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Supernatural Attributes
Sep. 4th, 2019 06:12 pmIn Thurlow's universe, the laws of physics aren't simply the parameters of what's possible and impossible. They're laws in the sense of a legal code, and they have to be enforced in order to have their full effect. The enforcers of those laws are the Judgements, which are stars, and starlight is the medium of their enforcement.
This is why the Neath, an underground cavern that is both shielded from sunlight and in possession of a deposit of irrigo, an impossible colour of light that causes forgetfulness, is so screwy compared to Surface Earth in the same universe. Death is a transitory inconvenience, many species of animals can talk, certain sounds can be physically held in one's hands, you can walk bodily into a dream, and so on. For the sake of maximising shenanigans, I have decided that it also applies when Thurlow leaves their universe entirely and enters other universes where the stars are non-sentient plasma fusion furnaces that only provide heat, light, gravitational attraction, various electromagnetic rays, and other such impersonal emissions.
It doesn't really benefit them personally except where death is concerned. Thurlow is as easily killed as the average baseline human being, but after hours or days they'll get up again, sooner if someone tends to their wounds while they're dead (e.g. stitching up a cut throat). They revive in the same body rather than respawning, but the primary tradeoff for not having to deal with extra corpses is that if you kill a Neath-dweller hard enough they stay dead. Decapitation, explosives, and the worst poisons out there (the only specific one mentioned may be supernaturally potent) can all cause permanent death. So can natural illnesses, incidentally. There is also the possibility that a near-miss with permanent death will cause a lingering permanent injury, or make them undead, i.e. cause them to start slowly decomposing while they're still up and about.
Canon is also rather lenient on the player character's ability to eat things that aren't food; if they get Unaccountably Peckish and eat a bunch of rocks or something, they lose hit points but don't have many lasting consequences. In millicanon Thurlow personally suffers even fewer digestive consequences from eating that stuff (although they will definitely still die if they eat something that's full of poison, for instance) and has sharp teeth that grow back if damaged.
If someone who has either died in the Neath or otherwise become thoroughly immersed in its defiance of the laws of nature were subjected to Judgemental sunlight once again, they would die fairly quickly. And it would be a Surface-death, which you don't normally come back from even if your body is brought back to the Neath. Thurlow is not exempt from this effect, and has both died before and been up to their elbows in weird Neath stuff for most of a decade.
This is why the Neath, an underground cavern that is both shielded from sunlight and in possession of a deposit of irrigo, an impossible colour of light that causes forgetfulness, is so screwy compared to Surface Earth in the same universe. Death is a transitory inconvenience, many species of animals can talk, certain sounds can be physically held in one's hands, you can walk bodily into a dream, and so on. For the sake of maximising shenanigans, I have decided that it also applies when Thurlow leaves their universe entirely and enters other universes where the stars are non-sentient plasma fusion furnaces that only provide heat, light, gravitational attraction, various electromagnetic rays, and other such impersonal emissions.
It doesn't really benefit them personally except where death is concerned. Thurlow is as easily killed as the average baseline human being, but after hours or days they'll get up again, sooner if someone tends to their wounds while they're dead (e.g. stitching up a cut throat). They revive in the same body rather than respawning, but the primary tradeoff for not having to deal with extra corpses is that if you kill a Neath-dweller hard enough they stay dead. Decapitation, explosives, and the worst poisons out there (the only specific one mentioned may be supernaturally potent) can all cause permanent death. So can natural illnesses, incidentally. There is also the possibility that a near-miss with permanent death will cause a lingering permanent injury, or make them undead, i.e. cause them to start slowly decomposing while they're still up and about.
Canon is also rather lenient on the player character's ability to eat things that aren't food; if they get Unaccountably Peckish and eat a bunch of rocks or something, they lose hit points but don't have many lasting consequences. In millicanon Thurlow personally suffers even fewer digestive consequences from eating that stuff (although they will definitely still die if they eat something that's full of poison, for instance) and has sharp teeth that grow back if damaged.
If someone who has either died in the Neath or otherwise become thoroughly immersed in its defiance of the laws of nature were subjected to Judgemental sunlight once again, they would die fairly quickly. And it would be a Surface-death, which you don't normally come back from even if your body is brought back to the Neath. Thurlow is not exempt from this effect, and has both died before and been up to their elbows in weird Neath stuff for most of a decade.
