Skulduggery Pleasant Dead or Alive revisions + 7-A Darquesse + removing soul manip resistance

[DontTalkDT]

Monarch Laciel already applied a bunch of the necessary revisions for this volume, but I wanna make a CRT to add the rest.

Necronaut suit​

It is already mentioned in Valkyries abilities, but the Necronaut suit is not yet in her Standard Equipment, which it should be.
Additionally, the suit always changes its appearance every time it is activated. I don't know what ability that is, but we may as well mention it.

Valkyrie took the black skull amulet from her jeans and pressed it to her chest, then tapped it. She caught her reflection in one of the large mirrors as the necronaut suit flowed over her clothes. A different design each time it came out, dependent on her requirements, today it looked almost military-officer smart: perfect for public engagements.

Weakness to mind manipulation​

Valkyries mind manip only works on physical brains, which should be listed as a weakness.

Jericho smiled. “By all means, try.”

She reached out with her thoughts, and after nearly a minute she frowned. “I can’t find anything.”

“Because there’s nothing to find,” said Jericho. “I don’t have a physical brain for you to search through. Seven years ago, I moved into my astral form and I went travelling, but when I returned my body was dead. An old friend of mine had killed me, and blocked my return. I have been stuck like this ever since.”

Astral Projection​

Valkyrie can astral project herself to other places, which should be added.

“Now reach into it with your mind. Expand your thoughts through the wall. Find a point in the picture in your head – a point in mid-air. Direct your thoughts towards this point.”

Valkyrie did exactly as he said. It was like she was falling asleep while at the same time being wide awake, alert to every sound, every smell, every sensation.

“Now allow yourself to be pulled to that point. Imagine there’s a rope tied round your waist, and now it’s tightening, it’s going taut. It’s tugging on you.”

She could feel it, feel the rope digging into her hips.

“And now you’re being pulled off the bed. You’re weightless. You’re like a balloon, and you’re being pulled smoothly along.”

Valkyrie opened her eyes except she didn’t open her eyes. Her eyes remained closed, but she could see everything. She was still lying on the bed except she wasn’t: she was floating towards the wall. She turned her head, watched Skulduggery, watched Jericho.

Portal Transmutation for Darquesse​

This is a weird ability, but Darquesse apparently can transmutate physical objects into portals to other universes and vice versa... yeah, she can turn curvature in spacetime into matter... somehow.

Sebastian followed him into the living room, where a gale was blowing. Kimora stood, chewing a knuckle, while her hair whipped round her face, eyes on Darquesse who floated in mid-air, examining a portal that had opened up before her.

“That was a chair,” Ulysses shouted over the wind. “That was a chair that she turned into a … a whatever that is.”

Kimora looked over. “First, she turned it into a rock,” she shouted. “Then a butterfly. Then she turned it into a shark. A huge, huge shark. The shark knocked over the lamp.” She pointed. The lamp had indeed been knocked over. “Then it became a vortex of …”

Kimora shrugged, at a loss for words.

Sebastian moved into Darquesse’s line of sight. “Sweetie? Darquesse? What’s that?”

“It’s a chair,” Darquesse said loudly.

“Well, it used to be a chair. What is it now?”

She glanced at him, frowning in a way that said Daddy is an idiot. “It’s still a chair. It just looks different. And you can’t sit on it. And it lets you see into other dimensions. And take things from it.”

She reached into the portal, came back with an ice cream. The portal twisted in on itself and became a puppy that floated into Darquesse’s arms and licked the ice cream. As an afterthought, she looked up again. “Daddy, can we have a dog?”

Darquesse doesn't keep her memories in her brain or body​

“And you keep all those memories in your mind?”

“Not all of them,” said Darquesse. “The human brain isn’t built to think the kind of thoughts I do.”

“Then where do you keep them?”

Darquesse shrugged, and fluttered her fingers round her head. “Everywhere. Outside and inside me. It doesn’t matter.” She looked at him, suddenly concerned. “Or, not that it doesn’t matter, it does matter, but I don’t think the same way as you do and as other people do, so I’m a little bit different. It doesn’t mean that I’m better than you, it just means that I’m different.”

So yeah, Darquesses thought are beyond what a human could think and she hence fundamentally has a different mental structure. Should be added to her mind resistance justification.

Instant Death resistance for Lord Vile​

Might stem from the fact that he is an undead, but it is still noteworthy:

“You’re wearing your necronaut suit, Valkyrie. Those suits were designed by Necromancers for Deep Venturing – the exploration of dead dimensions. The vast majority of dimensions that Shunters manage to find are devoid of any life at all, let alone intelligent life – but there are universes out there where life is simply not possible. Not because of any atmospheric condition or inhospitable environment, but because death itself permeates every molecule, every atom. Those suits allow Necromancers to study death from the inside. Of course, when I was a Necromancer, I didn’t need such a suit.”

“You went Deep Venturing?” she asked.

“I walked on dead worlds, Valkyrie. You have no idea what it’s like to stand on a world and know with absolute certainty that you are the only person in the universe. It’s both incredibly humbling and wonderfully self-aggrandising.”

Turning souls into glass​

Apparently, something Valkyrie did by accident:

Valkyrie didn’t look at them for long. She didn’t know if it was in her head or actually happening, but she could feel their eyes on her. She was the one who destroyed their last home, after all. According to Uriah Serrate, that moment when she lost control of her magic resulted in tens of thousands of souls being petrified, somehow. Turned into glass.

Should give limited certification of souls.

Weakness of Lord Viles future sight​

As Cadaver Cain explains, the kind of future sight Lord Vile has has the limit that finding the optimal solution can take a lot of time:

“I have access to all knowledge – that’s not quite the same as knowing everything. It takes time to sort through the – sometimes infinite – amount of possibilities. I could spend the rest of my days searching for a better way to overcome a single obstacle – or I could make a decision early on, and then fight to ensure that decision was the right one.”

Which should be added as a weakness.

Postcognition​

While Vile already has precognition listed, he also has postcognition:

I can see into the future,” Cadaver said, “and I can see into the past. Right now, I can see you and your late wife in this park – though she was only your fiancée at this point – and I can see her face. She does seem sad, you’re right.”

Darquesse can physically manifest minds​

Just some more mind manip stuff from her:

A constellation of blazing stars rotated in the living room, a galaxy of worlds and suns linked by continuous flashes of lightning. In the middle of it all, Darquesse, approximately sixteen years old and dressed in black.

“What is this?” Sebastian asked, his voice hushed as he walked in.

“It’s you,” she said.

He glanced at her and smiled. “You named a planet after me? It better be a handsome planet, I swear to God.”

“This,” she said, indicating the constellation. “It’s you.”

“I don’t get it. What are we looking at?”

She pointed at where lightning had just flashed. “Did you see that? That was your question.”

“I’m confused.”

“I can tell. This is the inside of your mind. These are your thoughts. These are your synapses. Over here are your memories. Look.” She poked a cloud of particles and he remembered that time when he was four years old, getting lost in the woods. “This is live,” Darquesse continued. “A livestream of who you are right now. When we were talking the other day, and I was saying how someone’s personality isn’t really that important – afterwards, I started thinking that maybe I was wrong. It all depends on how you look at it, obviously, but …”

“I, uh, I don’t know how I feel about this,” Sebastian said.

She squinted at the constellation. “According to this, you feel awkward, and you’re wondering if this is an invasion of privacy.”

“You can tell that just by standing here?”

Darquesse laughed. “No, I could tell by your reaction. Am I right?”

“You are.”

A grin. “I’m getting better at regular-people stuff, amn’t I? Social cues and whatnot.”

“It’s all very impressive. But I can’t fail to notice that my brainwaves are still being broadcast in the living room.”

“Sorry,” she said, and shrank the whole constellation down until it fitted in the palm of her hand.

He peered at it. It was an odd sensation. “What do you plan on doing with that?”

“I’m going to find somewhere to keep it.”

Improved Enhanced Senses for Skulduggery​

He can't just see better, but Skulduggery in fact doesn't need any light to see

They drove to a secluded spot, parked out of sight of the road, and walked into the woods. Skulduggery, who didn’t need light to see, stepped over every root and branch. Valkyrie, who did need light to see, did not.

Faceless ones have physical bodies​

Currently their true forms are described as incorporeal, however it should be noted that they also have other true forms. Those other true forms also don't share the passive madness stuff they have.

“But won’t that send everyone mad?”

Valkyrie shook her head. “That’s in their spirit state, according to Creed. Their natural forms, their physical bodies, are horrible and sickening and huge – but we should be able to deal with them. So that’s good. That’s another bit of good news.”

Faceless Ones weakness​

However, their true physical bodies can only exist in a universe with a lot of magic:

“He said in this universe the environment isn’t quite right. It isn’t suitable for the Faceless Ones. There’s not enough magic, apparently. He’s doing his best to fix that. All those reports you hear, about the scientists studying the rifts to the Source? They’re not studying them – they’re widening them. They’re letting more magic in, like the Draíocht boost only permanent, which means pretty soon every sorcerer around the world is gonna be stronger. More powerful. It also means the Faceless Ones will be able to exist here in their natural forms.”

Darquesse 7-A upgrade​

Phase 2 Darquesse and those scaling to her should scale above Cadaverous. She is equal to gods at that point.
This is also supported by the fact that she fought the faceless ones for years in their bodies, which are larger than mountains too:

Omen looked up, into the distance, where she’d been pointing. He saw it, then, the creature he hadn’t been able to see a few seconds ago. An impossibly huge thing, bigger than a mountain, with too many legs and too many eyes. Standing there. Just standing there.

Horrified, devastated, he looked away, to the east. Saw two more, as different from each other as they were from the first one. Standing. Waiting.

“Hundreds of thousands of them,” Valkyrie whispered. “Millions maybe. I’m the Child of the Faceless Ones, but in a way? In a way, I’m also their mother.”

Removing soul manip resistance​

Several characters in the SP verse have soul resistance with the reasoning of "souls in the Skulduggery Pleasant verse cannot be traditionally harmed, only split apart into smaller and smaller pieces", which is indeed something that was stated. Buuuut in my opinion that should not be grounds to give soul manip resistance, since it really only means that they don't have the ability to do more lethal soul attacks. That is proven by the fact that Darquesse can in fact erase souls, making the statement irrelevant.

 

[Loyd]

oooh skulduggery pleasant nice i need to catch up with the books

 

[DaReaperMan]

I think I agree with everything here!

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

This is looking good

 

[DontTalkDT]

Doing 1 more bump, just in case.

 

[Antvasima]

This seems fine to apply to me.

 

[DaReaperMan]

Doing 1 more bump, just in case.

Has this been applied yet?

 

[DontTalkDT]

Yes. Unless I forgot something.

 

[DaReaperMan]

Alright, just making sure

 

[Antvasima]

I will close this then. Thank you for helping out.