NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 5688690" data-attributes="member: 19675">But you miss that the powers originate within and are entirely dependent upon an Oath.  An Oath in the old-school mythological sense.  In Irish legend, they'd call this a <a href="http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geis" target="_blank">geas/geis.</a>This isn't just swearing to do something- this is an agreement that has inherent mystical power and that if broken, results in serious penalties- even for gods.  This is something so different from a mere agreement that cultures all over the world have reserved a special opobrium for "Oath-breakers" in their legends.Besides Paladins, you find stories in which an Oathbreaker is shunned- sometimes to the point of death- by members of his society.  Or struck dead by a bolt from the blue sky.  A king who breaks his Oath of Kingship might not only lose his legitimacy as a ruler, but crops may fail, rivers run dry and the people become enslaved, possibly for generations.  Others may find themselves subject to eternal torture by the gods.  In Greek myth, an oath sworn by the River Styx was so serious the fods themselves dared not break it- mortals who got such an oath from a god (such as Semele*) often wind up dead since the god could not act to intervene on their behalf contrary to the language of the vow.* Semele asked Zeus to grant her a boon. Zeus, eager to please his beloved, promised on the River Styx to grant her anything she wanted. She then demanded that Zeus reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his godhood. Though Zeus begged her not to ask this, she persisted and he was forced by his oath to comply. Zeus tried to spare her by showing her the smallest of his bolts and the sparsest thunderstorm clouds he could find. Mortals, however, cannot look upon Zeus without incinerating, and she perished, consumed in lightning-ignited flame.</blockquote>

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