From: owner-7thsea@darkedge.com on behalf of vanadium@ix.netcom.com Sent: Monday, September 27, 1999 12:50 AM Subject: [7th Sea RPG] Finn's Companion #11 [long] ------------------- Finn's Companion #11 September 26, 1668 by: Carl Gilchrist http://seventhsea.itgo.com http://seventhsea.itgo.com/7thsea/companion.htm ------------------- Order of St. Daniel(75 AV-133AV) HISTORY Father Daniel was an early zealot of hunting down and killing sorcerors in the name of the first prophet who named sorcery "...an unholy abomination in the eyes of the Creator." After 20 years of fighting sorcery, after a series of events that are not clear to this day, Daniel's life was saved (and that of the Theah as well) by Sorcerors. This caused Daniel to rethink his ways and he spent 5 years in private contemplation. When he came out he began a personal crusade to not destroy the sorcerors, but to understand their ways and to save them if they could. Sorcerors were not necessarily bad people, they could be saved. Daniel spent the rest of his life learning the secrets of sorcery, though he could not perform them, and trying to save the souls of those he could. FUNCTION The Order of St. Daniel do not perform sorcery as such. They have the greatest collection of lore of sorcery in the entire Vaticine Church. The order is also very low key, and not many people know of its existence, especially outside of the church. There are few members of the Order, and they do go out, the Order is known for its scholarly origins and the seeking of knowledge of legends and lore, and that is how they are known publicly. The order has knowledge that functions like the sorcerous heritages do in game mechanics. OBJECTIVES The Order seeks to understand sorcery to better combat it. They seek to redeem the souls of sorcerors as best they can. They know that not all of the sorcerors believe their souls are in danger, the members of the order do they best to convince them, but not always with rhetoric, they try by example, showing the sorcerors the way, making them understand the way of Theus. It doesn't always work, but Theus gave man free will for a reason, and the Order of St. Daniel will not be the ones to take that away. There are those that can be saved, those that are basically 'good' but don't want to be saved because they do not believe. Then there are the evil sorcerors who cannot or choose not to be saved. These the Order uses what Lore is has to stop them, destroying them if necessary. CURRENT EVENTS. Understandably, the Order of St. Daniel and the Inquisition do not get along. Their members are too alien to each other. At this time, with the inquisition in the position of power it is, the Order has mostly become very quiet. The members have not been making any noise. However, they are doing something the inquisition would truly destroy them for. They are hiding scholars and sorcerors. They are protecting them as best they can, showing them the true mercy of Theus. MEMBERS Acolytes These members run the day to day operations of the order. Filing, scribing, recording , running errands, and so forth. Seekers These members are the "field agents" of the order. They go into the world, and take up arms and serve as holy knights for the church and the order. The main advantage the Seekers have is that the have the Lore of the Order to the "half-blood" level. Costing 20 points. Brothers These are the "average" members of the Order. They do similar things as the Acolytes in day to day activities, but they tend to lead the Acolytes and direct their researches. Additionally, brothers may have been taught all the Lore of the Order, and be considered "full-bloods" in this "sorcery". Fathers The senior members of the order. Again, they do similar acts of work like the acolytes and brother beneath them, but they run the overall direction of the Order and direct various projects. Each father as a few pet projects of his own that he is running. All fathers have definately learned the Lore of the Order and are considered "full-bloods" in its knowledge. The Abbott This position is for life and leads the Order in its objectives. When one dies, the fathers get together and decide on a new one, who must be confirmed by the Heirophant. THE LORE OF THE ORDER Mechanically this works just like a sorcerous heritage. With "half-blood" costing 20 points and "full-blood" costing 40 points. This heritage does not reduce the cost of the noble advantage. Someone can have normal sorcery and this too, if they want to fork over the points and have a darn good story to boot. Points to spend, maximum skills, apprentice, adept, master, all those works the same as the normal sorcerous heritages. The Lore concerns the knowledge the Order has gatherer over the hundreds of years it has been around. It represents the knowledge the members have learned that can counter the various magics of sorcery. Just as the faerie have their weaknesses, so do the sorceries. As to what these weaknesses are specifically. I'm not going to say. It isn't really important. The Order knows them and uses them. If they fail a roll, the GM can always rule that the knowledge he used was WRONG. The weakness could entail throwing the silver dust to disrupt a spell, turning someone around in a circle three times to dispel an effect, knowing the proper word of power or prayer that has proven to be effective against this sort of thing. There is folklore and legends about the sorcery and this Order knows them, they have spent over 1000 years collecting it, and they use it to protect themselves and others from the foul uses of it. Knacks: Glamour, Laerdom, Porte, Sorte, Pyeryem The priest knows a great deal about the various sorceries. The priest can make a wits+knack (of the appropriate magic) to know something about the magic. Typically a TN of 15 for some apprentice ability, 25 for an adept ability, and 30 for a master ability. If the magic subject is not related to degree the GM will just have to judge, but again, typical TN should be 15. Degree powers Apprentice-The priest can counter other apprentice sorcerous powers. Adept-The priest can counter other adept sorcerous powers. Master-The priest can counter other master sorcerous powers. Countering magic This comes in two versions. The immediate counter and the dispel. Whether or not the priest can dispel the magic is based on at what point does the sorceror get the ability. The TN is based on the mastery level of the sorceror performing the magic. eg Invoking is gained as an apprentice, so an apprentice of the Lore can counter it, however, if the Laerdom practitioner is a master, then the TN is a 30. The immediate counter is used when the priest recognizes someone is targeting him with magic. He has no special power to recognize magic like the Thomas Glamour knack does, but someone invoking a rune can be fairly obvious. (see knowledge note above). The priest uses an action, interrupt action if necessary, spends a drama die and makes a finesse+knack roll. The priest must choose which knack to use, each knack based on a kind of magic, if the priest chooses the wrong knack (ie the wrong kind of magic to base his knowledge off of) the roll automatically fails and the drama die is lost. This can be used on the priest himself, or someone that is right next to him, about 3' or so. The target number for the roll is 15 for an apprentice ,25 for an adept , and 30 for a master . The dispel comes into play when the priest comes across something that has magic on it. It takes the priest 10 actions, spends a drama die, and makes a resolve+knack roll. The target number for the roll is 15 for an apprentice ability, 25 for an adept ability, and 30 for a master. This has a 10 foot range. EXAMPLES The priest recognzes the form of a glamour mage as "The Noble". The priest can dispel the effect, taking 10 actions, spending one drama die and require a resolve+knack(glamour). The priest must himself at least be an adept because that ability is gained as an adept in glamour. The TN to beat would be based on the glamour mages mastery rating. This particular glamour mage is a master, and therefore the priest is looking to beat a 30 TN. An Adept level Skjaeren throws a rune of fury at a priest of the Order. The Skjaern in using the invoke ability which is gained as an apprentice, so the priest need only to be an apprentice level of the Lore. He needs to spend a drame die and make a finesse+knack (laerdom) roll vs a TN of 25 , since the Skjaeren is an adept in order to immediately counter the magic and not be affected by it. The priest have captured a master of Pyeryem. He has the strength of a kodiak bear, but doesn't have any physical change. In order to keep him from bashing the door down in the next minute or so. A priest of the Order is called forth. Since the Pyeryem user is a master using a master level ability, it will take someone of the master level of ability with the Lore to counter the Pyeryem magic. He spends a drama die, takes 10 actions and makes a resolve+knack(pyeryem) roll vs a TN of 30 since it is a master who is using the magic. If the priest makes the roll, the pyeryem user loses the change of the kodiak bear and returns to normal. Swords High! Captain Morgan York of the Brilliant Victory email: vanadium@ix.netcom.com IM: duncanmage HOME: http://home.netcom.com/~vanadium 7THSEA: http://seventhsea.itgo.com --- To unsubscribe, send a message to "majordomo@darkedge.com" and put "unsubscribe 7thsea (or 7thsea-digest)" in the body of the message. Contents Copyright (C) 1997,98,99 by ALDERAC ENTERTAINMENT GROUP, INC.