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Evan Sageser
Evan Sageser's picture
Sorcery and the church
Kickstarter Previews

If anyone's taken a look at the previews for the hero and villain decks, there's some surprising talk about Vaticine heroes trying to work for greater acceptance of sorcery.

 

This definitely seems like a departure from the design philosophy in 1e where strangely enough the Inquisition was kind of in the right about most sorcery, it was dangerous and innately tied to dark powers. While we already knew they weren't going to do much of a Cthulhuesque meta-plot, it's still somewhat surprising to hear a generally good church NPC talking favorably of sorcery.

One does wonder if this means some sort of significant change in the Vaticine theology this edition. After all, most of the prophets seemed pretty unapologetic about how sorcery was a bad thing in 1e, perhaps there's not as much solid condemnation of sorcery as a practice now?

 

(On a side note with the hero deck, there's at least one Castillian NPC that was accused of sorcery by the Inquisition. There's nothing concrete given that they were only accused. but do you think this might be some indication that Castille might be getting their own sorcery in the future? After all, it's hard to accus a Castillian born person of sorcery if the nation has no sorcery. Even a sorcery mostly in hiding might explain this oddity.)

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Rossbert
Rossbert's picture

In regards to your side note, historically speaking sorcery not existing at all did not stop people from accusing others of practicing it. #remembersalem

Evan Sageser
Evan Sageser's picture

True, there does always exists the chance of pointless persecution (or they could think she has a foreign bloodline from a mixed heritage)

But it still seems odd to me. Especially given that in a world where sorcery actually exists you'd expect the inquisition about how to deal with it. Just seems odd for their to be such paranoia and contention around accepting sorcery Castille if they don't actually have a native bloodline of it, otherwise it's mostly just paranoia about foreigners, which is kind of par for the course.

Rossbert
Rossbert's picture

The book does state that there is hefty mingling of national bloodlines, so Castille can have sorcery of all kinds scattered through it.  Even if there isn't a home grown type, it could have gotten in the same way differing hair or eye colors do, or even bloodlines of other nations.

Alternately it could also be a case of recent extinction. Just because the rules don't have any Castillians with sorcery anymore doesn't mean the inquisition knows that it is gone.  Maybe they are hiding better and we need to look harder, or maybe they still find lots of evidence (by their standards).

A third option could be that the Inquisition cracks down in Castille not so much because they are very worried about Castille's sorcery as much as simply Castille is where they have influence, so it is just felt there.

Salamanca
Salamanca's picture
It depends on if they change the commandment about not suffering a sorcerer to live. I expect some vaticines would push for tolerance because they see the concept of using an evil ability to do good things as a redemption for the afflicted.
Rossbert
Rossbert's picture

Also, remember that even in the real world there is radically varying interpretations of what various scripture means.  Various sects could have different opinions on sorcery as real sects differ on the role of women in the clergy, acceptance of alternate lifestyles, transubstantion, the nature of Mary, etc.

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