Back to the main page

Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Brett Borger <SwiftOne@***.EDU>
Subject: Re: Oath Ordeal
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 1997 00:30:23 GMT
>I have a physical adapt player who is getting ready to iniate(sp?) to
>level zero. She is doing it with a group and an ordeal. Her ordeal will
>be the Oath. My point is that I want this to be a soul shattering ;}
>experience, not just ya pays your karma and gets your metamagic. Any
>Suggestions? Incidently, she is a deep cover secret service operative and
>will be initating with a group working out of the government called
>Directorate 7. It will post it if anyone is intrested.

Soul-shattering is hard with an Oath. For maximum effect, write up a very
serious sounding oath and have the character recite it. Accompany it with a
nice ritual. Look into initiation rituals to University secret societies
for inspiration. But Unless the Oath represents a serious change in your
character's style, it won't be Soul-shattering.

Sorry, maybe someone else has an idea.

-=SwiftOne=-

Oh, and put a subject to your posts.
Message no. 2
From: Gossamer <jrsnyder@********.WISC.EDU>
Subject: Re: Oath Ordeal
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 20:26:26 -0500
[Oath ordeal stuff skipped]

>Soul-shattering is hard with an Oath. For maximum effect,
>write up a very serious sounding oath and have the character
>recite it. Accompany it with a nice ritual. Look into
>initiation rituals to University secret societies for
>inspiration. But Unless the Oath represents a serious change
>in your character's style, it won't be Soul-shattering.
>
>Sorry, maybe someone else has an idea.

Right up every stricture the group has and make the character
swear to every single one. Secrecy, exlcusions, Obedience,
Belief...

Ok, your group is a government group right? It probably has
an Obedience stricture... Maybe as part of the Oath, the
character will have to agree to each stricture that you've
got (I would). When it comes time to swear Obedience(just
after that Oath is given), have someone interrupt the ceremony
and call the character on it. If the character is going to
be used in some martial capacity within the group (most
Phys-Ads are), have the interrupter seek a demonstration of
that Obedience by making the character kill, right then and
there, without question, without hesitation. The trick is
that the target of the killing will be one of the PC's(not
really, it will end up being an illusion).

Have the player of the target character play along with you.
Have that player beg and plead and do whatever to stay alive.
Then YELL at the character "Obey!! You will follow Orders!"
etc.

If the initiate 'fails' to obey(eg hesitates, argues, debates,
attacks the orderer, uses astral perception to see if this
truly is the other PC, flat out refuses, or whatever) then
you have two options:

1. Kick the person out of the group.

2. Smile and say, "Good, we seek obedience, not stupidity"
or something like that.

As an alternative to #1...

1A. And by far the more sneeky, kick the character out of
the group only to have the character recruited by the
'super-secret' subgroup of the first group. These will be
people who are looking for intelligent, free-thinkers,
with minds of their own who can do what needs to be done,
but are not blind to what it is that they do...

Using this last alternative will certainly 'shake the
character's soul'. Devistation can do that, as I understand.
You could even throw in a death vendetta from the other
group. "You know who we are, and we can't let you live..."
Chased through everywhere by a bunch of *initiated* Phys-Ads
and what-have-you, getting wounded, and finally 'getting
away' right into the hands of this second 'super-secret'
group... Make it like the fox and hounds.

If the character has no heart, and wastes the poor slot,
then your character can go the rest of the way... Only
later to find out that the character blew it by following
blindly. Or maybe you can tell the character right then
and there, "Your overzealousness has caused you to be
deminished in our eyes..."

That is, if you don't want a mindless killing machine as
a PC. Also, anytime that this character does decide to
disobey, you can go to #1A above...

Anyway, I thought I'd ramble for a bit, sorry if my
ideas are too wierd.

Gossamer

Further Reading

If you enjoyed reading about Oath Ordeal, you may also be interested in:

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!