Zanovere Wizard Guide

Societies

There are two major societies in Elanthia. One is the sacred Order of Voln, the other is a secret society. Both societies are based close to the town of Wehnimer Landing. Both societies afford those adventurers affiliated with them magical powers from outside the normal spheres of spell casting for their respective professions. Members of both societies satisfy criteria for rank advancement and acquire special skills upon advancing through the ranks. Both societies refer to those who complete their advancement as masters of their respective order.

I make no claim to being an unbiased, casual observer of societies. I am a dedicated Master of the Order of Voln. I recognize that each society has its relative strengths and I am attempting here to fairly represent each.

Wizards are generally expected to join the other society. I will not disown anyone who does, in fact I may invite you to my next infusing party. But anyone who might tell you that the Order of Voln has nothing to offer wizards is mistaken.

Here are some advantages each has over the other:

Voln:

Not a secret society, speak and use powers openly
Voln members are not punished by loss of powers or death due to conduct
No use of spirit points for Voln powers, so no spirit deaths
Power to lifekeep without mana, and even lifekeep yourself while dead
Power to cry for help, even while dead
Power to attack undead creatures while dead
Social interaction from the Voln thought net
More attack weapons for fighting undead
Bless weapons, even most magicals
Group fogging to safe areas, (some locales allow only individual fogging)
Speed learning for field experience to convert to permanent
Weaponless concussion combat (wizards don't use this skill much if at all)
Masters have teleport access to about six locations for fighting undead, some of which are difficult to get to otherwise, such as the Misty Chamber and Darkstone Castle.

Other Society:

Slightly higher attack and defense potential
More variety of creatures to hunt
Ability to temporarily stop bleeding instantly
Faster spell-up times because of fast mana recovery
Faster enchanting because of fast mana recovery
Using skills does not hinder advancement
Much shorter time to master
Takes mana and spirit to implement powers, which recover over time

Both Societies:

Have the ability to recognize other members of the same order with no cost in mana or favor
Have the ability to increase attack strength and defense strength
Have the ability to recover health points in emergencies
Have the ability to teleport from anywhere in a general area to a specific location.

Join a Society!

Wizards should join a society around age five. Before that, they should be hunting for the purpose of acquiring deeds. It should be a careful decision. You can only be a member of one society at a time. If you join a society and then later resign from it, your body can never come back to join that society again, but you can join the other one.

Both societies require an invitation. Any Voln master can invite you to join. I suggest that you ask for a master to invite you, and then ask the master who invites you if you can ask them questions from time to time. The master is supposed to mentor those he or she invites into the order. It's not often done, but you can ask.

If you cannot find a Voln master and still wish to join Voln, you can look around the town of Wehnimer Landing for the grizzled warrior. Old Grizzly, I call him. You need to get his attention. Wink at him, smile at him, and otherwise taunt him. I wouldn't recommend you try to attack him. If he tells you about a place across the bridge and east of town, he has just invited you to join Voln. Good luck getting much advice from him.

The other society has the curious mystic in town. Get the mystic's attention like you would Old Grizzly if you were to be one of my brethren. The mystic will tell you about a bathhouse in town.

Joining Voln

If you are joining Voln, go to the Voln monastery which is outside the Landing, Go through the north gate of town, then south around the exterior of town until you come to a bridge. Cross the bridge, go northeast, then north until you come to the second trail. Take the trail and head east. You will come to the monastery.

Try to go through the gate. If you have been properly invited, the guard will inform you that you must first cleanse yourself of all worldly pollutions. He's telling you that you need a bath. Luckily, there is a warm-water spring right there in the Voln Courtyard. Just go into the spring and enjoy it. It's really very nice. Eventually you will know that you have been cleansed of all of your worldly polutions.

Try the gate again. Go east and then south. Meet the Grandmaster. He'll tell you a little bit about Voln. At that point you are in. I saw one situation where the Grandmaster ignored someone whom I had invited. It turned out that the youngster had not yet attained the third level.

When you leave the Grandmaster, go through the arch. This is the path to enlightenment. A monk will talk to you there and tell you what you need to do next. I suggest you take notes. Anything the monk tells you, jot it down. Cut and paste it into a scrapbook labeled with every step you are on. You will keep returning to this path until you have completed 26 steps, at which point you will be a Master.

Joining the Other Guys

I'm not at liberty to tell you much about the other guys, they are secret after all. All I can say is to go into the bathhouse, go behind a tapestry. It may be occupied, so you would need to keep trying. The person who went back there will probably not come back out the same way.

You will see a basin and a chain. You pull on the chain a few times and you are in a place I know very little about. Look for a guy they call the Grand Poobah. He seems nice at first, but he is both more and less than meets the eye.

Leaving Voln

If you choose to leave our great Order, go tell the Grandmaster of your intent to leave. I believe that is all you have to do. Your powers will be gone, but that's all.

Leaving the Other Guys

If you are not yet a master, leaving is a simple matter of telling the Poobah that you want to leave. Trust me, he'll get over it. If you are a master, Poobah is more obstinate.

Back behind the tapestry in the bathhouse, kneel in the toilet before you flush it. You will be in an odd shrine of some sort. Look around, there will be a room in which you see yourself. And yourself will be taunting you. Don't fight yourself, just kneel and pray. Everything will be ok. But you won't have your society powers to call upon anymore.

I have been a Volner all of my life, but of those who have left the distinguished other order in favor of mine, there seems to be a tradition of going back one last time to tell Poobah goodbye in a creative and appropriate fashion.

I Like Voln

The biggest advantage that Voln has over the other society for wizards is that you will never experience spirit death or decay as a Voln Master. If you overuse mana slightly, a bite of lichen will heal you up functionally. Once you dip down to zero spirit, you are dead. You have died a very nasty death -- a death which robs you of a significant amount of permanent experience.

Decaying after death brings the exact same fate as going to zero spirit. The way to prevent decay is for your spirit to remain bound to your body until a kindly cleric raises your body from the grave. If you are hunting alone, nobody wonders past you, and nobody comes to your aid then you decay over time. In practice, if relief does not come immediately, you leave the lands and come back when you know that somebody is going to be there looking for you.

Voln Masters are able to lifekeep themselves after they die, therefore extending the time that they will have for help to arrive. And they can send the image of their dead carcasses littering a room full of nasty beasties to every Voln member who is anywhere within a very broad area. And they can even attack a roomful of undead critters in retribution after death. All field experience is lost when you die, but you can still get experience from nasties you wounded and left when someone else kills them, and I have actually gotten fried many times from field experience acquired after I died from attacking the nasties as a deader. With a head full of field experience, I was learning while spelling up for the next hunt.

A Voln Master, I have never had a sprit death, and I have only decayed one time in my 63-trainings. A well-meaning cleric administered first aid to my wounds on the shadow valley ledge before I was kept. The tend took very long and neither of us were able to administer a keep while it was happening, so I awoke on Lorminstra's altar.

After a successful hunt, Voln Masters can regenerate mana roughly twice as quickly as they could sitting and waiting at a normal node. They can also unfry quickly, learning from their field experience. So there can be a lot less time between hunts for Voln Master wizards. A drawback is that the unfrying skill requires you to dream, so you can not socialize while learning during a powerhunt. Sometimes that's not a bad thing.

What I'm Missing

What I envy most about the other society is that their wizards can spell up for a hunt far more quickly than I, and they are far less dependent upon other persons when it comes to enchanting. At one time in my life, I was spending a full hour spelling up for three hours of hunting. And if I arrived at the hunt without my shield in my left hand -- instant deader, I. Most frustrating.

About the Societies

The Voln Society is a religious order, as well as a social order. Lord Voln is one of the gods of Liabo. His concern in the lands is the preponderance of the un-life. Undead creatures are embodiments of the souls of departed citizens which have been enslaved by evil forces. The most effective way of dispelling the evil forces is by terminating the existance of the undead creature, thus freeing the soul to Lorminstra. Terminating the undead creatures affords Voln members favor from the gods, which are expended both for advancement within Voln and as the cost for using most of the skills the order provides its members. In addition to favor, Voln members must perform a specific task in order to advance to each step.

Members of the secret society advance by acquiring specific items and knowledge. Items include skins and hides of specific creatures. Secrecy in the order is policed by powerful minions. Powers are exercised through the use of mana or of spirit points. Non-members of the society must not be allowed to witness the loss of spirit associated with the usage of society skills, lest the secret nature of the organization be jeopardized. For this reason, secret societarians have to hide a lot in the presence of non-members of their order.

Young Volners are advised to use their Voln powers very rarely until the time that they master Voln. Otherwise, favor is diverted away from the key task which is advancement within the order. There is no comparable penalty for the other society. They are free to use their skills as soon as they acquire them. Some Voln skills do not reach full potential until a person becomes a master.

Voln members never lose their powers, unless they use up their reserve of favor. Members of the other society lose powers temporarily whenever an outsider witnesses them losing spirit because of a society power, or witness one of the obvious powers being performed, such as fogging out. Voln members tend to hunt undead creatures almost exclusively. Many of the powers granted by Voln apply only to hunting undead creatures.

Using Voln powers to hunt undead is a bit of an irony because Volners tend to hunt undead in order to garner favor. Using Voln powers to kill undead tends to use more favor than it generates, so many of the undead hunting skills are not used very often except when hunting with groups of younger adventurers. You may want to freeze undeaders in their tracks and let the young ones pummel them for a while.

The Wizard sleep spells do not work against the undead, which takes a very nice spell away from the Voln wizard's arsenal. Volners can put undeaders to sleep, but again it takes favor to do so.

The other society has no restrictions on what it's masters hunt. Undead creatures are often overhunted and are therefore financially poorer than other creatures. Voln members will dedicate a disproportionate amount of time to hunting undead creatures, which amounts to Voln members taking a virtual vow of poverty compared to members of the other society who are freer to hunt whatever pays well.

Both societies offer a teleportation ability. One society requires its members do so in secret while Voln allows it's members to fog en masse. Voln Masters can hunt with a group, and then fog the group home at the end. Or they can hold the hand of a dead person and teleport them home.

Both societies have a very fast mana recovery ability. The Voln mana symbol is inferior, however, because it requires one or two deeds when it is used. The other society's wracking technique generates a full head of mana at the cost of spirit. Volners consuming deeds for mana is a frightening thought to me. Should one lose track and run out of deeds permanent death becomes a very real possibility. Spirit loss, however, can be replaced magically by the transfer of spirit from a cleric, but it takes a lengthy recovery time between casts of the well of life 308 spell.

There is a technique for accelerating mana recovery for the Volner with the dream skill. The first mana pulse from a dream is about 75% of what a normal nodal pulse is, but each successive dream pulse is significantly and increasingly smaller. So by dreaming for two or three minutes at a time, using the mana and then dreaming again, a Volner can accumulate large volumes of mana in a short period of time, but at a significantly increased favor expense.