#Unkillable Eternal and Infinite

[remxedmoon]

“the eternal wanderer. even death cannot release it from its plight.”

tribeless

1 power - 1 health - 7 bones

unkillable - when a card bearing this sigil perishes, a copy of it is created in your hand.

corpse eater - if a creature that you own perishes by combat, a card bearing this sigil in your hand is automatically played in its place.

brittle - after attacking, a card bearing this sigil perishes.

hidden trait - cursebearer

this card cannot be sacrificed at the sigil stones event.

finally posting my isatscryption stuff here!!! yipee!!! here’s a writeup about the card design because frankly i put wayy too much thought into all of these cards. sorry if these are a bit hard to parse!

unkillable and corpse eater effectively make sif immortal, since every time he dies, he’ll be placed back on the board! and i thought that was fitting for. y’know. timeloop reasons. brittle is only there to emphasize the whole constantly dying thing. because is it really isat without siffrin torment

also didn’t notice this until after i designed this card, but the brittle sigil art has a star on it??? not intentional in the slightest but it is Fitting

sif is a fox here! i know that that would technically put them in the canine tribe, but i felt it’d be more fitting for them to be tribeless? and base game inscryption already kinda bends the rules when it comes to tribes (such as the bullfrog being a reptile and the rabbit being treated internally as a rodent) so i think it still works

i’m well aware that card traits don’t actually have cool names or anything but i still want to give them cool names because it’s fun. anyways! cursebearer! i gave them this trait both because these sigils are extremely overpowered, and for lore reasons. sif sees their sigils as a curse! they don’t want to force them on anyone else!! it’s their burden to bear!!!

tangentially related to that last point, but sif is a talking card in this au! because it’s fun :3. and because i think it’d be really interesting to see how he’d react to the cabin

sif’s scar is covered by the hat a bit but it’s Star Shaped. and so is the eye shine teehee

this was the first card i made and Boy Does It Show. i had the WORST time trying to get the card generators to work for this because oops! both of the card generators are inaccurate in different ways! plus theres a few mistakes in the card art that i didn’t notice until after i finished most of the others... i promise the others are a little more polished

also, since i didn’t mention it above the cut, the sigil patch is for the bone king sigil! which makes the card award 4 bones instead of 1 upon death. this is less for lore reasons and more for the synergy with his sigils. since he’s constantly dying and coming back, he can basically give you infinite bones for Zero Cost. fun!

aaand i think that’s all the notes for this card! thanks for reading this absurdly long post. here’s his alt card art without the patch for your troubles 🫡

[mistress-of-vos]

Idk how to put this on a way that makes sense outside of my mind but to me Tim is Persephone, protected apprehensively by Bruce and spending the days between his flowers and friends.

There's Kon, who shines in golden inheratinace just like Apollo. He's born of a tragic love, his mother never the queen that sits next to Superman.

There's Bart, blessed by Hermes and the winds. A kind, strong soul that craves to see the world.

And there's Ra's, just like Hades, of course. Unkillable, king of a land that you can't come back from. His mere sight condemns people and a favor from him will grant you eternity. His wealth is infinite, and he moves through shadows, noticed until it's too late and his sword has made justice.

The myth, as expected, follows its path. And the little bird who lived between flowers and was loved by the sun and wind, becomes queen to the king.

[ryin-silverfish]

how does rebirth and reincarnation work in Buddhism

do memories carry over and Can personality traits or characteristics also stay the same

or does being reborn erase everything and basically reboot a person

is everyone reincarnated or just some people and what causes rebirth

if you don’t want to explain it can you please reply with links to websites where I can find information on the topic

Disclaimer: Everything I write here is less Buddhism, and more "sinicized Buddhist concepts", aka "Chinese adoptation of the ideas of karmic laws and reincarnation, with a bunch of tweaks".

-There are 6 paths of rebirth: Heavenly/Deva, Asura, Human, Beasts, Hungry Ghosts, Hell. In practice, because of unfamiliarity with the Hindu Asura ("wrathful demigods"), it often gets simplified into 5 paths instead.

-Based on one's karma (consequences of one's causes), one is reborn into one of these Paths after death. The first 3 are commonly seen as the "3 good paths", while the last 3 are the "3 bad paths".

-Technically, even being reborn as a celestial being does not free you from suffering, since, despite the incredibly long lifespan of celestials and the pleasures they enjoy, their stay there is still not infinite, and they'll be reborn into a lower path once their Good Deeds Bank runs out, so to speak.

-However, in lay practice, being reborn in the Heavenly path is often considered "Good enough".

-Similarly, in more orthodox Buddhism, the concept of "non-being" and the lack of a permanent, eternal self is a big thing (where there's no continuation of the self between each life, memory-wise or personality-wise).

-Yet after its spread to China, it was adjusted to fit, and syncretized with existing beliefs about souls and ancestor worship, and honestly, folks pretty much assumed that there is a...soul thingy that gets reincarnated, and some sort of continuation exists between each life.

-In Northern-Southern dynasty and Tang legends, there are a lot of tales about people who remembered their past lives, or people who suffered misfortune/got a lawsuit from ghosts in the Underworld bc of bad things they did in another life.

-However, in the latter case, they often don't remember. It is kinda implied that reincarnation itself blurred/erased their memories, but never explicitly explained.

-The much later Ming-Qing addition of Mengpo and her amnesia soup could be seen as a "fix-it" to that question: people don't remember their past lives bc the amnesia soup is mandatory, and the few who remembered are folks who had found a way to avoid drinking it.

-Like all folklore stuff, it's far from universally adopted, and in Liaozhai, you can still see tales like Lian Xiang's, where the fox spirit in question died, reincarnated into a human body, and remembered her old ghostly rival-turned-best-friend upon seeing her again.

-In vernacular novels and tales about reincarnated immortals and celestial deities, like JTTS and JTTN, it's more common for the protagonists to remember their original self from start to finish, or recover their memories after being informed of that fact and settle on working their way back into their old position.

-As for "does everyone have to go through reincarnation?" Unless you are a Buddha, a Bodhisattva, or Arhat, technically yes.

-After Daoism adopted the Buddhist ideas of karma and reincarnation, there were also works that suggested, by attaining immortality, you wouldn't have to reincarnate again...

-But I personally saw that as more of a "immortality just means no natural death, not unkillable" situation——the immortal in question won't have to reincarnate bc they can no longer die of old age, but if sth comes along and kill them, or they got demoted by the Heavenly Emperor for breaking celestial laws, their soul will still re-enter the cycle.

-Lastly, what causes rebirth? Well...existing. As long as you are within the Realm of Desire and a being of the Six Paths, you are subjected to the cosmological cycle, and to Buddhists, the only way out is attaining enlightenment.

[white-collar-cannibal]

gleegsnag pov ✌️

promise that i tried everything, redeemer, forgiver, beloved, held all those sad dying sops going this is how you breathe in case you forgot somewhere along the way, pretending i always remembered; pretending i was mary and goliath and the berlin wall; pretending the world was made of love instead of blood and cash and oil; pretending to believe in the eternal dream of the unified front.

glass in the sink cause we hate the house, blood on the floor cause we hate the house, house full of sinners, house full of dogs, house full of tripwires and landmines and excess munitions, house full of razor wire, house full of hand in the mouth of the dog, house full of bridge over abyss, house full of i forgive you in the air like pollen, salt lines over doorways, tape on the windows, padlocks and deadbolts to say our dysfunctional i love you’s, and you’re not here no matter how many times i invite you in.

God bless the losers, God bless the degenerates, God bless the roaches, God bless the sole survivors for they shall inherit the earth, definitionally.

bless our house full of heathens, Godless folk with space enough in their hearts only for the people bound to them by the blood of the knife, and the axe, and the bullet, paranoid folk stumbling through the difference between routine and ritual, ghost and hallucination, metaphor and delusion, hearing our dead on the streets sing along to R&B from car windows and ambulance sirens and the city birds, unkillable city birds who, too, are us.

i invite you in again, lover, confessor, friend, right hand, right lung, please come back, please bring with you the thousand blessings of your voice and hands, please give me something to believe in and i’ll pay attention to it this time, stuck like a magnet to your side watching the corners of your mouth like propaganda, come home and you don’t need to do anything but taste of utopia and that infinite dream of the unified front.

[tiktaaliker]

alright so current plot synopsis of the null v nil portion of mortally coiled that nobody probably wanted or asked for, but if you DID want to actually hear about it this is probably way longer than you've ever wanted or expected:

though a bit obtuse and quite a bit cliche, it starts with the creation of the universe- or more specifically and more accurately, the creation of the Mortal Coil.

the three major beings (and the only relevant ones, for now) in the Eternal Coil are Hark, Lythe, and Sar'Kai. In relation to the Mortal Coil, they're less like gods and more like... demiurges, for lack of a better term.

the early stages of the Mortal Coil were stars and little else, crafted entirely by Hark. Sar'kai's first impact on the Mortal Coil was destroying one of the stars, and Lythe made a living thing from the resulting star-fragments. that first living thing would later become Khetzal, immortal prophet and sun-eater, but that is a story for another time.

eventually, the three diversified- Hark created planets, and (in jealousy of Lythe's first creation) the first mortals, populating a world with flora and fauna alike. Sar'kai gave the mortals death, and sickness, and fear, and hunger. Lythe took a dead star and split it into four, gifting the pieces to a chosen four mortals, granting them and all their descendants sentience and sapience.

Hark grew angry with the other two for meddling in what they believed was their creation and theirs alone, but Sar'Kai was the greater offense in their eyes. Sar'Kai was and had been destroying their work, and that was unacceptable.

Over ages and centuries, Hark turned Lythe against the third- Sar'Kai was ruining the Coil, they claimed, and eventually Lythe believed it. While Sar'Kai could not be killed (as death was not a natural part of the Eternal Coil), they could, theoretically, be displaced. For what in the Mortal Coil would be generations on generations, they gathered power. Hark saved their energy, and Lythe would hold back a tiny portion of the starstuff from departed mortals whenever one died.

Sar'Kai was banished from the Eternal Coil into the Mortal Coil. It was not a good plan.

Those in the Eternal Coil cannot thrive in the Mortal Coil. They are incompatible. Banishing an Eternal to the Mortal Coil is similar in effect to throwing a soul into a blender. The Mortal Sar'Kai was a being of pure hatred and blind destruction, a hulking, unkillable beast that devoured anything in its path. Mortals did not recognize this thing as the Sar'Kai of legend, worshiped by some as a god alongside their brethren; they thought this thing a killer of worlds. They knew it as Noxa Krav, Dragon of the End and Apocalypse Incarnate.

Those spared from Noxa Krav's wrath worked day in and day out to find a way to kill the seemingly unkillable. Mage's Towers were some of the few truly safe places left, as the magic-wielders were able to stall or evade the Dragon's warpath for the time being.

However, it was not a member of these Mage's Towers that finally stopped Noxa Krav, but a Novice mage from a small town directly in the Dragon's path. The Novice in a desperate attempt to protect their friends and family devised a spell to trap Noxa Krav and rip the soul from it's body, ripping it to shreds and effectively killing the beast.

They confronted the dragon, and Noxa Krav walked directly into their spell circle. Unfortunately for the Novice, an Eternal is made from different stuff than a Mortal, and Sar'Kai would not be destroyed so easily. The soul was successfully ripped from the mortal body, but so vast and alien that the Novice was only able to tear it once rather than into infinitely small pieces. It used so much power that the Novice's very being imploded, wiping them and their memory from common existence. They would recover, eventually, but that is a story for a different time.

Sar'Kai, no longer Noxa Krav, was now split into two. In the chaos, the two halves scattered- one fled into the wilderness, and one deep into a pitch-dark cave.

This is where our story actually begins.

The cave-dark soul and the wilderness soul alike form into more solid, material mortal shells as time goes on. While the wilderness soul has a form more similar to their predecessor, occupying a similar niche, the cave-dark soul adapts to the environment. Instead of eyes, they sense the world with heat and sound and reflective radio-waves on the cave walls. Their body is more stone than flesh, their teeth strong enough to bite through and eat the hard rock in the lack of other food.

With one of the three major forces of the Mortal Coil indisposed, the universe rebalances. To fill the now-empty niche, beings known as Sundogs come to be. They each fulfill a role that was previously done by Sar'Kai, now performed within the Coil rather than outside of it.

The Sundogs eventually learn of the two half-souls of Sar'Kai. Some wish to restore the Eternal to their former power, and seek them out.

The wilderness half, which calls itself Nil, is found first by Tyto, Sundog of the Hunt. Tyto believes that Sar'Kai must be restored by the recombining of the half-souls, and the best way to do so is for one to kill the other. Nil is Tyto's champion, and they will kill the cave-dark soul.

Far later, the cave-dark soul is found by a gentler sort. Fane, Sundog of Lies, waits for the cave-dark soul to emerge. It does, eventually. Fane has their own motivations, but mostly is hoping for Tyto to fail.

Fane plans, at first, to have the cave-dark soul, self-named as Null, destroy Nil, as they also believe it to be the way to restore Sar'Kai. However, Fane quickly becomes attached. Null, as it turns out, does not want anything to do with the Eternal Coil. They just want to enjoy the Mortal one. Fane, eventually, decides to act as Null's protector rather than guide, and the two evade the pursuit of Nil and Tyto.

Nil, however, is convinced that their life's purpose is to hunt down and kill Null. This is, after all, their true enemy, their fated adversary. This is what they were destined to do, and cannot accept that Null does not feel the same way.

Null and Fane are, eventually, accompanied by Roach, Sundog of Decay, and Nil and Tyto are joined by Panik, Sundog of Crowd Chaos.

Eventually, Fane cannot ward off the advances of the other two for any longer. They confront each other. Nil attacks Null.

Nil is killed, but not by Null or Fane or any of their companions, but by Panik. Panik was an old friend of Tyto, but disliked Nil profusely. The clash between the two groups was a perfect opportunity for Panik to change things to their liking, and Nil was drowned without any blood otherwise spilled.

Sar'Kai is restored, with a price.

As Null was still one of the halves, their soul was torn from their body along with Nil's and shuffled back into the Eternal Coil. Null's mortal shell was left empty, a petrified stone stature on the riverbank.

Fane, devastated, never left Null's side. Eventually, a temple was built around them- an ancient gargoyle and their immortal protector, an idol to be revered without true knowledge of what it once was. It's not like Fane would ever tell them the truth.

Years pass. Centuries pass. The temple is abandoned and found again, left to ruin and restored, cycles on cycles, and still Fane does not leave.

Fane, eventually, grows desperate. In an act of despair and hopelessness, he severs himself from the Eternal Coil entirely and uses his own power to try giving the empty shell of Null something, anything. To their horror, this reveals that Null was not empty at all- inanimate, but still sentient, trapped in a stone body with no way to move or communicate for all those horrid, lonely years.

The two reunite. Fane finds a way to enter Null's mind in a sort of pseudo-coil of their own creation, where Null lives a confined but no longer lonely life. They stay in the temple, together, until the Coil unravels.

[magicaemaxima]

me thinking about dionysia and how lost and empty she actually feels often times having unlimited power and it makes me think of what heaven is like in nbc's the good place (spoilers for that show below)

"Each day in The Good Place is a blissful and beautiful existence, where a human may have anything they desire, simply by calling on their neighborhood's Janet. Humans in The Good Place also never experience any kind of pain, do not age and cannot perish. The Good Place is considered to be actual, infinite perfection; anyone can see or do anything they want to do, regardless of scale, difficulty or complexity. They can live anywhere, do anything, see anything, and get anything they want from the Good Janets who service the inhabitants of the Good Place."

on paper, doesn't that sound amazing? just like magicae maxima, the thought of having unlimited power and being able to do whatever you want, never having to worry about anything again, being immortal, being unkillable, never aging, etc. But straight up, everyone in the good place is miserable and bored. they've done everything they've ever wanted to do, and then now what? that's where dionysia is

"but even the souls that do make it into the Good Place end up literally losing their minds from boredom, as they all eventually run out of things to keep them entertained. "Patty" reveals the actual Good Place is just as screwed up as the rest of the afterlife, as it turns out having your every desire met for all eternity eventually becomes its own kind of hell, making your existence meaningless and with no hope that anything will ever change."

yeah. that's where dionysia's at most days. it's why she tries so hard to throw herself into things, to keep herself distracted, to try putting herself in dangerous situations, to behave so recklessly. it's because she's legitimately running out of things to do. she's not at the "she's been in this state for thousands of years" level yet like we see in the good place but she's secretly terrified of reaching that level. when she's 100% completely done everything and has completely run out of things to do.

right now her main hope is to find other witches and to fulfill her promise to her sisters of taking over salem, having witches ruling over it. but dionysia's even a few times thought; what happens after that? what next? what's left after that? and then promptly shoved those feelings and thoughts into a box and thrown herself into more distractions.

[angrypeaceexpert]

[Prompt]

[You've put that doll in the cabinet, in the closet, in the attic, but no matter where you tuck it, it always shows back up on the sofa. On Halloween night, you find it watching you…]

So, I decided to try something I'd never tried before, befriend the doll. "H-Hello", i said hesitantly not knowing what to expect. "Finally,", said a voice coming from the doll, it was deep and eldritch, but it had an entrancing quality to it, "I know the doll is a bit unsightly but to think you'd throw it out every time you saw it, how rude." I was still unsure of what was happening, maybe because it was Halloween and i thought this was all a prank by a disillusioned friend or because of the vodka bottle I'd downed earlier i replied: "Do you not know the stigma behind dolls? Have you never watched a movie? One of two things happens when a doll is involved, and the day is October 31st. You get killed or your soul gets stolen by a demon." "Woah woah, slow down there buddy. I haven't been up there in a while but I'm sure no demon I know is going around using dolls to steal human souls." said the voice, with an upset undertone. "Human souls are not even that important anymore, they're dirty dirty things. Sure, they were useful back in the day, but now they're the cheapest soul around. Every beggar has a couple hundred human souls to their name." "W-what? What are you talking about? Who are you?" I asked visibly scared, I thought this was a prank at first, but not anymore. The way the voice spoke about humans, reminded me of the way humans speak about cockroaches, with such disgust it made me curl my toes. "My name is Berith. Or Baal. Whichever one is fine. Some of the old humans called me Baal of the Covenant too. I was a pretty big deal. But life got boring, I'm no Lucifer, no Beelzebub, no Satanas. I have no throne, and no real power. Infinity is nothing but boredom if you have no one to share it with. Life down here is just an unending race." she sounded almost sad as she talked. "Which brings us to here. I'm looking for a companion, someone willing to share eternity with me. Can't be another demon, they're too competitive. Can't be an angel as they're too self-righteous. But a human, a human is a careful mix of both." "Well, what brings you to me then? I'm no one special. A stay-at-home nobody who specializes in dreaming up perfect universes where no one ever dies, and no one ever suffers." "Well, that's the point, at first I was just going to stay here for a while and then move on. But i got curious, you spend all your time immersed in fictional universes pondering what would happen if you were to become immortal, wishing for it even. What if you could?" Baal asked excitedly. I was surprised, I'd been getting ready for this my entire life. "I'm definitely intrigued, but if you've really been listening to me for all this time, you know what I'm going to ask." There're 2 essential questions when it comes to immortality, what type it is and what else changes in your physiology. Especially regarding your memories, I pondered this a lot while watching a specific TV Show and never stopped wondering since. "I was waiting for that" said Baal almost giddying with joy. "You'd be immortal but not unkillable, you'd be mostly invulnerable but could still die should you choose to.  And about your physiology, nothing would change outwardly but a lot would change internally. For example, your brain would evolve allowing you to store well, an infinite number of memories. And as a bonus from me you'll get one power of your choice, although i think i know what you're going to say. At the count of 3" "1, 2, 3" "Shapeshifting" "Shapeshifting" I was speechless, this demon was offering me everything i ever wanted. It knew me well enough to know what power I'd choose given the chance. But still i was a bit skeptic, a side effect of being this imaginative is being gullible so I could be taken advantage of really easily should someone want to. But as I was about to overthink it and get stuck in a do or don't paradox Baal said. "Don't overthink it. I know what you're thinking but don't. Just say yes,and  if I'm lying what's the worst that could happen, huh?" Those words filled me with confidence, and so without a beat I replied: "Yes, I agree." Smoke filled the room and enveloped me, transporting me someplace else. Somewhere magical. "Welcome to hell" Baal said. "Not what you expected huh?" I turned around towards the sound of the voice, and in front of me was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. Pale red skin, beautiful black eyes with a long curvaceous body. "I-I-I-I Y-yes" I stammered still panicking over this beauty. Was I really about to spend eternity with her? Maybe hell is not so bad after all.

[youllallriseintheink]

I’m you immortal au. Right now. Who’s being the goth? Who’s being the hippie? Who’s being the soccer player? Who’s into witchcraft? And who’s making contact with aliens? (( Hehe things I love))

Goth: I mean, Allison has had periods of dabbling in witchcraft and has tried just about every fashion trend on the planet. Susie and Bertrum have probably put on the costume at appropriate times in their careers.

Hippie: Jack was a hippie for several years in the sixties. It had a profound impact on him that can be seen in his films.

Soccer player: Shawn is definitely quick enough for it, has the right body type, and will probably pursue that at some point after he gets clean.

Witchcraft: only Allison. Sammy is pretty good at sniffing out signs of it, and as a priest tries to turn people away from it. Failing that he’ll call the authorities. As for Joey, he’s drawn his last pentagram. Hard to access the necessary supplies when you’re locked in an insane asylum and too sedated to even read.

Aliens: no one, probably. If the aliens come down at the right time Norman might get to talk to them, since he’s gone through periods of pursuing politics. Probably not, though.

[justanotherpersonsuniverse]

So, this might be long and might be weird so feel free to not answer it.

But I was wondering exactly how Anarka’s immortality worked in regards to menopause. Cause if Anarka’s immorality is “nothing can kill you not matter how fatal” then her body would heal almost naturally and function almost naturally.

Meaning, Anarka would, have periods as they signal the stage during the cycle in which after you missed the chance to get pregnant. Now, all people who are able to get pregnant are born with the Unfertilised eggs that would be humans if they, you know, knocked up. And thus, there is a limited supply of them.

This is why women experience menopause at roughly 55.

If Anarka’s immorality is just “Perfectly natural but unkillable” then she herself would have entered Menopause long before she could have Luka and Juleka when she did.

So what, I’m ultimately wondering, is how she did manage to stay able to have kids despite this.

Is it: All Fae magic requires some minor “fuck you” and Now Anarka has regenerating eggs, this unlimited chances to have kids.

Or

The Fae magic resets Anarka’s body to the point of when she received her Immorality, (with the exception of wanted changes like getting pregnant and gaining Scars) and since she could have kids then, she can now have kids eternally.

Or, is it something else, I hate bringing ✨Science✨ into a Fic about magic but this thought has been eating me up for a while.

Cause either way you’ve ultimately cursed Anarka to have Infinite periods for the rest of existence.

OoOooooooOOOOOhhhhh, those are some good points, either make sense tbh and I didn’t even think of that.

If it helps, Anarka hit immortality at around 35-40 and she Is killable and woundable

But she continued aging very very very slowly during the time her Fae wife accompanied her on the seas but it paused when they were apart, resulting in why she looks around her 50s now

In summary, Anarka ages like a Fae, its weird and wobbly and inconsistent especially when around Fae magic. So whether she gets menopause or not is also questionable

[talldarkandroguesome]

1st of Sun’s Height, Turdas

I have not yet slept.

How could I? After what happened?

All I can do is try to figure out exactly what Daedric Prince I may have garnered the attention of. Would it be Molag Bal, trying to reek his vengeance on me for my role in foiling the Planemeld?

I certainly do not want to have his attention. I have had enough of it for a life time. Which in my case is now an eternity.

I do have eternity. It is a strange concept to be sure. Hard to really wrap one’s mind around the idea of having infinite time to be on Nirn. Of course, I suppose if I were to have gotten back my soul and died naturally, an after life is also eternal, so perhaps it is not quite so different. Other than how I will be interacting with others during that eternity.

I wonder if the ancient wizards or Almsivi have similar thoughts. I presume that after stealing godhood for yourself it is a bit different. They likely had full physical changes to contend with.

Speaking of, I have to wonder, if I manage not to be killed, will my body continue to age? If I went a few of centuries of surviving in my most recent body, will my skin start to wrinkle or my hair thin? Would I simply need to die in order to restore myself to that moment when Mannimarco plunged his dagger through my heart? Or is there some property of this body that will keep it ageless?

Perhaps I should not have so great of fear of whatever Daedric entity is seeking me out. I know that if it should kill me, I will not be dead for good.

That said, who knows what it might try to do before I would die. Or where it might take me.

Also, uncle Tanval and Mother alike have warned me not to let any know I am without my soul or unkillable. And Daedra so often have a tendency to leave very messy scenes in their wake.

Even worse, I finally have managed to grow my hair out to a decent length where I can add my ornaments and combs again. And it is so nice to be able to put it up when I wish to do so. It is a relief to have it out of my face.

I have an appointment with the librarian at the Tribunal Temple to look into their books on repealing Daedric influences. I only hope it is not too late.

One of the books that I specifically requested is a book with basics of the Daedric language. I heard one phrase repeated over and over when the voice was whispering to me and if I could just figure out what it says, I think that it would help me to discern what Prince may be involved and what the intention is with me.

Unless....

No, my Prince would not contact me in such a way.

Would She?

No.

Though there is whispers....

But I KNOW the sound of my Prince’s voice. It is unmistakable. And this voice is not His voice.

This is driving me mad! I must get to the bottom of this or I truly will lose my mind.

I am well aware that the lack of sleep will not help. Exhaustion clouds the mind. But I cannot risk the Daedra coming for me in my sleep before I know what is wanted of me. Wanted with me.

I must find answers.

[sortyourlifeoutmate]

“If it has turned its attention our way once more then we are naught but food for the gods! Food for the gods!”

I know the ship sailed on this years and years ago but I still infinitely prefer the Oldcons. And I have reasons for this.

Ahem.

You see, the Oldcons, as they were, serve as both a foil to the Tyranids and to Chaos, and also sit as another existential threat in the 40K universe (as though there needed to be more).

I’ve thought about this much more articulately on my walk to work but I’ll do my best to vomit my thoughts out here, for the edification of no-one.

(This worked out way longer than I initially thought it might, so I’m putting in a cut.)

SETUP

The basic schtick of the Oldcons - and I can’t remember how much and how little of this passed over intact in the retcot, quite a lot as I recall - was that the Necrontyr, a long, long, long fuckin’ time ago, were on a planet dying a lot. They had super-good technology but their sun basically fried them to death, so their lives sucked.

Then one day they met the Old Ones, classical precursors of the 40K universe and Those Who Shall Not Be Seen. The Old Ones were basically immortal and liked to cruise around space through their webway, seeding life and generally just being precursors.

The Necrontyr got mad about this because, well, they were bitter and angry that these guys got to live forever and they didn’t, so they had a war. That’s maybe an oversimplification but a war did happen.

Now the Necrontyr had super-good technology, as said, so did very well for themselves all things considered, but the Old Ones had access to the webway and mastery of the warp and basically just ran rings around the Necrontyr and kicked the shit out of them so much the war fizzled to nothing and the Necrontyr were pushed to one podunk corner of the galaxy to sit and get even angrier.

The Old Ones pretty much forgot about them at that point.

Meanwhile, the Necrontyr had been studying stars. This was partly because, as they had a somewhat rocky relationship with their own sun they kind of hoped they might have found a way to make their lives less blighted and shitty, and partly on the off-chance they’d find something useful to go fuck with the Old Ones.

The former didn’t work out, the latter most certainly did.

To cut a long story short they found the C’tan, star gods. These ancient, ancient, formed-at-the-start-of-the-universe entities that lurked around old stars feeding off them.

For some reason the Nectrontyr immediately knew that this was a key turning point? I don’t know. Guess they knew they were powerful somehow (they were).

But! Since the C’tan at this point were just enormous, planet-sized diffuse clouds of energy they couldn’t really relate to the world as the Necrontyr were aware of it. They needed bodies. And so the Necrontyr built them bodies, using the same super-duper living metal they used to make their super-duper spaceships.

This was one of those points where things - already not great - started getting worse.

The C’tan (in a process you shouldn’t think about too hard) poured themselves into these fancy-pants new bodies and in the process got a new, different understanding of the world and how things worked. And they liked it. To quote the codex:

“As the C’tan became ever more manifest with the focusing of the their consciousness, they began to appreciate the subtleties and pleasures of both matter and life. The close weaves of dancing particles enthralled them and the deliciously focused tickles of electromagnetism leaked by the mortal bodies of the Necrontyr about them awoke a hunger in the C’tan quite unlike the one they had sated among the raging torrents of stars.”

As you might not need me to tell you that last part is kind of important.

So these star-devouring things had bodies now, and were basically gods. They could do all sorts of reality-bending shit (don’t look into the hows or whys, they just can) and they got a real taste for being the object of adulation for their mortal subjects.

The next part always kind of confused me, but here we go.

So with their super-duper technology and ships that could cross the galaxy in the blink of an eye and their own GODS walking around and willing to pitch in, the Necrontyr were ready to get the war started again, but before they did the C’tan came to them with an offer.

The offer boiled down to “Hey, do you want indestructible, eternal, metal bodies so you can be our servants forever? You’ll totally get to kill the Old Ones!” The Necrontyr leapt at the chance but - surprise! - they weren’t told the whole story. While they did get their shiny bodies, they also basically had the whole essence of their species devoured by their ravenous gods, almost all of them ending up as blank, hollow shells that existed only to serve and a slim handful retaining only a glimmer of their former selves.

Why this always confused me was because there aren’t many details provided about the process, what it involved and why it was even the C’tan who floated the idea - they’re not the ones who made all the technology, after all, were they? Why weren’t the Necrontyr the ones who cooked up the ‘transfer ourselves into everliving bodies’ plan? And what was it the C’tan ate? Their souls? Or just their vague ‘life energy’?

(This ‘What is it C’tan actually eat?’ question is another one that always bugs me, but I don’t think it matters especially - souls or the bio-electrical energy of living beings they eat people one way or another and that’s what counts.)

So the Necrontyr are now the Necrons, the C’tan have vast legions of unkillable, implacable, mechanical doomtroops and technology the likes of which can be scarcely imagined. The war kicks off again, and this time the Old Ones are the ones getting their arses handed to them. They’ve still got the webway and their warp magic but the C’tan and their Necrons are more-or-less unbeatable in the real, physical world.

Things get worse from here.

The Old Ones are pushed into a few isolated spaces and barely hold onto these. Meanwhile, elsewhere, everywhere else in the galaxy the Necrons and the C’tan are in charge and they run the place about as well as gluttonous, capricious gods who feed on life itself can be expected to run the place - that is to say, badly. Planetary populations are harvested to sate the hunger of the C’tan, whole species made into cattle, etcetera.

And even that’s not enough! Not enough to satisfy the C’tan! So greedy are the C’tan that they start turning on one another, eating each other even as the war continues.

It’s worth bearing in mind for later that the C’tan don’t need to do this. They just want to do this.

The Old Ones, with their backs to the wall, start getting desperate. They start engineering species to act as living weapons in the war, species that can use the warp given that it’s their main edge. This is where Eldar come from, explicitly, and I think it’s also implied this is where psychic potential got put into humans (Necrons also put the Pariah gene in here, but I don’t know if that’s still true).

Oh, and Orks also got invented. Maybe. It’s less clear but I like to think it’s true that they made the Orks towards the end and never got around to finishing them properly. But that’s me.

So now you’ve got a galaxy teeming with life, all of it tapping into the warp in a millennia-spanning, apocalyptic conflict for the fate of the galaxy itself. This is when the warp starts getting bad, because it’s being fucked around with so much. Beforehand the warp was actually fairly sedate, but now since it’s being swung around like a big stick for years and years and years it start getting messy. It starts getting angry. Nasty things start appearing in it.

The C’tan have a plan for this, it should be said, and that plan is to seal off the material world from the warp. Completely. What this would mean in practise is unclear but as far as they were concerned it would just fuck over the Old Ones and that’s what counts.

And then things get WORSE.

Enslavers appear. You may have heard about these. Weirdo warp beasts. Possess those with psychic potential, melt their bodies down into gristly flesh gates that more Enslavers can come through, enslave everyone to make this easier and defend against threats that might want to stop it, repeat across whole population across whole planet, repeat across whole system, etcetera.

EVERYTHING STARTS TO DIE.

The C’tan have eaten themselves down to a nub at this point and there’s only a handful of them left. The Old Ones are basically done too, the webway is breached, their uplifted races are in disarray, shit’s fucked. Across the galaxy Enslavers are just wiping out whole populations, everyone and everything is dying.

But the C’tan don’t really care. The Old Ones have lost at this point and that’s the only thing that really matters. That all life is dying out is just a passing thing, they can ride that out and come back later. The C’tan plan to settle in and have a nap. In a few million years the Enslavers will be gone and the galaxy will have produced new life and they can get restarted on their ‘Seal off the warp, feed on life forever’ plan.

And, millions of years later, 40K happens.

That’s it in broad strokes.

OLDCONS

If you followed any of that congratulations. 

The practical upshot is this:

A) The Necrons are an undying, soulless race of borderline indestructible machines that are the slaves of the C’tan B) The C’tan are immeasurably ancient, star-eating beings given physical form by the the Necrons and who really, really, really like having physical form C) Neither the C’tan or the Necrons have anything to do with the warp other than not liking it. They are NOT PSYCHIC, they have zero presence in the warp. It has nothing to do with them other than being an obstacle.

Now I’ll tell you why I like this and why I think they serve as a good foil to a couple other factions in 40K.

GOALS

Broadly speaking, every faction in 40K has their own little motivation, right? 

Orks want to fight forever. The Imperium basically wants to survive and kill everything that looks at them funny. The Tau want to expand and spread their philosophy. The Eldar want to cling on for just another day please just another day (and also fuck chaos and Necrons). The Tyranids want to eat everything and then leave. Chaos wants to sunder reality and just sink into a mire of mindless chaotic indulgence forever, maybe, kind of, whatever it’s chaos.

And so on.

The Necrons (as a faction) I always liked to think of having some distinct lines that run close to some of the others, but don’t cross over.

So let’s, uh, talk about that.

CHAOS

Necrons are associated with sterility, lifeless sterility. They are associated with order - serried ranks of mindless machines marching in lockstep across the surface of dead worlds; towering, silent monoliths of black stone built to sever the material world from the immaterial, to eliminate variables and ensure that everything runs as desired for eternity.

In this they’re fairly obviously set against Chaos.

Chaos! The Chaos gods! Beings born from both the unrelenting, brutal psychic warfare of the War in Heaven (as the war between the Old Ones and the Necrons was called) and from the constant, churning wants and desires of the countless beings in the galaxy.

The Chaos gods are distinct, separate beings but they are also intimately tied to the souls they were born from. They’re individuals, yes, but they’re individuals born from very specific things. They have purviews, they have domains. They are - and are for - these things.

Khorne is as much an incarnate desire for bloodshed and furious anger as he is also a sapient entity who happens to enjoy those things.

If you can follow that?

By contrast, the C’tan existed first. They weren’t born from the desires of mortals, they were just there, sucking on stars until they were put into bodies. They exist separately from mortals. They don’t need mortals, they just want them so they can eat them.

The Chaos gods, for all their cruelty (the extent of which is the result of the War in Heaven is kind of an open thing), want and need mortals. They need mortals to act in certain, often contradictory ways. They need mortals to be chaotic, to give into their desires, to want things.

The C’tan need mortals to eat them. And that’s it. Maybe to do things they don’t want to do, but mainly to eat them since, hey, they’ve got the Necrons if they want stuff done anyway.

So while the Chaos gods would, ideally, like a galaxy overrun with (appropriately enough) chaos so that the endless roaring conflict can generate a lot of that sweet, sweet tumult they thrive on, the C’tan want a nice, quiet galaxy where they can eat in peace.

Order and Chaos, see? Foil!

Oh, and of course the other part about Chaos being All About the warp while the C’tan are All About the physical, real world. Gods both, but on the flipside, yo.

Tyranids

Now I’ve mentioned a lot that the C’tan like to eat people, and you might (rightly) be thinking “Hang on, eating people? Isn’t that the schtick of the Tyranids?” and, again, this is one of those things where they run close, but don’t cross, and in an interesting way.

See, the difference is in the approach. Or something.

The Tyranids are ravenous, the C’tan are gluttonous. To put it simply.

The Tyranids come in a great, all-consuming swarm to strip worlds completely, down to the bedrock, just everything. They do this world by world, system by system just across all of space. They leave nothing. And their hunger won’t ever let them stop, they’re always pushed forward by it. Their hunger is their defining characteristic. 

The C’tan specifically eat living beings. They savour the flavour. What’s more, like I said before, they don’t need to eat people. They could easily go back to being sun-sucking energy clouds and get by just fine. The point is they don’t want to.

See? Ravenous versus gluttonous. The Tyranids are pushed by constant hunger to devour everything and have no future planning beyond moving on to the next meal, the C’tan want to arrange the galaxy so they can a specific thing without interruption forever.

So that’s the difference. The Tyranids would leave the galaxy utterly stripped and barren and dead because of their hunger, while the C’tan would have the galaxy turned into an eternal farm-stroke-slaughterhouse-stroke-whatever because of their desire to eat.

TO SUM UP

Chaos: The galaxy as an anarchic maelstrom of reality-bending madness forever

Tyranids: Eat everything move on.

Necrons: A sterile galaxy, severed from the warp, everything in it as food for the gods, forever

IN CONCLUSION

I know why they did what they did. The Necrons did come across kind of bland. 

Their only characters were two C’tan (one of whom didn’t say anything), all of their fluff was written from the perspective of other factions (like the Tyranids, actually, but again that’s another reason to change them around) and there was just kind of a...sterility, I suppose.

Appropriate, really.

And while I like that - indeed, it’s the whole reason I like them, as you might have picked up on - I guess others didn’t, and it didn’t really give the writers anything to work with. 

So now they’re basically a fallen alien empire that wants to reclaim its glory. The C’tan have been jobbed out and the Necrons have leaders with personalities now, internal factions, competing interests, the capability of having plans beyond SERVING THEIR HUNGRY GODS and so on.

Which I can see the appeal of, I really can. And they’ve also left in Oldcons after a fashion, saying that some are still like that, but that’s a sop for me - it’s all or nothing.

But it’s all water the bridge now anyway, no going back. I just liked them the way they were. Oh well.

The new fluff for the flayed ones is dumb though, I hate it.

Or do I like it? I can’t remember.

[bigskydreaming]

Anyone else familiar with the Chronicles of Amber? Its one of my earliest and favorite series of books, and I’ve been rereading it recently and LOLing at how I never before connected my fondness for it with my fondness for the Batfamily. The royal family of Amber is pretty much the only family in fiction that’s consistently more dysfunctional than the Batfamily.....occasional murder attempts by siblings who then go on to get over it and become BFFs included. Only they’re more like the Batfamily at their most dysfunctional....then taken and dialed up to eleven hundred, lmfao. 

Ugh, I kinda love these immortal, fucked up reality-walking sorcerers and their constant scheming and backstabbing and shifting alliances, not always just because they’re all vying for the throne or backing different siblings who are vying for the throne, but also just sometimes because their dad loved so and so more than them.

Plus, unlike with Bruce, where there’s at least competing takes on whether or not he’s a total bastard and responsible for much of the division within his own family, with the Chronicles of Amber, that’s not really a factor. There’s not really an alternative take to “Oberon was a fucking bastard and responsible for much of the division within his own family, so fuck that guy.”

I kinda want to expand on this and the Amber family tree and which of them are like which Batfam members and why, but I don’t know if that would mean anything to anyone lol, because I honestly don’t know how familiar people are with this series.

(LOL, I’m currently cackling because I just got to a part I’d tooooootally forgotten about, where Flora pulls a fucking hand grenade out of her purse and hands it to her nephew Merlin, who looks at her like ‘wtf’? Now, Flora is one of the youngest members of Corwin’s generation - Corwin being Merlin’s father and the narrator of the first five books - although that still means Flora is probably about a thousand years old herself. But she tends to be regarded by most of her siblings and people in general as just the vapid, air-headed ‘beauty’ of the family who mostly is just concerned with having a good time, living a lavish lifestyle, and enjoying herself. She tends to always end up on the winning side of her siblings’ various power struggles though, because she’s got a keen sense of feeling where the wind is blowing and allying herself accordingly - she doesn’t have much interest in vying for the same kind of power most of her siblings are always after, she just likes to be comfortable and prefers to back whomever she thinks having in charge will let her remain the most comfortable, allowing her to live her life the way she enjoys and fuck everything else, pretty much. Anyway, the thing to remember about this family is they’re all immortal and basically superhuman, and most of them are experts at all kinds of weapons and fighting styles, not to mention sorcerers and practitioners of various magical arts. Then here you’ve got ‘ditzy, air-headed party girl Flora’.....and she just fucking pulls a fucking hand grenade out of her purse and hands it to her nephew. And when he’s like wtf, why do you even have that? Her response? LOLOLOL. She just shrugs and says "Sweetie, in all the centuries I’ve been alive, I’ve yet to face a problem where I didn’t think ‘this wouldn’t be a problem if I just had a hand grenade.’ And so, I just make sure I always have a hand grenade on me somewhere.” And that’s Flora for you, in a nutshell. LMFAO).

Anyway.

Basic premise of the series is that in the beginning, there was one world and one world only, a confusing, shifting place of dizzying physics and magic called the Courts of Chaos, the creation of one of the two prime figures of the universe - the Serpent, whose opposing counterpart is the Unicorn. The one representing chaos, the other order. Though an important distinction is that they’re not meant to be God and the Devil, or any form of Good vs Evil....just Order vs Chaos. And sometimes Order is a tyrannical fucking asshole, and sometimes Chaos is in the mood to be helpful and kind. Its all relative and always changing.

At a certain point long ago, a member of one of the ancient royal houses of Chaos, Dworkin Baromin, came into contact with the Unicorn and its notions and representation of Order, a previously unconsidered opposite to the Chaos that before that was all Dworkin or anyone else had ever known. With the Unicorn’s backing, Dworkin left the Courts of Chaos and went as far away from it as he could, and then using a combination of his own sorcery and things the Unicorn taught him, Dworkin created a magical labyrinth called the Pattern, a sorcerous construct through which he imposed Order upon the shapeless, formless Chaos around him, and created a whole new world called Amber - though Amber for the most part consists just of its titular city and its surrounding environment. Its not a world in the traditional sense, more just that there’s not really anything else to call it, since like the Courts of Chaos it kinda just....exists unto itself.

But for reasons known only to the Serpent and the Unicorn, with not even the greatest minds of Amber or the Courts ever truly understanding the mechanics of how or why this happened.....in the act of drawing the Pattern, creating Order out of Chaos, Dworkin also incited the creation of an infinite number of other universes that within the series are called ‘Shadows’ by the royals of both Amber and the Courts, because these infinite universes are all said to be the shadows cast by the world of Amber when it came into being.....they’re all the worlds Amber COULD have been, all the forms of Order it COULD have taken, rather than the specific shape it took from the endless potential held within the Chaos it was formed from. And all these other universes are real, they exist, but the royals of Amber and the Courts tend to consider them.....largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Ever since the Pattern’s creation, Dworkin’s descendants aka the royal family of Amber, and the nobility of the Courts have been locked in an eternal, never-ending power struggle between Order and Chaos, each vying to become the dominant force in the cosmos once and for all. The Courts want to eliminate their counterpart and undo what Dworkin wrought, return things to what they’d been before Dworkin ‘betrayed them,’ and Amber wants to....well, okay, the royal family of Amber tend to be the central figures of the series as it follows first Corwin’s and then Merlin’s adventures, so its most accurate to say that there’s very little consistency to what ‘they’ want overall, lol.

Anyway, all of that was countless millennia ago, at least as far as Amber is concerned, because time runs differently in Amber, the Courts and across all Shadows. Each universe runs according to its own clock. So for instance, Earth and ‘our’ universe exists and is considered to be one of these Shadows......even though this universe is billions of years old. In Amber time, it hasn’t been anywhere close to billions of years since Dworkin first drew the Pattern....untold millennia, its said, but even the royal family acknowledges that time is a fickle thing from universe to universe. Which is part of why they don’t consider themselves or the Courts’ royals to be gods, the creators of all universes....that’s kinda what I meant when I said they consider the infinite other universes to be largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Its not that they don’t matter, or that they don’t tend to spend a lot of time in various of these Shadows, its more that like.....according to their own history and mythology, all these universes came into being in large part BECAUSE of their family, Dworkin, the Pattern....but other than that, their creation and existence has very little to actually DO with them. It was....a side-effect, that wasn’t really either expected, wanted, or understood, so its just....one of those things that just is the way it is. They consider their family to be the creators of Amber, and thus their ‘divine mandate’ to rule it......it is what Dworkin intended it to be, the Order he pictured when he drew it out of Chaos. Everything else.....is nothing to do with what he intended to create, so as much as their own history claims its because of them, they don’t tend to be that interested in CLAIMING any of these other universes as like, theirs, or their creations.

BUT one power unique to the royal family of Amber and the nobility of the Courts, is that they can Shadow-walk......they can move between these various universes as easily as just walking from one place to the next. They’re reality walkers....upon reaching adulthood, each of Dworkin’s descendants do something called ‘walking the Pattern,’ like physically make their way across the Pattern he inscribed in a labyrinth he later built the palace atop of....and only his descendants can actually walk the Pattern and live. Others usually die in the attempt. But upon reaching the center of the Pattern, something about the act of walking it and ‘attuning’ themselves to it, then forever grants that person the ability to move freely from one universe to the next. The Courts have their own version of the Pattern - though a twisting, chaotic kind of maze unlike its clear form - they call the Logrus, and it empowers them to walk through Shadows the same way as the Amberites do.

So all of that began untold time before the beginning of the series, because the royal bloodlines of both Amber and the Courts are immortal in the sense that they can be killed, are as vulnerable to that as anyone - well aside from power and skills they draw from their various forms of sorcery, derived from the Primal Pattern of Order and its opposite number, the Logrus of Chaos - so they’re not unkillable, but unless they’re killed, they can pretty much live forever. They don’t age past adulthood, don’t get sick and are superhumanly strong to various and largely undescribed degrees - like Corwin in one book kinda effortlessly throws a car while he’s on Earth, and he’s not surprised to be able to do this and is pretty matter-of-fact about it, but so matter-of-fact, that such feats are kinda rarely mentioned, not really a big deal to the characters so not something they focus on as much as their actual fighting prowess or sorcery. 

Most of the main characters are all said to be centuries old even by their own universe’s timetable, and members of their previous generations are millennia old. So ages past, Dworkin made the Pattern, founded Amber and eventually disappeared and was succeeded by his son Oberon, who is in turn the father of the current Royal Family. And Oberon, in the thousands of years he ruled Amber before HE mysteriously disappeared, not long before the start of the first book, with his disappearance being what sparks the major plotlines, such as the war of succession that breaks out after he’s gone.....well like I said, he’s kinda a douche. No two ways about. Most of his kids hate him but also like....were desperate for his love and approval too, when he deigned to dole it out. 

But a huge part of why there even WAS a war of succession is that well.....dude was a douche, and did NOT make it easy to follow a chain of succession and decide who should take the throne after him. Probably because he half expected it to never matter, as he intended to live forever, lol. But it complicated things considerably in his absence, considering that he’s said to have had 47 kids, though most are never named or mentioned in the series. In fact, Corwin, the narrator of the first five books, mentions that he’s only ever even known of fifteen brothers and eight sisters, with six of those brothers and four of those sisters either dead or missing or disappeared to go live in some distant Shadow centuries ago. The other twenty or so kids Oberon had were likely the products of affairs that he at least knew about and kept some kind of eye on, but only twenty-four of his kids were ever actually claimed by him.

Course, remember the immortality thing.....its not like Oberon had 47 kids all within just a normal human lifetime and with just a handful of partners.....we’re talking about 47 kids spread out over several thousand years, with the thirteen currently known and living members of the royal family as of Oberon’s disappearance all having been born within a span of at least two thousand years. One of the pretty interesting things about the family’s dynamics IMO was the fact that like.....none of them ever referred to each other as anything other than just siblings, even though technically many of them are half-siblings, with different mothers. Given that only Dworkin’s descendants and the royal bloodlines of the Courts he originally came from are actually immortal, most of the women Oberon married or had affairs with were mortal, with normal human lifespans. 

So the interesting part about this is that within the thirteen members of Corwin’s generation that he interacts with most......they’re not really all that focused on the fact that many of them are technically half-siblings BUT most of them tend to be closest with the ones who are their full siblings, and share the same mother. However, this doesn’t always or even usually tend to be because they consider any of their other siblings any LESS their brother and sister, just because they have a different mother.....its more an age thing. The siblings with the same mothers all tended to be born relatively close together, whereas some of their other siblings were already centuries old and off doing their own thing before they were born. So the ones born of the same mothers usually were the one who actually grew up together....and then they only really got to know and started interacted with their much older siblings once they were adults themselves.....in turn, the same being true of their much younger siblings interacting with them only once they reached adulthood, often centuries later.

And this family is just so. So. Petty as fuck. LMFAO. And they all get it from their dad.

Like, the oldest living child of Oberon is Benedict, his eldest son by his first wife Cymnea. Which would make him the clear heir to the throne, except well. Oberon was a douche. At some point, the two younger sons he had with Cymnea, Osric and Finndo, conspired to take the throne from him most likely due to his Douchery, and Oberon sent them to the front-lines of a war from which they conveniently never returned. Which needless to say, caused problems between him and Cymnea.....to which Oberon’s galaxy brain response was to not just divorce her.....but also to declare his marriage to her entirely null and void....which retroactively erased Benedict’s claim to the throne and made him technically illegitimate.

And this wouldn’t really be a problem, because while Benedict is stern, humorless and pretty much just obsessed with honing himself into the greatest swordsmaster and tactician that ever lived in any universe....he’s also unfailingly fair, and pretty much the ONLY member of the family that ALL his siblings like enough that they’d agree to respect his claim to the throne if he wanted it. Except....he doesn’t. At all. He hates politics and thinks all of that is bullshit and usually just fucks off to various shadows to emerge as some mysterious war leader fighting for the little guy, only coming back to Amber when there’s some family crisis or they’re in a war themselves, because Benedict might hate their bullshit, but above all else he is a Dutiful Son and he always Does the Right Thing, no matter how he feels about it. So....they call, he shows up. Usually in a perpetually sour mood, but whatever, he’s there, who does he need to fight.

He’s said to only have ever been in love once, with the only person to ever defeat him in battle....Lintra the Hell-Maid, a warrior princess of one of the Courts of Chaos’ noble houses. They had a brief romance during one of the few cessations in hostility between the Courts and Amber, but then conflict resumed and they both sided with their families....and faced each other in battle again. And this time, Benedict won, and killed her in their battle, though not before she cut off his right arm. Various siblings have over the centuries offered him their aid in using magic or technology to give him a new one but he refuses and just says he’s still a better swordsman with one arm than anyone else is with two. 

Then the next oldest living child is Eric, Oberon’s oldest son with his second wife, Faielle. Which would make Eric the legitimate heir, except for one little problem: Oberon was a douchebag. Because although he did end up marrying Faielle, he had an affair with her before he actually divorced Cymnea, which Eric was a product of. So Eric is the oldest son of Oberon’s first lawful wife, after he declared his marriage with Cymnea retroactively null....it just doesn’t matter, because he’s technically not legitimate because he was born before his parents’ legitimately married. Which means that Eric’s younger full brother Corwin, born after they were married, is technically the oldest living child with a fully uncontested legitimate claim to the throne. Which Eric HATES him for. And Corwin hates him for, well, being hated since he was born.

And Eric can kinda be a prick, but he’s pretty decent in most regards which means he’s fairly well-liked and respected by the rest of their siblings.....except for those who like Corwin more, because although for most of his early life, Corwin was legendarily reckless and irresponsible, he was well....a lot more likable in most peoples’ eyes than Eric. So they’re incredibly close in age, were raised together, but have hated each other for as long as they’ve been alive. Centuries before the series began, they apparently - or so Eric claims - decided to settle things between them with a duel, once and for all.....and Eric won, with Corwin’s injuries from their duel leaving him in a coma, which he eventually awoke from with brain damage that caused amnesia for a few hundred years. And Eric left him on Earth and asked Flora to keep an eye on him, and like, hilariously doesn’t get why Corwin’s so pissed at him later because he’s like BUT I LEFT YOU ALIVE DOES THAT MEAN NOTHING TO YOU? 

And Corwin’s like....uh....not really bruh. And Eric’s like “Ugh, I just can’t win. I didn’t even KILL you because you’re my BROTHER, and yet Dad and everyone else all just assumed I killed you anyway, what the fuck is up with that?” And Corwin’s just like gee, I can’t imagine why anyone would doubt you when you said we totally agreed to duel to the death but also you totally didn’t kill me, you’re right, that’s so weird. I mean, I guess you could have just told someone where to find me on Earth and then that would have proven you were telling the truth. 

And Eric’s response was like: “Umm, no, because then they would have brought you back to Amber, cured your amnesia, and then you would be back to being my main rival for the crown, whereas you being out of the picture is what let me seize the crown once Dad disappeared? Duh? Like think, little brother, you sound so dumb right now. How hard did I hit you, I thought you were all better now, ugh.”  

LOL. And then Faielle’s youngest child with Oberon was Deirdre, who is known as the most beloved of the royals. Everyone loved Deirdre, pretty much, because Deirdre was caring, no-nonsense, and a terror in battle with her weapon of choice, a battle-axe as big as she was. Basically the only person who didn’t like Deirdre was Eric, and that was really just because she and Corwin were as tight from day one as Eric and Corwin were mortal enemies, like, Corwin’s uncontested favorite sibling, and Eric couldn’t stand that. And Deirdre couldn’t stand Eric, because he hated Corwin, the big brother she adored.

So when Corwin gets his memory back, Deirdre’s the first sibling he actually seeks out. And he’s like “Get in loser. We’re going to Amber to kick King Eric the Assmunch off the throne he STOLE from me like a THIEF. Bring your axe, we’re probably gonna have to kill a whole bunch of people first though cuz you know he’s gonna be a douche about and be like nuh-uh, you can’t have it, its mine. Ugh. Why is he just the worst.”

And Deirdre’s just like “You had me at bring your axe.”

And about a century after Faielle died, Oberon remarried again, a red-head sorceress named Clarissa from a Shadow with their own unique forms of magic. They had three kids, Brand, Fiona and Bleys, who are usually referred to by their siblings as ‘the redheads,’ and they all grew up super close, always likely to take each other’s side before anyone outside their little trio, and the three of them are all accomplished sorcerers, easily the most powerful in the family. And they’ve all been pissed at dear old dad for centuries because his divorce from Clarissa was messy as heeeeeeeeell. Like.....he had his next child, Llewella, while he was still married to Clarissa and cheating on her....and when she got pissed at this, Oberon the douche’s righteous response was “Oh yeah? Well guess what? Even though she’s technically illegitimate, I’m going to formally adopt Llewella as legitimately part of the chain of succession JUST to piss you off even MORE!”

And Clarissa’s kids, the redheads, did NOT like that. Even though ironically, without that move, they probably all would have been inclined to support one of the others’ claims to the throne, that spiting of their mother, even centuries after their mother died, had them so eternally pissed off at their dad that they were like NOPE! Doesn’t matter that we’re way down the chain of succession and don’t even really WANT the damn throne, we want one of us to get it anyway just to make sure that no ‘legitimate’ heir of Dad’s gets it instead, because fuck that dude.

Which led to them all conspiring together to put Brand on the throne, and led to ummm.....Fiona attempting to kill Corwin once or twice as she saw him as the biggest obstacle to Brand getting the throne. Which did not endear her to him. But she is regarded as the smartest and most dangerous of all of them, as well as the best with magic. So after Fiona and Bleys turn on Brand, because they found out he decided that if he was going to try and be king, why not go even bigger and try and destroy the Pattern and draw a new one of his own devising and literally remake the universe in his own image - to which Fiona and Bleys were like, YIKES, when did that become the plan.....

Well, Fiona wasn’t about to work with Eric, whom she found unendurable, so she reluctantly sought out Corwin for his help against Brand instead, as she thought him the lesser of two evils out of those who might actually be somewhat helpful in opposing Brand. And then she was basically like: “Huh. This is so weird. I thought I was going to hate this, but you’re surprisingly likable when I’m not trying to kill you.”

And Corwin was like, gee, you’re swell, Fi.

But its also why Fiona and Corwin’s son Merlin are really close and she becomes his mentor and tutor in all things magic - she has a soft spot for Merlin because she feels bad for how treated him until she sided with him against Brand. And Corwin’s like “I do not know how I feel about this information, but I’m leaning towards I Do Not Care For It.”

And Bleys is like, this charming boisterous guy most people get along with, who is a warrior-sorcerer equally dangerous as a fighter and with magic. And unlike Fiona, he’s always kinda tried to buddy up with Corwin, and acts all hurt whenever Corwin’s like....what are you doing, dude. Eventually, they kinda become close after Fiona and Bleys officially turn on Brand and reveal the conspiracy they’d spent centuries building with him, and Bleys is like see, I don’t get why we couldn’t have been like this all along. Corwin’s just like, I wanna say it has something to do with you not really objecting to Fi’s constant attempts to assassinate me, so the two of you could put our ‘wants to destroy the fucking universe’ brother on the throne instead of me, just to spite Dad, who none of us even like all that much and is probably dead anyway and thus doesn’t actually care.

And Bleys is all: “Uh....I don’t really get what that has to do with anything, but whatever I guess. Let’s have another beer, and maybe start a fight that gets us thrown out of not just this tavern, but the whole city, no, country, no - universe! It’ll be fun!”

Also, Bleys has a tendency to fake his own death a lot. Its kinda a thing. He has Reasons. He thinks. 

And then of course there’s Llewella and Julian, Caine and Gerard and that’s not even getting into Dalt and Coral and the weird bromance rivalry that Merlin and Rinaldo have but I have no idea if anyone is even reading this and have run out of energy slash focus sooooo lol. The end.

[ty-talks-comics]

Best of DC: Week of April 10th, 2019

Best of DC: Week of April 10th, 2019

Best of this Week: The Batman Who Laughs #4 - Scott Snyder, Jock, David Baron, Sal Cipriano

You will know terror.

Batman’s been infected by Joker’s heart toxin, Jim Gordon has been kidnapped and the Batman Who Laughs has been trouncing him at every turn. With no real options left and running out of time and sanity, Bruce dons the visor of The Batman Who Laughs to see things through his eyes. The only thing keeping him grounded s also the thought of seeing the world through the eyes of his kids, his Robins, especially Dick Grayson who had “circus eyes. Weightless, leaping, never falling.”

But Alfred, after seeing Bruce with the visor, takes it away and proceeds to fight him. Jock breaks my heart as Alfred fights with all that he can to keep his son from making a grave mistake and the tears falling down his cheek, with Batman’s hands around his throat, sells the desperation in both of them. The Batman Who Laughs is winning and the only way to defeat him is to think like him.

Meanwhile, The Batman Who Laughs tells the story of what made him snap and kill the Joker on his world, the Death of Jim Gordon. Heavily shadowed with an even heavier focus on his vibrant red lips, crooked/jagged teeth, with the words in their scratchy red font dripping with venom, The Batman Who Laughs weaves his tale with an almost terrifying glee. I feel the weight of his threats and I fear what he and The Grim Knight have planned for Gotham and Jim himself.

Batman, now searching the city for Dark Multiverse Metal energies, calls James Gordon Jr. hoping he’s found the waterway that TBMWL is planning to poison. James, also hoping to stop Batman from going down the path of darkness that he himself travels, asks if he has a contingency plan in case The Joker Toxin fully takes hold. We get a flashback to Batman checking Gotham’s water before being approached by the Joker and the two have a surprisingly heartfelt (ha) conversation. Joker wishes Batman good luck in taking on The Batman Who Laughs and reveals the reasons why his plans always fail.

Joker believes their eternal fight to be a game and believes that one day he’ll win, but doesn’t want to, he doesn’t want Batman to win either. He wants the game to go on and on and on. Each inset panel is absolutely creepy as Joker has one green eye and the position of it changes from panel to panel, growing or shrinking and getting brighter. Batman, asks Joker if he can pull the trigger if Batman does go over the edge, the two share a joke and fear runs down my spine.

The first time I finished reading The Killing Joke, seeing Batman laugh with the Joker during the villain’s one moment of lucidity was weird and uncomfortable. An infinite number of interpretations of what would happen afterwards or the grim implications weighed heavy on my mind and hindered my ability to sleep. This - seeing Batman shrouded in shadow, sharing a moment of madness with the Joker is even worse. There is no way this mini-series ends well with Batman coming out they same way he came in and Joker’s madness is contagious, it will leave a mark on Batman’s soul.

Batman makes his way to the Blackgate Penitentiary and meets with a guard whose history he seems to know well enough before the officer betrays him, telling the other guards that Bruce is the Batman Who Laughs. The guard then takes off his mask, revealing himself as The Batman Who Laughs and chilling my soul as we finally see his face.

This book is powerful. Jock’s art is haunting, Snyder’s writing is careful, measured, making Batman so sure of his abilities, but distressed when things go awry. Watching him slowly slip into madness is horrifying and the image of The Batman Who Laughs face is burned into my mind.

The is possibly one of the highest recommendations I can give. It is amazing, a perfect book!

---------------------------------------------------

Hawkman continues to soar high as one of DCs best and most fleshed out heroes as his fight against the Deathbringers continues.

Runner Up: Hawkman #11 - Robert Venditti, Bryan Hitch, Andrew Currie, Jeremiah Skipper, Starkings and Comicraft

With his back against the wall in the last issue, Carter Hall reached deep inside himself and called all of his past selves forward so that he could have the strength to defeat the Deathbringer Armada, creating an Army of Hawkmen. In an absolutely amazing double-page spread, Hawkmen from different periods of time and erase all shot forth, hungry for battle and justice, ready to protect the world and end this invasion.

Bryan Hitch has drawn scenes like this throughout the series, but this time they're real and carry with them all of the regret, rage and strength that Carter has been carrying through his journey. Each Hawkman is distinct and this issues does a good job of showcasing Hawkman through his almost 80 years of publication. Silent Knight of Britain was epic, Catar-Ol of Krypton was as powerful and as regal as the old Kryptonians and Nighthawk of the Old West was a badass gunslinger as he took out many Deathbringers. Katar Hol, in a costume mixing the original helmet design with the uniform of a Thanagarian police officer, appeared. Freaking Prince Khufu Maat Kha-tar of Egypt, one of the first origins for Hawkman, realized his true purpose in the battle.

Not only did heroic versions show up to help in the effort, but even monsters like The Dragon of Barbatos appeared to turn the tide, mowing down waves of enemies. Seeing even this version return as a force for good shocked me because of the damage the monster almost helped to cause to the Multiverse and he just looked so threatening, imposing an cool as hell!

While all of that is going on, Carter is in the middle of battle with his former friend, Idamm, in on of the best action scenes Hitch has drawn thus far. Carter lets loose all of his regret, his shame and epically defeats Idamm, impaling him with the Deathbringer Spear. Carter’s muscles ripple, the pain in his face is prevalent and he stands tall, heroic and mournful that he had to kill his former friend. Or did he?

Idamm, having been stuck in the Abyss with their death god for god knows how long has changed, become unkillable. As the Hawkmen fall one by one and Carter himself is bested by Idamm, he remarks that this moment between them is how all of this started and is also where it should end. Idamm, instead of killing him outright, readies the Deathbringers to destroy the Earth, bringing Hawkman to the endgame.

This issue was phenomenal. The same way that Robert Venditti helped in the later era of Green Lantern, post Geoff Johns, by revitalizing the character, he’s given new life and purpose to Hawkman. I will admit, I used to hate Hawkman for being an almost useless character overshadowed by Hawkgirl, but this series has turned all of that around. He has depth, a new and wonderful history with a better villain that those in his past. Bryan Hitch brings the pain with every panel with expressive body language, great scenery and composition along with the wonderful way that he draws each Hawkman to make them look especially unique and cool in their own right, but also being distinctly Carter Hall.

Admittedly some of the colors feel a bit flat here and there, but with the amount of detail he puts into every scene, not all of them can be perfect, but when they are, they certainly go past the mark. I can’t wait for the next issue and I really hope that it’s not the final and that Hawkman’s story continues being told and if it is the last, well what a ride it has been!

[unproduciblesmackdown]

tru like..........if youve got a looping environment outdoors then unless its pointed out in really obvious ways the player is just going to think it was a lack of effort....and when you do it indoors like p.t. its mostly going to be like "oh this is like pt" but if thats the only real similarity then its kind of like, yeah its unusual and you get that first moment of mild surprise but its not inherently scary. i guess it does have a slight inherent advantage towards building suspense in that, since you probably thoroughly explored the loop the first time around & would have no reason to do so again when finding out your environment is identical, you sort of have all your focus put towards keeping an eye out for any minute changes / anything to break the loop / just waiting for an attack or smthing since you know youre getting "used" to the environment and its supposedly safe each loop but for another thing, none of them really do the truly infinite loop of pt....like maybe it loops until you realize theres some task youre supposed to be doing, but so does pt and then youre still in the loop. unless you "die" and you enter the starting point room before reentering the loop. the freakin lore but yeah like, any single element could be copied from pt & be effectively transplanted into any horror game & still be scary....but really while a bunch of the individual scary bits were effective and pretty "new"/creative, its definitely the overall atmosphere that made pt such a big deal or ppl wouldve just been talking about the individual points and not the overall game. the looping environment is kind of an overall reflection of that whole atmosphere imo....its kind of creepily realistic in the first place and the simple L structure is good / giving you a slight "descent" and unsafe zone between making it through the door at the end with the danger at your back and the relative safety of reentering the loop, where the only danger in that section is noticing an atmospheric change. but anyways the fact that it loops = the whole overall kind of surreal/nightmare/dream rules that are still solidly tethered to this being a reality that can not only hurt you but operates under its own consistent rules. like its a fantastic balance of the dream reality where dissonance with how reality operates allows for a lot of eerieness but also sticking to some elements of straightforward "this is real reality", so that you can never really be sure which set of rules you should view the situation in? + the fact that really all the player is capable of doing is looking at things and eventually holding a flashlight, and thats not likely to be the case in a full game plus the atmosphere of how the game seems to treat the player, like growing more hostile but never exactly making it clear that the player specifically is being targeted as opposed to just being in a bad place at a bad time, like how in theory i think you can go completely unkilled by the game thru sheer luck or more likely knowing what you were supposed to be accomplishing and the later supposed rituals to keep you safe when all the baby sounds mean something and all.....but like, its never really knowing whats just creepy and whats dangerous and whats a reaction to your presence and whats just happening coz fuck it. like, the blood fridge. with it writhing around like something inside is bad enough, but even just hanging there is suspenseful what with the window having been smashed down earlier. oh and the figure just standing there looking down from the balcony. its like, is this a deadly ghost sighting? no. but fuck if who wants to turn their precious back on that nightmare anyways. or continue looking at it? the game really maintains such a tenuous balance in several ways that theres never any sense of safety or that you know whats going on or what any of the elements are going to do at any given time anyways the point is that a full length game is really not going to be able to evoke the same effect as pt just by having a similarly creepy radio or whatever, like, unless it entirely commits to that extremely specific atmosphere throughout. the point is always that not only should everyone have had pt forever but the actual silent hills game is a deep and eternal loss

[the-master-of-wuju-blog]

(Last one I'm sorry for drowning you in these) Would you rather fight Sion or Mordekaiser?

“While both of these…men are dangerous and in the villainous spectrum and should both be dealt with I believe I would rather face Sion for multiple reasons.”

“Mord was a war lord and that by name shows how dangerous he was, he didn’t work for others he was the strongest and took control. It took many armies to finally fell him, his kill count is countless. Now he is of the shadow isle, he has been bestowed with who knows what sorts of powers and now may be unkillable as the isle brought him back once they could do so again. Possibly infinitely. I hear that if this man of metal kills you, your soul is then enslaved to him and at the risk of not only death but eternal enslavement I would rather go with the other option. He may have an army of his own dead by now if those rumors are true.”

“Sion, while dangerous, is not a product of the shadow isle but rather extreme necromancy. He is now man made, if he is killed it would take more work to revive him and it’s not automatic or guaranteed. They had to piece him back together to get this far and not all of his body is even flesh. If someone made sure even less or nothing was left there would be nothing to revive and if he does kill me, no enslavement, I can simply move on. Not only this but he is one of Noxus’ most dangerous weapons and his loss could hurt them, while as long as Mord stays on the shadows isle most will leave him be. He isn’t the immediate threat.”

“Hurting Noxus would be a benefit to Valoran for all. I find myself to be pro Demacia and would hope the effort would help them to victory even if I am not of their land. Noxus has hurt Ionia and many others, they openly seek to conquer runeterra. While Demaica seems content in its kingdom and would likely leave the rest of us be if we did the same.”

//No, it’s cool these are fun. This one really took some thought.

[thornstocutyouwith]

Immortality

"I intend to live forever, or die trying."

― Several

"Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying."

― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

"Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality."

― Abraham Lincoln

The power to never die. Opposite to Mortality.

Also Called

Death Immunity

Deathless

Endless/Eternal/Everlasting Life

Immortal Physiology

Capabilities

User possesses immortality: an infinite life span, as they can never die, never age, and can shrug off virtually any kind of physical damage. Some users are the defensive type, simply preventing all damages, to appear physically invulnerable, while others are the regenerative type, surviving and quickly recovering from anything you throw at them while at the same time they are capable of resurrecting themselves instantly after death and completely self-sustaining, free from all bodily necessities.

Variations

Some may only possess the power of:

Death: No body to destroy. The soul, one that is not of a physical being, does not inherit physical characteristics, such as concepts of destruction, therefore cannot be destroyed; in short, the user cannot die because it is already dead. Most common form of immortality.

Head Liberation: Survive decapitation.

Immortal Cloning: Transfer one's mind/soul into a clone to cheat death.

Infinite Resurrection: Death is omitted. Injuries may be inflicted, but complete annihilation is impossible.

Invulnerability: Cannot be harmed in any way or form. Therefore, death by physical damage is omitted.

Life and Death Transcendence: Be beyond the very concepts of Life and Death and immune to all life and death based powers.

Life Extension: Extend one's life.

Possession: Possess a new body/host upon death of the current, thereby surviving death and becoming immortal.

Retroactive Immortality: Cannot remain dead, always resurrecting or reincarnating oneself after being killed.

Quick Reincarnation: The power to be immediately reincarnated following "death"; can result in gaining powers in relation to how the user previously died.

Regeneration: High-level regeneration of body that heals any injuries, even fatal ones, preventing one from dying.

Self-Sustenance: Can survive without the need for bodily resources, such as food.

Self-Resurrection: Completely heal fatal injuries and resurrect upon death if body isn't entirely destroyed.

Semi-Immortality: Un-aging.

Spatial-Temporal Lock: Exist outside the normal space-time continuum, and thus immune to what happens in it.

Temporary Invincibility

Life Transcendence: Transcend the limitations of ones life/lifespan and conquer death itself.

Multiple Lifes: Can die multiple times and still live until all lifes are used up.

Levels of Immortality

Semi-Immortality

Cannot age, thus preventing death via senescence.

Remains vulnerable to mortal wounds, severe injuries, diseases/viruses, and foreign substances.

Mental damage may still occur.

Reliant Immortality (Concept-Dependent Immortality, Self-Puppetry)

User acquires immortality by anchoring their life to a certain object, source, concept, etc.

Destruction of anchor ends the user's immortality.

The physical body remains mortal, only the soul is earthbound.

May require continuous intake of source or maintenance of object to remain immortal.

Immortality (Immortality via Regenerative Healing Factor)

Cannot age once reaching a certain point.

Immune to diseases, toxins and drugs.

Wounds, even crippling or fatal ones, heal near instantly.

Time-manipulating powers can erase the user's existence, as opposed to biologically killing them.

May apply only to biological immortality, as the mind and/or soul may remain mortal.

Immortality power may be removed, rendering the user mortal once again.

Selective Immortality

Cannot age.

Eternal and unkillable, barring certain factors.

Unfettered Body

Cannot age once reaching a certain point.

Body is completely immune to physical and mental damage, toxins and pathogens.

Soul may remain vulnerable.

Per chance the body is harmed, regeneration may not occur.

Time-manipulating powers can erase the user's existence, as opposed to biologically killing them.

Absolute Immortality

Cannot age.

Immune to all diseases, toxins and drugs.

All wounds and injuries heal instantly.

Immortality applies to not only the body, but mind and soul as well, rendering the user truly "absolute".

Power is absolute, so it can never be removed, nor can the user's existence from timelines.

Associations

Amortality

Death Removal

Immortality Manipulation

Injury Immunity

Omnilock

Limitations

Immortality Bypassing/Immortality Negation/Immortality Removal

Cannot overcome the End of Time, unless the form of immortality is an absolute type, hence why just like Regenerative Healing Factor, it is unclear how long it would last.

May be erased from history via the effects of time-manipulating powers, killing the immortals in question before they become immortal.

Nonexistence can wipe the user out of existence, as opposed to simply killing them biologically.

May have certain weaknesses that are lethal (i.e. decapitation, disintegration, and/or poison).

May be killable by certain specific way, item or people.

User may go mad, from the effects of time and boredom.

May forget events that happened long ago.

Some immortals are infertile, or incapable of passing this ability to their descendants.

Immortality may depend on outside sources and objects (Horcruxes, Shikon shards, etc.).

Can be sealed/imprisoned in an empty dimension with no chance to escape.

May survive indefinitely in conditions where death would be preferable to them.

While users are immune to the ravages of time, most are vulnerable against direct application used against them.

May have weaknesses to single source (item, event, person, etc.) that is lethal to them.

This can also cause madness overtime because the immortal is forced to watch those who aren't immortal die.

Trivia

It is highly likely that various kinds of Immortality can become a curse because whoever is close to them or even their friends had past away, the user would be left behind, unless the user is also gifted the ability to teleport to both Earth and Heaven, or alternatively Meta Teleportation to keep the curse of being immortal at bay.