Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)

[Fate]

Insanity is a percentage chance that the unit will ignore any orders you give it for a turn and do something random. When they do their picture will turn red and their random order will be already selected for them. Insane units will not randomly decide to move.

For most nations the insane orders are stuff that doesn't do anything (stuff like "F'taghn!" and "Stargazing"). For R'lyeh (whose dominion spreads insanity) they will execute real orders, but rarely to any effect (a non-magic path commander attempting to site-search). Occassionally R'lyeh will get multiple prophets this way (you can search the forums for more information on this).

Finally, I have read that tartarians are insane and do some interesting things, but I have never really experimented with them so I am not at all sure.


Question 2: Most nations have national spells. Some of these can be cast be the national mages, some can be cast with a little help, and some require luck/empowerment/pretender paths as you mentioned. You can try a test game and summon these to see if they are worth it, but I doubt it unless you can figure out other ways of leveraging those paths on your pretender (maybe summoning more death mages to really start your foray into death magic, though you would have to balance it against your blood and fire and astral magic as well).


Question 3:
You can search the forums for information about old age. Some short points:

Age advances at the end of every late winter by one year.

Old age causes new afflictions every late winter along with other stat modifications.

Afflictions from old age can only be cured by the Chalice (N4? Construction 8 unique item) and the Gift of Health global (N4, Ench 6?).

The spell Rejuvanation (Blood school 6? , B3?, ritual requires 10 slaves) reduces age by 10 (enough rituals will remove old age). The boots of youth (Constr 6? B? item) stops aging and new afflictions from old age.