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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Battle Realms Lotus Clan

Peasant: "My struggles above the earth merely delay my final sleep there."

Tier: n/a
Rice Cost: 0
Water Cost: 0
Melee: Piercing
Missile: n/a
Weakness: all
Strength: none
Training: none
Innate Abilities: Building, Repairing, Training, Gathering Resources.
About: The peasants of the Lotus Clan are truly a strange race. Thin, wiry and pale, they perform their labors with religious fervor. Their zeal is unsurprising; they witness more dark and unholy miracles during infancy than the zealots of many other faiths glimpse in ten lifetimes.
BATTLEGEAR

none
Channeler: "Secrets beyond both Gods and men are mine to keep; from my lips, they shall never take flight."

Tier: n/a
Rice Cost: 30
Water Cost: 50
Melee: Piercing
Missile: Piercing
Weakness: none
Strength: Fire
Training: Aviary
Innate Ability: Healing: The Channeler uses ravens, instead of stamina, in granting health to allies.
About: The channeler is an anomaly among the Lotus. By the laws of the Forbidden Path, Channelers are only women allowed to rise beyond the ranks of the peasantry. Their studies are not the Path at all, but an even more ancient and secretive religion passed down from mother to daughter. Only those who devote themselves irrevocably to this religion ever learn its true nature, and the elder practitioners of the Forbidden Path - even the awful Lord Zymeth - know better than to prey into its riddles, which are far older than the Lotus Clan itself.
Of all Lotus adepts, only the Channeler is able to truly mend the wounds of another. She is bonded to three raven familiars, but must snap the brittle neck of one of them in order to fuel her dark spells of regeneration. A sibling from the aviary eventually replaces the sacrificed raven, but there is invariable a period of mourning before this happens. Despite this, a Channeler's ravens will fight for her if she must stand to battle.

BATTLEGEAR

none
Blade Acolyte: "All that separates life from death is rage, hatred, and my slashing blade."

Tier: 1
Rice Cost: 30
Water Cost: 30
Melee: Cutting
Missile: n/a
Weakness: none
Strength: Fire
Training: Forge
Innate Ability: Blade Sharpening: He will sometimes sharpen his swords and have increased damage to his next attack.

About: Novices of the Forbidden Path who react to their agonizing Rites of Initiation with anger and struggle are marked as the children of Lythis, dark bladesmen of the Three. During their apprenticeship at Lythis' forge, Bladed Acolytes meditate upon their natural affinity for violence. This rage is focused outwardly, upon the enemies of the Lotus, and inwardly, upon their physical inadequacies. Frustration slowly and painfully reshapes them, until their elongated limbs and steely skin cause them to resemble the wicked, curved scimitars they carry. When not engaged in meditation, Acolytes may be seen sharpening, polishing, and occasionally speaking to these swords.
The Forbidden Path does not lend robust health to its practitioners, and the Blade Acolyte is less study than a mundane swordsman. However, his inhuman agility and deep understanding of violent death grants him terrifying skills in combat.

BATTLEGEAR

Inner Strength: When empowered by Lythis' Shade, the Blade Acolyte learns to contain and repair damage to his decaying body, even as he parries and thrusts at his baffled opponents.
Leaf Disciple: "All that separates life from death is confusion, insanity, and my falling leaves."

Tier: 1
Rice Cost: 30
Water Cost: 30
Melee: Piercing
Missile: Piercing
Weakness: none
Strength: Explosive / Fire
Training: Blade Garden
Innate Ability: Melee Counterstrike: When hit in melee combat, the Leaf Disciple's opponent takes a small amount of damage in return (from the whirling leaves).
About: Initiation with cold calculation and vengeful thoughts is recognized as a spiritual brother of Sehk, the Crafty One. Along the strange, disorienting paths of his Blade Garden, Leaf Disciples learn to twist and distort their minds and surroundings through sheer force of will. Such distortion is not easy, and Disciples must expend an inordinate amount of effort in study before they can even manipulate the razor-thin, paper-light leaves of the Tree of Corruption.
On the field of battle, these leaves spin and whirl about a Disciple's head like a flock of angry sparrows. With an indolent flick of his finger, he can send them whistling towards and enemy's head or cause them to slice and slash at nearby foes. Enough small cuts can bleed the strongest enemy to death, and no Disciple ever seems to run out of leaves.

BATTLEGEAR

Scrye Leaves: With Sehk's help, a disciple may bind his sight to his spinning leaves, viewing his surroundings in mad, kaleidoscopic glimpses. By flinging these leaves aloft, he can briefly see vast landscapes in their metallic reflections.
Staff Adept: "All that separates life from death is loneliness, suffering, and my iron staff."

Tier: 1
Rice Cost: 30
Water Cost: 30
Melee: Blunt
Missile: n/a
Weakness: Magic
Strength: none
Training: Training Yard
Innate Ability: Whirling Staff: Does area effect damage when engaging multiple units in melee combat. (As of 2/22/02, this innate is not working in the game. Should be fixed in BP3).
About: Those novices who pass through the Rites of Initiation with quiet, stoic hopelessness demonstrate their kinship with Tausil, the Forsaken One. These initiates endure endless, repetitive drills at the Training Grounds, repeat interminable chants of droning monotones, and maintain ceaseless and solitary vigils over the Tree of Corruption. From existence, they gradually learn to accept emptiness as the sole truth among the distractions of life.
In combat, the Staff Adept moves quietly, with little apparent interest in his surroundings. Yet the emptiness of his soul gives him a painful awareness of - and loathing for - those who disturb his inner silence. He is utterly fearless, and is more than able to engage multiple opponents with the emotionless, technically perfect spins and flourishes of his staff. For such a frail-seeming opponent, the Staff Adept finds pain surprisingly irrelevant.

BATTLEGEAR

Dark Canopy: Granted Tausil's insights into nothingness, a Staff Adept may spin his weapon overhead with such flawless precision that it deflects missiles from all nearby allies.
Diseased One: "In my scabrous, fevered skin, you see a man who belongs to Death. In your healthy flesh, I see the same."

Tier: 2
Rice Cost: 60
Water Cost: 60
Melee: Magic
Missile: n/a
Weakness: Explosive, Magic
Strength: Cutting, Fire
Training: Forge, Training Yard
Innate Abilities: Rotting Decay: When the Diseased One dies, it leaves behind a nasty cloud that will cause poison damage to any enemy units that enter it. The cloud lasts for about 20 seconds.
About: The Diseased One's blossoming inner corruption has overwhelmed his immune system: he is a breeding ground for every imaginable plague. An ordinary man afflicted with a tenth of the Diseased One's maladies would be dead within the hour. Yet he has learned to draw just enough vital energy from his corruption to stave off death, and so he lives in a nightmarish twilight of fevered delusions, racking pains, and his desperate, scrabbling will to live.
Lurching about the field like a drunken man, the Diseased One is a clumsy fighter at best; it is not difficult to end his tortured existence. However, as he expires, his body explodes from the sudden internal pressures of rot and decay, spreading pestilence across a wide area.
BATTLEGEAR

Projectile Vomit: The Diseased One can temporarily relax his control over his illnesses, spewing a stream of virulent vomit that is extremely harmful to the living. Death Wail: By consuming the flesh and soul of a living being, the Diseased One learns the true horror of the corruption that consumes him from within. As he wails, he releases the very soul of his victim to terrify horses and sap the willpower of his enemies.
Unclean One: "There is no darkness in this world which has not its mirror image in my soul."

Tier: 2
Rice Cost: 60
Water Cost: 60
Melee: Blunt
Missile: Magic
Weakness: Cutting, Blunt
Strength: Explosive, Fire
Training: Blade Garden, Training Yard
Innate Ability: Darkness: Upon the Unclean One's death, a dark cloud surrounds the area where he died and reduces the line-of-sight for enemy units in the area to 0 for a brief period.
About: The Unclean One has nurtured the core of evil within himself to such a level that his mortal shell cannot contain it. As a result, his body begins to manufacture great quantities of black, tarry, vitriolic goo that he must constantly struggle to expel from his lungs and stomach. Hacking, coughing, and vomiting almost constantly, these benighted souls struggle for life with every rasping breath; eating is difficult, and sleeping for more than a few minutes at a time would be fatal.
In battle, the Unclean One flings his wretched slime at opponents, searing and dissolving the flesh of those unlucky enough to be struck. Should he be dispatched, the blackness in his soul is released, blanketing the field with a hideous parody of night.

BATTLEGEAR

Spreading Goo: The Unclean One can exert some control over his bubbling evil, and may transform it into a vicious sticky substance that drastically slows oncoming enemies. Death Sentry: After eating a hapless peasant, the Unclean One can imprison its soul in the grisly remains of its skull, much as he imprisons his evil within himself. This abomination is known as a Death Sentry. The Unclean One can see distant lands through its vacant sockets, and its agony torments all those who pass nearby with wracking pains.
Infested One: "Am I not the kindest of parents, who feeds ten thousand children with his own tender meat?"

Tier: 2
Rice Cost: 60
Water Cost: 60
Melee: Piercing
Missile: n/a
Weakness: none
Strength: Blunt, Fire
Training: Forge, Blade Garden
Innate Ability: Eruption: The unit explodes in a damaging spray of maggots when he dies, unless it has the Rebirth Battle Gear.
About: The Infested One's corruption is literal indeed; his swollen belly is a host to a mass of hungry maggots that devour his raw, bleeding flesh as quickly as it can heal. He lives in a state of constant suffering, yet identifies, perhaps, with his maggots: from their brutal, swarming life energy, he siphons the strength to continuously regenerate his body.

When angered, the Infested One flings writhing clots of starving maggots at his foes. These burrow into healthy flesh with terrible, swift efficiency. Upon his death, his 'children' abandon his cold, worm-eaten corpse en masse, seeking new hosts upon which to feed.

BATTLEGEAR

Rebirth: In the ultimate act of brotherhood with his pestilence companions, the infested One may devour the bodies of the living, trapping their souls within him. Should the Infested One receive a fatal wound, this raw vitality generates torn flesh, effectively raising him from the dead. Famine: The act of consuming one of his own clan enables the Infested One to forcibly rip worms from this stomach and fling them across an enemy's rice fields. This is painful and costs stamina, as the worms prefer the taste of flesh and do not relinquish it easy. It is far more painful to the crops and those who depend on them.
Warlock: "Death was once my master; now I have mastered Death."

Tier: 3
Rice Cost: 90
Water Cost: 75
Melee: Magic
Missile: Explosive
Weakness: none
Strength: Magic / Fire
Training: Blade Garden, Forge, Training Yard
Innate Ability: Soul Lick: When engaged in combat, the Warlock drains stamina from enemies within a radius.

About: Students of the Forbidden Path are defined by their shortcomings: the collapsed fortitude of the Diseased, the failed self-control of the Unclean One and the cannibalistic hunger of the Infested. The astute Warlock, however, has conquered all of these pitfalls and discovered how to balance the delicate dance of life, corruption and death within his soul. No longer prey to sickness and torments, these elite sorcerers of the Forbidden Path are able to fling bolts of destruction across great distances and suck the living energy out of the weak. They are mightily feared, and the mere act of opposing one drains courage from the stoutest fighter.
Despite its confidence, the Warlock has not the sturdiness of the truly healthy, and is best kept from the front lines. However, from time to time he may sap the strength close to him to regain strength.
BATTLEGEAR

Lythis' Dark Arson: When summoned, Lythis can make the Warlocks's ranged missiles burn with an unholy flame. Tausil's Life Siphon: The Staff Brother can teach Warlocks to drain life from his allies to dustain himself.
Sehk's Soul Chill: The Brother of the Leaf carries the cold of the deep forest within him, and when he wishes a warlock may share it and cast it froth at his enemies.
Master Warlock: "I am death."

Tier: 4
Rice Cost: 180
Water Cost: 150
Melee: Cutting
Missile: Explosive
Weakness: Fire
Strength: Cutting
Training: Two Warlocks enter the Warlock's Tower. One Master Warlock leaves.
Innate Ability: none
About: Master Warlock: "I am death."
The end of the Forbidden Path is a mystery unknown to humankind, save for those who have tasted its fruits. The Final test of a Lotus magician's skill, wisdom and strength takes place in the Master Warlocks' Tower, an enchanted fortress of such evil that none but a full fledged warlock can set foot within its walls and hope to survive.
When two warlocks declare that they have attained perfect understanding of the Tree of Corruption, they enter the tower together,. Nobody knows what terrible wisdom is imparted there, what dread specters arise from the past, or what fantastic duels take place. Only one Warlock emerges from the Tower, and with him he carries the polished, grinning skull of his opponent. Thereafter he is a near-immortal terror on the battlefield, commanding wizardries beyond imagination, swinging the skull with the force of a giant's hammer.
Though it is speculation, some guess that the true winner of the Warlock's Duel is actually the gleaming skull, and the Master Warlock, for the skull is beyond pain and death, and forever whispers the black, unknowable secrets of the grave in his captive owner's ear.

BATTLEGEAR

Lythis' Soul Thresher: At the Blade Brother's building the Master Warlocks's energy blasts can be tuned to cleave not just the body, but the soul itself. Tausil's Unlife : Through the branches are cut, the trunk may live Tausil can teach his greatest disciples to raise his allies from the dead.
Sehk's Ephemeral Corridor: Amid the dappled shadows of the forest, distances can be illusory. Sehk can grant Master Warlocks insight into the art of teleportation.

The Brothers Training: The Crypt of the Brothers
Innate Ability: Stamina Leech: Drain stamina from enemies when they attack. Also gain stamina by attacking enemies.


Tier: n/a
Yin: 1
Melee: Cutting
Missile: n/a
Weakness: none
Strength: none
About: Lythis is the Blade Brother, whose wicked blade once trimmed the roots of the Tree of Corruption.


Tier: n/a
Yin: 1
Melee: Piercing
Missile: Piercing
Weakness: none
Strength: none
About: Sekh is the Leaf brother, who once pruned the metallic leaves of the Tree.


Tier: n/a
Yin: 1
Melee: Blunt
Missile: n/a
Weakness: none
Strength: none
About: Tausil is the Staff Brother, the original guardian of the Tree's twisted trunk.
Issyl: "Hey Mister! Want to see me do a trick?"

Tier: Zen Master
Rice Cost: 500
Water Cost: 0
Yin: 1
Melee: Magic
Missile: n/a
Weakness: Blunt
Strength: Explosive, Magic, Fire
Training: Keep
Innate Abilities: Regeneration: Heals twice as fast as normal and up to 100%.
About: Visitors to the court of the Lotus Clan will nervously wonder why a twelve-year-old child sits on their high council, clutching an oversized hourglass. They don't feel any better when they learn that this is Lord Issyl, Dean of the College of Time, one of the most powerful wizards in the world. When they realize that eyes hundreds of years old peer from the face of a nasty little boy, nausea is a common reaction.
Lord Issyl ages slowly backwards, a condition resulting from an accident 70 years ago. Despite this misfortune, his body is free from the rampant decay that plagues many who follow the Path. Time flows… interestingly… around him, and he controls it to some degree. Wounds he takes in battle knit with unnatural swiftness.
BATTLEGEAR

Haste: With some effort, Issyl can warp the flow of time in his allies' bodies, letting them move, attack, and recuperate much more rapidly.
Koril: "You may think of space and distance as solid facts. I prefer a more fluid interpretation."

Tier: Zen Master
Rice Cost: 250
Water Cost: 250
Yin: 1
Melee: Cutting
Missile: n/a
Weakness: none
Strength: Magic
Training: Keep
Innate Ability: Evasiveness: He is less likely to be hit by projectile weapons.
About: By consensus, Lord Koril is believed to be the second most powerful warlock of the Lotus Clan, both magically and politically. It is also rumored that he is by far the eldest of any of them, older than Zymeth himself. To have survived so long in the Byzantine, the deadly world of the Lotus, -- this bespeaks a brilliant mind and ruthless political instincts. He does not lead openly, but is always present at critical debates.
Koril if formally styled "Master of the College of Space," and pursues a species of magic distinct from but related to the Forbidden Path. Position and distance are no great trouble to him, and he is often seen at opposite ends of the land in a single day. His power is such that he seems to shimmer at all times, a trait infuriating to enemy archers.
BATTLEGEAR

Teleport: Koril never has to stay where he is if he doesn't want to. A wave of the hand, an exertion of mental strength, and he is elsewhere.
Soban: "While my colleagues waste their time studying death, I have taught the very stones to live."

Tier: Zen Master
Rice Cost: 150
Water Cost: 400
Yin: 1
Melee: Blunt
Missile: n/a
Weakness: Cutting, Blunt
Strength: Magic
Training: Keep
Innate Ability: none
About: Like all the highest-level Lotus warlocks, Soban's researches have taken him on a unique path. His work blends clockwork and high wizardry to produce alchemical feats like his tireless servants, the golems. He is called "Lord" as a courtesy for his accomplishments but he holds no political sway, having always kept out of power struggles of the Lotus elite.
Behind his back, Soban's colleagues deride him as a mere tinkerer or mechanic, but his powers are genuine. The Wolf Clan's Shale Lord hero is a result of one of his experiments gone wrong.

BATTLEGEAR

Create Golem: With a wave of his staff, Lord Soban can call a golem from the ground, a tireless peasant laborer made of dirt and rock.
Zymeth: "The Warlocks of the Forbidden Path have conquered death itself, but I am still their Master."

Tier: Zen Master
Rice Cost: 500
Water Cost: 200
Yin: 2
Melee: Magic
Missile: Explosive
Weakness: Piercing
Strength: Cutting, Explosive, Magic
Training: Keep
Innate Ability: Storm Master: If it is raining, he will call down lightning bolts at nearby enemies when he melee attacks.

About: For hundreds of years, Lord Zymeth has ruled the Lotus Clan as the undisputed first among equals. He is a master manipulator and orator, using deception and threats to build coalitions and cow opponents. In his dealings with other clans, Zymeth also uses his great longevity to powerful effect, planning schemes that span generations of Wolf and Serpent clansmen.
No one could rule the Lotus without being a wizard as well as a statesman, and Zymeth is no exception. Like most of the warlock elite he is a specialist, and his sphere is weather, the sizzling crackle of lightning or the relentless force of a summer storm.
BATTLEGEAR

Heavy Rain : The storm-clouds are at Zymeth's beck and call. When he wishes, he can raise the humidity around him until a rainstorm results, and then call lightning from the resulting storm.

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