Wiki Showcase: the Path of the Righteous Crusader

The Righteous Crusader was the first of the three paths I created for True Communion.  It draws inspiration from the Archetype of the Noble Knight from "the Magic of Stories" from Pyramid #3/13, and the general archetype of the Jedi Knight (perhaps exemplified by Luke Skywalker, arguably best in the Empire Strikes Back).  You can see the revised version here.

Wiki Showcase: the Path of the Exiled Master

The Path of the Exiled Master was the third of the three original paths created for True Communion.  I drew heavy inspiration from the Gentle Fool from "the Magic of Stories" from Pyramid #3/13, but also from the image of the desert ascetic-prophet and the martial arts master atop the mountain. In Star Wars, this role is first occupied by Obiwan Kenobi, then by Yoda. You can see the revised version of the path here.

Wiki Showcase: the Path of the Bound Princess

The second of the original three paths I created for True Communion, the Bound Princess drew inspiration primarily from the Captive Maiden of "the Magic of Stories" from Pyramid #3/13, and, of course, Princess Leia as the Captive Maiden of the original Star Wars.   You can see the revised and updated path here.

Wiki Showcase: Paths Revisited

Part of returning to Communion means looking at the Paths of Communion once again.  I wrote paths originally as a sort of "Prestige Class" for Communion users.  Instead of just being "a mystic" you could decide in what way you were a mystic.  I borrowed heavily from the idea of Avatars from Unknown Armies and "the Magic of Stories" by Kelly Pedersen in Pyramid #3/13: the idea is that you need to attune yourself to this cosmic trope and, in so doing, gain additional power.  This way, you can more clearly define your relationship with Communion: all Communion users, say, might be able to heal, see visions or fight well, but you pick one of these things as your specialty.

Since then, paths have evolved a bit to become the center of cults and perceptions of divinity.  The Divine Masks worships gods as "aspects" of some primal image represented by paths.  Instead of worshiping "Dark Communion" as an entity, they instead give a name to and worship the image of "the Beautiful Fool" or "the Rebellious Beast," because these are more concrete things, and their high priests and priestesses follow these paths, becoming incarnations of that divine image.  The same sort of approach should work for a variety of cults, such as the Asrathi death-cult, or the ancestor worship of Maradonians.  This approach required revisiting how paths interacted with miracles to more clearly define what fell under the purview of a path and what didn't.

Originally I designed three paths, but part of this revision has increased the number of paths per form of Communion to 4, to encourage more variety and to discourage this idea that "these are all the paths that exist," because that's just not true.  As time goes on, I'll add additional paths, or remixed paths, based on different traditions or philosophies.

Wiki Showcase: True Communion

When I created Communion, I divided it into three "types."  True Communion (originally just called "Communion," but one of my readers took to calling it "True Communion" in his game, and I've borrowed the name) represents the Communion of Super-Ego, the drive and impulse towards community, self-denial and judgment; it's that voice in your head that tells you "No" when you want something that you know you shouldn't have.

True Communion works the most like vanilla Divine Favor, though obviously it has shifted to a more psychic flavor to fit the psychic origins of powers in Psi-Wars.  Its self-denial means it requires a Pact limitation that pushes one towards rather traditional conceptions of holiness.  It also helps one connect to others, such as sharing the same language, or psychically contacting someone no matter how far away they are. It also denies others the use of psychic powers or even communion miracles (True Communion "says no.") to those it deems unworthy. It has a conception of worthiness, and helps the user judge that in others, to differentiate the outsider from the insider.

All forms of Communion grant a basic bonus to anyone who has unlocked them, and True Communion grants Meditative Psionics. That is, you can meditate for 8 hours to earn one energy reserve point for psychic powers.  There's no upper limit to how much you can have.  This might not seem like much, but there's no upper limit to how much you can have.  There's some True Communion saint on a swampy planet somewhere with several thousand psychic ER points built up ready to lay the smack down on some mouthy punk who complains that ships are too heavy to lift with your mind.  I did put a limit on how much you can spend, though.  You can waive that if you want a truly epic, one-time feat, of course.

The main updates to True Communion are Auras, Ghost-fighting powers, and some versions of Blessed that boost your IQ.

You can check out the updated form of True Communion here.

Wiki Showcase: Communion

Center by the Babman

I created Communion all the way back in Iteration 4 as my replacement for "the Force."  If Psi-Wars is, in any way, going to invoke Star Wars, it must have mystical space magic.  Not much about Communion has changed since then, but I've added a few more concepts and clarified a few things, especially about Broken Communion (which may well need yet more revision, but we'll see).  You can find it at its new, permanent home here: Communion.

My patrons votes on this as the Psi-Wars topic for October, but the Space Knight ended up taking all our time.  But here it is at last, just a month late.

Blog Roadmap: November 2019

Happy Halloween!

We had a very good month here on Mailanka's musing.  I've managed to beat all previous months for posts except for a very weird June (which I don't count) and the unbeatable cliff of May 2017.  So it's been a good month for views.

What did you read? Mostly the following:

1. Doubtlessly spurred on by the provocative title, the Psi-Wars Fallacy was the most read blogpost.
2. I should have done a second one, but alas, time.  Still, the Martial Arts Retrospective came in second. Don't neglect the other four martial arts, though!
3. A surprising number 3, given that I just posted it, was Robots Revisited.  You guys are going to like November, I can tell you.
4. Surprising only in that it didn't come in higher was the template a lot of you had been waiting for for a long time (and several of you seem to already have characters for): the Space Knight Template.
5. And the winner of "Which martial art do you guys want to read up on the most" is clearly Knightly Force Swordsmanship, though, man, all the styles were popular (the next three were the Simple, Swift and Destructive forms)

We added no new Patrons and we lost no Patrons, thus a steady month. EDIT: That's not true, we had one new patron; he just came on really early.  Welcome, Kevin!

Looking Forward

Normally around now I would announce the results of the poll, but I've put that on pause for a few reasons.  First, I promised a Communion revision, and I have it.  It's sitting right here in a great stack of glorious, digital paper, but I need to get it out.  Expect that over the next couple of weeks.

Second, I really need to finish the military technological framework of Psi-Wars, and that includes the oft-forgotten, but extremely important, robots.  They sit in your fighters, they polish your armor, they tend to your wounds.  And people want to play as them, so I need to get them done.

And lastly, I've been putting off a playtest of all these rules for awhile, mostly out of fear that I'll be unable to make the time commitment necessary, but I think I can make it happen.  Disciple Mavrick, and creator of the Orochi Belt, have been quietly working behind the scenes to lay some ground work for additional setting material for the Orochi Belt, and then I'll try to get some story material done.  In December, I've got 4 weeks of vaction (yes, four, not a typo), so I should be able to get some stuff, done, but I need to really focus on this. More details will be forthcoming.

Thank you, as always, for reading the blog, leaving your comments here or on the discord server, and for being a patron!  Hopefully I can get some nice things out for you this month.