It's becoming something of an internal running joke for me, but I'll see if I can't get permission to work on something (in addition to my other plans). I brainstormed a background for the society years ago, so definitely have something to work from. Also, having wrote the Voln history, assisted Oscuro in the Sunfist document, I think I can make a hat trick here. (THE ONLY REAL REASON TO TRY AND DO THIS)

GM Scribes

<<Trust me; it's the undead. I'll even help you flesh it out.

Nope. The undead are powered by it, but it's not the undead. It's your lost soul.

My suggestions for revamping CoL:

(1) Clotting/Staunching combined into one sign with the same overall efficacy, freeing up one slot.

(2) Warding/Defending and Striking/Smiting combined into two signs, respectively, with the same overall efficacy, freeing up two slots.

(3) Swords/Shields improved to add crit/damage weighting/padding in addition to the current AS/DS bonuses. Duration is reduced to flat 3-5 min or so to compensate.

(4) Hypnosis/Possession both improved. Hypnosis becomes a mass calm similar 619 with hidden check on standard success resolution system. Costs 2 spirit. Possession becomes a spell similar to the Empath's "Sympathy," i.e. critters will stop attacking you and start attacking each other. Hidden check. Costs 19 mana and 3 spirit.

(5) Hopelessness becomes useful and moved toward the middle steps. Target will start randomly falling down and whining about how the world is ending! May also attack itself. Costs 15 mana and 1 spirit. Hidden check. Trying to use it a second time within 2 minutes makes it cost double. Using it again, triple.

(6) In one slot freed up by Warding/Defending consolidation, a sign that reduces the attacker's AS, CS, cman sucess, etc. by a fixed amount. Costs mana. Using it repeatedly within a 2 minute window causes the cost to increase, again on a 2x/3x/4x etc. scale.

(7) In the slot freed up by Smiting/Striking consolidation, a sign that reduces the defender's DS, TD, cman defense, etc. by a fixed amount. Costs mana. Using it repeatedly within a 2 minute window causes the cost to increase, again on 2x/3x/4x etc. scale.

(8) Sign of Domination (why CoL doesn't have something called Domination yet, I'll never know). A high-end sign that causes the target to kneel before the member, going into offensive stance, and dropping whatever is in its hands. The user cries "Bow before me, supplicant!" right before putting an arrow in its freakin' eye. I made that last part up. Costs mana and spirit. Can't use it more than once every few minutes.

If we're talking about RP consequences, I for one would be happy with fully fleshing out the story a bit more here (although as Heathyr mentions, a bit of mystery never hurts). But I disagree completely with the notion that there should be some kind of stiff "penalty" associated with being in CoL. There aren't any penalties associated with Voln or GoS and unless CoL is made the MOST POWERFUL/mechanically useful society, attaching a penalty to one society while none exist with respect to the other two renders CoL as always the WORST "all-else-equal" choice. We do not need that happening.

I dislike your suggestions. I think they're poorly thought out and would Gimp the society. The suggestion for swords and shields being 3-5 minutes while keeping the other signs powered by spirit would insure the society would be limited to dwarves and halflings with spirit enhances, and worthless to most other races.

Dgry

Edit: having stopped before it became GS4.

I fully expect that the Council of Light will get a review at some point. I think the greater concern, for me personally, is the roleplay foundation of the society.

I've finished the outline for much of the creation as it pertains to Phoenix from December 1989-February 1992 and the role players who sided and joined the Council of Light played in that role. The Unlife is a big part of that so I've created it's Krakii entry. These tales will be on the House Phoenix website at http://gshousephoenix.com/, but it's important that aspects of the intent of the society are maintained. I expect they will be so to foster discussion the Unlife synopsis is reference.

It can be found here:
http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Unlife

I think any remaining connection to "Unlife" has as about as much a chance to leave a CoL review intact as does Sign of Wracking.

Even less of a chance, really, when you consider that the Unlife has already been removed from the game once.

Your House notwithstanding.

>>Oh. I have no delusions that we'll be calling the power behind the Council the Unlife in the future. It will be something dark and unnatural though and the soul aspect I think will be intact. Reading the articles and even Phoenix belief structure is that you may call it whatever you want. If grey suddenly is called majestic fusion it's still grey. In the same lense, evil is evil.

Ah, well, in that case I'd think you should be able to rest easy. Taking the evil out of the Council would be, well, ridiculous. If anything I'd expect to see that fundamental feature redoubled. Apparently some players think it can be legitimately played off as a joke.

"Naturally, I will have to repaint House Phoenix as a bunch of communist no goods." -- Scribes

Of course they are! All of their goods have been purloined by the Society!

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Read this reminded me of Hong Kong capitalism (one of my ATFs, along with Surrealism & Counter Culture), as espoused in The Cow Theory of Political Science:

FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations say you should need.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment.

MILITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate".

BRITISH DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. You feed them sheeps' brains and they go mad. The government doesn't do anything.

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows...

ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to kill you and take the cows.

CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

HONG KONG CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt / equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because the feng shui is bad.

ENVIRONMENTALISM: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.

FEMINISM: You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf.

TOTALITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.

COUNTER CULTURE: Wow, dude, there's like. . . these two cows, man. You got to have some of this milk.

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

LIBERTARIANISM: You have two cows. One has actually read the constitution, believes in it, and has some really good ideas about government. The cow runs for office, and while most people agree that the cow is the best candidate, nobody except the other cow votes for her because they think it would be "throwing their vote away."

A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRAT: You have two cows. You keep one and give one to your neighbor who has none. You feel righteous.

A SOCIALIST: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor who has none. You feel patriotic.

AN AMERICAN REPUBLICAN: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So what?

AN AMERICAN DEMOCRAT: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You vote people into office who tax your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money, buy a cow and give it to your neighbor. You feel better for sharing.

A COMMUNIST: You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk.

A FASCIST: You have two cows. The government seizes both and sells you the milk. You join the underground and start a campaign of sabotage.

DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both cows to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow - which was a gift from your government.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull and build a herd of cows.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government takes both cows, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk and then pours the milk down the drain.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one. You force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when the cow drops dead.

A FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create clever cow cartoon images called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month and milk themselves.

A BRITISH CORPORATION: You have two cows. They are mad and die. Pass the shepherd's pie, please.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows. You open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have 500 cows. You charge 498 others for storing them.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You worship both of them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment and high milk productivity. You arrest the newsman who reported on them.

AN ARKANSAS CORPORATION: You have two cows. That one on the left is kinda cute...

DEMOCRAT
you have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
You vote people into office that put a tax on your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax.
The people you voted for then take the tax money, buy a cow and give it to your neighbor.
You feel righteous.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.

SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

REPUBLICAN
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM - AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

DEMOCRACY - AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.

BUREAUCRACY - AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when one cow drops dead.
You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch.
Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 12 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.
You produce your 10th, 5-year plan in the last 3 months.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

IRAQI CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You hide your cows and tell the world that you only have calves.

FLORIDA CORPORATION
You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who like the brown one best, vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which is the best-looking one.

NEW YORK CORPORATION
You have fifteen million cows.
You have to choose which one will be the leader of the herd, so you pick some fat cow from Arkansas

ROFL, Robert!

I'd say that's a LOT of bull there. . . but I'd be brought up on equal rights suppression charges, no doubt.

I'm amazed at the product though, very funny.

Doug