Nilaz

[amish overlord]

Went through and reading docs recently and came across this

Nilaz    The quasi-element of discordant void, where the four primary elements are entirely absent.

Nowis this just out of date or is it just four elements that are absent instead of all. Just curious any thoughts, since nilaz mostly seems to be antithesis to all. But in the magick webpage just four primary(whatever those are).

My guess the primary are vivadu, krath, ruk and whira. But could be wrong.

Any thoughts?

Amish Overlord  

[SpyGuy]

I'd assume Drov and Elkros are considered quasi-elements in that case but all 6 main elements are absent from Nilaz.  Nilaz is scary stuff.

[FiveDisgruntledMonkeysWit]

Don't forgot Krok.
And, oh, yes. Find out IC.
Just ask your friendly local [Edited: magicker]
Heh. Heh heh.

[mansa]

It's correct, AmishOverlord.

[Morgenes]

Edited Monkey's post above to remove IC information (a particular guild)

[LauraMars]

AYIEEE NILAZ *cries* Nilaz is scary!! It's worse than zombies!

I HATE YOU, HALASTER.

[Eternal]

Halaster is also worse than ZOMBIES... or so I hear.

The magicks of Nilaz twist the heart and mind, or so it is said...  remember that fear is a very common response to anything Zalanthan that is not immediately and easily understood.  There's nothing wrong with Nilazi... they're just -different-... like templars...

Or Zombies.

Lord Templar Hard Nose publicly disavows the existence of Nilazi, much like the existence of the number zero or negative integers.  (Food for thought)

[Malifaxis]

Halaster > Zombies.

I saw it on CNN.

I have always wondered, however, why people 'go to Drov' instead of Nilaz.

[Cale_Knight]

I have always wondered, however, why people 'go to Drov' instead of Nilaz.

Probably because something about "the absence of other elements" is something only a magicker would bother to think about and comprehend, while Drov is just darkness.

Death = Darkness. It's an easy conceptual link to make.

[Malifaxis]

Yeah I suppose not every joeboy knows about Nilaz.  Good point.

[SpyGuy]

It's also a matter of mythopoeic thought and how zalanthans relate to concepts.

Drov = Darkness.  Easy to relate to an afterlife like the Olympian Hades.
Krath = Fire.  Fire burns, easy to call the hell pits a place of torture.
Nilaz = Nothingness.  A much much harder concept to really conceive.  More abstract and less defined.

[Anonymous]

You could also think of it as:

Krath: anger, hate, or energy
Drov: ennui, laziness, sleep
Vivadu: softness, sweetness, physical weakness
Whira: flexibility, change, intellect
Ruk: strength, endurance, physical power
Elkroz: attraction, tension, nervousness
Krok: security, groundedness, centered
Nilaz: not being, death, the end

[Cegar]

What the heck is krok?

[Anonymous]

http://www.armageddon.org/cgi-bin/help_index/show_help?magick_element

[Cegar]

Whoa... never ever noticed that before. Ever.

[Cale_Knight]

Me either. Is there a Krokian magicker guild? What karma is it, if so?

[Intrepid]

You could also think of it as:

Elkroz: attraction, tension, nervousness

Actually, Elkros is energy and motion.  Krath is destruction and revelation, not energy.

[Larrath]

Let's stick to more basic common knowledge here.
According to the basic helpfiles, here is what the elements are:

Vivadu - water and life.
Ruk - earth/stone and protection.
  Krok - rock and more protection.
Whira - air/wind, travel and illusion.
Suk-Krath - fire/sun and killing you.
Drov - darkness/otherworldly stuff and deception.
Elkros - energy, lightning and tinkering with energy.
Nilaz - void, extra-planar spacial manipulations, blocking elements and messing with the nature of death.

It's not a complete or perfect accurate description, but I think this is as   complete as a list on this here board should be.  Everyone should keep in mind that the Magick-related helpfiles tend to hold back massive amounts of information - if 'help guild_water_elementalist' tells you that Vivaduans suck at combat, I advise you don't put too much weight behind that statement if you had to go toe-to-toe against a 80 day Vivaduan somewhere.

The reason why people say 'go to Drov' instead of 'go to Nilaz' is, in my understanding, because Nilaz is just completely foreign.  Almost everyone dies eventually, so death is part of the natural circle of life in the world that is, really, built up of the elements.
Suk-Krath is the sun, the moons are Suk-Krath's testicles, Ruk is the sand and Krok is the larger rock formations, Whira is the wind, Drov is the shadows that keeps everyone from dying of heatstroke, Vivadu is the oases and Elkros is the sandstorms and the mudsex.

Nilaz has nothing to do with any of the above.  Nilaz is alien, foreign and evil and really, really cool, and this is why dead people go to Drov instead of Nilaz.

Nilaz is the anti-life and is separate from death.  Also, Nilaz is very scary.

Last thing - I don't think that educated people in the Known World (short of, perhaps, some Tulukis) wouldn't know what Nilaz is.  If your character knows the distinction between a Krathi and a Drovian, in most cases you'd probably also hear that Nilaz is very scary.  You might not understand what Nilaz is, but you'd know it's scary and very cool.

[spawnloser]

Vivadu - water and life.
Ruk - earth/stone and protection.
Krok - rock and more protection.
Whira - air/wind, travel and illusion.
Suk-Krath - fire/sun and killing you.
Drov - darkness/otherworldly stuff and deception.
Elkros - energy, lightning and tinkering with energy.
Nilaz - void, extra-planar spacial manipulations, blocking elements and messing with the nature of death.

I would alter this to...

-Vivadu - Water, health in all it's myriad forms
-Ruk - Earth/sand and physical protection
-Krok - Subset of Ruk, Stone and it's protections
-Whira - Air/wind, going where the wind takes you both mentally and physically
-Suk-Krath - Flames, illuminating and consuming
-Drov - Shadow, the absence of light and all that entails
-Elkros - Energy, personal and external
-Nilaz - The absence of the above...without health, physical form, intellect, the creative and destructive fire in all of us, deception and the energy that makes us able to do.

Take that as you will.

[Marauder Moe]

Shouldn't all this magicker theory stuff be discussed in-game?  Yes, I know it's in the helpfiles, but discussion is dangerous and things can accidently slip out, hence the fact that this thread has already been edited once.

[LucildaHunta]

Yeah, but the problem with discussing this in-game is that it could lead to a shorter life span for your character. Characters don't always react kindly to magickal curiousity. It could add an interesting wrinkle to your RP, but sometimes you don't want that.

Besides the edited stuff, these are things you character could at least be familiar with.

[Anonymous]

I think my point was more that, everyone knows what the help-files say. The help-files are designed to help people who are playing mages.

But, is common knowledge on the street, rife with superstition and wrong-headed conclusions about everything, necessarily going to get it right to the lines of the help-file?

What's to say the magick-ignorant wouldn't make something up like what I posted, eh? I mean, everyone experiences darkness when it's night. Sure, it's scary, but in the presence of a knowledge like Nilaz...

[SpyGuy]

Yeah, but the problem with discussing this in-game is that it could lead to a shorter life span for your character. Characters don't always react kindly to magickal curiousity. It could add an interesting wrinkle to your RP, but sometimes you don't want that.

Join a clan where you can talk about that sort of stuff.  Trust me, it's really really cool.

What's to say the magick-ignorant wouldn't make something up like what I posted, eh? I mean, everyone experiences darkness when it's night. Sure, it's scary, but in the presence of a knowledge like Nilaz...

Nilaz is scarier than death, it's an unnatural breaking of the cycles that govern life.  Sure your character could believe you go back to Nilaz but I doubt that view would be very common or very welcomed by anyone who thinks about it too much.  Most commoners probably never encounter Nilazi magicks, or know what they're encountering if they do, but if and when they did they'd be terrified.  Drov is scary in a natural way, it's something every one has to deal with.  The absence of life without death is straight out of H. P. Lovecraft and is something truly terrifying.

[Aldiel]

What the heck is krok?

You know, an earthenware vessel.  ... Crock, Krok sounds like crock, get it... ?   No?  Damn. *crawls back into his hole*

[Angela Christine]

Nilaz - void, extra-planar spacial manipulations, blocking elements and messing with the nature of death

Discordant void, it is described as discordant void at least once.  I think the "discordant" part is important, because it shows that it isn't a peaceful emptiness.  I'm not sure how you have a lack of liquids, solids, gases, light, darkness and energy and still have something discordant left, but apparently you can.

I picture it as being something like the weird bits in the movie Event Horizon .  A ship disappears into a black hole (a void) and mysteriously returns ten years later, and it brought back some of that void with it.  


Of course as far as I know I've never met a Nilazi, much less played one, so I could be way off.


Angela Christine