Mages and confessions

[Solipsis]

That thread did not begun as part of a mage VS order discussion, but as part of a clergy VS inquisition discussion. The case of confession only came up as an example of things where the inquisition forces an interpretation of the theme which may be an impediment to the flourishing of the clergy. That is, at least, what I am discussing about here.

Which is great for the other thread, but this thread is an offshoot of that specifically revolving around Mages confession to Priests, set up by another player (or staff forum alt? Not meaning to presume here). Perceived issues with Inquisitors bullying out Priest views is still going on in the other thread, unless it's been locked.

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

That thread did not begun as part of a mage VS order discussion, but as part of a clergy VS inquisition discussion. The case of confession only came up as an example of things where the inquisition forces an interpretation of the theme which may be an impediment to the flourishing of the clergy. That is, at least, what I am discussing about here.

Which is great for the other thread, but this thread is an offshoot of that specifically revolving around Mages confession to Priests, set up by another player (or staff forum alt? Not meaning to presume here). Perceived issues with Inquisitors bullying out Priest views is still going on in the other thread, unless it's been locked.

Taunya's a player here! — the topic about Priests being thematically required (but not OOCly required) to keep the confession of a mage private even from the Inquisition is a recent-ish talking point where Staff clarified in that case. It's a complicated topic. As a bit of further information to those who don't know the whole story, I'm the most recent Grand Inquisitor (Farra), and I argued very strongly against thematically requiring a priest to keep a mage confessing their maginess secret. However, as Staff remained firm on their decision, I worked to ensure there was IC Literature explaining this piece of theme and in ensuring helpfiles were both updated and worded right to support the Staff decision.

The comment quoted at the beginning of this thread was in response to the idea that a Priest can (within theme) offer "temporary penance" to encourage a reticent mage to go to the Inquisition. Priests are ICly instructed to direct ANY AND ALL people, even within confession, to take magical matters to Inquisitors because that's what Inquisitors are for. They aren't just "priests with more authority", they are Priests who receive special, secret training to help them deal with situations.

Further, the idea that the "Inquisition" is forcing their views on the "Church" is a bit absurd, because the Inquisition and the Church are one and the same. In fact, the role of the Grand Inquisitor predates the role of the Cardinal. The views of the Inquisition (and the Grand Inquisitior) are massively important as the Inquisition is a fundamental pinnacle of the Davite religion, which teaches that ALL forms of magic are "anathema to the Lord of Springs" that REQUIRES a special "Cleansing by Fire" (the pyre) to fix. The existance of a mage is one of the most significant ways that evil is allowed entry to the world from the Abyss. There is no concept of telling mages to "come forward when you are ready" or "well so long as you're not hurting people". The Inquisition does not "impose views" on Priests because Inquisitors themselves are Priests, just ones with a more specialized focus.

There is a TON of working room for how priests interpret this, of course, and I think many who want to play Priests would somewhat "bend theme" by trying to act tolerant of the mage, by soothing them, by even lying to them in order to get them in the hands of an Inquisitor. Which is fine! It's great! But to suggest that a character who is playing "a good Davite" wouldn't turn themselves in for magery is an incomplete statement; the character would be playing "someone who THINKS they are a good Davite, but really isn't", which is obviously a much different implication.

[Helena]

Which is great for the other thread, but this thread is an offshoot of that specifically revolving around Mages confession to Priests

Allright. So, here is my opinion on that: If I were a mage, I'd love to confess. If I had the chance to play a priest, I would love to hear a mage confessing, and having to deal with the moral conflicts it creates. Yet, for OOC reasons (because I'd certainly love that RP moment), I'd tend to make it be possible (by giving enough confidence to the mage that I won't betray him), and make it last (by actually not declaring the mage to the inquisition). I don't think such a situation would be bad for the game: inquisition would have no less opportunities to hunt the mage than if he was not confessing.

From an IC point of view, I think the lore opens that possibility. That revolves around the idea of the three afterlife possibilities: becoming a demon, being lost in endless darkness, or joining the lord in the Fountis. If the pyre certainly prevents a mage to become a demon, what makes the difference between endless darkness and the fountis is much more subtle. We can consider that the good will to receive penance makes the difference, and that working on that good will is the long time work of the clergy through confessions.

That would mean that the inquisition's goal is to win the war against magery, by avoiding demons at all cost, even at the cost of sending a soul to the endless darkness. While the goal of the clergy is to send souls to the fountis at all cost, even at the cost of suffering all the evil a mage can do while confessing.

[Rothgar]

From an IC point of view, I think the lore opens that possibility. That revolves around the idea of the three afterlife possibilities: becoming a demon, being lost in endless darkness, or joining the lord in the Fountis. If the pyre certainly prevents a mage to become a demon, what makes the difference between endless darkness and the fountis is much more subtle. We can consider that the good will to receive penance makes the difference, and that working on that good will is the long time work of the clergy through confessions.

That would mean that the inquisition's goal is to win the war against magery, by avoiding demons at all cost, even at the cost of sending a soul to the endless darkness. While the goal of the clergy is to send souls to the fountis at all cost, even at the cost of suffering all the evil a mage can do while confessing.

I'm not entirely certain that your first paragraph is entirely true. I believe that helpfiles and lore states that, yes, Pyring does indeed prevent a Mage from becoming a coded demon. And I believe that the helpfiles and lore state that, yes, there is both the Abyss and Paradise (Fountis?). With that said, I was always relatively certain via helpfiles and lore that the Pyring itself guaranteed that you'd go to Paradise. I believe this because it makes more sense to me - if I can absolutely without a doubt in my mind promise someone that I can send them to Paradise, they're far more inclined to cooperate with me. As Rothgar was fond of saying, "A moment of pain for an eternity of Paradise." If anyone can point me to lore and/or helpfiles that state otherwise, I would be appreciative, either by PM or Discord, etc.

As for the rest of your post, I believe that you hold a certain disconnect between what you'd like to see the Order do, and what the Order actually does. That's not your fault, either, as I believe a lot of people have the same misunderstanding.
As-per 'Help History Inquisition :

It is the responsibility of the Order (sic) to ensure that no one uses magic while in the lands of Dav, and as such they are the party which responds to any such accusation.

As we've literally no "how-to" guide that currently exists in-game, besides a scant handful of in-character written texts that pertain to the Inquisition and it's wonts, I think this helpfile would be some of the only things that we've got going for us. I think that you have this idea in your head that the Order is incredibly oppressive in it's works, and that the players who are playing GI and EM and the rest are incredibly opposed to change in lore and rules, and that's simply not true. I believe what you're experiencing is that they're resistant to your change in lore and rules, and that you have a deep-set wont to impart your interpretation of how the Order should work onto others without being at the tip-top of the Order, and changing it from the top down. Or, realistically, even being kindly about it to the very person that can do that. I've been on the receiving end of this, and for anyone other than Rothgar it'd be an incredibly, incredibly intimidating experience, at best, some rando Acolyte coming up to you and telling you that everything in their understanding of Lore is wrong and they need to covert and repent by any means possible. You absolutely have to ease people into these things.

[Rothgar]

With that, I'll explain how I view the Holy Inquisition, and why I believe it should be even more oppressive, not less. The Holy Inquisition does not have the means or the methods in-lore. They haven't been living in some peaceful Urth since the Consolidation where they're let to their devices to study and document. The Urth - Lithmore, Farin, the rest - is an anarchic nightmare of a wasteland the moment you leave the big cities into the miles and miles of deadland and bandits and Mages and Daravi and Archmages armed with magicks from before the goddamn Consolidation, and heresy lurking in literally every corner. And if those don't get you, maybe the errant magick just LYING AROUND will get you, as evidenced by the Red Comet plotline that just awokened latents and ripped open an Arien portal from this reality to the next, letting demons pour the shit through. And EVERYTHING in the Inquisitive Archives is completely gone, or even outright corrupted. Spread out around the Urth so utterly far away from one another that it'd be impossible to see even a tenth of the total books in the impossibly short lifetime of an Inquisitor, assuming that they were even safe to acquire and read. And they're not.

The books have been corrupted into Magicks and Madness by the Consolidation, and the unleashing of the most potent war to ever grace mankind as they understood it, before and since. And then, the shit in question was DOUBLY corrupted because Mages wrested control of Daravi and continued to practice Magick while the Seven just dipped off this realm of existence and left them to their devices because they were buttmad that one of them gave Dav some kids before getting cheated on and killing them. Dav, nearly half of FARIN was rendered completely uninhabitable, and there's evidence that other Baronies suffered the same fates - even Lithmore with our Farin area plot - and attempted to recover over the years with whatever they had left. If you come back from these areas with any sort of intelligence - and you'll almost certainly fucking die horribly, but given that you don't - it's almost certainly gibberish written in a literal dead language, and if it isn't, it's corrupted so utterly that instead of giving you a way to bless a sword, it's instead a fucking spell that will put all your blood in your brain and explode your head in a way that it acts like a goddamn grenade to shrapnel all your friends, as well.

And this is why the Inquisition doesn't like ANYONE mucking around with archival books and spells and shit, because it's so utterly rare to find ANYTHING that works properly, anything that just WORKS, and doesn't immediately attempt to rip your face off and your soul out just because you activated it, which inevitably leads to some sort of goddamn demon incursion that will kill thousands. That, and the Inquisition literally doesn't have the time or the knowledge to muck around with these magicked items properly, intelligently, through experimentation, because whatever item you've gotten has already been fucked by the Consolidation, and then double-fucked by Mages who were attempting to bring about the end of the Urth with magicks that they LITERALLY do not understand and cannot have any comprehension of because it will rip your fucking mind asunder and open it up to demonic entities that will stop at NOTHING to murder you, your friends, your family, and everyone around you in the most horrific and painful ways imaginable.

The Inquisition isn't grim and edgy by choice and could be fine if someone who was actually fucking normal came along to fix everything and make the Holy Order an analog for the current-day Catholic Church, with it's deep-set established lore and totally forgiving ideals on things like witchcraft and homosexuality. A sensible person in the Inquisition wouldn't last more than fifty seconds before getting absolutely ripped to shreds by a Mage who was trying to prove themselves to his buddies, and then his body would be sacrificed to a God he's never heard of, in a ritual he'll never hear of, for a power that he has literally no comprehension of. No, the Inquisition is fucking grim because every single shitty decision, every single sacrifice that they've got to make, every single man and woman living an absolutely unimaginable shitty life in the worst conditions you could imagine, is the absolute best that can be done. You guys have in your heads this idea that the Inqusition is some happy-go-lucky organization where we're all sitting around with our thumbs up our butts, when I say to you it's a goddamn case study on what happens to people when the worst of humanity is brought before them for judgement. Where, daily, you have to ask yourself what part of your humanity you have to sacrifice just to survive the day. And then, on the next day, you ask yourself whether or not it would've been better to Arien die.

[Voxumo]

Okay, legit question regarding most of that... Where the flying fish is the information that you are basing this view/interpretation of the inquisition on from? I played GI and I've played a few inquisitors, and I don't recall any help files that touch on a vast portion of this view, unless it was a recent addition? Like not talking about the Farin badlands or Daravi bit, but the supposed artifacts, books and whatnot that were corrupted by the consolidation even though that makes no sense given the consolidation wasn't some magical event, but was Dav's doing that was merely consolidating the various duchies into one kingdom, and actively spreading that Magery is bad, with everyone just kind of nodding their heads in agreement. "Yeah yeah, seems right."

Also I'd argue the Inquisition is doing far better than you give them credit for, as since Dav's consolidation, they've managed to actively decrease the lethality of mages, by restricting the knowledge they have access to, thus limiting them to "Lesser" circles of magic than what was capable pre-consolidation.

[Geras]

Here's an idea... can we just leave this policy to the discretion of the GI of the day?

[Rothgar]

Okay, legit question regarding most of that... Where the flying fish is the information that you are basing this view/interpretation of the inquisition on from? (...) The supposed artifacts, books and whatnot that were corrupted by the consolidation even though that makes no sense given the consolidation wasn't some magical event, but was Dav's doing that was merely consolidating the various duchies into one kingdom, and actively spreading that Magery is bad, with everyone just kind of nodding their heads in agreement. "Yeah yeah, seems right."

Have you never been to the Rectory, or the Vaults? There are books in there that will literally force in-game skills into your brain. Items that will literally grant you the ability to do X or Y without ever having learned it before. Tinctures that will levitate you, or make you invisible. Books in the Rectory that talk about the worship of all the Lords before the Consolidation, and the actions of the Seven, after that era. You can also read some in-game lore about how the Seven reacted to the Consolidation, and why it affected Mages and the Manus, and the history of the difference between the two. These are both character-made items, as well as imm-granted items from both present and past IC events.

Also I'd argue the Inquisition is doing far better than you give them credit for, as since Dav's consolidation, they've managed to actively decrease the lethality of mages, by restricting the knowledge they have access to, thus limiting them to "Lesser" circles of magic than what was capable pre-consolidation.

It's a pretty obvious over-exaggeration for the sake of a more exciting narrative, but I don't think it's too terribly far off the mark. Considering that, before certain things were looked at, nearly every GL in-game was a Mage, anywhere from 40-60% of people in-game were Mages, the Mages outnumbered the pious and attempted a literal revolution not even 5 years ago, and that the might of five separate armies was wholly incapable of defeating a single military in a strategically disadvantageous position, I'd say that the Holy Inquisition and the Order is either pretty laughably incompetent, or that the Holy Order just doesn't succeed in other Baronies like it did in Lithmore. I'd also argue that while, code-wise, the last "circle" of magery is beyond existing anymore, Mages now are notably more powerful than the Seven ever could've hoped to be back in the day, with the introduction of new spells, magecrafting, mattack, and other benefits.

Here's an idea... can we just leave this policy to the discretion of the GI of the day?

I think that, at the end of the day, that's probably the best idea, yeah. The problem, of course, tandems back to the other thread we had, wherein the decision on this particular bit of theme lies with the imms, and not the players, as the imms control the Cardinal, and therefore, the overall theme decisions of the Order.

[Voxumo]

Okay, legit question regarding most of that... Where the flying fish is the information that you are basing this view/interpretation of the inquisition on from? (...) The supposed artifacts, books and whatnot that were corrupted by the consolidation even though that makes no sense given the consolidation wasn't some magical event, but was Dav's doing that was merely consolidating the various duchies into one kingdom, and actively spreading that Magery is bad, with everyone just kind of nodding their heads in agreement. "Yeah yeah, seems right."

Have you never been to the Rectory, or the Vaults? There are books in there that will literally force in-game skills into your brain. Items that will literally grant you the ability to do X or Y without ever having learned it before. Tinctures that will levitate you, or make you invisible. Books in the Rectory that talk about the worship of all the Lords before the Consolidation, and the actions of the Seven, after that era. You can also read some in-game lore about how the Seven reacted to the Consolidation, and why it affected Mages and the Manus, and the history of the difference between the two. These are both character-made items, as well as imm-granted items from both present and past IC events.

Last time I was GI, which was my last time being an inquisitor in general, both were very barren, and I recall no such books regarding skill-gain, or it's possible I simply didn't know such books granted that. So yes, it's very possible these are recent additions, as I haven't been in either for I think two years now.

[Helena]

With that said, I was always relatively certain via helpfiles and lore that the Pyring itself guaranteed that you'd go to Paradise.

There's actually one helpfile stating that: it's "help order tutorial", a relatively recent addition. The goal of the paragraph is to tell the GI he should use his mighty hammer without thinking twice. And the idea that a pyring directly sends a soul to the fountis is expressed here, as an IC reason to not worry OOCly. I personnaly find that sentence a bit unusual compared to the other helpfiles, and my feeling is that it has been written too quickly.

Because, if a mage cursing the Erra on his pyre his sent to the fountis, we have to understand that everyone blessed on his death bed is sent to the fountis. Then, who goes to the abyss? Why working all your life to avoid sins, if you just need a drop of water on your head the day of your death to be purified? Stating that all pyred mages go to the fountis, is, imho, an invitation to sin all your life but your last hour.

And actually, the lore tells us who goes to the abyss:
- "those who have fail to confess their sin or been lax with their good works" (as for help afterlife). If we can believe the mage confessed all his sins during the revue, can we believe he made enough good works to be worthy of the fountis?
- those who failed to cleanse their sins "promptly and with a willing heart" (help sins). If we can believe the pyre is a penance able to cleanse mage's sins, can we believe that it is cleansed "promptly", can we believe that the mage goes to the pyre with a "willing heart"? What about those mages who still find the strength to curse the inquisition while burning?

I find that the "pyre leads to fountis" interpretation is less able to coordinates the various piece of the lore than the other one.

I believe what you're experiencing is that they're resistant to your change in lore and rules, and that you have a deep-set wont to impart your interpretation of how the Order should work onto others without being at the tip-top of the Order, and changing it from the top down.

It is true that after being discouraged enough, I actually played the conflict with my hierarchy to have IC reasons to leave the grid. But I mean, I really felt discouraged before those actual conflicts. But that's another discussion.