For our runic arrays segment this week we give you the ultimate reset button.
This week we show you the Lazarus array.
Notation: Transmute Non-Living Humans into Living Humans and sustain said Humans.
Class: Utility
Description: A very simple array but with the most direst of consequences. This array does exactly what its name implies: it brings humans back from the dead. By transmuting non-living humans into living humans, the only thing you are really changing is the state of life, thereby leaving the person “transmuted” unaffected otherwise. They are still the same person for all intents and purposes, but one thing that does not change is how they died.
Unlike the Dark Folly array, the Lazarus doesn’t turn back time to before the person died, it just changes their state from “dead” to “living”. So if they died through violent means (eg a gunshot to the chest) they will still have that bullet hole in their body and all the damage associated with it. And if left like that, they will promptly die again. That is why the Sustain rune in this array is so important; it sustains the body and keeps it from whatever just killed it killing it again. As long as the array is active and the Sustain rune is working, the person won’t die again. This gives you the time to fix whatever went wrong, however you might go about it.
One thing to note is that because this array only changes a person’s state from “dead” to “living”, if they are too far decomposed, it wouldn’t do any good since no amount of surgery will fix them. In that case, it is better to use something like the Dark Folly array. It will require far more energy, however, and that is why this array will more easily work in a pinch.
And lastly, if you are using the Z-Land rules with the Runed Dead crossover (for which the Life rune was invented), this array won’t help to bring people back from the dead as the undead in the Runed Dead are powered by the arrays. If you try and use this array on a dead person, it will just turn them into a zombie.
So I’m thinking that if you utilize this array with the one that creates an unliving human/animal will that provide a generic human/animal entity? And would there be a way to combine this array with the create array to produce workers/soldiers? Definitely an interesting thought.
A very interesting thought indeed; and yes you should be able to do that quite easily. Perhaps by using this array as a secondary array within a larger one simply creating humans/animals and then having an If-then statement linking the two together. So you’d create a human (dead by default) and as soon as a dead human is present, it will bring it to life.
That was my thought on it, as well. Yet another direction to look for interesting plot-twists. I’m wondering if there shall be a book (or card-deck) consolidating the arrays that I have been seeing here in the near future?
We do a yearly collection of that year’s runic arrays, which come in book pdf and/or printed card format. We just released the latest Journal of Array Design in March (which you can find here), so you’ll have to wait until next year for all most latest arrays to be collected.
Looks like I’m going to have to wait another year, as I have both Volume 1 & 2 of the Journal of Array Design. Continuing to build on ideas.