On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 9:59 AM, David Ramsey <pooka...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 1:55 PM, Adam Borowski <kilob...@angband.pl> > wrote: >> You mean, a good god of law being opposed to an evil god of chaos? >> They're near exact opposites; "near" because Zin is more lawful than >> good while Makhleb is more evil than chaotic. Zin can have another >> arch-enemy beside Xom. > > I meant that I wasn't sure how to handle overlap, not that there > shouldn't be overlap. Zin's having another arch-enemy is fine, of > course.
Another approach I considered was making the hell effects caused by the individual lieutenants of Hell. We needn't explain away fellow worshipers of a god wanting to kill or harm you -- though perhaps if these are using Makhleb's power, rather than their own, Makhleb might refuse to use it against you. However, that comes into the realms of "gifts of power" versus "gifts of ability": Beogh priests can still smite followers of Beogh, even those of high piety. Regardless, accepting the hell lords as being the originators of hell effects, we can thus flavour the effects of individual hells against the abilities of the lord of that hell. This would do something to reduce the monotony of the hell effects, in my opinion. We could also attribute hell effects of various kinds (or the "current" hell effects) as part of Makhleb's wrath. I'd love to see the capacity to banish people to the individual hells (or to a "generic" hell). This could also be used as a Makhleb wrath item. But, the issue with hell effects is: if they are hell-lord derived, they should end when the individual hell lord ends. If they are Makhleb-derived, they shouldn't affect you at all -- or at certain levels of piety -- or you should be protected by him in some way. I both like and dislike the ideas! As an aside, and also on the topic of hell, we could have the individual hells themselves close whenever the lord of that hell was destroyed -- perhaps a timed "run" out of the hell with the loot and the rune before it collapses? I can't recall whether or not I mentioned this in my initial email. It would prove problematic, I imagine. Of course, I am over-thinking all of this. [snip] >> By the way, torment being closely tied to Kiku means Makhleb should >> stay away from it. > > Very good point. I agree. Torment being tied to Kikubaaqudgha is quite nice, and, while it's not always cheapening, I'd hate to see some of Kiku's unique flavour being shifted away from her. [snip] I'm not sure we need to focus on a "means" to an "end". Makhleb favours chaos and death and destruction. Do we need to be particularly concerned about how his followers achieve this? Likewise, his gifts of health could this be seen as an investment in your future capacity to provide destruction and death and chaos -- more so than your individual demise. Which of course means that the health gifts can fluctuate with piety levels, where piety is Makhleb's way of determining whether or not you are "worthy" or worthwhile in some way. > By the way, if the hell theme is appropriate, I can tweak one word in > the flavor text in order to reference it (demonic -> hell-spawned): I'm utterly for it. > Makhleb the Destroyer is a fearsome God of bloodshed and mortification > of the flesh. Followers are expected to cleanse others by inflicting > suffering and death on them in Makhleb's name, and can gain further > favour by ravaging the freshly dead. Dedicated followers may also access > the raw energies and hell-spawned servants of chaos, so that they may > better break the impure world and its false laws for this evil God's > glory. With regards to demons: I'd love to see, in future, a big differentiation between the demons of the hells and the demons of Pandemonium. There's considerable overlap which seems to be rather cheapening, as you can lump them all as "demons" and, at least in our mythology, they are two distinct places. On a final note, it would be pretty cool, at least in a couple of instances, to adjust the way deaths are handled: for instance, Kikubaaqudgha's followers get a "you rise from the dead like a mindless zombie". It would thus seem appropriate that, instead of generating a ghost, in generates a scalable undead type. Likewise, the death of a follower of Makhleb could result in the creation of a "flaming wraith of hell". Of course, in a lot of instances these are just flavour, but I think it would be interesting and cool flavour: we could have powerful followers of Makhleb who died randomly show up either in their death location, or in a relevant level of hell. Waffle and out! -J ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ EditLive Enterprise is the world's most technically advanced content authoring tool. Experience the power of Track Changes, Inline Image Editing and ensure content is compliant with Accessibility Checking. http://p.sf.net/sfu/ephox-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Crawl-ref-discuss mailing list Crawl-ref-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/crawl-ref-discuss
