[D&D-5e] The Secrets of Cinsex (5e, very complex hombrew setting with some house rules)

[Sebecloki]

Originally Posted by ArcZero

Yes there is an unearthed arcana for 5e that sums up Onomancy quite well. http://dnd5e.wikidot.com/wizard:onomancy-ua

Those responses sound good for combat being clear enough to give you an initial position. Then focusing on keeping combat moving with a bit of vagueness after that and not worrying about exactly how many kobolds you hit with a fireball. In that case, I would be happy to say "I aim my fireball in the middle of the kobolds but hugging the wall to avoid allies." Then you decide how many will wind up being hit, precisely.


Makes sense. I am happy to not use spheres. Just for clarity, are you saying from my post that I appear to be one of these players? It seems that many qualities of the game are still up in the air, so I thought a few custom requests like a Kingfisher Kenku or Onomancy were fair.

I was simply interested in getting at some interesting flavor, but I can keep it simple: would that Onomancy UA subclass be acceptable? Are you uninterested in any custom character approach eg. A sorcerer with a necromancer bloodline? If neither are acceptable then a simple Necromancer Wizard would work.

So theriamorphs are not native to Ghyfe but are common enough to be playable? Is trying to play a Kingfisher-type (pescatarian diving bird) Kenku a fit for the setting? It would be humorous to see a kenku come to Ghyfe and feel resonance for the Kingfisher goddess. Then she would see if she could emulate those values and try to be one of their priests.

Does Onomancy have a place in your world? It sounds like the Vumyrusians could be a good fit as they practice unique magics and it sounds like derivations of Celtic mythology could result in Naming. Is xenophobia or suspicion of spies high or would a Vumyrusian who immigrated to Ghyfe and wanted to join the Kingfisher Temple School be accepted? I would be happy to have the character endure lambasting and doubt if there was some mechanism for acceptance (like my Vumyrusian family marrying into a Ghyfean family known for priesthood)? If they've been recently invaded by Ghyfe then intermarriage or Vumyrusian integration doesn't seem that far-fetched.

Second is Atax-Aurora and Teperua the names for both the goddesses and the moon/sun themselves? Or do the celestial bodies have further names?

Do priests study at both Temple Schools to avoid suspicion of being a monotheist? Are there specialists who use Moonglow or Sunspark alone and do all the deeds needed to be properly dualistic? Or do all practitioners have some amount of both mantles?

Is it culturally acceptable to study Vumyrusian magic and Moonglow at the same time? Would using Moonglow entail new gameplay mechanics or simply be flavor with the sub-talents you were refering to? Eg. take a proficiency in Moonglow and Moonscript for Arcana-type checks, but otherwise you would be casting normal Wizard spells?

You said the goddesses have many names and subsects. Are all of those who worship both goddesses appropriately, but by another name, heretics? Or is there a hard and fast rule like "people of the book" that as long as you follow said holy scripture that regional variance is allowed?

Is holy war common? It sounds like the Marchlanders would piss off Ghyfeans to the point of needing to die for worshipping another god in another land. Is it malpractice of worshipping the sister goddesses that draws the ire of clergy or is it any different religion at all?

Finally, what is the enforcing body for this religion? Priests, regional leaders, standing armies from local lords swearing fealty to the "church"?

I'm fine with the other systems, I was just trying to clarify why I didn't pitch this as a PF game with spheres and dreamscarred press from the outset. And no, you don't strike me as a combo build player.

I promise I'll get to the other stuff but I've written several pages already answering questions today -- I've gotta call it a night at some point and there's more here than I can easily answer in another 5-10minutes of typing.

[ArcZero]

Originally Posted by Sebecloki

I'm fine with the other systems, I was just trying to clarify why I didn't pitch this as a PF game with spheres and dreamscarred press from the outset. And no, you don't strike me as a combo build player.

I promise I'll get to the other stuff but I've written several pages already answering questions today -- I've gotta call it a night at some point and there's more here than I can easily answer in another 5-10minutes of typing.

Sounds good and thank you. Another thought for how the class stuff might be resolved: A necromancer bloodline sorcerer, but her metamagic IS True Naming. So using a similar rule to the Onomancy Wizard tradition to gain people's names and then you are able to use metamagic on them. That would wrap the necromancy and naming flavor up into one neat package without having too much power if a hybrid wizard tradition is too complicated.

[Sebecloki]

Originally Posted by ArcZero

Sounds good and thank you. Another thought for how the class stuff might be resolved: A necromancer bloodline sorcerer, but her metamagic IS True Naming. So using a similar rule to the Onomancy Wizard tradition to gain people's names and then you are able to use metamagic on them. That would wrap the necromancy and naming flavor up into one neat package without having too much power if a hybrid wizard tradition is too complicated.

I'm really fine with the mechanics -- I was just unaware there was any truenaming conversion (mostly play PF, not 5e), and I was just discussing that I'm in theory open to PF if that's, in actuality, what everyone wanted to do, but explaining why I was pitching it as 5e instead (bigger player base, less of the theorycrafting).

[ArcZero]

Gotcha. Yeah Pathfinder has so many options that it is kind of suffocating. I would prefer 5th edition for sure even if Pathfinder is also fun.

[ProjectLazarus]

I know @Sebecloki that you're answering a ton of questions and being stretched in about a hundred different directions, by myself included; but on another tack, what subraces of elves are extant?

[Sebecloki]

Originally Posted by ArcZero

Gotcha. Yeah Pathfinder has so many options that it is kind of suffocating. I would prefer 5th edition for sure even if Pathfinder is also fun.

The issue is also, once you advertise a spheres + PoW + Akasha campaign, it's increasingly about that, since the PF1e community has, it seems to me retracted, and the diehards left are really into those systems specifically, so you're going to get players that want to play those systems more than want to play a specific story -- though I'm sure it's not universal and there's some grey area, but it's a trend I've observed in some recruitments. That's not really where I'm pitching this campaign -- I'm also not really trying to have a recruitment that goes on with 12 pages of mechanics questions because players are trying to test and stretch and theorycraft a lot of unusual interactions between systems that most DMs don't allow (that's my impression). I know what they are and find them cool, but I don't have time or the ability to spend the time to google all kinds of obscure maneuver and feat interactions to engage that kind of character building and theorycrafting experience. I'm also not necessarily planning a ton of combat, so a lot of those ideas won't even really see use.

[Sebecloki]

Originally Posted by ProjectLazarus

I know @Sebecloki that you're answering a ton of questions and being stretched in about a hundred different directions, by myself included; but on another tack, what subraces of elves are extant?

The basic answer is that the snow elves, the main kind of elves in this setting, in the mountains of northern Ghyge are Bon Tibetan mystics and lamas but I have more details on that I'll come back to.

[Battlechaser]

Originally Posted by Sebecloki

Perhaps it could help to have multiple subdivisions in the OOC: literature, science, religion, people. Otherwise one can easily get lost in the posts.

I have a few questions regarding my concept:

- What are the names of the God of Knowledge?

All the gods have dozens of names. The Ghyfean name of this deity is Zakar, Zakaryazornakyan or Zakaryazornakyanastvadzadourian (the use of a specific title would depend on context, with the longest name representing the 'Holy Name', and the others being degrees of abbreviation appropriate for certain kinds of speech and topics).

- Does he have an order of intelligence gatherers? Perhaps spies that infiltrate in other organisations with the explicit goal of intelgathering? Off course, if they destroy knowledge, an intervention is necessary.

The old Ghedrosian name of the organization is the Makharbekhamitsaev -- the Vigilant Eyes (of the All Seeing and All Knowing), or just the Vigilant. Zakar was considered to be the emanation of the active intellect of the unseeing, unhearing, and unchanging creator deity that emanated the world in the old imperial religion.

- Where is his university located? What is its name? Do they teach medicine, alchemy, poisoncraft?

The university of Zakar the All Knowing is located in the Shrine District, and is attached to the Great Temple of Zakar, also known as the Great and Auspicious Panopticon of the All Seeing, All Hearing, and All Knowing
Zakaryazornakyanastvadzadourian of the Highest Intelligence and Greatest Wisdom, Most Auspicious Scholar and Revered Teacher of all the Gods. It is known as the Sakhandzherissoslænbek Sozyryqo, another Old Ghedrosian name, but is also referred to as the College of Sakhandzheri. They do not teach poisoncraft or alchemy (at least not openly), but focus on book arts and learning, as well as something like 19th c. style 'scholarly' projects -- collecting and organizing information, creating taxonomies, making lists of formulas and working them out to a million places, etc. They try to maintain a front as disinterested scientists, but Zakar also has an aspect that is more like Vecna, and is the lord of the hidden, and his associates of the 'higher mysteries' explore poisons, alchemy, demon-summoning, and other forbidden knowledge.

- Does Cinsex have slums? If so what is their name? Would it be reasonable for a healer/alchemist to set up practice there? Could he/she make contact with members of the new Kingfisher’s assassin’s guild?

The slums are in the marshlands near the lake that have not been adequately drained; one large part is known as the Xhevahir Tenements. Xhevahir is the name of a mythological outcaste. It is a deep depression. There could be practitioners of those arts.

- I see the possibility of my character gaining the trust of the organisation to infiltrate them.
- What are the naming conventions? And the major languages?

For the Ghyfeans, I'm basing the names on Armenian, Georgian, Ossetian, and Albanian. https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com is a great website for help with that, but I also have a language generation program that makes conlangs with 2,000 word vocabs and complete grammars.

I've written a bit above about the other human subpopulations, those all have their own naming conventions and languages.

- Mechanically, I’m leaning towards a prodigy. Do you have any objections?

Looks good[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the information. Where would one go to learn medicine then? Or is it like a craft? You enter service and learn everything from your master.

[Battlechaser]

Would you object to introduce historic medicinal practices to your world? In the 13th Century Arabic physicians contributed enormously to the medicinal knowledge and different surgical practices were documented in Rogerius’s practices of surgery.

Would a Vumyrusian gain access to the universities? Could they settle in Cinsex as a healer?

[Sebecloki]

Originally Posted by Battlechaser

Would you object to introduce historic medicinal practices to your world? In the 13th Century Arabic physicians contributed enormously to the medicinal knowledge and different surgical practices were documented in Rogerius’s practices of surgery.

Would a Vumyrusian gain access to the universities? Could they settle in Cinsex as a healer?

They could be a minority tradition -- the majority tradition is definitely the hot/cold paradigm I outlined.

Vumyrusians could theoretically study in universities, but right now they're a mistrusted minority because the king recently conducted a war against an alliance of their islands ruled by a force known as the Dread Fleet -- it consisted of a cult that directed a pirate fleet that gave allegiance to god like mosasaur and megalodon 'gods' and their sahuagin servants. They're very populous on the literally millions of islands that fill the sea of claws, but little known beyond the coast, and, to a lesser degree, the river ways of Ghyfe. There's a small population in Cinsex, and they mostly live in the marsh like tenaments of the lower class district, and travel from an island in the river that connects to the lake beside which the captial is built. They also live on houseboats. They could offer healing services, but would be viewed as something of an outsider -- not because of their medical practice neccessarily, but because of the aforementioned political situation and the fact that they're rare in the mainland.

[Sebecloki]

Originally Posted by Battlechaser

Looks good

Thanks for the information. Where would one go to learn medicine then? Or is it like a craft? You enter service and learn everything from your master.[/QUOTE]

Depends on the temple (if it's a strictly clerical art). In the temple of the Phoenix and Kingfisher, it would be taught alongside other priestly crafts. There is a many-headed snake deity of healing from the Ghedronian empire whose members are something like mystics/psychics, and work as psychologists, as well as surgeons, and other roles.

If it's a skill or alchemy, it would be taught in a related professional guild or by apprenticeship.

[Sebecloki]

So theriamorphs are not native to Ghyfe but are common enough to be playable? Is trying to play a Kingfisher-type (pescatarian diving bird) Kenku a fit for the setting? It would be humorous to see a kenku come to Ghyfe and feel resonance for the Kingfisher goddess. Then she would see if she could emulate those values and try to be one of their priests.

a kenku type race would be fine -- I'd place it on islands off the eastern coast.

Does Onomancy have a place in your world? It sounds like the Vumyrusians could be a good fit as they practice unique magics and it sounds like derivations of Celtic mythology could result in Naming. Is xenophobia or suspicion of spies high or would a Vumyrusian who immigrated to Ghyfe and wanted to join the Kingfisher Temple School be accepted? I would be happy to have the character endure lambasting and doubt if there was some mechanism for acceptance (like my Vumyrusian family marrying into a Ghyfean family known for priesthood)? If they've been recently invaded by Ghyfe then intermarriage or Vumyrusian integration doesn't seem that far-fetched.

That's one possibility. The Vumyrusians actually have their own religion and gods, so the notion of one studying at a temple school of Atax-Aurora or Teperua would be unusual, and would mean they had converted from their ancestral faith to the state religion -- there's no miscegenation laws, but it would be similar to a roman citizen who worshipped the roman gods moving to Judea and converting to Judaism in order to study as a cohen/priest. The islands of the sea of claws are not ruled by Ghyfe -- they're isolated outposts, but it's not a part of the kingdom, and it also wasn't a part of the Ghedronian Empire. The hundreds of thousands of clans of the Vumrusians of the millions of islands have been their own cultural sphere for all of recorded history so far as anyone is aware that you're likely to encounter. I can go into more detail depending on how this answer impacts your character concept.

Second is Atax-Aurora and Teperua the names for both the goddesses and the moon/sun themselves? Or do the celestial bodies have further names?

There are different views on this -- some see the sun and moon as creations of the goddesses, some see them as identical, some see them as the 'eye' or crystal ball of one or the other. This is an area where there is not theological concensus. Both objects have dozens of names and titles depending on who you ask, especially in Ghyfe, where almost every city and town has local names, sometimes depending on month or lunar/solar cycle (like every part of the cycle, they'd have a different name for the sun or moon).

Do priests study at both Temple Schools to avoid suspicion of being a monotheist? Are there specialists who use Moonglow or Sunspark alone and do all the deeds needed to be properly dualistic? Or do all practitioners have some amount of both mantles?

If you read above, it's okay, as long as you're not obnoxious about it, to be monotheistic about one or the other (i.e., that one or the other is the real creator deity) -- what's truly heretical is to assert that they're both the same deity (and especially to evangelize that position). There are channelers who use one, the other, or both.

Is it culturally acceptable to study Vumyrusian magic and Moonglow at the same time? Would using Moonglow entail new gameplay mechanics or simply be flavor with the sub-talents you were refering to? Eg. take a proficiency in Moonglow and Moonscript for Arcana-type checks, but otherwise you would be casting normal Wizard spells?

Read the above about the distinction between Vumyrusian culture and that of the mainland -- honestly, I wasn't thinking of specific mechanics when I came up with a lot of stuff. I generally think fluff ideas can be represented by multiple mechanics as long as it somehow gets the effects across. Like I could see using spheres or incarnum for some of these ideas -- I don't think you have to have a 1-1 correspondance between mechanics and fluff, and that the same idea could have two different mechanical realizations.

You said the goddesses have many names and subsects. Are all of those who worship both goddesses appropriately, but by another name, heretics? Or is there a hard and fast rule like "people of the book" that as long as you follow said holy scripture that regional variance is allowed?

As long as you don't claim that the two goddesses are actually one goddess and evangelize for that position, you're basically allowed to hold a variety of views. It's also a setting where the individual cities and towns don't have instant communication and standardization of print culture to where you can have a completely top-down religious system with uniform printed materials available to everyone. There are infinite local variations on some of these ideas.

Is holy war common? It sounds like the Marchlanders would piss off Ghyfeans to the point of needing to die for worshipping another god in another land. Is it malpractice of worshipping the sister goddesses that draws the ire of clergy or is it any different religion at all?

Holy war is not common within the kingdom of Ghyfe -- there is an aggressive theocracy called the Theocracy of the Sacred Ankh, but that's way northwest. The marchlanders are a really small minority that live on the western border regions in scattered townships in a dense forest. They're not usually permnanent residents elsewhere. They consider the rest of the Ghyfeans to be sinners who killed their prophet. They have their own very complex religious culture that's based on a mix of new age concepts, early Mormonism, and other second great awakening traditions like the Shakers, and folk magic like in the Alvin Maker series, as well as the three goddess religion in Foundation. I can go into more detail on it, but they're not fighting wars with the government -- they're hugely outnumbered, live in a hinterland, and are divided into hundreds of little sects in their various townships. They are not a unified community to the degree they could all get together and declare a holy war. The state church could theoretically, and has knightly orders, but doesn't have any internal enemies it would need to fight in this manner.

Finally, what is the enforcing body for this religion? Priests, regional leaders, standing armies from local lords swearing fealty to the "church"?

There is a rigid hierarchy that is comparable to the catholic/orthodox church, the shi'ite seminary system in iran, or sassanian zoroastrianism. There's a high priest who represents both goddesses who is the head of the church and is considered to be infallible, and several dozen echelons of lesser priests that represent degrees between something like a cardinal to a local vicar, but there are way more than three orders of appointment like deacon, elder, overseer -- there's like a hundred or more of these distinctions that are in tiers that go up, and are also connected to mystery religion elements like free masonry. There are geographical territories like dioceses that are based around major cities with something like a cathedral in each one -- though it's called an archtemple, and there are like several degrees of temples between one of these and the equivalent of a parish church -- like subsidiary shrines of a 'sub-bishop' that are for each ward or division of a city, or for a client town, and additional ones for neighborhoods or streets (which might be only a small shrine). Again, there are many tiers of divisions here, it's a ridiciulously complicated system.

The church has a private army, or several -- remember I said it was founded by military orders that reinvented themselves as noble houses. There is something like the inquisition, but it's really a secret police to root out the specific brand of monotheists I mentioned. They don't generally attend to any other religion, except if they're truly obnoxious -- like the very early Marchlanders before they went on their hijra to the west. Now, they barely have any contact with them, so they might harass the very infrequent Marchlander missionary if they were too open or vociferous, but it doesn't happen often enough to be a real issue.

This is the state religion -- almost all noble houses (or at least 95+%) are officially bound to it and have representatives in the clergy, and the king is annointed by the high priest, and is considered to be ruling on behalf of the goddesses as their earthly representative. There was an historical period where the role of the pontif and king was combined, but that was a previous dynasty, and they are now separate roles again. Now, it's more like the role the english monarch has as the chief officer of the church of england, but there's also an arch bishop of canterbury.

[Sebecloki]

To answer the question about the snow elves -- they have a religion that is similar to the Bon religion in Tibet (it's the pre-buddhist animist practice that still exists and strongly influenced Tibetan Buddhism). They revere a pleroma of ascended ancestors who some have identified with the unseeing, unhearing creator god of the Ghedronian Empire, but which they deny. They believe that their mental appeals to this pleroma of ascended ancestors can allow them to shape the dream realm (tulpas) and call forth wrathful deities/elemental powers to do their bidding. They are ruled by a council of mystics/adepts, and the mountain realm has hundreds of sanctuaries where these arts are cultivated, and where they live alongside the spirits of the departed (the sanctuaries/monastaries are basically built around grave sites/mausoleums). There's also a minority tradition that is sort of like Vulcan philosophy, but it's not at war with the animistic/elemental ancestor worship tradition, it's just a minority concept that can exist alongside it.

[Sebecloki]

I think I've answered all the outstanding questions -- let me know if I missed anything (I might have, there were a lot of questions!). I can also expand on anything that was unclear or you want more information about.

Also, I have to say, I basically come up with fluff concepts and I don't always really have mechanical ideas for their realization -- especially magic. If I was going to make a system to really model my concept of magic it would combine the earthdawn system of weaving threads and creating matricies to protects your casting from deep astral taint with one of the word + noun make up your own spell systems like words of power, and combine that with replenishing mana points tied to your soul, combined with the domains of spheres (like diffenent verbs and nouns would be parts of different domains in some fashion). It would be like calculus and would be really complex. In practice, we have to use simpler mechanics and just kind of reflect that complexity in description, I don't think it'd actually be playable.

[Battlechaser]

Originally Posted by Sebecloki

They could be a minority tradition -- the majority tradition is definitely the hot/cold paradigm I outlined.

Thanks. I could rework their treatments and surgeries to work with the hot/cold tradition. So Zadig would study medicinal arts at the University of the Phoenix and The Kingfisher. Meanwhile he’ll keep in touch with the other members of the Vigilant Eyes. After studies he set up practice in the slums to study the Vumyrusians. One of his patients could have been a member of the new assassin’s guild giving him some intel with his last breath.