How many sages do you REALLY need to seal an ancient evil away for a thousand years...

>one of the sages dies of natural causes
>the council refuses to choose a new sage to replace him
>the ancient evil awakens and breaks the seal

> Posting the photoshopped pic

>7 sages
>and not a single pair of eyes among them
Shit out of luck desu

>implying he has enough power to be the Ancient Evil

He's a middle-aged evil at best.

Where they've been, you don't need eyes to see.

7.
Gods holy number.
Makes sense.

Infact, I'm fairly sure all the settings with 6 sages/magical leaders has the sages die, go corrupt or infight with the others.

How many pillars of Nosgoth were there again?

You only need four pillars to hold a thing up.

Nine.

...

That really depends on the thing.

Wouldn't god's holy number be 3?

I've always thought those things were wobbly garbage, but point taken.

Seven's a good number. It's one of those "magical numbers" that shows up in a lot of different mythologies, so it's a pretty good choise if you're unsure of how many sages you need.
It's better to have too many sages than too few, anyway. Sure, maybe you can seal the anciet evil away with only three sages, maybe just one if you really want to push your luck, but that gives very little margin of error. But if you've got some extra sages helping with the sealing, the ancient evil won't get immediately released just because some idiot broke one seal.

God has no holy number. He simply is.
To believe in a number is pagan superstition.

>sealing ancient evils
Just send the six heroes to kill it off for good.

>How many sages do you REALLY need to seal an ancient evil away for a thousand years?

Well, I'd imagine the stronger the evil, the more sages you would need depending on how powerful they are; ganondorf was quite strong and he needed 7.

Though, the same good be said for an exceptionally strong sage who could probably seal an ancient evil all by himself, but then you get a kind of "goku syndrome" problem where if anything happens to that sage -and something will- the seal will immediately open with no buffer zone.

310

But then you end up with seven heroes showing up and they have to spend all season trying to find out who the fake is only for another hero to appear once they do.

Have hero exams and take the six people with the highest scores. Letting destiny pick your heroes is a bad system.

Also, you'd expect an Ancient Evil to at least dress better.

That doesn't work, they just respawn eventually.

4, you then need to put them in 4 crystals and put each of those crystals in one of the 4 dungeons themed after the 4 classical element.

All you need is some chalk and 4ccs of mouse blood. the rest is theatre.

It's okay, these six heroes are really five and one alternate ancient evil that they're forcing to help them via mind control magic. RIP Ragna

What are the parameters for determining your heroes?
Not to mention we're on a bit of a clock here. Say what you will about the indecisiveness of destiny, it's usually at least timely.

Man, I didn't know our world was so...basic.

Triangles are inherently more stable than squares.

It *is* a garbage stool, but only because the material won't support weight well.

A written exam for general adventuring knowledge, a practical exam to gauge combat ability, and a psychological profile to make sure none of them are ancient evils. Results will be judged by an impartial board of retired heroes and experts in their fields. Shouldn't take more than a weekend if we set up multiple testing centers around the kingdom.

>Not having 9 sages seal the evil with 9 staves
>Not having 3 fake staves for a total of 12
>Not having retarded players

Get on my level.

I remember that thread

Nah, some of them are kinda lazy. Ill-fitted suit and red tie is about equal to chains and spiked pauldrons in a fantasy world.

This is still fantastic and I'm still going to steal it some day.

Can the rest of us get a pic of said thread?

so's 5.

as is 3.

or 7,853

>Not using exactly 10009 sages to seal your ancient evil
Its like you want the world to end.

>Using anything less than Grahams Number sages.
>Expecting to seal the ancient evil properly.

There are a lot of "holy" numbers in the bible user. Including 7 and multiple of 100.

archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/50579499/

Whats up with Japan and just sealing shit away? Why can't you kill them?

Rowling killed her villain in the fucking backstory and had the majority of the series feature him trying to figure out how to rez himself.

Not quite true, 3 and 72 are also valid numbers.

It's not just Japan, but primarily it's because some Evil is too strong to be killed and we need more time. The sealing is a stopgap. Or the heroes are merciful, or the sealing is the only way as the evil is truly immortal.

It takes three legs to make a tripod, or to make a table stand - School House Rock

1, 3, 4, 7, 10, 12, and 40 are the ones I remember.
One God
Three Persons
Four Gospels, Horsemen
Seven Lampstands, Scrolls, Sons of Sceva, the base number for forgiving someone
Ten Commandments
Twelve sons of Jacob, tribes of Israel
Forty days and nights of rain for Noah, days of fasting for Jesus

Don't you have some betters to bow to, Confucius

>Letting destiny pick your heroes is a bad system.
I feel that you and I are not of similar disposition, that we indeed have wildly differing parentage and melanin content, and that my dwelling would not be an welcome site for further discourse.

How about a chosen hero not because it's just him and he needs to step up, but because the chosen hero was whoever could do X Y and Z and everyone's trying to fill the checklist to prove themselves worthy?

It is the Law of Conservation.

Evil can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be moved somewhere else.

>How about a chosen hero not because it's just him and he needs to step up, but because the chosen hero was whoever could do X Y and Z and everyone's trying to fill the checklist to prove themselves worthy?
That's cool.
It's definitely the better of the (at least) two good kinds:

The Destined One:
The one who can X, can Y, and can Z, will be P, do D, and become Q.
I know there's good examples of this. I can only think of Bulletproof Monk off the top of my head.

The Chosen One:
Fate has chosen one specific person for something and, as such, as they proceed towards that something, fate and luck open the path and fortune favors them. Basically plot armor and railroading them towards becoming awesome, but the individual is actually worthy of the honor and has to do the legwork.
The Golden Child, the Forbidden Kingdom, and Mighty Max spring to mind.

The first kind feel better, because there is more mystery and room for free will and interpretation.
But both can be pretty cool, when done right.
When done poorly, it's boring, plodding wankery.

Personally, I love subverting prophecized destiny by having Neville Longbottom kill Voldemort or somesuch.

>the entire world is a sage

>Personally, I love subverting prophecized destiny by having Neville Longbottom kill Voldemort or somesuch.
Fuck no the whole point of it was that Neville MIGHT have been the chosen one to kill Voldemort, but Dumbledore had to hammer it into Harry's head that Voldemort turned Harry into the chosen one.
Neville always had real potential anyway - his performance in school got better as soon as he got his own wand, instead of his dad's old wand.

>Fuck no the whole point of it was that Neville MIGHT have been the chosen one to kill Voldemort, but Dumbledore had to hammer it into Harry's head that Voldemort turned Harry into the chosen one.
I thought Dumbledore's point was that blindly adhering to the prophecy was a mistake and how Voldemort's choice showed his bias and illustrated his way of thinking, and that the prophecy's relevance was nothing compared to Voldemort's choices.
Been a while since I read it though.

>Neville always had real potential anyway
Damn straight.

>Liberals actually believe this.

Also, I just used that as an easily accessible example of subverting a prophecy.
I think if Harry chose to let go and die, Neville could have killed Voldemort.
But, that would never have happened with Harry written as he was.

I chuckled.

I like to think that both Harry and Neville, when given the option (which was Dumbledore's whole point - they had a choice) they would both choose to fight Voldemort, every time.
Blindly adhering, yes, but it's more about how you interpret things. It could have been either Neville or Harry, and for whatever reason he chose Harry, bad luck Snape. Harry originally interpreted it as killing Voldemort, but he won by allowing Voldemort to kill him.

As an aside, I totally agree with Ron: there is literally no proof that Snape is actually on their side. Lucius Malfoy says he was under mind control, but he's clearly a Voldy sympathizer at best. Snape's in charge of all the racists in Hogwarts, and he particularly harasses a minority student. The way I see it, Lily was literally the only reason Snape is working with Dumbledore, he is still aligned with Voldemort on every ideological point.

While I'm at it: Rowling really missed a golden opportunity when she switched the name from Knights of Walpurgis to Death Eaters.

The Knights of Walpurgis sounds like the secret society they actually are, but Death Eaters sounds like a GTA street gang.

I would have dovetailed it with the use of Voldemort's name. Tom Riddle hated how common and unimportant his name was (lots of Toms, and the Riddles were muggles) so he started calling himself Lord Voldemort. His gang (because that is what they were in Hogwarts) called themselves the Death Eaters because they're edgy teenagers. As they grew up, they change the name to Knights because it sounds more mature and adult. Dumbledore continued to call them Tom Riddle and the Death Eaters (which sounds like a band) because 1) the whole "always seeing your former pupils as they once were and 2) using their real name to get past their masks. The rest of the Order follows suit with the latter, but not the former.

Depends on how powerful the sages are.

Though if one isn't enough, you automatically upgrade to at least three. Nobody's ever heard of just two sages. Can you even imagine?

And We the Knight shall fall upon you this very night and shall lay claim on what is rig-
SHUTUP TOM You SUCK

The amount of good gods in the setting equals the amount of sages needed for such rituals.

>Yes, you're highness. My niece, magister Velma the Grey, and my twice removed cousin doctor Dexter Ku'Yver are totally needed if this ritual is to succeed. I know what i am doing. But since they are my relatives, they'll only charge you 80% of their normal price.

>40
That's just a thing because of Hebrew - 40 is their equivalent of "hundreds" or just "a lot, okay" - when you've not got a specific amount, or a case where it matters (like an army), and you just generally want to say a lot, in Hebrew it's the same word as 40

user, this is top secret Vatican shit, but that's kinda the reason the Pope exists.

>Not sealing the ancient evil with a solar system

No, heroes can only kill the ancient evil after he awekened to fulfill the prophecy, do you really want all the prophets and ancient sages to be unemployed?

Is that hitler on the right?

Well you can spice thing up with thing like light ,darkness and thing like that, or you could use the element on the periodic table but that would make a lot of dungeons, and a lot of sages to put into crystals.

Yes. He and Stalin often fought.

>not having two bros-for-life sages seal the ancient evil
>not uncovering the history of their bromance through the campaign

>How many sages do you REALLY need to seal an ancient evil away for a thousand years?
One for each field.

My players only have five sages... but they didn't seal an ancient evil. The sages are sealed inside one of the players, and they try to set them free one after another.

I liked that show.

Japanese mythology doesn't really employ a concept of good and evil. There's corruption and purity, though, which relates to how closely aligned you are with your nature and place in the world.

Of course "pure" doesn't mean "safe". It's a bear's nature to maul you, a kitsune's to trick you, and so on. Since a lot of youkai are just doing their own thing as their nature requires, which just happens to be problematic for humans, it's not really acceptable to destroy them for it. That'd invite a great deal of annoyance and disfavor with other aspects of the spiritual world. So instead, you seal them away.

Little known fact: Each of the Seven Seals is imbued into the flesh of a high-ranking member of the Roman Catholic Clergy. The election of the Pope is less about who will lead the church, and who has the spiritual fortitude to hold the First and most important Seal.

AshkEnte was a hack, Bel-Shamharoth is true GOAT

Because one sage is enough to seal a being for a year but thanks to the way magic works, the magical number seven gives one helluva multiplier that makes them able to lock the being for thousand+ years.
If you had seven groups of seven sages, then we would be talking about a better side of a million years.

Came here to say this.

The number should be high enough that the safety of the entire world isn't compromised if just one sage dies (or their mcguffin stolen). But low enough that someone can locate each sage (or their mcguffin) in a reasonable amount of time if the world is threatened and the sages are needed.

>310
Explain, you devils.

I usually need about 350

You can manage with one but the more you add the more difficult you make the inevitable effort to break the magical seal by agents of evil or greed.
Certain numbers can also add an additional boost from magical significance depending on the nature of the magic used, three, seven, the number of holy children of the goddess of light, the number of original founders of the paladin order, the secret number of arcane spheres, whatever.

So no sages at all would suffice? Neat.

...