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Are they armored dopplegangers?

Magic robots?

Demons?

The reason I ask is that there are certain attacks which may or may not work depending on thier nature. For example, how would martial art powers affect them? If you shatter a piece of armor with Tamashiwara, what's underneath?

Is ugly a classification of nature?

If I remember correctly I thought they were demons. But since I dont have my book near me I can't check.

I was wondering about the official word. Myself, I consider them armored and altered dopplegangers totally loyal to the Nightlords and having no other purpose but to hunt 'Bane and other supernaturals. Inside the armor is a once humanlike carcass but the flesh and blood is all black and gooey. The skin was grafted directly to the armor, so no removing helmets and armor unless you want to take all the skin with it.

Pretty sure they are hollow and/or completely made of armor. IIRC, they are more like a golem than a zombie: i.e. created from scrap not a living/dead creature. I don't think it ever comes right out and says in the books does it? I don't own Nightlands, though, and my memory does kind of suck...

No, never really says. I guess that's left up to interpretation. Not everything should be completely explained though. Nightbane is great for that reason as well as Phase World, there's still some room for GM creativity in regards to the setting.

I think of them as dopplegangers who were captured and subjected to a ritual which forces them to look into the Dark which destroys their personality and lifeforce and turns them into a mindless minion who grafted to the magic armor. But that's just me.

Thats a great interpretation. Very creative

Thanks!

Creative, but wrong. AcreRake is correct. The hounds are not demons, read Nightlands, most Nightlords (including Modoch) HATE demons. Lilith could get herself killed for dealing with them.

They are not dopplegangers, dopplegangers and doppleganger Warlords are dopplegangers. Pay no attention to the Nemesis, they're incorrect and defy everything originally stated about dopplegangers.

Magically animated suits of armour (that can make sounds, smell, see, and follow basic commands) are the closest description. They do have blood though... which shows that Palladium really needs to be consistant about them. Perhaps there is something living under there, or just a couple organs with steel as the flesh. Not a clue...

You never know what exactly ANYTHING is in Nightbane, because so much of the information is deliberately subjective and open to GM interpretation.

The hounds are definitely living creatures (the band of warriors known as Cortez' Cannibals is mentioned as drinking their blood in Between the Shadows), but exactly what sort of living creatures they are is open to speculation. One hypothesis presented in the books is that they, along with the Doppelgangers, Hunters, and several other minions, are actually corrupted and permanently transmuted Formless Ones and/or Nightbanes.

This is one of those "ask ten people a question, and you'll get ten different answers" type of thing. No solid answer. Honestly, I like it that way.

Here's my little twist on it. Living Magic. Think about it. Nightbane is the first and maybe only Palladium series (so far as I know, I really don't branch out much into other games) to even suggest magic taking on a life of its own. So the Nightlords have been around for at least six or seven thousand years, maybe longer. Maybe they found a way to use Living Magic, pouring all their hate and cruelty into spells that took shape and life, and became the Hounds and Hunters. Now they use mass ritual sacrifices and very trusted Night Princes to produce them in secret chambers beneath the Nightland's city-states. Personally, I like this explanation the best. It keeps a lot of things open, like new kinds of Hound-like minions.

Another explanation are that they are pawns and creations of that alien intelligence/god/whatever it is, the Dark. That's probably the simplest explanation, without a need to go into too many details. Think of the Harvester of Souls, from Rifts: Psyscape, and those essence things it sends out. Sort of like that.

Another idea that I heard, and is touched on by Tinker Dragoon, is that Hounds are the enslaved essence of the Formless Ones/Nightbane. There's some evidence supporting this, to the Hounds ability to sense supernatural creatures (like the Nightbane ability to sense others of their kind), and the fact that the main book states, I think, that Hounds are very subtely different from one another. I kind of have this idea of all the souls of the Formless Ones were enslaved and imprisoned, and the power off all that energy is forced through some kind of mystic mold created by the Nightlords to produce Hounds. For some reason that doesn't sound right to me, but I've heard it, or variations of it, several times from several different people.

Don't you just love it when games let you actually put your own spin on just about everything?

Hounds are something unto themselves. I believe it was implied under the "Nemisis" R.C.C. (which is contridictory, while answering a lot of questions about Nightbane at the same time) that Hounds are just another kind of Nightlord creature and might be a counterpart to a Soldier or whatever.

They are definatly living and thinking things (albiet very stupid), and can feel fear. If you read the Guardian R.C.C. an example is given of a bunch of Hounds fleeing them due to fear/horror factor.

They definatly are not supposed to be mindless automatons, or "Darkgolems" as some people liked to call them.

>>>----Therumancer--->

I think of that as Golems. The nightlords created a magic ritual(which requires the sacrifice of a living being) to turn armor(what they appear as now) into golem like creatures(the sacrificed sentient creature giving the hounds greater intelligence & thinking ability above that of a regular golem).

I thought I read in something canon a while ago that Hounds were baked.

Take 10 Doppleganers.
Throw into a large, strange, black metal vat.
Start your priest types chanting, or just watch and pour power in.
Press their bodies like grapes.
Watch the energy from their screaming, wailing forms solidify into a Hound.

Hunters are made using a different mold.
Masters require more Dopplegangers.

I'm unsure if any of them needed to be awakened at any part of this, or if you need an extra separate sacrifice for it, or what. If so, make sure to "pre-spice" the Dopplegangers in question.

That's what I recall reading, anyway.

This, plus the random slaying of Dopplegangers by board Hounds and Hunters, or their use for practice, does explain why there are so few Dopplegangers in the Nightlands compaired to humans.

I always thought that hounds were formles ones enslaved. I got that impression from the diaries of the wanderer or whatever that was called mentioning something about the formles ones being enslaved and turned into servants of the nightlords. I will have to look up the journat entry.

Now I must comment on the who nemesis thing, I will never take any of that information about the nightbane and use it. It seems to have been written by someone who hadent even read any of the previous books beforehand. And the nightland invasion by the earth, please how lame.

Sorry for the mini rant there

Aegis

While I agree that the Nemesis OCC in Through the Glass was probably something that should've ended up on the cutting room floor, the rest of the book is a great foree into how magic works especially in a horror setting. I loved the new magic OCCs as well as the treatise about living magic and how to add to a magic character with the powers and weaknesses printed there.

Well first off they have the basic immunities that golems do. They
don't bleed or eat. They don't even have a personality or emotions.
So I say there more golems created by the powers of the Nightlords.

But according to Nightbane world book 2 under Cortez cannibals (sorry for the mispelling) that this particular group drinks the blood of hounds to gain superhuman powers. So that leads me to beleave they cannot be golems.

Aegis