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The Killing Song
11-24-2009, 07:42 AM
When This Song Is Over You Will Die by Tom Smith
http://www.thefump.com/embedded_player.swf?fumpID=1229
It probably would be best used in conjunction with I'll Play For You, if it's used at all.? What it would do
is, in my opinion, painfully obvious, though I don't think Doug's metagift would directly kill Doug.? I hope not, anyway.?
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I think that Doug would more likely have copy of "Killing Me Softly with His Song" by Roberta Flack. Assuming that he'd keep a tune that would do
that (which he might, since as he has asserted, he's a soldier, not a superhero).
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No reason he can't have both, right?
EDIT: This idea has been sort of percolating in the back of my head for a while now. I see the two songs as having about the same end effect, the death of the
target, but having different means to achieve it. When this Song is Over feels to me to be something of a blunt
object almost, killing the target by whaling on him with raw power until he keels over at the end of the song. Killing Me
Softly, on the other hand, feels more like a rapier being precisely thrust through the enemy's heart. It's far more elegant, and much less
wasteful of energy, but likely less effective against those with the magical equivalent of full plate armor (as the "thrust" would be aimed at the
heart, not at joints in the armor... I think I'm overextending the analogy here.)
Anyway, with regard to visual effects, I can see When This Song is Over creating a countdown timer over the
target's head, like the Doom status effect from Final Fantasy. I'm not sure what Killing Me Softly would
have though.
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Quote: Jorlem wrote:
I'm not sure what Killing Me Softly would have though.
They just get more and more weary, their senses get duller and duller, and then they just... stop, as the same instant the song does.
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I try to stay away from "this makes the target die outright" soings because they can easily be gamebreakers. That said, though, this might be something fun to throw at Glory in DW13 just to see it not work on her...
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I suspect this kind of song would be like the "death spells" in a Final Fantasy (or the like) RPG : they only kills targets that are weaker than you.
Against anything stronger than you, high-level monsters, or god forbid, bosses, (that means in any situation where a one-shot kill would be useful) they NEVER
work.
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I see there being a tradeoff. The Tom Smith song forces death, but costs a lot of power to use, and is very, very
obvious about it. Anybody with the ability to counter or neutralize effects will do so, and save themselves. Anybody who can't will make a beeline for
Doug, figuring that if the song is stopped, it didn't end, and they won't die. The power requirements make it too expensive to be a cheap kill option,
and anybody strong enough to merit its use will be strong enough to have a good chance of reducing Doug to a fine paste to save themselves.
Killing Me Softly takes less power, and is much less obvious, but far, far easier to resist. It'd only be useful
if Doug could keep the target distracted, because the instant the target notices that they're slowly dying, they'll try to fight it, and anybody with
semi-heroic willpower (virtually every combatant) will be able to fight it off. This limits its usefulness to suicidal targets and the easily distracted.
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Mm. Actually, now that I think of it, I should follow the precedent I set in my notes for the Harry Potter Step, in which I simply am handling the Killing Curse as a standard V&V "Death Ray" attack. Death Ray first must hit its target, then the target saves against both agility and endurance on D20. I don't have the rules handy, but if I recall correctly, both saves mean no effect, and one save means all HP are drained but the target is still alive... or something like that. Upshot of this is that Glory is likely to save handily (Doug can still hit her with the effect; he's used to fighting speedsters as there are several in the Warriors). Then again, Doug defends and saves easily against Death Ray, too, as a very large number of frustrated (and increasingly terrified) Death Eaters will discover.
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I wouldn't have thought that would be an appropriate mechanism for the Killing Curse, myself, given that it is explicitly stated both that it's
unblockable (short of a sufficiently durable physical obstacle) and that before Harry's special circumstances, *no one* has ever survived it.
Unless you have some sufficiently impressive explanation for why no one in the entire history of the wizarding world who's ever been hit with that curse
has been able to make their saving throw, this strikes me as something which would strain plausibility - and my suspension of disbelief - quite a bit.
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When we've see it used though, it was usually against squishy wizards, or squishier muggles, who likely didn't have great endurance. I seem to recall
reading somewhere that it could take more than one hit to take down certain creatures, like dragons, basilisks, and maybe giants, though that might have been a
fanfic, so don't quote me on that.
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Death Ray is instakill on non-super targets, or nearly so -- 0 hits in V&V is "not dead yet but will be there shortly"-- and that's shortly as in combat time -- seconds or less. Plus the Wizarding World doesn't have the kind of medical resources a superhero world does.
And remember how Sylia described Doug's field in DW2 -- as "space-time itself conspiring to protect him". Not accurate, but does describe the effect nicely.
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Quote: Jorlem wrote:
When we've see it used though, it was usually against squishy wizards
Squishy wizards? This is Potterverse we're talking about here, not D&D. Neville's uncle tested him for magic by throwing him out a
window. Neville fell off a flying broom at age 11 and suffered no worse than a broken arm. A great many wizard spells seem to inflict massive blunt force
trauma as side effects, and nobody seems to care. Splinching an arm off is a mere annoyance. It seems fairly obvious that Potterverse wizards are physically
reinforced by their magic yet still suffer insta-death from the killing curse.
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Umm...Whoops? Somehow that completely slipped my mind. Sorry.
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I think the main problem is that we have no clue what the mechanism of the Killing Curse is. Is it a soul-ripper? A neural blaster? Does it coagulate every cell in the body into the equivalent of a hard-boiled egg? All we know is that it appears to be powered by anger and/or hatred.
Oh, and that it's a straight-line non-homing effect, travels slow enough that it can be dodged, and that it splats on sufficiently solid objects.
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Also that it tends to have some explosive effect, even on tough enough objects to stop it.
I'm fairly sure it's a soul-ripper, or some form of life-force extinguisher. If memory serves me right, AK doesn't leave marks, or any sort of
physical damage, when it kills. We can rule out a lot of methods by this. It also kills instantly, which takes most of the obvious possibilities out of the
equation. Consider that heart attacks leave people some time to act before inflicting unconsciousness and/or death, and that seizures and destruction of the
brain (through things like large-caliber rifle rounds to the head) cause muscle spasms before the body dies. AK doesn't do either of these- it just kills
you.
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Which makes me argue in favor of the neural shutdown theory... basicly what AK does is completly short out the body's nervous system, ergo your heart
instantly stops beating, etc...
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Quote:AK does is completly short out the body's nervous system,
Soooo... it's a conductivity enhancer?
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Now that I think of it, the killing curse reminds me somewhat of some Slayers spells. It does damage primarily on the Astral plane, but the damage bleeds over
to the physical world if whatever it hits doesn't have a spirit to take the damage.
Also, if the killing curse does acts against the soul, the three Unforgivables would fit together perfectly. The Cruciatus Curse attacks the body, and the
Imperius Curse attacks the mind, leaving the Killing Curse to attack the soul.
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Actually that's a very clever insight, Jorlem. I like that. It also, strangely enough, makes the Unforgiveables fit nicely in In Nomine, some of which makes up the cosmological underpinning of the Walk...
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Quote: The Wanderer wrote:
before Harry's special circumstances, *no one* has ever survived it.
I believe that it's not the curse itself that no one has survived. It's Voldemort casting it that no one else has survived. So
basically whatever the save normally would be (say, beat 15 on a D20), when Voldemort casts it you have to roll a natural 20.
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Quote:when Voldemort casts it you have to roll a natural 20.
Functionally speaking, I have no D&D experience, but I think even that might not have been enough.
Excepting Harry, of course, who was rocking a +5 from his mom's sacrifice.
(does this enchantment make me look fat?)
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To tie back to the In Nomine mechanics, perhaps Voldie's castings need an Intervention to resist?
(Which implies some sort of Infernal backing for everybody's favourite noseless villain...)
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Quote:I believe that it's not the curse itself that no one has survived. It's Voldemort casting it that no one else has survived.
This does not fit with either my own memory of the original stories, or the common interpretation I see being used in fandom. The only single time I can recall having seen someone else survive the curse in a fic, it was explicitly with a very similar kind of extremely unusual protective magic.
What's the reference which leads you to believe this?
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12-16-2009, 05:12 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-06-2020, 12:01 AM by Bob Schroeck.)
I have to agree with the Wanderer. It's not Voldemort's use, but any use of the Killing Curse. Here, check the Harry Potter Lexicon, which is accurate and detailed enough that Rowling consulted it while writing the later books. To cite its third point, "Harry is the only known person to survive the Killing Curse (esp. PS1, GF14, also GF34). "
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...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Though IIRC, that's tempered by fake-Moody's comment to the class (having just demonstrated the curse on a spider) that all of them could cast it at
him at once and he probably wouldn't get so much as a hangnail - but that's more a commentary on what it takes to cast it (the desire to kill) than on
anything about the curse itself.
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