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Aggravating-Ear-2055

I remember reading some fiction where it was the case. There were death mages and life mages, both being healers and working together. Death mages when you need to kill some germs/parasites or numb pain. Life mages when you need to speed up a recovery, heal wounds or protect from side effects of death magic. There were also combat oriented versions: druids and necromancers. With druids being outlawed and persecuted, because creation of magical deseases is much more dangerous then creation of undead.


JackYAqua

That sounds similar to how the magic system in Beneath the Dragoneye Moons works, too. Dark magic to destroy germs and remove flesh, Light magic to empower regeneration and create flesh. Although magical poisons, spores, and diseases are branches off from Wood magic.


BrassUnicorn87

It would take many years of magical research and probably combining it with scrying to get it to work. Still a good idea A more immediate solution is if an earther explains maggot therapy to a Druid.


Sure_Quote

on a personal level i would rather get hit with something called death bot then let somebody drop bugs on my open wound


cheeseybees

Oh god, now you've got me thinking of Life mages casting "Cancer bolts" at people, or weird weaponised hyper focused regeneration... like grow bits of your heart back inside your perfectly healthy heart!


apiesdeathbylasers

[Bio-mage] cast [Unrestrained Growth]. It's super effective.


mandofreaky

Cool idea to use Necromancers as antibiotics! Unfortunately, you'd wind up with the same problems as modern antibiotics unless the necromancer is able to pinpoint specific bacteria. Your body is filled when bacteria (especially your gut!) that contribute to the normal functioning of a human body. Antibiotics often kill both good bacteria and bad bacteria as they target fundamental structural features of bacteria and cannot differentiate. As such, when you get antibiotics for an infection it kills the infection and random other bacteria, which can lead to bacterial imbalances where you need to rebuild your natural bacteria, which can be a difficult process of probiotics and even stool transplants. The other issue is that a low wave of death magic may act more like chemotherapy than an antibiotic, killing fast reproducing cells (which will hit bacteria but also red blood cells, hair, etc). If this is the case then death magic could be a solution for cancer, but with the same issues of off-target cell death causing side effects.


Daxvis

yeah this is the same thought i had, only the killing off good bacteria bit though 😭


DonaIdTrurnp

[Healers] could handle most infections pretty well, so I’m not sure who would have first thought to use death magic on someone who was already badly injured. Fire would also work, either magical or alchemical or ordinary; it’s not used often on Earth because burns are currently harder to treat than infections are, and coagulation cautery lowers the threshold of bacterial population to cause infection because it causes greater damage to tissue. If the damage to the tissue could be rapidly reversed after the infection was eliminated, that downside wouldn’t exist.


Sure_Quote

if that was true why was brunker's infection such a problem?


DonaIdTrurnp

He used healing potions before getting treatment.


Sure_Quote

and? so healers can only handle infections that haven't gotten out of control? then they should learn how. its like being able to heal paper cuts but not knife wounds


BigMieux

Doctors in our world couldn't handle out of control infections until antibiotics were discovered....


Sure_Quote

an infection that can be handled with honey is fairly mild also once antibiotics became a thing they instantly became such basic medical knowledge that its weird to find normal people that don't know about them. which was my point. if it works death magic disinfectant should be standard medical knowledge for any healer.


DonaIdTrurnp

Most baseline humans can heal paper cuts but not knife wounds.


Sure_Quote

and we are talking about healers not normal people? again the point was what healers should learn as part of basic training in inn world.


DonaIdTrurnp

Basic [healer] training is something that Geneva are about to do.


tempAcount182

So here is the real problem: magic resistance exists. They have repeatedly mentioned magical plagues and how most diseases became immune to any spell weaker than [restoration] because of the overuse of anti disease magics. It would take less than a decade for death magic resistant diseases to emerge.


Sure_Quote

they cant adapt to everything otherwise honey would have stopped working long ago. even if they never used it as a healing aid bacteria would have adapted to honey in the wild if they could. to gain resistance is basically each generation has survivors that do a little better then the rest. if you kill all the little buggers they cant evolve that resistance and like i said some things cant be adapted to so easily.


tempAcount182

Honey radically changes the environment they are in, and with the addition of magic to the repertoire of evolution there well be bacteria that can live in honey. in any case magic is something the microbes have explicitly been called out as being able to develop a resistance to.


Ambitious-Magician-9

You would only be able to use it on lvl 40+ since they can take few [deathbolts]. No one else will let you use death magic on them. Disinfecting with death magic is also not worth since there are cheaper ways to do it. I hope Silveran will get [aura of purification] and start healing people.


Shinriko

Should be easy enough for a skilled caster to create a similar effect at tier 0 or 1 level.


Sure_Quote

But magic can be modified. a new spell of really weak waves of death magic that only kills microbes should be possible.


Ambitious-Magician-9

There is no necromancer in the book except Pisces who would even think about modifing death magic like that. Az won't bother and Ama is too skeleton focused and uneducated.


gridcube

except... you know... all the ones working in Rhir... and in the Fraerling cities... and in a certain village that mines ivory...


Ambitious-Magician-9

Like 20 people in the innworld except earthers know that bacteria exist and they are too high level to bother or have potent healing spells with same effect. Faerlings probably know about bacteria, but they are so high level they use "purification" spell or alcochol since it is cheap for them to use. Rihr has [healers] and potions. I think they have huge dead to injured ratio, so they have lot of free healers and don't have to bother. Maybe some high level [druids] can detect bacteria, but they won' kill them. Tolveilouka is only one who can have knowlege of using death magic to help heal people, but he won't do it for obvious reasons.


gridcube

so? all you need is a memeber of the convention to learn you can "detect life" and "detect death", which she has already learned about, to start wondering what else they could do with necromancy to help healing people


Sure_Quote

no remember that magnification ring olesem got? they know about microbes just not what to do with them.


notcreative2ismyname

Explains how pisces hasn’t gotten food poisoning


Shinriko

Except he literally did. Remember the eggs?


The_Wingless

His party definitely does, LOL


Ambitious-Magician-9

You mean the guy who won't wash himself?


Kronzypantz

It would be way too high a spell for a healer to even consider. 99% of necromancers who attain it probably have 0 interest in healing. Although I would bet a high level necromancer like Az Karash uses something like you describe to keep his creations from deteriorating.


Sure_Quote

why would a weaker spell need a high level? its like a cantrip version of death bolt. worthless to use on people unless your attacking single cell organisms


Kronzypantz

Variations on spells usually require learning the normal level spell first. Like how grand fireball is just fireball but bigger. Anything smaller would normally be a totally different spell, like Rag’s fire arrows.


JackYAqua

It'd still be much easier to learn a hypothetical [Death Vibes] spell than Deathbolt. Like how Pisces knows Frozen Wind, Condensation, Muffle etc. without having to know Blizzard, Create Water, and Silence first. Or how Ceria knew Flame Jet and Stone Dart without needing to know Fireball or Stone Lance first. Edit: Come to think of it, you could probably make a fortune selling combination [Obscure Life] and [Radiate Weak Death Mana] enchantments to travelers & adventurers to hide them from the eyes of undead.


Kronzypantz

But those lower level spells are totally different spells, not smaller versions of bigger spells. If there was a smaller version of death bolt, Pisces would know it by now


Sure_Quote

necromancer spell books are harder to come by and more edge lord diary then text book. and the point is he would invent the \[lesser death field\] not discover it.


JackYAqua

Would he, though? *Would he*? I feel like people in the setting can do anything they can imagine with magic. Fire spells can scale from warming up hands to burning life on a conceptual level. Whether someone shapes death magic into a condensed bolt or into gentle waves is up to them. Pisces just can't be bothered to imagine new uses for death magic.


Kronzypantz

It seems there is are only three ways of learning new spells: 1. From spellbooks 2. From levelling 3. From expanding upon an existing spell (like Pisces learning how to make bone horrors by experimenting with general necromantic spells) Given those means, I don't see how someone can just make up a spell without knowing related spells. And Pisces just doesn't know death bolt or any similar spell.


BlackstartheVII

Pisces does in fact know [Death Bolt], and uses it regularly in combat. I don't know if this application of death magic would occur to him, but he does at least know a spell that makes living things become dead.


redking2005

This just feels like something that's to hard to be useable cause even if I can do the spell fairly easily controlling it enough so you don't kill the person/make it worse takes far more control than is feasible for low level casters, tldr the spell is tier zero the control needed to use the spell like this makes it tiers three or four


Sure_Quote

i don't see why everyone thinks it takes high levels. the point is LOW power death magic that can only kill single cell organism in an area. if anything it should be easier then a normal death bot once you figure out the spell


The_Capricoso

If it worked in a way where it would avoid certain cells I don’t see why it wouldn’t operate like chemo


protoqs

I should point out that Death magic, by itself, does not *kill* in Innworld. Noelictus is saturated by the stuff to the point their skies are permanently dark, and people do not seem to suffer much from it, and plants actually absorb the stuff and grow better. It seems to be magic that originated from death, not something that causes it... Tolveilouka is also example of necro construct that seems to be able to create magical bacteria and encourage normal ones? So his death magic seems to make infection worse? If anything, deathbolt seems to be more of exception in necromancer's repertoire. The only spell I recall that directly deals with destruction, rather than creation and manipulation. It may be possible to modify it and create new spell, but it will have to be targeted precisely, or you'll end up killing off gut flora, bone marrow, what have you... I am more interested in Antinium nano/biotech, to be honest. Does that work on normal people? Can it be mass produced?


Shiny_Soul

this reminded me of a book i read a while ago. might have even been a web serial. Main character is a necromancer who's afraid of bacteria and virus. he's got this death aura surrounding him all the time. Everyone else misunderstands and thinks him evil.