Re: Secrets of the Than

From: simon_hibbs2 <simon.hibbs_at_vZ8aSUrl1xw4f8jEeiUME9Rx-oWBnTTYeTv3bTgW6G9j1n4VG5vjyxVrXy_ICb6D>
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:15:25 -0000

>
> When I was thinking about a 1st Age Lightbringers game, one idea I had was to have the players encounter a community of Than worshippers. (One of the premises of the game would have been that each group encountered would only have a limited pantheon or religion and that the Lightbringers would reveal a more complete Orlanth/Ernalda religion.)

I had a similar idea for a community to be encountered during heroquesting to the Great Darkness, though it would also be suitable for a dawn age setting. It's a community of disciplined warriors who keep their 'civilians' under harsh military discipline. The best food, clothes and equipment all go to the warriors who regularly have to fight off incursions of monsters and rival communities. The sinister secret is that the military caste are feeding off their civilian community (the weakest first) and are actually becoming ogres.

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you." - Thus Spake Zarathustra.

These elite warriors have fought with monsters for their community, but have become monsters that feed on their community. They have gazed long into the abyss of despair and endless struggle and it gazed back into them, and it's name was Cacodemon.

A Niezchian take on Ogres works well with my last post on the nature of Chaos too.

"What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment." - Thus Spake Zarathustra.

The military caste see themselves as being the Overman, different from and greater than the run of humanity they 'protect', and so they have become inhuman.

Simon Hibbs