Drasvin

Erring on the side of sending the energy risks significant feelings of regret if the Immortal isn't certain in the decision, especially if they go over the evidence more closely and realize they should have done differently (Such could happen with the opposite, but with sending the energy, the Immortal has likely killed someone and destroyed a significant amount of the knowledge they carried with them) The energy being sent automatically also absolves the Immortals of the responsibility of the rule-breakers death. They don't have a choice in sending the energy, so the weight of decision is entirely on that of the rule-breaker. Not at all. The best way to remove regret is already implemented - the group effect. You will be unlikely to feel regret unless you think your opinion was deciding factor, and we can assume much less than half of immortals is needed to force the reset in most cases. Why do you think execution by firing squad was developed? It's multiple people deliberately firing at once, so it's not possible to say if any specific one killed the prisoner. Execution by firing squad also incorporates one or more blank cartridges, so the individuals firing don't even know if they fired a live round. With the sending of energy, they don't get that comfort. They will for certain have contributed to the death of another person. They might not have been the deciding factor, but there isn't really a deciding factor with simultaneous, combined action. No one individual can say they were the one that killed the person, but they choose to contribute. They all have blood on their hands. That's another thing. With the sending of energy, it's a conscious choice, whereas firing squad is typically an assignment. For one, so they know what their energy is being used for. For two, so the altruistic among them can attempt some sort of damage control if needed. For three, depending on how much Immortals socialize (the one's we've seen don't socialize with others much, but Pandora admitted she might be introverted, Zeus has been busy trying to fulfill the vow he got saddled with, Voltaire is a jerk, and H&D are more than a little clueless from being improperly reset and are also busy with following Elliot and 'recruiting' vampire hunters) it could be a means to let other know what happened to their friend or that a given Immortal might be dangerous to hang out with. And for four: It reinforces that, even if they have the best of intentions, they should not break the rules, ever. Hmmm ... true, all good points, but only for transmitting the "what she did". The "why" is barely needed for point four. The "why" helps reinforce the "even if they have the best of intentions" part. Even if an Immortal broke the rules to save the world, she still broke the rules and as such suffers the penalty. (Also nicely ties into the Immortals being fairies. Only a fool breaks a deal with a fairy, even if breaking the deal was an accident)

Isn't magical darkness impenetrable by darkvision? Not exactly. The Darkness spell can only create total darkness, which darkvision can see in. The more powerful version, Deeper Darkness, can make it supernaturally dark, which darkvision doesn't work in.

If a lot of Immortals start thinking about needing to change the rules, they would need to figure out how to do that, which would likely need them to congregate somewhere to discuss that and what to change the rules to. Lot of them, yes. But HOW will they get everyone, if changing the rules needs everyone to agree? If there is no pre-agreed way to summon the congregate, it may require literally waiting for everyone to reset and finding them before they learn to hide. It's certainly a conundrum, though I doubt that they'll have to wait for everyone to reset. Immortals are going to be paying attention to the world around them (otherwise they would likely get bored) and therefor one could try to get their attention by spread rumors of the congregation through the magical community. Such a grapevine attempt would be more than a little hit-or-miss, as there would be little to no way to know which part of the world a given Immortal is paying attention to, but is potentially more expedient than just waiting for the stragglers to reset. Erring on the side of sending the energy risks significant feelings of regret if the Immortal isn't certain in the decision, especially if they go over the evidence more closely and realize they should have done differently (Such could happen with the opposite, but with sending the energy, the Immortal has likely killed someone and destroyed a significant amount of the knowledge they carried with them) The energy being sent automatically also absolves the Immortals of the responsibility of the rule-breakers death. They don't have a choice in sending the energy, so the weight of decision is entirely on that of the rule-breaker. I'm not sure about you, but I've had times were I've had to stop and untangle my own thoughts. And information being transmitted telepathically doesn't mean that information is instantly processed and understood. Just means the information is readily available in their minds. They will still have to think it over and process the information. Also, if the transmitted information works like a lot of Immortals stuff (their laws and their vows), then they don't have to lie so much as convince themselves of what their motives are. For one, so they know what their energy is being used for. For two, so the altruistic among them can attempt some sort of damage control if needed. For three, depending on how much Immortals socialize (the one's we've seen don't socialize with others much, but Pandora admitted she might be introverted, Zeus has been busy trying to fulfill the vow he got saddled with, Voltaire is a jerk, and H&D are more than a little clueless from being improperly reset and are also busy with following Elliot and 'recruiting' vampire hunters) it could be a means to let other know what happened to their friend or that a given Immortal might be dangerous to hang out with. And for four: It reinforces that, even if they have the best of intentions, they should not break the rules, ever.

I have to admit that it takes a special kind of stupid to overconfidently charge into a cloud of darkness a wizard just created. Me, I'd much rather throw something in there that would make remaining inside it a bad idea. A grenade, maybe a handful of caltrops... I just don't see the tactical value of deliberately blinding yourself. Well, if the person attacking the wizard doesn't know what the cloud of darkness does, it would be easy to assume it works like a simple smoke grenade. Something to distract and obscure. I agree that it would be much better to use a grenade or some other ranged option than charging into a smoke cloud, but not everyone brings ranged options. Admittedly, that's not good tactics either, but some people don't plan ahead (More times than I care for in my Pathfinder gaming group, we've had situations were people neglected to get ranged options for their characters and end up suffering for it) I wonder how many of the characters that charged in had ranged and/or AoE options. True, the rest of the group shouldn't have charged into the silent cloud of darkness and instead waited for whatever was inside that hurt their friends to come out where they could see it and properly fight it, though they might have been worried about the caster in the darkness setting stuff up. That scenario also displays the value of darkvision (something me and my group learned after getting ambushed at low levels by monsters with Darkness Spell-like Abilities and no one in the group had darkvision. We survived, but we were hurting afterward)

Given that it's been stated there are Wizards that gain there own spells (in addition to being able to learn other people's spells) and Wizards that don't (Raven being the former (stated by Dan) and Tedd being the latter), what makes you think Raven learned Murder Shroud from Pandora? It's entirely possible it's one of the spells he has in his own spellbook. Which is probably just as confusing as Susan's and the others', but he's more experienced with reading his. Well, Adrian is using Murder Shroud. Either it's from Pandora, or it's better than whatever Pandora taught him. I don't believe Adrian is using inferior spell just because it's his own or some similar reason, AND if he would, Pandora would likely facepalm. Also, he might be so good in reading his spellbook he don't find it confusing at all With the varied nature of both spells and combat in general, there likely isn't a strictly superior option. Some options might be better in some situations and worse in others, and being able to tell which is which in any given moment is an extremely important skill for combat. And the spell being his own (if it is) could be an advantage of it's own, as his own spells are going to be more inline with his personality and desires, meaning it's going to fit into his personal flow much better than a spell learned from someone else, making for greater ease of use and potentially skill with it's use.

Pandora seems like a nice lady and Diane just learned that Pandora might possibly be her great-grandmother (add more greats as needed). That really plays into the fact that Immortals used to call themselves fairies. A common thread with the Fair Folk is they don't quite understand human morality. They might understand it's a thing that we care a lot about, but the concept is odd and alien to them. I don't know how deep into the Immortals having Blue and Orange morality Dan plans on going, but between Pandora's clumsy definition of good and Hanma's poor grasp of morality, there are certainly elements of it. "With Great Power comes Great Responsibility" Different hero, but similar idea. If the rule changes just allow for direct interaction with vampires, it might be less disastrous, but given how they treated Magus before they were forcibly reset, I would be wary about expanding the rules any wider than vampires. If a lot of Immortals start thinking about needing to change the rules, they would need to figure out how to do that, which would likely need them to congregate somewhere to discuss that and what to change the rules to. They should be, but it also depends on how much detail they get when someone breaks the rules. If there's too little information, there wouldn't be enough to untwist the logic. For instance, Voltaire has more or less summed up his motivation as wanting to make "the world a better place." While many villains in fiction have that as a motivation, on the surface, it seems like a justifiable reason for otherwise terrible actions. Many heroes have justified their fight against the bad guys by trying to make a better world. The difference between the heroes and villains with that motivation comes down to two points: 1) Point of View of the narrative and 2) A better world for who? If there's too much, it could be difficult to properly work through it all in a timely manner. This would be problematic, as there needs to be enough energy in the retribution to overcome the rule-breaker's defenses and then kill them. If the information is too dense to formulate in a timely manner, then the energy from the various Immortals across the globe is going to come in separate packets instead of a single massive pulse, and the separate packets might not have enough power to force the reset.

Probably to prevent them from going easy on rule breakers that have a sympathetic-ish cause, as letting some rule breakers go without punishment could open up ways to further bend the rules by the less scrupulous. Those less scrupulous rule breakers would just need to contrive a "sympathetic" reason for their actions. And Immortals have already shown themselves to be very good at twisting logic. There are already some, like Zeus, that think the old laws are stupid and there are likely others who would enjoy being able to interact more directly (I imagine H&D wouldn't mind being able to take care of vampires themselves rather than track down a hunter to do the work for them). Voltaire largely needs to get Immortals to start thinking about changing the laws, then he can get their attention and start pushing for whatever his particular direction is.

I think Voltaire plans to throw Pandora under the proverbial bus. He wants to change the laws, but Immortals are spread out across the globe, so contacting them all to even try to convince them would be a challenge, even before accounting for their ability to hide from each other. But if Pandora breaks the laws to defend her son, all Immortals across the globe will know what she did and, more importantly, why she did what she did. That could give Voltaire the means to get everyone to listen to him, especially if a magic reset happens around that time, stripping all the mortals that the Immortals care about of their ability to defend themselves.

I was shamelessly stealing from an issue of What's New with Phil and Dixie in which the Foglios explored precisely what it was that makes vampires so scary. They submitted hair-stealing vampires as a good example of monsters of the night that would carry rather less gravitas and feelings of dread. Certainly an interesting idea. Though if the vampire consumes life-force in addition to a person's hair, then it only has less gravitas and feelings of dread until one is the vampire's victim. Then I imagine it could be rather frightening and surreal.

I just realized something. Against someone that doesn't know what it does and is willing to charge into it, murder shroud is ridiculously lethal. If you're inside the shroud, it can fire exploding crows at you from every possible angle, possibly at the same time. He possibly could use both of his lance arms together, kind of like chopsticks or tongs. Though that's if he feeds on people's energy literal, like Big Mouth did. It's possible that he can drain life energy out of a person with his lance arms or blade tail. Another potential option for a way to drain energy, though one that is rather silly (still could be terrifying to have to deal with), though the vampires shown haven't had a lack of silliness to them. Well his tail appears to be a flexible mammalian one instead of a segmented insect one, so he should have greater striking arcs than your typical scorpion. And his large humanoid torso section would get in the way of a typical scorpion tail anyway. And I'm not sure if his lances are too short. They might be, but I'm not sure. Looking at it, best I can reason lance-tip-to-shoulder length seems to be about to a little more than his height.

I'm guessing the "they" is the other Immortals (or perhaps some sort of ruling council of Immortals if they have such a thing). Perhaps he wants to convince them to change Immortal Law to be less restrictive and allow more interference in human affairs? As to why the other Immortals would care about magic changing, it affecting how magic works for them too would be the most obvious explanation. Magic changing for the Immortals is a possible answer, they it's likely that they would care if it only changed for humans, because it would change how they can interact with humans. Right now they can use magic marks as leverage to get things done. To give humans the tools to complete a task or as a temptation to get the human to do what they want. If magic changes, it's likely that magic marks won't work any more and Immortals will need to find a new way to influence humans.

From how Pandora was talking when formulating her refresh plan, it seems that she's planning on trying to use the mechanism that Immortals use to pass on knowledge to pass on her emotional attachments. So if the passing on of knowledge is like an encyclopedia that gives you information in a dry, detached manner, then what Pandora is planning to do is a kin to writing a novel to get the reader invested in the characters, to actually care about these people.

I prefer to think that they held onto one thing that was important to their previous incarnations. If "follow Elliot!" was at all related to a vow, I'm not certain they could have stopped, as I mention above. If eliminating vampires is linked to another vow, it could possibly let them move away from following Elliot whenever they get a whiff of one. Would also explain why they are so keen about getting people to fight vampires. That does bring up the question of what happens when an Immortal has conflicting vows (Probably unpleasantness).

Seems that though Jerry was wise and knowledgeable, he didn't understand his own basic nature. Or he did and he wanted to push Zeus to be a more responsible individual. Either way, it's led to Zeus resenting his previous life. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that. On one hand, Immortals/fairies being more responsible is a good thing. On the other hand, forcing an open ended vow on someone who never technically agreed to it is kinda mean. Though helping Susan and Nanase after what H&D did to them is a very good thing. Also somewhat answers my question about how female elves getting pregnant. If elves are significantly less likely to become, or get someone, pregnant, then the problem wouldn't come up very often if at all. It might be possible that even with his long life of looking for love and such, Adrian might have only fathered a single child...which, depending on how distantly he's related to Susan and Diane, might have been Susan's father. Maybe, but I doubt it. Zeus is likely stuck with the vow until Susan, Diane, and Nanase die. (I was going to put 'of natural causes,' thinking that if they died of unnatural causes would end up breaking his vow, but then had a thought that he might not break the vow if he did everything in his power to save them. Jerry vowed to be their ally, not to 100% ensure they survive to old age) Mr. Raven hadn't been intending on Susan specifically. He just made an illusion of what he thought a niece of his would look like, probably extrapolating features of his father and mother. Jerry passed the knowledge on to Zeus. After being told that most Immortals lie to themselves about elves being able to pass on children, Diane asked him, "Then why do you know this?" His answer is "Jerry wanted [him] to be a responsible successor." Jerry not only didn't pass on the lie that elves can't have children, but made a point to make it clear to Zeus that they can.

She would also have a compulsion to seek out Sarah, though she wouldn't quite know why, similar to how Helena and Demetrius have a compulsion to follow Elliot around. That brings something to mind. If H&D have a vow to stop Magus's plan (or keep Elliot safe or whatever) does that mean Magus succeeding is going to cause them to be constantly barraged by unwanted thoughts? It also usually makes them not reset, probably. Which is dangerous by itself - A LOT. That was the point I was trying to build towards.

Well, if true, the fairies weren't trying to impose a life without love on their future incarnations, but are instead trying to prevent the familial connection from growing beyond their immediate offspring. Pandora refused to reset because she didn't want to leave Adrian alone in the world. Elves are unaging, but they can still be killed, either by accident or intent. If Adrian had died at any point, Pandora would have gone berserk and tried to exact her vengeance, but then she would have reset, either forcibly as repercussion of her actions in grief or willingly once she no longer has ties to the world to keep her in her current incarnation. With an extended bloodline, her familial connections would just get passed down the generations, more and more excuses piling up as to why she wouldn't reset until either her mind collapses into total chaos (Which would end badly for everyone) or she has an epiphany and lets go. (And considering it took a massive mental shock to bring about her current epiphany, I image such an occurrence would be rare) That's entirely her decision, but she's rapidly approaching the end of her life and she has a lot of emotions and stuff on her plate that she has to work through before she dies. (And she has a lot of emotions tied up in Blake, which makes me think she's the type that likely wouldn't go searching for new love) She could certainly seek out love after her reset/refresh, but that would for all/most intents and purposes be a new person, not the old Pandora.

I imagine that's the case. Likely the main reason why many aberrations have the ability to assume a human form. It lets them blend into the crowd and hide from entities that would prefer to end their unnatural existence. But they must assume their monstrous form to attack and feed (or attach to a new host for aberrations that take their parasitic nature more literally, like Sirleck), which makes them vulnerable to detection as actual monsters. Then there just needs to be an Immortal (or someone else with the ability to detect them and/or fight them) within range to detect the vampire and keep tabs on it long enough to get help. The other vampires might not be in their monstrous forms yet. Also there's timing and placement. Pandora was next to Adrian, and was probably just too distant to warn Susan as they didn't arrive until after Susan attempted to fight the Koala and he fled.(She was probably hoping that Zeus would actually be able to do something other than ineffectually panic)

Based on how Heka told Pandora "You're actually a perfect example of why they did", I would guess fairies have a strong tendency to become deeply invested in familial ties. And her threatening Zeus to make him protect Susan and Diane reinforces that perspective. It's simply too dangerous for a fairy to get that invested in a bloodline, especially as the bloodline grows larger.

I've wondered how the secret of elves having children works with a female elf. That can't be played off as their partner cheating on them. And there only being male elves (or only male elves being able to conceive children) feels too contrived (Though it is the answer my own brain echoed back at me whenever I thought on this conundrum).

In some versions of the myths, Hera wanted to get vengeance against her cheating husband, but knew that doing so would likely be suicide.

Maybe a shield or something to help her dodge faster. She has plenty of offensive options but not many defensive ones.

Zeus seems to be at the edge of panic, if not diving full into it. Diane is going to be the death of him, either figuratively or literally. While in modern day, Zeus is most remembered for his infidelity, He did have dominion of other things that made mortals appreciate him. Such as the rule of law and xenia(sacred hospitality, very important in a time which travel can take multiple days and things like hotels didn't really exist yet). Breaking xenia was possibly the fastest way to make Zeus extremely angry. I doubt Pandora knows about Magus's plan. She would have warned Adrian before this if she did. Even if she wants Magus out of his situation, she's not going to care more about that than Adrian. And she's been more self conscious about her actions recently, so I doubt she would risk his safety like when Adrian fought Abraham. I agree Pandora is likely referring to herself when mentioning only one is in danger. She knows direct action would be against the rules, but she's willing to sacrifice herself to save Adrian, Susan, and Diane (She probably doesn't care about Zeus outside of his ability to keep the others alive and he's an Immortal. He can take care of himself) But after she spoke with Tedd, she had resolved to "Refresh" rather than "Reset", a forced reset doesn't seem like it would work as a refresh since getting one's knowledge run through a blender would not be ideal for someone who desires to maintain all their memories of the people she cares about. I think it might be a case that she doesn't want a forced reset, but is willing to accept that if that is what it takes to keep people she cares about alive.

She's already proven valuable as an extra pair of eyes. Certainly saved Susan's life.

I forgot about changing horses, though technically they could stop and rest the horse if the communication isn't urgent or the infrastructure to horse-swap simply isn't there. A lot of research came about not from people seeking a solution to a problem, but from trying to better understand how the world works and then seeking a problem for their solution. Or the research was a side-effect of other research. A better solution existing would limit proliferation of the new technologies, but whether magic were a truly better alternative would require answering questions of production and cost in addition to effectiveness. And typically, costs of a solution weigh much more heavily than effectiveness of the solution.

I don't think gravity would be problem. In fact, even bumping into objects in constrained space as the mall might not be an issue. Come to think about it, just because the immortal is visible on physical plane doesn't mean she's actually solid. I forgot about her walking through the table in the physical plane. Though the gravity might still be an annoyance depending on how her floating ability works (though certainly wouldn't be anything worse than annoying if it matters at all) It wouldn't be helpful in any of the situations before, but in case she would like to stop escaping vampire, it might be appropriate. That certainly could be an option, though she likely wouldn't be able to actually prevent them from leaving, just "guide" them to head back into the battle.