Slayers
- Has nothing to do with the Dwarf Slayers or the Halatu, the House of the Second World.
The Slayers is an animu about a sorceress and her adventuring party of murderhobos. The Slayers traces it roots back to the 80's with some short stories which rumors hold were based on some Japanese dude's AD&D games (though in all likelihood it was Sword World). Those short stories got converted into comics, then later into animu, in series, minis series and movie formats.
The main character is an absurdly overpowered sorceress Lina Inverse and her companions. In the series this is the idiot Gourry, the chimera Zelgadis and the princess Amelia. There is another shrine maiden Sylphiel and in the third season the dragon priestess Filia. In the movies, her companion is the battleslut wizardess, Naga the white serpent (notable for her huge tits and annoying laughter). One cannot speak of Slayers without mentioning Xelloss, the mysterious priest. Son of the demon-goddess of beasts and most powerful demon outside the ranks of the demon-gods, he is a trickster and a liar fiercely loyal to his mother's plans. The anime looks and feels like a dream version of Dungeons and Dragons, without the LAWL RANDUM Chaotic Neutral players, the jackasses and the rule lawyers.
Through the series there were a collection of interesting villains that any DM should learn from, either from what to do, or what not to do. Rezo the Red Priest, a multiclassed priest/wizard and the BBEG from the first season, is a prime example of a character who was once Lawful Good, but due to circumstances had to walk the path that leads directly to Lawful Evil. As it turns out, his body contained a fragment of the demon-god of fire/king of the demon-gods. A clone of him reappears in season 2; this incarnation seeks only to destroy the heroes to prove he is more powerful than the original, a pretty good example of Neutral Evil. Another wizard villain shows up in season two: Halcyform, a man who sold his soul to the Mazoku for immortality. Again, he's a sympathetic villain who will stop at nothing to resurrect his dead wife. Sad problem is, without the interference of Hellmaster Phibrizzo (demon god of death) or Lord of Nightmares, all deaths are final in the Slayers-verse. Season two also introduces Demon Dragon King Gaav, a rebellious demon-god who, due to a rebellion in the past, had his form locked into that of a human. He wears a badass anachronistic gold trench coat. Later in the season a string-pulling Phibrizzo shows up in the form of a shota, Lina goes into god-mode (summoning the Lord of Nightmares into herself) to kill him. The third season introduces a new part of the world to explore, and what's the first they find? That's right, Gaav's head lackey and gay lover Valgaav waiting to get revenge! He has aligned himself with lesser gods from an adjacent material world. Well, suffice it to say, there is a happy ending.
Introduced in season 2 is an interesting foil for Gourry; Zangulus a mercenary obsessed with proving he is more powerful than the mindless oaf. Using a magic sword and near equal fighting skill he holds his own, and shows to be useful to the heroes now and again, but never stealing the spotlight. A good example of how a DMPC can be used in a game without actually hurting the game.
Cast of Characters
Whilst the precise cast of characters and more importantly details on those characters varies between the light novel and anime continuities, there's still a pretty solid core set.
Lina Inverse is our star, a Chaotic Neutral Black Mage who has an uncanny aptitude for the most destructive spells in her setting, most famously the Dragon Slave, which is pretty much THE biggest boom in the canon. Vain, arrogant, greedy and gluttonous, she mostly travels to gain loot, see new places and make herself famous. Her big sister is a famous archmage and hero, and her twitching inferiority complex over being essentially the less-powerful, less-attractive, less-successful version of her is at the root of many of her personal issues.
Gourry Gabriev is Lina's dumb-as-a-stump meatshield and longest traveling companion. There are hints of a romantic attraction between the two, but it usually goes nowhere, save in the odd season finale. Pretty good at swordfighting, actually, and wields the setting equivalent of a lightsaber, but, well, is ultimately stuck being the sole single-classed fighter in a series where everyone else at least dips something a bit more... world-smash-y. His ability to kill a man with a thrown acorn is a bit less impressive when his partner's go-to attack spell is the magical equivalent of a tactical nuke, ya feel me? Has a surprisingly tragic backstory that never gets mentioned or brought up.
Zelgadis is a cursed sorcerer-swordsman whose great-grandfather, the famous Red Priest Rezo, magically fused him with two different kinds of monsters to make him stronger. From a Blue Demon, he gained increased magical aptitude and superhuman speed and reflexes, whilst a Stone Golem gave him super-tough rocky skin and metallic wire for hair. He hates looking like a freak and is always out to find a cure for his condition. Has kind of a thing for Amelia that is a bit more explicit than the other main romantic couple in the series.
Amelia is a well-meaning, cheerful, good-hearted white mage princess who thinks she's in an old-school magical girl-style series, and conducts herself accordingly. (Ironically, she predates many of the cliches of the genre she's a spot-on parody of.) Has a big heart and a flair for drama that causes her to serve as the moral compass of the party, despite being the youngest. Is probably Naga the Serpent's younger sister, though nobody can prove anything.
Xellos is the enigmatic trickster priest of the Mazoku race, who specializes in trolling Lina's group and playing them like puppets. Is an evil jerk, but he's funny and charming enough to also be a fan favorite.
Naga the Serpent is Lina's original traveling partner, before she finally managed to ditch her. An incredibly arrogant ditz with a laugh that can crack glass, she infuriated Lina as much for her bungling stupidity as for her incessant wearing of super-skimpy clothing to show off her ridiculously oversized rack, which made Lina feel quite inadequate.
Filia is a Gold Dragon priestess who recruits Lina's party to help her save the world in the third season of the anime. She knows some white magic, and tends to whip out the mace she keeps under her skirt to beat on Xellos whenever he shows up.
Pokota is a prince whose people were experimented upon by Rezo, resulting in him being ripped out of his body and stuck in the body of a living doll.
 This article is a stub. You can help 1d4chan by expanding it |
Plot
The plot in Slayers is kind of an ups and downs thing. At the very start, you need to know that there are two major continuities; the original Light Novels, which never made it out of Japan AND where a lot of information is literally made up by the author on the fly in interviews, and the anime, which mostly sticks to the light novels where it can, but does its own thing, and doesn't try to info dump on the world. So, yeah, we'll stick to the latter.
There are currently 5 seasons of the Slayers anime - well, technically 8. See, the Slayers tends to internally divide each season into two major plot-lines, which are told over their own 13 episode arc, although they share a greater continuity. In fact, the last two official seasons - Revolution and Evolution-R - are literally the result of taking this to the official level, consisting of only 13 episodes apiece and fitting together as a single meta-season. The general plotline is that Lina Inverse goes running around looking for bandits to rob and ruins to loot, but keeps getting embroiled in bigger shit.
Season one, or "The Slayers", consists of two arcs. In the first, "The Red Priest Arc", Lina meets and teams up with Gourry and Zelgadis, as she becomes embroiled with trying to keep the magical Philosopher's Stone away from Rezo the Red Priest, who turns out to be vassal to one of the seven fragments of Ruby-Eyed Shabranigdo. When things go wrong, the three are forced to fight together to prevent this fragment of the ultimate evil from annihilating the world. In the second arc, "The Copy Rezo Arc", Lina's party grows to include Amelia, and they find themselves having do to battle with Copy Rezo, an insane clone of the Red Priest who wants to annihilate them all in vengeance.
Season two, or "The Slayers Next", again consists of two arcs. The first, "The Clair Bible Arc", sees Lina, Gourry, Zelgadis and Amelia teaming up to hunt down the lost magical grimoire known as the Claire Bible, an ultimate book of spellcraft. Lina desperately needs to find it because the outcast Mazoku Lord, Chaos Dragon Gaav, is trying his hardest to kill her! But when they succeed at that, it only leads to more problems; it turns out Gaav wanted Lina dead because her personally designed ultimate spell, the Giga Slave, is actually an invocation of the Lord of Nightmares - which means that if Lina ever loses control of it, she will annihilate the entire universe! Worse yet, the Mazoku Lord Hellmaster Phibrizzo knows she can cast this spell, and will stop at nothing to force Lina into casting it, resulting in the surprisingly dramatic "Hellmaster Arc".
Season three, "The Slayers Try", opens up the Slayers world. Centuries ago, the segment of the world where Lina and her buddies live was sealed behind a Mazoku-created barrier. Now, that barrier has fallen, and the party reunites with plans of exploring the strange new realms beyond. These innocent plans are scuttled when a Golden Dragon priestess from the outer world named Filia recruits the Slayers to avert a prophecy of doom in the "Darkstar Prophecy Arc", which also sees them facing off against Valgaav, the half-mazoku dragon servitor of Chaos Dragon Gaav. Then, when they botch their initial attempts at foiling the prophecy, they must locate the five Weapons of Light and deal with the insane, murderous Shinzoku/Mazoku/Ancient Dragon hybrid that is Darkstar Dugradigdu merged with Valgaav, in the "Weapons of Light Arc".
"The Slayers Revolution" is either season 4 or season 4, arc 1, depending on how you look at it. In this 13 episode, the Slayers meet Pokota, a cursed prince who is looking for some way to restore his lost kingdom. However, Pokota isn't the only survivor of his kingdom, and first, they must stop his one-time ally, who has instead become obsessed with destroying the neighboring kingdoms that he feels betrayed their own.
This then concludes in "The Slayers Evolution-R"; having learned that Taforashia was sealed in its slumber by Rezo the Red Priest, they seek out the Hellmaster's Jar, an enchanted vessel which promises the ability to revive the dead archmage/high priest. Unfortunately, when they succeed, another fragment of Shabranigdo is restored alongside of him, and they must battle to save the world once again.
Cosmology
As touched upon under Plot, because of the rather...uncoordinated release of Slayers material, it's hard to get a perfectly accurate reference to what the Slayers multiverse looks like, but this is what is known:
The foundation of the multiverse is a swirling ocean of golden primordial chaos. Sapient and self-aware, this Chaos is a Chaotic Neutral Overdeity referred to as the Lord of Nightmares. From itself, the Lord of Nightmares has created the various worlds, which are depicted as plates sitting atop cosmic pillars that rise from this golden sea. We know of Lina's world, and have no idea how many others there are, although it's suggested that four are known to Lina's world in total.
In each world, the Lord of Nightmare created life - most specifically, the beings called "Shinzoku" and "Mazoku", terms that are difficult to translate from the Japanese, but most closely work as "Gods" and "Monsters". She charged the Shinzoku with preserving their chosen world, and the Mazoku with destroying it. In truth, she doesn't care which force wins; she just enjoys watching the conflict as a source of amusement from her eternal ennui. The plot of Slayers Try actually stems from the lead Shinzoku & Mazoku of one world - Volphied and Darkstar Dugradigdu - learning that their titanic cosmic battle was nothing but a game she was watching, resulting in them fusing together and trying to annihilate their world in order to spoil her game and then recreate it on their own terms, away from her.
In the Slayers World, the Shinzoku manifested as mighty dragon-gods, served by lesser dragon underlings. The Great Shinzoku and Great Mazoku, the most powerful of all their kinds, are respectively known as Flare Dragon Ceiphied and Ruby Eye Shabranigdu. Eons ago, the two fought a mighty battle, which resulted in Ceiphied splitting Shabranigdu into seven pieces and cursing those pieces to be repeatedly bound into the bodies of different human hosts, in hopes that eventually this would cleanse him of his nihilistic instincts and end his threat to the world. Ceipheed then vanished, and is implied to have been mortally wounded.
Ceiphied's underlings are known as Aqualord Ragradia, Flarelord Vrabazard, Airlord Valwin, and Earthlord Rangort, respectively associated with the North, East, West and South. During a later titanic battle, Aqualord Ragradia was slain by the Mazoku Lords, which is why the art of Holy Magic has been all but lost in the Barrier Realms.
Shabranigdu's underlings, the Mazoku Lords, were originally five-fold; Hellmaster Phibrizzo, Chaos Dragon Gaav, Greater Beast Zelas Metallium, Dynast Grausherra, and Deep Sea Dolphin. Of the five, we only know real details about the first two.
At some point in the past, Chaos Dragon Gaav was sealed inside of a mortal host, much like his master - unlike Shabranigdu, he was not strong enough to resist the "purifying" effect of being bonded to human souls, which stripped him of the instinctive yearning for obliteration that all Mazoku are supposed to feel. This made him a traitor to the Mazoku race, who are supposed to eagerly seek the annihilation of all things, whereas Gaav wanted to live and enjoy himself. For this reason, he took to wandering the land and indulging in whatever whim he felt, whilst occasionally rising up to strike down particularly powerful threats to the world. This culminates in Slayers Next, when he attempts to kill Lina Inverse for the sake of preserving the world from her deadly Giga Slave spell. Instead, he himself is killed when, after Lina weakens him in self defense, Hellmaster Phibrizzo takes advantage of his condition to strike him down.
Hellmaster Phibrizzo is a sadistic, manipulative monster even by the standards of the Mazoku. Possessing authority over the otherwise undetailed underworld of the Slayers dimension, he has the power to raise the dead and slay the living with just a thought. Having learned of Lina Inverse's Giga Slave spell, he becomes the big villain of the second half of Slayers Next, where he tries to force her to use the spell in hopes that she will lose control and annihilate everything. Instead, Lina Inverse ends up being possessed by the Lord of Nightmares herself, whereupon Phibrizzo has a surprisingly creepy mental breakdown, shifting from begging her to destroy him to trying desperately to save himself. Ultimately, the Lord of Nightmares effortlessly obliterates him, ending his threat to the world.
Magic
Magic in the Slayers universe is most deeply detailed in the light novels, but the anime shares pretty much the same ground.
Theoretically, everyone can do magic in the Slayers universe - all one needs to do is speak the Chaos Words (incantations that invoke the various metaphysical entities from whom spells draw their power) and bam, the spell goes off. This is because spells are fueled by mana, and every living thing in the Slayers universe has mana. Chaos Words help to shape mana into specific patterns, and can be forgone if you're sufficiently skilled; a good mage can cast a spell just by invoking its name, whilst a great one doesn't even need that.
The reason the entire world isn't crawling with archmages is two-fold; Dedication and Capacity.
Sure, pretty much everyone knows a cantrip or two that comes in handy in their day-to-day life, but not everybody has the chance or the desire to dedicate their lives to studying spells. Add in that you need to know the incantations, and that not every spell is just in a public library waiting for some yahoo to memorize it, and that keeps most of the powerful mages aligned to the various sorcery guilds. Also, if you're a dumbass, then you're naturally not going to be very good at magic - the Slayers' creator has actually claimed Gourry's talent for sorcery rivals Lina's, but because he's such an absent-minded dreamer, he could never remember the incantations, and so he can't cast spells.
Capacity is the other big issue. See, every spell requires a certain amount of mana before it can function. Bigger spells need more juice. Now, a person's mana "pool capacity" - how much mana they can store at one time - grows with repeated spellcasting, much like how a muscle strengthens with exercise. But their "bucket capacity", how much of their internal mana they can actually access at once? That's set in stone. Doesn't matter how much you practice or how much you wish it, if you can barely muster the mana to fuel a Flare Arrow, you're never going to cast a Dragon Slave. This has resulted in at least one spell being lost to humanity; the ultra-destructive Fire Shamanism spell Blast Bomb is such a mana-guzzler that even Lina Inverse can't cast it on her own. And bucket capacity boosters? Oh, those are rare indeed - Lina Inverse has the only set known in the series, and she had to steal those off of Xellos.
Magic Schools
In the Slayers universe, magic is divided into several different schools; Black Magic, Holy Magic, Shamanism and White Magic.
Black Magic draws its powers from the dark, destructive, negative energies embodied by the Mazoku. It is, thusly, an offensive style of magic, most useful for delivering powerful magical attacks, with a side-deal in curses. It is the most useful anti-Mazoku school known in the "Barrier Realms" of Lina and her crew, because it tends to attack physical and astral bodies at the same time. However, that makes it very subject to nerfing; if the Mazoku you're blasting is stronger than the Mazoku you're drawing energy from, then that spell's not going to do anything. Likewise, spells drawn from a particular Mazoku will do all of jack squat if you cast them on that very same Mazoku.
Holy Magic is the polar opposite of Black Magic, drawing its power from the positive energies embodied by the Shinzoku. Very little is known about this kind of magic because it's been lost in the Barrier Realms for generations, whilst in the Outer Realms, magic itself has dwindled to become virtually a lost art, a result of virtually every magically skilled individual being drafted for the ancient war that saw the Barrier Realms being created, leaving all the mages stuck inside and the non-mages stuck outside. It presumably has similar abilities to White Magic, but with vastly more potent anti-Mazoku killing spells.
White Magic is a lesser form of Holy Magic mixed with aspects of Astral Shamanism. It focuses on curative and protective spells, healing injuries and trying to keep people safe.
Shamanism is a form of elementalism that draws its power from five elements; Earth, Air, Water, Fire and Spirit. It's the most well-rounded and utilitarian of schools, with lots of spells for attack, defense and utility. Earth Shamanism focuses on manipulating earth and metal, such as throwing giant rocks at people, causing spontaneous eruptions under them, or creating protective walls. Air Shamanism grants flight, razor sharp wind projectiles, lightning bolts and protective barriers. Fire Shamanism burns the shit out of things. Water Shamanism can manipulate water or hurl icy blasts, and is useful for countering Fire Shamanism. Spirit Shamanism is more commonly referred to as Astral Shamanism, as A: all shamanism spells call upon spirits, and B: its spells focus on manipulating the Astral Plane. This makes it the only branch of Shamanism that can hope to affect Mazoku, with its Ra Tilt spell being considered almost as powerful as the Dragon Slave.
Slayers and Gaming
 This page is in need of cleanup. Srsly. It's a fucking mess. |
>
Guardians of Order has, on two occasions, failed to make a good RPG out of the license. First was a series of three splatbooks for their BESM tristat game, each book represents a single season of the series. These books did nothing a veteran gamemaster couldn't already do. But they did present playable stats of all of the main characters from the season they covered. Their second failure was the Slayers d20 book, which was one of many hanger-ons to the d20 OGL. Unlike most copycats though, this system did try to rebalance the classes, but ended up making a shit-ton of crap, such as the man-at-arms, shrine-maiden and sorcerer classes. One good feature was its innovative magic system; it allowed a caster to know a level dependent number of spell level worth of spells. This was also capped in that there wasn't a spells per day system, but instead a caster roll based on the arcana skill.
The Slayers D20
Since 1d4chan takes pride in rescuing lost /tg/ stuff from the depths of time, let's take a look at some of the unique material from the Slayers D20 game that might be worth stealing, or at least building upon for your own games.
Slayers D20 Races
Slayers D20 Spellcasting
Gallery
-
BESM Slayers, book 1 -
BESM Slayers NEXT, book 2 -
BESM Slayers TRY, book 3 -
-
It's pretty much like that. -
4e tries to be like this -
Not to be confused with this pile of faggotry.
Lost Universe
The Slayer's own science fiction spin off. According to the creator, Lost Universe may or may not be part of Slayer's universe, or even its prequel, but shit is complicated so here's the plot:
Background
Slayer and Lost Universe are similar in a lot of ways; the deity Vorfreed and Dark Star Dugradigdu from Slayer exist in this series as well, but in the form of an ancient eldritch starships known as "The Lost Ships". The Lost Ship are suppose to be space ships created by the ancient ayyy lmao to wage war. But the truth is that Vorfreed and Dark Star Dugradigdu got tired of each others shit so they fuck off to a planet and turn into starships. Then came Alicia shon Stargazer and Albert von Stargazer, the brother and sister that found these ships. Albert von Stargazer choose the ship Dark Star, but he was corrupt by its influence and was turned evil. He turned so evil that he started a galactic crime syndicate. To stop him, Alicia boarded her ship The Swordbreaker (Vorfreed), hoping to fight against her brother in order to restore him, but lost her life in the process, leaving that that task to her grandson Kane Blueriver. It is also noted that these lost ships have AI that can project their human forms via hologram.
The Plot
Kane Blueriver, a luke skywalker wannabe going around the galaxy doing mercenary work a trouble contractor.