Ur-Shulgi vs. Larloch

Ur-Shulgi vs. Larloch is a What-If? episode of Death Battle.

Description
''Lichdom isn't for everyone. Neither is vampirism. But Larloch and Ur-Shulgi show us how it's done. Can the most powerful arcanist in the Forgotten Realms come out on top, or is one of the oldest vampires in the Classic World of Darkness too mighty an occult threat? Find out in this episode of DEATH BATTLE!''

Interlude
Wiz: The undead are compelling antagonists for fantasy stories, and what better fantasy stories than those of tabletop roleplaying games?

'''Boomstick: You don't need a special effects budget in your imagination. From the Classic World of Darkness, we're tossing Ur-Shulgi, childe of Haqim--'''

Wiz: --in with Larloch, the Shadow King, from the Forgotten Realms of Dungeons and Dragons.

Boomstick: He's Wiz and I'm Boomstick--

Wiz: --and it's our job to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who would win a Death Battle.

Ur-Shulgi
Wiz: Over nine thousand years ago--

Boomstick: Too easy, Wiz.

Wiz: --the founder of the Assamite clan, Haqim, threw a corrupted child into a pit of demonic influence. After an assault by infernalist vampires on the Second City that held the pit, Haqim went back and transformed the boy into a new vampire, Ur-Shulgi.

'''Boomstick: And then he went to sleep for a long time or two. I guess he needed his naps...'''

Wiz: His past is deliberately vague. In modern times, Ur-Shulgi has woken up, and his still-reawakening power is all contained within himself. No weapons, no armor, just a robe for decoration.

'''Boomstick: And his eyes! The EYES, man!'''

Wiz: Ur-Shulgi's eyes have either been removed or burned out, but apparently he can see just fine. Because Ur-Shulgi doesn't have a complete character sheet, some of his abilities are a matter of interpretation--

Boomstick: Which means no one can stop the, say it with me, FANBOY WHINING!

Wiz: Yeah, that.

'''Boomstick: Ur-Shulgi's powers are bundled up in his vampire Disciplines. In the game, each one is rated from 1 to 10, with 1 keeping it simple and 10 being a plot device. That's right, the writers just gave up. I guess when you can notice an ancient curse from multiple mages on your entire bloodline, and you just decide you don't like it and it's gone, it gets pretty hard to actually explain what you can do.'''

Wiz: But a vampire can only reach level 10 in their Disciplines if they're in the 3rd generation, meaning they're the third vampire in a chain starting from the original vampire, Caine. Ur-Shulgi can only reach level 9, because he's in the 4th generation, but that's more than enough to terrify an entire branch of the vampire family tree.

Boomstick: Explaining using the official jargon would take a while, so we cut that part, since I'd get bored if Death Battles were an hour long, too.

Wiz: Regarding his abilities, Ur-Shulgi doesn't move, he just...

'''Boomstick. He just kinda blinks over to wherever he feels like. Otherwise he stays still.'''

Wiz: How this works isn't clear, but since his clan has Celerity as one of their primary disciplines, it's safe to assume it's an application of Celerity. Since there is a similar-but-costly ability called Zephyr at Celerity 8, and obviously Ur-Shulgi can't use it all the time or he'll run out of the blood necessary to power it, it's reasonable to say he has Celerity 9.

'''Boomstick: We get it Wiz. He's overpowered.'''

Wiz: His other physical abilities are unclear. It's unlikely that he survived for this long without at least the Fortitude discipline, which grants supernatural durability.

'''Boomstick: Otherwise, the books wouldn't have lines about how he can snuff out anyone less than a thousand years old before breakfast. And we have tanks now. What about the tanks, huh? The tanks, Mr. Scary Vampire?'''

Wiz: Fortitude is a common Discipline to acquire outside of one's clan. To get an estimate for Ur-Shulgi, we did a linear regression of Fortitude values of vampires at his Generation, correlating with their lifespan. It isn't exactly open-and-shut, but after throwing out a major outlier, it turns out Ur-Shulgi's age of 9000 years should place him comfortably at Fortitude 9.

'''Boomstick: Because it doesn't go any higher! And before you talk about all the time he was dozing off underground, we didn't count sleepytime for the regressinationers either. This kind of defense makes weapons fall apart if they hit him the wrong way. What can't this guy do?'''

Wiz: Again, the books are deliberately unclear, but he's probably the least subtle vampire among the ancients. That means he probably doesn't have Dominate or Presence. If he does, they're at low levels that won't make much of a difference. What he does have for sure, though, are Obsfucate, Quietus, and Assamite Sorcerey, all at level 9, and Auspex at level 8. Obfuscate gives him the ability to obscure himself and others in a variety of ways—such as invisibility, mental shielding, and changing his appearance to essentially whatever he wants.

'''Boomstick: Quietus gives him lots of ways to assassinate people using his blood, though it kinda makes even Assassin's Creed stuff look subtle. And the more powerful stuff isn't really assassination, just mystical blood powers. Then there's Assamite Sorcery, which is, uhhhhh, mystical blood powers. Stuff like telekinesis, shooting fire, conjuring stuff out of thin air, and decaying anything he touches. And there's a lot of fancy rituals.'''

Wiz: Due to the large number of rituals and sub-powers of Ur-Shulgi's Disciplines, we won't be covering them all, partly because they're not all relevant to the fight--like the rituals, generally.

Boomstick: Auspex counts, right?

Wiz: It does.

'''Boomstick: This one lets him use all sorts of mystical sensory powers. He gets telepathy powerful enough to read minds, and he can see people's auras. And if he wants too, he can straight-up mind crush someone, no children's card game required.'''

Wiz: Despite all this, Ur-Shulgi is bound by the Path of Blood, which is a set of immoral and seemingly-arbitrary codes mostly based around coverting the worthy to Haqim's teachings, and killing them if they refuse. Ur-Shulgi will learn all he can about an enemy before engaging them, since not doing that is a sin to him.

Boomstick: He can also run out of batteries.

Wiz: Ur-Shulgi has a concentrated form of converted blood in his body, known as vitae. By burning this off, he can increase his physical might or power his Disciplines, but he can only store up 50 doses of it. We'll assume Ur-Shulgi has all 50 doses for this fight.

'''Boomstick: And he's a vampire, so he can be burned by the sun. He doesn't like fire very much, either. Either can hurt his actual soul, and even send him into rot...roat...rowboat--'''

Wiz: Roetschrek, the vampire version of running away. Wooden stakes through the heart can paralyze him, too. Finally, Ur-Shulgi is a megalomaniac, though with how powerful he is, he can get away with it. Ur-Shulgi might just be the most terrifying vampire in the World of Darkness, short of the 3rd generation members themselves.

'''Boomstick: Plot device! I mean, come on, plot device!'''

(Ur-Shulgi's hollow eyes stare forward. He says nothing.)

Larloch
Wiz: Larloch, the Shadow King. Born two thousand years before the Spellplauge--

'''Boomstick: Don't ask about the Spellplague. Just don't.'''

Wiz: Larloch discovered his own method of lichdom, but not before becoming one of the decadent Sorcerer-Kings of Netheril. Even since the fall of his enclave, Larloch has been considered one of the most powerful arcanists in the Forgotten Realms.

Boomstick: Isn't this the setting where your grocery bagger is probably 15th level out of a usual 20?

Wiz: That's...a bit of an exaggeration about the Forgotten Realms, but it's true that Larloch is a power among powers. Using the revised 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons, where caster supremacy is in full swing, Larloch is level 32 out of a usual maximum of 20. Boomstick, you play D&D, right?

'''Boomstick: Yep. A wizard's power doubles every two levels, and this gets so out-of-control that they can grant wishes before even hitting 20. It scale a little differently above 20, but it's still pretty crazy.'''

Wiz: Thankfully, Larloch has a full character sheet, so we can determine the extent of his power without extrapolation, except for the indeterminate abilities in his history—such as the creation of the Death Moon Orb.

Boomstick: ...Dot Tumblr Dot Com.

Wiz: The Death Moon Orb's powers involved summoning fiends and acting as a class crystal ball, but since it was destroyed after Karsus's Folly, we won't be using it. It's just Larloch's equipment and his spells this time. Speaking of spells, Larloch has spellbooks containing practically every spell in existence, and because there are literally thouands of them in the game, we can't hope to go over them all.

'''Boomstick: But basically, a wizard like Larloch can do whatever he wants. Just go check d20srd.com. Not necessarily anything he wants in terms of power, but you get the idea. Wishes, Wiz.'''

Wiz: And it's not guaranteed that Larloch will have any given one of them. Larloch relies on Vancian spellcasting, which means that he prepares a chosen set of spells in the morning and can fire them off one by one as the day goes on. It's possible for him to expend all of his prepared spells. But with 62 spell slots, not including cantrips, it's not likely that he'll run out.

'''Boomstick: But a few of Larloch's spells are gonna come out no matter what. He can convert some of his prepared spells into a few spells he's mastered.'''

Wiz: Magic Missile, which needs no--

Boomstick: Magic homing rockets!

Wiz: Ugh. Dispel magic, which does just what it sounds like it does; bestow curse, fly, fireball and teleport, which are self-explanatory; chain lightning, which lets him blasts multiple targets with lightning; disintegrate, which is a thin green ray that can turn a 10 foot cube of anything into dust; and time stop, which accelerates Larloch to such a speed that he can get several spells out while his enemies are effectively frozen in time.

'''Boomstick: And then there's DEVASTATE UNDEAD, which autokills anything undead. Wait, how is this fair?'''

Wiz: Most of Larloch's spells can be resisted, partially or entirely, including devastate undead. Whether that be by raw physical might, speed or will, it's possible to shrug off Larloch's spells entirely.

'''Boomstick: But not all of them. It's complicated. Larloch gets a few freebie spells too; every day he can cast a spell without all the tricky 'casting' stuff. Magic missile, web, dispel magic, arcane eye, animate dead, chain lightning, control undead, devastate undead, and energy drain.'''

Wiz: Arcane eye creates a small visual probe, animate dead makes skeletons and zombies out of corpses, control undead is self explanatory, and web bogs down an area in sticky strands that trap anyone within.

Boomstick: And if regular spells don't work, he can just cast versions of them that are faster or don't need some of the hand-waving or secret words.

Wiz: But spells aren't all that Larloch has to offer. Larloch is a lich, which means that his undead body is immune to anything that would influence his dead mind. Poisons and ailments against the living don't work on him. Of course, he has a phylactery, and thus can come back from the dead if killed...given a few days to recover.

'''Boomstick: And he's completely decked out in magical gear. He's got enough Ioun stones to make your head spin, which are little pebbles that float around your head and give you magic upgrades.'''

Wiz: Mostly passive ones that make him more talented in general, but a few of Larloch's ioun sones allow him to regain spells or absorb—then reflect—spells cast at him. What's more, Larloch's magic jewelry, cloak, and bracers render him mostly impervious to magical and physical attacks. The details are a bit difficult to go over in a reasonable time frame. He also has a ring of three wishes for emergencies, and carries with him a legendary Staff of the Magi.

'''Boomstick: It gives him more spells. More. Spells. And it can absorb magic to charge itself up, but if it absorbs too much, it explodes and might send you to an alternate dimension. That's if you don't break it and make it explode yourself, but who would do that? Right?'''

Wiz: Finally, Larloch has some unique abilities. Anyone who touches him is cursed with age and idiocy, and he's immune to an unknown set of nine spells. Larloch is immune to a variety of threats, such as cold, electricity, magical movement inhibitors, getting hit--

Boomstick: Half of the time.

Wiz: --and he can see past any invisibility. This ancient wizard is the pinnacle of arcane might, and can bring anyone short of a god to their knees.

(Larloch's eyes, nothing more than red beads of light, burn in their sockets as he stares.)