Chapter 121: Behind the Scenes

Today we're going to talk about three unrelated things: The Yamato, Sasaki, and Power. Some of what I reveal will be lies and some of it will be half truths, and some of it will be just in-game errata.

Yamato

Obviously, the Yamato are the Japanese expy for this world. Eventually I'll come up with a more interesting name for them, but for now, they're the Yamato.

The Yamato live on a pair of islands that're a bit bigger than say, the island of Madagascar. While it's a more or less fertile land, it's an island out in the middle of the ocean, and thus there's not a lot of biodiversity. The Yamato are hungrily buying up everything they can in order to fix that. Yamato's closest neighbor are the people from Toledo. They don't get along very well. In fact, when the Anglish discovered both the Toldedans and the Yamato, each were very quick to sell out their neighbor, a fact that neither side forgets.

Sasaki's little history lesson in Aston is sort of true, except she didnt pay a lot of attention in her education. Whether or not there was an actual dragon living in Yamato is a story left for a different time... and we'll talk about dragons later, so make of that what you will.

There was a disease and a famine that decimated the populations of the elf and human kingdoms. They put aside their differences, tore down their walls, and integrated into eah other's culture so much that for all intents and purposes, your average 'Yamato' is classified in D&D game terms as a half-elf.

However, the Yamato are actually a fusion of three different races. Which race is the third one? Totally different book series. Not even mentioned in this one. Wait, no, there was sort of a mention of the third race. Shit. Nevermind, nothing to see here.

Realistically, genetically speaking, there's all sorts of variation, from 1/32 elf to 31/32 elf and so on, which leads us to the Guild of Blood.

Somewhere along the line, someone decided that elves were asthetically pleasing to look at, were smart and wise and powerful. Maybe they were! Anyway, this created a stratified society that's based entirely on how much elven blood you have. The closer you are to a full-blooded elven, the higher you rank in Yamato society. The Guild of Blood keeps comprehensive records on who marries who in order to keep it this way.

Sasaki

In game terms, Sasaki is a Duelist. In D&D 3.5, a Duelist is a Prestige Class, but I said "fuck it" and just made it a base class, just for her. She was a wild child growing up, so in the hopes of instilling discipline in her, she was trained in the way of the sword. She did become disciplined in the way of the sword, but that's pretty much it for her.

We already know most of her life story up to this point; Sasaki is finally and uncomfortably coming to the realization that actions have consequences. She's still stuck in that spot where you're like "I know I shouldn't do this, and I know the consequences will be bad but fuck it, let's do it anyway, because fuck it."

Astute people will recognize her as being Sasaki Kojiro. I took a little bit from each of his representations in fiction and history, splashed in some other shit (we'll get to that later) and there you go.

Sasaki killed some people she shouldn't have killed (which got her into all sorts of problems with her family and with the government), so she made a vow never to bare her blade to anyone that was weaker than she was. This doesn't cover things like beasts, beastmen, mutants, abominations and the like. She'll use knives and darts and hand-to-hand combat (a mix of jiu-jitsu and aikido) against people she feels are undeserving of her blade.

Sasaki is a bit of a hedonist! She likes sleeping with people she considers "exceptional". Part of it is admiration, and part of it is strut-rights. People will see a famous artist and say,"What a fantastic person they are", or "what an amazing talent!" and Sasaki will smirk and smugly inform them, "Yeah, I fucked 'em." This has gotten her in trouble more than a few times, too...

Sasaki believes she has Oni blood. Her family claims to have the blood of the Oni in their heritage, but Oni are fictitious; fairy tales told to little children. Really, it's just an excuse for her to go wild. There are no (official) D&D 3.5 rules for a 1/4 elf, but biologically speaking, she's mostly human, so her character sheet says "human". Her clan is just important enough to play in the lower eschelons of politics, but not enough (unless the clan marries up) to be significant.

For Sasaki's fighting techniques, I took a bunch of combat maneuvers and stances from the Tome of Battle, assigned them a point cost, and gave them to her. She's particularly good in short, intense fights, but she becomes exhausted easily in prolonged fights. We'll talk a little bit more about this further down the page.

Powers

I was going too talk about gods and demons and dragons and angels and all sorts of other shit, but I kinda talked about that last time, so...

There are essentially three forms of power in Aggenmor.

Clerical power, Magical power, and Psychic power.

Clerical power:

Clerical power is what it is: You pray to your deity, and if you're in good standing with that deity, you get to channel a little of their power to do what you want. There's limits to that, however. First, there needs to be a two-way attachment between you and your deity. Let's take Angland for example: They follow the Goddess of the Dawn. She's got all sorts of names and titles because to speak her real name is the highest form of blasphemy (or so the Anglish believe). The Anglish Church believes that there only seven prayers that one can pray to the Goddess, and they follow that rule to the letter. You must never, ever deviate from those prayers.

In short, the Goddess stopped listening. They were basically sending her form-letters and expecting her to figure out what they actually wanted. You want a pillar of fire to destroy your enemies? Say ten 'Hail Marys' and nine 'Our Fathers'. ... Oh... it didn't work. The Goddess wants to know you, and she wants you to know her. Only then will you gain clerical powers.

There are limits to what you can do with clerical power, also.

Take Clerical healing, for example: You lose an arm, and a priestess uses her healing ability. The wound closes up, you stop losing blood, and after some rest you can get on with your life, minus an arm. Clerical healing cannot regenerate lost limbs. If you suffer from a disease, they can cure the disease, but not its effects on you. You'll still have scars and the like.

Magical power:

Magical power is what it is: Magical power. It flows throughout the world and keeps it together. Everyone has a connection with magic, but not everyone can use magic. Surprisingly, magic is affected by belief: If you're skeptical about magic, it won't affect you as much as someone that believes wholeheartedly in magic. This is a narrative mechanic that explains why you don't always roll ALL SIXES when casting Fireball. Even if you were skeptical about magic affecting you, there's a fundamental instinctive belief that magic is real, so no matter what, if someone casts a spell at you, you're gonna take damage. (with exception to be discussed below)

Magic can do a lot of shit that clerical power can't. For instance, magical healing can regenerate lost limbs, restore blood loss, completely cleanse poisons and cure diseases, essentially returning someone to 100% full health. However, magic is toxic. Random mutations, cancers, mental pollution, it's risky business. Are you really sure you want to risk a random mutation, or cancer, or being driven mad by magical healing?

So now we talk about Sanctioning.

First, the Church preaches that all true power comes from the Gods (or Goddesses), and any other power (including magic) is heretical. In contradiction however, the Church recognizes that there are limits to clerical abilities (just the same as limits on magical abilities) and so mages can agree to become Sanctioned. They're branded or tattooed with a mark that acts like a buffer, filtering out the toxic element of magic so that a mage can use their powers without the potential side effects.

But why wouldn't you get Sanctioned? A number of reasons:

First, the Church teaches everyone to fear and hate the mage. They're not wrong in this; a mage is potentially dangerous. So if you find out that you can use magic, the first reaction is usually pants-shitting terror. You're a blasphemer, a heretic, you've been denied your place in the afterlife, et cetera et cetera. Most people in the Anglish Empire are illiterate and rely on superstition and the Church to lead them. A newly awakened mage can find themselves up a rope or burned at the stake faster than you can spit.

Second, Sanctioning is only doable in cities that have the facilities for it, and there's only a handful of cities that are capable of doing it.

Finally, (and this is the best-kept secret) Sanctioning puts a hard cap on how far you can level as a mage. An Unsanctioned mage can level as far as they can go (up to the soft cap of level 11, where they need to make a pact, see the previous 'Behind the Scenes' page), but a Sanctioned mage can only get a few levels.

Do you want to go as far as you can as a mage (and potentially risk it all) or do you want the safety and security of being a mediocre mage with very little room for flexibility and growth?

Psychic Power:

Psychic power is bafflingly unknown. A Psyker is completely undetectable, because they don't resonate in the same way as a mage. However, if there were psykers out there, and a common person were to see them use their abilities, it certainly would seem like they were magical. That's heretical. Also, since they don't have a magical or clerical resonance but are using some sort of power, that's double heretical!

If there were psychic powers, how would they be represented? Well in D&D 3.5 you had power points and various abilities. But if nobody knew or had formal training in the use of psychic powers, how would they know they had them? The answer is that they wouldn't know they had psychic power and would be unaware that they were using them.

In "Katarina the Witch Hunter" we've only seen one verified psyker, one of Katarina's teachers. He knew what he was, and he used his abilities in full knowledge of what he was. However, there are other people in the story who don't know they're psykers, and so their abilities are a lot more subtle.

Final Notes:

So, some final notes on powers before I end this little mixture of half-truths and Behind the Scenes revelations:

A mage cannot become a priest(ess), cleric, or what-have you. The powers are incompatible. it goes both ways; a priest/ cleric/ paladin cannot become a mage.

A mage cannot become a psyker. Their powers are like oil and water.

A psyker can be anything except a mage. They can be priests and priestesses, clerics, paladins, the list is endless.

A mage can't form a pact with a god, so how do they get around that? Maybe I'll talk about that next time.