Question: Hi! Let's chat about Balor's Eye! What'd it do? I hear it has some kind of laser power. I'd love to know more about it. Is it a relic? Is it destroyed? Since it's mentioned as his Evil Eye, would it be related to the boon? I hear it's really great if you'd like to make a lake! Thoughts?
Oh, fun questions! Balor's (currently inert) eye has occasionally turned up in our games, but since it's approximately the size of a small house and violently dangerous, the PCs usually just leave it alone. It would certainly be a relic, and while you might rule that it's destroyed thanks to Lugh's stabbings, you could just as easily say that it survived (either as it was or in a diminished capacity) or that it's still attached to its dreadful owner in whichever Titanrealm he inhabits. I doubt it has anything to do with the Evil Eye spell, which is so-named in relation to the ancient concept of witches laying curses on others with the Evil Eye, not anything to do with Balor. Balor's eye, as you noted, shoots lasers, which are significantly different from curses.
Actually, Balor's eye has a writeup of its very own in the Elohim supplement, where it appears as a powerful artifact, currently being held in the Titanrealm Sedeq under the control of Bres the Beautiful. It's available in the supplement along with a lot of other cool stuff, but I'll repost it here to save you some time:
Bres' greatest weapon is the Evil Eye of his grandfather Balor, torn free of his head by the force of Lugh's attack when the fomorian king was slain. Bres rescued it from the battlefield with the aid of the few surviving fomorians, wrapping it in their ruined armor to avoid touching its deadly surface. The Eye is now mounted in the highest tower of Bres' fortress in Sedeq, two fomorians tasked night and day with keeping its monumentally heavy lid (pierced with an iron ring to allow them to touch it safely) propped open so that its baleful gaze burns down on the landscape around it.
With Balor's death and the wounding of the Eye itself, the organ has lost much of its original power but still remains extremely potent. Anyone who comes within three hundred miles of Bres' fortress must succeed in a Dexterity + Stealth roll against a difficulty of 80 to avoid its notice every hour that they are within its range; if they do not, Bres is immediately alerted that there are trespassers in his territory (though he does not gain precise knowledge of where they are). The mere gaze of the Eye can no longer instantly destroy those who fail to avoid it, but it is still a powerful weapon, inflicting 100 dice of lethal damage every five ticks. The only safe haven from the Eye is within the fortress of Bres itself, where the fomorian army remains garrisoned for the moment; the Eye is never closed unless Bres needs to move his troops en masse.
Construction on a very large project is currently underway within the great hall of Bres' castle; those who possess experience in crafts or sciences may discover, upon close examination, that the framework looks disturbingly like a mobile seige tower, precisely the right size for the Eye to be mounted on when it is finished.
So... yeah, duck.
I never knew Balor's Eye shot lasers - I always thought it was a case of anyone he placed his Evil Eye curse on would die instantly. In which case it MAY have been a relic, in the same way that Odin's Eye is probably a relic, and probably a "Star" relic too, if Lugh had pulled the eye from Balor's Corpse and not made a point to destroy the eye first.
ReplyDeleteI trust that yours is the mythologically correct one, though, but I still find it rather difficult to take seriously, as the Eye of Balor in the Elohim supplement seems like Scion's very own Eye of Sauron from the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films. Tolkien being who he was, though, I wonder if you were drawing inspiration from him or whether you were both drawing from the same source.
Well, nobody is using the word "lasers" in medieval Ireland, obviously, but there are a lot of phrases like "piercing beams" and "searing gaze". It not only kills anyone who looks at it instantly but also supposedly blasted away the islands around Ireland and burned a hole through the earth to create Loch na Sul, so it's a pretty safe bet it does something more concrete than just cursing people. While I could see a Titan Avatar having a curse-you-to-die power, it probably wouldn't be an outgrowth of the Evil Eye spell, since that spell doesn't really do anything more similar.
DeleteThe Eye of Balor certainly predates the Eye of Sauron. :) It's far from the only thing Tolkien borrowed from mythology - The Lord of the Rings is rife with mythic elements, most of them drawn from Norse and Celtic sources. Middle Earth is a direct translation of Midgard, lots of names are borrowed from Norse myth (including Gandalf!), Earendil the Mariner is just a reimagining of the Norse figure Aurvendil, and so on. You're not the first to suspect that Balor's Eye might have been an inspiration for that venerable old writer.
I guess my only comment to that first paragraph is that Balor is (or was, if you determine that he is in fact dead and stayed dead and didn't 'come back' with the other Titans) really, really bad-ass.
Delete'He blasted away the islands around Ireland and burned a hole through the earth to create Loch na Sul.'
BURNED A HOLE THROUGH THE EARTH. WITH HIS EYE.
I'd be more afraid of that guy than your typical Titan.
Oh, and that I get the feeling Bres would have serious Daddy issues. I imagine having to fill the shoes of your Dark Lord Father who can burn holes through the earth by staring at it hard enough can do a number on a Titan Avatar.
DeleteBalor is technically Bres' his grandfather, but I don't think that's helping his inferiority issues much. Considering that he ended up bringing Balor to the fight because the Tuatha were voting him out of office as king and he couldn't take them on by himself, he probably already wasn't feeling great about his own effectiveness. He's probably a pretty angry dude.
DeleteI love it when other people jump in on my questions!
ReplyDelete