Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[newjrmint21]

how would you go about adding vampirism to a caste anyways?
which bits of code are necessary to make vampires, zombies, and necromancers part of a civ?
because certain conditions need to be met for anyone to become a necro, vamp, or a zombie.

[Escapism]

Good idea, imo. The concept of huge necropoli populated and built by undead at behest of their necromancer overlords is pretty cool. The grimdarker the better. "Political entity" seems more fitting then civilization, though. More like a group of bandits in game terms (a council, of sorts) that just happens to have vast forces of undead at their command, and perhaps more arcane and grander goals with their undertakings.

"Populated" is perhaps the wrong word as well. More like huge magical servo-stations for undead forces, with of course plenty of chambers for dark rites and magical experiments and living quarters for the actual necromancers.

[Crinkles]

I think the existing teacher-apprentice relationship is very flavorful, and any expansion of necromancy should probably be based on that. It would be enjoyable if, for example, your fortress defeats the forces of an invading necromancer (but does not kill him) and then the necromancer encourages his teacher or his apprentice to attack your fortress, even if their towers are not ordinarily within range.

[Agent_Irons]

I think the existing teacher-apprentice relationship is very flavorful, and any expansion of necromancy should probably be based on that. It would be enjoyable if, for example, your fortress defeats the forces of an invading necromancer (but does not kill him) and then the necromancer encourages his teacher or his apprentice to attack your fortress, even if their towers are not ordinarily within range.

What we have now is quite similar to a magical college, with all the teachers and students sharing a building. It would be neat if that could be codified.

"Students, your final projects are due tomorrow. How are your zombie hordes coming along?"
"Teacher, Boatmurdered vaporized my zombies! Can I get an extension?"
"Well, all right, but remember. You need at least one of each civilization."

[Beznogim]

Necromancers holding living slaves/workers would be interesting, as mindless zombies are only so useful.

I agree. Having cities populated by living under necromancer's rule would mean a stable resource for a necromancer as living people tend to procreate and die of old age.
Maybe, a necromancer with more-or-less benevolent personality would even trade or lend his zombies to these cities, so that zombies would assume all the dirty primitive work there, such as growing or pump-operating, - while an evil necromancer would merely demand human sacrifices from living population.

[newjrmint21]

zombie's doing super basic labor like hauling and lever pulling would be alright.

[Hinaichigo]

This would be pretty cool.  I think dynamic civilization generation would be needed.  But having necromancer hierarchy and laboring undead would be really cool, especially when there are more economics.  Necromancers could even send undead merchant caravans with undead pack animals to trade with living people for slaves which they could take back to their tower and undead cities for ritual sacrifice, etc.

[newjrmint21]

i dont think any living civ would be very happy about a caravan of zombies coming to trade. not to mention, the zombies are too stupid to act as trader, appraiser, etc. 

[Brunste]

This is not World of Warcraft. The undead are mindless slaves to their necromancer master and as such are completely useless for anything other than attacking people.
The Necromancers themselves apparently have some kind of teacher<->apprentice thing going on, so any kind of necromancer "civilization" would be more like a loose cooperation between towers.

Well from what I understood is that he's interested in the necromancers really being the "civilization" not the undead.

The undead are obviously mindless slaves for their masters, but that doesn't mean that their masters can't rule civilizations run by their underpaid, poorly cared for zombie workers.

It could be a "Forbidden arts" type deal going on, like the teacher and apprentice deal but on a larger scale.

[Scruiser]

In general, it would be interesting if interactions and secrets and the like could set conditions for the affected creatures to organize into groups/civilizations.  So not just necromancers, but night trolls could form a city or dark tower or pit if they reached a critical number and organize their abduction behavior.  Or if werecreatures would band together under the right circumstances. 

The addition of city state type sites would facilitate this well. Randomly generated civilizations with just one (rarely more as vassals).

This would be pretty cool.  I think dynamic civilization generation would be needed. 

Yeah dynamics civilizations/randomly generated civilizations ties into this.  More ways for ad-hoc groups to reach civilization status.  That way the feature will expand as other types of secrets are added.

[Hinaichigo]

As the undead are used for constructing a tower, I think that they are able to do more than just attack people, but maybe complicated mental tasks would be too much.  Perhaps there could be other "classes" of undead in the civilization, that could do more complicated things.  Like, if husks could come out of worldgen from people traveling through terrifying areas, then the husks could join the necromancer civilization as a general or something like that.

[Nikita]

How about this: Necromancers are not inherently evil, but rather doing it "for science" (apprenticeses?), because they are "obsessed with their own mortality" (original slabbed necromancers), or maybe they want to see their loved ones. So my addition to this adea would be, to have different kinds of necromancers based on their personality:
- warmongering necromancers would build large armies of "low-tech", combat ready zombies that assault nearby settlements and thus grow their number. These are your standard necromancers and the kind we already have, essentially.
- peaceful necromancers would focus on perfecting re-animation and could return people back to life, not as undead but as warm-blooded mortals. However, they are unable to do it very often/quickly and thus do not rise armies.
- science-oriented necromancers could turn into Liches, extremely powerful, intelligent undead that come back to life back home even when their physical body is vaporized.

The necromancers would generally be on friendly terms. Most races would consider them enemies, because necromancy would be considered unethical (except maybe humans?). Whether a given necromancer (or necromancer society/school/tower/cabal) trades with you or tries to invade depends on their personality. It could even be arranged that they normally trade you, but can be pissed off in some strange manner (e.g. attacking or detaining any necromancer). It could even be arranged that they are pleased eith things that normally piss off other races (opposite ethics) but I don't think Toady would dare go that far into dark stuff.

[kontako]

Who says it has to be just zombies? Don't night creatures such as vampires and suchlike technically count as being friendly to other undead such as necromancers and zombies

I would disagree for this form of collaboration, immortal beings such as necromancers and vampires would be (and should be) selfish against each other - wanting to be unchallenged, incarnate demi-gods of some sort.
It's not that the undead are 'friendly' towards the vampires, but they fail to see them as living creatures and don't attack (Similar to how zombies of rival necromancers don't attack each other but the rival necromancers themselves.)

As the undead are used for constructing a tower, I think that they are able to do more than just attack people, but maybe complicated mental tasks would be too much. Perhaps there could be other "classes" of undead in the civilization, that could do more complicated things. Like, if husks could come out of worldgen from people traveling through terrifying areas, then the husks could join the necromancer civilization as a general or something like that.

As the undead are already used to generate the towers (once the necromancer responsible has reached a certain limit) - it is arguable that the zombies have a degree of 'intelligence' within the aura of said responsible necromancer. Rather than having a specific 'race' of intelligent zombies, it would just make more sense for specific jobs to require the supervision of their master (such as the mining for stone and construction of towers) - similar to how a programmer creates an application for a computer to use. Mindless until programmed to do otherwise.

How about this: Necromancers are not inherently evil, but rather doing it "for science" (apprenticeses?), because they are "obsessed with their own mortality" (original slabbed necromancers), or maybe they want to see their loved ones. So my addition to this adea would be, to have different kinds of necromancers based on their personality:
- warmongering necromancers would build large armies of "low-tech", combat ready zombies that assault nearby settlements and thus grow their number. These are your standard necromancers and the kind we already have, essentially.
- peaceful necromancers would focus on perfecting re-animation and could return people back to life, not as undead but as warm-blooded mortals. However, they are unable to do it very often/quickly and thus do not rise armies.
- science-oriented necromancers could turn into Liches, extremely powerful, intelligent undead that come back to life back home even when their physical body is vaporized.

The necromancers would generally be on friendly terms. Most races would consider them enemies, because necromancy would be considered unethical (except maybe humans?). Whether a given necromancer (or necromancer society/school/tower/cabal) trades with you or tries to invade depends on their personality. It could even be arranged that they normally trade you, but can be pissed off in some strange manner (e.g. attacking or detaining any necromancer). It could even be arranged that they are pleased eith things that normally piss off other races (opposite ethics) but I don't think Toady would dare go that far into dark stuff.

I would disagree on the allocation of specific spheres such as 'warmonger', 'Peaceful' or even 'Scientific' - (Hey, I thought we were talking about magic here). The necromancers are sentient beings and therefore should behave in their own best interests. Naturally they would be selfish and extremely protective - armok forbid some rogue adventurer steal their much coveted immortality - and therefore attempt to hide themselves from the greedy fingers of locals. Truly, only the most boastful necromancers would dare to spread influence. Larger areas would require 'municipalities' to be formed under the close watch of necromancer apprentices - or 'competitors' in the strive for eternal life. Widespread interaction between necromancers and towns in the form of trade seems somewhat redundant. A necromancer with all the time in the world might as well supervise their minions in order to achieve their goals.

Furthermore, the concept of a 'undead civilisation' seems somewhat self contradicting. Civilisation being 'The removal from barbarianism' and 'The laws of criminal process' more so represent the development of an intelligent sentient race, rather than the meddling of a selfish, evil maniac. The concepts of secrecy and the formation of factions seems somewhat more fitting - like hidden pygmy tribes in the forest waging wars against other pygmy tribes.

tl;dr : I disagree!

Edit: No more elves... or crude humour.

[Vgray]

Only elves are already immortal and never become necromancers. Same with goblins.

[kontako]

Elves never become necromancer? Hah! I had never noticed!
Damn elves...