How intelligent are zombies anyway? In d&d terms, at least. Can they follow basic instructions? Can Reddy create zombies that can do that?
There are normal undead and greater ones. Zombies are normal ones. You can tell them "Go there, smash this, stay here" but "search the desert and come back if you find something" is beyond them.
You can only use them to search for pits and ditches by letting them walk and eventually fall into them.
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Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei, King Joffrey, The Tickler, The Hound, Ser Amory, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling, Weese, Dunsen, Nale, Ser Gregor Clegane and Chiswyck: Winter is coming!
Xykon knows very well he has lost everything that made living worth living. Yes, he enjoys his undeath, his cruelty, his evil... but from all the things he had and loved as mortal, that is the only thing he has left.
What else can he do but uphold the only thing that he has?
Or: "What good is life if all the other things have gone?"
Xykon is a liar and a bluffer. Xykon never liked his own ego tarnished. A lot of what he tells and shows is fake.
The change in SoD from "horribly evil but still somewhat charming and human" to "purely abomination" is very sudden. It's the scene in the diner where Xykon suddenly realizes what he actually has lost in the transformation: All the little things that make us human (and in some way, dieing is also part of that - and even that isn't open to Xykon anymore).
Couldn't he learn Polymorph Any Object and change himself into a young human in order to enjoy coffee, food, wine, sex...etc., and later dismiss the spell and go back to lich for business?.
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Originally Posted by veti
Well, we can agree that's not going to happen, so this is entirely academic, but - in this case, I don't think that approach would work anyway.
The desert is big. Even an army of many thousands would take months to comb it as you describe.
Most living slaves would be dead (of thirst, or sunstroke) within a couple of days on the job.
There's a limit to how many zombies Xykon can control, and I'm not sure how effective they'd be as searchers anyway.
Xykon only needs to create a single intelligent, infectious undead, able to control its own spawn, like a Wight or Wraith, and order it to turn their human prisioners into undead and voila! cheap undead army under his control!
Last edited by Clistenes : 11-03-2012 at 11:33 AM.
Couldn't he learn Polymorph Any Object and change himself into a young human in order to enjoy coffee, food, wine, sex...etc., and later dismiss the spell an go back to lich fo business?
Game technical that "might" be possible... but what good is a Curse of Utter Depravity if you can easily wiggle out?
Vampires who can just put on Sunlotion and substitute blood for Coca Cola are totally stupid as they get around what is actually their (in the worse cases self-inflicted) burden.
You can also ask in the case of an abomination on the scale of Xykon: Does this possibility even occur to him? He is not remotely human anymore, so why should he even ponder this? Why should he give up etearnal life and all the "good" things his curse brought him? He might not even see it as curse anymore but as blessing, that freed him from all the "human" burdens, like old age, fragility, the need to eat, and morals...
In any case: If you have a curse you can get around then it's no curse at all. That (in a game or any story) is hellish boring and the author a) should not have bothered at all with introducing the curse in the first place but have his character just be some evil human and b) probably look should for another job he actually can do.
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Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei, King Joffrey, The Tickler, The Hound, Ser Amory, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling, Weese, Dunsen, Nale, Ser Gregor Clegane and Chiswyck: Winter is coming!
Game technical that "might" be possible... but what good is a Curse of Utter Depravity if you can easily wiggle out?
Vampires who can just put on Sunlotion and substitute blood for Coca Cola are totally stupid as they get around what is actually their (in the worse cases self-inflicted) burden.
You can also ask in the case of an abomination on the scale of Xykon: Does this possibility even occur to him? He is not remotely human anymore, so why should he even ponder this? Why should he give up etearnal life and all the "good" things his curse brought him? He might not even see it as curse anymore but as blessing, that freed him from all the "human" burdens, like old age, fragility, the need to eat, and morals...
In any case: If you have a curse you can get around then it's no curse at all. That (in a game or any story) is hellish boring and the author a) should not have bothered at all with introducing the curse in the first place but have his character just be some evil human and b) probably look should for another job he actually can do.
Well, Xykon would still be a creature of utter evil and depravity (PaO wouldn't change him morally), so if he were able to turn human for fun, he would be even more dangerous and wicked (just think the things real life psychos have done for pleasure...*shudder*).
I wouldn't have a problem with Xykon being able to become human for some periods of time to have his wicked fun: He's not a tragic figure/tortured villain (that's Redcloak role); he's a complete monster, and becoming temporally human would only allow him to be a complete monster in different ways.
Last edited by Clistenes : 11-03-2012 at 11:24 AM.
Well, Xykon would still be a creature of utter evil and depravity (PaO wouldn't change him morally), so if he were able to turn human for fun, he would be even more dangerous and wicked (just think the things real life psychos have done for pleasure...*shudder*).
Xykon already was a rapist when he was mortal. He spared nothing.
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Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei, King Joffrey, The Tickler, The Hound, Ser Amory, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling, Weese, Dunsen, Nale, Ser Gregor Clegane and Chiswyck: Winter is coming!
In any case: If you have a curse you can get around then it's no curse at all. That (in a game or any story) is hellish boring and the author a) should not have bothered at all with introducing the curse in the first place but have his character just be some evil human and b) probably look should for another job he actually can do.
I've seen a similar "Lich able to temporarily take on human form" setup in Eternal Darkness and Pirates of the Carribean, and rather than totally negating the impact of the curse, it added to the creepiness of the curse and the character. Then again, those weren't as self-inflicted, so yeah.
Pirates of the Carribean: No, they could not circumvent the curse at all. They just appeard differently, but they still were cursed.
No eating, no sleeping, no nothing. Even if they seemed human, they were just as cursed.
It's the same with Vampires: No matter how they might appear as human - they are not and do not function like them. That's part of their curse.
What is suggested here is totally different, it's a complete, yet temporary, mitigation of the actual curse itself by applying some aetheric phlogiston (in this case "magic").
Also, the curse was self-inflicted: Murder and Greed caused it in the very end (that it was "bad gold" is, I think, just the narrative fluff around it).
I have no clue on Eternal Darkness. But even if it's true, on example, no matter if well done or crappy, does in no way violate the truth of the general rule.
IF you can mitigate a curse it can only serve, in a narrative, as mean to strengthen the impression of the actual curse. As such, any mitigation would just make it worse. Which again makes the curse worse, which again highlights it's a curse instead of giving "a time out from it".
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Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei, King Joffrey, The Tickler, The Hound, Ser Amory, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling, Weese, Dunsen, Nale, Ser Gregor Clegane and Chiswyck: Winter is coming!
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Re: Xykon character analysis
