Thank you kindly for the elaborative post, LoM.
My turn for a wall of text:
You raise solid points, of course and I personally agree with most of them. However, as you can see, I think we are only really debating the use of magic in Angmar. The architecture you have implemented for Angmar is wonderful and quite fitting, with the use of stone and iron, as well as some wooden elements.
The sacrifice theme is also a very fitting concept that I do not think is unrealistic or lore-unfriendly in the sense that it is impossible. You could imagine that all these individuals would ''push'' themselves to extremes just for the sake of their leaders and the thrust for power. I see it like a perverted inspiration mechanic, where these inviduals or soldiers would go to extreme lengths to prove themselves in the face of their leaders, hurting themselves in the process.
Furthermore, most of these things that you interpreted for yourselves like the traitorous Men that joined with Angmar and that are not dictated in the lore, are far more acceptable, because you have actually written lore to try and explain a logical chain of events that resulted in what Angmar eventually had become.
This brings me to my point and my suggestion: I think this is the perfect opportunity to make a lore background article or post explaining the entire background of how the sorcerers came to be and who and what Gulzar is. This, to remove all the speculation and room for interpretation and make it so that they have their own little lore to make it less controversial to field them and hopefully lead to more acceptance from the lore heads. It is the ideal opportunity to explain to the people what Angmar's magic is, and how it came to be.
My lore suggestion goes something like this:
The Witch-King had two disciples, which he believed where his two most potent pupils and he gave them two lesser rings of power that the Witch-King had obtained in the past. Since the Witch-King was already bound to Sauron's will, the rings had no effect on him, so he decided to gift them to his most talented disciples. Introducing: Zaphragor and Gulzar.
Zaphragor's story has already been explained in one of the articles, but Gulzar has yet to be explained. I believe it would be very proficient to hit two birds with one stone, by connecting the sorcerers and Gulzar together, in the formation of a
small sorcerer cult.Allow me to continue:
While Zaphragor was completely devoted and loyal to the Witch-King, Gulzar had a more twisted nature deformed by pride, hate and a superiority complex. Being one of the most influential figures in Angmar's ruling sorcerer nobilite, he would go on ahead and use his lesser ring of power to dabble in dark arts and other forms of depravity. Eventually, he was most pleased that he was able to slowly decay the life of his test subjects, simply by focussing his hate into his lesser ring of power, the ring of decay. This let Gulzar to form a base of studies and research around the manipulation of pestilence and decay, and the experiments on subjects to create vile plagues and virulent diseases. However, his pride let him to believe that he needed to spread his influence and teachings in these dark arts, so that they would not be lost. In his search for future pupils, he found that he needed human beings that had a particular disdain for living things underneath them and humans that could have their hate become a driving force, instead of fear, thrive for power or simple loyalty, much alike to Gulzar himself. Where else to look but the Angmar nobilite, who had a particular disdain for the filthy orcs and hillmen, as well as the half-witted trolls beneath them?
He went on and founded a small, but very powerful sorcerer cult. His lesser ring of power, the ring of decay, had a particular ability, to share a part of its power with an individual that was similar in personality as the wearer through a ritual that only Gulzar could hold in utter secrecy. Unfortunately for Gulzar, and unbeknownst to him, the ring of decay had one downside. His life was prolonged much like the lifespan of Numénoreans, but it did not make him immortal. Instead, he would slowly decay himself, and suffer a long and painful death after the fall of Angmar due to his greed, pride and dabbling in the dark arts. Since only very few were apt to share Gulzar's power of pestilence and decay, the cult was eventually destroyed by the combined forces of Men and Elves during the fall of Angmar. However, some time before Angmar's fall, the Witch-King had taken a notice of Gulzar's cult and their influence as well as aptitude for sorcery. In order to prevent Gulzar from becoming a thorn in the Witch-King's side at the last moments, he laid claim to Gulzar's cult. Gulzar was furious, but eventually accepted, because he knew he could not defeat the Witch-King in a duel, and that somewhere, he was grateful, for the Witch-King had given him the lesser ring of power that allowed him to cast sorcery in the first place. As a last ditch effort, the Witch-King himself imparted some teachings to the cult, which led them to be able to manipulate the elements around them to a certain degree. In the final assault on Carn-Dûm, the Witch-King ordered all the acolytes to make a last stand and ''throw everything they have'' at the invaders before the capital would fall. The acolytes tried manipulating the ice and snow beneath their feet to slow the advance, freeze unlucky souls as well as sapping the strength and the will to fight of the invaders. They even tried healing arts, which is strictly forbidden in sorcery and throwing corpses at their opponents. Gulzar was obedient, till the last few moments, where he bolted like a coward further north. Gulzar's cult was destroyed, and he died of decay by his ring in complete loneliness somewhere in the northern wastes.
This is some vague, but potential lore background that I had thought of for Gulzar and the sorcerers.
I will now move on to my suggestion for the sorcerers:
Transform the sorcerers into a support-oriented heroic unit. Limit them to 3. Raise their price accordingly (1100 possibly). Make them a late game unit only, which can be built via the temple of twilight if the Tower of Sorcery has been researched on an outpost. Furthermore, all their abilities will be unlocked by default, which would make them unique since the sorcerers would be the only heroic units for an evil faction that would not level, with a pure support oriented function. Scale their levels in power accordingly. With 5 abilities, and 5 acolytes, each ability costs an acolyte more, requiring the player to carefully manage his acolytes in battle. Furthermore, the reinforcement time of acolytes should be very low, like heroic units. To compensate for this, the Temple of Twilight could have some interesting abilities to make it more powerful in the lategame. On level 2, the Temple of Twilight can activate an ability that allows all fielded sorcerers to rapidly reinforce their acolytes for a very short time.
On level 3, if Gulzar is recruited, sorcerers and their thralls get a boost in armour and spell damage.
Both could be inverted, other abilities could be thought of.
Again, this part is just conjecture.
I believe we need to find a compromise. Since the fact that Angmar can seemingly recruit as many sorcerers as it wants, it upsets the people that care much about lore, and Tolkien's definition of magic. Tolkien doesn't necessarily mean that magic cannot be taught, but the key element to Tolkien's magic is that its use and appearances are very reserved and then again subtle for most peoples. He stated specifically that being able to bend elements would take tremendous amounts of strength or longevity, akin to that of Maiar and above, or individuals possessing objects that are imbued by the power of Maiar or the inheritance and origin of their folk, like the elves. I think that if we make the sorcerers limited, but powerful, we can explain it in the sense that the Witch-King managed to give them lesser rings of power, since multiple were made and eventually found in the remnants of Eregion and other regions of Eriador. I think it would be the only way to justify the use of such extreme feats of magic for ''regular'' human beings for a faction devoid of Maiar. I am sure that Walk would agree with me in that sense
.
I know it was quite a bit of text, but what are your thoughts people? I spent a decent amount of time thinking of a way to explain a connection between Gulzar, his acolytes and the Witch-king and their ability to use magic via the possession of lesser rings of power, not to mention writing this post.