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Actual Play - Sun & Moon

There is huge thematic tension in the sun cult of Absolon as it relates to character identity, being how it is just about the only religious tradition in the book that doesn’t offer kewl powerz up the wazoo. I find it interesting to play the humble rural sun priest as a good guy, or have the influential abbot do his best against the ravages of a corrupt Lord, all without Solar Rays of Death in his back pocket.

The Shadow Cult is the only serious ideology to resist the Lords of Maldor, but at least in my games it seems to be filled with terrorist assholes willing to go to any lengths against the Lords. This is sad, as the Shadow Cult is also the only really liberal theology in Maldor. Traditional witchcraft is weak in Maldor, but it makes for interesting sectarian disputes when it encounters its young, mad sibling faith.

The Servitors are only a faint idea, wistful for a third way but impotent in the monotheistic, monolithic present. The Nine Celestials in chapter 32 provide a sketch of an elite mystery cult revolving around them.

No Gods

This is just the first of many chapters in the book to include explicit religions that even have magic powers. What does it mean, exactly, that Near “does not include gods”?

The answer is simple: the Story Guide never considers celestial intent in the plays he makes, nothing ever happens on the initiative of gods, and gods never communicate, and especially never, ever take any stand on issues, even if their purported representatives do. As far as the Story Guide is concerned, he’s running a materialistic setting where having faith gives you super-powers, whatever the characters might think. This doesn’t even particularly mean that the characters are objectively wrong in their beliefs; it just means that even if they are right, that’s not part of the game, and their beliefs will never be affirmed by the setting authority, even if the story itself should.

There are plenty of things the players can do with gods, even with the Story Guide thus constrained. Roll a PRAY (V) check, have your character go into stupor and afterwards claim to have spoken with the Sun Lord who told him that he’s actually Absolon Reborn? Sure, as long as it’s clear that we’re just talking about your character’s subjective experience. That sort of thing is completely in the player’s purview, the Story Guide can never claim that nuhuh, the Sun Lord didn’t talk to your character, because the Sun Lord wouldn’t – he doesn’t have that power, because the gods are not his to play.

If the reader is wondering why we hash these nuances, the short answer is that this anti-god agenda is just another part of the humanistic strategy in TSoY, and a sort of safety rail against bad fantasy game habits: the Story Guide cannot have gods steal the story from the player characters when gods are not in his toolbox. Whatever choices characters make, whatever the consequences, the events play out without divine interventions, at least ones not backed mechanically by characters actually present in the story.