Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 13 Dec 2005 to 14 Dec 2005 (#2005-232) From: MYSTARA-L automatic digest system Date: 15/12/2005, 19:00 To: MYSTARA-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There are 4 messages totalling 287 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Mystaran Churches (2) 2. Alphatia: The bad guys ? (2) ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.pandius.com To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 05:36:10 -0800 From: Daniel Gioffre Subject: Re: Mystaran Churches > And that's why I didn't buy it. I like your > explanation better if one > supposes the "church of Thyatis" isn't a singular > organization but a > collection of cults. Yes, that's always how I read the source material. There are only a few references to a "Church of Thyatis" and I always interpreted that as meaning "the cults in Thyatis which, although acting independently of each other, are all recognized by Thyatian law and therefore somewhat 'official', as opposed to the cults of Alphaks and Thanatos". __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.pandius.com To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 15:41:57 +0100 From: Havard Faanes Subject: Re: Mystaran Churches I love this topic! This is something I have been thinking alot about when doing my writeup of the Faiths of Mystara (http://pandius.com/knwnfath.html). I suppose a better entry than Churches would have been organizations, but I felt the need to distinguish between cults or associated cults and say religious orders. For the Church of Thyatis, I have always been of the opinion that there is a bit more to it than just a wide bunch of cults devoted to individual immortals. There is for instance an overarching Faith connecting these cults, even though the organization connecting them is very lose at best. Syncretism exists within the Church of Thyatis, but much less so with the Churches of Karameikos and Traladara. (Darokin is open to speculation). The Antalian Faith, if we go with the RW Aasatru paralell, accepts the existance of other Immortals, and acceptance of healing/aid and even usage of relics from other immortals, but joining a forreign cult is absolutely banned. In Antalian society, religion is firmly connected with the clan structure, and abandoning one's religion means turning your back on your family and clan. The Ethengar would probably simply assume that others worship various hero spirits (true, in fact), but probably feel little reason to involve these in their daily lives since they are not connected to their lands or their people. The Eternal Truth is even more absolutist than the Church of Karameikos, and would not allow worship of any immortal other than Al-Kalim. The fact that Mystara has clerical magic does indeed change things from the R/W situation. Few people doubt that the Immortals exist, even immortals outside their own Faith. However, the nature of those immortals will be disputed. Most forreign Immortals will be suspected to be untrustworthy at best, demonic at worst. R/W comparisons may be something like Faeries and Demons. Okay, so Faeries arent exactly evil, but they are likely to get you in trouble no matter how many presents they offer you. This is not so different from the R/W medieval situation actually. Unlike the situation these days, medieval man rarely disbelieved the existance of magic and supernatural beings, both of benign and malign existance, though he was likely to rely on the local priest to tell him which was which. The closest to Atheists in the Known World are the people of Glantri. They also do not deny the existance of Immortals, but frown upon Clerics which they see as people who have sold their souls to more powerful beings rather than persuing the power of magic on their own. Whew. :) Håvard --- Daniel Gioffre skrev: > > And that's why I didn't buy it. I like your > > explanation better if one > > supposes the "church of Thyatis" isn't a singular > > organization but a > > collection of cults. > > Yes, that's always how I read the source material. > There are only a few references to a "Church of > Thyatis" and I always interpreted that as meaning > "the > cults in Thyatis which, although acting > independently > of each other, are all recognized by Thyatian law > and > therefore somewhat 'official', as opposed to the > cults > of Alphaks and Thanatos". > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam > protection around http://mail.yahoo.com > ******************************************************************** > The Other Worlds Homepage: > http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp > The Mystara Homepage: http://www.pandius.com > To unsubscribe, send email to > LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM > with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. > ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.pandius.com To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 15:40:31 -0500 From: Gilles Leblanc Subject: Alphatia: The bad guys ? I have had 2 Mystara groups in the past both running for a number of years. After these groups my players wanted something different so we left Mystara for a couple of years. Now that we are coming back, I wanted to do a campaign in Alphatia since we had largely ignored this part of Mystara, keeping to the known world, savag= e coast, sind, hule, thanegioth archipelago and some forrays in the hollow world. In fact we had largely ignored the Thyatian vs. Alphatian conflit altogether. Now the players have rolled their characters, I told them with = I remembered about Mystara. I dug up an old quest I had written for level 1 characters. When I started reading the Alphatia material from the Dawn of the Emperors boxed set I started getting a different picture of Alphatia than what I remembered. I remembered that a lot of conflicts were nations against nation, not the clear cut good vs. evil of other campaigns. While Alphatia isn't evil, I'm having a hard time sympathising with them an= d wonder if my players will too. They want to fight for the good of the empire, but basicly everyone except one of them ( the mage ) will be second rate citizens who can be killed by a magic-user under threat of a 100 gp. fine. They will bear full force of the injust justice system where a commener can be raped by a mage for a 10gp. fine and where insulting a mage merits almost a worse punishment than a mage killing someone. The player's book present Alphatians as treating their slaves as convicts, commoners as slave. Even the history of Alphatia casts a bad light on them. It is stated that after the Followers of Fire realized the errors of their way they cast out Alphaks who had insurged the violence and then offered peace to the Air Wizards, which refused and destroyed the Alphatian homeworld, their homeworld, out of what seems like spite and then left. Considering this is the player's guide, maybe a more biased history should have been presented which shows the Air Wizards ( the now alphatians ) in a better light vs. the Flame Wizards ( the now Glantrians ). ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.pandius.com To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 15:58:06 -0500 From: John Hofmann Subject: Re: Alphatia: The bad guys ? No, you've got it right. They're pretty much jerks. However, you are free to reinterpret the country as more benevolant where magic-users run the country with the best interests of everyone in mind. That's actually how we played for decades before the trash that is Dawn of the Empires came out. That set is nice for the maps, but I know for a fact that you can have great Thyatis-Alphatia campaigns while leaving some of that stuff behind. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gilles Leblanc" To: Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 3:40 PM Subject: [MYSTARA] Alphatia: The bad guys ? I have had 2 Mystara groups in the past both running for a number of years. After these groups my players wanted something different so we left Mystara for a couple of years. Now that we are coming back, I wanted to do a campaign in Alphatia since we had largely ignored this part of Mystara, keeping to the known world, savage coast, sind, hule, thanegioth archipelago and some forrays in the hollow world. In fact we had largely ignored the Thyatian vs. Alphatian conflit altogether. Now the players have rolled their characters, I told them with I remembered about Mystara. I dug up an old quest I had written for level 1 characters. When I started reading the Alphatia material from the Dawn of the Emperors boxed set I started getting a different picture of Alphatia than what I remembered. I remembered that a lot of conflicts were nations against nation, not the clear cut good vs. evil of other campaigns. While Alphatia isn't evil, I'm having a hard time sympathising with them and wonder if my players will too. They want to fight for the good of the empire, but basicly everyone except one of them ( the mage ) will be second rate citizens who can be killed by a magic-user under threat of a 100 gp. fine. They will bear full force of the injust justice system where a commener can be raped by a mage for a 10gp. fine and where insulting a mage merits almost a worse punishment than a mage killing someone. The player's book present Alphatians as treating their slaves as convicts, commoners as slave. Even the history of Alphatia casts a bad light on them. It is stated that after the Followers of Fire realized the errors of their way they cast out Alphaks who had insurged the violence and then offered peace to the Air Wizards, which refused and destroyed the Alphatian homeworld, their homeworld, out of what seems like spite and then left. Considering this is the player's guide, maybe a more biased history should have been presented which shows the Air Wizards ( the now alphatians ) in a better light vs. the Flame Wizards ( the now Glantrians ). ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.pandius.com To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.pandius.com To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 13 Dec 2005 to 14 Dec 2005 (#2005-232) ****************************************************************