Immortality or near-immortality can make characters sound quite invincible. If they heal fast or never get sick, how can anyone ever kill them?
They sound much too powerful and you know what? I don’t like invincible characters or beings that are all powerful and no one can EVER kill them off. That just sounds too convenient to have characters like that. It’s like flawless characters.
That’s my personal opinion 😛
So what do I do? I come up with a way for my near-immortal Sorcerers to die.
Sorcerers and Aging
Sorcerers live for a very long time because they have magic in their veins. The magic enables slow aging. Very slow. What this means is that yes, they will get old, but it will take a very long time for their body to actually age.
At age sixty, some Sorcerers may still have the body of a twenty-year-old, for example. Everyone ages slightly differently and it could have something to do with their specie, too.
Sorcerers might not start feeling old until they are well over a couple centuries old.
Yep. They live for a LONG time.
Sorcerers and Healing
Magic in their veins doesn’t only affect their aging process but also their bodies’ abilities to heal.
The stronger and older the Sorcerer, the faster they heal. Younger Sorcerers could get infections just like every other race in the world, but don’t worry, Sorcerers also know healing magic just in case. If something doesn’t naturally heal, they do it themselves.
Sickness also doesn’t happen with Sorcerers because the magic in their veins prevents them from getting sick.
How Sorcerers Can Die
If a Sorcerer’s magic is extracted from them, their age will rapidly catch up and they can die depending on how old they would be without magic. Just as blood can be extracted, so can magic.
If a Sorcerer ever does a very bad deed and must be killed for some reason, the higher-ups in the Sorcerer police force know a magic that can extract magic from a Sorcerer and kill them.
A Sorcerer’s blood is black with magic. It turns the normal red without magic.
Another way a Sorcerer can die is through impaling their heart. The heart pumps blood and magic. If the heart dies, the magic stops pumping. If there is no magic to heal the wound on the heart and the heart is greatly damaged, the Sorcerer will die.
Death Scenes of Sorcerers
Not to get all depressing, but the way a Sorcerer dies is not like how any other race dies so it must be mentioned. The body does not remain intact. Here is an excerpt from The Gold of Charmteller. A scene of a Sorcerer dying from the point of view of a Sorcerer.
Just as the sun rose over the horizon and touched the grass field, the magic in the black blood faded and turning it red. Gallen’s body disintegrated into specks of white dust that settled onto the ground leaving the shape of his body.
Another few sentences of a Sorcerer’s death from The Choice of Aurvandil. Point of view from a non-Sorcerer.
…and yanked his sword out of her chest causing the black ooze to spill from her wound.
Since the point of view here is from non-Sorcerer, protagonist Pinti, she doesn’t know the black ooze is actually blood.
She glanced back at Lai-ikolo and saw her body disintegrating into specks of white dust.
If Pinti had been watching a moment longer, she would have noticed the “black ooze” turn red after the magic disintegrated completely.
So, there you have it. While it may be hard to kill a Sorcerer, you can see that not even all-powerful beings can escape death. We all die eventually.
Boy, that got depressing.
On the brighter side of things, if you are a Sorcerer, you don’t get colds. Yes, let’s remember that and wish we were Sorcerers 🙂
FOXWOOD FOREST 