ISWAT Mission to Abydos

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Hmmm... one issue is that in GURPS, living forever is game-mechanically not that hard, so any Cabalist powerful enough to take on an ISWAT team probably has already attained it.

Point cost doesn't matter if the setting says you can't buy it. True immortality is specifically stated as something that most Cabalists find very attractive but hard to attain, so (unless you change that about them) it just is.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

My big reluctance in using the Dark Elves is I can't quite figure out what's supposed to make the tree at the center of the Blackwoods a threat. It apparently can "twist the shape of living things," but not affect sentient beings. But unless that means a HUGE power boost, it doesn't seem like anything a sufficiently large group of armed, coordinated, and magically supported humanoids shouldn't be able to deal with. But if neither the Dark Elves nor the Megalan expedition sent to deal with it have been able to deal with it so far...

If I go this route, maybe I should just plan on writing up some monsters to fit the ISWAT team's capabilities? Or then there's something about the tree "slowly, overwhelmingly warp reality," how do you game that out?

Yeah, after the failed attempt by an entire legion, the question becomes, "How large of a group of armed, coordinated, and magically-supported humanoids is sufficient to deal with this?" If Yrth possesses such a force, it has not yet brought it to bear on the Blackwoods, so we don't really know. Maybe your ISWAT team could tear their way through the monsters to the tree no problem, maybe they can't; you're writing undefeated monsters created by something that can warp reality itself and they can be insanely dangerous if you want them to.

I'll also point out that the Dark Elves are a conspiracy, not a nation. They may have large settlements in the Blackwoods, but bringing the group into conflict with them does not necessarily involve going there.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Also: were the Blackwoods explained better in some 3e supplement or something?

Worse, actually: there was just "something strange that's causing all this" presumed to be in the woods back in 3e.

[CoyoteGestalt]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Also: were the Blackwoods explained better in some 3e supplement or something?

Nope, this is the most detail we've ever gotten on that. There's a (very brief) mention of other options in the Designers' Notes (link on http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/banestorm/ ), which also has some other relevant thoughts on Yrth and Infinity.


Personally, I've assumed for my own games that at least one of the Caithness wizards who are so mysteriously gifted at dealing with low mana areas is secretly a Cabalist who keeps a tower in the woods of Yrth as a vacation home....

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Point cost doesn't matter if the setting says you can't buy it. True immortality is specifically stated as something that most Cabalists find very attractive but hard to attain, so (unless you change that about them) it just is.

I was partly thinking of the fact that canonically, the ranks of the Cabal include vampires and other similarly long-lived supernatural beasties. But taking a closer look at the 3e Cabal sourcebook, it seems that the immortality the Cabal is searching for goes beyond things like Unaging and Youth spells. In that case, they're likely to be dissatisfied by what Abydos has to offer, but that doesn't stop them from having a look.

Also: reading the description for Yibyorak, I should really have the Brothers of Mercury steal something important from the PCs (which could be read as, "something they need to continue their mission," "something that could give them away," or "something that could be very dangerous in the wrong hands.")

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

I was partly thinking of the fact that canonically, the ranks of the Cabal include vampires and other similarly long-lived supernatural beasties. But taking a closer look at the 3e Cabal sourcebook, it seems that the immortality the Cabal is searching for goes beyond things like Unaging and Youth spells. In that case, they're likely to be dissatisfied by what Abydos has to offer, but that doesn't stop them from having a look.

The Cabal does include vampires and other long-lived supernatural beasties, but they are by no means the majority and it still remains a major plot goal for the group worthy of excusing their involvement somewhere random like Yrth. Their vampires and other effective "immortals" tend to have other severe vulnerabilities or dependencies to guide their role in the story, and if they don't, they can be the rare exception without screwing up the whole paradigm. You can just say, "these six Cabalists are interested in immortality and do not currently possess vampirism or other methods of achieving it, so they are involved in pursuing that here," without ruling vampirism and whatnot out of the Cabal.