Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MarkB" data-source="post: 6213782" data-attributes="member: 40176">I like much of this article, but some parts are a bit too much "a god did it" for my liking. As others have mentioned, making satisfying the sphinx's challenge the only way of successfully bypassing it is very limiting, and having it come with an infallible "thou shall not pass" contingency is very powerful. I don't want to only ever use sphinxes when there's a god directly involved.I'd prefer to think of them more as divine beings on a par with lower-ranking angels, whose duties on the celestial planes are to test the qualities of a deity's servants and ensure they're up to scratch - sort of like celestial drill sergeants.Their normal duties don't bring them to the material world, but they can be summoned and either contracted or bound to become guardians for a set period of time, which may well be centuries in length. As guardians, they use their powers to secure a particular treasure, and test the worthiness of those who come to them.A priest or good-aligned character might employ a sphinx in precisely the way the article describes, contracting for their services through offerings to their deity. An evil character might bind a sphinx to forcible service, and use it simply as a way of testing most intruders to desctruction, and at least delaying those who can pass its tests.On the celestial planes, sphinxes do indeed have a culture of their own, building societies based around the virtues they venerate.</blockquote>

Verification