That's one of things I was thinking about: fates worth than death.
Ah, but don't forget to tack in the dying character's
perception of what that might be. Cassius, the ex-Denarian from "Dead Beat" offered an insight into that with his.
"The mind is a thing unique unto itself, and can make of Heaven a Hell, or a Hell of Heaven." -Milton, Paradise Lost
To put it another way, ask if the curse is hitting the target with "Blessed With Suck" or "Cursed With Awesome". (Look 'em up
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage here) Not that the dying character should necessarily realize the difference, since that's part of the fun...
Example:An cursed NPC called "The Monk"
Back in 1592, a mad cleric kills a wizard for possessing knowledge of the "Dark Arts" The wizard's death curse is that the cleric will not be able to die until he learns all the knowledge of mankind.
My questions are as follows:
1. Would a death curse keep him alive until he learns everything? The Monk trips down a flight of stairs and breaks his neck. Does the curse reanimate him? Plus, is his neck still broken or is it healed?
If I were GM-ing a game in which this character appeared as an NPC, I'd probably use some form of uncontrollable probability-manipulation to keep all injuries in the realm of "ordinary human could survive this" while also costing the character something: he could still fall, but A) he lands on a trusted servant at the bottom of the stairs and kills
him or her; B) witnesses to his fall could be sufficiently disturbed by the sight that his reputation is besmirched; C) he ruins a priceless artifact that he requires for academic purposes (an ancient orrery, for example). That way, he would still physically survive almost anything, but would still avoid taking ridiculous risks.
2. Knowledge is constantly expanding - What determines how this or other curses are fufilled? Would the Monk still be alive in 2009? ( I understand he would be by GM fiat, but am curious how it would be explained in game terms.)
IMHO, this would be a sufficiently specialized case that GMs in different games would have to make their own house rules. If nothing else, the death curse is still a
spell, which the character has to be able to cast. I'm not exactly up on all the nuances of the Fate system, so I'll bow to superior knowledge and/or experience in that context. I can say that, from a storytelling viewpoint, inflicting cursed immortality on another character shouldn't happen often. Unless the cursed immortality really drives home the point that the victim's life is going to
suck, especially doing so immediately, quite a few characters might just revel in the fact that they will clean up on high-yield long-term investments...
I'd probably wind up modifying the death curse into "your
immortal spirit shall..." or somesuch.
