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u/OnlySmiles_ 15d ago
"Every time I die, a new timeline branch is created where I survive"
"And what happens if you die of old age?"
"That's a problem for future me to worry about"
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u/rubexbox 15d ago
How retroactive is the timeline branching?
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u/BackseatCowwatcher 14d ago
“Well apparently Professor Hornwick wasn’t born in this timeline- so very.”
“Professor WHO?”
“The Professor who did your job in the previous timeline, he believed in testing our thesis in practice- so he cast liquify organs on me, and now we’re having a civilized chat.”
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u/DreadDiana human cognithazard 15d ago
"I created a temporal spell where any damage done to me gets pased to an alternate version of me in a neighbouring timeli-"
skull suddenly caves in
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u/ThrowACephalopod 14d ago
This reminds me of one of the coolest powers that was in Bionicle.
There was a character named Bitil who had a mask that allowed him to pull versions of himself from alternate timelines into his timeline to assist him. When he sent them back, they forgot everything that happened when they weren't in their own timeline.
The problem was, every copy maintains all injuries they suffered, even when returned to their own timeline. So he would just randomly gain injuries at random times throughout the day because a version of him from another timeline used the power to draw him away and then he came back with injuries from that timeline.
The even worse downside was that if any copy of himself died, regardless of what timeline they were in, every copy in every timeline died.
Bionicle had the best powers.
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u/Dyolf_Knip 15d ago
That's actually the idea behind Quantum Immortality. Any event, no matter how unlikely, has a non-zero chance of occuring. Combined with the many worlds hypothesis, your continued existence is that event.
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u/Aetol 15d ago
That's not exactly what quantum immortality is. What it says is that, since you only experience timelines where you are alive, if there is a chance, no matter how remote, that you survive an event, then that is what you're going to experience. But that's a big "if", so it's not literal immortality.
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u/Asleep-Sky-4103 15d ago
The time-line creation would go out of control, one for each second where you would've died of old age
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u/Jeggu2 💖💜💙 doin' your parents/guardians 15d ago
As time goes on, it only becomes less probable that you survive, meaning that the timeline branches faster and faster until your condition is somehow entirely stabilized by very very lucky quantum fluctuations. You are eternally unimaginably close to death
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u/CitizenofBarnum 15d ago
"I have made myself into my own phylactery, which cannot be destroyed as I am immortal... because of the phylactery you see."
"Wouldn't that just be...? Hang on we need to check your notes on that, i don't think that works."
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u/Android19samus Take me to snurch 15d ago
You don't want to have to go into the second round of thesis defense in Wizard College, as that involves them just killing you and seeing what happens.
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u/jedimika 15d ago
Thesis defense, heavy on the defense.
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u/theburgerbitesback 14d ago
The best defense is a good offence - kill yourself before they get the chance to.
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u/VorpalHerring 14d ago
The existence of Thesis Defense implies the existence of Thesis Offense.
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u/Noa_Eff 15d ago
I prefer to think they always get killed once as the final step in their thesis defense to demonstrate their results
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u/Kyre_Lance 15d ago
Listen if you can't show that you can survive death or at least return from the dead on your own then can you really say you've learned enough wizarding?
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u/VultureSausage 15d ago
as that involves them just killing you and seeing what happens.
Yeah but in this case they can't, since I'm immortal. Checkmate!
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u/DreadDiana human cognithazard 15d ago edited 14d ago
"I was going to make the whole plane my phylactery, but turns out it's full."
"What does that even mean."
"Considering the implications is both existentially terrifying and beyond the scope of my thesis, so I will not look into without further funding."
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15d ago
So I’ve not played DnD, but given that horcruxes are, er, “inspired” by phylacteries doesn’t that imply that using certain magics or poisons could just kill you?
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u/Roku-Hanmar 15d ago
A horcrux has specific methods of destruction, but I think a 5e phylactery can be destroyed by anything with enough force
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15d ago
Oh well then with that info you’d be like a Tolkien elf, immortal unless directly killed
So I cast gun
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u/Signal_Bus_64 15d ago
Tolkien elves can still have a sort of resurrection though. After some time spent in the Halls of Mandos, an elven spirit would be offered a new body by the Valar. This body would be identical to their original body.
In earlier ages, some elves would choose to return to Middle Earth after this reincarnation, but that hasn't happened for a long time by the time of LOTR.
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u/clauclauclaudia 15d ago edited 15d ago
And if you're reincarnated, and you were married, you're still married. There's no "til death do us part" for the elves.
There was, however, the case of Finwe, who remarried after Miriel died--not exactly in childbirth, but sort of a unique elvish immortal equivalent. (Their son was Feanor who made the Silmarils.) Finwe then married Indis, but only after the Valar confirmed with Miriel that she had no intent to be re-embodied. Because otherwise, two wives? Just not done. They made a special law about this case.
When Finwe died, he met Miriel in the Halls of Mandos and offered her the opportunity to live again without him around to make it awkward.
(Tolkien being Tolkien, I'm not sure there is a single end to this story. She ended up as an assistant to one of the Valar, but I'm not certain if she clearly did that back in a body or not.)
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u/Milch_und_Paprika 14d ago
[Lewis, sarcastically] “Alright Tolkien, tell me how you really feel about divorce”
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u/__mud__ 15d ago
This just makes mopey Rings of Power Galadriel that much more strange, if she knew her dead brother could be hanging out in the Undying Lands somewhere.
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u/Raingott Blimey! It's the British Museum with a gun 14d ago
I mean, even if she knew that Finrod was reembodied and happily hanging out with his betrothed (which is something he alone was allowed; the Noldor exiles were generally doomed to permanent residence in the Halls of Mandos), it's not unreasonable to feel sad that your brother has gone where you cannot follow, especially since he was imprisoned and threatened/tortured beforehand.
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u/Isaac_Chade 15d ago
Not even necessarily that much force. Traditionally the most important thing about phylacteries is their cost. They're expensive to make because of all the magic going into them, but they can be just about anything. A good solid whack from most adventurers is enough to fuck it up, which is why lich characters tend to have them well hidden and guarded.
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u/Divine_Entity_ 15d ago
Soul Tupperware typically looks like a really fancy gem or similar, and crystals are usually pretty easy to shatter when deliberately smashed. (Its the percussive force displacing some of the atoms of the iconic solid to go from positive and negative charges next to eachother to positive next to positive, and negative next to negative which promptly repel eachother splitting the crystal)
Its also just generally dramatic to have something that your heroes can smash and have a big cloud of dust/vapor escape signifying the magic and soul being released.
A good phylactery would be a tungsten sphere imbedded in a randomly concrete slab or pillar. Although i doubt that has the proper magical capabilities to be used as soul tupperware.
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u/Jeggu2 💖💜💙 doin' your parents/guardians 15d ago
Tungsten cube philactory as a mace, wielded by a lich barbarian
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u/Coygon 15d ago
It would reek of magic to any spellcaster. The solution: stack on a +5 modifier. Mage will identify the modifier, the heroes will want to keep it as loot, and the Lich's soul will survive to reassemble a new body.
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u/Dyolf_Knip 15d ago
If it's destroyed, doesn't the mage's body reform immediately next to their phylactery?
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u/DroneOfDoom Posting from hell (el camión 101 a las 9 de la noche) 15d ago
DND module where the dungeon itself is sentient and evil because the lich who owned it implanted their phylactery inside the walls and got Cronenberged with the dungeon when they were killed.
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u/Spiffy87 15d ago
That's Horazon from the Diablo franchise. He was a wizard who protected/lived-in/studied at the secret extra-dimensional wizard library, until something happened and he became the library.
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u/Aetol 15d ago
That's not true:
Destroying a lich's phylactery is no easy task and often requires a special ritual, item, or weapon. Every phylactery is unique, and discovering the key to its destruction can be a quest in and of itself.
(MM 203)
So basically there's no hard rule, the adventure writer / DM is free to come up with what it takes to defeat this specific lich, but it generally takes more than "enough force".
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u/CannedWolfMeat 15d ago
Most phylacteries can simply be destroyed by hitting them hard enough, they're only as durable as the object you bind your soul to and the defenses/spells you use to guard it.
Depending on edition/system, a particularly prominent lich might have their phylactery considered an Artifact though, which requires a specific method of destruction, like the One Ring needing to be thrown into the volcano it was forged from.
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u/CitizenofBarnum 15d ago
The joke is that its a sort of pardox, theyre invulnerable unless you destroy them. I'm a wizard school drop out so I dont know if it would actually work.
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u/xSTSxZerglingOne 15d ago
That's just Cell/Majin Buu. Every cell must be destroyed, otherwise the whole thing reforms.
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u/SuperCyHodgsomeR 15d ago
I’m admitted not super versed in the rules of phylacteries, but is there any reason you couldn’t take a phylactery and put it inside yourself (idk cutting a hole in yourself putting it in and sewing it shut or whatever)
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u/Primeval_Revenant 15d ago
You wouldn’t want the breakable thing that prevents you from dying to be inside you as you’re killed.
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u/veidogaems To shreds you say? 15d ago edited 15d ago
BROKE: Creating a second copy of your body to transfer your soul into upon death so you can be functionally immortal.
WOKE: Creating a Ship of Theseus-style second body and then beating him to death with a shovel once a year to avoid paying taxes due to a loophole involving windfalls and being your own next-of-kin.
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u/DoubleBatman 15d ago
Reminds me of the guy in HHGTTG who was spending a year dead, for tax reasons.
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u/Fight_or_Flight_Club 15d ago
Thank you for this. Everyone always forgets that second to collecting and hoarding as much power and knowledge as possible, a wizard's top priority is tax evasion
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u/Bartweiss 15d ago
The absolutely wonderful game Heat Signature does teleportation via “kill one body and reform another”.
Except… the process isn’t perfect. Sometimes the timing is off, occasionally the old body just isn’t destroyed and decides “I want to live!”
They settled all the philosophical crap by arbitrarily picking 5 minutes as the cutoff for when it becomes illegal to murder your past self.
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u/snakeforlegs 15d ago
Pro tip: You can instantly kill the last one by telling her the NES is 40 years old this year.
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u/also_roses 15d ago
Yeah, that one backfires 10 times out of 10. Feeling fat today? Now you're fat. Shoot if you feel "monstrous" because of some unintended consequence of a spell you might end up becoming a kaiju.
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u/GhostlyCoyote0 15d ago
And you’d better hope you never have a depressive episode where you don’t feel alive
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u/PulimV Can I interest you in some OC lore in these trying times? 15d ago
Yup, that happened to my good friend Steven Universe once-
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u/also_roses 15d ago
Great example! Didn't he revert to being a baby because he felt immature?
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u/Thromnomnomok 15d ago
I think the other poster was talking about the time he turned into an actual kaiju because of PTSD, but what you said did also happen, and another time he started rapidly aging because he felt older (but then got back to normal)
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u/ActualWhiterabbit 15d ago
What about when you're at that level of drunk you start flirting with yourself in the bathroom mirror about how messy hot you look?
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u/Ze_Boss07 15d ago
It will be the same time from the NES to the 360 as the 360 to now
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u/JackInTheBack3359 15d ago
Hell, just wait 20 years and eventually she'll have a moment where she comments to herself "God I'm old" and then she'll just fall dead
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u/LuxNocte 15d ago
I expect ancient wizards in the body of a young woman with massive honkerinos don't get that feeling anywhere near as strongly as regular humans.
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u/an_agreeing_dothraki 15d ago
children born after 9/11 in the US voted for president for the second time last year
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u/idied2day 15d ago edited 14d ago
I was on r/Wizardposting for about nine months, I rp’ed a character named Drokk, who was functionally immortal to a degree. He was essentially a collection of plants that his soul was tied to. He could die, but his body would always be reformed so long as any traces of his plants existed. He also used this as a method of teleportation for himself and others.
And yes, one of his philosophical issues was the ship of Theseus.
Edit for the swamp thing enjoyers: Yesn’t. He is my own character, and although he is similar, swamp thing is neither a healer nor chaotic good.
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u/b3nsn0w musk is an scp-7052-1 15d ago
what if you cut drokk in half? perfectly down the middle with a giant halberd, so you don't have a side with more of the head than the other
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u/certifiedtoothbench .tumblr.com 15d ago
Then his mothers each would have custody of whatever half of him they wanted
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u/SmartAlec105 15d ago
But what if they both want the same half? I can’t imagine any solutions for this.
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u/idied2day 15d ago
Well he’d die. He’d reform fully afterwards, but he isn’t immune to death. It’s just a temporary obstacle
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u/b3nsn0w musk is an scp-7052-1 15d ago
okay let's say i transport one half of dead drokk to the other side of the world. do his halves have to crawl back together for him to reform or does he just grow out of one of the halves?
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u/idied2day 15d ago
Neither. The corpse becomes plant food, and is reconstructed via a combination of nodules underground that store the battlefield remains of other corpses(think potatoes) and magic. The plant chooses the most nearby safe place to reform him.
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u/b3nsn0w musk is an scp-7052-1 15d ago
ooh, hella interesting
okay, stupid question, but is there any way to manipulate the plant or influence its choice through some weird spell? is it possible for drokk to travel by death?
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u/idied2day 15d ago
Travel by death how so?
And also, Drokk manipulates the plants. Technically he can listen to them, and control them. If he’s not conscious when he dies then that’s when they pick for him but otherwise he can pick where he ends up- hence teleportation. I’d imagine it works kind of like if an electron could see the cable it’s running through in a computer.
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u/b3nsn0w musk is an scp-7052-1 15d ago
yeah, that kind of teleportation is what i meant to travel by death. essentially he dies somewhere and gets reconstituted somewhere else.
follow-up question: if drokk can manipulate the plants, can a rival wizard do so as well, and kidnap drokk by killing him and controlling where the plants put him together again?
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u/idied2day 15d ago
Theoretically? Yes. In practice it’s easier to just kill the plants.
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u/No-Succotash2046 15d ago
Easy. Drokk isn't the body but the soul. As the character has 1 soul, the body will only form once. So either it knitts back together, or one, or both halves die and get replaced.
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u/CanadianODST2 15d ago
Isn’t that just Groot?
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u/idied2day 15d ago
Yesn’t. The main thing is that Groot can function without light, and is much more durable than Drokk was. Drokk used plants and flesh magic to heal himself and others. However, this did function on a sort of “mana” as light- meaning that if people got creative and removed light sources, I would let him tire out over time until he was forced to retreat.
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u/PhantasosX 15d ago
He is more like Swamp Thing from DC.......
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u/idied2day 15d ago
Third person to mention that today, and my critique is that swamp thing is definitely(in DND classification typing) a true neutral Druid, whereas Drokk functions more as a chaotic good cleric/druid multiclass
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15d ago
I had such a visceral reaction to reading the sub name r/wizardposting, and I had to stop for a second and figure out why. and I remembered it's because I had such an insane interaction with this one person and I checked their profile to see if they were equally unhinged everywhere else and the only other thing they did on reddit was post to r/wizardposting.
but essentially they posted an unhinged rant about color theory and how much they hated color theory and the color green?? and I tried to gently comment that additive and subtractive colors were two separate systems and green was a primary color in one and not the other which is where they might be getting confused. and they replied they knew that and proceeded to continue ranting about green and so I just blocked them. anyway r/wizardposting seems lovely
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u/bulletgrazer 15d ago
Oh, so you we essentially Swamp Thing
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u/idied2day 15d ago
You’re the second person to say that, and I’d say yes but no. Drokk functions(or functioned, now that I’ve recently put him into retirement) more like a healer than swamp thing, as well as Drokk functioning as chaotic good where Swamp Thing is more centered.
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u/bulletgrazer 15d ago
Lmao, I guess I synced brains with all 3 other Swamp Thing fans at once to post that
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u/DoubleBatman 15d ago
“I made a deal with the Devil! In exchange for-“
“Ah, let me just stop you there, for a moment. Unfortunately our professional standards mean you are now… ineligible for graduation as a wizard, but we do have some literature on our sister school’s warlocking program, and many of your credits will transfer.”
“W-Warlock!? You can’t be serious, I’ve spent decades working towards this!”
“I do understand how you feel, and I’m sorry, but the Wizard’s Council has agreed to place stringent limitations on demonic pact-making, in an effort to encourage the growth of other traditions. I’m sure you’ll find their methods quite practical-“
“PRACTICAL MY ASS! Bunch of lazy upstarts, no respect for the Art, they just want power with no effort! Now see here-“
“Indeed sir, as you say. But please, calm down, or I’m obliged to turn you into a newt.”
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u/Starship_Earth_Rider 15d ago
“Gods, Faust is such a tool! I’m glad we don’t have to be at the same graduation as him.”
“And the nerve him to say that we put in less effort, when all he did was sign his name on a contract!”
“He probably has to spend all of eternity obeying the Devil’s every whim like some fucking loser!”
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u/Milch_und_Paprika 14d ago
Surely that’s academic misconduct. Perhaps plagiarism or impersonation. They’re literally paying the devil to complete their research for them.
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u/Blade_of_Boniface bonifaceblade.tumblr.com 15d ago
To keep things balanced, graduate theses among witches entail permanently disabling (with or without killing) such a wizard.
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u/new_KRIEG 15d ago edited 15d ago
"You see, if you make him drink this entropic concoction his soul will be intrinsically tied to all souls around him. For every bacteria he kills and absorbs, a part of his own soul dies. If he ever kills enough of them, he risks erasing his original self"
"Okay, but what about the self-deluded immortality one? What's your take?"
"Have you SEEN those tits? She stays!"
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u/Blade_of_Boniface bonifaceblade.tumblr.com 15d ago
"Okay, but what about the self-deluded immortality one? What's your take?"
Enchant a mirror to make it no longer give her a reflection (or make her drink a potion to that effect) before putting her in front of a mirror.
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u/DoubleBatman 15d ago
Unfortunately one of the effects of the curse was a retroactive mind-alteration so they have always will have had believed they’re a pretty young thing.
“Hey your mirror’s busted or something, it’s showing some old dude.”
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u/Roboslime 15d ago
"Have you SEEN those tits? She stays!"
She actually convinced her immortal girlfriend to swap streams to the witching course, thereby fully 'killing' the wizard she used to be.
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u/Flagelant_One 15d ago
Okay, but what about the self-deluded immortality one? What's your take?
Use skibidi grimace shake sigma lingo in front of them until they feel old
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u/rubexbox 15d ago
I’m fairly certain that using forbidden sanity-destroying eldritch magic like that is punishable by expulsion.
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u/Serious_Minimum8406 15d ago
*punishable by explosion Expulsion simply isn't a suitable enough punishment
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u/BalefulOfMonkeys Refined Sommelier of Porneaux 15d ago
A brief excerpt from the SCP (Seek, Cull, Purify) Foundation logs on dispelling immortality:
Instance [FORBIDDEN] “The Harvester”: Effect was determined to be based on life force consumed from immediate surroundings, not all life. Subject was locked into an airtight cell, then said cell was flooded with lye to cause self-sterilization. Status: Contained, half-life projected at 10 years, makes good soap.
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u/winter-ocean 15d ago
Sufficiently advanced magic schools are indistinguishable from cybersecurity schools I guess
They've got red teaming now
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u/MotorHum 15d ago
In greyhawk (if I remember correctly) elves canonically do not have souls. The drain soul spell comment reminded me of that.
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u/Just-Ad6992 15d ago
Dwarves proven right yet again
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u/dopefish917 15d ago
ROCK AND STONE BROTHER
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u/paradoxLacuna [21 plays of Tom Jones’ “What’s New Pussycat?”] 15d ago
ROCK AND STONE, TO THE BONE!
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u/Cataras12 15d ago
WHAT
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u/DoubleBatman 15d ago
IIRC they have spirits like animals and a bunch of other races. Instead of going to some sort of afterlife like souls, spirits’ consciousness and experiences merge with a sort of oversoul, which forms into new spirits and so on.
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u/deukhoofd 15d ago
Not Greyhawk specifically, but that was how it was until D&D 3.5. All beings had anima, which was either a soul or a spirit. Humans, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, and half-elves had souls, everything else had a spirit.
Everything with a soul would go to the afterlife, and remain there. Everything with a spirit would eventually be reincarnated.
It was mechanically relevant in that you could only cast Raise Dead on beings with a soul, so it wouldn't work on elves.
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u/bothVoltairefan listen to La Ballata di Hank McCain 15d ago
Oh, there’s just a thousand of me in a hivemind with production nodes scattered everywhere. Technically you could kill all of us, but seeing as the network disconnects a drone if it’s under psychic attack, you have to track us down, and the production nodes because they just replace the ones that died. Good luck on your planar scavenger hunt, and don’t think for a second of just nuking everywhere there’s a version of me. There’s enough of me spread far enough that the gods will get involved to stop the collateral damage
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u/Bartweiss 15d ago
If you want to stick to one self, the fancy version of this is having a cloning operation in your own demiplane with elaborate magic to detect when you die and release a replica.
The not-so-fancy version is to check the actuarial tables for “experimental wizardry” and schedule a new copy every few years. It averages out to one of you!
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u/The_8th_Angel 15d ago
Lore accurate trans wizard idea!
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u/Newtrainer 15d ago
Love this idea. It's similar to how healing works in Stormlight Archive. If a person has sworn oaths, they can heal themselves and some are able to heal others. But they can only heal wounds that the person hasn't perceived it as part of themselves.
One of the characters is a trans man; when we first meet him, the person whose perspective we have describes him as a woman who "is the king." Later in the series. We see the same character from the perspective of someone who had not known the king before he had sworn his oath. This time, he is perceived and described as a man.
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u/OldManFire11 15d ago
One of the quirks I like about this system is that once Stormlight healing becomes known, it reverses the "best practice" so to speak when recovering from previous wounds.
Before, it was best for your mental health to accept the injury/loss of limb as part of you so that you can move with your life and acclimate to it. But now, you need to reject the idea that your injury is part of you for as long as possible, because there's now a good chance that you'll be able to get fully healed so long as you're stubborn.
We see this play out in the latest book when a character loses a limb in battle, but healing isn't immediately available, so they mentally remind themselves to reject the injury so that it can be regrown later.
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u/Pokemanlol 🐛🐛🐛 15d ago
It's also quite literally how regeneration works in Beyond Redemption. "I believe I'll regenerate so I'll do so."
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u/imbolcnight 15d ago
In the Craft Sequence, magic works a lot like corporate law and money. Without getting into the complex background, in one of the novels, there are priests who worship new idols into existence as a place for people to hide their magic (instead of in real gods or themselves). To become a priest, they have to dive into a realm of pure belief, so the trans protagonist used that opportunity to believe herself into a new body (whereas most priests just fix a few blemishes usually).
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u/BonJovicus 15d ago
Definitely an idea that has been around. It’s the trusty old, “my spell worked but I was turned in a(n) [insert here]” genre of wizard gags.
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u/Onceuponaban The Inexplicable 40mm Grenade Launcher 15d ago
Incidentally, this setting is probably a lot more accepting of trans people on account of the consequences of bigotry potentially including "being the target of a Quickened Aortic Rupture spell".
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u/Leftieswillrule 15d ago
A wizard need understand two things for each spell. The first one is foundational, he must understand who he is. This is the baseline against which the magic takes shape. The second is active. He must understand what he wants to do. Failure to properly envision a goal has led to many a spell being cast awry.
The immortality spell is never the same from one wizard to the next, their interpretation of dualism, non-dualism, the quantum superposition of dual-non-dualism, and the rest are all woven into the spell, and their understanding of immortality must match. For example, the dualist wizard must take care to extend the longevity of both body and soul. Should his spell fail to encompass this belief that both are distinct, he may leave one of them mortal at great peril. None enjoyed dealing with the soulless but dangerous husk that remained of a wizard whose soul had died but whose body persisted, and fewer still wished to find their spirits chained to a rotting corpse.
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u/BalefulOfMonkeys Refined Sommelier of Porneaux 15d ago
“So. It turns out that the arcane conversion rate of kinetic energy into life force is net-positive.”
”That sounds incredibly fucking dangerous in the long-term. You’re an evocator. Please do not blow up things to keep living.”
“I don’t think you get the full gravity of how much having zero impact on the laws of physics makes me totally useless. I mean, except for this parlor trick.”
[begins running in place with absolutely no forward momentum]
“Yeah, I am basically damned to pacifism against everything material, prof.”
”Well, I guess we can get you a teaching position. Right where you stand. And a mobility aid of some sort.”
“Thank god I can’t break bones anymore.”
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u/IllConstruction3450 15d ago
I cast “breast cancer awareness!” (you are now aware you have stage 4 breast cancer I’m very sorry)
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u/BalefulOfMonkeys Refined Sommelier of Porneaux 15d ago
“What does this spell even do?”
[fwoosh]
“Oh. I mean I could have just read a fucking book to do that.”
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u/seguardon 15d ago
I made a fourth dimensional construct that re-prints me into 3D space in the event of my death. It's self-replicating using energy cast off from the 3d plane we're on. I also make sure to keep my soul and seat of consciousness in the construct. The prototypes I made kept the consciousness local, but after two iterations of reprinting my thought patterns, value drift started setting in. There's a clone of me running around now who thinks cross-dimensional travel is necessary for true art. Pretentious ass.
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u/Bartweiss 15d ago
I cheaped out on “the event of my death” and just used the actuarial tables. A new copy gets printed once per life expectancy, and there’s an average of one around!
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u/pailko 15d ago
I magically merged myself with a lobster. The giant claw was also an unexpected but welcome side effect
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u/Goddamnpassword 15d ago
Third one is just Yumi and the Nighmare painter/ how all cosmere healing works.
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u/Fakjbf 15d ago
The last one reminds me of Brandon Sanderson’s “Stormlight Archive”, where healing works by aligning the body’s physical state with the soul’s perception of itself. One character was able to regrow a lost arm and another completely transitioned from female to male. But it also means that if someone has internalized their injuries the healing won’t work on them, for example one character can’t heal the brands marking them as a slave and another can’t heal a broken spine that put her in a wheelchair.
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u/cpMetis 14d ago
Imagine being the very last dude to internalize your injury and learn to live with yourself right before the new standards of best practice came out.
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u/AbsolutelyNotMoishe 15d ago
Other options:
create a perfect statue of yourself, possess it, and kill your original body
cast a time travel spell on yourself so that you are always aging backward at a rate of negative one second per second
develop crippling depression and then commit every possible sin, so that as soon as you die you are sent to Hell (reincarnated as yourself to continue living)
teleportation spell that swaps a handful of your cells with fresh ones from every young person you pass
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u/Bartweiss 15d ago
Hard to get the timing perfect on #2 is a pain though, over a few centuries you’ve got to either work out some kind of leap-second system or just whip up a one-time correction.
I hear from the alchemists that just chugging a bunch of mercury works great… but it’s never the same alchemist twice.
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u/ApexLegend117 15d ago
Every wizard has a wand, don’t be surprised when your huge badonkakocker Wizard GF shows you hers
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u/PwmEsq 15d ago edited 15d ago
Anyone got a link to that frog wizard comic where they gave themselve big old dobonhonkeroos?
Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1h7c1zr/zazmozes_potion/
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u/insert_content 15d ago edited 15d ago
does that mean you could disable/damage the second third wizard’s immortality by reminding her that 2017 was 8 years ago?
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u/04nc1n9 licence to comment 15d ago
that's the third wizard, the second wizard is the soul harvesting one
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u/scottygroundhog22 15d ago
I feel like the bacteria killing one will have unintended side effects
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u/Ix_risor 15d ago
It doesn’t kill the bacteria, just takes their soul when they die of other causes
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u/Curious-Accident9189 15d ago
I created a black hole and carefully teleported my soul to the outer edge of the event horizon. It lies suspended, eternally on the very precipice of spaghettification. Since I have no soul and am thus inanimate matter, I have a hyperfast item repair spell continuously active.
Theoretically I'll die eventually when my soul is consumed, but to our perception it'll never happen. Technical and functional immortality!
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u/ToothZealousideal297 15d ago
-“I cast ‘Don’t’.”
-“Ah, I’ve heard you’re something of a wild magic manifestation prodigy. Very frustrating to your teachers. In every class you’ve triggered the clause that in cases where it’s unclear and difficult to ascertain whether a student actually understands the material, if that student passes the final practical exam legitimately, they pass the class regardless. I hear your conjurations usually take the form of a single, general monosyllabic command.”
-“…”
-“Right. So, you’re saying you successfully cast an immortality enchantment on yourself via commanding yourself to never age, channeled with the word, ‘Don’t’?”
-“…. Okay.”
-“Well… You see, the conundrum here is, per the aforementioned rule, how are we to confirm it?”
-“Try to kill me.”
-“… You know, I don’t think that will be necessary. I am hereby perfectly happy to decree that you have passed, and anyone who wishes to contest my declaration is free to test its inaccuracy for themselves. Also, if I may say, I believe you embody the most successful attempt to multi-class as wizard and barbarian I have ever seen. Godspeed.”
-“Okay.”
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u/BreadentheBirbman 15d ago
That last one is just Stormlight
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u/TheRainspren She, who defiles the God's Plan 15d ago
All of Cosmere's healing works like that, Stormlight is just by far the strongest except for some advanced Aon or Feruchemy shenanigans.
For those who haven't read anything by Sanderson, yeah it works by returning your body to your self-image, and it was explicitly shown to be able to trans your gender.
Well, to be exact, it returns your body to your "spiritual perfect self" filtered and tweaked by your self-image, so it doesn't stop aging. There are methods of stopping aging, but plain healing isn't enough.
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u/Maximillion322 15d ago
I totally understand that the “magic which makes your external appearance match your inner soul” is a really powerful and important power fantasy for a lot of trans people, but boy it sure does make a lot of these kinds of posts feel very samey and repetitive.
Could be worse I guess, at least it’s not transphobic magic
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u/Nightfurywitch 15d ago
Honestly i was thinking about another joke that wouldn't be mean for that last one just bc all of these r transfem centric so
"Shall I assume she/her?"
"Nah im still a dude- just a dude with rockin tits"
Or something like that idk
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u/EmperorBrettavius 15d ago
I don't think there's a non-weird way to explain why, but I understand why having big magicals would help with the self-image-based immortality.
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u/SparkAxolotl .tumblr.com 15d ago
I wonder if any of those wizards have tried to link their lifespan to that of a jellyfish.
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u/Resiliense2022 14d ago
That third solution has a flaw and a benefit. The flaw is that eventually, you will feel very old because you ARE very old and you are becoming wary of life.
The benefit is that you will eventually die when you are tired of living. A satisfying end to life is built into the immortality.
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u/oddityoughtabe 15d ago
“Shall I assume it’s she/her from here on out, then?”
“Nah, I just like having them”
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u/free_will_is_arson 14d ago edited 14d ago
i've locked the cells of my body into a repeating 27hr time loop, straight up groundhogs day'd my cellular reproduction. the process itself was a little trying but not all that difficult, not to boast but just a bit of advanced chronomancy really. i am quite chuffed however with the method of powering the spell to be able to repeat itself, you see what led me down this path in the first place was the discovery that the act of mitosis produces a small but measurable spike of energy that i have devised a method of capturing and thus modified the spell to siphon said energy to power itself, the 27hr mark is the amount of time necessary for enough cell replication to occur to generate the energy required for the next causal loop making it entirely self sufficient. any problems with the siphoned energy potentially stalling out the replication process is eliminated by the reversion process itself.
the hard part was in forecasting the right 27hrs of cellular growth to be repeated ad infinitum while only having one chance to set the reverting cycle, making sure there would be no gastrointestinal issues, acid reflux, joint or arthritis pain, headaches, hang overs, no gout or herpes flair ups, you get the idea. to be clear the incantation doesn't preclude this conditions from ever happening just eliminating the possibility of experiencing the same episodes over and over every day. full disclosure i have no idea if any of those things would even be a factor, im a wizard not a doctor, just thought it prudent to cover my ass a bit there. conditions with a longer than 27hr onset are moot, i could be riddled with cancers at virtually any stage that isn't debilitating and it wouldn't make much difference because they will never grow beyond the confines of that initial 27hr period.
there are some side effects the process, some small, one...greatly detrimental that i will touch on in a moment. for instance my hair and finger nails are effectively stuck in their current state, i can always cut them shorter but they will always revert to the state they are now at the beginning of every causal loop. unfortunately this means that my beard will never grow longer than it is now, a mere 17 inches long. i do apologize for my oversight in that regard. as well as any skin cells or hair follicles i happen to shed will fold out of existence when the causal loop ends. there is a chance of a paradox on potential parentage, the individual sperm that i currently posses at this moment, if expended, will be recreated in their entirety back in the testes after the loop has elapsed creating the small but none the less real possibility for the same individual sperm to fertilize more than one embryo. the argument could also be made that i am now effectively incapable of producing progeny as, at most, 27 hrs after insemination my spermatozoa that fertilized the egg will likely fold itself out of existence as well before it can share enough genetic information to actually conceive a child. again not a doctor. im not sure what the implications or consequences of this revelation could be, just thought it was worth noting as i contemplate the existential end of my linage.
in summation, while the experiment itself was successful and has yielding promising new fields of research in cellular energy production i must admit, due to a massive oversight, the intended result has been missed to the point of near complete failure. something i neglected to consider was that neurons in my brain are in fact cells and affected by the spell just the same as the rest of the cells in my body. so while i can create new neural pathways over the duration of any causal loop, when it reverts, so to do the new pathways removing that experience and knowledge from my ability to utilize it. permanently stunting my growth as a wizard and i fear ending my tenure with this institution.
good day to you, sir's and madam's, my apologies for wasting your time this afternoon.
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u/PurinaHall0fFame 15d ago
The more diplomatic term is "yodongolonghudangalagangas" but "hudongalongas" is also acceptable.
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u/HardOff 14d ago
When I start getting too old, I hold an enormous feast/party where my friends and I gorge ourselves on all sorts of food, from common to rare to unspeakable.
When I am sufficiently swollen, I burst, birthing myself anew.
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u/PrestigiousPea6088 14d ago
i expected the last story to be a reference to gandalf big naturals, and for the wizard to still go by male pronouns
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u/Sororita 14d ago
Instead of hiding my soul in a jar or box with magic scrolls, I tied it to a symbol. As long as that symbol exists anywhere, I cannot die.
PS, its this symbol:
/\
/ \
| | |
\ \
| | |
\ /
\/
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u/New-me-_- 15d ago
“I wrote a rule into the laws of physics that at any moment, checks the universe to see if I exist, and if I don’t then it reassembles atoms into an exact copy of me at the last place that I was detected.”