Immortal

This article is about the class of being also known as fairies and sometimes equated with Ancients. For more general usage, see Immortality.

Immortals (also called fairies) were first introduced during the Hidden Genesis story arc. Immortals are a race of beings who typically dwell on another plane of existence, which Edward Verres referred to as a "spiritual plane", and suggested that it was a plane "above" the one the other races live on. Beings on the physical plane can not see or hear events on the spiritual plane, but the immortals and any other creatures living on the spiritual plane can see and hear what happens on the physical plane.

When following their rules, immortals can only be seen when they wish to be seen, even by other immortals.

While it has been shown that immortals can potentially look like whatever they please (they can shapeshift) - from a mischievous child to an amorphous blob - most that have been seen typically stay in their true form. It is, however, common for immortals to have oddly shaped ears. Thus far, there is only one known immortal who chooses to occasionally look like a child - Pandora Raven, who was the third immortal introduced. The other known immortals, including the French Immortals, Jerry, and Voltaire, have chosen to use their physical form to reflect their approximate physical ages: before resetting themselves, the French immortals and Jerry looked like old, aged elves; the French Immortals, having reset, now resemble teenagers. and so does Jerry, who now calls himself Zeus; Voltaire looks like a middle-aged man.

While immortals possess nearly god-like powers on the spiritual plane, they are significantly weaker on the normal, physical plane (i.e., that of the Main Universe). An average person would have trouble dealing with one, but Edward Verres stated that people involved in DGB, or presumably other people who are awakened magically, would have favored odds in a fight. This is, of course, assuming the immortal in question would play fair. After discovering the changes to Immortal Law, Edward remarked that his previous statement felt arrogant, and that he wasn't confident with his previous assessment.

Immortals have a system to keep each other in check, and have their own rules governing what they can and cannot do in the physical world. Before they changed the rules, the immortals were forbidden from doing anything other than guide or empower a person (such as when "awakening" a "dreaming" magic user or setting a non-magic user "dreaming") on the physical plane. Point of fact, immortals could not harm someone on the physical plane (except in self defense), or else they would be reset. However, there were loopholes to this rule that allowed the Immortals to attack others regardless (Doing as little as threatening an Immortal is excuse enough for them to attack without repercussions).

Immortals are undetectable by mortal magic-detecting senses.

Another trait of immortals is that many choose elitist names from ancient mythology, to the point of having two or more immortals named "Zeus," for example.

Fairies

Immortals are not the only immortal beings in EGS. In the past, they were called fairies. It's possible they only get away with renaming themselves to immortals because other kinds of immortals no longer interact with humans or only do it rarely, since many people, from random humans like Luke to possible deities like Heka, find that name to be horrible.

Children

Main article: Elves

Immortal interaction with those on the physical plane can also include reproduction. The child resulting from said liaison is commonly referred to as an Elf, though thus far there is only one known in existence, Adrian Raven. As Raven has referred to himself as an abomination, it is possible that offspring of humans and immortals are seen as unnatural in the magic-using community and are persecuted for their heritage.

Reset

Immortals tend to reset themselves after about 200 years of aging. The reason for this, as the immortal Jerry explained to Susan, Grace, and Sarah during the third part of the Hammerchlorians storyline, is that as immortals experience life, their memories become clearer, their intelligence increases, and their power grows, to the point where they get more accurately clairvoyant with each passing year. Because of this, they gradually become more bored, more powerful, and less sane, which is a bad combination. If immortals live for too long, they are likely to destroy themselves, and take a bunch of innocent beings along with them. Thus, they reset themselves approximately after 200 years of aging. After resetting, the immortal in question reverts to their base nature, with most of their memories lost, and they have to start from scratch. If done properly, even though the actual memories of the previous life will be lost, the knowledge contained within them will be retained (but it will be secondhand knowledge as if they had read a book written by a predecessor). It is also possible for an immortal to retain the knowledge such that they still truly knew everyone that was important to them, though most immortals don't even consider trying.

The downside of this is if the immortal in question doesn't die properly (by gathering back all the power they've doled out, such as the power Jerry used to make the hammer artifact), they won't be reborn with all their knowledge intact, and may forget important things. This is the main reason why the French Immortals are having such a difficult time with their memories - they didn't reset properly.

Immortal law

Empower and Guide

As mentioned, the interactions of immortals and mortals were limited to "empower and guide". This is however technically incorrect, as this definition does not mention anything about the loopholes which could be found in that. Apparently, doing something indirectly instead of directly was the usual way how to go around the rules.

What was enforced is that when an immortal knowingly violated the rules (including "guide and empower"), all the other immortals automatically sensed this and contributed in a distributed manner to a forced reset. Consequently, immortals were bound only by their individual understandings of "guide and empower".

Pandora and Voltaire are known to interpret immortal law very generously. For example, Voltaire mind-controlled Dex by combination of empowering in a way that made him very susceptible to suggestions as a side effect and guiding him in that state (as Adrian Raven, Noah and Tedd commented), Pandora empowered Moperville by clogging the magic and also apparently found a loophole in the rule that mortals may not be given magic marks without their knowledge or consent simply by explaining everything while on the astral plane without the mortals actually hearing it.

New immortal law

After Pandora was reset, Voltaire summoned the immortals to a meeting to change the immortal law to give them more freedom. What exactly they decided is unclear, but that new rules apparently have as a side effect that the immortals are no longer intangible, or at least unable to move through walls.

Vows

An immortal can vow to do or not do something for a mortal. Breaking a vow will result in intrusive thoughts about the vow.

The following vows are known:

• Jerry vowed to be Susan's ally in order to atone for how the French immortals used her to kill a vampire. Zeus inherited the vow.
• Voltaire vowed not to kill Elliot on Edward's request.
• Pandora vowed to help Sarah awaken.

Moral Compass

It seems that Immortals have problems with their moral compass. Heka directly said that fairies struggle with mortal morality. The repeated "people say that" response suggest that they know that somethings are evil but only because they were told, they don't feel it.

Known Immortals

Pandora Chaos Raven

Helena and Demetrius (French Immortals)

Jerry/Zeus

Voltaire

Hanma