OK, now that we’ve got Assemonite religion all set out, it’s time to look at the law. I roll 2d6-3 for each of the five categories of law, and then average them all out for the overall law level.
Weapons law gets a 6, which is high-moderate. This kind of the law is also the only one that gets specific guidelines for each level in the various versions of Traveller, so I can tell you that Amon Assemon forbids all firearms except for shotguns, which I can’t imagine being overly useful on such a small moon. That might challenge the sort of technolibertarianism I was seeing in the moon’s culture, as it is a governmental intrusion into individual liberties, but perhaps not. After all, those Google techies that I used to run with who are my main model for such are mostly liberal-leaning well-off urban folk. Exactly the sort of person I, at least, expect to support gun control.
Further cementing that technolibertarianism is the trade law level, which comes out a 3, the highest level still considered low. It seems like the Assemonite Parliament has generally taken a free-trade, laissez-faire stance. It might be described, perhaps, as a frontier kind of stance. I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet how similar Amon Assemon feels, to me, to a sort of queer-ass Western setting (in which the colonialist idea of terra nullius, “no man’s land”, happens to be true cuz moon). Scattered homesteads with no real town except maybe the spaceport, and relatively few restrictions on commerce? Yeah, that’s a bit Wild West. I guess we can sum up Amon Assemon as “technolibertarian Firefly written by flamboyant, non-assimilationist queers” ~ I’m into it.
What about when someone done me wrong on this moon? Remember that Traveller splits that into criminal and civil law. Criminal law comes up with a law level of 7, or high. OK, forget the technolibertarianism ~ or, maybe, don’t. As a leftist anarchist, I’ve seen how rightist versions of anarchism can allow fascism to foster (the liberal problem), invite fascism (the anarchocapitalist option), or even be identical to fascism (the so-caled “Third Way”, a.k.a. esoteric anarchism, a.k.a. cryptofascism, a.k.a. anarchofascism, a.k.a. the alt-right). Queer fascism is also totally, and sadly, a thing. Maybe Amon Assemon has begun to shift in such a direction. We’ll be able to judge better when it comes to rolling the personal freedoms law level, but we have established that there is at least a little bit of the draconian to their legal codes.
How litigious are they? Rolling for it, we find that civil law is at a solidly high level of 8. As intense as the punishments can be for breaking the law, losing a lawsuit is worse. Considering that the highest law level a representative democracy can roll in this system is a 9, Amon Assemon is practically the worst. Let’s see how permissive it is with personal freedoms, the stat I consider the primary indicator of fascism. We roll another 8. Yep, this technolibertarian individualist queer paradise has rotted from within and become a totalitarian state. I imagine it still looks like the Wild West to Ishee, a place where queer people can learn and grow to find and become themselves, a place where a body can settle in with a good-sized parcel of land and live by the fruits of their own labor, but that is a mask ~ only a little true ~ or what is actually a tyrannical and intrusionist government.
I’m starting to feel even more sympathetic to that radical direct democracy rebel group. I’d even call them freedom fighters.
The overall law level is the average of the other levels, which is 6.8 ~ just shy of a high level of law. It’s only their dedication to laissez-faire free trade that prevents them from achieving high. Their public relations stance probably makes more of this economic freedom than it deserves. Tyrants always like to make out like their defenders of freedom, after all.
Another key indicator of a planet’s level of fascism is how progressive their culture is. Amon Assemon has few enough people, and a democratic enough government, that this is a flat 2d6 roll. An 8 means the moon ends up with a conservative (barely) attitude, which adds +3 to the roll for the culture’s progressiveness action. Whatever that ends up being, however, I think it’s fair to say that we’ve established a fairly right-wing vision of a queer homeland. It’s not one I share, but there are qweens out there for whom it would sound glorious. That 2d6+3 roll shakes out as an 11, indicating an indifferent action. That’s kind of an awkward term ~ it means that they lack a drive to progress and change, but also lack a drive to resist it. This leads to an almost immeasurably slow rate of change in their society. That seems about right for the right-wing queers I’ve met in my life.
Perhaps luckily, the 2d6 roll to determine how aggressive the Assemonites are comes up 8 ~ unaggressive. However, the accompanying 2d6 roll to determine their actions is a 3, which means they’re militant. These are the fascists against which appeasement might work ~ they flout their military strength and many openly advocate for military solutions to their problems, but they prefer compromise to action. Their bark is worse than their bite, because they won’t actually attack unless backed into a corner or given absolutely none of what they want. This doesn’t make their diplomats any easier to deal with, incidentally, because it means they’re bullies who bluff up a big intimidating pose and ask for more than you can give in an attempt to convince you to “compromise” and give them what they actually want, and maybe a bit more. I think this is what Trump wants the American populace to think he is.
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Friday, November 30, 2018
The quissians of Scarhas (Fantasy Friday #24)
Quissians have darkvision out to 60 feet, which is worth 2 RP, and a trait equivalent to Camouflage (Desert), which is another 1 RP. Their Skill Bonus to Climb costs them 2 RP, and +2 natural armor is their most expensive racial trait with 3 RP. It’s not listed in their stat block in Mythic Races, but in the text it describes that the quissians don’t need to drink water to survive. It’s a very small ability, but I’ll call it worth 1 RP. Languages can be a bit difficult for me, as the existence of a near-universal Common language is utterly risible. That being said, it is founded upon real things. Latin was a scholarly language in medieval Europe, in which all the revered ancient texts, as well as anything involving the hegemonic Catholic Church, whereas Farsi’s importance as a poetic language, the language of Rumi and Hafiz and many others, earned it the right to function beside Qu’ranic Arabic (whose importance should be obvious, in light of the inerrancy required of reproductions of Islam’s holy text) allowed them to function the same way. In short, these were languages that the educated and privileged classes could reasonably expect to be known by anyone they met in their travels or someone near to hand, if not. Even the common folk picked up phrases here and there in these languages from hearing them repeated or out of sheer pragmatic necessity when dealing the courts or the church.
Of course, all three languages being born of empires certainly didn’t hurt.
Scarhasi religion isn’t textual the way Islam is, but it does have two empires that are important to the region. The Hemeya Sea was not always a sea, but once was a mountainous empire of minotaurs that was punished by its gods for purging scientific inquiry from its culture. A giant ball of flame and stone fell form the sky, and the empire’s peaks became islands. It was in the wake of this catastrophe that the Haćo religion was first created. The language of the minotaurs (Istahaanu) functions much like Quranic Arabic (and scholarly Latin, as many minotaurs never fully relinquished their scientific curiosity, even in the post-apocalyptic archipelago they found themselves in). On the other hand, the dragon-kings who rule the city-states of the Dragon Coast have ruled those city-states ~ and have been worshiped by their citizens ~ since well before the minotaurs even founded their empire! This immortality-backed continuity of government and economic hegemony have spawned the creation of a pidgin of the languages of these seven city-states that serves as the de facto diplomatic language of Scarhas. It’s a Scarhasi Esperanto of sorts.
Quissians, obviously, have their own language “of hisses and pops that sounds like the primal communication of serpents”. I’ll call it . . . Quissad. But do they know either or both of Scarhas’s international languages? They’re given Common in the text, but also described as isolationist, nigh unto xenophobia, engaging only in brief, perfunctory interactions filled sparingly with quick and honest speech unadorned by casual conversation. With that in mind, as well as the very short list of three language options given in the text, I’m going to give them the Xenophobic trait (0 RP)
That means that the quissian’s total RP cost is 8 RP, which makes them equivalent to the half-orc, duergar, orc, vanara, and lizardfolk. I call it good! Here, then, is my conversion of the quissian race, in proper formatting (although, conversion might be a weird word for something this easy):
Standard Racial Traits
Ability Score Racial Traits: Quissians are a naturally tough race, but their stern, withdrawn tendencies make them less sociable than other races. +2 Constitution, -2 Charisma.
Size: Quissians are Medium creatures and thus receive no bonuses or penalties due to their size.
Type: Quissians are humanoids with the quissian subtype.
Base Speed: Quissians have a base speed of 30 feet.
Languages: Quissians begin play speaking Quissad. Quissians with high Intelligence scores can choose from the following: Istahaanu, Draconic Pidgin, Pearl Words.
Defense Racial Traits
Natural Armor: Their thick scales and tough skin give quissians a +2 natural armor bonus to their Armor Class.
Feat and Skill Racial Traits
Camouflage: Quissians gain a +4 racial bonus on Stealth checks while within the desert. With their earth-colored scales, quissians easily blend into their native environment.
Skill Bonus (Climb): Quissians gain a +2 racial bonus on Climb checks. The quissians’ clawed hands and feet make them excellent climbers.
Senses Racial Traits
Darkvision: Quissians can see perfectly in the dark up to 60 feet.
Other Racial Traits
Dry: Quissians have no need of any kind of regular hydration. A quissian can drink if they choose but does not need to for survival.
Of course, all three languages being born of empires certainly didn’t hurt.
Scarhasi religion isn’t textual the way Islam is, but it does have two empires that are important to the region. The Hemeya Sea was not always a sea, but once was a mountainous empire of minotaurs that was punished by its gods for purging scientific inquiry from its culture. A giant ball of flame and stone fell form the sky, and the empire’s peaks became islands. It was in the wake of this catastrophe that the Haćo religion was first created. The language of the minotaurs (Istahaanu) functions much like Quranic Arabic (and scholarly Latin, as many minotaurs never fully relinquished their scientific curiosity, even in the post-apocalyptic archipelago they found themselves in). On the other hand, the dragon-kings who rule the city-states of the Dragon Coast have ruled those city-states ~ and have been worshiped by their citizens ~ since well before the minotaurs even founded their empire! This immortality-backed continuity of government and economic hegemony have spawned the creation of a pidgin of the languages of these seven city-states that serves as the de facto diplomatic language of Scarhas. It’s a Scarhasi Esperanto of sorts.
Quissians, obviously, have their own language “of hisses and pops that sounds like the primal communication of serpents”. I’ll call it . . . Quissad. But do they know either or both of Scarhas’s international languages? They’re given Common in the text, but also described as isolationist, nigh unto xenophobia, engaging only in brief, perfunctory interactions filled sparingly with quick and honest speech unadorned by casual conversation. With that in mind, as well as the very short list of three language options given in the text, I’m going to give them the Xenophobic trait (0 RP)
That means that the quissian’s total RP cost is 8 RP, which makes them equivalent to the half-orc, duergar, orc, vanara, and lizardfolk. I call it good! Here, then, is my conversion of the quissian race, in proper formatting (although, conversion might be a weird word for something this easy):
Standard Racial Traits
Ability Score Racial Traits: Quissians are a naturally tough race, but their stern, withdrawn tendencies make them less sociable than other races. +2 Constitution, -2 Charisma.
Size: Quissians are Medium creatures and thus receive no bonuses or penalties due to their size.
Type: Quissians are humanoids with the quissian subtype.
Base Speed: Quissians have a base speed of 30 feet.
Languages: Quissians begin play speaking Quissad. Quissians with high Intelligence scores can choose from the following: Istahaanu, Draconic Pidgin, Pearl Words.
Defense Racial Traits
Natural Armor: Their thick scales and tough skin give quissians a +2 natural armor bonus to their Armor Class.
Feat and Skill Racial Traits
Camouflage: Quissians gain a +4 racial bonus on Stealth checks while within the desert. With their earth-colored scales, quissians easily blend into their native environment.
Skill Bonus (Climb): Quissians gain a +2 racial bonus on Climb checks. The quissians’ clawed hands and feet make them excellent climbers.
Senses Racial Traits
Darkvision: Quissians can see perfectly in the dark up to 60 feet.
Other Racial Traits
Dry: Quissians have no need of any kind of regular hydration. A quissian can drink if they choose but does not need to for survival.
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Students of Great Men (Traveller Tuesday #23)
OK, so the Drag Moon of Amon Assemon already has a large population of people unaffiliated with any one religion in particular, a strong presence of Associationist Spiritualists, and almost equal numbers of Neo-Wiccan gender-duotheists and speciesist scientific historians. What will come next?
We roll a 6 on 3d6, again! Well, now, avatar-based theology seems to be really popular amongst these moon-qweens. Maybe this religion is related to the Tickseed Feast in some way, or maybe this one will be more Hindu. By the way, do any of my readers know of any good Hindu representation in science fiction? I feel like it’s been woefully passed up for the “. . . IN SPAAAAACE” treatment, but maybe I’m just reading the wrong books.
Will the follow-up 2d6-1 roll continue and cement the similarity? That’s a resounding NO, to the tune of an 11. In fact, this newest religion seems to have more in common with the Guild of the Rose-Brothers than to anything else, as believers seek to expand the frontiers of knowledge through inquiry and speculation. If it’s in that fruitful line, then perhaps it’s more Neo-Platonic than Hindu, seeking to understand the One by understanding the Forms, which one can only understand by examining the individual imperfect objects of the world. Or it could be both, with a handful of devis and devas (or just the Trimurti) being a stage between the Forms and the One ~ I have run across Neo-Platonic ideas of the One yielding the Two which then begets the Three, et cetera, before we get into the Forms.
Another 11 comes up on the Devotion roll ~ much more expectedly, this time, I should add, as it’s a 2d6+4 roll ~ to give us a semiannual devotion. Twice a year, this religion meets to worship and advance the boundaries of knowledge. We continue the 2d6+4 rolls with one to determine the Organization Structure of the faith, getting a 7. That means that it has a loose hierarchy with most decisions made on the planetary level. That, in turn, means the Liturgical Formality is just a 2d6 roll. An 8 means that rituals are combined with an open teaching policy. I’m feeling, again, that religious gatherings resemble an academic conference more than a tent revival.
Speaking of, how much Fervor do its Missionaries have? 2D6-2 tells us that only an ordinary level of proselytization is present and that any sophont species is welcome with an 8. Let’s roll the dWikipedia to name this religion now, and maybe we can flesh out some more of its ways before we determine how many people practice it. How about the Students of Great Men? I addressed issues of religious racism down on Ishee (well, speciesism, but it’s the classic space-opera substitute) and it’s shown up here on Amon Assemon, so why not mix in some explorations of scientific/spiritual sexism up here? Also, I have brushed up against way too much gay-male sexism in my life (being coercively assigned as male, they always seem to think they can talk to me as if I’m “one of the boys”) and this small Assemonite religion could be a good way to comment on that.
OK, so let’s imagine a new take on Rose Brother or even Azeyrenawti teachings. No one is trying to summon Hermachis of the Horizon or remember the world-shaking inventions that have done so in the past. This faith believes in a handful of Genii (plural of genius, mind you) who project images of themselves by means of the ancestors (for an Associationist element) into “images”, great men who swell the bounds of science and achieve great feats of engineering. Much of the Students’ study is dedicated to identifying which of the handful of Genii are manifesting any given image ~ because the ancestors control the cosmological technology to allow the projection, they can manipulate and shape the image according to their tastes, and often dress up the more disreputable Genii in upstanding images that portray the values of their society to the utmost.
Imagine the rows that develop between the Azeyrenawti and the Students, over species and sex, over the number of divine beings and the relevance of Spiritualism, over the steady progress of projection and the respectful honor due the grand inventions of the past!
A 4 on 3d6-8 allots the Students of Great Men tens of thousands of followers. Random.org can narrow that amount down to 65,802 Students of Great Men. With numbers like that, I say we finish off Amon Assemon’s population with 142 Students, or 1.6% of the planet.
Religious landscape of Amon Assemon:
5227 sophonts (59%) atheist/agnostic/non-religious
2747 sophonts (31%) Liberty Fellowship of Spirit-Listeners
390 sophonts (4.4%) the Tickseed Feast (Tickseeds, Feasters, Tickers, Seedies)
354 humans (4%) Azeyrenawt
142 sophonts (1.6%) Students of Great Men (Students)
We roll a 6 on 3d6, again! Well, now, avatar-based theology seems to be really popular amongst these moon-qweens. Maybe this religion is related to the Tickseed Feast in some way, or maybe this one will be more Hindu. By the way, do any of my readers know of any good Hindu representation in science fiction? I feel like it’s been woefully passed up for the “. . . IN SPAAAAACE” treatment, but maybe I’m just reading the wrong books.
Will the follow-up 2d6-1 roll continue and cement the similarity? That’s a resounding NO, to the tune of an 11. In fact, this newest religion seems to have more in common with the Guild of the Rose-Brothers than to anything else, as believers seek to expand the frontiers of knowledge through inquiry and speculation. If it’s in that fruitful line, then perhaps it’s more Neo-Platonic than Hindu, seeking to understand the One by understanding the Forms, which one can only understand by examining the individual imperfect objects of the world. Or it could be both, with a handful of devis and devas (or just the Trimurti) being a stage between the Forms and the One ~ I have run across Neo-Platonic ideas of the One yielding the Two which then begets the Three, et cetera, before we get into the Forms.
Another 11 comes up on the Devotion roll ~ much more expectedly, this time, I should add, as it’s a 2d6+4 roll ~ to give us a semiannual devotion. Twice a year, this religion meets to worship and advance the boundaries of knowledge. We continue the 2d6+4 rolls with one to determine the Organization Structure of the faith, getting a 7. That means that it has a loose hierarchy with most decisions made on the planetary level. That, in turn, means the Liturgical Formality is just a 2d6 roll. An 8 means that rituals are combined with an open teaching policy. I’m feeling, again, that religious gatherings resemble an academic conference more than a tent revival.
Speaking of, how much Fervor do its Missionaries have? 2D6-2 tells us that only an ordinary level of proselytization is present and that any sophont species is welcome with an 8. Let’s roll the dWikipedia to name this religion now, and maybe we can flesh out some more of its ways before we determine how many people practice it. How about the Students of Great Men? I addressed issues of religious racism down on Ishee (well, speciesism, but it’s the classic space-opera substitute) and it’s shown up here on Amon Assemon, so why not mix in some explorations of scientific/spiritual sexism up here? Also, I have brushed up against way too much gay-male sexism in my life (being coercively assigned as male, they always seem to think they can talk to me as if I’m “one of the boys”) and this small Assemonite religion could be a good way to comment on that.
OK, so let’s imagine a new take on Rose Brother or even Azeyrenawti teachings. No one is trying to summon Hermachis of the Horizon or remember the world-shaking inventions that have done so in the past. This faith believes in a handful of Genii (plural of genius, mind you) who project images of themselves by means of the ancestors (for an Associationist element) into “images”, great men who swell the bounds of science and achieve great feats of engineering. Much of the Students’ study is dedicated to identifying which of the handful of Genii are manifesting any given image ~ because the ancestors control the cosmological technology to allow the projection, they can manipulate and shape the image according to their tastes, and often dress up the more disreputable Genii in upstanding images that portray the values of their society to the utmost.
Imagine the rows that develop between the Azeyrenawti and the Students, over species and sex, over the number of divine beings and the relevance of Spiritualism, over the steady progress of projection and the respectful honor due the grand inventions of the past!
A 4 on 3d6-8 allots the Students of Great Men tens of thousands of followers. Random.org can narrow that amount down to 65,802 Students of Great Men. With numbers like that, I say we finish off Amon Assemon’s population with 142 Students, or 1.6% of the planet.
Religious landscape of Amon Assemon:
5227 sophonts (59%) atheist/agnostic/non-religious
2747 sophonts (31%) Liberty Fellowship of Spirit-Listeners
390 sophonts (4.4%) the Tickseed Feast (Tickseeds, Feasters, Tickers, Seedies)
354 humans (4%) Azeyrenawt
142 sophonts (1.6%) Students of Great Men (Students)
Sunday, November 25, 2018
To honor each other is to honor the gods (Design Domingo #23)
Dwarfin law and conflict resolution almost entirely rests on the duel, serving as a decision-making device, a punishment, a negotiative strategy, and the foundation of friendship, as well as recreation. They have developed a broad panoply of dueling styles with any number of weapons and combinations thereof. Other races, especially orcs (who also have a strong dueling culture) have a hard time understanding the humorous flippancy with which dwarfs usually treat duels. More confusing is how seriously the fey beings take the results of such a flippant act.
Relations: As has already been referenced quite a few times, dwarfs tend to live closely connected to gnomish settlements. They have mixed feelings about this: they require the intercession of the gnomes if they’re going to have much trade or interaction with the races whom the sun doesn’t hate, but they find the gnomes’ free-wheeling way of life and lack of concern for mundane things like consistency or scheduling mind-bending. Dwarfs remain completely baffled by how the gnomes get anything done or apply any sort of meaning to lives lived primarily for fun and lack of worry.
Dwarfs have fought many wars with the elfs of Dalmatia, dating all the way back to the rule of the Archmagi, a conflict over the rich farmlands of what is now Penguern that extended both races’ oppression by the Archmagi for a few centuries longer than it needed. It is worth noting that neither race operated as a monolith in these wars ~ they were a complicated knot of dwarfin tribes allying with elfin tribes against other elfs, and vice versa. They now exist as sort of frenemies writ big, evaluating each interaction to discover whether they squabble or whether they trust each other implicitly, and treating their mottled history with humor and camaraderie more than anything else. They’ve both been subjects of the Galatian king for the last two centuries, but they allied together a century before that to harry and raid Galatian villages. They hoped to prevent Galatian hegemony, and failed.
Accordingly, dwarfs tend to view the humans who dominate the southern lands with some suspicion. In truth, it is only King d’Holbach’s history of earning their trust and dedicated effort to bring them into the rest of the empire that prevented them from merely burrowing deeper into the mountains until this short-lived race’s time passed. That first century was still marked by repeated duels between dwarfin representatives and various imperial and provincial agents. If even a handful fewer of those duels had been won by the humans, they might have chosen total war instead of wary participation anyway.
Both halflings and orcs tend to live a bit far from the dwarfin homeland of Worth for them to come into common contact with these Fair Folk. That distance prevents them from having strong tendencies in their perceptions and relations with these races, although halflings do tend to display a work ethic that dwarfs find more comprehensible than the worldviews of many other races. Orcish discipline and honor can easily fall into an uncanny valley for dwarfs ~ they’re not toil, but they can look like it. Dwarfin culture as a whole, as I’ve said, hasn’t yet developed a unified reaction to this uncanny valley.
Alignments and Religion: The primary recipient of dwarfin worship is the blacksmith goddess of war and duels, the Orippan Mosaifis. In the epic poem known as the Locorrad, the merchant-god Locorrus and some of his orcs stole Mosaifis's blond hair, thinking to both demoralize a powerful warrior on the side of Galatia and to use it as a focus for evil magic. They succeeded at the first, for Mosaifis did not accompany the company questing to regain her hair and spent much of her time thereafter alone in her realm on Orippus. Her dwarfs could not bear this, to see their goddess so depressed, and so spent weeks, even months, forging her a wig of gold. They even inlaid it with enough protective magic to deflect any magic Locorrus might attempt upon her. The gods who set out to find her hair never found it, but it is said that the humans and dwarfs who accompanied them have continued the search to this day, as a secret society. Mosaifis is known to own the jewel-dropping ring, Draupnus, which is occasionally worshiped by gnomes.
Other dwarfin deities include
Superstitions passed along in the warrens of the syndics largely center around keeping dwarfs safe from Soleh, whose anger is said to persist until this day. He’s rather the bogeyman, if you’re a dwarf. Worthese priests, including many dwarfs, in the Orthodox Orippan Church have formed a strong faction within the church, strong enough and different enough that some have begun to challenge their succession within the church, saying that they may be in violation of orthodoxy. This “Worthese Interpretation” is what I called the “Penguernite Interpretation” a while back, and it exhorts its followers to be Energetic and Generous rather than Forgiving and Merciful.
Relations: As has already been referenced quite a few times, dwarfs tend to live closely connected to gnomish settlements. They have mixed feelings about this: they require the intercession of the gnomes if they’re going to have much trade or interaction with the races whom the sun doesn’t hate, but they find the gnomes’ free-wheeling way of life and lack of concern for mundane things like consistency or scheduling mind-bending. Dwarfs remain completely baffled by how the gnomes get anything done or apply any sort of meaning to lives lived primarily for fun and lack of worry.
Dwarfs have fought many wars with the elfs of Dalmatia, dating all the way back to the rule of the Archmagi, a conflict over the rich farmlands of what is now Penguern that extended both races’ oppression by the Archmagi for a few centuries longer than it needed. It is worth noting that neither race operated as a monolith in these wars ~ they were a complicated knot of dwarfin tribes allying with elfin tribes against other elfs, and vice versa. They now exist as sort of frenemies writ big, evaluating each interaction to discover whether they squabble or whether they trust each other implicitly, and treating their mottled history with humor and camaraderie more than anything else. They’ve both been subjects of the Galatian king for the last two centuries, but they allied together a century before that to harry and raid Galatian villages. They hoped to prevent Galatian hegemony, and failed.
Accordingly, dwarfs tend to view the humans who dominate the southern lands with some suspicion. In truth, it is only King d’Holbach’s history of earning their trust and dedicated effort to bring them into the rest of the empire that prevented them from merely burrowing deeper into the mountains until this short-lived race’s time passed. That first century was still marked by repeated duels between dwarfin representatives and various imperial and provincial agents. If even a handful fewer of those duels had been won by the humans, they might have chosen total war instead of wary participation anyway.
Both halflings and orcs tend to live a bit far from the dwarfin homeland of Worth for them to come into common contact with these Fair Folk. That distance prevents them from having strong tendencies in their perceptions and relations with these races, although halflings do tend to display a work ethic that dwarfs find more comprehensible than the worldviews of many other races. Orcish discipline and honor can easily fall into an uncanny valley for dwarfs ~ they’re not toil, but they can look like it. Dwarfin culture as a whole, as I’ve said, hasn’t yet developed a unified reaction to this uncanny valley.
Alignments and Religion: The primary recipient of dwarfin worship is the blacksmith goddess of war and duels, the Orippan Mosaifis. In the epic poem known as the Locorrad, the merchant-god Locorrus and some of his orcs stole Mosaifis's blond hair, thinking to both demoralize a powerful warrior on the side of Galatia and to use it as a focus for evil magic. They succeeded at the first, for Mosaifis did not accompany the company questing to regain her hair and spent much of her time thereafter alone in her realm on Orippus. Her dwarfs could not bear this, to see their goddess so depressed, and so spent weeks, even months, forging her a wig of gold. They even inlaid it with enough protective magic to deflect any magic Locorrus might attempt upon her. The gods who set out to find her hair never found it, but it is said that the humans and dwarfs who accompanied them have continued the search to this day, as a secret society. Mosaifis is known to own the jewel-dropping ring, Draupnus, which is occasionally worshiped by gnomes.
Other dwarfin deities include
- Phaitos, the ethereal god of smithing, crafts, travel, and secrets, who has been getting more and more popular since the subterranean roads were completed and more and more dwarfs began living across the empire, all mixed in with the other races.
- Nafdes, goddix of death, grief, earth, the underworld, and wealth, who rules the mines that make dwarfs rich, and the feeling a dwarf gets when there is no longer a need to labor
- Shecire, goddix of the harvest, the underworld, abundance, the moon, and the undead, who is understood to be mysterious and arcane and to wield powers both stange and likely dangerous, and who is thanked every time the vegetables and fruits and grains which are her children are brought into the tunneled halls.
- Hrumdas, god of orcs, war, territory, watchfulness, sight, hearing, outcasts, barbarians, rebellion, whose image stands at every mountain door and every Worthese border, watching for potential danger.
- Scanerdus, god of earth, mountains, death, darkness, murder, the underworld, who organizes the Syndic of Ghosts far below the shallow realms of the dwarfs in the Deepest Halls.
Superstitions passed along in the warrens of the syndics largely center around keeping dwarfs safe from Soleh, whose anger is said to persist until this day. He’s rather the bogeyman, if you’re a dwarf. Worthese priests, including many dwarfs, in the Orthodox Orippan Church have formed a strong faction within the church, strong enough and different enough that some have begun to challenge their succession within the church, saying that they may be in violation of orthodoxy. This “Worthese Interpretation” is what I called the “Penguernite Interpretation” a while back, and it exhorts its followers to be Energetic and Generous rather than Forgiving and Merciful.
Friday, November 23, 2018
Race and the new character (Fantasy Friday #23)
But the community around them would not let them go down like that. The Haćo master who was dedicated to their training (the Obi-Wan to their Anakin) interrupted their self-punishment, reminded them of their goodness, helped them see that they weren’t bound to serve Fate just because they had gone down a dangerous path. In short, their mentor showed them compassion, and revealed their own mistakes and errors and the pain they carried from them. The mind, the mentor taught, can be tricky. It can see Destiny where it is looking at Fate; it can confuse the path so one doesn’t know whence one is heading. The honor and nobility of spirit shared by the two Haćo (symbolized by a gold dragon in Intelligence) gives the two tokens on Intelligence to Wisdom. It’s also what sent the character on the path to becoming a refo (the Haćo equivalent of a qadi, a judge of positive law), one who trusts their heart and their experience of temptation more than the intricacies of the Haćo code, the endless interpretations thereof, and the impenetrable interacting hierarchies of precedents.
Their base ability scores, after gifting the extra token from Wisdom to Constitution, come out to:
Strength 14
Dexterity 13
Constitution 14
Intelligence 10
Wisdom 15
Charisma 14
Thanks to a short-lived attempt at playing with a homeless friend of mine, I’ve previously established that Scarhas’s racial context derives from Fantasy Flight Games’s ancient Mythic Races book, a part of their Legends & Lairs line dating back to the OGL boom and the early days of the company. She wanted to play a rhonian, one of the Labyrinth-muppet-looking bardic swampbirds from the book. I quickly decided that the rhonians came from the Sumer equivalent in Scarhas (since Sumer was all marshland). In the Hemeya Sea, however, fantasy reskins of Star Wars and Star Trek races descended from minotaurs warped by the cataclysm that created the sea dominate the racial context.
I’m hoping to capture some of the uniqueness of my game with these characters, so I’m going to put off looking at the Hemeyan races for this Haćo and look through the mainland races of the FFG book. The anaema, a species of demi-substantial humans, tickle my brain momentarily, but their lack of solidity makes some of the physical aspects of the character’s background ~ the drive to maximize their body’s capabilities, the idea of bullying people towards goodness ~ harder to swallow than I would like. Artaathi are the inevitable catfolk, but a comment about their sociopsychology and its union of dualities pulls at me for a moment until I realize that playing up that kind of theme is closer to Boanerges than I would like. I want these characters to all be different, after all.
Now, the blickish is super tempting. Essentially halfling aasimar who have the innate power to blink, in my setting they were born of the same celestial/mortal pairing that gave birth to the central figure in Natsiyaasim’s religion (and heritage). Making this character a blickish, thus, would give them an immediate, if minor, link to Forsetilafom. Plus, despite their small stature, they have a Strength bonus, so the whole bullying, weightlifting thing works . . . . I consider the curst for half a second, but the inheritors of a divine punishment for decadence don’t seem quite right for this character. Similarly, the planes-wandering eyeless illonis tempt but fail to quite connect to the character’s themes. The luminous, on the other hand, stand next to the blickish in the contest for this character ~ they were blessed with bodies of light and a connection to the positive energy plane after selflessly sacrificing most of their race to defeat an army of undead.
The jaguar shapeshifters known as mhuinntirs fail to quite capture the characters’ themes, despite lending themselves to the simmering anger that the character has mostly come to terms with. Something about the inherently magical pevishan almost snags on the character concept. The reptilian desertfolk known as the quissians date back to the same war that created the luminous ~ they were a mad wizard’s attempt to preserve his community from the ravages war brings to anyone nearby, whether involved or not. Something about them, perhaps their brutal nobility, puts them in the prime candidate along with the blickish and the luminous. The sendasti are another race of desert-dwellers, whose fasting abilities resonate with the character’s successful times of introspection and retreat and facing their own demons. It’s not quite enough for me to make the character a sendasti, though. Meanwhile, the sktak are another reptilian race, and their discipline and austerity actually puts them in the final running, too.
The final listing of good possibilities for this character includes the blickish, the luminous, the quissians, and the sktak. The tragedy inherent to the quissians pulls me in that direction ~ I think I’m deciding that, rather than being a warrior race created to defend a kingdom, they are the entire kingdom transformed into a sturdier race. And the attempt to save them from the horrors of a war they were never actually in was what doomed them as a civilization. It’s just close enough to the character’s personal journey to have resonance with it while remaining distinct enough that it provides depth tho the narrative, not just fractal repetition.
The next step is to convert the race from Mythic Races to Pathfinder, especially with its RP system. As written, quissians are humanoids (0 RP) of Medium size (0 RP) who get normal speed (0 RP) and +2 Constitution and -2 Charisma. I’m gonna call that combination of modifiers roughly equivalent to the Weakness quality (-1 RP). Sure, it’s not tanking Charisma with a -4, but it’s also not giving them a benefit to anything other than Constitution. It’s obviously weaker than Standard (0 RP), which would require a +2 to Intelligence or Wisdom as well, but not nearly as powerful as a Mixed Weakness (-2 RP), which would involve another +2 and a -4 moreover. So far, quissians have -1 RP. Next week, we’ll start to examine their racial traits.
Their base ability scores, after gifting the extra token from Wisdom to Constitution, come out to:
Strength 14
Dexterity 13
Constitution 14
Intelligence 10
Wisdom 15
Charisma 14
Thanks to a short-lived attempt at playing with a homeless friend of mine, I’ve previously established that Scarhas’s racial context derives from Fantasy Flight Games’s ancient Mythic Races book, a part of their Legends & Lairs line dating back to the OGL boom and the early days of the company. She wanted to play a rhonian, one of the Labyrinth-muppet-looking bardic swampbirds from the book. I quickly decided that the rhonians came from the Sumer equivalent in Scarhas (since Sumer was all marshland). In the Hemeya Sea, however, fantasy reskins of Star Wars and Star Trek races descended from minotaurs warped by the cataclysm that created the sea dominate the racial context.
I’m hoping to capture some of the uniqueness of my game with these characters, so I’m going to put off looking at the Hemeyan races for this Haćo and look through the mainland races of the FFG book. The anaema, a species of demi-substantial humans, tickle my brain momentarily, but their lack of solidity makes some of the physical aspects of the character’s background ~ the drive to maximize their body’s capabilities, the idea of bullying people towards goodness ~ harder to swallow than I would like. Artaathi are the inevitable catfolk, but a comment about their sociopsychology and its union of dualities pulls at me for a moment until I realize that playing up that kind of theme is closer to Boanerges than I would like. I want these characters to all be different, after all.
Now, the blickish is super tempting. Essentially halfling aasimar who have the innate power to blink, in my setting they were born of the same celestial/mortal pairing that gave birth to the central figure in Natsiyaasim’s religion (and heritage). Making this character a blickish, thus, would give them an immediate, if minor, link to Forsetilafom. Plus, despite their small stature, they have a Strength bonus, so the whole bullying, weightlifting thing works . . . . I consider the curst for half a second, but the inheritors of a divine punishment for decadence don’t seem quite right for this character. Similarly, the planes-wandering eyeless illonis tempt but fail to quite connect to the character’s themes. The luminous, on the other hand, stand next to the blickish in the contest for this character ~ they were blessed with bodies of light and a connection to the positive energy plane after selflessly sacrificing most of their race to defeat an army of undead.
The jaguar shapeshifters known as mhuinntirs fail to quite capture the characters’ themes, despite lending themselves to the simmering anger that the character has mostly come to terms with. Something about the inherently magical pevishan almost snags on the character concept. The reptilian desertfolk known as the quissians date back to the same war that created the luminous ~ they were a mad wizard’s attempt to preserve his community from the ravages war brings to anyone nearby, whether involved or not. Something about them, perhaps their brutal nobility, puts them in the prime candidate along with the blickish and the luminous. The sendasti are another race of desert-dwellers, whose fasting abilities resonate with the character’s successful times of introspection and retreat and facing their own demons. It’s not quite enough for me to make the character a sendasti, though. Meanwhile, the sktak are another reptilian race, and their discipline and austerity actually puts them in the final running, too.
The final listing of good possibilities for this character includes the blickish, the luminous, the quissians, and the sktak. The tragedy inherent to the quissians pulls me in that direction ~ I think I’m deciding that, rather than being a warrior race created to defend a kingdom, they are the entire kingdom transformed into a sturdier race. And the attempt to save them from the horrors of a war they were never actually in was what doomed them as a civilization. It’s just close enough to the character’s personal journey to have resonance with it while remaining distinct enough that it provides depth tho the narrative, not just fractal repetition.
The next step is to convert the race from Mythic Races to Pathfinder, especially with its RP system. As written, quissians are humanoids (0 RP) of Medium size (0 RP) who get normal speed (0 RP) and +2 Constitution and -2 Charisma. I’m gonna call that combination of modifiers roughly equivalent to the Weakness quality (-1 RP). Sure, it’s not tanking Charisma with a -4, but it’s also not giving them a benefit to anything other than Constitution. It’s obviously weaker than Standard (0 RP), which would require a +2 to Intelligence or Wisdom as well, but not nearly as powerful as a Mixed Weakness (-2 RP), which would involve another +2 and a -4 moreover. So far, quissians have -1 RP. Next week, we’ll start to examine their racial traits.
Todahlael, Habbalah of Ignorance*, Demon of Gratitude
Well, it's a day late and a dollar short, but I created a character for In Nomine encapsulating some of my feels/observations from yesterday (the so-called "Thanksgiving"). I'm actually quite fond of her.
She's a servitor of Ascetus, the balseraph demon prince of Ignorance and one of many non-canon Superiors in my version of In Nomine (which I call Reality Beulah, for reasons I'll explain later). I'ven't written him up yet, but he's a blend of Ascetus and Astaroth from the In Nomine Collection's Rogue Gallery. All relevant game information has been provided.
*****************
Todahlael, like many celestials, is a very old being. She was created in Ketriel's service, and diligently, dispassionately served the aeon archangel of Grace for millions of years before the Fall. And it wasn't the Fall that sent her to Hell, either, as she fought those who are now her friends and allies after Metatron's murder. Afterwards, secure in the knowledge that the newly-minted demons were safely locked away forever, she continued just as she had before the Rebellion, bringing joyful surprises and easing luck to the humans who had been the excuse for that shocking crime. And then the human Lilith freed the demons.
Though her faith that everything would turn out for the best by the grace of God had finally been shaken, Todahlael settled into the new role with which Ketriel, the first of the Archangels known as the Four Soteroi, charged its angels with an odd mix of comfort and desperation. Salvation, after all, comes from many sources ~ famously, from grace, faith, and acts. Todahlael and her coworkers coordinated well with Yves's angels, arranging for the sort of inexplicable gifts and luck that came at just the right time to rescue a human soul from becoming the plaything of the liberated demons. But the entire time, she hid in her Heart a secret wish that someone would do the same for her, would restore her faith in the God which created her and rescue her from the Fate she feared she knew was awaiting her.
Ketriel had been clear in its charge ~ grace is not grace if it can be caused. In other words, asking for grace destroys the possibility of grace. Todahlael was nothing if not dutiful, and took the aeon's teaching to heart. She never asked for the help she needed so greatly, and so she never received it. Her Outcasting and Fall were slow, a creeping teeter that lasted from Lilith's unlocking the gates to Hell in 15,000 p.e.v. (prior era vulgaris, before the common era) all the way to her Heart shattering during the first part of the 4th century e.v., during Constantine the Great's reign as Byzantine Emperor.
Rejecting the gentleness of her past, Todahlael took up with Malphas, wielding unexpected luck as a weapon against relationships and unity. Nothing promotes a lonely individuality like jealousy over a friend's seemingly unbalanced good fortune. This work kept her busy for a millennium and a half, slowly working her way all over the globe, taking inconspicuous roles amongst the irredeemable throngs of the human herd. Often, she chose to appear as a supporter of some alliance or solidarity, while secretly working to undermine it, to set it ablaze with the disastrous inferno of envy.
Like most of her friends in the service of Factions, the American Civil War was yet another orgy of a party in an increasingly dense social calendar. Such joy Todahlael found as brother fought against brother, bloodily severing ties for often insignificant reasons. General Lee, for example, who believed in the North's cause but fought for the South simply because it was his home. It was one of Todahlael's friends who outmaneuvered the malakim surrounding the general, turning Lee's honor against the unifying actions Heaven wanted to see from him.
As so often happens, this constant din of fun and games lent itself to a moment of melancholy. For Todahlael, this came when she read Lincoln's declaration of Thanksgiving (reproduced after this paraggraph). A long-unaccustomed sadness struck the habbalah who couldn't help remembering her days with Ketriel as an angel, as the "[n]o human cousel [that] hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things." She finished the war out with a dingy enthusiasm, unable to shake that memory, so incompatible with her habbalic belief that Hell was where God wanted her. Returning to a familiar feeling ~ desperation ~ Todahlael sought to eliminate these memories and thoughts, to no longer be troubled by an unwelcome longing for the Light of Heaven. If Mariel hadn't been devoured by a munchy-haunted Haagenti, she'd likely have pulled off some hare-brained scheme designed to remove herself from Malphas's service to that of Oblivion. However, Mariel had proved tasty some centuries before, and so Todahlael settled for jumping ship into the service of Ascetus instead.
"The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth."
Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln, October 3, 1863."
The work of Ignorance didn't suit Todahlael as well as her previous two jobs, and it certainly did not have the memory-exorcising effect she wished. She found herself obsessed with Thanksgiving Day, doing her prince's work by using it every month as a way to spread ignorance of the true cost of the pleasures and gifts the U.S. populace had received. The rest of the year saw the fruits of Todahlael's practice for that one day in November; she grew quite deft at nurturing vague, impersonal gratitude as a way to prevent atrocities from coming to light or responsibility being taken for the actions of an individual, group, or their ancestors. Ironically, she became known among Ascetus's servitors for exactly this kind of work.
Though she had been, quite naturally, stripped of all the gifts Malphas had given her in her 1500-year-service to the prince of Factions, Todahlael found herself quickly acquiring replacements over the course of a mere century serving Ascetus. By the century's end, she was among Ascetus's knights, and she was granted a captainship shortly after Macy's started their parade. Her focus, nigh unto a djinnish obsession, with the day in which an entire country ate more food than any other day, even more than a few days combined, convinced Haagenti to grant her his attunement, as well.
It was Thanksgiving Day, 1954, that Todahlael, firmly ensconced in the role of a sweet little old church lady, led a prayer at a charity dinner her church was leading. Afterwards, a snappily dressed man who had been introduced to her an hour or two before as one of the big donors to the church's charity programs walked up to her. "I liked your prayer," he said. "Especially how it avoided any of the real reasons we've got all this food to give. And why they're poor, for that matter. It's you who should be Grateful." And suddenly, Todahlael knew who the handsome man was, as she felt the Word shoulder itself a space among her Forces. She stammered out a "Thank you" to the man's bemusedly cocked eyebrow, one half of his mouth smiled, and he turned and disappeared into the crowd.
Ever since, Todahlael has continued the same work that earned her her Word, encouraging humans to mimic the humble selflessness of thanks as a way of avoiding guilt, responsibility, or critical thought as to what they could do to prevent the evil of the world. Not a few demons distrust her now, uncertain what to do with a demon ~ especially one of the habbalot ~ who carries such a seemingly Heavenly Word. To tell the truth (but why would we do that?), Todahlael herself has struggled with her Word, as it is all too easy for her efforts to have the opposite effect of that she intended. Her doubts about her place in the Descending Hierarchy have fled, however. God's Hellish representative (Lucifer) rewarded her for her efforts, after all ~ this must be the work God wants her to do.
Todahlael is still adjusting to having received a Word, and such a big Word at that! She's only held it for about 65 years, two-fifths of her time in the service of Ascetus, and a mere fraction of an eyeblink for a being whose age is measured in the billions of years, which accounts for her possessing only a single Word-Attunement when most celestials with such a Word have two. In truth, she knows that she has access to fewer Word-Forces than she should ~ surely Gratitude is a major Word! ~ but she's been facing some strong opposition from Maodea, her Heavenly counterpart, the angel of Giving Thanks (ofan of the Sword under Etiquette), who's been getting aid from the angel of Charity (a malak of Generosity) and the angel of Restitution (an eloah of Judgment). The inherent dangers of her Word, on top of the lasting effects of her earlier doubts concerning her diabolicity, have resulted in a bit of Discord. Todahlael's vessel's stoop and slow gait aren't intended to mimic arthritis ~ they are actually arthritis, and will be carried over into any other vessel she might take. Similarly, she finds a good feast almost impossible to pass up, and she always overeats.
Celestial Appearance: Todahlael has allowed the ravages of age to show on her celestial form. It remains luminous, glowing with a grayish-brown light the color of poorly-cooked meat, and her eyes appear even larger than they did before the Fall behind broad-diametered rose-colored coke-bottle glasses. They are human eyes, though, not the alien eyes of the elohim, and they are a much more pleasant brown than the light which surrounds her, the color of a crispy, fatty turkey skin promising delicious delights beneath. Whereas elohim tend to carry an ageless, vital androgyny, Todahlael's Fallen form is androgynous by dint of age, so withered and twisted and stick-thin dry that no gender can be ascertained among the pale wrinkles that envelop her form. It is those wrinkles that provide a topographical map to the self-mutilations that mark Todahlael as a habbalah. Piercings ride the crest of these fleshy waves, while tattoos peek out from their valleys. Scars artfully interrupt their sumptuous curves, and the twin edges of her flayed edges blend imperceptibly into the ridges of ancient skin. No clothing covers her form, though a couple of napkins seem to have blown against her chest and crotch, stuck there by a wind unseen and unfelt except by those napkins' flapping. A fork and a knife (to which is attached the flag of whichever country the nearest human is a citizen of) fill her hands.
Vessel: An older woman in her 80s, shorter than her skeleton would actually warrant thanks to a stoop that tells of long hours spent hunched over a keyboard. Her hair is the faded black of a cheap dyejob covering up a soft silver, and her brown eyes are filled with a watery-warm sincerity. Cat-eyes glasses on a pearled string often rest atop a pale blue sweater that covers up a long, floral dress. Her shoes are reasonable, and her nails sport a new pastel every other week.
Total Forces ~ 12
Word-Forces ~ 9
Corporeal Forces ~ 4 Strength 8 Agility 8
Ethereal Forces ~ 3 Intelligence 7 Precision 5
Celestial Forces ~ 5 Will 12 Perception 8
Vessel ~ Human/1
Role ~ Little Old Church Lady/4 (Status/2)
Servant ~ Pastor/2 (Class/4)
Skills ~ Artistry (Cooking)/4, Computer Operation/2, Emote/5, Savoir-Faire/3, Singing/1
Attunements ~ Captain of Twisted Memory**, Demon of Gratitude***, Habbalah of Gluttony, Habbalah of Ignorance****, Knight of Stupidity*****, Memory Gap******, Modern Dark Age*******
Songs ~ Charm (Ethereal/6, Celestial/3), Forbidding (Ethereal/3), Harmony (Corporeal/6), Opening (Ethereal/3, Celestial/1), Seals (Ethereal/5), Solace (Ethereal/5), Succor (Corporeal/2)
Additional Rites ~ Lead a prayer (or equivalent) of impersonal or vague thanks; Spend an hour in conversation, monologue, or writing (et cetera) downplaying/ignoring/covering up past or present atrocities
Discord ~ Disabled/3********, Gluttonous/1, Pity/1, Obsessed (Thanksgiving)/1
* It is dissonant for a servitor of Ascetus to correct any belief that goes against the facts, or to promote education or enlightenment. Rites: Convince someone not to think twice; Spread a lie to the public, by posting it to the Net, handing out flyers in the street for an hour, etc.
** These are the most feared vassals of Ignorance, as they can twist known and unknown concepts into knots that cannot be deciphered. By spending 4 essence, they can change a 'truth' into whatever they chose. For example, they could change the answers in the back of a particular book, change a few 1's to 0's in machine code, or make a Macintosh a real computer, but they couldn't change pi to equal 4 or any universally affecting 'constant'.
*** As long as someone is even vaguely or indirectly experiencing pleasure, Todahlael can cause them to ignore one unpleasant thing per point of Essence spent, with a successful Will roll. The Attunement's effects only last as long as the specific pleasure does, though events during its effects can prolong the results. Normally, this Attunement must be activated individually for each intended victim; however, if Todahlael cooks a feast to be used as the anchoring pleasure, the Attunement will affect a number of people equal to the check digit of her Artistry (Cooking) roll with each activation.
**** Same as Habbalah of Factions.
***** By concentrating on someone and spending one essence, the knight can sense the one thing that the person has little or no knowledge, but wishes to learn about. {And, yes, "stupidity" is a word with a long ableist, racist, and classist history. This is Hell we're talking about, after all.}
****** The demon can cause a target to forget a specific piece of information. This requires a Contest of Will vs. the target's Perception; the demon may spend Essence to add to his will. The check digit determines the type of information that can be erased:
Check Digit~Information Lost
1~Something minor in short-term memory (a name or phone number just heard)
2~Something major in short-term memory (the just-heard time and place of a meeting)
3~Something minor in medium/long-term memory (the phone number at work; your spouse's middle name)
4~Something major in medium/long-term memory (the exit to get to your parents' house; the password to your AOL account)
5~Something minor in long-term memory (the name of your first-grade teacher)
6~Something major in long-term memory (your wedding anniversary; the Pythagorean Theorem)
Information lost in this way will be "on the tip of your tongue" or misremembered in such a way as to be useless. The target can be reminded of it, but must make a Will roll; the information is not retained until a successful roll is made.
******* By spending 2 essence per person the demon wishes to affect (to a maximum of his celestial forces) he can have them interpret a sign, image, or oration the wrong way, or ignore the enlightening effects of teachers and books (negating any potential for learning from that source) for one day.
******** "Crippled" is a slur.
She's a servitor of Ascetus, the balseraph demon prince of Ignorance and one of many non-canon Superiors in my version of In Nomine (which I call Reality Beulah, for reasons I'll explain later). I'ven't written him up yet, but he's a blend of Ascetus and Astaroth from the In Nomine Collection's Rogue Gallery. All relevant game information has been provided.
*****************
Todahlael, like many celestials, is a very old being. She was created in Ketriel's service, and diligently, dispassionately served the aeon archangel of Grace for millions of years before the Fall. And it wasn't the Fall that sent her to Hell, either, as she fought those who are now her friends and allies after Metatron's murder. Afterwards, secure in the knowledge that the newly-minted demons were safely locked away forever, she continued just as she had before the Rebellion, bringing joyful surprises and easing luck to the humans who had been the excuse for that shocking crime. And then the human Lilith freed the demons.
Though her faith that everything would turn out for the best by the grace of God had finally been shaken, Todahlael settled into the new role with which Ketriel, the first of the Archangels known as the Four Soteroi, charged its angels with an odd mix of comfort and desperation. Salvation, after all, comes from many sources ~ famously, from grace, faith, and acts. Todahlael and her coworkers coordinated well with Yves's angels, arranging for the sort of inexplicable gifts and luck that came at just the right time to rescue a human soul from becoming the plaything of the liberated demons. But the entire time, she hid in her Heart a secret wish that someone would do the same for her, would restore her faith in the God which created her and rescue her from the Fate she feared she knew was awaiting her.
Ketriel had been clear in its charge ~ grace is not grace if it can be caused. In other words, asking for grace destroys the possibility of grace. Todahlael was nothing if not dutiful, and took the aeon's teaching to heart. She never asked for the help she needed so greatly, and so she never received it. Her Outcasting and Fall were slow, a creeping teeter that lasted from Lilith's unlocking the gates to Hell in 15,000 p.e.v. (prior era vulgaris, before the common era) all the way to her Heart shattering during the first part of the 4th century e.v., during Constantine the Great's reign as Byzantine Emperor.
Rejecting the gentleness of her past, Todahlael took up with Malphas, wielding unexpected luck as a weapon against relationships and unity. Nothing promotes a lonely individuality like jealousy over a friend's seemingly unbalanced good fortune. This work kept her busy for a millennium and a half, slowly working her way all over the globe, taking inconspicuous roles amongst the irredeemable throngs of the human herd. Often, she chose to appear as a supporter of some alliance or solidarity, while secretly working to undermine it, to set it ablaze with the disastrous inferno of envy.
Like most of her friends in the service of Factions, the American Civil War was yet another orgy of a party in an increasingly dense social calendar. Such joy Todahlael found as brother fought against brother, bloodily severing ties for often insignificant reasons. General Lee, for example, who believed in the North's cause but fought for the South simply because it was his home. It was one of Todahlael's friends who outmaneuvered the malakim surrounding the general, turning Lee's honor against the unifying actions Heaven wanted to see from him.
As so often happens, this constant din of fun and games lent itself to a moment of melancholy. For Todahlael, this came when she read Lincoln's declaration of Thanksgiving (reproduced after this paraggraph). A long-unaccustomed sadness struck the habbalah who couldn't help remembering her days with Ketriel as an angel, as the "[n]o human cousel [that] hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things." She finished the war out with a dingy enthusiasm, unable to shake that memory, so incompatible with her habbalic belief that Hell was where God wanted her. Returning to a familiar feeling ~ desperation ~ Todahlael sought to eliminate these memories and thoughts, to no longer be troubled by an unwelcome longing for the Light of Heaven. If Mariel hadn't been devoured by a munchy-haunted Haagenti, she'd likely have pulled off some hare-brained scheme designed to remove herself from Malphas's service to that of Oblivion. However, Mariel had proved tasty some centuries before, and so Todahlael settled for jumping ship into the service of Ascetus instead.
"The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth."
Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln, October 3, 1863."
The work of Ignorance didn't suit Todahlael as well as her previous two jobs, and it certainly did not have the memory-exorcising effect she wished. She found herself obsessed with Thanksgiving Day, doing her prince's work by using it every month as a way to spread ignorance of the true cost of the pleasures and gifts the U.S. populace had received. The rest of the year saw the fruits of Todahlael's practice for that one day in November; she grew quite deft at nurturing vague, impersonal gratitude as a way to prevent atrocities from coming to light or responsibility being taken for the actions of an individual, group, or their ancestors. Ironically, she became known among Ascetus's servitors for exactly this kind of work.
Though she had been, quite naturally, stripped of all the gifts Malphas had given her in her 1500-year-service to the prince of Factions, Todahlael found herself quickly acquiring replacements over the course of a mere century serving Ascetus. By the century's end, she was among Ascetus's knights, and she was granted a captainship shortly after Macy's started their parade. Her focus, nigh unto a djinnish obsession, with the day in which an entire country ate more food than any other day, even more than a few days combined, convinced Haagenti to grant her his attunement, as well.
It was Thanksgiving Day, 1954, that Todahlael, firmly ensconced in the role of a sweet little old church lady, led a prayer at a charity dinner her church was leading. Afterwards, a snappily dressed man who had been introduced to her an hour or two before as one of the big donors to the church's charity programs walked up to her. "I liked your prayer," he said. "Especially how it avoided any of the real reasons we've got all this food to give. And why they're poor, for that matter. It's you who should be Grateful." And suddenly, Todahlael knew who the handsome man was, as she felt the Word shoulder itself a space among her Forces. She stammered out a "Thank you" to the man's bemusedly cocked eyebrow, one half of his mouth smiled, and he turned and disappeared into the crowd.
Ever since, Todahlael has continued the same work that earned her her Word, encouraging humans to mimic the humble selflessness of thanks as a way of avoiding guilt, responsibility, or critical thought as to what they could do to prevent the evil of the world. Not a few demons distrust her now, uncertain what to do with a demon ~ especially one of the habbalot ~ who carries such a seemingly Heavenly Word. To tell the truth (but why would we do that?), Todahlael herself has struggled with her Word, as it is all too easy for her efforts to have the opposite effect of that she intended. Her doubts about her place in the Descending Hierarchy have fled, however. God's Hellish representative (Lucifer) rewarded her for her efforts, after all ~ this must be the work God wants her to do.
Todahlael is still adjusting to having received a Word, and such a big Word at that! She's only held it for about 65 years, two-fifths of her time in the service of Ascetus, and a mere fraction of an eyeblink for a being whose age is measured in the billions of years, which accounts for her possessing only a single Word-Attunement when most celestials with such a Word have two. In truth, she knows that she has access to fewer Word-Forces than she should ~ surely Gratitude is a major Word! ~ but she's been facing some strong opposition from Maodea, her Heavenly counterpart, the angel of Giving Thanks (ofan of the Sword under Etiquette), who's been getting aid from the angel of Charity (a malak of Generosity) and the angel of Restitution (an eloah of Judgment). The inherent dangers of her Word, on top of the lasting effects of her earlier doubts concerning her diabolicity, have resulted in a bit of Discord. Todahlael's vessel's stoop and slow gait aren't intended to mimic arthritis ~ they are actually arthritis, and will be carried over into any other vessel she might take. Similarly, she finds a good feast almost impossible to pass up, and she always overeats.
Celestial Appearance: Todahlael has allowed the ravages of age to show on her celestial form. It remains luminous, glowing with a grayish-brown light the color of poorly-cooked meat, and her eyes appear even larger than they did before the Fall behind broad-diametered rose-colored coke-bottle glasses. They are human eyes, though, not the alien eyes of the elohim, and they are a much more pleasant brown than the light which surrounds her, the color of a crispy, fatty turkey skin promising delicious delights beneath. Whereas elohim tend to carry an ageless, vital androgyny, Todahlael's Fallen form is androgynous by dint of age, so withered and twisted and stick-thin dry that no gender can be ascertained among the pale wrinkles that envelop her form. It is those wrinkles that provide a topographical map to the self-mutilations that mark Todahlael as a habbalah. Piercings ride the crest of these fleshy waves, while tattoos peek out from their valleys. Scars artfully interrupt their sumptuous curves, and the twin edges of her flayed edges blend imperceptibly into the ridges of ancient skin. No clothing covers her form, though a couple of napkins seem to have blown against her chest and crotch, stuck there by a wind unseen and unfelt except by those napkins' flapping. A fork and a knife (to which is attached the flag of whichever country the nearest human is a citizen of) fill her hands.
Vessel: An older woman in her 80s, shorter than her skeleton would actually warrant thanks to a stoop that tells of long hours spent hunched over a keyboard. Her hair is the faded black of a cheap dyejob covering up a soft silver, and her brown eyes are filled with a watery-warm sincerity. Cat-eyes glasses on a pearled string often rest atop a pale blue sweater that covers up a long, floral dress. Her shoes are reasonable, and her nails sport a new pastel every other week.
Total Forces ~ 12
Word-Forces ~ 9
Corporeal Forces ~ 4 Strength 8 Agility 8
Ethereal Forces ~ 3 Intelligence 7 Precision 5
Celestial Forces ~ 5 Will 12 Perception 8
Vessel ~ Human/1
Role ~ Little Old Church Lady/4 (Status/2)
Servant ~ Pastor/2 (Class/4)
Skills ~ Artistry (Cooking)/4, Computer Operation/2, Emote/5, Savoir-Faire/3, Singing/1
Attunements ~ Captain of Twisted Memory**, Demon of Gratitude***, Habbalah of Gluttony, Habbalah of Ignorance****, Knight of Stupidity*****, Memory Gap******, Modern Dark Age*******
Songs ~ Charm (Ethereal/6, Celestial/3), Forbidding (Ethereal/3), Harmony (Corporeal/6), Opening (Ethereal/3, Celestial/1), Seals (Ethereal/5), Solace (Ethereal/5), Succor (Corporeal/2)
Additional Rites ~ Lead a prayer (or equivalent) of impersonal or vague thanks; Spend an hour in conversation, monologue, or writing (et cetera) downplaying/ignoring/covering up past or present atrocities
Discord ~ Disabled/3********, Gluttonous/1, Pity/1, Obsessed (Thanksgiving)/1
* It is dissonant for a servitor of Ascetus to correct any belief that goes against the facts, or to promote education or enlightenment. Rites: Convince someone not to think twice; Spread a lie to the public, by posting it to the Net, handing out flyers in the street for an hour, etc.
** These are the most feared vassals of Ignorance, as they can twist known and unknown concepts into knots that cannot be deciphered. By spending 4 essence, they can change a 'truth' into whatever they chose. For example, they could change the answers in the back of a particular book, change a few 1's to 0's in machine code, or make a Macintosh a real computer, but they couldn't change pi to equal 4 or any universally affecting 'constant'.
*** As long as someone is even vaguely or indirectly experiencing pleasure, Todahlael can cause them to ignore one unpleasant thing per point of Essence spent, with a successful Will roll. The Attunement's effects only last as long as the specific pleasure does, though events during its effects can prolong the results. Normally, this Attunement must be activated individually for each intended victim; however, if Todahlael cooks a feast to be used as the anchoring pleasure, the Attunement will affect a number of people equal to the check digit of her Artistry (Cooking) roll with each activation.
**** Same as Habbalah of Factions.
***** By concentrating on someone and spending one essence, the knight can sense the one thing that the person has little or no knowledge, but wishes to learn about. {And, yes, "stupidity" is a word with a long ableist, racist, and classist history. This is Hell we're talking about, after all.}
****** The demon can cause a target to forget a specific piece of information. This requires a Contest of Will vs. the target's Perception; the demon may spend Essence to add to his will. The check digit determines the type of information that can be erased:
Check Digit~Information Lost
1~Something minor in short-term memory (a name or phone number just heard)
2~Something major in short-term memory (the just-heard time and place of a meeting)
3~Something minor in medium/long-term memory (the phone number at work; your spouse's middle name)
4~Something major in medium/long-term memory (the exit to get to your parents' house; the password to your AOL account)
5~Something minor in long-term memory (the name of your first-grade teacher)
6~Something major in long-term memory (your wedding anniversary; the Pythagorean Theorem)
Information lost in this way will be "on the tip of your tongue" or misremembered in such a way as to be useless. The target can be reminded of it, but must make a Will roll; the information is not retained until a successful roll is made.
******* By spending 2 essence per person the demon wishes to affect (to a maximum of his celestial forces) he can have them interpret a sign, image, or oration the wrong way, or ignore the enlightening effects of teachers and books (negating any potential for learning from that source) for one day.
******** "Crippled" is a slur.
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
My chapel is a warm kitchen, with soup on the stove, bread in the oven, and good wise friends (Traveller Tuesday #22)
OK, let’s create a new religion ~ you probably remember that this is one of my favorite things!
Frustratingly, I can’t seem to find the version of my world creation file that has the 1d20 version of the God View table, so I roll 3d6 and find that this religion’s basic theology is avatar polytheism (6). Like certain interpretations of various Hinduisms, this religion has a multitude of many gods, all of which are manifestations or names or forms of a small handful of divine beings. Similar interpretations of Greco-Roman religion (Poseidon Earth-Shaker is not necessarily the same as Poseidon Horse-Lover; alternatively, Neo-Platonism was all about mapping the manifestations of the One through the Ideal Forms to the bewildering diversity of earthly beings), Afro-Diasporic religions (where different “roads” or “paths” of various beings are discussed, and the orishas are sometimes referred to as classes of spirit beings rather than individuals), and Neo-Wicca (which oft repeats that “All gods are one God; all goddesses are one Goddess”).
A 2d6-1 result of 6 tells us that this religion preaches that worshipers will be received into paradise when they die, whereas the same roll comes up 8 to reveal that the religion requires a monthly devotional practice. This starts to give me a bit of an inspiration about this religion, as I begin to see in my mind’s eye images of coven meetings every “moon” ON the moon. Maybe it’s related to Ishee’s parahuman and bioroid Bio-Witches movement?
On the other hand a 10 on 2d6+1 tells us that there is no organization beyond the regional level and a 13 on 2d6+3 gives the religion a highly informal liturgy with some limitations on topics or references. I’m starting to feel like this religion is SUPER domestic and homey, pursuing a cozy feeling as its preferred altered state of consciousness within a Neo-Wiccan avatar-dualism theology. These monthly devotions with their highly informal liturgies could be very classic witchy ~ not 13 people around a cauldron, but a bunch of folk gathered in a kitchen cooking together. Galactic culture as a whole might be stymied by the deep, deep importance laid upon these gatherings, but remember that this culture treats eating as a private matter away from everyone else. Shockingly to Assemonite society, members of this religion allow people who aren’t their family or spouse to see them eat ~ it’d be the equivalent of, say, a high-class Victorian woman showing her ankles to someone who wasn’t her husband or parents, or a conservative Muslim woman taking off her burqa outside of the home, or ancient Roman Christians performing unisex rituals where rich and poor participate equally. Incredibly intimate, and one’s coven is thus composed of your ultimate confidantes.
The 2d6-2 roll for Missionary Fervor comes up 4, revealing active efforts to proselytize the religion among a limited number of sophont species. In truth, this is probably about as high as it makes sense for this religion to have on this table ~ zealous proselytizing on Amon Assemon would likely result in any number of indignant slaps, if not worse, as you invited people to violate a cultural taboo. And if we hold to the Neo-Wiccan duotheism, then the religion would likely not make sense to species with strong gender binaries. Hell, it likely flourishes among humans, but I’m a human and nonbinary and I find Neo-Wicca too binarist for me to practice it!
This religion stretches beyond whatever meager atmosphere Amon Assemon might have, as it has tens of thousands of adherents (3d6-4=4). Turning to random.org, I set the number at 73,217 practitioners ~ there’s only 532 unaligned people left on Amon Assemon! That’s 6% of the moon’s population, so I’m gonna roll 1d60 (divided by ten) to figure out this religion’s share of that population: 4.4%, which is most of that remaining population, or 390 sophonts. Rolling the dWikipedia, let’s call it the Tickseed Feast.
Oh, and I’m thinking that the higher levels of organization (surface region, planetary, galactic region) are composed of 4th degree and higher practitioners who spend their time traveling between various monthly home meetings to dispense wisdom and provide cohesion to the religion. 1st degree would be a new initiate or acolyte, 2nd a full initiate able to participate fully in the religion, and 3rd the ability to act as a host and invite people to your home for the monthly gatherings.
Going back and reading the earlier blog post on the Barnwell Tradition of Scientological Witchcraft on Ishee, I determine that there is no connection between the two religions.
Religious landscape of Amon Assemon:
5227 sophonts (59%) atheist/agnostic/non-religious
2747 sophonts (31%) Liberty Fellowship of Spirit-Listeners
390 sophonts (4.4%) the Tickseed Feast (Tickseeds, Feasters, Tickers, Seedies)
354 humans (4%) Azeyrenawt
Frustratingly, I can’t seem to find the version of my world creation file that has the 1d20 version of the God View table, so I roll 3d6 and find that this religion’s basic theology is avatar polytheism (6). Like certain interpretations of various Hinduisms, this religion has a multitude of many gods, all of which are manifestations or names or forms of a small handful of divine beings. Similar interpretations of Greco-Roman religion (Poseidon Earth-Shaker is not necessarily the same as Poseidon Horse-Lover; alternatively, Neo-Platonism was all about mapping the manifestations of the One through the Ideal Forms to the bewildering diversity of earthly beings), Afro-Diasporic religions (where different “roads” or “paths” of various beings are discussed, and the orishas are sometimes referred to as classes of spirit beings rather than individuals), and Neo-Wicca (which oft repeats that “All gods are one God; all goddesses are one Goddess”).
A 2d6-1 result of 6 tells us that this religion preaches that worshipers will be received into paradise when they die, whereas the same roll comes up 8 to reveal that the religion requires a monthly devotional practice. This starts to give me a bit of an inspiration about this religion, as I begin to see in my mind’s eye images of coven meetings every “moon” ON the moon. Maybe it’s related to Ishee’s parahuman and bioroid Bio-Witches movement?
On the other hand a 10 on 2d6+1 tells us that there is no organization beyond the regional level and a 13 on 2d6+3 gives the religion a highly informal liturgy with some limitations on topics or references. I’m starting to feel like this religion is SUPER domestic and homey, pursuing a cozy feeling as its preferred altered state of consciousness within a Neo-Wiccan avatar-dualism theology. These monthly devotions with their highly informal liturgies could be very classic witchy ~ not 13 people around a cauldron, but a bunch of folk gathered in a kitchen cooking together. Galactic culture as a whole might be stymied by the deep, deep importance laid upon these gatherings, but remember that this culture treats eating as a private matter away from everyone else. Shockingly to Assemonite society, members of this religion allow people who aren’t their family or spouse to see them eat ~ it’d be the equivalent of, say, a high-class Victorian woman showing her ankles to someone who wasn’t her husband or parents, or a conservative Muslim woman taking off her burqa outside of the home, or ancient Roman Christians performing unisex rituals where rich and poor participate equally. Incredibly intimate, and one’s coven is thus composed of your ultimate confidantes.
The 2d6-2 roll for Missionary Fervor comes up 4, revealing active efforts to proselytize the religion among a limited number of sophont species. In truth, this is probably about as high as it makes sense for this religion to have on this table ~ zealous proselytizing on Amon Assemon would likely result in any number of indignant slaps, if not worse, as you invited people to violate a cultural taboo. And if we hold to the Neo-Wiccan duotheism, then the religion would likely not make sense to species with strong gender binaries. Hell, it likely flourishes among humans, but I’m a human and nonbinary and I find Neo-Wicca too binarist for me to practice it!
This religion stretches beyond whatever meager atmosphere Amon Assemon might have, as it has tens of thousands of adherents (3d6-4=4). Turning to random.org, I set the number at 73,217 practitioners ~ there’s only 532 unaligned people left on Amon Assemon! That’s 6% of the moon’s population, so I’m gonna roll 1d60 (divided by ten) to figure out this religion’s share of that population: 4.4%, which is most of that remaining population, or 390 sophonts. Rolling the dWikipedia, let’s call it the Tickseed Feast.
Oh, and I’m thinking that the higher levels of organization (surface region, planetary, galactic region) are composed of 4th degree and higher practitioners who spend their time traveling between various monthly home meetings to dispense wisdom and provide cohesion to the religion. 1st degree would be a new initiate or acolyte, 2nd a full initiate able to participate fully in the religion, and 3rd the ability to act as a host and invite people to your home for the monthly gatherings.
Going back and reading the earlier blog post on the Barnwell Tradition of Scientological Witchcraft on Ishee, I determine that there is no connection between the two religions.
Religious landscape of Amon Assemon:
5227 sophonts (59%) atheist/agnostic/non-religious
2747 sophonts (31%) Liberty Fellowship of Spirit-Listeners
390 sophonts (4.4%) the Tickseed Feast (Tickseeds, Feasters, Tickers, Seedies)
354 humans (4%) Azeyrenawt
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