Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 17 Jul 2003 to 18 Jul 2003 (#2003-179) From: Automatic digest processor Date: 19/07/2003, 17:00 To: Recipients of MYSTARA-L digests Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There are 2 messages totalling 80 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Planar Warfare Part 2: Staging areas (2) ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.dnd.starflung.com/ To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 11:00:41 +0100 From: Colin Davidson Subject: Re: Planar Warfare Part 2: Staging areas ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Calvin" To: Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 4:32 PM Subject: Re: [MYSTARA] Planar Warfare Part 2: Staging areas > Good point (and I know that others have made similar ones as well). Immortal > intervention would not (or should not) happen on the material plane, but once > an army gates out to another plane of existance they may be fair game. > > This did spark an idea in me though... a sort of counter point. Let's take > WotI as an example. In this case the immortals have actually taken sides. > Could not the immortals that are friendly to the Alphers provide a safe planar > harbor for their allies? Immortals friendly to Thyatians could do the same. > > This could get quite interesting as battles would be waged on a planar > battle... all in support of a war raging on on the prime material plane. > Ixions planar forces might lay siege to a planar staging area used by > alphatians and under the protection of the forces of Razud. Which of the immortals is going to risk that? The problemn with taking forces off the prime is that it is tremendously easy for a god to eradicate them. Take them to the ethereal or the astral and any immortal wanting to interfere can simply and effectively open gates to and from the plane of fire all around them, producing an effect similar to the Great Arch of Fire in Norwold; they might simply summon lots of monsters and leave them to do their dirty work, or they could even hurl powerful destructive magics at their rival immortals knowing fuill well that any mortal troops nearby would be almost guaranteed to die in the fallout. Put them on an outer plane and any immortal worth their salt can change the atmospheric conditions on that plane to make it toxic to mortals if they persist there too long. Failing that, I'd expect most passionate or warlike immortals to readily be able to call upon populations of all sorts of gribbly beasties to fight in their favour from some outer plane, whole armies that they cannot legally take to the prime plane but which can be legitimately employed elsewhere. Remember also that on the wastes of the Astral plane or in the Ethereal the rules forbidding the use of Blackmoor technology no longer apply, so an enterprising Immortal with a memory stretching back that far might be tempted to throw somewhat more damaging weapons at any armies encountered so far from the prime. Which of the immortals is going to subject their home plane to the risk of a nuclear arms race? This leads us to an incredible situation where the Immortals could end up having huge and very risky battles on the outer and inner planes, with few of any of their mortal followers having any chance of survival; bear in mind that once an immortal avatar is killed in such a confrontation it's feasible that the life force of that Immortal could be tracked back to its home plane and destroyed therein. When you're looking at whole pantheons slugging it out like happens in Wrath of the Immortals that means that Ixion, Razud, Valerias, Vanya and others could end up directly slugging it out to the death. I strongly suspect that this is something that they would be very, very keen to avoid at all costs. And thinking about this from an Alphatian perspective, no general is going to order any large force into what would be almost certain death for no obvious gain. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 09:56:39 -0400 From: Chris Cherrington Subject: Re: Planar Warfare Part 2: Staging areas Another point to take on gating to planes and gating back again, is that certain spells that create a gate are learned for each destination. A particularly favorable mortal of Rad would learn how to gate to an outer plane that is safe or under the influence of Rad; or at least he better learn to create a gate that would do that. Then there are those greedy wizards that do not take care to learn what gate their gate spell opens, so they hire a bunch of adventurers to find out for him. Of course you will always have that special wizard that nobody likes, and he opens a gate thinking it is from his favorable patron, only to find out he opened a gate to Alphaks’s home plane. Even further research would be needed to open a gate in an outer plane to bring the carrier to a safe location, or a specific location, on the prime. Any travel in a gate, or outer plane, by a mortal, should mean that that mortal is safe by all immortal intervention, as if he is on the prime. If it is ! your own home plane, and the mortal(s) appear there, then you can dispatch with them as you see fit. Many outer planes are inhabited by mortal creatures that share the same protection of immortal candidacy as any creature on the prime. The difference is that most immortals have come from the prime, so more attention is given to the prime. I believe the staging of the WotI was more likely to show the immortals that a new time has come to pass, that they have been doing all the meddling and interfering, and nothing they do is going to help their situation. Rad was different. He made himself immortal, and he dared to live with mortals to have themselves do the same. Many of the immortals that were against him, knew how they fixed the Blackmoor problem, they knew how they fixed the Nithian problem, so of course they know how to fix the Glantrian problem. Had Rad stuck to his original plans of being himself and not fall in line to the other ‘older’ immortals tricks’, would ! the Old Ones come to punish Rad, or make him one of their own? Now the immortals know, or they have been reminded, that they too are being watched and judged by an even more powerful force than their councils; and three times they have intervened in mortal affairs under the guise of ‘wise council’ and have utterly failed at their best intentions. So after WotI, if a wizard goes through the trouble of creating gates to move armies in mass, I believe there won’t be that many immortals around to directly confront this action, but actually watch and wait and see what this new style of mortal action stirs up in the end. ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 17 Jul 2003 to 18 Jul 2003 (#2003-179) ****************************************************************