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> Therefore I have three kinds of "mystical" characters in my game:
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> And very good they are, too.
I would throw in a 4th, and maybe a 5th
4. Characters who have achieved enlightenment through some sudden experience of the Absolute. Usually these people have been prepared for the experience to some degree, but the actual event (which could have all sorts of effects on the character) is sudden and unexpected. So, someone who was a practicing Theist in a Mystic culture suddenly has an epiphany of how her god is merely a step on the road to the Absolute, and this changes how she relates to that god in any number of ways. The Imperial Lunar Handbook does a good job of modeling this in it's section on Illumination.
5. Lastly, people who follow a "normal" tradition whose culmination is a mystical experience. They can only get to the mystic stage by abandoning their "normal" practice and shifting to some mystic one, usually at the end of their lives. So the follower of a Solar deity who retires to the towers to spend his last years in contemplation of Dayzatar with every expectation of achieving release from the muddy cycle of life in the process. Obviously, after retirement, those hard-won theistic powers are useless except as guide-posts on a path, and the scenario would make (I expect) for spectacularly uninteresting gaming being solitary and internal.
Peter Larsen
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