Sharing Roles

By Mark Grundy (markg@cs.anu.edu.au)

**Flaming
Feather**

Kirt writes:

Which leads me to another question -- how are Roles established, anyway? Especially the higher level ones. IF I have a Level 6 Role, my human life is as real as any in the Symphony, right? Does this mean I have a family? Friends who've known me for years, even for a Celestial freshly on Earth? To establish a High-level Role, does one have to go through childhood et cetera in a Vessel? ("Oh, isn't Joan such a sweet angel..." "My Bobby is a perfect demon...")

There are a few ways you could play it:

1 have celestials live their roles from childhood
2 have angels take over the lives of people who are on the verge of destruction anyway
3 have lesser celestials spend time fabricating credible roles for later use by greater celestials
4 utterly change the fabric of reality (the Twilight Zone approach)

Method 1 gives you a world where celestial roles are positioned strategically against future need... They have roles that last for 60-80 years before having to `reincarnate'. It's not possible to create a credible role in response to any short-term threat this way.

With Method 2, you can either take over the body near death, or else switch an identical vessel for the original. To guarantee authenticity you need access to the history and mannerisms of the original subject -- which means either intensive study or some absorption process. Are there spirits of Destiny who hang around doomed people, scribing notes against future celestial need for their roles? Or do the doomed souls cooperate and transfer memories and habits? Or are they wrested from souls without their consent? Does the plane of dream have any part in this process?

Method 3 is really a wrinkle on method 1 -- but instead of committing your best celestials to 3 years of dirty nappies and wailing, you get a reliever to do this stuff instead. You make a swap later on, as the role begins to be useful.

I included Method 4 for completeness, but I can't see a sensible way of doing it. If reality is so volatile, then it takes the edge off the moral issues, and raises the question of why symphonic disturbances are such a problem. Maybe you could use this method in a dark campaign, though.

**Flaming
Feather**

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