Alzrius said:
By the way, Keith, I was wondering something. The Lords of Dust article says that the Overlords are the strongest being in the setting, with the exception of the progenitor dragons. Presuming the "progenitor dragons" are Khyber, Eberron, and Siberys, that statement makes me somewhat confused. I was under the impression that those three either didn't really exist (e.g. they were part of the creation myth) or had long since entered a state where they don't have/need stats anymore (e.g. Khyber is the underdark, Eberron is the surface world, and Siberys is the sky and/or the ring around the world). Are those three still distinct, sentient entities with stats, or not?
Like the other gods, there is no concrete proof that they exist or ever existed, and if they still do, it would be as disembodied (and statless) sentience. Eberron is the world itself, after all. The point is that if you believe the LEGEND, they've got to be the most powerful things around. But it is simply a legend.
Alzrius said:
Also, the section on immortal outsiders seemed unclear. It seems like not many Outsiders should be immortal, but the rules for Outsiders with more than 12 hit dice seems to tacitly suggest there might be weaker Outsiders who are immortal...basically, I'm confused if only a select group of Outsiders are immortal, or a large portion of them are (and then how to determine which are and aren't).
In my opinion, in Eberron
most of the traditional outsiders - archons, eladrins, angels, demons, devils - are immortal. It's certainly the case that all quori, rakshasa, and couatl are. Shavarath is a plane of eternal war: the archons aren't off somewhere making baby archons, but the balance remains the same, because after they fall, new ones eventually rise to fill the ranks.
In my mind, the simplest way question for determining if an outsider is immortal is "can it reproduce to create another being of its type?" Archons and quori aren't created through sexual reproduction; it's a question of conservation of spiritual energy. There's 100,000 archons and there will always be 100,000 archons, though you can bind them to take them out of play. On the other hand, planetouched, half-celestials, fiendish creatures, mephits, formians - these creatures are born, reproduce, and while they may live for a long time, eventually die.
The question is whether the outsider is simply a creature
from another plane - in which case it's probably mortal - or whether it in some way is an embodiment
of the plane, in which case it's probably immortal. There will always be war in Shavarath, and the fiends and archons are simply a manifestation of this; hence, new ones will always rise to fill the old.
A side effect of this is that mortal outsiders are far more flexible in personality than the immortals. An aasimar from Shavarath is going to be much more like a human than an archon; the archon is a symbol of war, and simply won't think in the same way as a mortal.
Alzrius said:
As an aside, it also seems odd to say that immortal Outsiders don't need to eat, drink, or sleep, but they apparently do need to breathe...so you can garrote Sul Khatesh to death?
An
overlord shouldn't need to breathe; that's a slip. As for immortal outsiders, they aren't actually
that different from normal outsiders, who apparently need to breathe. By the MM, you can garrote an archon; the only difference in Eberron is that is essence will reform, and if it's powerful enough will still have access to its memories. Normal outsiders never need to eat or sleep. Native outsiders normally do; as immortals, the rakshasa of Eberron do not.
