Remember . . .

[Brandi]

What is Shay-Lot?
Well an abadoned aboleth city you'll probably say but I don't mean that. I mean where is it? Why do you believe it is such a city?

The name sounds familiar but I don't remember anything.

Drinnik is having a slightly confused recollection from the CotN: Werebeasts adventure featuring the wereray Hilde Borgonov. The sunken city she's been investigating has no name and its inhabitants are called the Shay-lot-- and it's left quite open as to just what the Shay-lot are. They very well could be aboleth.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Hmmmm. I suppose it *could* work, assuming Azalin doesn't already have some means of pinpointing the right volume within his library (card catalog? Dewey decimal system? ;-D).

But then again, if an aboleth's ENTIRE MEMORY -- millions of years of ancestral experience and countless digested victims' memories, included -- were to appear on the lich's shelves, wouldn't that one critter's memory take up hundreds of times more pages than the rest of his memory-text collection put together...? There's a question of diminishing returns to be considered; if he has to choose between sifting through 10,000 volumes of human recollections, or 5,000,000 volumes of *one* aboleth's, that's not exactly an efficient indexing system. :-/

[Jester of the FoS]

-OR-
The aboleth has the more powerful mind and exerts its mental dominance knocking back Azalin and letting it get a peak in HIS mind. He's just made his worst enemy.

Azalin is a Darklord. His power over memories is donated by the Dark Powers, so it is vastly more powerful than the aboleth's powers. Aboleth's are ancient and immortal but not deities. So they can't defy the rules of the Dread Realms.

Yes, but a darklord who has been unchallenged in the mental realm. It may be a muscle he has not toned to perfection. And learning mental combat to fight an intelectual psionic genius would count as a new skill.

Remember, Strahd was a darklord and a vampire but some of his powers could be overidden by a more powerful will (ie Jander and the wolves).

I'm not saying he wouldn't find a way to break free, but it might be a struggle. He'd win but for a few days/weeks/months an alien power would be running his mind...

[alhoon]

It may be a muscle he has not toned to perfection. And learning mental combat to fight an intelectual psionic genius would count as a new skill.

Remember, Strahd was a darklord and a vampire but some of his powers could be overidden by a more powerful will (ie Jander and the wolves).

Azalin can learn new skills. He can't learn new magic.

Also I haven't read "Vampire of the mists", and that comes to me as a shock. Jander overid Strahd's rule over the wolves? All the rules of Ravenloft I have seen say that this is impossible.

To Rotipher: The books would be useless to Azalin, I agree. . .
But Azalin can now search the memories of his subjects directly with a standard action.
The "Lords of Madness" states that an aboleth needs much time to recall a specific piece of information. Azalin doesn't have that problem. He can search the memories of the aboleth much more efficiently than the creature itself. . .

hmmm that seems paradoxical to me. I believe it needs fixing.

[Jester of the FoS]

Well, Strahd had never really explored his vampiric powers in that regard and was only a few decades old whereas Jander had hundreds of years of wolf-control experience.
Strahd did catch up and show his superiority... eventually.