>Rory's comments are more likely to be useful: well,
>usuallly. But this time, he starts by saying illusions
>have "always" been temporary reality, and then reminds
>us of the only way we've ever had Illusion magic,
>where they're not. For "always" read "never", it would
>seem.
>
>Then we have a statement that "*No-one* uses Trickster
>(any form or name) in battle or war..." when we know
>perfectly well that they do. The Sky Ship, Kallyr does
>just that, adding a rather unexpected Wooly Mammoth to
>her attack force.
>
>Oh, dear. He's slipping.
I interpreted the "No-one" to mean no normal person. PCs and unusual NPCs excepted. He also interprets Greg's proportions of Trickster magic as applying to individual tricksters which I don't think is true. Some tricksters are basically well intentioned, others predominatly nasty and evil while the majority tend toward the meaningless.
>For illusion magic, we've got two sorts we know about.
>Sorcery, where you pick which senses you can affect,
>and probably don't do all five.
>Trickster magic - which by definition does not obey
>any rules. It's unpredictable, uncontrollable, and not
>repeatable.
Then there's the puppeteer troupe. As described in BA it is not compatible with the counter in WBRM. Now that might be Gregging but I'm of the opinion that BA just skims the surface of the puppeteers. I'd probably go with some serious Lunar illusion magic often appearing like Trickster magic but with at least some control.
>Still, if what you want is a bridge capable of
>supporting people, or an attack capable of doing
>actual damage, what we're discussing isn't an illusion
>in any normal English sense of the word.
Yet the principle that illusions can do damage goes back to RQII. Greg has repeated his opinion that they aren't dispelled simply by disbelief. At the same time they do not physically exist.
>Whether the
>Lunars could do it is another matter. On a small
>scale, they probably could. On a large scale - take a
>look at the final assault on WW, where they seem to do
>exactly that. Magical ramps, supported purely by
>magic.
I'm not sure that's the case, it could be large scale earth moving magic. KoS isn't very clear on the matter.
Looking through ILH2 I can't find any illusion magic at all which seems strange. nearest I can find is Merasedenya's dream magic which can on holy days bring dreams into the real world. The write up says many other cultures have such people as well.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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