Dark vortece
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The dark vortece is a mass of dark, swirling shadows. Little more is known about this deadly creature despite many attempts to study their origins. This is understandable when you consider the one well known fact about them: Simply being in the presense of a dark vortece is enough to endanger your life, due to their tendency to drain the life out of everything around them.
Hunting strategies
Only weapons that do crushing damage will be effective against dark vorteces. They do not carry a weapon or shield, wear no armor and have an extremely low defensive strength. They also take crush critical damage but not critical injuries or status effects.
AS: +97 vs DS: +26 with AvD: +31 + d100 roll: +7 = +109
... and hit for 8 points of damage!
Shadows roil forth from the dark vortece, revealing a hazy tenebrous orb.
Other information
Dark Catalyst is the only sorcerer spell that affects them. Minor elemental is also absorbed. Upon death, they may release hazy tenebrous orbs. Gem dealers will pay for them, and they vary widely in value (from under 100 silver to over 6000). They vanish immediately upon death.
If you try to search a dark vortece that is not dead it hurts you on contact.
>search vort As you approach the dark vortece, you feel an intense cold shoot through your body! ... 25 points of damage! Icy blast freezes your right hand! You are stunned for 2 rounds! Roundtime: 3 sec.
When they attack you with their powers, there are two warding casts simultaneously.
You feel the dark power of the dark vortece pulling at you. CS: +224 - TD: +249 + CvA: +6 + d100: +18 - -5 == +4 Warded off! A dark vortece shoots a shaft of pure darkness at you! CS: +224 - TD: +249 + CvA: +6 + d100: +49 - -5 == +35 Warded off!
Behind The Scenes
Uthex Kathiasas called these "dyar rakul" (Iruaric: "dark cold shadows"), which were "other standard" (non-demonic) extra-planar entities from Rolemaster called Nycorac. Nycorac were mysterious entities made of some unknown kind of energy, who had the ability to move between planes of existence at will (though these ones appear trapped.) They are not considered extraplanar beings for system purposes in GemStone IV.
They were extremely difficult to fight, due to their virtual invisibility, and immunity to almost all weapons. They would stalk their victims, who would only feel "cold chills", draining the life out of them. When you consider that no one knows how to summon them and their origins were unknown, with the nature of their energy beyond comprehension, that Uthex was forging them is supposed to be virtually impossible.
The details of the original parts of The Broken Lands have counterparts in "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" by H.P. Lovecraft. The dark vorteces correspond to the "vortices of cold wind" on the "Cyclopean stairs" of the enormous castle reaching atop the mountain of Kadath, where the gods of earth resided in madness, with the risk of drawing the monstrous demonic attention of their guardians the dreaded Other Ones. The hazy "tenebrous" orbs they drop may be an allusion to the end of "Nyarlathotep", and might also be somehow related to Blacar entities.
References
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