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hrmmmm…. wasn’t expecting to run into a swarm entity in this setting. only other example of an intelligent wizardy swarm entity I know of is Xanthir Vang the Plagued One (tho he hates that title) from Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, and he’s made of a swarm of demonic Locusts instead of worms.

I am very lost, here. Especially in regards to everything Kaylin said.

I’ll try to break it down for you; first- Terry is a Worm That Walks; a particular type of eldritch nasty in most stories which is typified by being a hivemind of worms, all of which are casters themselves, and while their individual power isn’t particularly up there, (think level 3 or 4 caster class in dnd), there’s a *lot* of those. second- ritual casting allows for a few useful things in a scenario like this, first is that while it generally requires a fair bit of setup time per cast spell, (and low level spells are usually what get used with this), you either arent required to expend resources to cast them, or the oomph in the damage output is *vastly* amplified (think the difference between a modern-day taser and one of those zat guns from stargate). and third- the monster types Kaylin is referring to are bottom of the barrel mooks, the kind of thing that’s generally only dangerous to prepared combatants in horde situations. the plan she’s implying is to have *all* of Terry’s constituent casters ritual cast low-level magic, while the rest of them hold off the monsters, so they can essentially do the magical equivalent of Close Air Support when the rituals finish.

Ahh, so Kaylin is *suggesting* that they do ritual casting instead of whatever they’re currently doing. I couldn’t parse that from the way she phrased herself, so thanks for explaining that.

I don’t expect everyone to just understand it all, but rather expect people to understand the outcome. So if you don’t understand what she is saying- the next page should make it more obvious.

That being said – Kaylin has met Terry before. She mentioned he was the scariest of the group that showed up to confront her and Nyna.
But to break it down, she called them a colony of creatures, they are a bunch of worm and worm like magical creatures that function together as one being.
Ritual casting here means that they can work together to cast spells. Normally Ritual casting low level magic wouldn’t be necessary, but they aren’t extremely powerful when it comes to magic. So, normally they only cast a few spells at the same time with lots of them.
She’s suggesting Quantity over Quality because the creatures are mostly weak, but numerous.

As shown previously, Kaylin can deal with magic, however simultaneously cast spells or multiple casters are something she struggles with. Imagine Terry as 1000 spellcasters in a trenchcoat! Except its more like millions in a cloak- If they arent all working together on one or two spells- they could overwhelm her with hundreds of spells.

Yeah I’m not a gamer either, I don’t see how this helps people deal with real life, which is what matters. Maybe identifying Terry ‘Legion’ WormColony helps folks accept strangers instead of attacking mindlessly. Are we sure the undead aren’t simply acting like moths attracted to living ‘flames’ ?

Gotta say, I’m not a gamer myself, so… this sort of thing’s normal, is it?

Think small ambulatory town of low level magic users able to work together to do massive amounts of spells, but they’ve grouped up so that they look like one person and now your brain’s trying to parse the “one person” doing a *lot* of magic, and it doesn’t add up in the standard instinctual understanding of how the world works.

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