Ye Olde Inn

by **Pancho** » August 19th, 2019, 5:01 pm

He’s a skeleton, but a bad ass one. Nuff said.

wallydubbs wrote:I totally understand and respect everyone's opinion on this, but I'm gonna have to be the odd man out:
Categorically speaking, how do you distinguish undead? Granted he's skeletal in appearance and was awakened in a tomb. But it doesn't seem like he was dead the whole time and came back to life, there was a Magical seal that kept the Witch Lord confined to this room.

I do not consider him undead because A. It is not specified (Even Kalvenos from Frozen Horror is granted the distinction); B. He has mind points (which all other undead do not have); and C. He can cast spells (which no other undead can do, asides from homemade quests); D. Holy Water (or Sacred Water) isn't counted among the list of weapons and spells that could harm him in RotWL.
Yes, the Spirit Blade IS the only thing that can harm him, but it can harm anything, just gives you a bonus against undead. Plus I'd like to keep it more challenging for the heroes.
This in turn will simplify the same questions regarding sentience of Skullmar and Kassandra.

100% this.

by **mitchiemasha** » August 19th, 2019, 10:19 pm

So it depends on what we use to classify the term... living. Biologically or spirit. Although he is the same as Undead (not alive biologically), all other Undead don't have their own spirit. His Spirit is very much alive. We'd still fit him in the Undead bracket as does original Warhammer, but he's the Lord, not just a skeleton.

by **mitchiemasha** » August 19th, 2019, 10:20 pm

Stig wrote:
wallydubbs wrote:C. He can cast spells (which no other undead can do, asides from homemade quests)

If we take that Heroquest is set in the warhammer world, the undead have some of the most powerful magicians, e.g. Nagash. Necromancers are also magicians.

Exactly! Even if it isn't!

by **Jalapenotrellis** » August 19th, 2019, 10:47 pm

So basically he's weak to the spirit blade, but not THAT weak to it :-)

by **wallydubbs** » August 21st, 2019, 10:45 pm

Well there's no supporting story that'll give a viable background to the Witch Lord, so it's rightly up to the Zargon player.

Barok Tor is noted as the "Resting Place" of the Witch Lord, which can actually be taken either way: Resting as in dead? Or resting as lying in wait. The answer is in the Quest Notes:
D. This is the Tomb of the Witch Lord. The Witch Lord will be released from his imprisonment when the first hero enters the room... "You have broken the magic seal that kept the Witch Lord imprisoned." The Witch Lord's prison just happens to conveniently be a tomb. He was never dead to begin with, just trapped by a magic seal.

Maybe the Witch Lord can't die, perhaps he's immortal and looks like a skeleton because he's been alive for so long. Maybe he's not dead, but just the king of the dead because he has conquered Death. He's also the most powerful Necromancer there ever was, so it's justifiable that he takes on the form of a skeleton.
You don't have to be dead to be a Necromancer, you just need to embrace and understand death. It's possible this is what Wardoz was going for when he turned himself into a Zombie.

Undead, to me at least, are generally reanimated corpses, and though the Witch Lord seems like a corpse, he has a mental process which corpses lack.
So it's within the rights of the Evil Wizard player to conclude that the Witch Lord, Skullmar and Kassandra are not undead.

by **Jalapenotrellis** » August 21st, 2019, 11:46 pm

This will also be quoted wallydubbs, in case there is a dispute

I can see it both ways, but since my players have steamrolled the game system except the first quest, anything that makes it more difficult should be welcome.