Covenant Academy - Discussion Thread

Anno has confirmed that humans with myths around them (IE Arthur or Achilles) would work out just fine.

Um, I dunno about Achilles, but Arthur's myth ends in some versions with him outright traveling into a mythical land separate from human beings. Also both of them would be unavailable anyways because their stories endings make them so. so...yeah.

edited 22nd Jul '13 5:21:50 PM by Dblade26

Um... I really shouldn't make GM posts when it's late, honestly. I rescind what I said before.

Playing devil's advocate here, but could Sabre go for something like how the Winchester Brothers investigated The Greys only to find it was the lesser The Fair Folk?

Have the MIB being Loki just being a dick/adapting with the times, or something?

edited 22nd Jul '13 5:23:37 PM by Luthen

Soo...considering that Achilles and Arthur are kinda mythology, where do they stand?

re: RD: what is a myth if not a fancy story? There are plenty of figures who blur the line between mythology and reality—see my point about George Washington. Or, to take another example, Virgil the poet. The man who recorded the Aeneid was a historical figure; the shade who guided Dante through Hell was not. Therefore the second should be up for contact; the first should not—even if the myth says they are one and the same. You see the problem.

re: Anno: so, set down some concrete limitations; I've proposed two possible ones already. Whatever rules you set down must be consistent across time and cultures, though. (Let us take some hypothetical culture that's into ancestor worship, and which would take their powers and guidance through the deceased souls of their real-life antecedents. How would that apply?) Clarify the rules and I'll follow.

Neither of them are acceptable.

You're missing the qualifiers of monsters, gods, titans and magical, aren't you? >.>

edited 22nd Jul '13 5:30:29 PM by tachikaze

Therefore, explicitly nonhuman. Which I'd specifically asked to be clarified, and which I'd gotten no direct answer on. Now that I have, I know which constraints I'll be working with.

...So where does that leave the Flying Dutchman?

I can accept the caveat that "ghosts = magical" and leave it at that, which would resolve points about ancestor worship, calling upon the dead (see: necromancy, vodun, all that), and all that.

For that point, I've found something which I think will be acceptable: the Angels of Mons. The Battle of Mons in 1914 marked the first occasion that the British Expeditionary Force fought with the German army. It was a decisive British victory. After the battle, rumors and legends began circulating about apparitions who fought alongside and protected the British riflemen. The final form the legend took was that the ghosts or angels of British longbowmen who fought at Agincourt nearly 500 years ago descended to help the BEF repel the German assault.

That should qualify easily enough. With GM approval I'll start hashing out the character.

No. Dead people are dead. Not magical beings that you can make a contract with.

Going on from the "dead people are dead" bit, no, you can't have the ghost of a British archer.

In short, that idea is not acceptable.

edited 22nd Jul '13 6:16:09 PM by tachikaze

...soooo where does that leave the Flying Dutchman?

Actually, they were mentioned as angels (subtype, guardian). They may have appeared in the guise of the dead bowmen, but in the original story it was mentioned as divine intervention, and whether they were ghosts or angels masquerading as such isn't answered. See: Angel Unaware. It'd be completely inconsistent to leave out angels while letting in gods and titans.

Herp, seems like I haven't posted here yet. Hello, all. :)

The Dutchman would be fine.

I'm sorry, but based on the amount of stress and frustration you have caused thus far, not just for me, but for several others, I'm going to have to ask you to leave under the second rule in the signup thread.

That said, in case anyone else was wondering, angels would be fine.

Hi.

edited 22nd Jul '13 11:12:31 PM by tachikaze

Question: Would Odin count as a death god? His role in the myths is extremely expansive, so I'm not sure if he'd count enough as a deathgod to get him disqualified.

Another question: Seeing as its gotten its own mythos over the past few years, would the Slender Man count as a mythical being? And what about the Crumple-Horned Snorkack of Harry Potter lore? Would the Jabberwock be acceptable?

Just a couple ideas before I decide what to do for my character.

Odin would be fine, so long as you don't base his powers around the death god side of things.

Slendy and the Snorkack would not be acceptable though. And the Jabberwock would probably just be a dragon, based on most if the pictures/descriptions of it I've seen.

Don't think of it as "stress and frustration". Think of it as "world-building via stress-testing"—I think of it as a player's duty to find the edges in the world the GM builds (in this case, 'what exactly qualifies as folklore? Does X? Why not Y?'), and the GM's duty is to resolve those issues in order to make for a more coherent story. I suspect that you'll be seeing plenty of that from your other players once the game starts—perhaps not to the extent that I did, but it will happen, and it will test your patience. Be prepared!

In any case, I'll be elsewhere. And best of luck.

Alright, awesome. Thanks for the info.

I'm still baffled by the Flying Dutchman—it's a ghost ship, allegedly a sunken Dutch man-o-war, but yet somehow ghosts are not permitted? I don't mean to bother, I just can't figure out this conundrum.

Maybe individual ghosts aren't permitted.

Something about the captain being cursed in one telling. You could probably get the Wandering Jew in if you like making your character suffer.

Depending on the telling and the interpretation the crew of the Dutchman aren't so much dead as cursed with immortality in order to wander the seas because the Dutchman's captain was an idiot who made a sarcastic oath to god that he'd sail the seas forever if he didn't finish a specific voyage on time.

That said, no idea what kind of contract or powers you could get from that sort of situation.

edited 23rd Jul '13 9:22:40 AM by Dblade26

Which still raises problems—the Flying Dutchman's crew and captain were supposed to be human. And humans, even the ones shrouded in myth like King Arthur or Achilles, are banned.

I'm so confused. @_@

Achilles qualifies, actually. He's a demigod, technically. But, um, he's also kind of dead. So he doesn't, because he's dead, but, um, if he wasn't dead he would.

Arthur doesn't because he's fully human and incapacitated.