaign.
Talathothanay is very old, though now forever young, being once a priestess in ancient Balic, in the early Green Age.
The Burning Tree is of mysterious origins, but he is the god of the Chorsh, and is a monstrously evil being.
It would seem to me Keltis would need cleansing from both, or else beings like them, in order to have a chance at becoming Oronis.
In the aftermath I think he would have dropped to 20th/20th, and had to earn the huge pile of XPs to try to become a 21st level avangion. But he would retain the power the Dark Lens bestowed upon him in the Steeple of Crystals, and have been able to spin spells from his mere thoughts (bound by the usual spells per level limits), as Sadira was able to do as a sun wizardess, and as all the Champions were able to do.