Guide to the Immortals

have need of faithful worshippers, in order to increase
their own vigour, and to enhance their ability to exert
influence on the Multiverse and the mortals therein. To
do this they impart some of their energy upon special
groups of faithful (called priests or clerics) who go out
amongst their fellows, preaching their patron's ideas and
seeking converts, and thus increasing the importance of
the Immortal within the Multiverse. The Immortal will
seek to advance his plans (whether covertly or overtly)
throughout the planes of existence. Immortals do,
however, show a preference for influencing the Prime
Plane (and in particular Mystara). This is perhaps because
that world is found at the centre of the Multiverse, a place
in which the Five Spheres are perfectly balanced. Ultimate
success, it is therefore believed, depends upon achieving
supremacy over that world.
It must also be noted that the Immortals are unable to
sire an Immortal race. The few times they tried creating
offspring whilst in mortal form, the resulting progeny
proved no better than any other common mortal, with no
particular powers or any greater probability of succeeding
in the climb to Immortality. Over the course of millennia
this kind of interference created many problems, so to
avoid upsetting the balance on the Prime these attempts
were (by common accord) abandoned long ago. Given
that they cannot expand their numbers by reproduction
amongst themselves, the Immortals are therefore required
to seek candidates amongst those mortals who show
themselves worthy. The Immortals attempt to inspire their
chosen candidates to step beyond the barrier of their body
and essence, and become an Immortal themselves. The
Immortals believe it particularly important to recruit new
candidates for Immortality within their own Sphere, but
well know that not all are capable, and that the path to
achieving transcendence is both long and difficult. The
various Spheres therefore try to protect all mortal species
throughout the Multiverse in order to have the greatest
possible choice and variety of candidates, whilst Entropy
seeks to spread destruction and corruption among the
mortal races, both to increase the chaos that they revel in
and to weaken the efforts of the other Spheres. In the
mean time, Entropy recruits its own exponents among
those people that have shown themselves the most brutal
and manipulative.
Finally, an Immortal can be hurt and may even die,
though there is a big difference between the death of the
material body of any particular Immortal and the ultimate
destruction of that same being. Indeed, it's possible to
physically meet with an Immortal and to prevail over it (in
this last case, the probabilities of doing so are much higher
when the Immortal has assumed a mortal identity, rather
than when he appears in his more resistant and powerful
celestial form, the so-called manifestation form), but it is
not enough to simply slay the body that the immortal
currently inhabits. An Immortal's essence (as the name
implies) is not subject to the same laws that bind the body
and soul of mortal beings. So long as a small spark of his
vital essence remains, the immortal can exist in an
incorporeal form and is able to grant clerical powers to his
priests. Should the physical body be destroyed, the vital
essence of the Immortal can use magic in order to create a
new one, though he uses up part of his personal power in
the process. The Immortal may then return, fully as
powerful as before, or begin anew elsewhere.
There are only two ways to actually kill an Immortal.
The first and most difficult is by eliminating the
Immortal’s manifestation form (having made sure that he
hasn’t invested some of his power into an avatar, which is
a physical body that contains part of his Immortal
essence). This form is found in his Home Plane (where he
is even more powerful) and at the same time the
Immortal's power must be drained (by reducing his Power
Points to below 100), preventing him from regenerating,
and thus destroying him forever.
The second method instead disperses the essence of an
Immortal reducing it to an immaterial state. This can be
achieved if an Immortal can be deprived of all his
followers: without followers giving power to him, the
Immortal begins to slowly fade away. A year after the loss
of the last follower, the Immortal begins to steadily lose
part of his essence every month, until after ten years he has
been totally extinguished. Initiate Immortals (whose initial
power is gifted to them by their patron) must make sure
that they secure an independent body of worship or risk
vanishing entirely when the basis of their immortality
dissipates. An Immortal that loses his own essence in this
way is not considered dead, but continues to exist within
his Home Plane as a weak spiritual force, though it will be
impossible to isolate it from the plane's own signature. If
the Plane is also destroyed, then the Immortal will cease to
exist. It is possible for an Immortal in this immaterial state
to return to life in the moment when any being rediscovers
his cult and creates a base of at least ten followers. In this
case, the Immortal returns to life in his old body as an
Initiate of 1 st level.
In any case, any Immortal consciously attempting to
prevent his disappearance creates at least one avatar (an
alternative corporeal manifestation that’s invested with
part of his Power, becoming to all intents his duplicate) or
a particular artefact (a powerful magic item created with
Immortal magic) that allows his priests to receive the spells
they expect to even when the Immortal is not present in
the Multiverse (and this can happen often, especially to
those Immortals that normally explore alternative
dimensions and planes in which magic doesn’t function or
when an Immortal is imprisoned for any violation of the
Immortal laws). Naturally, if one of these artefacts should
come into the possession of hostile Immortals or even of a
mortal, the cult of the Immortal could be set for serious
danger.
To this point, there have been few Immortals who have
vanished without trace from the Multiverse. Some of them
have effectively been defeated by a heroic mortal, and
following their disappearance, their priests have also
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