thread: 2008-12-31 : Dunesque Mechaton Campaign
On 2009-01-02, Joshua A.C. Newman wrote:
I was just thinking about how to represent this a few hours before you posted. This is great.
The Udu Convent of the Sisterhood of Taw is a space station in the orbit of Murx, C5 on the map. It's a planet orbiting the brown dwarf Kr??gen, emitting only the faintest glow. Murx is covered with volcanoes and great glowing fissures between the continental plates. There are few places hospitable to life, though there are small cloisters on the surface for training nuns in their arts.
The order was founded by Mother Taw, eight thousand years ago, charged with easing births and deaths as the Empire expanded its difficult frontiers. As their order grew in size, though, they found themselves with increasing political and economic responsibilities. "Easing death" became a license and encouragement to cause it in the interests of furthering their reach and populating the Galaxy.
Members of the order take a vow of humility, requiring them to keep their faces covered at all times; a vow to defend the order, requiring them to learn the fighting ways of the order; and a vow of mercy, requiring them to end quickly any life that will suffer if it exceeds its destined time.
As a result, they wear long, black robes, heavily embroidered in fine black cords with words of their creed. When they fight (always as a matter of last resort, but the Empire is in such desperate times now...), their vow of humility requires them to be absolutely silent. Because they must know the suffering of their patients, the will never cause a death at a distance unless it is absolutely necessary, favoring the Sister's Thighs, a pair of long daggers made of the femurs of fallen nuns.
I'll have pics of their spacecraft soon. They follow the same ethical code as the infantry, favoring boarding vessels to the callous causing of suffering brought about by the use of long-distance and impersonal weapons. But they'll do what they must in order to achieve the end of suffering of their wards.
Visions of Smoke tell them the wishes of Mother Taw. It informs them that suffering is increasing throughout the galaxy and the Emperor's seat is the source of the suffering. Whoever sits on it must be properly advised by a Sister. It is the only way to ease the suffering of all people.
2 Who controls the August Solar Throne?
1 Who controls the flow of Smoke?
2 Who holds absolute moral authority?
(Are we going to say what will happen if we achieve these goals? And I'd like to hear what the Smoke is to each faction.)
