Would you want a Tremere in your covenant?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
41

We have a Tremere in our covenant...he's been a pretty steadfast member. The part to remember is that there is a character underneath the House affiliation, and that personality is going to drive motivation as much-- if not more than-- the House. Magi are individuals first, and there are plenty of instances where the individual might disagree with the path chosen by the House. Everything depends on the character's desire to advance within the House, if they can reconcile the House needs and their own, if they're willing to accept consequences when they can't.

Honestly, the ArM5 Tremere are political, but they're a fraternity, a sort of Hermetic Legion. They might have policy goals they'd like implemented as a House, but they're also a large group of people who will have diverse personalities. That will influence how the policy is implemented more than anything.

And for the disbelief of many player covenants, I think many spring covenants are formed by a mutual need for survival and independence. When you start your own covenant with a group of freshly gauntlet'd magi, you get a certain level of equality that doesn't exist otherwise. New magi might then approach that covenant as time progresses specifically for that reputation of equality. Everyone brings something to the table because together you have strength to pursue your interests without fear of mundane reprisal. You can establish your personal projects, investigate what you like and know that there is a division of responsibility that will help protect you from the big big world.

As time progresses, yes, certainly more powerful magi have the means to strike out on their own, to be more discerning regarding the inclusion of covenant members, but then there are the thoughts of politics, legacy, reputation. Few like the idea of seeing what they've built crumble, and over time, maintaining that requires new blood. While some might find being an eremite a pleasant release from the responsibilities of a covenant, I think it probably brings its own series of complications.

-Ben.

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42

Our Princeps is a Tremere. As was the princeps, her pater, before her. Tremere's are nice and they are your friend. Nothing would be farther than for me to speak ill of the House of Capulet... wait... Tremere!

Hey wait! I'm the SG! Even without any characters of my own. Why then am I.. .hmmm...

Well... Tremere is your friend :laughing:

43

In most cases? Oneself, possibly superceded by one's apprentice, though, unless that apprentice is a blood relation, some magi seem to have cavalier attitudes regarding their apprentice. The character I currently play views them as hermetic children and can be quite protective of his apprentice.

Once established and involved with those around them, I think it would be infrequent-- probably when a magus has risen to a place of leadership within the Order, I can see one placing the House and the Lineage ahead of one's own immediate circle. Otherwise, most magi are probably going to look out for things in this order:

oneself/apprentice first
then amici,
then fellow covenant members,
then Tribunal associates,
then housemates regardless of Tribunal,
then fellow members of the Order.

Tremere probably rearrange that list to put Housemates either immediately before or after covenant members, depending on the constituents of their covenant-- but I see that as a sort of brothers-in-arms attitude. Since most Tremere had their apprenticeship in the Transylvanian Tribunal, chances are they know each other or at least of each other.

-Ben.

44

I wouldn't want a Tremere.
He would give out the secrets of the covenant: weak points and trigger effects of the magic items.
Who knows the next target of the Tremeres? Maybe our House follows.

45

My view exactly. They have already betrayed one fellow House without a shred of evidence to enhance their position, they should never be trusted again. Fool me once, as they say.

46

I don't like the emotion that some people are letting creep into their responses, the border-line name calling and such. You'd think this was RL politics, and that's just sad on several levels.

So I'm going to say this, and then sign out of this discussion. Let's use this last citation as a prime example, tho' many others would work just as well...

Some people read that and see the words "more sensible" and "peace" and "serves the Order" - fine. Others, myself included, read that and see that the whole of the statement is qualified by the words "is considered", and the very last part by "when needed". As in "appears" or "seems", or even possibly "operates under the pretext". As in "when there is no other choice" or "when doing otherwise would cause more harm than good".

If it said "House Tremere is one of the more..." and "providing strength and courage (period!)", that would be different - but it doesn't. It very pointedly does not.

And I believe (call me silly, again) that authors choose their words, rather than others, for a reason.

To me, that choice of words undermines any and all absolute statements, as is the case throughout. No one knows their their true motivations. And since, by definition and history, they're not the type to embrace things like "full disclosure" or "transparency", but quite the opposite (quite pointedly the opposite!), that would make me all the more nervous.

You can say that I'm "reading stuff into the description", but I'll say that, as a rule, the description consistently leaves itself open to that by its choice of phrasing, when it doesn't have to. I won't believe in absolutes when descriptions are consistently, intentionally indefinite. And you can't tell me how to interpret what is open to interpretation, what I'd say invites interpretation.

You want to say I'm over-thinking things, I'll take that compliment, and my leave.

Good gaming, happy holidaze, to one and all.

For this thread, CH out.

47

Basically, I didn't want to Officially Say if Tremere were Good or Bad. I'd make the point that the Tremere might well be either and still live up to their House ethos. This is not a White Hat / Black Hat situation in the books.

I wanted them to be bad or good situationally, and I wanted to give the player the basic question I see in them, which is that they are perfectly normal, perfectly virtuous medieval characters, who look like fascists to a lot of players, because actually we as modern people are really bad at getting into the heads of medieval people, for whom things like heirarchy aren't just options, they are the way God made thw world and everyone in it.

I mean, I've played Pendragon, right? I love it. The point I'd make is that knights are not democrats. When in the Player Handbook it says "King Before God." it really and truly means that when some of Arthur's knights drown children at his command, they are doing the -right- thing by their code of conduct. Not the Christian ideal, no, but by the standards they set themselves, its wrong to disobey the king. The fact that these knights failed to murder all of the children that Arthur asks to have murdered eventually, in a sort of poetic justice that we as moderns can't even see anymore, dooms the kingdom, because the one they miss is Mordred. How sick is that? How is Arthur a hero when he commands the death of every child born on a certain day of noble parentage? He's a hero, because we don't jusdge him by modern standards.

Did anyone else know that the SS had a Round Table? That they thought of themselves as knights?

I can quote you passages from the Arthurian stories in which it is clearly markled as morally wrong for gentry to raise up councillors from the common people. Wrong as in "deserving of poetically just death when they turn on you." Nepotism is good, and this is the freaky bit, because skill is carried in blood. Now, the Tremere don't do that, but in the Arthurian stories, this is clearly behind some of the moral fables.

The Tremere work in this milleu: they are not modern. A thing I think is interesting is that the non-modern things they do are exactly what players seem to expect their hireling warriors to do. They expect them to be feudally loyal. They expect them to serve at the expense of other axes of identity. I find that schism, between the way players treat the setting and the way they expect the setting to treat their characters, as an interesting source of stories.

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48

I don't take every letters of the RAW 100% true. I see them as ideas for the SG. He may create events which effect the whole order. For example the Tremeres are loyal to the order now but who knows the goals of the next primus?

49

I'd want a Tremere in my covenant.

Sure they want to rule the world but then who hasn't? Who hasn't wanted to set the world to right and, but for a moment, envisioned themselves as its lord and master bestowing benefices upon the masses. Only the most brow beaten and bent-back peasant without any sense of hope remaining.

Most of us discard the thought, recognizing in it the pride and hubris that could endanger our mortal souls. But then if one had a vision to make a better world without pride or hubris could they not argue that to fail to act upon it is a greater sin? Not without breaking the Code they couldn't but even so. One could not, perhaps, sleep at night until a way had been found.

I'd like to think that was Tremere's goal when he planned to seize control of the Order, but perhaps not. However he fell to madness and was stopped in his tracks but one step from success. The Order rejoiced while house Tremere watched its works destroyed and scattered to the four winds. Such defeat would have destroyed a lesser man, and indeed it may have eventually slain Tremere himself, but his house survived and that is why I'd welcome a Tremere to my covenant.

Because house Tremere picked itself up out of the wreckage and began again. This time it built not an empire of domination and broken wills but instead an alliance of support and steadfastness. They have shown a perseverance and drive seen little in the Order. That is who you want standing beside you; someone who, when all appears lost, will pick themselves up, dust themselves down and march on.

So yes I'd welcome a magus ex Tremere to my covenant. Sure tomorrow they might be my enemies but today they are my sodales.

50

One, the character making that statement is talking about events hundreds of years in the past and using them to judge the present house.

Two your statement of "without a shred of evidence" isn't found in the printed material; let's refrain from stating speculative readings of the material as unambiguous fact. (Of course if the statement was meant to be in character you have my apologies, and a request to be more clear in delineating in character and out of character statements. )

51

Not as I read the material, sorry Erik. Sure it plays at the pretense that "they were sincere in their belief, yada yada" but that is only from their own conniving perspective at the time according to their own agenda of wiping out their main rival for cohesion and power within the Order (the obvious subtext beneath the propagandist claims). What's more if one examines all the Schism references in 5th, turns out Guernicus is the only House which can be proven to have performed human sacrifice, whilst siding with Tremere and playing at righteous indignation toward Diedne.

A leopard doesnt change its spots, as they say and thus if perhaps at present Tremere maintains a facade of abandoned aspirations, history should serve as sufficient warning to all other Houses to hold them at arms length and block their maneuvres as much as they can lest they find themselves next on the Tremere hit list.

And I should make the disclaimer that whilst I loathe Tremere as a House, it is nonetheless a well written chapter and no slight toward the work of Mr. Ferguson intended. It is so well written that I, the player, not the character, am quite passionately roused to anger when reading the glibness with which they seek to paper over what I consider to be a marchable betrayal of their sworn Oath to the Code. To me it is an injustice that should know no statute of limitations simply because it happened so long ago.

52

With apologies to Tim (I understand the Why), but if they are going to leave things ambiguous, we can make any speculation we wish (which I believe is the point).

It all comes down to the Tremere. If its a stick in the mud, then NO. If its a character that won't shaft the Covenant, then all is well.

53

I can't recall if I'm correct here, but does the canon still state that after the war, House Guernicus tried to destroy all of the references to Diedne, including record of their magical practices, with the possible exception of material in they have retained in Magvillus? Can the Tremere be blamed for not having proof if the judges demanded all the proof to be burned afterward?

And, yes, Schism-era House Guernicus is a very suspicious sort of House. They probably do the human sacrifice thing, and then they keep what they hope are the only copies of Diedne's magical writings. To me, that looks a lot more spooky. Note that House Tremere doesn't know that House Guerincus did the sacrifice thing (at least, that's what I think) because they -hate- the human sacrifice thing.

I'm not going over the top here and saying House Guerincus: Realm of Evil! because they have a similar sort of deal as the Tremere, you can then legimtiately ask if this was just a desperate excess, or if they have always been willing to step into the sewer to defend their ideals, and if they have, what evlse have they done.

54

I agree with you Tim. My view on Quesitor's isn't much brighter to be honest.

55

I agree we can speculate. It's just that BoXer has this sort of tone thing that comjes across as his reading being the correct one. 8) He and I have thrown done on it before. :laughing:

I have basically the same view on a story-wide basis. I don't want every Tremere to be a misunderstood philanthropist IMC. At the same time, and I'm as guilty as anyone for doing this, there was a while there where the villain of the week was always the Tremere, and I think its healthy for my game, and for the line generally, to stop this reflex reaction and go looking for new villains and new reasons for villany. New reasons for villany give us new reasons for conflict, which give us new stories.

I do get the idea that it depends on your covenant. It also depends on your Tribunal. In Normandy, for example, there are virtually no Tremere. The place is fully of Tytalus magi. Tytalus magi have this house-wide bias toward selecting Tremere magi as victims in their games of self-improvement (stray aside, is Jigsaw from the Saw movies a Tytalus?), and House Tremere have basically decided that with everything else going on in the world, using up resources for the sort of trivial rubbish that their people keep getting dragged into over there just isn't worth the cost. If I was in Normanday and I wasn't in a quaesitorial covenant, I wouldn't want a Tremere in my covenant unless it was already an enemy of Fudarus, because you'd be inviting prominent Tytalus to keep doing this sort of niggly rubbish to you.

56

Huh... has the schism war been described so thoroughly?

57

Serf's parma

Nope, not that much. The evidence (or lack of it) has been left in muddy waters by the current canon. What is explicitly said is that the Tremere certainly believed that there was enough evidence for the mass murdering of the Diednes. Apart from that, I think there is no direct evidence listed there.

Cheers,

Xavi

58

There's the details in the Tremere, Tytalus, Flambeau, Bonisagus and Guernicus chapters which all totalled (to my mind anyways) paints a picture of sheer political connivance and cultural bigotry papered over with a laughably thin pretext of wrongdoing on the part of Diedne. Fact is Diedne was what Tremere is now, cohesive and politically powerful and the Roman traditions used mundane historic issues against the Druids as their rallying point (dishonouring themselves IMO in the process).

Diedne did not start the aggressions by those accounts given, the Roman Houses did and in doing so demonstrated that their sworn oaths to the Code were of less import than the satisfaction of their passion-driven bids for control and cultural hegemony. Makes the Order no better than the Church in the end.

To my mind the only honourable way forward for the Order is to acknowledge the truly guilty parties in that whole affair and demand full restitution from the relevant Houses, rather than continue to sweep it under the carpet where it merely festers waiting for just the right moment and conditions to reemerge, led by the same conniving power hungry protagonists.

btw: Thank you Xavi for labeling it what it truly was, mass murder even if you don't happen to share my reading of the history as presented.

59

Who said that the OoH is better than the church? :slight_smile: Or better than a filthy pit den?

All wars aiming at the utter annihilation of the other party are mass murder events. That does not make them wrong from the point of view of the victor, though.

I think that even if the sentiments expressed by BoXer in his posts my be a subterranean current in some parts of the OoH, the general attitude is "do not stir the shit, in case it hits you." So this revisionist history is unlikely to get a lot of support, and much more likely to be frowned upon.

Cheers,

Xavi

60

[quote="BoXer"]

Diedne did not start the aggressions by those accounts given, the Roman Houses did/

[quote]

Without wanting to derail the tread entirely with another round of this, you have no evidence for this bit, b ecause there deliberately is no evidence for if Greedo or Han shot first in the line. It just isn't there.