#3E-Spirituality

[bethanythebogwitch]

Bee people in my D&D world

The Abeil are an obscure race of bee people from D&D 3e that I decided to make playable in my world and give some worldbuilding and lore expansion to. Stats at the bottom.

The Abeil line in the continent of Rakada, which was originally part of its own planet before a magical catastrophe ripped a piece of it off of its world and deposited on my main campaign world. The piece that ended up on my world, the Lost World of Alvestra, is only a fragment of the original Rakada, whose fate remains unknown. The region of Rakada the Abeil originate from is known in Rakadan as N’Zar NiTotalu-i (N'Zar = land, Totalu = bones, i as a suffix = people, also seen in the Tabaxi (cat people) and Tlincalli (scorpion people), and Ni as a prefix = without) and in common as the Land of the Boneless People, for its primary occupants are the Abeil and the Kreen, both of which have exoskeletons instead of endoskeletons.

The Abeil mostly inhabit the outskirts of the Land of the Boneless People where rain is abundant, massive flowers grow, and the mighty wasp dragons dwell. They avoid the arid interior of the region, which is inhospitable to them and the homeland of the Kreen. An abeil resembles a humanoid bee, with a very human or elf-like upper body and face (though their eyes are compound and they have antennae). Their lower bodies are much more insect-like, with four narrow legs and a curved, flexible abdomen that ends in a venomous stinger. Two pairs of translucent wings emerge from their upper backs and their hand have three fingers and a thumb. The wings allow flight and can produce a droning noise that triggers drowsiness and unconsciousness in those that hear it.

Abeil are innately social beings, even moreso than other sapient species. While a human or tabaxi could shun company and go become a lone wolf, the Abeil are so innately social that being alone is extremely stressful to them. Lone Abeil will instinctively seek company and become highly attached to whoever they find. They are also biologically programmed to place the needs of the group over the needs of the individual. This is not to say that individualism is shunned, it is just a secondary priority to the health of the group. There are Abeil artists, Abeil games, and other things that do not directly contribute to the survival of the group, they are just not as heavily emphasized as in the societies of other species. Abeil are raised to understand that they are all part of the whole that is the community and everyone needs to support each other. Abeil build hive cities with hexagonal districts organized by what purpose they serve. These cities can be very difficult to navigate for members of flightless species, so there is usually at least one district built for trade and diplomacy with outsiders that is built accordingly. Smaller outlying communities such as farming or mining villages help support the cities. Trade with the other residents of Rakada (and more recently, Alvestra) is common. As with the other inhabitants of the Land of the Boneless People, Abeil tame and domesticate native massive bugs, using huge beetles as beasts of burden, dragonflies as mounts, and cat-sized isopods as pets.

Like the bees they resemble, Abeil have distinct castes: queens, soldiers, and vassals. Queens are always female, but soldiers and vassals may be of either sex. Queens are also not the only Abeil to reproduce, all Abeil can. An individual hive city will usually have one queen, with 1/3rd of the population being soldiers and the rest being vassals. The primary visual difference is that soldiers stand about about a head taller than queens, who stand about half a head taller than vassals. Queens act as the spiritual and authoritative leaders of their hive cities, usually with a council of advisors from the other sects. Soldiers are bred to take up martial roles as the warriors that defend the hive and scout out into unclaimed territory. Vassals fill all other roles, from laborers to traders to artists to scholars to clergy and everything in between.

Abeil are born as larvae who hatch from eggs. All larvae will grow into vassals unless fed a special diet. Abeil larvae are raised communally in nurseries and spend about a year as large grubs before pupating and emerging six months later as a young adult. The tenders of the nurseries will select the largest and most aggressive larvae to be fed the diet to become soldiers. When they finish pupating, the young Abeil are sent off to learn the tools of their future profession based on their temperament and the hive's needs. For example, an inquisitive Abeil may be sent to become a scholar and if their is a shortage of farmers, young Abeil will be sent to fill those ranks. There is usually only one queen, but if a hive city is growing too large, new queens will be raised and sent out with a portion of the population to found a new hive city elsewhere. If new queens are needed, the current queen (or council of advisors if the queen dies) will visit the nursery and take the most promising larva with them back to the palace. This larva will be fed a special diet of royal jelly that triggers maturation into a queen. This young queen will then be trained by the current queen or advisors in the skilled needed to become a leader.

As with most of the sapient species of Rakada, the Abeil claim to have been created by one of the divine Animal Lords, the Bee Lord in their case. As with the other Animal Lords, the bee lord has many aspects or masks, each of which can be thought of as its own god while also being part of the greater whole. The Abeil worship the various masks of the Bee Lord, with the most widely-worshiped one being known as the Queen of Queens, the Lawful Neutral mask of order, leadership, and society.

The Abeil are generally expansionist and their hive cities can be found in most of the wetter, coastal regions of the Land of the Boneless People. Attempts to expand into the arid inner regions of the region have mostly been thwarted by the native Kreen, leading to a great deal of animosity between the races. So far, political infighting between hive cities and the threat of retaliation by Thri- and Tohr-Kreen have prevented attempts to expand hive cities into the southern Tabaxi lands, but this state of affairs may not last long. There is no central government for the Abeil, each hive city acts as an independent, self-governing city-state. Relations between the hive cities are complex, with rivalries and alliances. In addition, hives may form alliances or trade agreements with the Tabaxi to the south or (in more recent years) Alvestrans. In particular, Abeil-produced honey is considered a delicacy in Tabaxi lands and fetches a high price.

Homebrew Abeil race stats for 5e (note: this has not been playtested)

ASI: +2, +1 or +1, +1, +1

Size: medium

Speed: 30 ft. Have a flying speed equal to walking speed, but cannot use this speed if wearing medium or heavy armor

Languages: common and 1 other

Sting: you have a stinger which counts as a natural weapon with the finesse property with which you are proficient. When you make an unarmed attack, you can choose to deal 1D4 piercing damage. When you successfully attack a creature with your stinger, you can force them to make a constitution saving throw with a DC equal to 11 + your proficiency modifier. On a failure, the creature takes 2d8 poison damage and is poisoned until the end of your next turn. On a success, the creature takes half damage and is not poisoned. You may use this ability a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, regaining all uses when you finish a long rest.

Drone: you can use your wings to create a horrible, droning noise that can lull creatures who hear it into a deep sleep. As an action, you can force every creature within a 15 ft sphere centered on yourself that can hear you to make a wisdom saving throw (DC 11 + your proficiency modifier). Any creature that fails this check falls asleep for one hour or until they take damage or another creature takes its action to rouse them. Once you use this feature you may not use it again until you take a long rest. 

Caste: Abeil are born into one of three castes, which shape their physical features. When you choose this race, pick one of the following options:

Vassal: you gain proficiency with one set of artisans tools of your choice and one skill proficiency of your choice, picking from history, religion, medicine, or persuasion. 

Soldier: you gain proficiency in one weapon or set of armor of your choice and one skill proficiency of your choice, picking from athletics, acrobatics, survival, or medicine.

Queen: you gain proficiency in one weapon or set of tools of your choice and one skill of your choice, picking from history, persuasion, intimidation, or deception.

[shifterglitter]

About Me

Greetings Shifters and curious minds alike. 

My name is Vi (“Vee”), I’m 30 years old and have been on Tumblr since 2009. 

Cancer Sun, Pisces Moon, and Sagittarius Rising

My main account is @purplepirateadventures, however, that is an 18+ account and I do post NSFW stuff on it. I will keep everything on this blog SFW and 15+ friendly (as I do curse a lot).

I identify as genderfluid/queer. I am comfortable with all pronouns. So whatever you perceive me as is correct. My favorite Pronouns if you are looking to butter me up are: It/Its, Ve/Vir, Fae/Faer, Bun/Buns, Spri/Sprout, Cubi/Cubiself, and Dem/Demonself.

I am Abroromantic and Abrosexual (Ace Spectrum)  https://lgbtqia.fandom.com/wiki/Abrosexual (+ level 5 monster lover)

I recently started experimenting with Shifting and am using this platform to connect to others in the community and document my experiences.

When I am not shifting or working overnights at the local Airport I am watching Anime, Maladaptive Daydreaming to music, or reading Monster Smut. I am also a witch, a rock collector, a member of the TST, and an oracle reader. (If you’d like a DR Channeling, or other reading I could use the practice so please DM me.)

My Favorite Podcasts are: Myths Magic and Murder, Desert Skies, What Fresh Hell is This?, and Tower 4.  My Favorite Anime are: Yu Yu Hakusho, One Piece, and Trinity Blood. My Favorite Artists are: Ghost, Sleep Token, Dread Buffalo, Markiplier, Save a Fox, Hollow_VA, Momolady, and SiobhanKaufmanArt. My Favorite Books of last year are: Bloodshed, A Court of Wings and Ruin, Forget Me Not, Thrawn, and Iron Widow.  My Safe food is Potatoes. My Safe texture is Velvet. 

Some People you may hear me talk about:

I come from a very abusive family, however, in my adulthood my siblings and I have become incredibly close. I am so grateful for that. So I am the oldest of 3 children. The middle child is my brother, Joshua, who is obsessed with 3e DnD and THC products. While Wilhelmina (Willow or Mina for short) is the chosen name of my baby sibling (trans/questioning); their hyperfixation is miniature war games like WH40k and Battletech. We are all writers, painters, and neurodivergent. 

My best friend is a guy I met through boy scouts in middle school. His name is Nick and he is a pharmacist. 

My platonic soul mate's name is Harley. They are on tumblr, but I'm not going to out them because they aren't a shifter. I've recently reconnected with them after an extended falling out.

All of these important people in my life are not spiritual in any way so I don’t see myself opening up to them about all of this. 

I have an orange cat named “Abraham Delacy Giuseppe Casy Thomas O’malley”, or Mr O’malley for short. And an energetic little Blue Merle Corgi mix named “Tax-Evasion”, whom we all call Eevee. You will see pictures of them here as my millennial ass can not help but share my fur babies with the world.

How I discovered Shifting

My Favorite Shifting Tools

My DRs

Main & Active DR Waiting Rooms Distant Future DRs Original Creation

My Original Methods

The Stitching Method The Candle & Mantra Method The Traveler Method The Plasmoid Method

[jebloguemoinonplus]

NOËL GOSPEL » LES 9 ET 10 DÉCEMBRE À LA SALLE PIERRE-MERCURE

« Noël Gospel » est un spectacle mettant en vedette les réputés Jireh Gospel Choir et Montreal Gospel Choir menés par Carol Bernard. Lors des trois représentations, présentées à la Salle Pierre-Mercure du Centre Pierre-Péladeau les 9 et 10 décembre, c’est 100 interprètes qui seront sur scène!

« J’adore l’évolution de la musique gospel – des Negro Spirituals au hip-hop, et j’adore Noël! Nous travaillons fort pour présenter au public une vraie expérience gospel, remplie de joie : un cadeau pour tout le monde. Notre message de Noël est : paix, justice et amour pour tous,» déclare Carol Bernard.

C’est un rendez-vous en prélude au temps des fêtes hors de l’ordinaire que propose Carol Bernard, la directrice des célèbres Jireh Gospel Choir (composé de 15 membres de la communauté afro- montréalaise) et Montreal Gospel Choir (85 chanteurs montréalais d’origine africaine, asiatique, caraïbéenne, européenne et latino- américaine). Au menu de ce spectacle de 90 minutes des chansons de Authentic Gospel, du Black American Gospel, du Negro Spiritual, du hip hop, plusieurs classiques du Noël ainsi que des compositions originales en français et en anglais.

L’album « Get Up » du Jireh Gospel Choir a reçu le prix de l’Album gospel de l’année, décerné par Gospel Music Association Canada. En juillet 2022, les 15 chanteurs et 5 musiciens ont pour une 3e fois enflammé la scène extérieure du Festival international de jazz de Montréal devant de dizaines de milliers de personnes; en 2019, ils ont participé aux trois concerts de Noël de l’Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal diffusé par Ici Radio-Canada Télé.

[psalmonesermons]

The gifts of the Godhead Part 3e

The inspirational gifts of the Holy Spirit: a word of knowledge and discerning of spirits

A word of knowledge

In the Greek it is a not the word of knowledge. This is when God who is omniscient (i.e. knows everything) chooses to reveal something by his Holy Spirit to a believer so that they can use this information to minister to another. Such a word of knowledge can open up your understanding to minister correctly into the person's situation.

People often put this gift on too high a level! Sometimes you are going about your normal daily business when the Lord lays a burden on your heart for someone or something then He has supernaturally given you knowledge of a situation you otherwise could not know!

The Lord might call you to pray or visit or respond in some other way. This at a basic level is a word of knowledge.

Often after the event you find out that something important happened just at the very time you received and acted on the word of knowledge. God never gives this gift except for a specific purpose, and we should act in faith when it happens i.e. be obedient to the Spirit's leading. (I was once woken up at night s to intercede for a relative who was in danger of a miscarriage- the pregnancy had a successful outcome).

Sometimes people at a meeting will receive a word of knowledge about a health, financial or other problem for someone in the congregation. When the word is given out it promotes faith in the person to receive healing or have their particular need met.

Thus it often is a catalyst to successful personal ministry.

Remember the Samaritan women at the well. The word of knowledge laid bare her whole life causing her to perceive that Jesus was a prophet.

Thee bible teacher the late Roger Price told a story of how (after several false starts) being obedient to prompting of the Holy Spirit led to the conversion of a fellow student.

Sometimes the word or picture we receive can be unusual (e.g. tinned food story). We have just got to be obedient and give them!

Jack Deere tells how one day when counselling one of his bible school students, suddenly saw in his mind the word pornography appearing and then it flashed on and off. He tried to ignore this but after a while he realised that the Lord was giving him a supernatural message. When he eventually gave in and asked the student outright if he was using this type of material, the student eventually came clean and received ministry which completely set him free from this bondage.

Judge the fruit! This is a border line example between a word of knowledge and discerning of spirits.

Discerning of spirits

There is such a thing as natural discernment (as in fictional characters such as Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple) but the gift of discerning of spirits reveals that which only God can reveal.

Often this gift functions during personal ministry when the Lord reveals the spiritual nature of the root problem which is not apparent in any natural sense.

Jack Deere tells of one young lady who came for prayer for nightmares. Whilst praying Jack received a word of knowledge from the Lord.... 'Don'. It turned out that the young women had been involved in immorality with a man named Don (who was heavily into the occult). The Lord then enabled Jack to discern that the girl had been demonized through this contact. After the spiritual root of the problem was manifested and repentance made, the young woman was set free by prayer and the nightmares stopped!

This gift is vital in the deliverance ministry for unless the Lord supernaturally reveals what the root problem is spiritually speaking, then we are unable to proceed.

Thankfully, the Lord usually gives discerning of spirits because He wants his people to be set free!

Sometimes the Lord gives discerning of spirits to a local church so that they know how to pray specifically and intelligently for their local area or even nation.

Another use of this gift can be when someone is telling you something and the Holy Spirit says that either they are lying or not telling the whole truth. This discernment might just be a warning or else a prompt to confront the person. You need to be led of the Spirit to manage this type of situation. If a doubtful character comes to your church, you might ask the Lord to give you discernment in the matter!

Moving in the inspirational gifts

These three gifts often come to believers as a recurrent thought or feeling, or as a vision (picture). For example you might see a picture of an ear, through which the Lord is showing that someone present has an ear problem and if He is revealing that it is almost certain that He wants to heal that problem. Some people see outlines of a body with just the affected part visible or prominent. Other may see or hear words... 'heart problem' etc. or 'marriage difficulties'. God will have his own way of speaking to you.

Step out in faith and see the supernatural power of the Lord at work in your church and in your personal life! It is a real boost to our faith to see the Lord meet people needs in such a fresh supernatural way!

Amen

Personal Prayer

Referenced authors

Roger Price BBS tape series (no. 95) 'Moving in the gifts of the Holy Spirit-part 2' Chichester Christian Fellowship.

Surprised by the voice of God by Jack Deere (Kingsway 1996).

[zalmoxis-the-great]

Lovely observations ! <3 Thank you @beril66!!!

But, allow me to bring the fact that GW's writing for the C'tan is all over the place.

The C'tan were made at the beginning of the universe, but GW is oscillating between them being just Star Vampires (they were attaching themselves to the stars and decreasing their lifespan) or the manifestations of the material realm itself (Codex 10e).

And they mention in Codex 9e, that breaking the C'tan (Yngir) broke the reality itself.

But, again, I might be at fault, since I lack the original sources, but in Imperial Armour Volume Twelve - The Fall of Orpheus (published by Forge world, there are zero chances I am getting my hands on that!) the Maynarkh Dynasty destroyed the Flayed C'tan with incredibly powerful weapons, and it DAMAGED CAUSALITY (!!! like, THE CONCEPT !!!! causality = the principle of or relationship between cause and effect. By the Silent King's nose hair, wtf !?) I see discussions on the forums that say the weapons did it, others say that the destruction of the C'tan did that, some joke that this caused the lack of thinking, and bad decision-making in the 40k universe.

Why I am really thinking that the divine spark is the best way to quantify the power levels of gods in Warhammer?

Well, because:

-The sheer numbers of Necrontyr that were alive at the moment of the biotransference "For all this, many billions of Necrons have already awoken and trillions more stir." In codex 8e (I don't have that one, but I will so buy it, I need to get the last white dwarf issue) they estimate around a thousand tomb worlds that are awakened, and that is just the "barest fraction" . A tomb world has around 2 billion Necrons in it. (From the Necron forums, what? they are so very, very good !) The sheer numbers of souls fits so well with the harvesting for divine sparks. And in the warhammer40k community, we pride ourselves with numbers. (Codex 9e and 5e)

-The fact that the C'tan can be broken into shards (Codex 10e) that together form a greater being, and the fact that the aeldari speculated their Laughing God convinced Tsara'noga the Outsider to start attacking their own brethren, and to consume then, fact that made him insane, because fragments of the consumed deities linger in his mind (using wiki for this one, codex 3e and 8e). I again speculate that he tried eating their divine spark ~₊˚⊹♡✧˖°. and might have, accidentally, consumed them fully. Live and learn, I guess?

I would like to point out that the ascended being Orikan is aware of the wheel of fate, but it is outside of it, judging it from a higher perspective. He firstly experiences melancholy, since now time is a malleable concept for him more than usual, he contemplates the times spent with his rival.

But, he is thinking ! "No matter, even the most formidable beings from his mortal days would be long dust before Orikan thought to dwell upon them again" (his troughs dwelled once on them).

Then he feels scorn, contempt for his race. Then hunger. (The trinity of my feelings if I don't get my early morning tea (ꈍᴗꈍ)♡ )

He indeed, lost the "mind" to understand language. But I am thinking that is because his Ascended form was too hot for his language processing centers to function, all that he was feeling before was coming from his engrams, the part of a Necrons that makes them, themselves! I personally believe that animism is a reality in the warhammer 40k universe. That objects too can possess spiritual essence, not related to the warp (but this is another subject and this is getting too long anyway), but it is because of the incompatibility of the C'tan with the warp, and that fact that they still ate the Necrontyr's souls (this is for another rant). I think that when he Ascended, all that was left were his memories, beliefs and emotions. Or maybe it was a mixture from the spirits in the aeldari gem with his personality? He felt melancholy when he thought about Trazyn because he really liked him, yet he didn't accept his advances, he felt scorn because his own people didn't listen to him as he tried to save them, he felt hunger because he deserved a little snack (just like me, fr fr).

In my (flawed) opinion, godhood might not be such a bad choice for Orikan.

I, unfortunately, know next to nothing about Elder Scrolls, but I hope to have the time to look into it, because it sounds hecking interesting ! I think he could grow into another god's spot, especially since one is actually dead-dead, and GW is trying to correct the silliness that was the bad decisions of the old 40k. Orikan will become the god of Sometimes-thinking-for-more-than-2-seconds-before-acting.

I admit I was wrong, yeah, Trazyn worshiping him sounds perfect, his first subject <3

C'mon, godhood doesn't sound so bad now (•ᴗ<˶)✧₊ ⊹

(thank you for asking, you are very nice, and kind, a-and, and, and it is horrible, and I hate it, and it's going terrible)

(˶╥︿╥)

(how's the thesis going ? 3D scaffolding sounds so cool! Tissue engineering is my only hope to convince someone to 3D print some scarab shaped chambers for my cells to regenerate in 👉👈 my cartilages shall be little tombs !)

About Orikan, Divinity, Divine Sparks and Speculations

C.W. Spoilers from TITD, T.W. mentions of death

A more technical aspect of Orikan's ascension can be explained in the D&D universe. There are a lot of real world religions that touch the subject of divinity, but I found a pretty satisfying explanation about reaching Godhood from role playing games, and by consulting forums online, as well as a well-made homebrew guide which clarified the information. I am sharing my understanding of what I read, as well as my own speculations.

In Dungeons and Dragons (the source I am using for this is The Extensive Guide to Godhood/ The Path to Godhood V1.2, which is homebrew, but the forums I consulted used the same concept from the 3.5E up to the 5E, and are very similar, but less organized), there are multiple methods to becoming a god, but all of them require the divine spark. A divine spark is what transforms a normal being into a divine entity. “To behold a divine spark, in the flesh, is akin to staring into a star”.  That is something that the divine has but mortals lack.

“If the soul is a flame, the divine spark is a star”. Depending on where you look, some will say that a few normal people are born with a bit of a divine spark in them, or that only a few special someones have some divine spark. But the facts are: it can be taken, gathered, accumulated, and after all that, if somehow, someone manages to absorb one, they get to go under Apotheotic Ascension, where “their bodies attempt to cope with the fluctuation of raw power inside of them, at the end of which their form will try it’s best to maintain that power without perishing”. That change is only the beginning of the transformation into godhood. Huh, that is an interesting and familiar concept. (Extensive Guide)

The issue is that many who dare try, fail to hold that power, those who succeed "will walk away with something more". In the book, Orikan didn’t explode nor die when absorbing the spark, therefor he succeeded his roll in absorbing it, otherwise, the only other outcome would have been complete and utter death and destruction of his being.

A way to acquire such a spark would be to simply slay a god and take their diviner spark(s) (dnd5e), other way would be to be worshiped by followers (“A deity’s divinity is measured by how much sparks they have”), another way mentioned in the guide is by harvesting the rare divinity of others within a week’s time, so pretty much mindless slaughter (the chaos gods growing fat with power from the divinity harvested by their worshipers), a less bloody way would be receiving it as a gift from another divinity, at the cost of theirs, them (the donor) growing weaker to birth a new god.

The eleven race, the equivalent of Aeldari, used Mythallas, magic items with a lot of power, that could manipulate the fabric of reality itself, drawing their energy from the weave (Dndbeyond 5E). Sometimes the essence of those Mythallas would contain the essence of the collection of hundreds or thousands of souls – that can form a divine spark. Sounds familiar? (Extensive Guide)

That is one way, the other way Orikan could get his divine spark is by using Mephet’ran.

We can assume that the Deceiver is a divine being, a star god. The more divine sparks you have, the greater the divine being you become, or are. Unfortunately for him, (the diviner) Orikan, cannibalized him at the end of the book. Since in the Warhammer universe, it is impossible to kill Star Gods without actually changing the natural order, since they are the embodiment of the laws of the universe, and killing them alternates the fabric of the reality, we can speculate he lost some of his divine ranking, by losing some of his divine sparks, consumed by the newly ascended god.

Based on the events in the book, I think Orikan has two divine sparks: one from the aeldari gem (which concentrated thousands of souls, and not any old regular souls, but aeldari souls, so long-lived and powerful), and another one from consuming the Deceiver.

Orikan right now seems to be a Quasi-deity, “he has enough divinity to be spectacularly powerful, but lacks worshipers, or power, has no clerics, no one to pray to him”. He is, I presume, an Ascended Being ( I liked how the Guide describes it, even if it is homebrew, “divinity being absorbed by him, able to walk among the material world unhindered, still bound by their “mortal shacks””).

So I think that Orikan might just become a deity of the Time Domain if he keeps on growing his powers, hopefully turning that divine spark into a fully fledge Godspark. (Extensive Guide)

~Z.

[dwellordream]

BATHING IN BLOOD: THE MEDICINAL CURES OF ANCHORITIC DEVOTION

“...A conflation between physician and mother, however, also emerges in Ancrene Wisse, and the centrality of blood-loss within this conflation is one which I argue had a marked influence upon Julian as she tried to grapple with the full meaning of the Passion sequence she envisioned in 1373. 

Indeed, within the physical and metaphysical frameworks of Ancrene Wisse, it is the shedding of blood that is most closely associated with anchoritic cleansing and healing, both bodily and spiritual – and it is a blood-loss, moreover, which is always already feminine because of the author’s relentless insistence throughout the work upon the fallen female bodies of his audience. 

For example, in Part 8, the author exhorts his female audience to undertake quarterly blood-lettings, a common enough medieval practice, particularly amongst religious, and a practice which, like the menses, was deemed to maintain the correct humoral balance and eliminate physical ailments from the body. 

Indeed, as Cathy McClive has demonstrated, within certain cultural contexts, phlebotomy was actively considered to be a form of induced menstrual bleeding. In the case of the female anchorites of Ancrene Wisse, moreover, this becomes an explicitly homosocial event, during which their normal restrictions and disciplines are to be suspended in favour of more recuperative and leisurely woman-to-woman interaction: 

Hwen 3e beoð ilete blod, 3e ne schule don na þing þe þreo dahes þet ow greueð, ah talkið to ower meidnes ant wið þeawfule talen schurteð ow togederes. 3e mahen swa don ofte hwen ow þuncheð heuie, oðer beoð for sum worltlich þing sare oðer seke. [When you have been bled, you should not do anything for those three days that taxes your strength, but talk to your maids and entertain each other with improving conversation. You may do this often, when you are feeling low, or are upset about some worldly concern, or ill.]

Here, the healing of the female body is depicted as dependent on an elective blood-loss, perhaps associated also with menstruation, but most clearly leading to an increased feminisation of the anchoritic space as the women converse, entertain each other and share each other’s concerns. 

According to medieval medical lore, as mentioned above, the menses provided a natural means for the female body to purge itself of impurities by eliminating regularly those bodily contaminants which accumulated within the womb as a result of the Fall, and in this sense there are again clear correlations between both types of female blood-loss and that of Christ’s salvific bleeding on the cross, which was also necessary to redeem that Fall. 

Indeed, in Part 2 of the text, the author actualises this connection via a specific configuration of the phlebotomised body in terms of Christ’s own blood-loss. In so doing he transforms elective blood shedding from physical therapy into spiritually salvific entity: 

A mon for uuel þet he haueđ ne let him nawt blod o þe seke halue, ah deđ o þe hale, to heale þe seke. Ah in al þe world þe ewes o þe feure, nes bimong al moncun an hal dale ifunden þe mahte beon ilete blod bute Godes bodi ane, þe lette him bold o rode. Nawt o þe earm ane, ah dude o fif halue, forte healen moncun of þe secnesse þet te fif wittes hefden awakenet. Þus, lo, þe hale half ant te cwike dale droh þet uuele blod ut frommard te unhale, ant healde swa þe seke. Þurh blod is in Hali Writ sunne bitacnet. 

[A man who has something wrong with him does not have blood let from the part that is unhealthy, but from one that is healthy, to heal the unhealthy one. But in all the world that was suffering from fever, not one healthy part was found among the whole of humanity that could be bled other than the body of God, who had his blood let on the cross. He had this done not only from the arm, but from five parts of the body, to heal humanity of the sickness that the five senses had caused. And in this way, you see, the healthy and living part drew out that bad blood from the unhealthy one and so healed the sick part. In Holy Scripture, sin is signified by blood.’].

Here God as the ultimate physician causes his son to be phlebotomised for the health of the body of humanity and, in her own regular acts of phlebotomy within the anchorhold, both elective and non-elective, the anchoritic woman is able to unite conceptually with that of the phlebotomist-Christ. Indeed, as Ziegler has demonstrated, such a configuration of a Christus Minutor [bloodletting Christ], whose passion was an act of altruistic phlebotomy, surfaces particularly frequently amongst the Dominican preachers of the period with whom, as Bella Millett has argued, the origins of Ancrene Wisse are associated.

Moreover, according to Thomas Aquinas, debating the Virgin’s menstrual status, Mary had to furnish ‘materia … sanguis mulieris’ [‘the matter which is menstrual blood’] in order to conceive and, later, feed Christ with her own breast-milk. Thus, like Gregory, even Aquinas offers a model which implicates female blood-loss as both Christic and Marian within the salvific schema. Ancrene Wisse’s Dominican connections are further evidenced in the associations drawn by its author between blood-letting and bathing. 

In Part 8, for example, just at the point where the author expounds the aforementioned need for quarterly blood-letting, he later inserts an addition to the text which emphasises the woman’s need to wash regularly since, as the author adds: ‘Nes neauer fulðe Godd leof ’ [‘filth was never dear to God’]. Used within this context, the term fulðe is clearly freighted with both the blood shed from her phlebotomised body and that of her monthly menstrual flow. 

As Caroline Walker Bynum has demonstrated, shed blood, particularly that emanating from a woman’s body, was deemed a powerful contaminant and needed to be instantly cleansed away by washing or bathing. Blood loss and bathing, therefore, were frequently closely associated, both physically and metaphorically, something expressed in the writing of the thirteenth-century Parisian bishop, Ranulphe de la Houblonnière (d. 1288), who explicitly depicts the crucified Christ as undergoing phlebotomy, being washed clean by his own blood and thereby washing clean the whole of humanity.

The messy business of blood-letting, therefore, was redolent with possibility when it came to articulating – and re-enacting – the complexities of sin and salvation. Indeed, in Part 7 of Ancrene Wisse, a section focusing on divine love, the author fully exploits this potential in his depiction of God as a mother-physician whose maternal love is so strong that she is willing to prepare for her own child a bath of blood – clearly her own – in order to save its life: 

Child þet hefde swuch uuel þet him bihofde beað of blod ear hit were ihealet, muchel þe moder luuede hit þe walde þis beað him makien. Þis dude ure Lauerd us þe weren se seke of sunne, ant swa isulet þer-wið, þet na þing ne mahte healen us ne cleansin us bute his blod ane, for swa he hit walde. [If a child had such an illness that it needed a bath of blood before it could be healed, the mother who was willing to provide this bath for it would love it very much. Our Lord did this for us – who were so infected with sin, and so polluted with it, that nothing could heal or cleanse us except for his blood … His love makes a bath of his blood – because that is what he wished.]

Here, of course we have a God who is depicted in terms of the ultimate maternal sacrifice, drawing not only upon that of the Virgin Mother who gave up her own child for human redemption, but also that of the worldly parturient mother whose life was frequently endangered by postpartum haemorrhage and other such complications. 

Indeed, such a reading of this episode is supported medically by the cure promoted for excessive post-partum blood flow in the so-called ‘Trotula text’, the popular De Curis Mulierum [On Treatments for Women], which prescribes that the bleeding woman be placed ‘frequenter in balnis … ad restringendum sanguinem’ [‘frequently in baths … in order to restrain the blood’].

No doubt such a ‘cure’ would produce bath after bath of bloodied water in the attempts to staunch the flow and wash her clean of her own blood – certainly enough to rival the copious blood and water shed from the side-wound of Christ at the crucifixion. It is clear, therefore, that both Ancrene Wisse and De Curis Mulierum associate the curative properties of the blood-bath with a maternal blood sacrifice, offering nuance to Augustine’s notion of caritas est sanitas and recasting it most emphatically within the feminine frame of maternal love. 

The image of the divine blood-bath is rare before Ancrene Wisse, although it provides a dramatic episode within contemporary traditions of the Grail romance, within which it is very much associated with the feminine. For example, in one thirteenth-century tradition, Perceval’s sister, Dindrane, offers her virginal blood for a leprous lady to bathe in as a cure for her affliction. In so doing, she also prevents Galahad, Perceval and Bors from having to sacrifice their own lives in an unequal battle in order to cure the same lady by means of their own male blood-shed.

The religious undercurrents of these episodes are clear and it is likely that the authors shared with the Ancrene Wisse author in drawing on the popular Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder as a source. Dating from the first century, Pliny’s widely circulated work at one point expresses deep anxieties regarding Egyptian beliefs in the prophylactic properties of the human blood-bath against leprosy, writing that ‘cum in reges incidisset, populis funebre, quippe in balineis solia temperabantur humano sanguine ad medicinam eam’ [‘When kings were attacked [by leprosy], it was a deadly thing for the inhabitants, because the tubs in the baths used to be prepared with warm human blood for its treatment.’]

Clearly part of an anti pagan propagandist enterprise, Pliny’s depiction also found its way into the vitae of the Emperor Constantine, as recorded in the Legenda Aurea [Golden Legend] written by the Dominican Jacobus de Voragine in the mid thirteenth century (again a work which certainly drew on some of the same sources as Ancrene Wisse). Here Voragine recounts how, in an attempt to cure his own leprosy, the emperor was discouraged from sacrificing hundreds of small infants and bathing in their blood by the cries of three thousand distraught mothers, again allying the blood sacrifice with the maternal feminine.

Folkloric though these tales may be, they do, however, posit what Peggy McCracken has termed ‘the gendered value of blood in medieval texts’. They also play most neatly into the development of a devotional hermeneutic which brings together the poetics of maternal sacrifice and the pragmatics of medicinal cure.”

-  Liz Herbert McAvoy, Medicine, Religion and Gender in Medieval Culture

[benevolentbirdgal]

A guide to 13 Jewish holidays / Jewish Writing Advice

Depending on how you want to count, there are theoretically 47 Jewish holidays, assuming you count all minor, major, and modern celebrations, both minor and major fasts, special shabbats, and each Rosh Chodesh (new month) individually. Since that post would be A) neverending, B) probably not useful in its entirety here, and C) really not applicable to most Jews you meet or write, I’m going to tell you about 13 celebrations (12 holidays plus the category of Rosh Chodesh and the category of special Shabbats), which will be plenty long enough. Maybe I’ll write a super-niche passionate post about the minor fasts or modern holidays later, but today is not that day. 

Usual disclaimers: I’m one me. The Jewish community is 14 million and super diverse. These are broad strokes and local tradition may vary. I operate from an American context and communal gathering/food sharing practices come from the Before Times (in some cases, the long before now times). 

I’m going to go in the order of the Jewish calendar, instead of likelihood of celebration, and note the most popular ones as I go. Three general notes as well: I will be using the most common transliteration/translation of the Hebrew names, Jewish holidays (and days in general) start at sunset and operate on a separate calendar that fluctuates relative to the secular Gregorian calendar. The Hebrew dates are listed with the months they generally fall in on the Gregorian calendar. Holidays marked with an * will likely merit their own list at some point. 

Additionally, how long many holidays last also varies depending on location. For some holidays (NOT fasts), diaspora (outside Israel) Jews celebrate an extra day for Jewish-diaspora-is-complicated-story-for-another-time reasons. I will note these holidays. 

*Rosh HaShanah (Tishrei 1, September-October): Jewish new year (well, one of four, but for the purposes of our discussion today, the Jewish new year). 1a. Typically celebrated by synagogue attendance, consumption of foods that are sweet and/or round (or have heads, like fish heads). Longer services than normal Saturday morning services but not by much, even when combined with regular Shabbat services. Big time to gather with families for a large meal. 1b. Lots of blowing of shofars at specific times, shofars, which are cleaned and sometimes painted ceremonial ram’s horns (we’re operating on 1200 B.C.E. tech here). Some of us are very good at blowing the shofar. Some of us are assuredly not.  1c. One of the most common holidays to celebrate, part of the “High Holidays.” If your character is remotely observant or has a very Jewish family, they celebrate this holiday.  1d. One day in Israel, two in the diaspora. 

Yom Kippur (Tishrei 10, September-October): The second holiday in the “High Holidays.” Yom Kippur is ten days after Rosh HaShanah, known as the “Days of Awe” (or the “Days of Repentance”). The Days of Awe, outside of orthodoxy and people who do prayers every day, aren’t really celebrated outside of asking people for forgiveness and tashlich (throwing away sins by yeeting small pieces of bread or other small foodstuffs into a pond). 2a. Yom Kippur is a 25 hour fast. Fasting on Yom Kippur means the following: No food. No water. Medication is typically okay (and most denominations are 100% okay with food/water necessary to accompany medication). No sex. This is usually extended to no sexual contact in general. No wearing of leather. You’ll see a lot of sneakers on Yom Kippur. No perfumes or lotions. Bathing/washing. This one is the one most people ditch. 2b. Jewish “adults” who are not health-impaired are expected to fast. Pregnant women, sick people, and the elderly explicitly get a choice and most of the former two do not fast. Lots of old folks do and have very strong opinions about it (I fast, but have gotten second-hand awkward watching a healthy 23-year-old explain why they aren’t doing so to an 89 year old survivor who is). There are young/healthy/not pregnant people who choose not to fast, but this is generally frowned upon. 2c. One day holiday regardless of location. Starts at beginning of sunset one day and ends at complete darkness (ideally with three stars in the sky) the next. Fasts are typically broken as a group over a large meal.  2d. It’s very likely that your Jewish character “celebrates” Yom Kippur and whether they fast or not is likely a point of contention with their family. 2e. There are a bunch of different services and they are usually heinously long.  2f. Shofars are also super important here.  2g. Wearing white is traditional in many communities.  2h. Napping is a popular way to pass the time, especially among less traditionally observant Jews.

*Sukkot (Tishrei 15-22, September-October): The Festival of Booths, basically the Jewish Harvest Festival.  3a. Fairly common to celebrate but not as much as the High Holidays, Passover, or Hannukah.  3b. Celebrated by building a Sukkah, which is an at-least-three-sided TEMPORARY structure with a natural roof (corn, leaves, bamboo) that you can see the stars through. People will eat and sleep in the Sukkah, and go “Sukkah hopping” to visit other families’ Sukkahs.  3c. In addition to regular guests, there is kabbalah and traditional mysticism that the a different guest from Jewish history will join you in the Sukkah each night, known as the Ushpizin. The Ushpizin  Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph and David) are all male, and in the 20th century some Jews began the custom of honoring Ushpizot (female guests as well, adding Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Hulda, and Esther (although some obscure lists of Ushpizot date back to the 15th century). 3d. Your Jewish character may not have a Sukkah. Their temple will have a communal one.  3e. It is customary to shake a lulav and etrog, also known as the four species. Three leaves and a citrus from specific plants are held together and shook in all six directions after the recitation of a prayer. I like to call this shake-the-plant, but it actually has a ton of different spiritual meanings traditionally ascribed to it. There is also a processional in synagogue with the lulav and etrog. 

Shmeni Atzeret (Tishrei 22, September-October): In Israel, the one day after Sukkot and in the diaspora the last day of Sukkot and the day after. There are some extra prayers and it marks a seasonal shift in prayers pertaining to rain. Unless your character is particularly religious/observant, they aren’t going to do anything extra. This holiday’s functions were mostly relevant during the Temple Periods in ancient Israel. 

*Simchat Torah (Tishrei 23, September-October): Simchat Torah celebrates the restarting of the Torah-reading cycle and overlaps with the second day of Shmeni Atzeret where there is a second day. Unlike in some other faiths where the congregation or leader generally chooses the text of the day, Jewish congregations are bound by the Parsha (portion) of the week for formal services/readings (as opposed to other forms of study). The 54 parshas are read over the course of the Jewish year, and the resetting of that cycle is Simchat Torah. In synagogues during services readings from from Torahs, which are large, heavy, physical scrolls. This is relevant during Simchat Torah particularly.  5a. Two days in the diaspora, one day in Israel. Intermediate level popularity.  5b. Seven hakafot (professionals) are performed by dancing around the synagogue while members alternate carrying the Torah. This is considered an honor. Simchat Torah is usually the only day all the Torahs are brought out (or at least the ones that are in good enough shape to be carried). Dancing is mixed outside of orthodoxy and separated within orthodoxy. Only Jewish adults are permitted to carry the Torah. Outside of orthodoxy this includes both men and women. Within some orthodox congregations, women-only circles will also include Torahs in their dancing.  5c. There are also smaller not-Torah-but-still-Holy scrolls and Torah-shaped-stuffies that children will sometimes carry and dance with.  5d. After the dancing, the final parsha is read aloud. This is the only time we read Torah at night (from the physical object Torah - we read books of the Torah in other forms at any hour). The scroll is then rolled back all the way to the first reading. Reading the first or last reading is a great honor. 

*Hanukkah (Kislev 25 - Tevet 2, November-December): Hannukah celebrates the victory of the Maccabees over the political and cultural oppression of the ancient Greeks in the 160s B.C.E. After the victory of the priestly-class-turned-warrior-bros over their oppressors, the Maccabees found the Temple seriously wrecked, both on a physical and spiritual level. They wanted to rededicate the temple, but only found one itty-bitty little jar of oil for the Menorah (seven-branched candelabra in the Temple), enough for one day. They figured it was better than nothing, and immediately sent out for more oil, which took eight days. That was the miracle of the lights, and where the Hanukiyah (eight-branched variant of the Menorah) comes from since the oil for one day lasted eight.  6a. Hanukkah is an immensely popular eight day festival. 6b. Religiously, Hanukkah actually isn’t super important. Religiously-significant practices for the holiday are lighting a Hannukiyah, telling the story of Hanukkah, and eating greasy foods.  6c. There are approximately a shabillion ways to spell Hanukkah, it’s not just  you. There are actually only two acceptable (really only one 100%) Hebrew spellings but transliteration is a bitch sometimes.  6d. Although not “Jewish Christmas” gifts on Hanukkah are a thing because of the proximity to Christmas. Hanukkah gifts as they now are are really a 1950s-forward thing because Jewish kids were starting to have Christian friends en-masse who were getting Christmas gifts at the same time a lot of the U.S. was experiencing an economic boom. Purim is actually the traditional gifting holiday.  6e. Related: Hanukkah parties are very popular, but much more cultural than religious.  6f. Dreidels have a weird AF history and their dubious origins (and half-dozen possible theories) truly merit their own post. In the U.S. they are played with chocolate coins or other not-money, elsewhere children frequently use their local equivalent of pennies instead. 

Tu Bishvat (Shevat 15, February-March): The Jewish new year/birthday of the trees. Functions like a Jewish Earth day - planting trees is popular. Fresh fruits are consumed in celebration of what trees give us. Some more religious families also do a ceremonial meal, a Tu Bishvat seder, but most Jews don’t. 

*Purim (Adar 14, February-March): Purim, an immensely popular holiday celebrates the survival of the Jews during the first exile period in the ancient kingdom of Persia. The text celebrates the strength of our community and the chutzpah of a Jewish woman, and is usually celebrated in practice like Jewish Halloween.  8a. The story really merits its own post, but the short of it is because shenanigans, antisemites, and booze-hound kings a Jewish lady named Hadassah became queen (hiding her Jewish identity and taking the Esther to do so), the king’s head advisor Haman wanted to kill-the-Jews-tm, Esther was able to prevent it by convincing the king that the Jews should be able to fight back, the Jews did so and won, Haman was executed, and Esther’s cousin/bestie Mordechai became the new advisor. [really, the full story is Hollywood-level drama, another post to come.] 8b.  Communities gather together to do communal readings of the book of Esther (in Hebrew or the lingua franca), it’s only about 10 chapters and takes an hour or two. The megillah is read once in the night and once in the day. Technically there are several megillahs for different books/holidays, but Jews are usually referring to Megalilat Esther (the book of Esther) when they say the megillah, definitely so on Purim. 8c. Costumes are donned by adults and children alike, both inspired by the story and otherwise. This is in honor of the hiddenness in the story (with both Esther and some other stuff we don’t have time for today). Synagogues often hold costume contests as a small break between chapters.  8d. Readings get ROWDY. It’s customary to boo and make noise using little noisemakers when Haman’s name is said aloud, as with the names of his also Jew-hating sons (which are traditionally said in one breath). There are also certain lines of the megillah read out loud together.  8e. It is a mizvah to give gifts (typically of food) to friends as well as to charity on Purim (two separate mitzvahs).  8f. It’s also a mitzvah to have a big special meal.  8g. It’s a common misconception that it’s a mitzvah to get so lit on Purim you can’t tell the difference between Haman the wicked and Mordechai the blessed. It’s not a Mitzvah, but there is some commentary in the Talmud saying that, so while not a commandment, “get lit to honor the party king goy who vouched for us and also because Jewish history requires drinking sometimes” is a historically-rooted take. Consequently, it’s very popular to drink a lot on Purim.  8h. Purim is, for all of the above, immensely popular with both children and adults despite being dark AF.  8i. Purim is the last holiday in the Torah itself (Hannukah is after).  8j. Purim is a one-day holiday unless you’re in a walled city (long story). 

*Passover (Nissan 15-22, March-April): Arguably the most important holiday, theologically. Passover celebrates the Exodus from Egypt.  9a. Families gather for Seders on the first night (Israel) and second night (Diaspora). The holiday is 7/8 days long and one of the most common to celebrate. In normal years it’s common for families to travel to have large gatherings together.  9b. In addition to regular kosher laws, “chametz” (basically leavened bread and bread-like things and most foods that bring joy). There are five grains that can make chametz, wheat, rye, barley, oats, and spelt.  Some communities historically forbade other foods that could be mistaken for chametz, like the Ashkenazi forbiddance of kitanyot (legumes, rice, corn, certain seeds), although that was revoked/voted on to be not an official custom by nonorthodox denominations in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.  9c. Seders are ceremonial meals with 15 steps, including the actual meal itself. The quickest Seders run maybe an hour plus the meal. The longest can run upwards of 6-8, depending on the denomination, family, and customs. It almost goes without saying that there’s a lot of food and wine involved.  9d. In addition to be prohibited for consumption, Chametz cannot be possessed or consumed on Passover, so Jews clean out their houses of Chametz, and temporarily sell it to a gentile friend or family member for the duration of the holiday.  9e. Passover-specific hanger is very real, especially after the post-Seder food-coma wears off. Especially if you already have dietary restrictions and can’t just do a meat-fast.  9f. During the Seder, the story of Passover is gradually told from Moses to the plagues to the Exodus itself. It is a fairly interactive telling/ceremony and the specific rituals to different parts of the Seder merit their own post.  9g. Synagogues also hold Seders, but at-home ones are very common. Whose home to go to for the Seder is often a very political choice. 

Lag BaOmer (Iyyar 18 for Ashkenazi, Iyyar 19 for Sephardi, May): The counting of the Omer is from the second day of Passover to Shavout. Passover is the leave from Egypt, Shavout is the getting of the Torah, the Omer is the in-between time. There are a bunch of restrictions during the Omer for long-story reasons, but  haircuts, shaving, listening to instrumental music, weddings, parties, and dinners with dancing are forbidden during the Omer. Lag BaOmer, the 33rd day of this count, is the exception. 10a. Consequently, for Jews who are abstaining from the aforementioned things, Lag BaOmer is popular to do those things.  10b. Many Jewish schools and synagogues will have counting activities for kids and prizes if they can count all the way to Shavuot on their sticker chart or equivalent.  10c. One day regardless of location.   10d. Bonfires are a super popular activity, usually accompanied by feasts. 10e. Not as popular as some others. 

Shavout (Sivan 6, May-June): Shavout celebrates the day Moses came down with the Torah and when the ancient Israelites in the desert formally chose to enter their covenant with God at Mount Sinai. It was also celebrated as an additional harvest festival in ancient times.  11a. Two days in the diaspora, one day in Israel. 11b. The “dairy holiday” because the Jews didn’t have any kosher meat and had just received the laws, including kosher.  12c. The book of Ruth is read on Shavout. There are several possible explanations, but the most popular is that she choose to be Jewish, just as the Jews did at Sinai.  12d. Torah studying all-nighters are traditional.  12e. Not as popular as some other holidays. 

Rosh Chodesh (varies, 1st of every Hebrew month): There are 12 Hebrew months, except for leap years which have a second Adar. The first day of each month is known as Rosh Chodesh. It is unlikely your Jewish character does anything for it, unless they’re very religious, work at a synagogue, happen to be at shul anyways for another reason, or go to a Jewish school. If any of those are true, their prayers will have extra prayers (especially on Shabbat or another holiday).  12a. Rosh Chodeshes are traditionally women’s time/a moment set aside to honor women. 

Special Shabbats (varies): There are eight special Shabbats scattered around the year right before or after a big holiday. Services are longer and special prayers are added, but unless your character goes to shul or is in another circumstance where they pray consistently, they likely won’t know/care/notice. 

Some of these topics are also totally their own posts, but this is a general overview of the most important/common holidays and already super long!

[jennamoran]

Approaches to Aspect

Lately I’ve been working on the Aspect chapter for Nobilis 4th.

The first time I opened up the file, it was honestly pretty hard to say anything about the trait.

Like, there wasn’t much to work with in Nobilis 2nd (or, for that matter, 3e.)

And, like, it’s a bland trait, right?

So I went for

Aspect is the self—the body and the mind, empowered. It is the human being, ascended, raised up unto the level of divinity.

The Aspect attribute is the measure of an Imperator’s miraculous investment in a Power’s body and mind. It is the degree to which they are no longer substance, but essence; no longer meat and bone and tangled mind, but light, but breath, but fire.

Each level of Aspect costs 2 points and makes the miracles of body and mind less costly. With no points in Aspect, at Aspect 0, a character is fundamentally mortal, albeit a mortal with the identity of a god; to act with the inhuman grace that is characteristic of the Powers is exhausting, rare, and exhilarating. At the peak of the Attribute, at Aspect 7, the character has burned away their mortality in the crucible of what they have become:

An equivalently exhausting effort will suffice to chase down a bullet, shove past stone walls, or write an epic novel in a night.

... before diving straight into the Attribute descriptions.

         Honestly, Though

That was kind of lame, and I knew it was kind of lame; so eventually, I dragged myself back around to it and tried something more expansive, more thematic:

Aspect is freedom from the treacheries and pains and failings of the flesh and mind. It is the ability to take action, to take the kinds of actions you could already take, perfected.

In becoming a Power, the mortal body and brain are, at least in potential, alloyed with a divine pith. The mortal architecture of a person’s being is wedded to a spiritual coprocessor, a model of their self, that flows through their bones, their nerves, their brain, their blood. When the divine will in them demands they act, that they solve a puzzle or outrace a car or whatever else they may be physically or mentally called upon to do, that miraculous presence woven through them responds:

Not by purely mortal means, but in miraculous fashion, do they respond.

The Powers speak of this as being perfected to the image of themselves—that a human Power, the most common kind on Earth, becomes an idealized human. That a Power born or reshaped into an owl would become an idealized owl, instead; a dragon, an idealized dragon; an ai or walking tree, an idealized ai or walking tree. The vain become, in some sense, more ideally vain. The passionate, more ideally passionate.

Whatever the Power was, they become more.

This is to some extent incoherent. It is impossible to become “more” oneself, as one is at 100% capacity there already. The Powers imagine that a human who can, in a burst of effort, outrun a car, while running in a generally human fashion and posture, is an idealized human; in fact, such a being is necessarily not “human” at all. In receiving a forcible infusion of the divine, a Power does not become more themselves; they become something else.

Nevertheless, it is the nature and the quality of Aspect to reinforce and enhance a given image of the character, rather than to take it in completely new directions; to make them better, along an essentially quantitative axis defined by a concept of their identity.

Whose concept?

It appears likely that it is a mélange of the Power’s self-concept and the Imperator’s concept of them in the instant of their enNoblement. That the Imperator looks upon, say, a human, and sees the shape of humanity in it, and the loose shape of their specific identity, and enhances that with the fire of divinity; and, as a reference point, a guidepost to keep from screwing the process up entirely, less confident or more scrupulous Imperators may bind a portion of this enhancement to the Power’s concept of themselves as well. In some cases, if the Imperator is liberal in drawing on the Power’s own mindset or the Power’s Aspect is low, this concept will drift naturally as the Power’s concept of self changes; in others, the core of their Aspect may only be shaped by the grooves the Power’s use of Aspect wears in it over time.

Imperators can get it wrong, and easily—they’re not good at understanding people, and not all of them have a strong grasp of exactly how not good at understanding people they are. Fortunately or unfortunately, however, if an Imperator gets it wrong enough that it’s obvious, that usually also warps and twists the Power’s mind and body to match:

If an Imperator thinks a Power can fly and bite through boulders, they’ll probably wind up with wings and a jaw they can unhinge, rather than the bizarre ability to run so fast they fly. If an Imperator gets confused and thinks that their lookalike Power is a famous chef, the Power will probably acquire an innate flair for and interest in the culinary arts even when they’re not using Aspect miracles at all. Induced dysphoria is rare and nonsense outcomes much rarer.

Even when there are no imposed changes, though, or when the Power is completely acclimated to every change the Imperator makes, there’s a subtle alienation that can accompany the recognition that one has been perfected to another being’s ideals. There’s an awkwardness to being aware that “peak human” (or “peak owl” or whatnot) is just “peak human” in a particular Imperator’s eyes.

On the other hand, Aspect’s also the most generally delightful of the Attributes the Powers possess. Assuming that one hasn’t been warped in any unfortunate fashion, it offers a lightness and competence in physical and mental action that is frankly enviable. A Power can do any task with grace and verve, can enjoy the full range of activities open to their mind and their body, can experience existence with the flexibility and resilience of a child and capability beyond any adult’s. They can wrestle tigers into submission in the morning, knock out a short story and a bit of handcrafts over lunch, get into an impromptu bassoon contest on the subway, and spend their evening talking hostage-takers down—

And that’s at the low end, assuming that they won’t need to do things like “stomping open the earth,” “writing the immortal poem of the 21st century,” or “redirecting a few bullets while they’re still in midair.”

��     At That Time

The best thought I had for what the Aspect Cost was going to be was---to my substantial surprise---Burn.

        See

See, my original plan, the thing I’d been vaguely expecting I was going to do ever since I loosely conceptualized Nobilis 4th in the late-Glitch-development era, was that Aspect’s Cost would be a lost connection to your human self. That, fundamentally, it would be alienation from humanity.

It was hard to find a good catchy phrase for that, I struggled, I tried, like Rift and Gulf and Schism and Alienation (perfect, but too long) and Distance and Distortion and Fray and Char and Hollow. I’d even tried Divinity, on the theory that I could have, like, Divinity as the Aspect Cost, and maybe Rule as the Domain Cost; and the main problem with Divinity was that it was hard to sell it as a bad thing.

(Glitch’s system is forgiving enough that it might break down a little if players started thinking Costs were a good thing to have in character. They wouldn’t figure out they were wrong about that quickly enough, there’d just be a very slow-building dissonance over time!)

     Except

When I actually thought about a Power trying to, like, push their Aspect, I couldn’t figure out how they’d be doing that by losing track of their humanity. I could see how doing that would help them forget their humanity, but there was weirdness there, like, if I did it that end around then the implication would be that any Power could use any level of Aspect comfortably and freely and the only problem was that at higher levels they risked getting confused about who they were!

And that’d be ... interesting! But not right.

Like, when a Power pushes their Aspect, just like when a mortal pushes their Ability, it feels like there should be effort. It feels like there should be concentration, will, intensity.

And really that’s just Wear, but the idea of having Aspect and Ability share a Cost was broken, and the idea of Aspect’s Cost just being Ability’s Cost in a miraculous suit was broken too---

But if I combined the idea of exertion with the idea that you could damage your connection to yourself, to your humanity?

That you could be, well, burning away the complexity in yourself, the mortality, the you you used to be?

It wasn’t quite the same as Glitch’s Burn, but you could see the kinship there!

        I Wanted

There was this idea I was toying with, which was the idea that maybe Domain was connected to a duty that the character had to the nature of their Estate.

Like:

There’d been discussion on the discord about whether the Power of Hunger was obligated to go around, you know, making people not hungry so much, or making it not so unpleasant, and whether the Power of Fire should, like, stop people from getting burned, and all that; and there was this vague implicit idea that had been floating around since the beginning of Nobilis that, yeah, you do have an ethical obligation to fight suffering ... but also, maybe, that the Nobilis have a kind of duty of care to their Estate, to its nature? Too?

Which is why you can’t just assume that the Powers of Hunger and Fire etc. are jerks, on the basis of, like, hunger and fire; and, uh, why the Power of 19th Century Detroit hasn’t completely rethought 19th Century Detroit as, like, a major world religion that gives real ninja powers; and why, like, the Power of Knives doesn’t just let you shoot bullets from them or whatever even though it would indubitably make knives more useful and popular.

(Or, like, if they’re pacifists, why you can’t use knives to, I dunno, cut away bad personality traits? and why rabbits don’t have laser eyes? and so on?)

It would need to be loose enough that if the Power of Rabbits really wanted to give them laser eyes, it’d be fine; but, like, the point is: I was thinking about having a thing like that in the game.

And it seemed to me that the corresponding idea for Aspect would be a ... kind of duty of care to yourself.

This was an exciting idea to me, and it connected to the Burn thing, and the main problem was, it was a flop:

The Duty of Self-Care

Aspect is fundamentally entangled with what can be considered a Power’s duty of care towards themselves, for it is in damaging themselves that they may push past its limits. It is in sacrificing some of the complexity and independence of their existence to adhere to that divine internal mold; in forcing past their natural limits; in stoking the fire of divinity within them past the levels that its flesh can bear, or, at higher levels of Aspect, past its own natural concentration and intensity, that they may reach the higher-level miracles of this trait.

In the public ethos of the Powers—that is, in the code that they are willing to discuss openly, without ensuring that no judgmental Imperators or enemies who might report to the Locust Court are listening—a Power should always be willing to burn themselves out, utterly, in their Imperator’s service. And, publicly or privately, almost any Power will be willing to damage themselves if the alternative is losing a battle with higher stakes than damage; and most Powers are inclined to think that, as with mortal exercise, a measured amount of pushing oneself miraculously is healthier than none.

... but that said, even the strictest loyalists to the Imperators or the War generally concede that a Power has a duty to protect the Imperator’s investment in them by not recklessly destroying themselves; and on a subtler philosophical level, it is commonly if not universally agreed upon that a Power should seek to respect themselves and to flourish, even if only in the name of greater effectiveness, and that this too imposes a duty of self-care.

Nobilis will assume, even if some Powers do not, that this duty exists; that on some fundamental level a Power should have a care for their own health and being. Thus, in nourishing and honoring that health and being they may generally restore their reserves of Aspect-related strength; in failing in the duty of self-care, they may potentially damage those reserves; and the “story” of pushing themselves too far may take the form of their failing in that duty of self-care.

       So

So here was a question that occurred to me:

Why was it a flop?

I liked the abstract idea of including self-care in the game, it fit with the ideas I had going, it built on the thematic movements I had going in Glitch, but it ultimately just wound up feeling ... flat.

        Ultimately

Ultimately what I pinpointed as my mistake was at the level of writer attitude.

I needed to remember, I think, what it was to be excited about Nobilis, and why one would be excited about Nobilis.

I mean---

I think it is important for a modern Nobilis to grapple with the way Imperators dehumanize Nobilis and dispossess them from themselves, much less the problematic ways that the Nobilis must deal with the world as a whole ...

But also, and even more importantly, I needed to go back ten or twenty years in my mindspace, to when the world of magic and miracles and things realer and truer than this was amazing.

I couldn’t quite square this with the Nobilis 2nd writing style that I’d used for Glitch, because my excited writing style has evolved, but I didn’t have to fall back to 3e’s voice either;

I think, this is likely the tone I’ll want to use, in the end:

       Aspect

Unfortunately, I had at some point caught on fire; but, I was having way too much fun just then to STOP.

— from Before the Last Leaves Tumble, by Ameline Skalski

Aspect is being what you always should have been. Aspect is the Attribute that makes you magic.

Or, if you want a more formal language here: that maketh you miraculous.

The slumbering potential that lives within your flesh and brain, Aspect will allow to flourish. The fire of godhood that could arc along your nerves and bones, it will awaken. If it is possible to envision a way in which the very substance of a character can stand alongside the Imperators, the Excrucians, the entities of miracle, Aspect is the thing that gets them there.

It is alienating and it is transfiguring.

It is common, even inevitable, to lose oneself in it. It is impossible to hang on to being human, as humans are human, if one regularly lives as a beast of the divine. To live in the presence of Aspect is to throw oneself into a river of greatness, to give oneself over to a grandness of intention uncontainable within the base mortality that one had started with; it is all-consuming, all-absorbing, it leaves no room for stability or clinging to the self one held before.

The ego of a mortal that began the journey into Nobility is as a boat upon a storm-tossed river, a kayak over a waterfall, a glinting fish before the gaping maw of the leviathan: it cannot hope to steer, but only to find its reflection, its greater image, in the wild power that there roars. It can only hope that the divine image of the character is in some meaningful sense the same being as their starting self, or at least a parallel and mostly isomorphic one, before it casts itself away into the rush.

There is a deep rightness to it that makes this tempting. It is traditional to stare into the maw of Aspect and see one’s true self, one’s better self, envisioned. It is traditional to laugh with joy when one first understands what one can be, and again and again as one experiences it.

It is only that this inherently privileges a divine view and disdains the worth of the mortal self that may be concerning; only that the idea of a “true self” is, perhaps, a contradiction, when a self is only its own being. Aspect is an enhancement in that it is endlessly freeing; to activate it, or to attain it, is to cast away the weight of the world, the crippling limits that have chained one down, and be free at last to live as one has wished to live. But it is also a transformation that is well known to be shaped as much by outside forces as by the character themselves:

The model for the divine human was inherent in the world before any non-miraculous human living now was born. The model for a Noble, in the fullness of their Aspect-granted strength, is as much that, and their Imperator’s conception of what they ought to be, as it is the unshackling of something that lived within the self that was there before.

Imperial hegemony thus becomes a mediating element in the process of self-actualization; an unsettling guiding hand that shapes what one is and what one should be, although in fairness without this slightly suspect action of enablement not even one in ten thousand Powers would have become the miraculous things that they are now.

The Aspect attribute, then, is the measure of an Imperator’s divine investment in a Power’s body and mind. It is the degree to which they have been exalted, raised up, made no longer things of the physical world but the breath of the divine. It is the extent to which they have been recast and remade, rather than simply empowered, as beings on the order of the gods.

To be Aspect 0 is to be tangled meat and bone and mind; to be Aspect 7 is to be light, and breath, and fire.

Each level of Aspect costs 2 points and makes miracles of the body and the mind less costly. With no points in Aspect, a character is fundamentally mortal; they are disinclined to take truly miraculous action, and even enhancing their mundane selves can be exhausting. At Aspect 7, the character has burned away their mortality in the crucible of what they have become:

Their every action can be casually miraculous, and if they exhaust themselves they can chase down a bullet, shove past stone walls, or write an epic novel in a night.

A character may purchase “Gifts” that relate to Aspect. These represent personal specialties and tricks within the broader field of Aspect. Some of these Gifts appear later, along with a general system for constructing your own Gifts.

                 Cost

Currently I’m actually back to Divinity as the Cost again, or, rather, “Godhead,” but that’s relying on my ability to make things feel a little sharper and faster than they do in Glitch---

It may very well flop back to Burn, or even to Aspect Miracle Points, if need be, if that’s what I need to use to capture the twin senses of “losing yourself to divinity” and “pushing too hard.”

       Anyway!

That’s where I am! Aspect chapter almost complete, which will mark the official launch of the Nobilis 4e project, at least in my brain.

I’ll be back to the Art of Glitch tomorrow---here, I mean, anyway---

I just wanted to share what was going on in my writing right this second, a bit, first! ^_^

Please enjoy!

[heliosthegriffin]

As always, great ideas. I too have not played Dnd, but I've been playing Pathfinder:Kingmaker videogame, and that's just 3e with the serial numbers filed off.

I think I've come to a compromise with Crocea Mors, to make it powerful, but restrictive. In that, it's just a very well made, durable, and most of all, sharp sword, but under special circumstances it acts like a Holy Avenger. Otherwise it's just a +3 Adamantine Longsword.

What I'm thinking is that the sword has spiritual connection to some sort of Celestial being that blessed the sword at some point in the past for a brave Arc fighter, that would grant them power facing evil as long as they were good and just.

That connection is still there, and the the wielder can still communication with the Solar, but unfortunately as a immortal being, it doesn't get why morals from centuries ago have gone out of fashion, and expects the Arc to act like it.

'What do you mean dueling has gone out of fashion?'

'Wait, don't stab someone in the back!'

'The man's down! You can't stab a man while he's down!'

'Women can hold a magistrate office?'

You know things like that, I also like the idea of it having conditional power, similar to Excalibur Proto, in that to draw it's maximum power, (You know Emperor's Flaming Sword Mode) he needs to meet all the solar's requirements.

Like.

Facing a opponent in a honorable duel/Opponent more powerful than oneself.

Facing a evil being/Grimm/Undead/Demon/Beings that defy natural order.

Being used by a lawful and good man. This is a flexible one, as being lawful means acting in benefit to society in that moment, such as protecting a city. But for the most part, it also means acting in a chivarlous and paragon like, being a ideal to strive for.

Acting as the defender of meek and innocent.

Facing overwhelming opposition such as holding off a army by oneself, like Roland.

The battle must not be for personal gain.

To defend all those with Souls.

Self-Sacrifice. To be wiling to die to save others.

This is all up for change though.

*Looks at the Spear stuck as a dagger* You son of a gun, I'm in. In fact with the weapons being part of the same family of weapons, then that opens up the option for bring in Branch members of the Arc family. Maybe.

Anyway, I'm in love with the idea of Jaune finding the Dore Fier as a knife and until told otherwise, never realizing it can extend as a spear. It was just such a good knife, why would he suspect otherwise?

Jaune is a loot goblin, that is confirmed here and now. If they're is use for a magical item, he will find it.

Ok fine, let they're gynoids. I'm being sold more and more on the idea by the paragraph. I can imagine them forming a heirarcy based on who works the closest with they're 'Master,' only for it to be constantly upset as Jaune randomly promotes his 'Servants' for whatever task he needs one to do. They are not used to having fluid roles.

Oh, they will definately be at odds with modern life. It will trash Jaune's rep, and I'm all here for it. Poor, Blake will be seething. (read jealous.)

That said, I'm thinking Jaune only gets a handful at first, and the Gynoid are searching for more sleeping sister-units, to awaken to serve they're 'Master', with only one or two, at first, handing around Jaune. One as a maid, and the other as a follower.

They absolutely loathe it when Jaune does anything by himself, he's they're reason to exist now! So, yeah, it's gonna be fun to explain.

Well, how can I resist Jaune being picked up like a angry tom cat, by a Elm sized droid, that's too funny. Jaune being suffocated by Elm and the Droid confirmed.

Oh, I'm using all those ideas for Neo's chicanery. I'm totally using the scene from Golden Kamui/100 Gf's where Jaune's solution to dealing with love potion'd girl is to wreastling them into submission! Wait, it's having the wrong effect!

Or better yet... I just use that scene from the Dresden Files, and have Jaune make them close they're eyes and get ready, then pour ice water on them.

Neo is definitely a Troll, and her morality is a roulette wheel! If it's funny do it, if it makes even more funny, do it more! She definitely doesn't get why Jaune does what he does, but it's entertaining for sure! That said, what's with the lack of boning, does she have to do everything around here? Looks like its up to her to get this started!

Her little moments of kindness with will be sweet, even more so when she had to understands that Jaune is much more vulnerable than he lets on. Then having to figure out, why Jaune would take a hit for her that might kill him. For no reward or pleasure, it would utterly confuse her.

Does Virtual Reality count as a pocket dimension? Yeah, I think they'll probably be some alternate realities, but nothing set in stone. So you can still sell me on it.

magical girl rwby discussion thread

@heliosthegriffin

people were complaining that the other thread was getting too long so I figured we can restart the discussion here. question do you have summer still alive in your au? i really think you should, it'll be a great way to distance yourself from cannon and the idea of a retired magical girl now being a full-grown woman is amusing to me.

like just the idea that she got a normal job after everything she went through is funny maybe have raven die in this au? have her be a previous magical girl who didn't make it, was taken down by a normal human and not even a grimm. hence why the girls have to keep their secret identities as criminals won't hesitate to try and take that power for their own.

also consider neo as an evil magical girl, or maybe a member of the fae, more on jaune's side of urban horror fantasy than rwby's magical girl anime but she refuses to fuck off so now jaune has her following him everywhere. because his suffering amuses her. maybe even have her be a threat to jaune in that she'll offer him power if he'll make a deal with her but jaune's hesitant to find out what she wants in exchange of course rwby doesn't know that jaune knows that neo is a fae and vice versa

[malaismere]

relevant spelljammer info for all your wild moon theories

D&D...in space? no this is not something taz came up with, we’re looking at the 2nd edition setting of spelljammer!

In spelljammer, each planetary system (or prime material plane) is surrounded by a barrier called a crystal sphere. Inside the crystal sphere is called wildspace and acts as standard outerspace does. Outside, we get into the phlogiston (aka the rainbow ocean aka the flow) an endless multi-colored highly flammable ocean full of currents that connect the various crystal spheres that float within it. Special ships powered by magic called spelljammers make the journey.

side note: there’s a single reference to Flow Beacons, glowing objects that resemble a rapidly spinning star that exist within the phlogiston. their purpose and origins are unknown. make of that what you will.

The astral plane (known as the astral sea post 4e) is the plane that seperates the prime material planes (earth, faerun, exandria) with the outer planes (where the gods hang out). Githyanki sail it in astral ships powered by the winds of the plane, but many of these ships double as spelljammers.

certain cosmologies conflate the two, others keep them separate, with the phlogiston being physical and the astral sea being mental/spiritual. Matt draws a lot of Exandria’s lore from 4e, the biggest source of conflating them, but his cosmology more resembles 3e or 5e so it’s hard to say.

[beyondmistland]

So considering Eugenius do you have any thoughts on how to write non-religious characters in a Medieval-esque setting?

1) Historical patterns: As far as I know, you wouldn’t really find cynical atheists/agnostics like Tyrion Lannister and Sandor Clegane in the Middle Ages Rather, what you would have is three things: 1A) People using existing scripture to justify new ideas (For example, John Ball’s “when Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman”) 1B) People taking up new/old ideas that conflicted with established orthodoxy (See, for example, the Cathars in France, the Lollards in England, and the Hussites in Bohemia) 1C) People demanding reform, which makes more sense when you remember that in the Middle Ages there was fluidity between the secular and the sacred when it came to (personal) politics 2) Religiosity versus spirituality: People have differing levels of religiosity so while someone like Davos Seaworth might come off as being pious in our eyes the same would probably not be true from the High Sparrow’s perspective Furthermore, it is perfectly possible for a person to be spiritual without being religious For example, someone can believe in God/Allah/YHWH but find the communal nature of organized religion distasteful Others may prefer to keep their beliefs (whether spiritual or philosophical) private (due to fear of backlash or their own mindset) (An example of this might be a Hanif, which in Islamic teachings was someone who embraced monotheism before the coming of the Prophet (PBUH) but did not become a Jew or Christian) Beyond that there is also the fact that (some) people change over time, becoming one or the other 3) The individual: When creating an explicitly non-religious character in a time period characterized by (among other things obviously) the exact opposite there are a few things to keep in mind: 3A) The character’s thought process and vocabulary should reflect the time period (See for example Tyrion’s view of the Vale mountain clansmen and Volantene triarchs) 3B) The character’s backstory should explain why he/she lost/never had faith (See for example Stannis Baratheon and Thoros of Myr) 3C) The character’s backstory should explain why he/she rejected religion wholesale instead of simply finding a new religion to embrace 3D) How does the character express his/her non-religiosity and how does he/she avoid persecution (Maegor I had Balerion for example) 3E) Is the character upper class or lower class (Nobles had a better chance of being literate, especially as you transition from the Early Middle Ages (where even kings were unlettered, hence Henry “Beaucleric”) to the High and Late Middle Ages (where nobles began penning works themselves) Moreover, nobles, due to their wealth and occupation, would be more able and willing to travel) 3F) What kind of person is your character and what are his/her goals 3G) Remember that people in the past were just as smart as us (For example, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, had Muslim bodyguards precisely because the Pope couldn’t excommunicate them) Tagging @warsofasoiaf and @racefortheironthrone for corrections and additional commentary. Thanks for the question, cynicalclassist      

[sarcasticcollegestudent]

It's so weird to have people complaining about people mentioning 3.5/3e D&D as if it's completely irrelevant.

Like I know that 5e D&D brought in an absurd number of people to the game, but for years, 3.5 was the *only* edition of D&D that people played. Pathfinder was (and kind of still is) it's spiritual successor, but 4e left behind an entire demographic of player, making it basically the only time an edition of D&D had more active players at any given time than it's successor.

Like, don't come into my lawn and complain about me being a crotchety old person when you ignore the most significant TTRPG system in twenty plus years.

[eleonoregustafsson]

Böcker jag läst 2016-2019

På den här bloggen har jag varje år lagt ut en lista på alla böcker jag läst ut från pärm till pärm under året som gått. Men 2016 blev det inte av, inte heller 2017 eller 2018. Framförallt för att listan inte kändes representativ. Under dessa år har olika jobbprojekt gjort att jag behövt ägna mig åt research där jag tvingats läsa utvalda delar i olika böcker istället för enskild bok i sin helhet. Under 2016-2017 läste jag t.ex. mycket om anabaptismen, men det är inget som märks i listan. Men nu har jag ändå bestämt mig för att lägga ut den. Kolla gärna in taggen #aureliaguläser på Instagram, där lägger jag ibland ut boktips och små recensioner (och där syns även de böcker jag inte läst från pärm till pärm utan bara utvalda delar). 

2019: 40 böcker

Böcker om Bibeln Sitting at the feet of Rabbi Jesus av Ann Spangler och Lois Tverberg A Life that’s good av Glenn Pemberton (om Ordspråksboken) Phoebe – a Story av Paula Gooder Hebrews av Mary Healy Priscilla av Ben Witherington III The Torah’s Vision of Worship av Samuel E. Balentine Reading Backwards av Richard B Hays

 Kristen ledarskapslitteratur If You Love Me av Matthw The Poor (på arabiska Matta-Al-Miskin) A Pastoral Rule for Today av Burgess, Andrews & Small

 Kristen uppbyggelselitteratur The Arena av Ignatius Brianchaninov How to be a Sinner av Peter Bouteneff 

Teologisk litteratur Paradiset åter av Tomas Einarsson Journyes of the Muslim Nation and the Christian Church av David W Shenk 

Kyrkohistoria The Patient Ferment of the Early Church av Alan Kreider 

Reportageböcker och dylikt Med Guds hjälp av Gabriel Byström Skärmhjärna av Anders Hansen Bön för Tjernobyl av Svetlana Aleksijevitj En piga bland pigor av Esther Blenda Nordström Tidens second hand av Svetlana Aleksijevitj A Time to Die av Nicolas Diat

 Romaner Beckomberga av Sara Stridsberg Bränn alla mina brev av Alex Schulman De kommer drunkna i sina mödrars tårar av Johannes Anyuru Vända hem av Yaa Gyasin Din stund på jorden av Vilhelm Moberg Den svalgula himlen av Kjell Westö Längtans flöde av Alva Dahl Pappaklausulen av Jonas Hassen Khemiri Sveas son av Lena Andersson Arv och miljö av Vigdis Hjort En dag i Ivan Deniosovitjs liv av Alexander Solsjenitsyn Konturer av Rachel Cusk Testamente av Nina Wähä Jag for ner till bror av Karin Smirnoff

 Biografier och självbiografisk litteratur Utan nåd – en rannsakan av Fredrik Virtanen Allt jag fått lära mig av Tara Westover Konsten att feja arabiska av Lina Liman Löparens hjärta av Markus Torgeby Vilket jävla solsken av Fatima Bremer En bokhandlares dagbok av Shaun Bythel

2018: 28 böcker

Romaner Never let me go av Kauzo Ishiguro Min kamp 3 av Karl-Ove Knausgård Mitt liv och ditt av Majgull Axelsson Min kamp 4 av Karl-Ove Knausgård Min kamp 5 av Karl-Ove Knausgård Min kamp 6 av Karl-Ove Knausgård Sågspån och led av Vibecke Olsson Amerikauret av Vibecke Olsson Själasörjaren av Christine Falkenland

 Kristen uppbyggelselitteratur Helig rot av Peter Halldorf (för 3e gången?) Hädanefter blir vägen väglös av Peter Halldorf  (för 4e gången?) Bottenkänning av Fredrik Lignell Through, with and in him av Shane Kapler 

Teologisk litteratur Välkomna varandra av red. Tomas Poletti Lundström 

Böcker om Bibeln Korsets mysterium av Agne Nordlander 

Kyrkohistoria The Forgotten Desert Mothers av Laura Swan Biskop Lewi Pethrus av Joel Halldof

 Självbiografisk litteratur Sorgens gåva är en vidgad blick av Patrik Hagman När livets stramas åt skärps blicken av Sofia Camerin När träden avlövas ser man längre från vårt kök av Tomas Sjödin (för 2a gången) Välkommen in i min garderob av Anton Lundholm Kristunge av Malin Aronsson En shetel i Stockholm av Kenneth Hermele Hur jag lärde mig att förstå världen av Hans Rosling Katolska läror av Gunnel Vallquist Livets ord: mina tio orimliga år som frälst. Del två, Förnyad & befriad av Tomas Arnroth 

2017: 32 böcker

Romaner Ta itu av Kristina Sandberg Den döende detektiven av Leif GW Persson Gilead av Marilyone Robinson De polygotta älskarna av Lina Wolff Tystnaden av Shusaku Endo Utvandrarna av Vilhelm Moberg (för 2a gången) Invandrarna av Vilhelm Moberg (för 2a gången) Nybyggarna av Vilhelm Moberg (för 2a gången) Bricken på Svartvik av Vibecke Olsson Min kamp 1 av Karl-Ove Knausgård Sista brevet till Sverige av Vilhelm Moberg (för 2a gången) Hemma av Marilynne Robinson Min kamp 2 av Karl-Ove Knausgård

 Reportageböcker och facklitteratur Halleluja Brasilien av Kajsa Norell Två systrar av Åsne Seiersdal Rom – en stads historia av Eskil Fagerström

 Självbiografiska böcker och biografier Letters from the Desert av Carlo Carreto Bonhoeffer av Eric Metaxas Det finns annan frukt än apelsiner av Jeanette Wintersson Livets ord: mina tio orimliga år som frälst. Del ett: de första åren av Tomas Arnroth Brev från en klostercell av Hans Gunnar Adén Århundrades kärlekshistoria av Märtha Tikanen

 Ledarskapslitteratur När du leder av Josefin Arenius Ledarens hantverk av Lennarth Hambre

 Kristen uppbyggelselitteratur Klostret av James Martin SJ (egentligen en roman) Kristliga råd och betraktelser av Fénelon Becoming Who You Are av James Martin SJ

 Teologisk litteratur Inte allena av Patrik Hagman & Joel Halldorf Martin Luther – hans liv, lära och influytande 500 år senare av Stephen J Nicholas Att älska sin nästas kyrka som sin egen av Peter Halldorf 

Böcker om Bibeln The Theology of the Letter to the Hebrews av Barnabas Lindars SSF

 2016: 38 böcker

Romaner Torka aldrig tårar utan handskar: Sjukdomen av Jonas Gardell Torka aldrig tårar utan handskar: Döden av Jonas Gardell Levande och döda i Winstord av Håkan Nesser Innan floden tar oss av Helena Thorfin Århundrades kärlekskrig av Ebba Witt-Brattström  Drömmen om Elim av Vibecke Olsson De ensamma av Håkan Nesser Flickvännen av Karolina Ramquist En mörderska bland oss av Hanna Kent Flykten av Jesús Carrasco De oroliga av Linn Ullman Glöm mig av Alex Schulman

 Facklitteratur Kunskapens frukt av Liv Strömquist

Reportageböcker Det heliga berget av William Dalrymple 

Självbiografisk litteratur, biografier, memoarer eller dylikt Brännpunkter av Thomas Merton  Jag sökte Allah och fann Jesus av Nabell Quresh Cigaretten efteråt av Horace Engdahl 96 lampor – om oss som brann och försvann av Jacob Langvik Min pappa Ann-Christine av Ester Roxberg Den sista grisen av Horace Engdahl Älskade terrorist av Anna Svadberg och Jesper Huor Och i Winerwald står träden kvar av Elisabeth Åsbrink Halvvägs av Fredrik Reinfeldt

 Kristen uppbyggelselitteratur Mellan skymning och mörker av Peter Halldorf Den brinnande busken av Lev Gillet Spår av den osynlige av Mikael Hallenius Den helige Ande i den kristnes personliga liv av Kallistos Ware Tron Allena av Bo Giertz (för 2a gången) Gud och intet mer av red. Ulrika Ljungman Contemplating the Trinity av Raniero Cantalamessa Du brinnande kärlekslåga av Peter Halldorf Den som hittar sin plats tar ingen annans av Tomas Sjödin

Kyrkohistoria Following in the Footsteps av Christ av Arnold Snyder Vindarna från väster av Per-Eive Berndtsson A Brief History of Spirituality av Pilip Sheldrake

Teologisk litteratur Som om allt förvandlats – Ekologi, ekonomi och eukaristi av William T Cavanaugh

[tanlorin]

Ma'isuri Ardela

Race: Ohmes-Raht Khajiit

Gender: Female (she/her)

Sexuality: Bisexual

Birthday: Evening Star 30, 3E 408

Age during Oblivion: 24-29

Born in Black Heights, Elsweyr

Distant relative of Tsameiji (the Vestige) and Ariyura (the Last Dragonborn), younger and identical twin sister of M'niara (the Hero of Kvatch), younger sister of J'zhari, younger stepsister of Venaryne (the Nerevarine)

Unlike her sister, she doesn't know how to fight with physical weapons. Instead, she heavily relies on illusion magic, and everything she knows comes from her mother.

She's a kleptomaniac and a bit on the impulsive side.

She tends to favor her own pleasure over most things, which usually results in her being inconsiderate of others.

6 months prior to the beginning of Oblivion, she and her siblings (as well as her brother's wife) migrated fron Elsweyr to Cyrodiil. Unlike her merchant brother and her alchemist/huntress sister, Ma'isuri liked earning money the (stereotypical) Khajiit way: stealing and fencing.

She uses illusion magic to give herself brown hair and green eyes as a way of distinguishing herself from M'niara.

When her illusion magic wore off in the middle of a burglary, she recklessly fled the scene. While Ma'isuri was able to escape without a scratch, M'niara ended up being blamed and imprisoned for the crime instead, which is what eventually led M'niara into becoming the Hero of Kvatch.

As M'niara did Oblivion's main quest, Ma'isuri made her way up the Thieves Guild. Eventually, she becomes the Gray Fox.

At first, she had a rivalry with Methredhel (a fellow Thieves Guild member), but they eventually became friends.

Shortly before KotN, Ma'isuri passes on her title as the Gray Fox to Methredhel. (Note: KotN and Shivering Isles take place 5 years after the end of the main quest in this story).

Ma'isuri ends up being the Divine Crusader, but instead of actually using the relics, she still uses her illusion magic to "fight." M'niara also joins the Knights of the Nine, but only to help her sister.

Ma'isuri's dependency on illusion comes back to bite her when she actually fights Umaril the Unfeathered, where her magic stops working in the spiritual plane. While she does manage to defeat him, he also fatally wounds her spirit, resulting in her death.