Meshabber of Dis

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Jan 7, 2009
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I've created this thread to respond to comments originally posted in the Bug Thread.
[to_xp]Gekko;8398580 said:
the Meshabber of Dis just gets fireball, since he has the divine promotion and should have AV though I think he should also have ring of fire or something?
Divine + Channeling II (and AV religion, of course) would give Ring of Flames. Fire II gives Fireball, with or without Divine. It seems intentional that he has Divine and Fire II but not Channeling II. The "advantage" of Meshabber having Fireball rather than Ring of Flames is that he can bombard city defenses, making him a versatile conqueror.

This is not a bug, but just something that bothers me about Meshabber of Dis: He can only be built in the Ashen Veil holy city, which cannot possibly be Dis. Meshabber of Galveholm or something like that would really be a better name.
My guess is that wherever the Infernals come from (I don't know enough about the lore to know if it's called Hell, or something else) there is a city called Dis, to which Meshabber's name refers. The Dis on this plane would actually be "New Dis", if you will. Maybe it's the Infernal custom to name their first city on every new plane "Dis", because the city is so well known; perhaps there have been thousands of cities named "Dis" on thousands of planes.

Alternately, I don't see any specific reason to tie Meshabber's name to the AV holy city. It would make more sense to me if he was "Meshabber of [city the builds him]". In any case, renaming him Meshabber of Galveholm would be nearly as flawed, because AV is very rarely going to be founded there, if ever. Unless the Sheaim found it, and unless they have only one city, it will probably be founded somewhere else.

In any case, the solution to being bothered by Meshabber's name is simple: Rename him.
 
Meshabber of Dis has not had his promotions updated since the streamlining of the spell system. Back when the Arcane line had to be specialized into Sorcery and Summoning, divine spells depended not on the caster's religion but on the same sphere promotions as arcane spells. Divine + Fire II was Ring of Fire, while Divine + Fire III was Pillar of Fire. These were available to both AV and Order priests, as well as to Seraphim (which, like Meshabber, have not had their promotions updated.)


Ring of Flames used to deal its damage in Python instead of XML, and there was an if statement that made it deal double the damage whem Meshabber cast it. I believe that that python code endured for a few versions after he lost the ability to cast the spell.



The Iron City of Dis was first described as a metropolis in Nyx, the lowest level of hell, founded on the border between the regions dominated by the flames and passion of Bhall and the darkness and despair of Agares. Meshabber was a demon lord whose fiefdom included the great city of Dis.

I believe it was fairly recently retconned so that Meshabber was not in Nyx, but rather in the Fane of the Lessers ("The Throne of Hell, "a part of Erebus that has been in demonic hands since the Godswar, and is close enough to hell that it is practically a pocket dimension like the Well of Shadows, which serves the purpose of gathering souls together and drawing them to their eternal fate). (It might also be that the city is so great that is spans several planes of existence, having portions in various hells and a portion in Erebus). This great city sat atop the largest portal between Erebus and Hell, and while Meshabber was officially the ruler of the city he mostly ignored it and instead focused on guarding the portal and plotting invasions of Erebus.
 
So then why doesn't Meshabber show up in the Lord of the Balors scenario? Isn't that set in the Fane of Lessers?
 
The divine promotion gives him potency and free mobility if he is built by Hyborem due to the infernals Spiritual trait.

That's the only reason I can come up with for why he (still) has it.
 
The divine promotion does nothing of the sort. The Spiritual Trait gives those promotions out to unitcombat_disciple units regardless of what promotions they may also have. Meshabber is unitcombat_melee, so he does not get that bonus.
 
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