Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8628615" data-attributes="member: 6790260">This is my MtG casual association showing. Swamps are associated with Black because they are places of decay and parasitism, two key Black concepts. Necromancy is, in a very essential way, the perfect blend of Black's two drives, parasitism and amorality (which is not necessarily immorality...but it usually leads that way). Necromancy defies natural order and generally preys upon the living (e.g. vampires feed on living blood but produce nothing living themselves, zombies only reproduce by infection, etc.), giving it the parasitism angle handily, and it is associated with all sorts of perverse or corruptive acts done in the name of quick power (amorality), such as desecrating corpses, imprisoning souls, infecting yourself or others with transformative influences, etc.Deserts, in general, are usually not associated with parasites. Every place HAS parasites, of course, but swamps offer a particularly effective place for them to grow and to jump from one host to another as seen in various actual species. Deserts strike me as less "draining" life and more "lacking" life. Consider for example what happens in many deserts when a rainstorm DOES occur: you will often see a profusion of incredibly beautiful flowers that linger just long enough to reproduce and then fade again in the desert heat. And survivor organisms like cacti can produce beautiful flowers and nutritious fruit. Swamps, on the other hand, may be full of life, but a lot of that life is poisonous, or toxic, or parasitic, or a major disease vector (all those insects incubating their young in stagnant water), and yet in a certain sense display a frailty that seems very in keeping with Necromancy: cut off a critical factor, e.g. by removing the water or making it flow swift and clear and suddenly the old life web collapses because the old exploits no longer find purchase. Whereas a desert that starts to get enough water will slowly change to something livable, like an expanding edge of an oasis.</blockquote>

Verification