Topic: Are the Dark Gods and Demons of Essaence evil?

[rraarrgghh]

Hi to all,

I've got a question that's been bothering me for quite a time now. My SW basic books are pretty old (2nd Ed. Master Atlas and Emer Box), so I don't know if this question has been dealt with in the new books.
The Question concerns the Status of the Dark Gods of Charon and the Demons of Essaence in relation to the rules concerning evil spell lists and the essaence soul of spell casters. In the Atlas Addendum (I think?) it is mentioned that Demons of Essaence and the Dark Gods do not originate from the Unlife, but from the chaotic Planes of Essaence. However, in the Master Atlas there is this rule about spellcasters loosing part of their essaence soul if they learn and cast evil spell list. The reason given there is that the spellcasters now get the power of these spells from the unlife (and, as you all know, slowly become its slaves).

Now my question is this:

Does this rule concern the followers of the dark gods and summoners of demons of essaence, too ?
Or are they exempt from the rule, since their spells are based on essaence and not the unlife ?

[yammahoper]

In my game, they are basically immune to the unlife influence, due to their high level and rr mods.  Looking at the rules for corruption, dark gods and their ilk would have to fumble horribly to ever lose even a few points of soul.  So, they weild the power with real arrogance, and are not slaves or allys to unlife, unless they choose to be.  In my game, good and even evil are opposed to the goals of the unlife.

lynn

[vroomfogle]

Hmmm, I think the poster's question concerns the followers of the Dark Gods.  It's a good question.    Evil casters in Shadow World are generally portrayed to be followers of the Unlife....but if a caster follows the Dark Gods who are not Unlife, then they shouldn't be either.     As far as I know Shadow World has never made that differentiation.

[Terry K. Amthor]

Now my question is this:

Does this rule concern the followers of the dark gods and summoners of demons of essaence, too ?
Or are they exempt from the rule, since their spells are based on essaence and not the unlife ?

An interesting question indeed. If you are summoning demons using regular non-evil spells (according to regular Rolemaster) you would be immune from the whole 'slide into evil' thing that I describe. That said, if I were running a game, I might forbid that list, or make it somewhat more risky (attracting demonic attention, etc.) or forbid that list entirely. IMHO good people do not summon demons to do their bidding. But that's just me. I reverse the Bard and Monk realms!

However, if you are following the Dark Gods, then, um, you're evil, and in some way however indirectly, you are doing the Unlife's bidding. That rule about learning evil lists in the Atlas is really more for nonevil PC's who want to learn an evil list... and live life dangerously. If you were actually playing an evil character I think you'd have more free will... within limits.

Just my offhand thoughts

Terry 

[yammahoper]

Well, for me, the followers of the dark gods who weild the power of the unlife will in time be consumed and become followers of the unlife, not the dark god, though few may know or sense this for a long while.  In my game mechanics, the dark gods weild dark essence, which is seen as evil, but is not evil, just very corrupting (i.e. drives you mad, makes you lust for power, etc).  Voidal powers are anti essence, anti life, which destroys and unmakes the fabric of our universe, turning it back into the voidal energies from whence it came (or God wove it, etc.  The unlife desires to destroy the cancer that devours voidal energy and weaves it into esseance...I have developed a rather detailed doctrine for my SW game, lol...).

Unlife and dark essence detect as evil, which confuses people, but serves the unlife well enough.  Only true masters of esseance know the difference.

lynn

[Terry K. Amthor]

lynn, I love it! Very nice interpretation.

Terry

[Nejira]

So the dark essence is voidal powers, aka anti-essence? Which causes taint?

Is Unlife dark essence?

And Ess?nce is the natural/good power?

btw, whats the fasination with ?s? Its a danish letter so just curious

[Cormac Doyle]

the "asch" (?) was part of the old-english language and as such automatically invokes the concept of "old" to english speakers ...

(Old English and Old Norse were very close) ... Danish never "lost" the asch, and as such it probably just looks funny to you since when you learn English, you don't encounter it ...

Cormac

[yammahoper]

Dark essence is not voidal.  Think of it as esseance with a reverse polarity.  It is dangerous and best left alone.  It is NOT anti life, but it is very unhealthy stuff.

Voidal energys are unlife energy.  They consume esseance, destroying it.  In my game, destroyed esseance becomes voidal energy.  To the unlife, esseance is a wound within the void.  Before esseance and the disaster that allowed them to become aware of it, what became the force we think of as the unlife was just voidal goop/energy.  The forms the unlife take are reflections of the esseance, taken to intereact and destroy/devour.  These forms are alien to them and hated, and monstrous to us because the unlife exist "outside" the will that shapes esseance.

Also in my game, souls are minature esseance machines that generate far more essence than ever goes into them.  A soul can be hurt, but if not destroyed, will always regenerate back to "full" and generate excess essence, which it bleeds off via its aura.  This energy enriches the universe, giving it constant fuel to grow.  The unlife hates souls more than anything and always seeks to destroy them.

Obviously, I have had far to much free time on my hands

lynn

[Nejira]

What type of energy/ess?nce would a necromancer use to cast his spells? Assuming the necromancer here are a servant/minion of Unlife.

[mocking bird]

Well, for me, the followers of the dark gods who weild the power of the unlife will in time be consumed and become followers of the unlife, not the dark god, though few may know or sense this for a long while.  In my game mechanics, the dark gods weild dark essence, which is seen as evil, but is not evil, just very corrupting (i.e. drives you mad, makes you lust for power, etc).  Voidal powers are anti essence, anti life, which destroys and unmakes the fabric of our universe, turning it back into the voidal energies from whence it came (or God wove it, etc.  The unlife desires to destroy the cancer that devours voidal energy and weaves it into esseance...I have developed a rather detailed doctrine for my SW game, lol...).

Unlife and dark essence detect as evil, which confuses people, but serves the unlife well enough.  Only true masters of esseance know the difference.

lynn

Very nice indeed.  To me the Unlife would be the antithesis to the Dark Gods.  The Unlife are more nihilists (Nihilists! (edit  ). I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.) and want to devour everything while the Dark Gods want to control everything.  They are both similar in method but their finial goals are quite different.

[dutch206]

I believe the philosophical basis for the Unlife's belief structures was spelled out in one of the Companions, but I'm not going to read all seven of them to find out which one it was. 

Your initial question was "are the dark gods and demons of the essaence evil?"

My answer to that question is:

By 'evil' do you mean:  greedy, selfish, ruthless, immoral, depraved, and ruthless?  In that case, yes they are evil.  However, please note that this does not necessarily mean that they all play on the same team.  I can't imagine Moralis and Inis cooperating with each other, let alone a demon from the Void.

[egdcltd]

I believe the philosophical basis for the Unlife's belief structures was spelled out in one of the Companions, but I'm not going to read all seven of them to find out which one it was. 

I think it's discussed in Powers of Light & Darkness, but I'm not near my copy at the moment.

[mocking bird]

I believe the philosophical basis for the Unlife's belief structures was spelled out in one of the Companions, but I'm not going to read all seven of them to find out which one it was.

This came up recently in our game.  It was a conversation between Elor Once Dark and Lorgalis.  Essentially the elves are the chosen ones for the Unlife as they never die.  By extension this also applies to the Undead.  Carrying this on to their ultimate goal, he decided the Unlife would be completely happy making the world a flat grey plain.  Ultimate order through ultimate desctruction.  The Dark Gods want chaos and strife to rule which cannot happen if everyting is stagnant.

This topic is actually quite relevant to my current character who is a follower of a Dark God yet working against the Unlife.  As I do not use any evil lists, I do not show up as evil.  However as I am Blessed by the War God fueled with a Demonic Taint, I will show up as Unholy.  There is a fine disctinction between the two that the GM and I spent quite some time going over after our last session.

[munchy]

Ah, RMCI, how I loved that conversation. Excellent.

I am, however, not sure whether the Dark Gods want chaos and strife, this is probably the method at the moment, they probably want to rule according to their own idea of order.

[yammahoper]

The explination of the Unlife as super racist pro immortal oraganization is just another lie woven by the unlife, or a poor interpretation.  The unlife is much more instinctive, elemental even.  It has a purpose, and It drives to achieve that purpose in all It does, unmake it all, invade the ulcer of esseance with the void, and restore the balance of nothingness, thus even destroying even the painful realization of Themselves and Their previously unknown existence, which They became of aware of via the massive cataclysm that ripped a hole in reality and exposed it to the void.

lynn

[Cormac Doyle]

In my last campaign, the players were (very) surprised to see the clerics of several of the gods of Charon actively assisting the clerics of the gods of Orhan in resisting a powerful Unlife scourge.

unlife is the antithesis of life (essaence) - the gods of Charon are a hodge-podge mix of essaence-based demons and powerful essaence-based gods that simply happened to disagree with the lords of Orhan, and were tossed in gaol for their pleasures.

The fact that they are a bunch of psychotic misfits doesn't mean that they are any less threatened by the unlife ...

[mocking bird]

The explination of the Unlife as super racist pro immortal oraganization is just another lie woven by the unlife, or a poor interpretation. 

But it is a pretty good reason for distrusting elves and wanting them wiped out. 

The unlife is much more instinctive, elemental even.  It has a purpose, and It drives to achieve that purpose in all It does, unmake it all, invade the ulcer of esseance with the void, and restore the balance of nothingness, thus even destroying even the painful realization of Themselves and Their previously unknown existence, which They became of aware of via the massive cataclysm that ripped a hole in reality and exposed it to the void.

This reminds me a lot of the paramandyr - a true neutral variant of the paladin who sees absolute neutrality as nothingness.  Essentially '0' is the expression of ultimate balance.

[yammahoper]

Well, the unlife is part of the genius of SW.  It is such a great enemy, it can cause the darkest assassin to turn to aid from the highest paladin, with both of them agreeing they need to work together.

lynn

[rraarrgghh]

Whew,

seems my post has inspired quite a discussion. Actually, the cause of my original post wasn't so much the question if the dark gods are evil (in a moral sense) but if they are in the peculiar magical sense of the Master Atlas (the Subject Title wasn't very well-formulated). It was clear to me that they were of the Essaence, but it was unclear whether they used the Unlife as a power source or if they were Essaence Users - and to what effect for their followers. The same holds for Essaence-Users summoning Demons of Essaence - are their spells fed by the Unlife or by something else. The main practical reason for the post was if the Gods, and their followers more so, are immune from the influence of the Unlife and can maintain autonomy.

Personally, I like Lynn's approach with two different evil powers ("Unlife" and "Dark Essaence") very much, since it gives some of the evil guys more independence, can explain their constant discord and gives opportunity for some strange coalitions: "In face of the Unlife, these followers of Andaras don't seem so bad at all, do they?" 

It creates some new questions, however. First would be, do both powers really detect as evil? With a new evil power, it would be equally plausible that the Unlife couldn't be detected at all by an Essaence spell.

Second question is how the GM can draw a clear (for the PCs) demarcation line between Unlife and Dark Essaence concerning spells, spell lists and character classes? One solution would be to rule that certain spells and spell lists can only be learned by followers of the Unlife or the Dark Essaence. Good examples for unlife-only-spells are in my opinion "Dark Absolution" and "Call of the Void". I think no essaence-user, how "dark" he might be, would ever use such a spell. Some Spell Lists, especially the demon summoning and mastery lists could be simply doubled up - if you learn one, you can only summon/master demons of essaence or demons of the void.
But a lot of the evil spells aren't that clear. Like Nejira wrote, the necromancer could probably get power from both sources.

Third question is whether one wants to introduce a corrupting effect of the Dark Essaence similar to that of the Unlife, with the notable difference that the character is transforming more and more into an immoral sadist rather than a mad destroyer?

Think about it.