It's been a little over three months since I last posted. Things got away from me. I contracted a bad throat infection that killed my vocal chords. I couldn't speak for around five weeks - much to the bliss of my wife and children. I was also off work for a good period of time. I quite frankly cannot do my job safely and effectively if I can't communicate clearly.
Anyhoo, I took the time given to me to delve into further world building for my Old School Essentials setting - Riven Realm. I wrote and published a twenty-six page player's guide to Source worship.
In my earlier The three seeds of Hen Ogledd blog post I stated,
"I also wanted to get away from real world religious creeds and beliefs, so as to spare my players any potential dogmatic or spiritual issues. I had to come up with an alternative monotheistic religion in place of Christianity."
I don't know about you, but in many rpg settings, I have found the offered religions for clerics to be flat and without real foundation or explanation. For Riven Realm I wanted to create an immersive experience that would reflect the real world Scottish Renaissance, where religion and the threat of schism were a very important part in every day life, political culture, and the rule of law. But, as highlighted above, it had to be removed from real world Christianity, so as to avoid any dogmatic stumbling block for players.
The question I had to tackle as, "what major faith would exist if Jesus Christ hadn't been born?"
and,
"how would I faithfully recreate an alternate reality mirror to our real world religious reformations and schisms that took place during the Renaissance?"
A major influence for me was the English author, David Gemmell. His Drenai saga, and Rigante series were very influential on me in my late teens and early twenties. Gemmell was a devout Christian and his books reflected the eternal war between good and evil, and the concept of redemption from sin, even for the most hardened and evil psychopath. His books were punchy and gripping and did not shirk from exposing the greatest evils such as lust, rape, murder and betrayal.
Gemmell's god was the Source, an all pervading force for good, that could be tapped for 'powers' by those who held true belief. I like this portrayal of a god within a fantasy setting, as it reflected the real world Christian god without the troublesome baggage of history, politics and dogma. Gemmell's Source was a god available to anyone with simple faith.
In a way you could even say that the Source is similar to George Lucas' Force. Although, I'm still unsure about the concept of midichlorians, as introduced in The Phantom Menace, which removes the idea of universal access through faith, replacing it with a genetic lottery. You've either got it or you don't.
To adopt Gemmell's Source as my own I called it the Source of All Things. To further de-personify the faith so as to divorce it completely from Christianity, I chose to make it a faith built upon the foundation of the five elements - Fire, Air, Earth, Water, and Spirit.
I must admit to a fondness for Luc Besson's film, The Fifth Element. Imagine a faith founded on the principles of the balance between all of the elements as building blocks for creation.
I know that in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the study of alchemy and the elements formed the foundation of scientific thinking. Couple that with the pseudo-science of astrology and you already had the case for a strong religion based on real world experience. Alchemy and astrology also gave an in for the presence of non-divine magic.
In our prime material plane of existence the medieval and renaissance church was the sole vehicle for education and the pursuit of knowledge within Europe, parts of the Eurasian steppe, and the Middle East. Priests of various ranks and creeds studied the sciences and developed philosophies in their search for understanding. Many were astrologers, and many studied and wrote about magic, necromancy, the summoning of demons, and the accruing of arcane knowledge that was, until then, the sole domain of God. Through study they sought the knowledge of life and death, and beyond.
Now, about seven years ago I had a major mental breakdown that was brought on by significant stress both at work and at home. I couldn't escape it, and thus I became near suicidal. I transformed from a well meaning, conscientious, and empathic soul into a violent, aggressive, and reactionary arsehole. My whole understanding of Self shattered, and I was desperate to escape my life and to understand what was happening to me.
I craved inner peace and searched for it.
I read and listened to many podcasts and books on self-help. I discovered Dr Jordan Peterson, who is a phenomenal thinker for our time (whether you like his politics or not). I read The Chimp Paradox, which provides an eye-opening delve into the human psyche and how it works. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who is struggling to manage reactionary behaviour. It's easy to get into and is written for the ordinary person. Read it!
A work colleague introduced me to Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher.
Through Epictetus I was led to the study of other philosophers both ancient and modern. What I observed, and what is pertinent to what I'm trying to say here, is that the early Christian Church followed the teachings not only of Jesus Christ, but also of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinian and many more.
Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of the first bishops of the early Christian Church, as adopted by the Roman Emperors, was a devoted philosopher and prolific writer of songs and guidance for the early Christian churches. Many of his sermons and teaching pamphlets extoled the lessons of Greek philosophy, which was also underpinned by a deep knowledge of alchemy and the elements.
All this knowledge I had accrued became grist for the mill years later when I began to ruminate and write on The Source of All Things.
So in my project, I wanted to achieve three things:
1) provide a useable framework of religious practice, and a simple system of belief for any player who wished to play a Cleric or Paladin of the Source.
2) further develop the five elements and their role in the church, as they provide the strongest flavour to this alternate reality religion
3) provide Cleric players new spells aligned to whichever element they choose to follow, and ones not found in the OSE Classic or Advanced players books.
In tackling the first part I mirrored quite a few structures within the pre-reformation Christian Church, but I renamed them and tweaked them to fit my own setting.
I adopted the Church of Scotland's version of the Nicean creed and heavily edited it to fit the Church of the Source.
I produced a cult of Saints using some existing Scottish saints, and invented a few more to better fit my narrative. To each saint I allocated one of the four elements.
For example, Saint Brigid, or Bride as she is known in Scotland, is the patron saint of many trades and persons, but she also has significant ties to the Celtic goddess, Brigid, who was a goddess of Smiths and the creative arts. Thus I attributed to Brigid the element of Fire.
I did this because real life saints were influential people who provided teaching and living examples of how to live the Christian way of life. And so within the Riven Realm, Source priests would teach and provide living examples of the tenets of the five elements.
Each saint had a specific feast day and a devoted shrine, which helped me create a calendar of feasts and religious festivals, and a physical path to pilgrimage.
I run my game following the real world calendar, which means that if we play a game session on the 8th day of May, then in the game world it will be the week where the 8th day of May falls. With the calendar to hand, it's easy to see if there is an influential religious event during the time a session is running.
I researched monasticism and took ideas from both the western Catholic church and from the eastern Orthodox church, and I adopted a shortened version of Saint Augustine's Rule for monastic life.
One real nugget of gold I found was a framework for every-day monastic devotion. I got this from the website of an Eastern Orthodox Monastery. I used it as a guide to create my own daily devotion framework that would give a taster for players to use as they see fit.
I was pretty happy with my progress so far.
To help make the five elements the core basis for my religion, I introduced divisions of hierarchy within the church for lay and ordained members, both secular and monastic. I also created special Orders for each of the five elements - Ordo Terrae, Ordo Aquae, Ordo Caeli, Ordo Ignis, and Ordo Spiritus. Each elemental Order was a restricted-entry institution within the greater organisation of the church.
These three divisions were:
a) The Presbyterium - for mainstream and secular clerical orders and offices
b) The Monasterium - for the eremitic orders
c) The Elementorum - for the five elemental orders.
In Renaissance Scotland there were many examples of bishops and senior prelates who were secular appointees, rather than true believers. Many senior churchmen gained their positions of authority because of their educational doctorates, or the influence of their patrons, be they religious or political.
For example, in 1504 the Archbishop of St Andrews, the most senior bishopric in the Scottish Realm, was Alexander Stewart, eldest bastard son of the king, James IV. Alexander was only 11-years-old when he was appointed to the position. The King held the right to appoint bishops in Scotland, a right won from the Pope in previous centuries. The king had his son appointed Archbishop so that the revenues of the Archbishopric would accrue to the crown whilst the incumbent was a minor. A very nice and devious way to bolster the Crown's resources for a decade.
With all the frameworks provided for, my next step was to smooth the edges and fill out the loose parts. No religion is complete without associated military orders. Much like Christianity's Knights Templar, it was important for me to provide a place for Paladins within the Church of the Source.
After researching military orders of the Catholic church I came up with three orders for the Source. One would be Knights Hospitaller that provided security and succour to pilgrims travelling between the shrines of the Saints. Another was an aristocratic order who's role was to protect the sepulchres of the Saints, and to police the procurement and sale of holy relics. There are lots of charlatans peddling fake relics out there. The final one was a small order devoted to the hunting of necromancers, lich lords, and beasts of the dark abyss.
My final task, and one which proved lengthy to complete, was to select or create spells/prayers/rites that were specific to each of the Elemental orders. These divine miracles would be in addition to the spells provided for by the core OSE books. I pillaged appropriate spells from AD&D 2nd edition core books and supplements, and streamlined them to fit the simplified mechanics of OSE play.
I'm pretty sure that some OSE players and GMs would criticise my complication of the OSE system of play by adding later edition spell mechanics. To those people I can only say that it was done so as to provide unique flavour within my own setting. I provided one or two spells per magic level to each of the elemental orders so as to give them unique powers that no other order had.
I'm pretty happy with what I've produced and I think it works. I've seen the RP between player characters change, as they now have specific in-depth information to work with. My group's cleric player, Graeme, now chants the Creed of the Pentarchy whenever he is about to abjure undead, or preach to a group of unbelievers. Whilst Murray has brought in a new character who is secretly an agent-enforcer of the Sacred Congregation - the Inquisition.
Currently the pdf document has various illustrations pilfered from the internet. One day I hope to produce my own, or commission illustrations from artists so as to make the work entirely of my own creation.
The work within (other than the illustrations) is entirely my own and written specifically for use in my homebrew setting of Riven Realm. I hope that you the reader will find inspiration from it for your own games, or at least provide you some light entertainment.
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