From owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com Fri Dec 11 19:55:56 1998 Return-Path: Received: from lists.io.com (majordom@lists.io.com [199.170.88.15]) by pyramid.sjgames.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id TAA20828 for ; Fri, 11 Dec 1998 19:55:55 -0600 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by lists.io.com (8.9.0/8.9.0) id TAA04703 for in_nomine-digest-outgoing; Fri, 11 Dec 1998 19:27:49 -0600 Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 19:27:49 -0600 Message-Id: <199812120127.TAA04703@lists.io.com> X-Authentication-Warning: lists.io.com: majordom set sender to owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com using -f From: owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com (in_nomine-digest) To: in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com Subject: in_nomine-digest V1 #1049 Reply-To: in_nomine-l@lists.io.com Sender: owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com Errors-To: owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com Precedence: bulk in_nomine-digest Friday, December 11 1998 Volume 01 : Number 1049 In this digest: Re: IN> Two Quick Questions Re: IN> Jean's word Re: IN> Honor and Pride RE: IN> Lilim and Malakim Re: IN> Jean's word, or was it Malphas? Re: IN> Numinous Corpus RE: IN> Lilim and Malakim RE: IN> Lilim and Malakim RE: IN> Lilim and Malakim IN> Environmental Damage Re: IN> Jean's word IN> [REVIEW] Louis Ginzberg's _The Legends of the Jews_ Re: IN> Honor and Pride Re: IN> Honor and Pride Re: IN> Lilim and Malakim RE: IN> Lilim and Malakim RE: IN> Lilim and Malakim RE: IN> Lilim and Malakim RE: IN> Lilim and Malakim Re: IN> Discord & Renegades Re: IN> Environmental Damage ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 12:12:55 -0500 From: John Karakash - Lucent ASCC Subject: Re: IN> Two Quick Questions Patrick O'Duffy wrote: > > Just to prove that you can read the rulebook umpteen times and still > have things occure to you, two things I'm wondering about: > > 1) Does a Possessed body (as in Song of Possession) cause > Disturbance through its actions? That is, if Joe Celestail possess Jane > Mortal & kills another person using that body, will that act cause > Disturbance? I can see argumants for & against that idea. Yup. Because the possessor is celestial. Note, this even applies to Shedim who are 'convincing' their hosts who are still present. > 2) When you use a Relic, you automatically use all the Essence in the > Relic. Does all that Essence have to go towards 'powering' the Song > (increasing its effect), or can it be used to increase the Target Number > as well? (Eg - using a Relic/5, can I use 3 Essence to power the Song & > 2 Essence for a +2 to my chances of success.) I'm in favour of this > idea, since Songs are pretty hard to pull off, but I can see how it > could be unbalancing. Urg. This has been discussed before, and official canon made, and I thought it went into LR, but I can't find a reference. David, do you recall what we decided? - -- ___________________________________________________ / \ | John Karakash - Lucent Technologies/Bell Labs | | (919)388-2665(COOL) MIB2300 | | | | The power to tax involves the power to destroy. | | -Chief Justice Marshall | \___________________________________________________/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 18:19:29 +0100 (CET) From: Anders Gabrielsson Subject: Re: IN> Jean's word On Fri, 11 Dec 1998 MarkDEddy@aol.com wrote: > I feel like I'm the only person on the list with significant knowledge of > Science History. Nicholas Copernicus/Nikolai Cupernik was actually trying to > prove *that the Sun traveled around the Earth.* His book was a marvel of > logic, except for one thing... His illustrations, graphs, and math while > trying to remove the (I forget the term) backwards movement of the planets > around a center point, ended up requiring that the sun be in the center of the > solar system. Legend has it that his last words were "The sun revolves around > the earth. My book proves it." To be fairly blunt, Rob's description above is > exactly what happened. There's a similar story about a priest or monk (I think) who tried to prove that hyperbolic geometry was impossible, and explored quite a lot of it while trying to find a contradiction. Anders Gabrielsson anders@stp.ling.uu.se The contents of this message belong to me and nobody else. So there! May you have the knowledge of a sage, and the wisdom of a child. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 18:32:51 +0100 (CET) From: Anders Gabrielsson Subject: Re: IN> Honor and Pride On Fri, 11 Dec 1998, Earl Wajenberg wrote: > Anders Gabrielsson wrote: > > > I still think Shedites' goals are to make their hosts do > > dishonorable things. I mean, what else are they doing? Whether > > the Shedite thinks those things are dishonorable doesn't matter - > > in order to corrupt its host it must understand its morality. [very good and interesting description of honor snipped] > Turning this to IN, I don't think Shedim need concentrate on > "honor" as I, at least, here understand and describe it. In fact, > a moderately subtle Shedite might do a lot of corruption of a host > under cover of "but you're still honorable," just by concentrating > on the sins not outlawed by the particular honor code. I used honor in a much looser sense than this, and in some sense equated it with morality. I took my definition from the Malakim, which, according to the impression I had, pretty much equate honor with "ability to follow one's principles", which is close enough to morality for most cases. Re-reading it I'm not entirely sure I had the right perception - "They can see in a human the purity of his nature and the virtue of his principle - how selfish or selfless that person's nature is, and whether he tries to rise above it or allows himself to sink below it." "With a successful resonance roll, a Malakite can size someone up and make a snap judgement about his integrity." And, from the check digit table, "You know the most noble or ignoble thing that the person has done that week, relative to his own moral standards." Actually, this last part pretty much validates my perception, I think. This discussion started from the Malakim vs. Lilim thread, so that's where the honor came in. Anders Gabrielsson anders@stp.ling.uu.se The contents of this message belong to me and nobody else. So there! May you have the knowledge of a sage, and the wisdom of a child. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 18:41:07 +0100 (CET) From: Anders Gabrielsson Subject: RE: IN> Lilim and Malakim On Fri, 11 Dec 1998, Matthew Stein wrote: > Granted, I'd say that there /is/ very close to no absolute morality > (however some things seem to be universal - don't steal, don't sleep > with your mother - but those two are about the extent of it). Universal and absolute are two very different things, IMO. However, > I'd say that a Shedim who just corrupts his host, by forcing him to do > something more immoral (to the host) every day isn't living up to his > demonic potential. If you go by that paradigm (breaking morals) you > can get into a kind of rut: lie, then steal, then assault, then kill. I'm sure there are a lot of Shedim who are in this, or similar ruts. That it would mean not living up to their demonic potential doesn't keep them from doing things this way. > Rah. However, if you enter into the "other" paradigm, the one where > the host is corrupted without necessarily breaking his morals, it > makes the situation all the better for the demon. To use the earlier > example, where the host is left saying "Oh, he looked suspicious but > at least I never lied," the host will realize all the stuff he's done > /without/ breaking his morals and then realize that, hey, he had fun > doing it. (Without advocating murder or robbery, I will not that there > is a psychological rush connected to those actions.) So what's the > morally upstanding former host of a Shedim to do? Rape, steal, > pillage, murder some more - doing a more effective job corrupting > himself than the Shedim could have done for him. But is this really corruption? The host isn't doing anything that it considers bad, just things it didn't know it liked. That's not corruption, IMO, unless you posit an absolute morality. In fact, I'd be > willing to posit that maybe the Shedim's real job within Hell isn't to > corrupt people beyond redemption, but to begin the corrupting process > and then move on. This I can agree with, though I think different Shedim work in different ways. Some take the blatant course - take one inhibited nerd, make him break every one of his moral rules, and then leave him in a total mess and hope he drags himself down lower - while others are much more subtle - take one not necessarily inhibited person, and make them take small steps towards Hell. Anders Gabrielsson anders@stp.ling.uu.se The contents of this message belong to me and nobody else. So there! May you have the knowledge of a sage, and the wisdom of a child. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 09:55:03 -0800 (PST) From: Robert Knop Subject: Re: IN> Jean's word, or was it Malphas? > There's a similar story about a priest or monk (I think) who tried to > prove that hyperbolic geometry was impossible, and explored quite a lot of > it while trying to find a contradiction. The current version of the Hubble Constant controversy is similar. (The Hubble Constant is today's rate of expansion of the universe.) Edwin Hubble came up with a value of 500 km/s/Mpc (don't worry about what that really means), but he was pretty far wrong. Some twenty years ago, the conflict was between Sandage (who was getting values of 50), and de Vaucoulers (who was getting values of 100). Some ten or so years ago, a new crop of methods for measuring the Hubble constant came into use. A whole bunch of younger astronomers, sure in their heart that Sandage was right, set out to use these independent methods and prove that he was right. They came up with values like 75-80. (All of these are in the same units: km/s/Mpc.) Oops. So now, there's a second disagreement. The Sandage camp has the Hubble constant in the high 50's, the other camp has it in the high 70's. At the place where Sandage works, Wendy Freedman down the hall is in the 80's camp. Which value everybody else uses depends on where their office is along the hall.... It seems that slowly they are converging on the "average" value somewhere in the 60's, but if you ask me or another astronomer in my group, you'll get different values. So, Jean? I would say that Malphas was more involved with this one :) - -Rob ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 14:48:00 -0500 From: John Karakash - Lucent ASCC Subject: Re: IN> Numinous Corpus > Ramesh Satkurunath wrote: > > The Numinous Corpus Feet says "You can attack with both supernaturally > augmented feet and hands at the same time, as long as one attack is > based > on Strength and the other is based on Agility or Precision" > > How do you make an attack based on Agility? Throwing skill. - -- ___________________________________________________ / \ | John Karakash - Lucent Technologies/Bell Labs | | (919)388-2665(COOL) MIB2300 | | | | The power to tax involves the power to destroy. | | -Chief Justice Marshall | \___________________________________________________/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 16:05:45 -0500 From: "Matthew Stein" Subject: RE: IN> Lilim and Malakim >> Granted, I'd say that there /is/ very close to no absolute morality >> (however some things seem to be universal - don't steal, don't sleep >> with your mother - but those two are about the extent of it). > >Universal and absolute are two very different things, IMO. I'd argue that it comes into your definition of the word. All that I'm saying is that within every known human culture, two things have been considered wrong. Sleeping with one's mother is one of them. Stealing requires the concept of ownership first, so it's not quite as absolute or universal as the incestual one. (Sleeping with one's mother is universal because it's universally accepted and it's absolute because no one every argues with it, they simply accept it, whereas other "absolute" morals, such as "thou shalt not kill" are debatable.) >But is this really corruption? The host isn't doing anything that it >considers bad, just things it didn't know it liked. That's not corruption, >IMO, unless you posit an absolute morality. I don't consider a lot of things bad - such as smoking marijuana or drinking - but if I woke up tomorrow, found out that I had been possessed by a Shedim (or not), and realized that I had done a lot of pot in the last week and a half, and that the way to get more - because I really liked it and wanted more of it - was to break the law, I'd have been effectively corrupted. Corruption isn't only violation of one's morals, it's violation of one's sense of self and sense of place within the defined social hierarchy. If you can convince me that I belong somewhere else - say, outside of my current society - then I've been corrupted since I no longer believe what I believed before was necessarily good. Absolute morality isn't a necessity for that, because if there is an absolute morality (beyond the ones I noted above), then the Shedim could not violate it. It's a destruction of a personal sense of self, which includes morality. Break part of my sense of myself - say, my love life - and in my reaction to it, if the damage is great enough, I would destroy my morals if I was upset enough. _______________________________Matt._______________________________ [Angel of Weird Ideas, servant of Eli, kind of kicking it for now.] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 16:05:34 -0500 From: "Matthew Stein" Subject: RE: IN> Lilim and Malakim >> Granted, I'd say that there /is/ very close to no absolute morality >> (however some things seem to be universal - don't steal, don't sleep >> with your mother - but those two are about the extent of it). > >Are you referring to humans or to angels? Certainly, I wouldn't say these >are universal among angels. Stealing is positively encouraged by one >angelic Superior. Okay, fine, so maybe some Angels practice the art of thievery. However, within human culture and society, stealing and sleeping with one's own mother are considered to be immoral and hence bad. I can't tell you about Angelic culture, since I'm not necessarily sure if Angels treat their parents (if they actually have parents) any differently. Second of all, when one notes that thievery is immoral across the board of human cultures, that is only when the culture also have the theory of ownership, something required to have stealing (if you and I don't own anything, then I can take the computer located in your home without stealing it). I'm not really sure if those Angels really subscribe to the theory of ownership. (I'm too lazy to find INC and APG.) As for Demonic entities, I think that if there's something immoral within any given human culture, some demons will go out of their way to violate - just to be "bad." One can't really classify morals and ethics within the sphere of the Celestials in IN, because Celestials are embody a single idea: good/bad (yeah, I know, they embody words too), and that for any given Angel, there is a given Destiny - but not supposed to be a Fate. For any given Demons, there is supposed to be solely a Fate. Falling and Redemption are things that exist outside of the normal bounds of social interaction for the Celestial. Humans, on the other hand, have both a Destiny and a Fate, and so they will have real morals and ethics that are prescribed by the social institutions that they live within. So the human race can have its absolute morals, but the Celestial race would not, since Celestials aren't really socialized in the same manner (because they are physically - if you excuse the term - attuned to a word or concept, unlike humans who are simply trained psychologically). _______________________________Matt._______________________________ [Angel of Weird Ideas, servant of Eli, kind of kicking it for now.] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 22:31:11 +0100 (CET) From: Anders Gabrielsson Subject: RE: IN> Lilim and Malakim On Fri, 11 Dec 1998, Matthew Stein wrote: > >> Granted, I'd say that there /is/ very close to no absolute morality > >> (however some things seem to be universal - don't steal, don't > sleep > >> with your mother - but those two are about the extent of it). > > > >Universal and absolute are two very different things, IMO. > > I'd argue that it comes into your definition of the word. All that I'm > saying is that within every known human culture, two things have been > considered wrong. Sleeping with one's mother is one of them. Stealing > requires the concept of ownership first, so it's not quite as absolute > or universal as the incestual one. (Sleeping with one's mother is > universal because it's universally accepted and it's absolute because > no one every argues with it, they simply accept it, whereas other > "absolute" morals, such as "thou shalt not kill" are debatable.) What I mean, and what I've been led to believe that most people mean, by an absolute morality is a set of rules that originate outside of humanity. The Ten Commandments are usually viewed as such by christians, for example. > >But is this really corruption? The host isn't doing anything that it > >considers bad, just things it didn't know it liked. That's not > corruption, > >IMO, unless you posit an absolute morality. > > I don't consider a lot of things bad - such as smoking marijuana or > drinking - but if I woke up tomorrow, found out that I had been > possessed by a Shedim (or not), and realized that I had done a lot of > pot in the last week and a half, and that the way to get more - > because I really liked it and wanted more of it - was to break the > law, I'd have been effectively corrupted. Corruption isn't only > violation of one's morals, it's violation of one's sense of self and > sense of place within the defined social hierarchy. If you can > convince me that I belong somewhere else - say, outside of my current > society - then I've been corrupted since I no longer believe what I > believed before was necessarily good. Absolute morality isn't a > necessity for that, because if there is an absolute morality (beyond > the ones I noted above), then the Shedim could not violate it. It's a > destruction of a personal sense of self, which includes morality. > Break part of my sense of myself - say, my love life - and in my > reaction to it, if the damage is great enough, I would destroy my > morals if I was upset enough. By this definition, any kind of change of personality or view of one's self is corruption, including bettering one's station in life. Anders Gabrielsson anders@stp.ling.uu.se The contents of this message belong to me and nobody else. So there! May you have the knowledge of a sage, and the wisdom of a child. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 17:13:28 -0500 (EST) From: Casca Subject: IN> Environmental Damage I've been looking through my various books, and I can't seem to find damage ratings for things like drowning, being set on fire, electrocuted, falling from great heights, etc. Am I simply overlooking such things, or do they not exist? - -- Casca, Seraph of Archives (bertishg@db.erau.edu) "...I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above Him were seraphs, each with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying...At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke." -- Isaiah 6:2,4 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 14:38:18 -0800 From: Greg Jensen Subject: Re: IN> Jean's word Okay, I admit I overgeneralized with the neurochemicals and lightning analogy. I still don't think having science and reason as a part of Jean's word is too hard to swallow. There are certainly other Words that don't always seem to fit with the AA's role. What does wind have to do with theft? What does fire have to do with vengeance? What does community have to do with stone? It's all metaphorical. Greg Jensen http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~gjensen/gregpage.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 17:46:55 -0500 From: neel@cswv.com (Neel Krishnaswami) Subject: IN> [REVIEW] Louis Ginzberg's _The Legends of the Jews_ Title: _The Legends of the Jews_ Author: Louis Ginzberg, translated by Henrietta Szold Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press Price: $15.95 (per volume, before any discounts) ISBN: 0801858909 Short description: The stories from the Jewish midrash, collected together. Quick take: Buy this NOW. Full Review: Some of the most useful things in bringing a game world to life are small details. Dropping a few names, making small references to things outside the immediate plot, these have a disproportionate impact on convincing the players (and the GM!) that the game world is a living, breathing place. For In Nomine, there's also the added method of making references to Biblical myths and legends. This lets you tie your gameworld to the vast body of myth accumulated over the past four millenia, and can a give a game a charge that's hard to top. So the best way to do this is to kill two birds with one stone -- drop little bits of biblical myth and legend into your game. Mention casually that Gabriel and Michael defeated Azazel and Shemhazzai in pre-Flood days, or that the Far Marches are an unfinished quarter of the universe, left undone by God as a challenge to any false gods pretending to the status of creator. Cool, you say, but there's not much chance of learning Hebrew and going through the midrash for game ideas. This is where Louis Ginzberg and _The Legends of the Jews_ comes in. Between 1908 and 1950 or so, the Jewish scholar Louis Ginzberg went through the midrash (commentaries on the Hebrew bible), and collected all the myths and stories in them. This makes things significantly more accessible to laymen like us, and even better, all the boring exegesis and theology has been removed, leaving hundreds of pages of myths and legends ready for insertion into your game. This is really good stuff, and really affordable. Even if you don't want to shell out a dozen bucks for 400 pages of esoteric goodness, go to your library and check it out -- these books are a standard reference, and odds are you can find a copy in the library. The first volume is _From the Creation to Jacob_, and covers exactly what it says it does. The next 3 cover the rest of the Hebrew bible, and the last three volumes are references and indexes, which are of less interest to a gamer. - -- Neel Krishnaswami neelk@cswv.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 17:47:27 -0500 From: neel@cswv.com (Neel Krishnaswami) Subject: Re: IN> Honor and Pride Earl Wajenberg wrote: > >My own generalization of what "honor" is, is that it is the pride >you are allowed to have in yourself (and display publicly, if you >desire) justified by your adherence to certain *specific* virtues. >And the honor code is a pretty public construct. > >Malakim are specifically described as embodying Heaven's "honor." >It's made clear that each Malak has its own honor code. The >common oaths they all take, and the tale of their origin, make it >look like the "honor of Heaven" being upheld here is the rule >that evil shall not "get away with it." "The wrong shall fail, >the right prevail." I'm not sure, though, that it meshes more >than peripherally with historical concepts of honor. The tie-in >seems to be to regard evil as an insult to good. > >Insult is important in honor systems because honor is measured in >terms of pride; an insult to honor is a claim that you are not as >honorable (just/brave/loyal/polite/chaste) as you claim. But with >Malakim, it's not clear what the insult is, unless it's simply, >"You are not right," or "You are not going to win." If evil is understood as disobedience of God's law, then the insult is pretty obvious -- the evildoer is not giving the Lord's commands the respect they deserve. Most people who are focused on honor are interested in public breaches. Generally, private comments are ignored, public defiance will often lead to reprisals, and open defiance in front of the man whose honor is insulted /must/ be replied to. For a Malakite, /every/ act of sin must count as open defiance, since God (who is omniscient) is a witness to every act of rebellion against Him. So a Malakite must not allow any evil to go unmarked, and the first oath falls into place. - -- Neel Krishnaswami neelk@cswv.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 00:02:50 +0100 (CET) From: Anders Gabrielsson Subject: Re: IN> Honor and Pride On Fri, 11 Dec 1998, Neel Krishnaswami wrote: > If evil is understood as disobedience of God's law, then the insult > is pretty obvious -- the evildoer is not giving the Lord's commands > the respect they deserve. > > Most people who are focused on honor are interested in public > breaches. Generally, private comments are ignored, public defiance > will often lead to reprisals, and open defiance in front of the > man whose honor is insulted /must/ be replied to. For a Malakite, > /every/ act of sin must count as open defiance, since God (who is > omniscient) is a witness to every act of rebellion against Him. > > So a Malakite must not allow any evil to go unmarked, and the first > oath falls into place. This is a very interesting view into the Malakite mindset. Part of the reason they are so bleedin' serious the whole time is that they are constantly aware that somewhere, someone is offending God's will... and it's their job to do something about it. Anders Gabrielsson anders@stp.ling.uu.se The contents of this message belong to me and nobody else. So there! May you have the knowledge of a sage, and the wisdom of a child. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 21:39:30 +0000 From: Kevin Walsh Subject: Re: IN> Lilim and Malakim On Fri, Dec 11, 1998 at 04:05:34PM -0500, Matthew Stein wrote: > >Are you referring to humans or to angels? Certainly, I wouldn't say > these > >are universal among angels. Stealing is positively encouraged by one > >angelic Superior. > > Okay, fine, so maybe some Angels practice the art of thievery. > However, within human culture and society, stealing and sleeping with > one's own mother are considered to be immoral and hence bad. Why the mother? Why not the father? I can't > tell you about Angelic culture, since I'm not necessarily sure if > Angels treat their parents (if they actually have parents) any > differently. Some of the more humanocentric angels would describe their Superior as their parent/mother/father. Second of all, when one notes that thievery is immoral > across the board of human cultures, that is only when the culture also > have the theory of ownership, something required to have stealing (if > you and I don't own anything, then I can take the computer located in > your home without stealing it). Armies steal. For many generations, armies depended on stealing. And in general I don't agree anyway. In medieval Ireland, a King wasn't truly considered a King until he'd raided some of his neighbour's cattle. And cattle were _very_ important in Irish culture; they formed the basis of Irish economy and kingship. > As for Demonic entities, I think that if there's something immoral > within any given human culture, some demons will go out of their way > to violate - just to be "bad." One can't really classify morals and > ethics within the sphere of the Celestials in IN, because Celestials > are embody a single idea: good/bad (yeah, I know, they embody words > too), I'm not sure I understand that remark. Not all angels possess the same concept of good. Not all angels of "specific Choir" of "specific Word" will have the same concept of good. For any given Demons, there is supposed to be > solely a Fate. I don't agree. Though a demon's destiny mightn't be to Redeem. It mightn't have that potential. Likewise it could be very evil without reaching its Fate, simply because it could have been more evil. The Fate of a Demon of Dark Humour might be to become an agent of the Game. I don't think that the Fates and Destinies of demons are more necessarily more constrained or less varied than those of humans. (And likewise for angels.) So the human race can have its absolute morals, > but the Celestial race would not, since Celestials aren't really > socialized in the same manner (because they are physically - if you > excuse the term - attuned to a word or concept, unlike humans who are > simply trained psychologically). > Given genetic influences on behaviour, it's questionable whether humans have any more free will than angels or demons. Kevin Walsh, Balseraph of Nitpicking, Demon of Off-Topic Trivia. - -- "Warfare is the Tao of deception. Thus although capable, display incapability to them. When committed to employing your forces, feign inactivity. When [your objective] is nearby, make it appear as if distant; when far away, create the illusion of being nearby." -Sun Tzu, the Art of War. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 15:28:39 -0800 From: Greg Jensen Subject: RE: IN> Lilim and Malakim At 10:31 PM 12/11/98 +0100, you wrote: >What I mean, and what I've been led to believe that most people mean, by >an absolute morality is a set of rules that originate outside of humanity. >The Ten Commandments are usually viewed as such by christians, for >example. And not even all Christians can agree on interpretations of the Commandments. A Catholic and a Seventh-Day Adventist would disagree about the details of keeping the Sabbath holy. A vegetarian and a hunter might disagree about some of the finer points of "thou shalt not kill." I think we need to differentiate between morals and ethics. Morals are basically a set of rules (formal or informal) of behavior. These are entirely subjective. Violations of morals are more clear than ethical violations. Each person will have their won set of moral standards, and each culture will, too. And there are no cultural universals in morality. Even incest and theft have been approved of, by some cultures, in some circumstances. Ethics, however, are broader principles and philosophies of behavior. "Do unto others" would fall under this category, as would "greatest good for the greatest number" and "the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It doesn't really define what these are, just offers guidance, so it's harder to see where ethical violations exist. However, these can be universally applied. It's not so much that all cultures will agree with them, it's just that they aren't as affected by culture as morals since they aren't actual rules. What is best for the greatest number in one culture is probably the same in all others, in the same circumstances. It really shouldn't matter what one's cultural background is to do unto others. I know I was going somewhere with this. I think a shedite's corruption should be based on a combination of what the corruptees morals are, as well as the shedite's own (twisted) ethics. For example, a shedite with an ethical position of "Do unto others as you would hate for them to do unto you" could possess someone and make them violate their own morals (albeit in ways that they already considered doing) and in ways that the Shedite would hate were the roles reversed. Greg Jensen http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~gjensen/gregpage.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 18:40:05 -0500 From: "Matthew Stein" Subject: RE: IN> Lilim and Malakim >What I mean, and what I've been led to believe that most people mean, by >an absolute morality is a set of rules that originate outside of humanity. >The Ten Commandments are usually viewed as such by christians, for >example. Granted. What I'm saying, however, is that there's absolute morality within the human race - intrinsic to the race or not, it does exist. >By this definition, any kind of change of personality or view of one's >self is corruption, including bettering one's station in life. Granted. However wouldn't you agree that /any/ change of personality or view of one's self, if done by an external influence, is a form of corruption? I might be a poor little college student, and if an external force - with no help from me - changes me, that I have to some extent been corrupted from what I was, and what I was presumably content being. Even if people are not happy (or even content) with their current status, having a fully external force (not influence, mind you) change them in some way would not please them, even if they were better off for it. Besides, "corruption" as it generally stands assumes the breaking of morals; I'd posit that it means more of a change. If I woke up tomorrow with a whole new outlook on life that came from some strange dream, I'd be screwed up, and more likely, corrupted a little for what I was. If we change without doing the changing ourselves, then we are corrupted from what we were. The bombing of Hiroshima, for instance, has been called a corrupter of humanity, because suddenly we as members in the human race had done something absolutely major that affected all of us without all of us making a conscious choice to take the action (the people directly affected from the blast were corrupted in the same way. The only people without this "unwilling" corruption are the people with direct ability to make the blast: the scientists, the President and his men, the pilots who flew the bomb, etc - they are corrupted in a different way, probably closer to the one you suggest). mmks. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 01:24:48 +0100 (CET) From: Anders Gabrielsson Subject: RE: IN> Lilim and Malakim On Fri, 11 Dec 1998, Matthew Stein wrote: > >What I mean, and what I've been led to believe that most people mean, > by > >an absolute morality is a set of rules that originate outside of > humanity. > >The Ten Commandments are usually viewed as such by christians, for > >example. > > Granted. What I'm saying, however, is that there's absolute morality > within the human race - intrinsic to the race or not, it does exist. That's not the same thing. That would be a universal morality, which is something different. I'm not sure there is such a thing either - IIRC, the Pharao of Egypt was expected to marry his mother, at least during some periods. The only universal thing about human morality is that it exists - all societies have rules of some kind. > >By this definition, any kind of change of personality or view of > one's > >self is corruption, including bettering one's station in life. > > Granted. However wouldn't you agree that /any/ change of personality > or view of one's self, if done by an external influence, is a form of > corruption? No, simply because corruption is such a loaded word. The negative connotations obscure what you want it to be, I think. Also, I don't agree that changes by external influence is necessarily bad. Often change is desirable, but one can't achieve it by oneself. One needs the help of someone else, an external influence, to push oneself in the right direction. If you want to call this corruption, I think you'll be misunderstood quite often. *shrugs* > If I woke up tomorrow with a whole new outlook on life that > came from some strange dream, I'd be screwed up, and more likely, > corrupted a little for what I was. If we change without doing the > changing ourselves, then we are corrupted from what we were. Well, I'd say that dream came from inside of you. Where else could it come from? And how can we change without doing the changing ourselves? (Now I'm talking real-world, sans Shedim.) The > bombing of Hiroshima, for instance, has been called a corrupter of > humanity, because suddenly we as members in the human race had done > something absolutely major that affected all of us without all of us > making a conscious choice to take the action (the people directly > affected from the blast were corrupted in the same way. This sort of thing happens all the time, on a smaller scale. We are, all of us, constantly affected by the decisions of others, in ways we can't directly affect. -Nothing- happens that all of us make a conscious decision about. Does this mean that all of us are constantly being corrupted? IMO, no, unless you use a definition of corruption that is essentially meaningless. No man is an island, and all that. Anders Gabrielsson anders@stp.ling.uu.se The contents of this message belong to me and nobody else. So there! May you have the knowledge of a sage, and the wisdom of a child. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 00:41:13 +0000 (GMT) From: Steve Jessop Subject: RE: IN> Lilim and Malakim On Fri, 11 Dec 1998, Matthew Stein wrote: > Granted. What I'm saying, however, is that there's absolute morality > within the human race - intrinsic to the race or not, it does exist. My attempt to get in first on this one - you what!? I don't want to knock anyone's religious beliefs: many people do believe that their own moral code applies equally to the entire race. However, one of the purposes of In Nomine as a satire is to poke fun at the whole 'I'm right and you're not' attitude. There simply are *no* morals which are subscribed to by every member of the human race, irrespective of whether anyone thinks there ought to be. On a list half full of atheists and agnostics, you aren't going to get away with claiming absolute morality :-) Steve. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 98 20:23 EST From: Walter Milliken Subject: Re: IN> Discord & Renegades >This is a multi-part message in MIME format. [Please turn off the HTML-appending junk in your mailer (MS Outlook Express, apparently. *sigh*). It puts two copies of every message out for those of us who don't use mailreaders that cope with that MS junk, or anyone who gets the digest copy (I think). Also, your line-wrapping is set too high, generating one plus a partial line for every line you have, and various "quoted-printable" junk is getting inserted. Actually, the best thing to do is junk OE and just get Eudora (or Eudora Lite, which is free). You can see what is happening in the excerpt below. Or maybe not -- who knows what OE will do with equal signs in messages it didn't generate....] >A demon with Celestial discord, is considered a renegade (at least by = >Admodeus=20 >[In Nomine =96 p. 160]). What if the discord is the same as their = >servitor=92s word? I.e. >a servitor of Gluttony having Gluttonous, (when the Demon Prince of = >Sloth did exist)=20 >Servitors of Sloth having Slothful or a servitor of Lust having Lustful. >And why celestial discord rather than Ethereal or Corporeal? This is all clarified (and modified slightly) in the IPG. The description in the core book doesn't really make sense, as you are pointing out. There are a couple discords the Game really doesn't like (Merciful and Selfless, which is in the IPG), and they consider dissonance dangerous. Other discords don't bother them much. - ---Walter ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Dec 98 20:24 EST From: Walter Milliken Subject: Re: IN> Environmental Damage >I've been looking through my various books, and I can't seem to find >damage ratings for things like drowning, being set on fire, electrocuted, >falling from great heights, etc. Am I simply overlooking such things, or >do they not exist? They don't exist. You can always steal them from GURPS... I believe hit points are *roughly* comparable between the two systems. - ---Walter ------------------------------ End of in_nomine-digest V1 #1049 ******************************** The material here is (C) 1997 Steve Jackson Games, Incorporated. All rights reserved.