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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nifft" data-source="post: 5222561" data-attributes="member: 6562">What good are educated slaves? They're good as teachers. (Nobody wants to trust them with real responsibility, but educating children? Feh, who cares about children? It's a time-honored use for smart slaves.) - Make it very clear that there's a small core of "old crew" and a larger number of "new crew". The "old crew" are 100% loyal to the captain, the new crew can be swayed with magic or even well-made arguments. You can do this during the first session, when a couple of very hungover (new crew) sailors asks the PCs if they can direct them to "our new ship, wossit, the Jesu de Nazarene".- The PCs ought to have several chances to interact with -- and do favors for -- members of the new crew. The old crew ought to be taciturn and inaccessible. Only the captain (& perhaps his first mate) has the skill to chat amiably with people he knows he's going to sell.- The pirates attacking them do have a Nephandi (or whatever "bad mage" type exists in Sorcerer), but the bad mage doesn't particularly care to intervene until he sees the PCs use magic. He'll try to attack a single PC mage, but if he sees they have more than one, he gets VERY scared and runs off (in a magically-powered lifeboat or maybe he turns into a shark). The PCs will see him on the pirate ship, using a spyglass on them the whole time, until someone goes overt with their magic. - Highlight the ambiguity of the "deist utopian" position. Perhaps with a very visible argument between two magicians overseeing a fireworks display -- and perhaps even the ambiguity of their view of slavery. Basically, one premise of Salvation is that it must be chosen (Free Will), while the program of the deist utopian tries to remove most choices ("for the good of the sleeping children, we ought not scatter their floor with knives").- The slavery ambiguity issue can be a bit more clear-cut. There should be plenty of rhetoric about how "we are all slaves to the Lord", and how children must obey their elders... but slavery isn't enlightening or uplifting. That's the cold, cruel reality behind the rhetoric.-- "Ah, my brother, but are we not both slaves to the Lord?"-- "The Lord God, blessed be His name, does not rape my daughters."The correlation between "science" (disempowerment of individuals) and "slavery" (disenfranchisement of individuals) is left as an exercise for the player.I dunno how the PCs are going to interact with the scene, though. Maybe just type some of these set-piece scenes up & email them out before the game. What's the standard reaction to overt magic in Sorcerer's Crusade? Is it "WOT THE BLEEDIN' BLUE BLAZEZ?!", by any chance? If so, the PCs may be able to cow the new crew and / or pirate crew remnants in fairly short order.Maybe the bad guy mage ought to set fire to the pirate ship -- which is lashed to the PC's ship -- before turning into a shark. Or summon a giant, insane shark spirit. You know, some kind of a distraction.Cheers, -- N</blockquote>

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