Forums of the Megaverse®

and "there is no way to actually die"

Both on page 127 of Mystic China, under the Ti Hsien (Enlightened Immortal). All this even before beginning Internal Alchemy.

Do you figure this makes the character immune to soul-destroying/eating attacks like that used by Tentac or the Deathkiss rune sword, both described in the Palladium Fantasy sourcebook Library of Bletherad?

Course, there's still other kinds of ways to mess you up like simply imprisoning your soul (souldrinking attacks from rune weapons, falling into a soul vat in Dyval) but at least in that case, if someone can destroy the rune weapon (or if it's possible to convince it to give it up) or exorcise the soul vat, you could still set the immortal free.

Besides imprisonment, I'm trying to think of other ways to mess up a soul that isn't destroying it. The 'Soul in the Bottle' spell from Through the Glass Darkly comes to mind. Or simply enslaving them via various spells like Ensorcel. Preventing suicide so they can't reincarnate.

One first has to decide if you are going with a Line approach or a Megaversal approach.

My view of this is that in the N&SS Game (which does not have soul destroying/eating attacks) that you can not kill an Immortal because there is no way to harm the soul, and thus the soul will simply be reborn. In wider Megaversal games I would say that Immortals can be permanently killed because in those games there are ways to destroy souls. And thus you can annihilate the soul preventing it from ever being able to be reborn.

eliakon wrote:One first has to decide if you are going with a Line approach or a Megaversal approach.

My view of this is that in the N&SS Game (which does not have soul destroying/eating attacks) that you can not kill an Immortal because there is no way to harm the soul, and thus the soul will simply be reborn. In wider Megaversal games I would say that Immortals can be permanently killed because in those games there are ways to destroy souls. And thus you can annihilate the soul preventing it from ever being able to be reborn.

Except even in the megaversal sense some souls are truly indestructible, and the Enlightened Immortals certainly have unique and special souls compared to the 'average' soul.

Nightmask wrote:

eliakon wrote:One first has to decide if you are going with a Line approach or a Megaversal approach.

My view of this is that in the N&SS Game (which does not have soul destroying/eating attacks) that you can not kill an Immortal because there is no way to harm the soul, and thus the soul will simply be reborn. In wider Megaversal games I would say that Immortals can be permanently killed because in those games there are ways to destroy souls. And thus you can annihilate the soul preventing it from ever being able to be reborn.

Except even in the megaversal sense some souls are truly indestructible, and the Enlightened Immortals certainly have unique and special souls compared to the 'average' soul.

I dunno. There is nothing in any book I am aware of that says some souls are indestructible (other than the statement here in the N&SS Mystic China book). Can you share the sources so I can look at them?

Juggernaut does have "he can be defeated, and he can be killed, but he can never truly die" but that's following a "No matter what happens to his body.." and preceding a "No matter what the damage ... and if his body" type stuff so it could be taken as a continuous thought of 'we mean his flesh not his mind' sense.

Which begs the question... if Tentac killed the Juggernaut, would his body respawn as a soull-less box ready for someone else to inhabit?

eliakon wrote:One first has to decide if you are going with a Line approach or a Megaversal approach.

My view of this is that in the N&SS Game (which does not have soul destroying/eating attacks) that you can not kill an Immortal because there is no way to harm the soul, and thus the soul will simply be reborn. In wider Megaversal games I would say that Immortals can be permanently killed because in those games there are ways to destroy souls. And thus you can annihilate the soul preventing it from ever being able to be reborn.

Seconded.

eliakon wrote:in the N&SS Game (which does not have soul destroying/eating attacks) that you can not kill an Immortal because there is no way to harm the soul

Mind Walk (Zenjoriki on N&SSp124, with added notes MCp161) lets your spirit leave the body. If a Chi attack makes the Chi spirit reach 0 chi then it dies, "no hope of recovery".

So there is actually a spirit-killing attack in N&SS for us to measure the Ti Hsien against.

I'm not sure if Mystic China may have possibly changed things though.

In a "Dangers" section on page 162 it mentions:

"It may be necessary to travel to some focus point, or to be "killed," or to otherwise dispel the Spirit Body, before the character can teleport back home.

It then goes on to reprint from N&SS that you can completely destroy a chi spirit, the "dead with no hope" bit.

But if being "killed" merely "dispels" a "Spirit Body" in a "realm of Chi Spirit" then the only way I can think to resolve this is that a 'Spirit Body' means something different from 'Chi Spirit'. It sounds like a Spirit Body is a faux-body that is inhabited by a Chi Spirit, and that dispelling a Spirit Body only frees the Chi Spirit inhabiting it, but that you would still have to attack the Chi Spirit's chi to kill it after that.

So yeah: there does seem to be a way to kill a guy's spirit in N&SS and a way to avoid that in MC, so that leads me to think it might present other spirit-killing means like Deathkiss/Tentac/Hades-ritual/Dyval-castle. Off-hand I can't remember any ways to destroy souls other than these 4.

Some of the new spells in the Minion War series should do the trick, as well as the Soul Crafted weapons in the Vampire Sourcebook.

Tor wrote:

eliakon wrote:in the N&SS Game (which does not have soul destroying/eating attacks) that you can not kill an Immortal because there is no way to harm the soul

Mind Walk (Zenjoriki on N&SSp124, with added notes MCp161) lets your spirit leave the body. If a Chi attack makes the Chi spirit reach 0 chi then it dies, "no hope of recovery".

I would say personally though that that doesn't mean soul death. It just means that the person dies and no amount of medical care or chi skills can prevent this.

Tor wrote:So there is actually a spirit-killing attack in N&SS for us to measure the Ti Hsien against.

I'm not sure if Mystic China may have possibly changed things though.

In a "Dangers" section on page 162 it mentions:

"It may be necessary to travel to some focus point, or to be "killed," or to otherwise dispel the Spirit Body, before the character can teleport back home.

It then goes on to reprint from N&SS that you can completely destroy a chi spirit, the "dead with no hope" bit.

But if being "killed" merely "dispels" a "Spirit Body" in a "realm of Chi Spirit" then the only way I can think to resolve this is that a 'Spirit Body' means something different from 'Chi Spirit'. It sounds like a Spirit Body is a faux-body that is inhabited by a Chi Spirit, and that dispelling a Spirit Body only frees the Chi Spirit inhabiting it, but that you would still have to attack the Chi Spirit's chi to kill it after that.

Or maybe it means something simpler...
That you can kill a chi spirit and this dispels them UNLESS you kill it with negative chi attacks, then the person dies.
So shoot the chi spirit with chi charged bullets and they will wake up
Shoot them with negative chi though and they wake up....in the afterlife (or their next incarnation)

Tor wrote:So yeah: there does seem to be a way to kill a guy's spirit in N&SS and a way to avoid that in MC, so that leads me to think it might present other spirit-killing means like Deathkiss/Tentac/Hades-ritual/Dyval-castle. Off-hand I can't remember any ways to destroy souls other than these 4.

I think it would do nothing to stop various other soul destroying attacks/effects (few as those are).
But that is because I still think that physical death and soul death are different.

The soul cannot truely Die, does not mean that the soul cannot be imprisoned. A soul drinking sword could trap the soul indefinatly, at least until it's freed. We know it's possible, in Armageddon Unlimited there is a special Holy blade that has the power to free any souls trapped by a soul drinker. it can even put them back in their origional bodies provided they are still around and in good enough condition to support life. (Apparently, when a soul is taken by a soul drinker, the body dosn't die immediately, it just falls into a coma state for weeks before the body gradually fades away)

My issue isn't with soul-drinking, undying spirits can totally be imprisoned, I get that. Most of the time you get a convenient savings throw when that comes up.

The concern is with the soul-eating Deathkiss and similar Tentac, or Sahtalus' ability with Grim to burn souls.

eliakon wrote:

Tor wrote:Mind Walk (Zenjoriki on N&SSp124, with added notes MCp161) lets your spirit leave the body. If a Chi attack makes the Chi spirit reach 0 chi then it dies, "no hope of recovery".

I would say personally though that that doesn't mean soul death. It just means that the person dies and no amount of medical care or chi skills can prevent this.

Lemme use the full quote:

"When a Chi spirit reaches zero Chi, it is dead, with no hope of recovery."

The power introduces saying "The character's spirit can leave the body" so it sounds like 'spirit' defaults to meaning 'Chi Spirit'.

The only wiggle room I can see is maybe if we consider 'spirit' and 'soul' to mean different things, but I think I've seen them used interchangeably.

eliakon wrote:I think it would do nothing to stop various other soul destroying attacks/effects (few as those are).
But that is because I still think that physical death and soul death are different.

I chose the thread title for a reason, the quote isn't talking about 'a body that can never die'.

Tor wrote:My issue isn't with soul-drinking, undying spirits can totally be imprisoned, I get that. Most of the time you get a convenient savings throw when that comes up.

The concern is with the soul-eating Deathkiss and similar Tentac, or Sahtalus' ability with Grim to burn souls.

eliakon wrote:

Tor wrote:Mind Walk (Zenjoriki on N&SSp124, with added notes MCp161) lets your spirit leave the body. If a Chi attack makes the Chi spirit reach 0 chi then it dies, "no hope of recovery".

I would say personally though that that doesn't mean soul death. It just means that the person dies and no amount of medical care or chi skills can prevent this.

Lemme use the full quote:

"When a Chi spirit reaches zero Chi, it is dead, with no hope of recovery."

The power introduces saying "The character's spirit can leave the body" so it sounds like 'spirit' defaults to meaning 'Chi Spirit'.

The only wiggle room I can see is maybe if we consider 'spirit' and 'soul' to mean different things, but I think I've seen them used interchangeably.

I think that the power means what it is talking about. A Chi Spirit. This is different than the Soul. Chi Spirit can be shortened to Spirit in context of a discussion about Chi Spirits with out meaning any other kind of Spirit.
This is why I explicitly said in my post that if you kill the Chi Spirit with Negative Chi you kill the body with no hope of recovery. I do not think that killing the Chi Spirit with Negative Chi destroys the soul.

Tor wrote:

eliakon wrote:I think it would do nothing to stop various other soul destroying attacks/effects (few as those are).
But that is because I still think that physical death and soul death are different.

I chose the thread title for a reason, the quote isn't talking about 'a body that can never die'.

I know that. The reason I said what I said was that a method of killing someone's body has no bearing on killing their soul.
Just because you can use a specific combination of Chi powers to kill a persons body, does not mean that their soul is destroyed. Just that their body dies with no hope of recovery.

The problem about saying this is 'shortened' is that it starts off with 'spirit' rather than later using 'spirit' as a shortening of 'Chi Spirit'. When it begins with 'spirit' and then says Chi Spirit, that presents to me as an explanation of the Chi Spirit being what a person's spirit is.

If a Chi Spirit is not someone's spirit/soul then destroying a chi spirit wouldn't prevent someone from being resurrected, I guess? But I'm not sure if there's a basis to believe that.

I guess maybe it could be analagous to destroying an astral body?

Another thing that comes to mind is destroying a Dream-Self when you use Dreamdance: Superior. I think that specifically refers to your soul.

Anyway, I'm still not talking about killing a body, I'm talking about killing spirits.

When the EI says "a spirit that can never truly die" it doesn't say "a Chi Spirit that can never truly die" so it may be talking about more than a mere Chi Spirit, if you view that as being a lesser death, so to speak, in the context of death.

Basically I don't think that killing a Chi Spirit with Negative Chi would stop either resurrection or reincarnation. It just means that the body dies, right then unpreventably.

I guess the same goes with an Astral Body dying, I can see interpreting it that way.

So basically, even though Chi Spirit is not specified, I guess a GM could opt to assume that was was meant for EIs.

I guess this means their Chi Spirits could not die/be killed while they were Mind-Walking, but that if they were in their bodies then their souls could be killed since the soul is not protected by the undying Chi Spirit when in physical form?

*getting reminded of past confusion regarding how specifically Infernals or Foxes can die*