"God created the devil, the devil is the enemy of the order. If god refuses to destroy the enemy he has created, he is also our enemy.
If the only way to defeat his creation is to fufill his narcisism, then he is evil himself for this coercion.
Since we cannot detect the devil, I propose we instead kill the faithful. This is not a war against god, but a war against the devil. Kill the master and the servent dies with him. Kill the story tellers and the story dies. Mostly at least.
Since it is thier god which has forced our hand, we cannot be blamed for the deaths of his followers. Should his followers denounce the evil iesus, they may be spared."
I actually have one guy with Chthonic Magic, which has proven to be interesting. I allow Diedne magic but I discourage it. IMS, it dos equal "short lived character", so I do warn them of that.
"In the sense that I believe that our glorious Order was duped into senseless killing of innocent fellow mages, while the true enemy was allowed to fester and grow fat in their blood, and continue their attempts to oppress the Order, as they have tried to do from the start. The wrong House was cast out in the Schism War, and that is plain for all to see".
"You are the deluded one, in believing the vicious lies that the slaves of the Dominion dangle before you in order to distract the likes of you while they tie the noose around the neck of magic. What harm ever did the exotic mages you fear so much ever did to the Order ? While you chase them, the mundanes and the Church whose boots you are so fond of licking continue theior unrelenting assualt on everything that is magical and wonderful in the world, to drown everything in their ant-like mediocrity. The Infernal you and they fear so much is but the shadow of their accursed Dominion. Uproot it, and the Infernal shall gutter out like a shadow deprived of the light that generates it. Damp its all-consuming flame, and the gentle light of magic shall be free to enlghten the world, and chase away the shadow. There is but one true enemy of the Order nowadays, and it is the mundanes and the Dominion they serve in their ignorance and the traitors and flase mages that disgrace their Goft by serving them".
"So the slave of mundanes shows his true colors. Here is the true enemy of the order, always ready to renege his oath to his fellow mages to side with mundanes. Well met... court wizard. Is your tongue pained enough kissing the backsides of nobles and priests ?"
"Ah, the eternal delusion of you pathetic followers of the Nailed One, to believe that the First Cause shall lockstep into place according to the childish fables that you tell yourselves in your books. In your delusion, you aren't even able to recognize that you create the Dominion and the spirits you venerate, with your ant-like devotion. Anyway, face me like a magus, but do not dare include me in your childish belief system."
"No, the likes of you disgrace our Order and are its true enemy, always ready to sell out their fellow magi, and let the very auras and vis sources our Order thrives on, in order to grovel before the mundanes and priests you love so much. Those who put allegiance to mundanes before solidarity to their sodales betray their oath, and should have no place in our Order. Come on, mundie-lover, has your butt-kissing of priests left you any strength to face a real mage ? Do you want a Wizard War ? Bring it on. Your bleached bones shall be testament to the hollowness of the lies you expose and the viciousness of your betrayal."
Sure.
"Only a dim-witted mundie-lover could mistake an oath-sworn alliance pact with "molesting". Come on, court wizard, do I need to teach you the Latin vocabulary all the way once again, before we can have our WW ? I would not want you misread my declaration when it comes. As for the mundanes, it is them who shall not cease interfering with our livelihood, and need to be uprooted in blood and fire".
"Fine, once we are done, this tribunal shall have one less poisonous viper ready to sell out his fellows to the mundanes."
He's keeping it a secret, so far. He did slip up once and invoked dark Gods in front of another magus, but he did not recognize them as such. He is in the same saga as a Holy maga character, which has also proven to be interesting. I go easy because the player is a really good player and Ludo is a really interesting character. But I forsee major problems down the road. The player was dissapointed when I stuck to the RAW and told him that he cannot summon angels with magic, and that the Divine is indeed the supreme power.
Aha! So that is how you justify your vile dealings with the infernal. I KNEW thats why you Flambeau´s are so in love with fire and brimstone!
Pft, you Flambeau, just trying to divert attention away from the diabolics in your ranks!
Just simple logic. Now wether its based on facts or delusions, thats another matter.
Thats bad GM:ing. If the player is really GOOD at keeping his secret from those who WOULD persecute, why should he be shortlived? And the only ones who would always be automatic enemies are Tremere. Stay far away from them or anyone else too zealous or with enough awareness about the surrounding world and they will be ok much/most of the time.
Its not like its easy to figure out a Diedne exactly.
Cthonic magic would be riskier for sure.
Very sensible. But I would avoid picking the kind of character that MM RP in our little fun exchange in one of my games, given how I redefined the sensibilites of the Order A Really Advanced Order... And above all, never play the inquisitor.
Hold up, Out of Character. That is not something a Flambeau magus would ever think, let alone say in front of other Flambeau magi.
In character…
“That’s all the evidence I need to convict you, former sodale. I call for a vote to cast this deluded madman from the Order! There is nothing innocent about human sacrifice or their blood magic. No excuse, none.
Let’s see: Murdered innocents, corrupted sodales, summoned demons, stole our vis, created a culture if ignorance (which you are an example of), and so on and so forth. I have nothing against exotic magi, just Diedne and their sympathizers.
Are we even living on the same plane of existence?
OOC – I will spare you the Theology, but this is very-very bad thinking. Just awful.
How about my mother and father? They were mundane. My children? One has the Gift and the other does not. Should I love one child more than the other?
What about your mother?
How do you know I am not Jewish?
Actually, I would likely not even bother with the debate if this was in an actual game. I would just declare war and let my actions speak for me.
But seriously, you would play a Flambeau magus like this?
I am not a GM. I am an SG
And I myself personally don't like the Diedne. I play them as they are in fact the villians that they were portrayed, and the Tremere & Flambeau were right. As a player in Novus Mane, I have a covenant mate with the Diedne Dark Secret, and I play ignorant. But for th saga I run, I need the players to give me some allowance for my preferences in exchange for the massive efforts I put forth. I don't want any Diedne staining the covenant I have been running for fifteen years now.
I see, your attitude towards the Diedne mirrors mine towards the Tremere (and the Jerbiton to a lesser degree).
About the Flambeau, in my sagas, they have come to the realization that the Tremere duped and exploited them during the Schism War, and have transferred their resentment against the Nazi... err, well-organized House all the way. So yes, I would RP a Flambeau that way. Even in canon sagas, there are going to be some Flambeau that think that way, since it is an established canon fact that historical judgement about the Schism War is controversial in the current Order, and I would only play the kind of Flambeau that thinks the Tremere were the guilty party in the Schism War (or member of any other house, for that matter). Only the canon Tremere are still adamant and monolithic in their negative judgment of Diedne.
About the theology, at that point of discussion, I was tapping the IC theory that Belief creates Reality, and hence the Dominion and the powers and supernatural creatures linked to it are created by the believers' faith, and the real Creator is unknowable and in no way linked to the Dominion.
"Belief defines Reality" is intrinsically flawed. The majority of people don't believe "Belief defines Reality", so if it does, it doesn't. And since Reality is everything, past and future, it never did, and never will. The idea the Belief creates Auras almost works, except the Magic aura seems "strongest" where there is no one to Belief.
You are both right, I should have termed it Belief (and Emotion, Expression, Story, etc.) define the Realms, and the Auras. A way to make the Dominion and the Divine Realm only generated and fueled up by belief and emotion of the believers, and having no ultimate backing from supreme cosmic forces (no more than the other Realms, anyway). To a degree, the forces generated by the Realms gain independent action (as spirits and creatures) and have ability to extend the boundaries of the realms, beside the direct influence of human belief/emotion. In this model, God either does not exist and seeming actions by him are actually performed by the most powerful angels, or the unconscious collective will of the believers, or he's just a very powerful previous magic/faerie being, the supernatural embodiment of Goodness, uplifited into the current impressive power level and a separate Realm by the massive level of belief and emotion he gets. Anyway, the Divine Realm has no direct connection with the Creator (if any), or the impersonal origin of the Universe, which is unknowable, and does not pick sides between the Realms, anyway.
I think this interpretation of the Dominion/Divine fits the setting nicely (it may or may not require to house-rule away the trumping quality of miracles, but one could also explain it as the result of the fact that currently the Divine realm is at the top of the metaphysical realm power level totem pole, thanks to the massive amounts of belief and emotion it gets in Mythic Europe), so I refer to it when I play/SG. I also find this interpretation of the setting much more confortable than one which makes Abrahamic monotheism even remotely more "in the right" than other belief systems.
Except there is no "as they are in fact", because the portrayal is ambigious to say the least.
Or do you accept Flambeau and Tytalus magi as tainted as well? Mmm which other houses have skeletons in the closet as well? Hmm?
Otherwise thats just being extremely selective about what source material you accept or totally hypocritical.
