Question: So, here's a question. Regardless of how you treat monotheism in your game, I don't think anyone would dispute the fact that the mortal religious figures like Jesus, his disciples, and Mohammad existed. How do you treat them or think they should be treated when they come up? I mean surely if he's not a god or demigod then Jesus has a ghost. Same goes for Mohammad. How do you deal with famous and iconic mortal religious figures?
Actually, people were just cheerfully disputing the historical existence of Christ here the other day, but that's neither here nor there.
Honestly, they really haven't come up; no PC has ever shown any inclination to go see if they could find the real Jesus and have a conversation with him, as most of them are too involved with their pantheons and other neighboring problems to be worried about mortal religions much anymore. The question of whether or not Christ (or, if you're messing about with Asian religions, Buddha has a similar set of issues as well) was real, mortal, divine or titanspawn, and what happened to him is something each game has to decide for itself, based on what the players are comfortable with and what's relevant to the story. Jesus has pretty much been a non-entity for us because he doesn't matter to the story (though, of course, we'd have to make a choice if a PC decided to make him matter).
Muhammad, on the other hand, actually has made an appearance as a servant of Aten, mostly to kindly inform Geoff and company that they had no business messing around in the Middle East and probably ought to go home if they didn't want there to be trouble. If you're sticking with the book's idea that Aten is behind most forms of monotheism, or at least trying to take credit for them even if they aren't his invention, it's easiest to assume that Jesus and Mohammad (and any other biblical/quranic prophet that tickles your fancy) was a servant of his, either as a mortal he directed or a lesser immortal/titanspawn under his control (or even a corrupted Scion of some other pantheon, if you like). Obviously, setting up such pivotal figures as servants of one of the bad guys is not a good idea if you have religious people at your gaming table, but if they don't mind and you think it'd be good for the story, it's an elegant solution.
Personally, I like the idea that Scion's mortal cult figures were probably just humans who started a very successful cult without any direct help from the polytheistic gods and Titans they were preaching against. That would be the simplest choice of all - at that point, you'd just have to decide what Underworld they ended up in (for Jesus, probably Nepesh; for Buddha, probably Naraka; for Mohammad, whatever the pre-Islamic Arabs considered their Underworld to be), where his ghost would indeed be available for PCs to interact with if they so wished. For such polarizing mortals, you might also have them picked up after death by a god - someone who found Jesus' antics entertaining might actually have stolen him away to a different Underworld, resurrected him with Deny Death or used a PSP boon to make him into a Legendary creature for their own inscrutable reasons, or a death god that was unamused (or just likes collecting important souls) might be hanging onto any of them via Ghost Control.
And, if you prefer the idea that folks like Jesus or Muhammad didn't actually exist and are conglomerates or cultural creations, they might very well exist now - someone like Aten could easily have looked at the situation and created a servant that matched the criteria for his own uses.
One of my PC's is looking into getting himself a Golem which means I'll have to decide how that works. Jewish sorcery is real? Is it not? Was the Golem a Titanspawn? Was Rabbi Loew a Scion with the Forge Purview or just a bunch of Earth?
ReplyDeleteAnother one of my PC's asked me what Cuchulain did after his story ends that resulted in him becoming a God. I made up on the spot a story that he defeated the Serpent of Saint Patrick. When St. Patrick drove the serpents from Ireland, he gathered them all up and merged them into a giant snake-monster that he sent to destroy the Tuatha De Danann, but Cuchulain wrestled it to death.
In a game where I'm the player, a crazy backwoods preacher has decided that my character is a devil and he's luring the youth of the world into paganism and satanism. The character in question is a wildlife enthusiast with a TV show where he documents his encounters with mythical beasties. High Charisma and a huge following. Recently it turned out the preacher has been under the influence to Aten's agents and is now being used to summon Angels into the World.
So far no one has asked to meet Jesus, but the monotheistic religions DO exist and have come up. Mostly they've been handled in such a way that they're mysterious, unknown and remote. They have power, that's to be sure, but what manner and how much is unknown. I kinda like it that way.
The "real" truth for my games? That the Abrahamic Religions are the result of mortals creating their own religions. The Gods may have inspired different aspects, but ultimately they're a human creation and any power they have is derived from the human ability to shape reality with belief.
Sounds pretty similar to my favorite approach - I love the idea that humanity could have created such huge impressive ideas on their own. Not everything has to be about you, polytheistic religions!
DeleteHeh, we also had a Fatebound mortal who thought that Sophia was a servant of the Devil and amassed a fairly sizable church dedicated to opposing her. Of course, she just murdered him, because he was inconvenient and she's Sophia. Poor kid.
Aten makes a really nice Demiurge figure, he has all the trappings and he takes Monotheistic religions at their worst. It could be an interesting take on the Fight with the Titan of Light taking cues from gnostic belief attempting to remove the power of Demiurgal titan and revive the benign Gnostic incarnation. One could play that the serpent, Jesus have all be slivers over this escaped incarnation constantly trying to bring this benign light to the world.
ReplyDeleteI never said Muhammad didn't exist. There are historical records about him that are valid because he lived not that long ago. Huhammad certainly existed, he was just a regular guy (a guy who heard voices, but a regular guy non-the less). It is the Jesus of the bible I believe never really existed. There are no historical records from the Romans talking about such a figure. Even the records of Ponchis Pilot don't mention his famous trial and execution chronicled in the bible. Maybe a man similar to Jesus existed and taught, but if so he was little known. The legendary Jesus is a Jewish version of the dying/resurrecting god man and the ancient mystery religions that surrounded them, teaching how to surpass death and reunite with the divine. This created Knosticism the monotheistic mystery religion that was eventually stamped out when the Church came into power and rewrote history to make Jesus a real man and the son of god.
ReplyDeleteI never said a man born of Virgin, died and was ressurected can be historically proven, I claim there's more than enough evidence to indicate that there was a Messiah claimant named Yeshu(Jesus) who gathered some followers and was crucified for his trouble. I point to Jewish Sources such as Josephus.
DeleteHell with how broad a statement I just made, I'd more than willing to say I believe multiple people fit that mold. Messiah claimants at that time were not unknown as were would be gurus.
The historical jesus totally existed. The letters of pilot describe Jesus from pilot's point of view. Whether or not you "believe" that source is I guess your own call. There were MANY jewish apocalypse prophets running around at the time.
DeleteWhat about moses? Did he exist? Ancient kings of egypt? Its a very dangerous road to go down randomly saying people didnt exist.
Even not believing in anyway that the bibles were true. Having 4 different accounts of a guy means he probably existed. The fact that they're so different leans more toward him actually existing.
I think Moses is harder to prove since his whole narrative is up for debate. The Exodus is pretty hard to find support for(though there are some Greek sources even they are much later). The required dates for Moses would put him roughly as far back as the Trojan war which would make is existence on par with Odysseus.
ReplyDeleteOf course this is Scion where they both probably do exist, as does Arthur and Archemedies really did make a Heatray.
I forget and have too much to do today to research, isnt there something about him in the pharaoh logs?
DeleteJosephus equates Exodus with the Hyksos but that changes the narrative significantly from Slaves escaping Bondage to well Foreign occupation being overthrown by native Egyptians.
DeleteOf course multiple traditions might have ultimately conflated different stories into a single narrative, as for signficant periods Egyptians dominated Caanan so that might be a source of the "escape from Bondage"
All in all it doesn't seem like Egypt Lost 600k slaves at any period in history at least recorded.
O certainly not. Of course the mythic part of it(succeeding at freeing slaves), even if it happened, would have been VASTLY over stated in the bible account. I meant, possibly the pharoah having a jewish brother that eventually finds out hes jewish and leaves part. But even that maybe we dont have much evidence on.
DeleteWhich ultimately leads to the issues of can we know if Moses existed, it seems unlikely a Pharoh had a Jewish adopted brother who lead them out(its even hard to determine when the Jews properly drifted from their Neighbors)
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