Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

Long ago, during the Orc Wars, a mage named Alex "Stonewall" Anders was supporting their bretheren on the battlefield, providing impenetrable shields for the attacking forces. They were making siege on a settlement they had lost earlier in their campaign, and morale was high--they were close to pulling the noose on the High Chieftain himself, who was waiting on the walls.

In their haste, the mage forgot to shield themselves, and was hit in the heart by a stray arrow.

By sheer luck and the quick work of combat-expedient surgery, Alex the Mage survived, but a shard of the arrow had broken off and was dangerously close to their heart. Worse, it was no ordinary arrowhead, but one made from nullmetal of the deepest orc mines, where magic cannot survive.

The nullmetal shard penalized all magic on the mage, including the mage's own. Neither the magics of humans nor the blessings of clerics could remove the shard without killing them.

The once-powerful mage has been in a slump ever since, retired and unable to continue their field work due to the constant penalty on their magical powers. However, a local group of would-be mages, well-read on Alex Anders' exceptional heroism and magery, banded together as a sort of fan club, and began collecting every splinter of information regarding nonmagical trauma surgery. Although they don't have the skills themselves, they know the locations of a few artifacts and supernatural ingredients that could keep Alex stable while a master surgeon removes the nullmetal shard using traditional methods.

Now they just need a team of heroes to make the journey to collect them.

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

Okay, I am legitimately curious. Why is the singular mage referred to with plural pronouns?

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

Gender neutrality!

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

Presumably "Alex" is meant to be an ambiguous name as well.

Here, the confusion is particularly painful because there is an actual plural in the story from the very first sentence, the mages as a group. They were laying siege to a town they had lost. So thereafter, it's unclear whether the antecedent for a "they" is meant to be the mages or Alex.

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

I really like that hook, I'll make sure to save it for later use!

and except for the second paragraph I don't think there's that much room for confusion, "they" is an established use for undefined gender singular.

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

Not seeing the benefit here, actually.

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

"They" is a perfectly acceptable singular neutral term.

Or it was until the mid 18th century. Damned British Parliament!

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

I prefer "he" as the neutral term since it sounds nicer, personally. It always feels weird to see a single person referred to as a group IME

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

"he" isn't neutral. it's been used for undefined gender during the 20th century, not neutral gender. "they" is and has been an acceptable use for undefined and neutral singular for hundreds of years, if it's nice enough for shakespeare and jane austen it's probably alright

Also, this thread isn't about grammar.

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

What Alex needs is to implant an electromagnet in their chest to stop the metal shard from getting closer to the heart, and then build a suit of armor enchanted with flight and sunbolt.

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

Check the link in my response above. You'll see it's gone back and forth, and has come again.


Drift is as drift does.

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

No doubt the list of supernatural ingredients the PCs are going to be sent to fetch includes palladium.

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

The magnet would work, but magical abilities would still work less around them due to the nullmetal's affects.

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

I would just like to point out that this "magical shielding" the mage was throwing up to protect his comrades would have failed in the face of nullmetal arrows.



Unless said 'shielding' were magically created walls. In which case... they'd have been protected as well.

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

You probably have to come up with a way to at least partially neutralize the effects of the null metal -- but that's probably where the pallidium comes in.

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

That first idea works even better! :D

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

The problem comes when there is a defined (and even named!) subject but the undefined gender singular "they" is still used. It's a very unusual situation except on Saturday Night Live.

Re: Adventure Hook: Wounded Mage
 

No it doesn't and no it isn't? Alex is a defined person of undefined gender and "they" is acceptable to use by any and all standards. Why are we discussing this? Second paragraph is a bit confusing, the rest is clear and also grammatically correct. Holy moly.