As many as your campaign needs. Why limit yourself if you don't know for sure that you might need one more? Contrariwise, why establish that there are fifty that you need to account for if you have no use for more than twelve?
The PCs don't know for sure. Ivid transformed some of his nobles and generals, but nobody has a definitive list of which ones are still human and which aren't. Probably not even Ivid.
I agree with Rasgon - you should leave the exact number an unknown quantity and it should be very difficult for your PCs to even get an estimate.
Rumors should exaggerate the numbers while some individuals (for their own nefarious reasons) should refute those numbers and minimize them. "Everyone" should be able to tell the PCs that Ivid summoned all the heads of the noble families, all his generals, all his ministers, and all their horses to his palace in his last days and turned them all, one by one, into animi(?). Contrarily, Agents of Grinnell, Herzog of North Province, will clandestinely inform the PCs that only a handful of individuals in possession of special, powerful, magical items were made into animi by Ivid. He did this to ensure that they would be able to guard those items for ever. Oh, and most of them, curiously, happen to be members of House Cranden...
So, the PCs can't be sure how many animi there are and you don't have to decide except on an individual basis: if you want a particular NPC to be an animus, s/he can be. If you don't want them to be an animus, they aren't. The PCs won't be able to tell if you're maintaining the numbers they verified.
After making a successful Research proficiency check (and consulting my own copy of Sargent's Ivid the Undying, no mean feat given its great length), I found the following information on page 32:
"There are no more than 40 or so animus creatures in
Aerdy, and Ivid has been told by Baalzephon that he can
spare few wishes from his pit fiends to create more."
Hope this grants me enough XP to gain another level, increasing towards GreySage status.
After making a successful Research proficiency check (and consulting my own copy of Sargent's Ivid the Undying, no mean feat given its great length), I found the following information on page 32:
"There are no more than 40 or so animus creatures in
Aerdy, and Ivid has been told by Baalzephon that he can
spare few wishes from his pit fiends to create more."
-Granted Rasgon and Sir X's point that the DM can do what he wills, color me impressed. I thought that would be the sort of thing which would have been mentioned somewhere...
James, do you want actual names of animuses, as well as locations and their character classes, etc. too? I can cross-reference and give that information to you, if you like, and time permitting...
James, do you want actual names of animuses, as well as locations and their character classes, etc. too? I can cross-reference and give that information to you, if you like, and time permitting...
-Lanthorn
-No, that's OK. I hope I didn't make you jump through any hoops; it was really just for curiosity based on Vestcoat's comment in another thread; I thought it woud be interesting to see if anything had actually been done on it. I do have a print off of Ivid the Undying. If I were doing something with an area, I'd probably check that. Of course, not every Animus will be listed at a location...
Plus, if anyone wants to discuss Animi (?) in the future, we now have a ready made thread. So actually, if you want to collect their names, locations, and data, this would be a good place to do it. Of course, that assumes Cebrion can get the search engine to work.
Seems that someone else beat me to the proverbial punch. Here is a list of all noteworthy undead on Oerth, in alphabetical order, starting with Animuses (15 are mentioned):
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
Canonfire! is a production of the Thursday Group in assocation with GREYtalk and Canonfire! Enterprises