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Thread: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
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2020-07-24, 10:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
I was able to find one here but it doesn't seem to have the abilities Kashem was talking about.
EDIT: ninja'd
EDIT 2: So I figured I'd look through the slaads in the thread for any potential candidates and only one kind of seems to fit. The platinum slaad seems to have the required capabilities at a glance, but it has the split ability, which means that if MiTD was damaged by MIko or Belkar, there would be now two MiTDs unless MiTD takes a full-round action to reform. I guess that could be explained though by MiTD trying not to split or something, thought that isn't RAW.
EDIT 3: So I decided to scroll through a bit more on the link of the converted prismatic slaad, and later down in the blog it references the Enworld thread as the source for the yellow slaad. Given the slaads seem to be based off the ones in the thread, it presumably is the original source.Last edited by catagent101; 2020-07-24 at 02:59 PM.
mew
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2020-07-24, 12:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
If the Prismatic Slaad had a better Escape answer than Dimension Door (or maybe, arguably, Word of Chaos or Dispel Law as some kind of banishment effect gone awry? Even calling that a "stretch" is a stretch) it would be pretty good. Extremely strong (you can bump its size all the down to Large and it still has a 30 STR), great defenses and super weird looking with a high CHR. Plus it doesn't speak common, isn't found in jungles, and has scythe blades for hands making it hard to hold stuff. On the down-side, its way, way too big.
That one, plus Platinum, were the only two that were close to fitting. Pity, really. Platinum was the one with Greater Teleport, but it was also the one that split when hit. Unfortunate."You are what you do. Choose again and change." - Miles Vorkosigan
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2020-07-24, 03:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
Reading the rest of that thread, and coming across the bubblegum Slaad made me want a "Ranch Dressing Slaad" that comes from the semi-elemental plane of ranch dressing... There were some solid candidates there though.
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2020-07-28, 09:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
IMO the only explanations for the escape that I find plausible are wish (the best IMO), miracle, greater teleport (unlikely to explain but no solid evidence it does not work this way/MitD could have been anchored) and I guess some older edition ability. I still believe MitD is not psionic due to redcloak, so those explanations may be lacking. I do not particularly like any banishment based effect or anything similar.
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2020-07-28, 09:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
Yeah, anything banishment-related or plane-shift related, or a short range teleport like Dimension Door are just terrible. I mean, they're technically answers, but in the way that "5" is an answer to "2+2=?". There's probably some odd non-Euclidean situation in which its true, but its generally just wrong.
That having been said, Greater Teleport (or the old version "Teleport without Error") combined with some kind of mind-reading or teleport tracing is actually an excellent solution, probably as good as Wish (given that Wish can sometimes have side-effects, especially from a Glabrezu) but still inferior to Miracle. If MitD was talking to people with telepathy, you'd think someone would have commented on it by now. But if MitD is reading people's minds, then maybe not."You are what you do. Choose again and change." - Miles Vorkosigan
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2020-07-28, 10:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
2 + 2 = 5 for sufficiently large values of two. It is a classic example of the dangers of rounding: 2.4 + 2.3 = 4.7, which if carelessly rounded, becomes 2 + 2 = 5. It's a less blunt kind of wrong, so to speak.
The SBGH did comment - they found it surprising MitD was talking. The possibility this is lamp-shading a creature that by base/fluff prefers to speak via telepathy is what attracted me to the Xeno-whatsit in the first place.
Grey WolfLast edited by Grey_Wolf_c; 2020-07-28 at 10:02 AM.
Interested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
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2020-07-28, 10:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
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2020-07-28, 12:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
This has probably been discussed to death before, but I keep coming back to the line by O'Chil in Strip 1042.
"If I told you, you wouldn't believe me. If I told him, I don't think he'd believe me either."
To me, most of the heavily proposed ideas don't fit with that line. If you told the MITD he was an Athasian Nightmare Beast, why would he not believe you?
He'd probably reply by asking what an Athasian Nightmare Beast is, but after you explained, why would he not believe that that's what he is? After all, he doesn't know what he is, and nothing about the ASB really stands out as being something you'd be surprised to find exists in the OOTS world, and nothing about it really seems to stand out as something he would feel he couldn't be.
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2020-07-28, 12:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
Interested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
Deep in the corners of your mind
Where reality is an intruder
And myth and legend thrive
Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est
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2020-07-28, 12:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
By the way, it's been a few days since we had any new votes. Time to call it?
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2020-07-28, 01:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
Well the monster is technically just called a Nightmare Beast, they just happen to live on Athas. But then again, Dragons live on Torril and Pokeballs come from Johto and we've seen those. So why wouldn't he believe that Nightmare Beasts could live on his world, based on what he already knows about the world he lives in?
IDK, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but that line makes me think that the type of thing MITD is would utterly shock him, and that doesn't fit with ASB for me, maybe Glazrebu, in so much as he wouldn't believe he could be a Demon since he's not evil? But the ASB is just what he knows himself to be, and what Xykon has treated him as: A big scary monster.
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2020-07-28, 01:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-07-28, 01:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
Last edited by Grey_Wolf_c; 2020-07-28 at 01:29 PM.
Interested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
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Where reality is an intruder
And myth and legend thrive
Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est
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2020-07-28, 01:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
While i will admit to not being a mathematician by trade, im reasonably certain that if you have to use rounding in a proof, its considered to be wrong. Rounding is useful for engineering, physics sometimes, and other situations where you can get away with an answer being "close enough". Not for raw mathematics. Pi may round to 3, but that doesnt mean Pi = 3.
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
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2020-07-28, 02:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2020-07-28, 02:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
I just checked the standings and noticed that my vote isn't correct any more in the table (though it was originally). I hope there aren't any other errors.
BTW, if I have understood the voting procedure correctly and if I have counted correctly, that error may currently make the difference between A and C winning.Ares - Music and sounds system for roleplaying
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2020-07-28, 02:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
Interested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
Deep in the corners of your mind
Where reality is an intruder
And myth and legend thrive
Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est
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2020-07-28, 02:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-07-28, 03:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
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2020-07-28, 04:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
My hypothesis is that the MitD is the Spawn/Child of Typhon, not Typhon himself. Birthed just before the end of the first world (by Echidna, most likely, but who knows) and cast into the Astral Plane to keep him safe. The Astral Plane is timeless, meaning creatures within it don't age. So if you were a baby (even a baby spawn of Typhon) going in, you'd remain a baby the whole time you were there. Even, say, the millions-billions of years between the death of the first world and the current one. For some reason, he popped out into the jungle in this world, and began to mature there.
So is he really a god? Well...probably not. Not any more than Scylla would have been. Could he have enough of a green quiddity to make things interesting? Maybe?
Most likely not the case, but that's what I'm rolling the dice on.
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2020-07-28, 05:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
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2020-07-28, 05:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2020
Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
It's possible that Redclock might recognize him for what he is...we don't really know what the Dark One has learned about the Eastern Pantheon, if anything, and we don't know whether any of that information is embedded in the Crimson Mantle or not.
But as has been discussed before, (many times, from what I see) it's possible the MitD could be a shapeshifter of some kind. Typhon himself, in some accounts, could do that. I think it's interesting that the SBGHs were so very confident about what they'd caught, but they didn't make any mention of it being small, or young, or worrying about a parent. And this is something else that's been discussed before, but they were surprised he could speak. That calls their positive identification into some degree of doubt, I think, even beyond the shapeshifting question.
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2020-07-28, 06:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
Okay, that's reasonable, but gods and demigods both have immunity to mind-affecting effects (see section 3b), which is an issue. There are some other issues to take into account though, such as how he would have survived the gods razing the outer planes endlessly many times, or how he would be recognizable to anyone in general.
Incidentally, since it's not a specific creature and is the child of a god of monsters, it could be anything, which doesn't make for a compelling argument but does mean for the sake of that particular guest it could have any number of features. Of course, at that point you're basically saying "a creature, of some sort, that possesses green quiddity and no clearly-defined features or source".
Well, that's my take on it, anyone else have something to add?An explanation of why MitD being any larger than Huge is implausible.
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2020-07-28, 07:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
To be clear, I'm not really banking much on the green quiddity one way or another, on the very off chance this idea pans out. Maybe he's got a scrap, maybe he doesn't. The mind-affecting effects thing kind of tilts the scale towards the 'he doesn't' side, to my mind anyway. I mean, to use my example from before, was Scylla a demigod? Was Cerberus? I'm kind of thinking not. But if it does pan out, the fact that he's at least descended from the Eastern Pantheon in some way is probably significant, so maybe he does have a bit of green-ness? Or will that be important for some other reason? Dunno.
I think Thor did a pretty good job illustrating the vast emptiness of the Astral Plane, making me think it likely that the MitD could float along out there, pretty much undisturbed, for as long as it took...especially if he was out in the most distant reaches. Which brings me to the next point...
This hypothesis of mine was largely born from working backwards from what I consider to be the most interesting pieces of MitD info we've got...that is, he's so child-like, but has been to the Astral Plane. (Child-like in this instance means his general demeanor plus how little experience with the world at large he seems to have.) The Astral Plane tidbit could be interesting because it gives away another of his abilities, like his stomp or Escape, and that's what I thought of it as for the longest time. But what if that wasn't it? What if it was interesting because of the properties of the Plane itself?
If you're a fully conscious being, the timeless aspect of the Astral Plane wouldn't alter your experiences much, beyond the fact that you don't age. But what if you tossed a literal baby, without a fully-formed mind/brain into the Astral Plane, and just let it float in the silvery grayness, all alone? I could see it remaining a baby pretty much indefinitely. But would that be important or interesting? Only if he came from the very first world, as far as I can see.
The idea of the MitD being the spawn of Typhon is the result of my having a peg shaped like all that Astral Plane stuff, and looking for a hole it fits. And that's my best shot.
Beyond any other considerations, my main contention is that the infant MitD floated in the Astral Plane since the destruction of the first world. To my mind, him being the spawn of Typhon fits that narrative and the other information best, but as a wise tracker once said, "That is my tale. Others may be devised."
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2020-07-28, 08:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
Offer good while supplies last. Two to a customer. Each item sold separately. Batteries not included. Mileage may vary. All sales are final. Allow six weeks for delivery. Some items not available. Some assembly required. Some restrictions may apply. All entries become our property. Employees not eligible. Entry fees not refundable. Local restrictions apply. Void where prohibited. Except in Indiana.
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2020-07-28, 10:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
I vote E. Could be a fun change.
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2020-07-28, 10:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
A baby MitD wouldn't age while on the Astral Plane, but once he left, the aging would apply retroactively.
Last edited by InvisibleBison; 2020-07-28 at 10:09 PM.
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2020-07-28, 11:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
I'm just a bit confused, in what way is him being a son of Typhon the best fit? Just, narratively, what about it is good, I seem to be lost. Are you just working exclusively off of "he is a child" and "he was possibly at the Astral Plane at some point"? Or am I missing something...
An explanation of why MitD being any larger than Huge is implausible.
See my extended signature here! May contain wit, candor, and somewhere from 52 to 8127 walruses.
Purple is humorous descriptions made up on the fly
Green is serious talk about hypothetical
Blue is irony and sarcasm
"I think, therefore I am,
I walk, therefore I stand,
I sleep, therefore I dream;
I joke, therefore I meme."
-Squire Doodad
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2020-07-29, 12:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
Depends on how seriously one takes the mathematical rule of significant digits. 2 is really just 2.x mathematically. Until it is defined as 2.0, you are assuming that first decimal. In many situations, the assumption is valid. But not all. We often say things like "Im leaving in ten minutes," which in actuality, we are more likely leaving in 8, or 12 minutes. Not terribly important until the information is, "the train is leaving in 10 minutes." Again.. With common use, that could mean anywhere from about 8 minutes to 12 minutes, and if it is leaving in 8 minutes, and you leave in 11, you have just missed your train.
So, 2+2=5 is wrong by most common usage, but you talk to anyone in applied mathematics, and 2+2=5 is more than just a theoretical possibility, but can mean the difference between a solid suspension bridge, or a pile of wreckage in the sea.
I've entirely forgotten the relevance of this discussion, but that took too long for my fat thumbs to type to erase now..
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2020-07-29, 01:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MitD XV: The Other Dark One
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2