Café de Nuit

brass wrote:

Sareau wrote:In my Ravenloft, there is the Church-staffed mainly by Experts who maintain the lands, copy books, etc. Most of the good gods are worshiped as saints by the Church, the Morninglord taking up the mantle Sts Cosmo and Damian held in the Orthodox churches, Ezra filling in for the Virgin Mary, who supplanted a lot of pagan Earth Mothers as Christianity spread. The Church is a body politic that performs mostly charity work, etc., and has a lot of clout.
Clerics, on the other hand, seem to be called by a specific patron, just as Paladins are likewise called into their professions.

I was equally thinking of toning things down slightly on the religious magic end. I've been using the inquisitor class more and more for religious types from the pathfinder rpg.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/adva ... sitor.html

Their spell list is more low key and has a bard progression.

Of course they are fantastic monster hunters as well.

I, too, tend to assume that most priests are Experts. One PC in my last campaign arc spent a couple of chapters blind because it wasn't easy to find a spellcasting cleric who could restore his vision.

Sareau wrote:In my Ravenloft, there is the Church-staffed mainly by Experts who maintain the lands, copy books, etc. Most of the good gods are worshiped as saints by the Church, the Morninglord taking up the mantle Sts Cosmo and Damian held in the Orthodox churches, Ezra filling in for the Virgin Mary, who supplanted a lot of pagan Earth Mothers as Christianity spread. The Church is a body politic that performs mostly charity work, etc., and has a lot of clout.
Clerics, on the other hand, seem to be called by a specific patron, just as Paladins are likewise called into their professions.

If you have most of the good gods as 'saints' and Ezra filling in for the Virgin Mary... Then who or what is the main focus of the faith? Surely not the Lawgiver? o_o

Continuing with the series...let’s do a tough one next!

Rokushima Taiyoo:

…Has none of this CL 5 Genpei War silliness going on. Nobody in Whistler-Ravenloft has a culture analogous to anything before 1600ish AD, because the early modern era is totally awesome so there. Technologically, the Islands are in the late Sengoku, thankyouverymuch: everyone has had arquebuses for at least 100 years, when the Loud Hairy People with Subpar Hygiene brought them over.

…Has person- and place-names that were not picked at random out of a “How to Convince a Group of Rural Norweigan Turnip Farmers That You Are Really Speaking Japanese” pamphlet.

…Has a version of Buddhism to go along with the version of Shinto. It’s around as similar to the real thing as the Church of Ezra is to real Christianity: the Great Teacher’s female, for example. Among other things, they’ve still got the warrior-monk tradition going alongside the traditional clergy; a lot of these folks are Paladins or Battleminds, mechanically speaking.

…Has historically been ruled over by four brothers, but it’s not like one of them’s a ninja, and one of them’s a sorcerer, and one of them’s a priest, and they’re all different alignments and look at how much better it would be if you lived on one island rather than another. Nope. They’re identical quadruplets, and they’re all profoundly obnoxious, questionably competent samurai-turned-administrators. The only practical way to tell them apart is by the color of their respective coats of arms and their retainers’ uniforms—and by the time you’ve seen one of those, there is an excellent chance that you are about to be killed in a territorial dispute. Whoopee.

…Is currently being ruled over by three brothers, because the fourth was extremely murdered about four or five years ago. As a consequence, the Domain now only encompasses three of the four islands in the archeapelago. The fourth island is still there, and it is under new management, and also freaking everyone the hell out. More on this in a future post.

…Has a populace whose defining sin is the abuse of public power for personal ends. This applies to rogue samurai and dictatorial daimyo alike, and comprises a decent share of corrupt monks and embezzling merchants as well: give these folks a position marked by centuries of tradition and an unbreakable code of conduct, and there’s a decidedly non-zero chance that they are using it to fill their coffers, expand their property, or get their sociopathic nephew that cushy government job. When Rokumans make powers checks—which happens with some frequency—they probably think that they’ve just been promoted, damn it, they deserve it just this once. They don’t.

…Has a darklord, who is not completely useless. Only mostly useless.

Here’s the deal: his name was Senzo Toyama, and back in the day, he was the Shogun during an Edo-ish period of extended peace. He and his peers were all trained as fighters, but were politicians in practice. Toyama took his training a bit more seriously than his predecessors. Dude liked the hands-on parts of the job.

The empire was parceled out to feudal lords based on strict hereditary lines: each family got a fief, and it had been that way for a few centuries. Problem was, Senzo was nostalgic for the militaristic old days, and wasn’t content for his family to just sit in the capitol and administrate. Plus, he had some children to toughen up: one oldest son and the aforementioned middle quadruplets. There was a younger daughter somewhere in there too, but, you know. Whatever.

Toyama picked the five best districts in the empire, and had their lords accused of treason. For unimpeachably valid reasons. And then he sent one kid out to each fief--accompanied by extremely large armies--so that they could collectively take over the vacant governorships. There was an awful lot of fighting, after which the original lords decided that they’d really like to preserve a half-milennium golden age by suing for peace. The Toyama kids could have the dang baronies, so long as there wasn’t another nationwide civil war.

So Toyama invited those local lords to the capital for a round of treaty negotiations, and then had them all killed by mercenaries in the deliberation room. You know. Just to be sure. The retaliation by the lords’ retainers was swift, culminating in an all-out siege of Toyama’s palace as the Shogun desperately tried to iron out the details of his succession—with his family in attendance, of course. This was precisely when Toyama and his oldest son were killed by musket fire through the windows.

One jaunt to the Dread Realms later… The oldest son, being a vaguely decent kind of bloodthirsty warlord, stayed dead. Toyama himself did not. I mentally style him after Blight, that one boss from Okami: a possessed, empty suit of samurai armor, run through with a couple dozen swords and arrows. Unlike his canon self, he has a limited gift of prophecy—at least for large-scale political events within his domain—and he can actually manifest himself sometimes. To members of his direct family line. And, oh, “manifesting himself” apparently doesn’t include talking. Consequently, a visit from Toyama is like an extremely terrifying round of charades, with wordless telepathic vision-quests as the drawing pad and “position your troops on such-and-such a ridge at 0900 hours or everyone in this district will die horribly” as the answer. Each of the quadruplets gets one of these visits every few months; they have been uniformly horrible at interpreting them. Toyama is certain that if he engineers everything just right, his sons will iron out their tremendous national clusterfudge, and usher in a new golden age under a glorious, united empire.

…What’s that? The only thing standing his way is the fact that he has raised his sons to be despotic, self-serving bullies who all hate each other? Nonsense. You must be thinking of somebody else.

The Whistler wrote:Continuing with the series...let’s do a tough one next!

…Has historically been ruled over by four brothers, but it’s not like one of them’s a ninja, and one of them’s a sorcerer, and one of them’s a priest, and they’re all different alignments and look at how much better it would be if you lived on one island rather than another.

HEY! I was young and stupid when I wrote that!

Aw man, for some reason I thought that that was a recognized feature of unofficial canon as opposed to one person's take on it! Heavy apologies, Zettaijin--if it helps, I have written far, far worse things when I was a youth.

Rock wrote:

Sareau wrote:In my Ravenloft, there is the Church-staffed mainly by Experts who maintain the lands, copy books, etc. Most of the good gods are worshiped as saints by the Church, the Morninglord taking up the mantle Sts Cosmo and Damian held in the Orthodox churches, Ezra filling in for the Virgin Mary, who supplanted a lot of pagan Earth Mothers as Christianity spread. The Church is a body politic that performs mostly charity work, etc., and has a lot of clout.
Clerics, on the other hand, seem to be called by a specific patron, just as Paladins are likewise called into their professions.

If you have most of the good gods as 'saints' and Ezra filling in for the Virgin Mary... Then who or what is the main focus of the faith? Surely not the Lawgiver? o_o

The Church is based around the teachings of a philosopher-scion of an ancient royal line-who wouldn't play ball with the Powers That Were and got himself executed by the State.
The Eternal Order corrupted a lot of his teachings similar to the Gnostic/Catholic schism.

Zettaijin wrote:

The Whistler wrote:Continuing with the series...let’s do a tough one next!

…Has historically been ruled over by four brothers, but it’s not like one of them’s a ninja, and one of them’s a sorcerer, and one of them’s a priest, and they’re all different alignments and look at how much better it would be if you lived on one island rather than another.

HEY! I was young and stupid when I wrote that!

One a ninja, one a sorceror, and one a priest actually sounds pretty cool!

Sareau wrote:

Rock wrote:

Sareau wrote:In my Ravenloft, there is the Church-staffed mainly by Experts who maintain the lands, copy books, etc. Most of the good gods are worshiped as saints by the Church, the Morninglord taking up the mantle Sts Cosmo and Damian held in the Orthodox churches, Ezra filling in for the Virgin Mary, who supplanted a lot of pagan Earth Mothers as Christianity spread. The Church is a body politic that performs mostly charity work, etc., and has a lot of clout.
Clerics, on the other hand, seem to be called by a specific patron, just as Paladins are likewise called into their professions.

If you have most of the good gods as 'saints' and Ezra filling in for the Virgin Mary... Then who or what is the main focus of the faith? Surely not the Lawgiver? o_o

The Church is based around the teachings of a philosopher-scion of an ancient royal line-who wouldn't play ball with the Powers That Were and got himself executed by the State.
The Eternal Order corrupted a lot of his teachings similar to the Gnostic/Catholic schism.

The EO as creepy Gnostics? Oooooooh-that's pretty good.

MY own RL's Eternal Order is more of a syncretic 'state cult', created by Azalin by codifying and establishing the trdaitional beleifs of Darkononians. In my notes, Darkonians have always had a reverence for , and fear of, the dead. In addition, they worshipped a pantheon of common gods, sometimes with different names used in different regions. Alien gods could be incorporated as aspects of native Darkonian deities. Each city has a patron god or goddess. These gods I took from Oerth, since Azalin is native to that world. For example. IlAluk's patron is Wee Jas.

I ignored the 'undead-a-ganza' of the Requiem (too over the top) and kept Il Aluk as a city of the living. The city possesses a vast necropolis, with many priests, undertakers, embalmers, etc to care for the dead. Sending your dead family or friends to be interred in Il Aluk is thought to be a great honor and a comfort to the souls of the departed.

ewancummins wrote:I ignored the 'undead-a-ganza' of the Requiem (too over the top) and kept Il Aluk as a city of the living.

I have exactly the same sort of feeling. Necropolis is too blatant for my tastes.

However, an errant thought strikes me!

I wonder if Necropolis could work as an undercity of Il Aluk. The Requiem opened up various underground tunnels, canals, and ancient caverns and the undead now swarm around those. It would leave Il Aluk aboveground as a living city, but the situation would be tense as all hell and most people in Il Aluk would be justifiably paranoid wrecks.

I'll do some more thinking about this.

HuManBing wrote:

ewancummins wrote:I ignored the 'undead-a-ganza' of the Requiem (too over the top) and kept Il Aluk as a city of the living.

I have exactly the same sort of feeling. Necropolis is too blatant for my tastes.

However, an errant thought strikes me!

I wonder if Necropolis could work as an undercity of Il Aluk. The Requiem opened up various underground tunnels, canals, and ancient caverns and the undead now swarm around those. It would leave Il Aluk aboveground as a living city, but the situation would be tense as all hell and most people in Il Aluk would be justifiably paranoid wrecks.

I'll do some more thinking about this.

That sounds cool, too.

My ideas about Il Aluk were inspired by a variety of sources:Litharge from the Sandman comics, the real world's An Najaf (been there- it's pretty nifty), Roman and Egyptian customs, etc.

ewancummins wrote:

Zettaijin wrote:

The Whistler wrote:Continuing with the series...let’s do a tough one next!

…Has historically been ruled over by four brothers, but it’s not like one of them’s a ninja, and one of them’s a sorcerer, and one of them’s a priest, and they’re all different alignments and look at how much better it would be if you lived on one island rather than another.

HEY! I was young and stupid when I wrote that!

One a ninja, one a sorceror, and one a priest actually sounds pretty cool!

Someone reposted my old (and I do mean OLD) Rokushima Taiyoo gaz in these forum, and then someone else reposted it, again. But, as much as some folks on the old mailing list liked my take in the Japanese domain (at the time influenced by a burgeoning interest in contemporary anime), it is pretty dated and was never unofficial canon of anything remotely close to that. It's just that no else had an interest in the place.

I wouldn't rule out some of my ideas, but I'd certainly revisit most of them were I intending to use them.

I'd definately keep the concept of each island representing a different era of Japan by blowing up to the point of caricature its defining traits of its ruling class (aloof nobles more ineterested in court intrigue, beauty and love making than their people; a warrior rule concerned solely with breeding future rank and file soldiers, stepping on everyone's toes; etc.).

But the anime references would be tossed out the window.

I always felt that Oriental Adventures was too Japanese, not enough of the rest of Asia. I personally would love to see a Ravenloft Asian Horrors, with all the luxuriant cultures and myths given equal time-a wall that holds off the barbarians to the North so long as it is fed, the intrigues of the spirits and dragons, maybe even encapsulate the Three Kingdoms period to keep China from dominating the cluster...
Maybe a spinoff thread for Asian realms only is in order...

Zettaijin wrote:I'd definately keep the concept of each island representing a different era of Japan by blowing up to the point of caricature its defining traits of its ruling class (aloof nobles more ineterested in court intrigue, beauty and love making than their people; a warrior rule concerned solely with breeding future rank and file soldiers, stepping on everyone's toes; etc.).

I'm very cool with that in principle! And I've actually done something similar for that one Fourth Island I mentioned, which I'll write about soon. If I were to go that route full-throttle, though, I'd just spin each island off into its own domain so each one's more thematically coherent in its own right. I feel like each of the more spotlit domains are very focused in terms of the culture and type of darklord dysfunction they represent, where Rokushima Taiyoo has just sort of canonically been "most-of-Japan"-themed... My take on it's just an attempt to tighten up the "pointless warfare due to deadbeat parentage" bits at the expense of some of the other stuff. No hard feelings intended!

Sareau wrote:Maybe a spinoff thread for Asian realms only is in order...

It's been done attempted before. Do a search for "Asianloft" and you'll find it.

Her ya go...

http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg12 ... EAS001.jpg