Spirits, Chiminage, and The Key of Solomon (Werewolf: The Apocalypse)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse can be a tough game to wrap one's mind around. The broad strokes make sense (an ancient, secret collection of werewolf tribes attempt to use their natural fury to commit acts of ecoterrorism in order to save the planet from the evil grasp of capitalism and modern corruption), but there are details of the game that can be difficult to grasp. And this is particularly true for those who are attempting to win the favor and help of spirits in the game. Whether one is a theurge (the spirit-speaking magic users), or simply spiritually-inclined, the idea of chiminage might feel a little too ephemeral to easily incorporate into one's playstyle.

For this, we need to get back to gaming's roots... black magic, and the writings of Aleister Crowley!

A more learned source you won't find in these lands.

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The Rules And Expectations of The Spirit World

All jokes aside, though, in Werewolf, a majority of the powers you come across are either gifted by spirits (they teach the werewolf how to use certain abilities), and the magic items you use are things that are bound to a particular spirit. And even outside of these mechanical concerns, the spirits can help or hinder werewolves as they attempt to achieve their goals, making a good relationship with them pretty important for all characters, and not just the ones who are attempting to make deals and bargains with them.

This is where chiminage comes in. The word itself is an antiquated term referring to a toll paid for passage through a forest, but in Werewolf it refers to the gifts and payments given to spirits as part of the rites and rituals for contacting them, asking them for aid, and attempting to recruit them to your cause.

And that is sort of an airy concept for a lot of folks, especially those who have not delved into religious traditions where these kinds of targeted offerings are far more common, might have issues with. And if I were to recommend a single book to Werewolf players (and especially those who are going to be playing theurges), it wouldn't actually be something from the World of Darkness. It's The Three Magical Books of Solomon: The Greater and Lesser Keys & The Testament of Solomon.

Seriously, check it out if you haven't!

For folks who haven't read this book, it is a collection of the various goetic spirits (or goetic demons, or infernal spirits, whatever you want to call them) that were supposedly summoned and studied by the ancient King Solomon. And the book is set out exactly how you would think a grimoire is set out, with the explanations of rituals and summonings, with descriptions of the great spirits, the gifts they offer, and what they may demand in return. It speaks of how to protect oneself, and how to discern falsehood.

Now, the book is a bit of a rough read for those who don't consume textbooks for fun. But with that said, the style of the entries, the setup, and how these rituals function can provide a lot of insight into making a particular character's style and spiritual setup feel unique to them, while also making it feel like more than just a character rolling a handful of d10s to see if they get their way or not.

So whether you have someone playing a traditionally-trained theurge who comes from the Children of Gaia who focuses on only using naturally-occurring implements and offerings they feel have been given to them by the Earth herself, or a Bone Gnawer theurge who seems to be a street corner shaman using a chaotic hodgepodge of improvised tools, the goal of both of these characters is to persuade the spirits to their side, to show them proper respect, and to earn their alliance.

My experience with this book is that it sort of primes the mind, and gets you asking the important details about different spirits, and it puts you in the mind of the acceptable aesthetics and ritual for how to please them, as well as how your particular character goes about their spiritual negotiations... and that is often what makes or breaks a character's performance as a theurge in this game.

And as a bonus, well thought out performances often get you bonuses from the Storyteller, making it even more likely that you succeed when all is said and done!

Additional Resources For Werewolf Players

For those who are looking for additional resources for Werewolf: The Apocalypse, I'd recommend checking out the following supplements by yours truly:

- 100 Kinfolk Bundle: With 100 NPCs from many of the major tribes, there are over 1,500 characters in these supplements!

- Dark Reflections: 50 Sights To See in The Penumbra: For folks who are looking for some dark, corrupt places to visit in the nearer parts of the Umbra, I'd recommend picking this one up.

- Tales From The Moot: This short story anthology covers a variety of tales from different tribes of the Garou Nation... and there are quite a few extra pieces that weren't included in this book!

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

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Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

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Alignment's Roots Go Deeper Than We Might Think (How Much Stuff Do You Lose Pulling It Out?)

Since I recently started doing my Alignment Deep Dives series, I've been thinking a lot more about alignment as a concept. Because while it doesn't exist in all games, and it's been mostly de-fanged in the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons, it still has quite a lot of teeth in my preferred game of choice, Pathfinder. And while I've seen a lot of people saying they want to remove alignment from their games entirely because it, "just gets in the way," I thought I'd take a moment to go down that rabbit hole. Because I've found the roots go a lot deeper than we tend to think... both mechanically, and otherwise.

So, if you're someone who is serious about yanking alignment out by its roots, here are some things you're going to have to change, re-write, or re-conceptualize.

Trust me, in the end it's just not worth the effort.

First, The Obvious Stuff

There are a lot of obvious parts of the game that rely on character alignment to determine certain effects or limitations. Paladins must maintain their lawful good alignment, barbarians cannot be lawful, clerics must remain within a step of their deity in order to maintain their connection to their powers, druids must remain neutral, etc. This is the most obvious thing alignment is used for, and honestly I think it's about as far as a lot of players and DMs think of it; it's just an impediment that stops them from playing certain characters, or which restricts the actions they can take in-game without dealing with consequences.

No, Geoff, you cannot play a barbarian/monk with Way of The Great Ax.

 

And sure, alignment does do that. It also stops players from claiming to be good characters on one hand, and then casting spells with the Evil descriptor on the other hand. It makes it clear that certain actions, use of certain items, and even certain classes require you to maintain a certain philosophy and behavior. If you're going to be an antipaladin, a bloody jake, etc., then you've got to devote yourself to that.

To be very clear, alignment doesn't actually stop players from taking in-game actions. However, if you are a character that requires a certain alignment to maintain your powers, then altering too far in any particular direction might mean you face consequences for those actions. And if your character doesn't depend on alignment at all? Well, they might consider their actions necessary for the greater good, or they might think of good and evil as philosophical concepts rather than anything physical. The character may not even think in terms of good and evil, but only in terms of what is expedient and efficient. That doesn't stop them from being good or evil, but it means they themselves are not concerned with those labels since it doesn't affect their life in any meaningful way. And unless there's a local spellcaster, they'll probably go their whole life without ever having someone use a spell to check and see what their alignment actually is.

Another consideration is that eliminating alignment either removes or severely undercuts many abilities in the game. From smite, to domain powers, to specific spells and magic weapons, alignment is one of the major guiding forces that underwrites them, or makes them useful at all. So if you get rid of it, you either get rid of these things, or you need to re-write them. From the holy avenger, to holy/unholy weapons, to spells like holy smite and chaos hammer, they cease to function without alignment to determine their effects.

But alignment affects far more than just the party. It is a huge part of the cosmos at-large. Without it, entire aspects of the game just fall... the hell... apart.

When Heaven and Hell Are Real

In the Golarion setting (as in a majority of other settings I've seen for fantasy RPGs), there is a planar multiverse. And without fail there are planes that are attached entirely to certain alignments. So there are planes that are wholly good or wholly evil, wholly lawful and wholly chaotic. Most games have at least one heaven, and at least one hell, though Golarion has the hells and the abyss, as well as heaven and the celestial realms, among other places.

Go then... there are other worlds than these.

Alignment is predicated on the idea that there are places, beings, actions, and things that are wholly good, or wholly evil (wholly lawful or wholly chaotic as well, but that tends to get less play in most games). Good and evil are facts in these settings, not philosophies, or opinions. Because if that were not the case, how could demons and devils exist? How could angels, celestials, and other beings that are wholly determined by the aligned energies that spawned them? How could the realms they are from (and even the gods who command them) be truly good or truly evil if good and evil were up for debate, rather than cosmic facts of the universe? And if we get rid of these places, and the creatures that live in them, then what becomes of their results on the world? With no angels or devils we have no aasimar or tieflings. We lose the celestial and infernal bloodlines, and all the things that draw power from them. Because the alignment of these outsiders is their main, defining attribute... without it, their reason for being sort of fades away.

Perhaps the biggest example of why alignment is often necessary is the idea of divine judgment. When characters die, they go to the afterlife they've earned/deserve based on their actions... but what determines whether those actions were good, evil, lawful, chaotic, or otherwise? What determines whether they were proper adherents to their particular faith, or people who just said the words and never followed the dictates of their deity? The very idea means there must be actions that are good or evil, and that the gods have a checklist they can use to grade someone to determine where they end up.

For divine judgment to function, good and evil must be facts. If you remove alignment, it throws that aspect into chaos, and removes that basic building block.

You May As Well Go Back To The Drawing Board

This rabbit hole goes a lot deeper when you stop and ask just how many creatures, outsiders, antagonists, and even nations (in the core setting, at least) are resting on a foundation of alignment. From Cheliax's obsession with devils, to Nidal's embrace of dark powers, to the Worldwound itself, so many of these things rest on good and evil being real, tangible facts in the setting. While some of these aspects might still function without alignment, others are going to topple right over like dominoes that hit an unfortunate breeze. And as anyone who's ever tinkered with a mechanically complex game knows, the more things that fall over, the more you're going to have to do to back fill what you changed... which could come with its own unexpected consequences.

Do you need alignment to play fantasy RPGs in general, and Pathfinder in particular? Absolutely not! Just because it's a traditional element doesn't make it required to play in the slightest. But if you want to rip alignment out of a game where it already exists, actually has a function, and is sewn into the fabric of the setting, all you're going to do is rip the lining out of your blanket, and drop all the fluff on the floor.

And that isn't going to get you anywhere. Trust me.

I say this as someone who writes and tinkers with RPGs as a living... you are just going to make a colossal amount of work for yourself if you try to remove a functional alignment system. Instead, if it is such a problem for your table, consider playing a game that doesn't use alignment at all, or where it's a completely vestigial thing that will have no effect on the game. Or, if your only issue is a relatively minor component of how alignment works in your Pathfinder game (the aforementioned barbarian/paladin multiclass), dig through the rulebooks and ask questions on the forums... chances are good there's actually a way to do what you want without changing a single aspect of the rules as they're written.

It might be obscure, and it might be in the reams of optional rules that have been written for the game, but I can practically guarantee you that it's out there, and it's an option. Don't go in to remove an organ that's connected to so much stuff if there's a way to do what you want without elective surgery.

 

Also, before we go, I wanted to let everyone know I've got a new novel out from Eric Flint's Ring of Fire Press! If you've got a soft spot for cats, and you'd love a hard-hitting noir mystery set on the mean streets of New York City, then Leo's adventure in Marked Territory is definitely one that you don't want to miss.

Seriously, go get your copy today!

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

What's The Difference Between Devils and Demons?

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Now then, what was I talking about? Oh yes...

The Real Difference Between Devils and Demons

It's a rite of passage for a Dungeons and Dragons party to face down its first infernal foe. Whether it's a fire-belching demon from the pits of hell, or a bone devil in the service of Orcus the Lord of Undeath, devils and demons are the bread and butter of big boss battles.

Say that three times fast and there's a golden fiddle in it for you.

In between all of the holy magic, shouted battle cries, and oaths to send these foul things back to the pits that spawned them though, players sometimes find themselves asking what the difference between devils and demons is (in a totally non-racist kind of way). It's a legitimate question too; after all, how do you tell one scaly, filth-spewing abomination from another?

Is There A Difference?

The hardcore gamers among you will be the first to point out that in both Dungeons and Dragons as well as Pathfinder devils are lawful creatures, whereas demons are chaotic. There may be other cosmetic differences, such as the locations they're summoned from, the languages they speak, but the point is that while similar demons and devils are distinctly different dishes.

Anymore alliteration and I devour you directly.

While we might use these two words interchangeably, we shouldn't, because they each have a unique definition. You see the word demon (daemon, daimon, etc.) goes back at least as far as Socrates, and was used for beings of beyond human power (often beings of pure spirit) in Greek, and then in Latin. Devil, by contrast, comes from Old English. You can get the full details with times and changes in my article here, but the thing that brought these two words together was actually the translating and re-translating of the Bible.

You see these words were originally different, but due to the translations they kept getting mixed up. In modern contexts the word demon refers to evil spirits, but the word devil refers to the singularly powerful entity that rules hell.

Try putting that into your next campaign, and see if your players think Linguistics is a useless skill after that!

The History Behind Your Favorite Monsters

Fantasy roleplaying games pull a lot of their monster rosters from world mythology. Whether it's giants or kobolds, goblins or gargoyles, these games have been using myth and legend as free idea buckets for decades now. As a result players have actually come face to face with fragments of cultures ranging from Europe and Africa to the furthest corners of the Asian continent without even knowing it.

This week on Moon Pope Monday we're pulling back the glossy curtain, and showing you just where some of your favorite creatures come from and how they've become what they are today. Now, in no particular order, let's start with...

Ogres

Pictured: A Re-Enactment

Ogres populate a huge variety of fairy tales, and they have the unique ability to make an entire party's collective asshole pucker. Strong, vicious, and usually pretty stupid, ogres are actually the direct result of a linguistic translation rather than a particular myth or legend.

The word ogre seems to come from the Italian word uerco, or orco. It was originally used to refer to demons in a translation of the 1,001 Arabian Nights from Arabic to Italian. There were a lot of steps along the way, but this translation eventually led to the term ogre being applied to specific people-eating giants in fairy tales. For a more complete history of the term, check out this article.

Speaking of demons...

The Difference Between Devils and Daemons

One of these things is not like the other...

Dungeons and Dragons was the first game I ever played that made it clear demons and devils were very different kettles of fish. In game terms one was lawful, the other chaotic, but both were found outside of reality in places of pain, suffering and torment. So, a lot of imagery from the big 3 Abrahamic faiths.

What I didn't know was there actually is a difference between devils and daemons.

The word daemon (spelled with the a) refers to a creature that is between man and god in old Greek. Hercules, and all of his half-god kin, were daemons. Devils in this case referred to genuine divine beings who had no blood of humanity in them at all. For more on this unique bit of language, read this article here.

The Ifrit

Fire It Up!

While they're now a player race in Pathfinder, Ifrit are bad, bad news if you're on their shit lists. Fire elements and djinn, we know them as desert spirits that are resistant or immune to fire, that come with a slew of spell-like abilities, and who can cut a party to slivers before they're really sure what's happening.

This isn't too far from the source material, actually.

The Ifrit, and their many alternative spellings, are taking from a combination of the Koran and Arabic mythology. Powerful spirits of fire created by God before man, these beings of fire are nearly immortal, possess great speed and strength, and are immune to weapons that are not magical or holy. Bad news for parties who can be stymied by damage reduction. Perhaps the most famous of the Ifrit is the one who fell the hardest, called Iblis or Shaitain in the Koran. More on him here. For more general information on the Ifrit as a people, check out this article.

The Succubus and the Incubus

50 Shades of Will Saves

Sex always finds its way into a roleplaying game. Whether it's the bard seducing his way into the queen's castle, or a cavalier fighting for his lady's honor there's at least as much sex in fantasy games as there is in real life. Usually more. Most of the time it's glossed over, but there are two creatures who take this uncomfortable topic and fashion it into a barbed spear made of confused libido and frustrated arousal; the incubus and the succubus.

The incubus and the succubus come from old Jewish lore stretching back to Adam's first wife Lilith. Supposedly Lilith wanted to be equal to her husband, and when Adam denied her that, she fled. She refused to return, or to accept her place in God's kingdom, and so she became a creature who preyed on men in their sleep (more about Lilith may be found in this article). Using their seed she would give birth to monsters called the lilim (more on them here). The succubi followed in their mother's footsteps, seducing men in their dreams and stealing their seed to give birth to ghost babies. Incubi were even more terrifying, having sex with women as they slept and getting them pregnant with half-human, half-daemon spawn called cambions.

In case these creatures weren't already scary enough for you, read more about the incubus and the succubus here.

Trolls

This is the lowest CR we could find.

Considered ogres bigger, bridge-dwelling cousins, trolls have a long and storied history. Though their decadent descendants are busy getting belly jewelry and starting fights on the Internet, trolls go back to Scandinavian folklore. For those who are familiar with Norse mythology the two main contenders in the myth cycles were the gods and the giants; the former representing the divinity of man and the latter representing the primal earth. Some giants were trolls, and in this case trolls could be seen as lesser representations of the primal. Human heroes like Beowulf could fight trolls and win, and they were used often as villains or as neutral representations of earth in fairy tales.

For more information about trolls, check out the full article.

Elves

My elf eyes see three viable targets.

Elves have been a player race for most of the history of fantasy roleplaying, and that's largely due to their prominence in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. The games that defined the genre drew heavily from LOTR, and they used a lot of the mythology present in those books. What a lot of folks don't know is that Tolkien was drawing on the works of the ancient skalds (more on them here), and that the elves we know are actually part of Norse mythology as well.

Light elves or dark, these willowy, impossibly skilled and nearly immortal forest and cave dwellers were knows as the Alfar (or the svartalfar for those who lived beneath the world). They were a lesser rank of divinity, and they answered to the god Frey and his sister Freya. At the last battle they stood with the gods against the giants and provided some heavy artillery.

So yeah... elves are not to be messed with. For more about the Alfar, check this article out.

The Zombie

The inclusion of the gunslinger was not a fluke.

The undead have been a huge part of roleplaying games for decades, and we can thank the success of the film Night of the Living Dead for the presence of the shambling, moaning corpses that we've had to mow down from level 1 to level 4. While this film might have been instrumental in making the walking dead part of pop culture, it draws on a much older tradition.

For those who don't know, zombies come from Voodoo. Voodoo is a religion practiced largely in Haiti, the Caribbean, and parts of the American south. More about that here. The zombie in this case is a human being who is fed a mind-altering substance, and then buried. The person is dug up and kept on a steady drip of chemicals, which makes the person subservient and thoughtless, ready to do anything commanded by the master. These soulless people felt no fear, no pain, and seemed to know nothing of their former selves were terrifying to behold. It wasn't until pulp horror and Hollywood got hold of the idea that zombies felt compelled to eat human flesh. We're still not sure what's up with that.

For more information about the zombie, check this page out.

The Ghoul

She's waiting till after the funeral.

Ghouls have gone through a lot of iterations, and in most roleplaying games they're seen as servants of vampires a la Renfield, of they're sub-human cannibals who feed on the dead after digging them up. The second one is pretty close to their original myth, but still no cigar.

Ghouls are a kind of djinn, and are seen as particularly heinous practitioners of magic and desecration. Often invisible, ghouls take pleasure in stealing offerings left for God, including the bodies of the dead. The word eventually made its way to England, where its primary definition was changed to a grave robber. Still no word on whether or not British ghouls were eating what they dug up.

For more about ghouls, click this link.

The Golem

You are sixteen kinds of screwed.

A spellcaster's worst nightmare, golems are creatures constructed from magic, alchemy, and a touch of insanity. While versions made with flesh and bone, wood, stone, mud, and a dozen varieties of metal have all been created over time, these mystical guardians actually come from the dust of Rabbinic lore.

According to Jewish tradition a powerful Rabbi can use the secret knowledge of the names of god to follow in his footsteps. The rabbi creates a man from clay, and then gives him life. The golem is bigger than mortal men, as well as stronger, tougher, and faster. These golems have no souls, and as a result tend to have no voice. The only way to destroy them is to eliminate the runes that bring them to life, or to somehow break the spell that makes them live. Historical legend has it that several golems were created to protect Jewish settlements, including one where this mud man killed Nazis for weeks until he was finally destroyed by his maker for becoming too bloodthirsty.

For more about golems and their history, click here.

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