I just got a bunch of WW books in, both new stuff and new to me stuff.  I’ll post reviews starting with Immortal Sinners very soon.  However, I want to remind my kind readers of a basic rule of my rules.  I don’t really care if a book is good.  A viable review has to set the criteria for a review and quality is not a factor in mine.  It may well reflect on what I think of a book but my criteria are based on how useful the book will be for fleshing out my game world and how much I enjoy reading it.

Wastelands

I want you to pick up the Promethean book and go read the Wasteland section if you’re not already familiar with it.  If memory serves the page is roughly 170, perhaps 172.  Got it or remember it?  Good.  Now, understand that any content involving Prometheans developed for Khallam will ignore these rules.

Now, ignoring book rules is actually unusual for me.  Its not unusual for me to add content but for some odd reason I like using books published as is.  I think its because I like for the books to be neutral ground.  I like for the books to be a point of common understanding and with the groups I play with we’re often so tight on time we don’t have the luxury of sharing debates over how we want to rewrite the rules.  So, my way of fixing things is usually to add options for characters (I’m almost universally the Storyteller).  So, I spent a great deal of time figuring out feng shui rules for mitigating this effect, then cobbling together a rewrite before I gave up.  One hour for setting down a track-able marker?  Instigating the first stage of wasteland in one day?  Finally, I realized that it was better to just chuck the whole thing.

It isn’t that I’m unsympathetic to the idea.  I love Promethean and think its a marvelous book.  I think the theme they are developing with the wasteland rules is a good one and appropriate.  However, I feel that the results of it are too constraining, require too much book keeping and the core theme is already developed well with disquiet.  True, the specific theme is a little different (rejection by nature rather than man) but at its core the theme that the world rejects the unnatural is already accomplished.  And perhaps on some level I disagree with it.  Aren’t the Prometheans alive?  Don’t they have that divine spark?  Isn’t this telling them that despite saying “I am” that they aren’t or at least shouldn’t be in this world?  I agree with the nomadic idea of the Prometheans but I can still see them as hermits and living in tune with nature.  I can see some spreading of disquiet in the natural world but not in the extremes listed and not in such as tight time frame.  And even that they should have ways to tone down to a bare minimum if a Promethean learned the alchemical secrets of shielding his Azoth.  Perhaps the disquiet powers should also limit the Wasteland spreading.  Its too much.  The wasteland is not only beating a dead thematic horse but punishing the player.  Prometheans often seek humanity and this requires some interaction.  Sure, they’re underdogs.  Its the World of Darkness, not World of Sunshine after all.  But give them a fighting chance.  Eventually the tipping point turns the under dog into a victim and that’s never fun to play.  Well, usually not.  Never say never.

Imagine a Promethean character beyond a short game series into long term play.  Other characters had better be pretty mobile.  And I’m not talking about a biker gang.  One hour at a  Waffle Hut and you’re setting down a mystic marker for enemies to track you.  One day at a bike rally and you’re playing havoc with everyone’s helmet’s blue tooth phone system if you’re a Frankenstein.  This kind of mobility is insane.  And the effect?  The World of Darkness is to me the real world with a horrific nightmare side.  With the square mileage that effects the wasteland spread Al-Qaeda would love to recruit a Frankenstein.  At Azoth 3 he would effect 28 square miles and change.  Manhattan is only 23 square miles.  In other words at a low level wasteland he could screw up all of the electronics of Manhattan (i.e. Wall Street) with bleed over to spare into other parts of NYC.  Sure, you could argue that some mage cabal would stop it.  Or werewolves.  Or whatever.  But even a few days could have disastrous economic effects and that kind of logic – that there isn’t some natural counter effect, that it relies entirely on intervention doesn’t sit well with me.  Though it might be a good adventure idea.  CIA mages track down Al-Qaeda Promethean slavers.  Pure gold, baby.

So, in summary.  Wasteland : no.  Wasteland as spreading disquiet, as its spreads out in the radius of effect: sure.  In fact, I encourage that idea but its nebulous, unfocused, it provides the idea of the Promethean as damaging his psychic environment and people would resist it better (double composure?) without direct contact with the Promethean.  The spirit world will be real pretty.  *cough*  At the later levels some of the physical effects might occur which draw the interest of mages and werewolves but the direct route leads to spirits.  This keeps Prometheans mysterious and rarely encountered.  I also think that supernatural entities should get extra resistance (Blood Potency / Gnosis / whatever) while animals could learn to over come it in time if they form a bond.

I like Prometheans and I like the toolbox of the new World of Darkness.  I want them to be beleaguered, even tragic figures, but not victims.

The Dragon and the Cross

The typical Ordo Dracul institution is secular, not hostile to spiritualism or faith but so focused on their own research that moralistic concerns are seen as distracting at best and destructive at worst.  In Khallam this is not true.  While the Lancea Sanctum and Invictus often claim to be the first and second estates of the realm, the Ordo Dracul of Khallam claim a greater right to the title of being the First Estate.  Like the Lancea Sanctum in many domains, the Ordo Dracul partners with the Invictus who take the role of the second estate.  As the first estate the Ordo Dracul claims a religious function in the lives of the cities Kindred and propose a moral agenda, which is very unusual for the Order of the Dragon.  However, Khallamites claim that this is the rightful chore of the Order, created by Dracula to mirror the mortal Order of the Dragon as champions of a holy cause and in God’s name defend the faithful.  Smugly, the Order also claims that like the medieval church they don’t restrict themselves to religious scholarship.

In most realms the Sanctified see Dragons as dangerous while the Order simply finds the Lance distasteful and backwards.  In Khallam the hostility is palatable but there are only a few Sanctified.  The result is they get to feel persecuted and the only Dragons who have to pay attention are the hounds who scrutinize their actions for violations of the city’s strict interpretation of the Masquerade.  Every Sanctified who has been found guilty of violating the Masquerade has been put to death, usually by diablerie.  The handful that remain still hold mass and try to convert who they can but also walk a very straight and narrow line.  It is no secret that Istavan despises the Lancea Sanctum and while he allows them to exist, it is only so long as they play by his rules.

Khallam Dragons believe that scholarship, science and mysticism should be informed by a study of ethics, philosophy and even morality.  The Mekhet monk Istavan is largely responsible for this.
Istavan has no cathedral and while he is fond of talking he never preaches but thanks to his philosophy a new kindred religion has formed in Khallam centered around the Ordo Dracul.  There are no organized draconic churches as Istavan claims this is a folly – there is one god for both man and beast and Kindred are both.  Still, the Order seems to condone the older and more ritualistic faiths – Catholicism, Episcopalian and Greek Orthodox.  While the foundation of the Order is strictly in the Christian faith Istavan has said that all kindred of good faith must look for common threads to understand their mission just as men must understand.  He is fond of saying that “God has five billion veils, and each veil has a name.  Let us not obsess over the veil he faces us with but rip it from his visage and then learn how to rip the next from him.”  He has reached out to the other Abrahamic faiths of Judaism and Islam and left the door open to others.  It should be noted that as accommodating as he is Istavan is not a theosophist but merely believes in the olive branch, tolerance and understanding as befits a scholar.  The Lance is an exception.

So far Istavan has been unwilling to codify an actual text of faith or establish an organization to it.  This unwillingness to be a papal figure has instead made him a saint to many and given him more influence than ecclesiastical power would.  Although taken out of its original context Istavan has reluctantly allowed to have the Kindred beliefs he espouses called pleromaism, indicating the totality of what a kindred should aspire to being and the power it represents.  Istavan however insists that he is merely a christian monk and that this set of beliefs is in no way a separate religion but more of helpful guidelines for interpreting the bible for vampires.  His acceptance of the term is a concession to needing to describe a belief shared by others rather than associate it unrelentingly as “what Istavan believes.”

Pleromaism shares the Sanctified belief that kindred are cursed by God.  However, the implications of that curse, the interpretation, is as different as one could imagine from the conclusions of the Lancea Sanctum.  This does not mean that the Order is filled with religious zealots.  Indeed, their focus on scholarship means that they are more successful with making true believers of neonates than elders but throughout the Order it has put faith and philosophy into consideration in the Great Work.  Some say that Istavan or Byron have received prophecy or have been visited by angels but this is rumor.  What is known is the tenets of how the Order sees the Kindred condition in the light of faith and how it has shaped Khallam.

Both Pleromasits and the Lance believe that God has cursed the Kindred, that they have been chosen, that they must fully master their power and that they must explore their nature as Kindred.  With all of these similarities it would seem that a strong common ground between the faiths but the differences are profound.  Istavan does not believe that Kindred are damned.  They have free will and can damn themselves but he believes that the curse is much like the trials of Job and those who can endure will be stronger for it and receive God’s vision.  Essentially, he has proposed that this is the true Golconda, a time when a Kindred’s nature is twisted, perhaps by a visitation from a divine being, an angel, and just as they were make more than man by becoming Kindred they will become more than Kindred.  But beware, there are false Golcondas along the way.  Some of these should be explored but only so far as they inform the greater progress of the Great Work.

And so comes into the faith the foundation of the Order’s reason to exist – the Great Work.  Istavan believes that Dracula created the Order to correct a failure, the failure of Kindred to expunge their own weaknesses.  This is widely accepted as it is the foundation of the coils.  However, Istavan claims that you must look to Dracula’s choice to name this the Order of the Dragon, a vampiric mirroring of the human order.  The Order must champion God’s cause and defend the faithful, vampiric, human or otherwise for all is God’s creation though some may walk away from Him.  As a result the Kindred of Khallam show a much greater concern with feeling a sense of community with humans, with stressing the importance of being human, than the Lance or Order does in other places.  Indeed, Istavan claims that to deny one’s humanity is a cardinal sin, they were once humans and humans were made above beasts and to reject humanity is to reject God’s gift.  The Lance’s obsession with being a predator is to Istavan the same failure of the Belialites dressed in ritual sacraments to make themselves feel better.  Indeed, were it not for this affront to God, mockery of him, Istavan could probably find common ground.  In fact he has been known to say that at least the Belialites are honest in their depredations.

In the great chain of existence there exists beasts (instinctive knowledge), man (rational knowledge) and angels (intuitive knowledge) and finally outside existence and unobtainable God who has omniscience.  Istavan claims that the Kindred condition allows for the marriage of man and beast with the barest glimmerings of even greater awareness.  As a Kindred one should exalt the Man, be rational and learn while at the same time explore the beast but never let it rule for to do so is to abandon free will and leave open dangerous doors to one’s soul.  Then, explore the powers of the Kindred to see the edges of intuitive knowledge.  The result will one day being risen to join the angelic orders as warriors of God.  Although, this is largely metaphoric the militaristic edge to the philosophy has created a new faction in Khallam in well, the Dragons of the Last Dawn.  The Coils are the means to this, the means to expunge weakness and expand one’s nature.  Some say they will literally become creatures of spirit, while others say that they are due to be an entirely different category of angelic creature that is both flesh and spirit and earth bound.  Some say that ancient Kindred now sometimes already reach the outer rings of this power but that none have reached the inner circle, the vampiric equivalent of the arch angels who could walk in the heart of the sun itself.

But like all Dragons, they debate these points, these interpretations a great deal.  And not all are true believes just as not all Dragons are true scholars.  But still the culture influences even where they don’t believe and most accept that they must be more than human rather than simply inhuman.