Newbie with some questions

[Ranzer]

So, um... hi. I've been reading and enjoying the comics for a while, and I've gotten into a situation where I need some info.

The setup:
"Alright, I'll be testing this new gaming system soon."
"Cool. What's it for?"
"Pretty much anything you can think of, it can handle."
"Anything, huh? Hmmm..."

So basically, now I'm creating a 'Cubi in it. I figure if it can handle that, it CAN handle anything. Unfortunately, even after reading up on the forum threads and the Wiki, I still have a few questions about what they can do. Sorry if these have already been asked. If they have, then feel free to beat me over the head with something.

1. What exactly is the limit of a regular 'Cubi's shapeshifting? From what I've seen, a lot of them seem to have T-1000 style shifting (AKA only into things roughly the same mass, and nothing too complicated, like a gun). I know Ink can do trickier things, but I'm guessing he's the exception rather than the norm. Also, he's a total nutcase, so yeah.

2. I remembered the Wiki saying that a Being could be changed into a 'Cubi, but it wasn't elaborated on there. Is there any official word on this, or has it just sorta been dropped since then?

3. Could scrying be used to be able to read other things besides books? I had an idea on someone cheating in a card game by scrying the deck and knowing the whole order of the cards... although shuffling would obviously send that idea crashing down.

...And unfortunately, I can't remember the others I came up with last night while attempting to sleep through a caffeine buzz. Is it okay if I reply with another if I remember a couple more?

Many thanks. Hope this was an okay first post.

[Tapewolf]

1. What exactly is the limit of a regular 'Cubi's shapeshifting? From what I've seen, a lot of them seem to have T-1000 style shifting (AKA only into things roughly the same mass, and nothing too complicated, like a gun). I know Ink can do trickier things, but I'm guessing he's the exception rather than the norm. Also, he's a total nutcase, so yeah.

I don't know the limits either, but Aary did manage to turn into a feral poodle, so they can apparently change into things with less mass.  Also, she is able to extrude tentacles, which requires more mass.  Also, 'Cubi can create base metals and so forth relatively easily, so maybe they're using a similar effect to create more mass for themselves?

2. I remembered the Wiki saying that a Being could be changed into a 'Cubi, but it wasn't elaborated on there. Is there any official word on this, or has it just sorta been dropped since then?

All we really have is Amber's comment here, the one referenced by the Wiki:  http://nice.llearch.net/dmfa_forum1871.htm#ref326

3. Could scrying be used to be able to read other things besides books? I had an idea on someone cheating in a card game by scrying the deck and knowing the whole order of the cards... although shuffling would obviously send that idea crashing down.

I think it's fairly obvious that someone is scrying - remember Abel's eyes, and that the bookshop keeper ran over, so it's obviously possible to tell from a distance.
They may have other powers that would work as well, though.

**EDIT**
Oh yeah, and welcome to the forum.   Trust no-one, remember to read the rules, don't annoy the admins, have fun and so on and so forth.

[Ranzer]

Aaaaand I just remembered two more questions. Stupid slow-booting memory...

4: How exactly does a 'Cubi grab a soul? Does the victim have to be alive, dead, alive but wishing they were dead, doing the rhumba, what?

5: What would happen if a 'Cubi tried to use an item strongly aligned with either light or dark? Would they not be able to use it, since they're basically users of both?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Hiya!

Let me start by saying welcome!

Yes, that was a perfectly fine first post - coherent, sensible, and even spelt correctly. In fact, I'm not sure how well you'll fit in, since you seem to post better than most of the incumbents... ;-]

Anyway, in terms of your quuestions:

1) No limit has yet been mentioned. Ink might be a nutcase, and he might be fairly good (although take that with a grain of salt; the Ink mentioned in the wiki may or may not be from the SAIA RP; not necessarily DMFA canon, as it were. Some of the entries are DMFA, some are not. Check the references.) but it's generally agreed that Fa'Lina is better. Also, Aaryanna didn't seem to be too much of a slouch (see the strip where she's shapeshifting into Fa'Lina's form for Pip and Mab...), and Dan even managed some interesting shapes in his testing with the torch...

I'd suggest the limit is imagination; the 'Cubi needs to imagine what he or she is changing into, so...

2) Amber has dropped hints about the process, but nothing specific has been said, other than "it's possible, but stupid, because you don't get anything more than an untrained Cubi out of it, so you've then got to train them. You might as well have the fun, first." Also, mention has been made of a particular clan that prefers to operate this way, but again, details are lacking.

3) Yup. However, it doesn't tell you what the order of the cards are - just what they were when you scryed them. You can bet that, since your eyes glow, there will be people watching for things like wearing sunglasses. And then there's the re-shuffle the deck; once it's shuffled, knowing how it _was_ ordered might help a bit, but no more than just counting the cards will, for a practiced card counter.

[Tapewolf]

4: How exactly does a 'Cubi grab a soul? Does the victim have to be alive, dead, alive but wishing they were dead, doing the rhumba, what?

No-one knows except Amber.  What we do have is an apocryphal statement from Aary's livejournal saying that she was tempted to kill Merlitz and take his soul, so she could wear it around her neck as a memento, and an in-strip statement from Abel about 'Cubi sucking people's souls out while they sleep.  From that, I'd say it's possible to take the souls of the living or the freshly-dead.

5: What would happen if a 'Cubi tried to use an item strongly aligned with either light or dark? Would they not be able to use it, since they're basically users of both?

I don't know if objects can be aligned like that - it might not even be a feature of Amber's universe.

[Ranzer]

I don't know if objects can be aligned like that - it might not even be a feature of Amber's universe.

Gah. Yeah, I basically got mixed up with the DMFA universe and Nethack and getting blasted by an artifact when I tried to grab it and oh man that's a painful memory. Then the rothes came...

Anyways, since this won't be taking place in the Amberverse, I just kinda wondered so that nothing would go squish. Sorry!

[Tapewolf]

Thinking about it, with regard to 'Cubi being able to use light and dark magic, I'm starting to get the impression that the 'truth table' runs something like this:

Angel: Very good with light magic, not so good with dark magic
Demon: Very good with dark magic, not so good with light magic
'Cubi: Decent with light magic, decent with dark magic, but not as good at either as an Angel or Demon would be.

That would be for a stock 'Cubi - one who has sufficiently increased their powers is likely to be able to top the abilities of a 'stock' Angel or Demon.

Of course, this is mostly conjecture and could be flat-out wrong, but it seems to fit Amber's way of balancing things out.

[Ranzer]

Hooray, more questions!

6: About how long does it take for a 'Cubi's metabolism to start shifting from physical to magical? Does it depend on the power that they get from souls (more on that in a sec) or is it about the same for all individuals?

7: How much of a potential power boost is in a soul, anyways? And yes, I'm planning on running these on conjecture for now. It's all that I have left! DON'T TAKE IT AWAY FROM MEEEEE! NOOOOOOO okay I'm done for now. Again, thanks for the help so far!

[Tapewolf]

6: About how long does it take for a 'Cubi's metabolism to start shifting from physical to magical? Does it depend on the power that they get from souls (more on that in a sec) or is it about the same for all individuals?

No idea what rate that happens apart from what it in the wiki and its sources.
Quoth the Amber:
"...once you hit a certain level you start to evolve and begin to be more magical-based than biology-based.  Sleep is usually the first to go, followed by food, then water, breathing tends to go out last, but even then most still do it out of habit and because it makes talking a whole lot easier.  But that [breathing] is a process that takes hundreds of years if not a thousand. (it really depends on how you go about it and what your priorities are)

If you want an example, I'll say now that Dan is at a point where sleep is slowly becomming optional...where as Abel has bypassed sleep/food/water and can go without breathing for a few hours at a time."

...Amber seems to imply it is possible to accelerate this process, but we don't have any details on how.

How much of a potential power boost is in a soul, anyways?

Pass.

[Ranzer]

Why can I never think of this stuff all at once ARGH ARGH ARGH

8: I think that Beings can regenerate to some degree. How quickly/well can they do that?

[Jairus]

Why can I never think of this stuff all at once ARGH ARGH ARGH

8: I think that Beings can regenerate to some degree. How quickly/well can they do that?

Don't worry, that happens to me all the time.

Um, I guess at about the same rate and level of skill that we humans regenerate: not that much. To be honest, I don't think that normal Beings can regenerate, though magic and healing potions would allow regeneration of some kind. Maybe someone else has some commentary of Amber's they can whip out...

[Ranzer]

*looks at the Wiki* Aw, crap, I got my terminology messed up. Forgive me.

Switch "Beings" with "Creatures" in that last post. And excuse me while I go bang my head against a wall for a while.

[Jairus]

*looks at the Wiki* Aw, crap, I got my terminology messed up. Forgive me.

Switch "Beings" with "Creatures" in that last post. And excuse me while I go bang my head against a wall for a while.

Okay, in that case I'd imagine that most creatures DO NOT have some form of super healing factor: when Aziz gets his arm chomped down on in Abel's Story Part 1, he needs to use an actual healing spell in order to fix the damage, though it could just be that he didn't want to waste any time waiting for his wounds to heal by themselves. We know that Cubi at the very least can basically regenerate anything, it just takes time and magic to do so. I guess the answer is that they can basically come back from  most normal injuries with enough time and magic. That's the best I've got. Does someone else have a better answer?

Oh, and these are actually some pretty good questions. Welcome to the forum.

[Tapewolf]

Okay, in that case I'd imagine that most creatures DO NOT have some form of super healing factor: when Aziz gets his arm chomped down on in Abel's Story Part 1, he needs to use an actual healing spell in order to fix the damage, though it could just be that he didn't want to waste any time waiting for his wounds to heal by themselves.

As you point out, it takes time.  If you lose an arm, you'd probably be able to re-grow it, if you didn't die of shock and blood-loss first.  That would likely require spells to sort out.

[rocket_red1]

So... creatures are starfish now? Except the bleeding thing...  Also, I am sorta confused by people specifing a difference between demon and cubi... Maybe in the amberverse... but remeber, even if light attributed items don't hurt cubi, you could cast a sort of cubi-bain spell on it, making it hurt cubi when it touched them... Can you imagine?
"i'll tickle you with my feather!" 
"what? is that suposed to be a threat?" *tickle tickle tickle* "oh my god! it i- hehe-s so painful! dea-haha-r god, why would y-*snort*-ou do this?"

[AmigaDragon]

  Also, I am sorta confused by people specifing a difference between demon and cubi... Maybe in the amberverse...

Go read up on Angel, Demon and Cubi in Demonology 101, Cubi came about as hybrids of Angel and Demon.

Okay, in that case I'd imagine that most creatures DO NOT have some form of super healing factor: when Aziz gets his arm chomped down on in Abel's Story Part 1, he needs to use an actual healing spell in order to fix the damage, though it could just be that he didn't want to waste any time waiting for his wounds to heal by themselves.

As you point out, it takes time.  If you lose an arm, you'd probably be able to re-grow it, if you didn't die of shock and blood-loss first.  That would likely require spells to sort out.

This might depend on how superficial or complete the shape shifting ability is, but since a shapeshifter is altering their cells to alter appearance, injuries might be shifted into a healed state, including lost limbs. Though such a drastic injury would take extra effort to resist the shock and compensate for the mass loss.

[Tapewolf]

Go read up on Angel, Demon and Cubi in Demonology 101, Cubi came about as hybrids of Angel and Demon.

That's not 100% confirmed, actually, it's more like a myth.  Some of Amber's comments seem to point out that Demons and 'Cubi are quite different things, and there is a rumour someone posted that 'Cubi are more like a crippled form of Dragons than Demons or Angels per se.  Though currently this is just a rumour and may turn out to be way off-base.

It doesn't help that the word 'demon' has been used occasionally as a generic term for that basic group (i.e. Angels, Demons and 'Cubi).  Also, the fact that 'Cubi are rare and poorly-understood by the general populace combined with Dan's own ignorance hasn't helped clarify things.

[Ranzer]

UPDATE:

Well, the game starts tonight. Wish me luck in coming up with a handwave to get this character into what we're planning, because it's going to require one heck of a good excuse for something so offbeat appearing. Not that that's a bad thing, of course. 

All we really have is Amber's comment here, the one referenced by the Wiki:*snip*

Darn. I was hoping that there was something that I had missed, as THAT would have been a nice justification. Oh well.

*snip discussion about shapeshifting mass*

I actually managed to come up with a somewhat plausible-sounding explanation for this a few days ago, but then I fell asleep and forgot all about it until today. My brain is not wired right, I swear.

Basically, my explanation was that there's a source of magic that's used to cast spells, and that 'Cubi pull energy from it to get extra mass when they need to. If they need to shift into something or someone smaller, they send it back to said source, thus sneaking around that little "conservation of mass" thing. Curse you, Newton, for giving us all these hurdles to jump over! CURSE YOUUUUUU!

*ahem* Anyways. I'm gonna see if this "summon creator of webcomic" spell works for getting official word on that 'Cubi creation process. Kal Por Xen, Kal Por Xen...

[Jairus]

The joke in the fantasy universe that I'm working on developing is that if you're already creating a fire without fuel or oxygen supply or ignition source, pulling a little extra magical mass out of the Abyss between universes isn't that big of a deal. It's my understanding that the point of magic is to break the laws of physics into little tiny pieces.

[Mao]

Wait.. if you're done getting info here, does that mean you'll stop posting?  NOOOOOOO!  It was so nice having someone else new here who wasn't posting random stuff and Gir quotes trying to play themselves off as being crazy and who actually used fairly decent spelling, punctuation and grammar!  Please say you're staying.  Please?


Phew!  Got that out of my system.  Good luck with the game, sounds like you'll do an excellent job if you're the GM, if not, you sound like the kind of player who makes for a fun game by having a well thought out character.

[Tapewolf]

creator of webcomic" spell works for getting official word on that 'Cubi creation process. Kal Por Xen, Kal Por Xen...

I was never clear on what 'Xen' was, but IIRC 'Kal Por' is something like 'Great Movement'.  Xen was related to summoning.  Either way, I used the Ultima spell language when voicing Dark Pegasus in the previous strip...

[Ranzer]

No, no! If it's okay, I might post some of the better moments from this game. We get a lot on a IRC game with a very imaginative and slightly off-the-hinge GM. But only if that won't constitute spam or anything.

I thought those symbols looked familiar in that last comic. According to the wiki ( http://ultima.wikia.com/wiki/Britannian_Magic ), "Kal Por Xen" literally translates to "invoke movement creature"; in other words, Amber, get your butt over to this thread and invoke movement in your typing hands! 

[Jairus]

No, no! If it's okay, I might post some of the better moments from this game. We get a lot on a IRC game with a very imaginative and slightly off-the-hinge GM. But only if that won't constitute spam or anything.

Well, it's good to hear that we're not loosing you right away?

Incidentally, what the heck are you people talking about? Ultima spell language: what's that?

[Ranzer]

You... you don't know about Ultima? HERETIC!

Er. Ultima is a old computer game that was a series of RPGs. One of the more unique things about the early game was having to type in your spells using the syllables to build a set of magic words, although this got abandoned at around Ultima 6. But yeah, there were spells for doing everything from creating food for your party to... uh... ending the world in Ultima 7. Really.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

No, no! If it's okay, I might post some of the better moments from this game. We get a lot on a IRC game with a very imaginative and slightly off-the-hinge GM. But only if that won't constitute spam or anything.

You have an IRC game?

If it's not asking for trouble, where, and do you mind if I watch?

[Jairus]

Oh, Ultima! Okay, that was made by... crud... calls himself Lord British... Richard Garriot! That was his name (thank you Yahtzee). I guess I kind of missed that game series throughout my youth, especially considering I didn't really play video games until 97/98. Wow, sounds like that game's got a lot of spells... and a world-ending one? Hm, how could that conversation regarding that spell have gone...
"Why did you design a spell that could destroy the world?"
"Because it's cool."

Hey, Zim was a great show, and that paraphrase was appropriate.

[Ranzer]

If it's not asking for trouble, where, and do you mind if I watch?

Sorcerynet server, #supersmashrpg. No period, obviously.

Say that Deloth sent you. Maybe I'll get a bonus for referrals!

Oh, and yeah, you could blow up the world in U7. Three characters survived. You, Lord British, and another important guy named Batlin. You got some funny conversations if you talked to them after this occured.

EDIT: Ah, forgot to mention. We play pretty late; around 8 PM EST. So bring plenty of caffeine!

[Tapewolf]

What was really fun in U6 was getting Shamino to cast the Armageddon spell instead of the player.  It destroyed everyone except the Avatar (i.e. you) and Lord British, though it rendered him unable to speak.
If Shamino (or any other party member) invoked they spell, it destroyed them while they were the current character and the game did not like that one bit.

Ah, those were the days...

Um, anyway.  Hope all goes well with your game.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

EDIT: Ah, forgot to mention. We play pretty late; around 8 PM EST. So bring plenty of caffeine!

Is that the North American EST or the Australian EST?

[Ranzer]

American EST. Sorry for not being clear, I'm used to talking with people in the US.

I enjoyed Ultima 7 a lot just for the number of ways you could bend it into uncomfortable positions. Building a staircase of pebbles, making bread out of blood, pouring a kegful of beer all over a floor, and in one case in Serpent Isle, cremating town guards for money. There was a sudden plague of "Slash-'em-and-steal-their-armor-before-dragging-the-corpse-over"-itis. It was a sad plague, really...