Could they be brought back if someone discovers ancient scrolls and begin worshipping them again?
Havard
*Canonically, the reason Mystaran immortals have their cults is to encourage and nurture candidates for immortality; Mystara is the single best recruiting ground for new immortals in the prime plane.
I'm not sure this issue is relevant to Mystaran immortals. Canonically, they don't need worship to thrive, or even to survive*. Without a set of followers though, they could easily lose interest in Mystara, and presumably they go off and get active in other projects on other worlds or planes. Almost anything could call their attention back to Mystara.
*Canonically, the reason Mystaran immortals have their cults is to encourage and nurture candidates for immortality; Mystara is the single best recruiting ground for new immortals in the prime plane.
WotI has information that Immortals who are forgotten by mortals may fade...
Havard
Are faded immortals completely dead?
Could they be brought back if someone discovers ancient scrolls and begin worshipping them again?
Yes. I'm fairly sure I've read that somewhere official, but I don't recall where.
"The link between immortals and their followers is not clearly understood.....
...However an immortal who has faded into nothingness is not dead;he or she still exists as a dim and undetectable life force on his or her home planeand can be revived if the conditions are right. If latterday mortals discoverancient writings about this immortal and decide to follow his or her teachings , he or she will hear the call and awaken...a first level initiate"
EDIT:
Book one, codex of the immortals
Wrath of the Immortals, page 83:
"The link between immortals and their followers is not clearly understood.....
...However an immortal who has faded into nothingness is not dead;he or she still exists as a dim and undetectable life force on his or her home planeand can be revived if the conditions are right. If latterday mortals discoverancient writings about this immortal and decide to follow his or her teachings , he or she will hear the call and awaken...a first level initiate"
EDIT:
Book one, codex of the immortals
Great!
Thanks for posting that!
Havard
The reason given for them not fading immediatly upon gaining immortality (as they would have no followers or worshippers ) is because they draw power from their sponsors.
When I played as an immortal a long long time ago I had my initiate create a few planets in my home world and populate it with mortals who only believed in one God (Called god) I called the main planet "Earth " and slowly added my avatars under different names.... I guess you know where I'm going with this lol.
I'm guessing that it is only a part of the cake so to speak. They get the bulk of their power and strength from worshippers, but they also draw strength from other areas.
The reason given for them not fading immediatly upon gaining immortality (as they would have no followers or worshippers ) is because they draw power from their sponsors.
I like that idea of new Immortals drawing power from their sponsors. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. There should also be a connection between an Immortal's source of power and their sphere of power, but I haven't a clue on how it should actually work.
I never thought Immortals gaining power from worshippers made sense when coupled with the original idea that Immortals gained power from their Sphere.
In the gold books, there is no such connection
The Gold Book doesn't make the connection because it's player-oriented: it is not that good to have PC powers tied to NPC actions. OTOH, WotI has less focus on PC Immortals, and gives a more reasonable version of things, IMO.
GP
Immortal adventures and explorations into the outer planes that last for years don't make any sense if the exploring Immortals would very likely loose their worshippers and "die".
I'd say this is a good example of needing to balance their 'plots'. ;)
I never thought Immortals gaining power from worshippers made sense when coupled with the original idea that Immortals gained power from their Sphere.
I've got to chime in with my agreement here. The notion of power from worshippers is much more in the vein of post-Avatar Trilogy AD&D than anything else- an artificial (and, IMO, unnecessary) means of explaining why Immortals interact with the mortal world.
As presented by Mentzer in the Masters and later Immortals boxed sets, the Immortals are a higher level of being/consciousness and their explorations and adventures may or may not intersect with the world of mortals at all (though it often does, if only due to the connection so many of them had with the mortal realms in their pre-elevated lives).
There was a definite disconnect between the Immortals as originally presented and envisioned, and in later Mystara products (the real change came in around Gaz3, IMO, and was most fully realized by the time of Gaz6).
The Gold Book doesn't make the connection because it's player-oriented:
I think it was more than that, though. The impression I get from the source material- and from posts Frank Mentzer has made on the Dragonsfoot forums about his campaigns using the Immortals rules- is that the Immortals were never intended to be precisely the same thing as AD&D's gods- that while some (many?) of them might be worshipped by them, they were really just a different rung on the evolutionary ladder, and their powers came from their accessing the cosmic, rather than having anything to do with worshippers.
(Now, that said, I think that Gods and Immortals are functionally the same mechanically speaking between editions; conceptually they are not- or at least were not originally- identical.)
is that the Immortals were never intended to be precisely the same thing as AD&D's gods- that while some (many?) of them might be worshipped by them, they were really just a different rung on the evolutionary ladder, and their powers came from their accessing the cosmic, rather than having anything to do with worshippers.
I think this is mostly due to a misconception on AD&D powers -- AD&D ascension rules are very similar to Mentzer rules, just less detailed, because AD&D was not meant to be played at very high levels, let alone at divine levels (which is also why almost no one knows about those rules...).
GP
The Gold Book doesn't make the connection because it's player-oriented: it is not that good to have PC powers tied to NPC actions. OTOH, WotI has less focus on PC Immortals, and gives a more reasonable version of things, IMO.
GP
Interestingly IIRC, Frank Mentzer mentioned at one point that one of his ideas behind Immortals was that new Immortals would rise and take the place of the old. This is actually better presented with the fading "rule" from WotI than in his own ruleset...
Havard
I believe this is the reason why they have avatars. They leave a little something of themselves on their home plane whislt the remainder of their power points..sorry I mean soul sods off exploring some ancient "old one" ruin or universe or whatever.
This way if they do get their material form slain whilst out in the multiverse there is some one back home who is aware of it and can start making the new form ready for the return. Also its a lot harder to totally kill an immortal if you cant find all of it and like I mentioned at the start. Theres always some-one to listen to worshippers.
EDIT :
The fading section went on to mention something about losing followers due to other immortals doing strokes against you. I didn't pay that section much attention as it wasnt relevant to the initial question. The question now seems to be ;
Are followers relevant/ connected to an immortals strength and power?
If you want I'll type in a little more if you dont have the book but I dont know when I'll have time to do it.
DW
Perhaps both are true?
Perhaps, over time, an immortal's power level will slowly shift towards a value that depends on the number of worshippers he has. Since initiate-level immortals essentially have no followers, they gain no benefit from them. High-level immortals with thousands of pp have a strong motivation to maintain a large body of followers, otherwise their outer-plane level-upping will rapidly deteriorate due to not having the number of followers needed to maintain that high pp level.
Roger
No food and they begin to starve...
Regards
Gary
The Gold Box makes it pretty explicitly clear that adventures in the outer planes (and other places) are the major way to level up for immortals, and that worshippers are pretty irrelevant in the equation. WoTI hints at worshippers providing some kind of benefit to immortals beyond being a recruiting ground for allies.
.
To be brutally honest, I reckon they wrote that because the whole basis of the Dnd game is adventuring, to divert from the adventuring and towards the "control of worshippers" would make it a different style of game which may not have been so enjoyable for the players of the basic through to master rules.
Furthermore, TSR were INCREDIBLY overcautious about insulting/offending religious people (This I believe, is the reason they called them immortals instead of Gods!) and so they likely feared causing offense if they made them too Godlike and made the focus point as being worshipped.