[D&D4E] Path of Enlightenment [OOC]

[Atanatotatos]

voda, should i make the rolls all at once or one per post and wait for you to post their result?

[Walking Dad]

Originally Posted by Voda Vosa

Yeah, they are all ugly. It's my personal signature in the draws I made (?)
Actually it's just very hard to draw oriental characters with good look, since I don't know their standards.
Master Jien looks like a mortal combat character xD
I must confess Ziang turned out to be the most favoured in looks.

Yes, very nice picture of Ziang! I figured he would prefer his armor concealed . Only need a nice straw head, but I like it very much. Go, go, artist VV!

[Helfdan]

Those drawings are awesome, Voda!

[Voda Vosa]

Originally Posted by Atanatotatos

voda, should i make the rolls all at once or one per post and wait for you to post their result?

Once per round and wait for the results.


Thanks buddies! I'll keep drawing during the classes.
Don't get that image too seriously, they just came to my mind in that moment, but of course they must be quite different in your minds.

[Nightbreeze]

Tsk tsk!!! Statistics important are!!! But after lunch you laziness understand I can, yes. And nice drawings, too.

[Voda Vosa]

I was wondering about the gods of this setting. I thought about taking the common gods from the PHB and change the flavour. For example, Pelor would be the Golden Dragon. But my times are tight at best to get myself into developing that.
I would appreciate suggestions; I was also thinking about making this things a kind of World building. That if you are ok with it.

[Nightbreeze]

Ok. First of all, I am really not versed in ancient China, so I may blunder and propose something that is not consistent.

I have some proposals (more like: hey, it would be cool if...), pick and take whatever you like.

It seems to me that the world is clearly human-dominated, at least the Middle Kingdom (it is called middle kingdom, right? i mean the empire). Sure, there are spirits of nature, demons and so on, but there are no clearly famous Elven, dwarven or so on civilization. And if there are, they are secluded.

Given the fact that it is not typical for a standard setting, why not move it further? Let it be an almost monotheistic world. After all, the Golden Dragon IS supposed to be the major thing. As far as the imperial church is concerned, the Golden Dragon is the demiurge (not in the christian sense: he has shaped the world, but not created it, or the elements of it. You can see him as the creator and protector of the human race, the obvious center of all that exists) and only real deity. Other kinds of great beings (the equivalents of, say, boccob, silvanus etc), are superior spirits ascended to great power, maybe even great enough so that if united, they could challenge the Dragon. But the difference between them is not only in power: it is ontological. They are just way below him.

What is Pelor's dogma? The Orthodox dogma is that he is the creator of humanity, and it's protector. Humans are the pinnacle of the creation (something that is common in our world, but uncommon in most fantasy worlds), but they have to prove themselves worthy, as the Dragon is not going to defend them if they don't defend themselves. Thus, there is no "surrender thyselve to his will". His will is not for the humanity, or for you, to suffer. Thus, don't accept the inevitable, and fight for your life and your well-being, under the limits that are imposed by HIM, of course. And those limits are, obviously, respect for good and respect for law.

The mandate of heaven fits easily into this pattern. As the Dragon is more like a guide than a silent and aloof creator, but given the fact that he doesn't sully himself by spoiling his children, an emperor dynasty is chosen to see that that his will is done. And if the dynasty fails, that means that it has losen the mandate.

Now, a monopolistic religion is boring, I know. But no religion stay monolithic for millennia, or heck, even for centuries. Thus, multiple philosofical currents may exists: there may be the Mystic Ascetes, which claim that the creation and the order is ALREADY perfect, so the drive to improve is not only fruitless, but wrong. There may be the liberals, which claim that accepting other faiths and races is the right path. There may be currents valuing law over good, and other valuing good over law.

Which is the dominant current? And what are the relationships between the different schools, and their real world power? That, I fear, would be your task.

[Atanatotatos]

I don't know how much exactly Voda wants the setting to be China-flavoured, but i must say I feel the monotheistic principle is really opposed to a "chinese" feeling.
(though i would appreciate the possibilities offered by this approach!)

[Walking Dad]

I would prefer a variation of Bahamut as main god. Lawful is better for an empire.

[Nightbreeze]

Originally Posted by Walking Dad

I would prefer a variation of Bahamut as main god. Lawful is better for an empire.

He has a big point there. But bahamut is god of the dragons, not humans. Perhaps a lawful good Pelor-Bahamut?

[Atanatotatos]

In 4e's flavor Bahamut is generally revered. Anyway I don't know if a god of good, honor, and ...uh...fighting evil dragons is the most appropriate to take as a base point in an imperial oriental setting...

[covaithe]

I spent a little time this morning looking at the Wikipedia entry for chinese mythology. It's long and confusing, which is not surprising for a country with that much history, that has gone through a number of very different dominant religions throughout its history.

My impression is that they seem to be very polytheistic, with heaven being a celestial court ruled over by the Jade Emperor, who is wise and good and remote and possibly a dragon sometimes. There are many, many minor deities, for rain and snow and lovers and funny-shaped rocks and so forth. These often squabble and reproduce in surprising ways. Former emperors or empresses who are particularly revered often seem to find a place in the pantheon, which sort of ties into the whole Confucian thing that the emperor is halfway to being a deity already.

Anyway, I think strict monotheism would be wrong, but a heaven full of obscure deities ruled by one uber-god makes sense.

[Walking Dad]

The Celestial Court of The 10,000 Immortals?

And substituting fighting evil dragons to demons would be no large change.

[Voda Vosa]

Yes I have read about some celestial bureaucracy. It might be a polytheistic pantheon, but it works differently, not anything similar to the DnD pantheon, or Greek pantheon; it's more like the Egyptian mythology, but still different.
It's a huge discussion topic and I think your oppinions are quite instructive.
Keep them coming.

[Nightbreeze]

If that means that we will be coerced into fighting evil dragons and demons, I am against it .

Voda, it seems that your thoughts are flying in a different direction: what do you exactly mean, so we can adjust the aim?

[Voda Vosa]

Well it took me some time.
Here is, graphically wat I think it should be the "cosmic organization"

As you can see there's a big red thing in the center, this could be the creator, builder of the universe and of this world. He has created everything. But the creator has no time to watch over his creations, he is constantly creating other worlds. For this matters he created five orange squares, er I mean, five gods.
(numbers are just representative to the drawing, just because it fitted in the image, they can be, and will surely be a lot more gods.) This five gods rule over the great aspects of the world; There could be social or human aspects, such as war, love, justice, honor, prosperity; and there could be natural aspects of the world: the elements, related with natural catastrophes or beneficial weathers; and the living beings (a god of plants, a god of animals -you wish this guy on your side if you are running a farm for example)
But each of these aspects is too big for a god to manage. He/she has to decide, to take the decisions that could change the world! They have no time for a peasant asking for some rains for his tomatoes. Thats why they have created a celestial bureaucracy. Basically it's an organization of spirits of different ranks that attend to the particularities of the god's aspect of the world, this system allows many lesser deities (high rank spirits) specialized in different matters. Keeping the example from above, there could be a spirit of cows, which the farmer should pray more often than the spirit of frogs; although both of those spirits belong to the celestial bureaucracy of the god of animals.
I hope that I've explained my mind well enough, it's kinda hard to write all this in English for me.
Well this is a point of view, a broad point of view, it can be changed, there are thousands of things to add, modify etc, or we can through it to the recycle bin

[Voda Vosa]

Hmm I think I scared you with those draws... O.o

[Voda Vosa]

In the end, no one kept talking about deities. I draw that horrible thing, and scare you the hell out =P
It would be good to get somewhere with that.

[Voda Vosa]

I'll reopen the recruitment to fill the slot of Nightbreeze.

If someone wants to take his place until (or if) he comes back, that'll be cool.

If you feel like making another character, well, that's ok too! I can work it out story-wise.

For further information about Nightbreeze characters, in the first post of this thread it's a description of this campaing, and the links to the RG and the IC threads.

Let me know about your interests.

PS: Atanotatos, I noticed that you didn't choose any utility power in your character sheet.

[Keia]

Hey there !

I've been looking for a 4e game so I would like to give this a try. Been playing face to face and dming it for a couple of months, but I find that I always learn more when I'm playing the system in pbp as well.

I'll look through the ooc ic and rg in the morning . . . gotta catch some zzz's

Keia