Re: Lunar Chaos Figthing Cult

From: David Cake <dave_at_difference.com.au>
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 09:58:45 +0200

On 12/07/2013, at 11:35 PM, drscience3000 <dr.dave.00_at_sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>
>

>> I doubt we are going to include any anti-Chaos Lunar Illuminate >cult in any future publications. If you find the Irin School useful 
>> in your campaign, by all means use it, but I personally think it >more than misses the mark as a Lunar cult.

>
> Well, at least be aware that some of use have made at least a bit of use of the cult.
>
> Also, whether it is "healed/unhealed", or a less formal distinction like David Cake make, I do think that anyone on the Lunar side ends up, sooner or later, needing to make a distinction between chaos that is "OK" and chaos that is "not OK".

	I think there is at least one formal distinction that captures most, but not all, of the important distinctions the Lunar Empire makes regarding chaos - and that distinction is legal vs criminal. An anti-chaos militant who kills a Lunar citizen who happens to have some chaos features is a criminal - but an Atyar cultist who eats minds for their own benefit is also a criminal. 
	Sure, this distinction gets muddy when you get into Lunar officials and notable going off the reservation and pursueing crazy private programs, and performing acts that would certainly be criminal if someone else did them. But most of the time the Lunar attitude is to tolerate 'chaos' but not to tolerate criminal acts, whether committed by chaotics or others. 

>

>> But the Empire does not need a specialist cult to fight Chaotic >rebels - it already has the Spoken Word, the Imperial Bodyguard, the 
>> Blue Moon assassins, and other specialists in rooting out rebellion. 

>
> Well, we found Irin useful against the Thanatari and Dorastor. We could have used other tools. The one thing that would have been hard to do without is some sort of detect chaos. But on the Lunar side what you really need is not detecting any chaos (though that is better than nothing) but detecting "not OK" chaos, whether you based that on it being unhealed, or it being from one of the chaos cults, or whatever.

        Once Illumination enters the picture, there is no foolproof way to make that distinction. The difference between a dark side Illuiminate and a 'healed' chaotic is subjective.         

	Cheers
		David