How immune the Telemori are to normal weapons depends how literally one interprets that word.
As others have pointed out, a long enough fall, being squished by a giant, poison, etc would potentially still be effective to kill a Telemori, indicating that they are at least partially subject to normal physics of impact. Part of this would reflect game balance, too; they're supposed to be hard to kill, but it shouldn't be impossible.
Poul Anderson did a bit on were creature immunity to damage in _Operation Chaos_; the male lead was a werewolf. Anderson's take on weres was that they healed *immediately* from any non-silver weapons. Not so much that they were flat out immune, but that the wounds healed almost as fast as the weapon left the wound. This also extended to fall damage, crush damage, fire damage, etc. Any single wound that didn't outright kill a were-critter would heal in a matter of seconds, although something that did continuous damage (fire, crushed under a pile of rock, drowning) would eventually kill one, and something that did enough damage at one time to destroy the integrity of the body would also prevent them from healing.
It didn't extend to regenerating lost body parts, so I would assume that, in theory, that an amputated limb/head could be *held* onto the stump and expected to heal, if it were separated from the body for more than a very short time, the stump would heal over and the amputated part be lost. In practice, difficult to achieve with larger limbs or the neck, except maybe with a very broad blade, because the limb is already healing back onto the body at the trailing end of the wound as the leading edge is cutting it's way out.
The other downside was that they were not immune to *pain*. Getting injured, while it healed immediately, was still *painful* and while you couldn't actually kill a were creature by bashing them, you could hurt them enough to cause them to pass out, even though they'd heal almost immediately. Getting impaled would be painful and inconvenient; it would certainly restrict movement until you managed to get the darn weapon out of your body.
Granted, this is a very different interpretation from the "weapons slide off" school of thought. There is a weakness, there, though, in that while it helps prevent damage from cutting and stabbing weapons, it doesn't address crushing damage (maces, hammers, clubs, etc) where the damage comes primarily from impact rather than penetration.
I suppose what I'm suggesting, then, is not so much a resistance to weapons as it is an ability to recover from their damage so ridiculously fast that it appears they have no effect. Same result, different mechanics.
Grimmund
On Jan 12, 2008 7:11 AM, ttrotsky2 <TTrotsky_at_...> wrote:
> Ian Cooper:
> > What happens when a warrior without a magic weapon runs a Telmori
> > through? He finds a weak spot not covered with skin like mouth, eyes,
> > a bare patch without fur etc. or deals enough blunt trauma his foes
> > internal organs. Exactly what happens in fiction when our hero
> > confronts a monster with seemingly impenetrable defences.
>
> It depends exactly how you think the ability/resistance works. If its
> just the skin or fur that's resistant, this makes perfect sense.
> Personally, though, I'd always imagined it as a property of the flesh
> itself. OTOH, the idea that it's a numbered ability (albeit a high
> one) rather than a flat-out immunity seems perfectly reasonable.
> --
> Trotsky
-- "A word to the wise ain't necessary - it's the stupid ones that need the advice." -Bill Cosby
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