Stahl

[Irmo]

I realize the first issue has been discussed in a previous thread on philosophies, but being back in Germany and pondering on Stahl a bit more, I'd like to discuss Stahl atheism a bit more in-depth.

A key question I think is: Ok, the Stahl nobility was seeing the church as meddling into their affairs too deeply. BUT: If we look at medieval and renaissance Europe, the precedents look different. In most cases, the nobility in question dismissed the authority of the organized church, but kept (most of) the fundamental philosophy intact, sometimes declaring themselves supreme head of their own version of the church.

One could argue that while they disliked the influence the church had over them, they still saw religion in general as a powerful tool to influence the public without having to resort to brute force.

So, why did the Stahl nobility act differently? If there is no God, they can't be "By God's grace, King of Stahl, Duke of etc., Count of ad nauseam". On what authority do they found their leadership, other than force of arms?

Second, and related only indirectly, what is the role of cities in Stahl (and elsewhere)? In Germany, at a parallel time, cities were becoming more and more influential, which commoners achieving influence rivaling and surpassing that of nobility. In some cases, cities shook off their feudal lords, in other cases, leagues of cities defied whole nations and waged war against them. How big is the influence of the nobility? Is Stahl mimicking the development in Germany, or is it on a more traditional course? Is there an equivalent to the Hanseatic League, and if yes, what is its influence on other nations?

What are your ideas on the issue?

[Lance D. Allen]

Methinks Stahl's power came from the temporal, and in my opinion more solid, means of feudalism, loyalty and respect.

Check this.. If you are a peasant, you probably just want to live your life, plant your fields, love your wife and take care of your babies. You don't want to worry about invaders razing your fields, raping your wife, killing your babies. So you probably have someone to turn to who'll protect you with his troopers. In turn, you give him taxes (or work his lands, however it goes). He, in turn, gives fealty to the king in exchange for assistance in protecting his lands, trade, and the sense of identity that most every man craves.

Eventually, after this arrangement has been in place for a few generations, you serve your liege because your fathers did, and they treated them well. Loyalty grows, and out of it, respect. You respect them, they respect you.

Stahl strikes me as a no-nonsense nation. The atheism is an extension of this.. They never see the gods, they rarely, if ever, see true sorcery, so why SHOULD they believe? Peasants don't bother to think about these things, often lacking inclination and education, but the nobles have time to think, and the ability to conceptualize these thoughts due to their education.

The peasantry generally still follow the religions of their fathers, and pay lip service to Stahlnish Atheism. The nobles in turn acknowledge that their subjects are good atheists, while turning a blind eye to the truth, out of a respect for their subject's beliefs.

I imagine that there are exceptions, but I feel that this is very much the rule.

[Irmo]

Eventually, after this arrangement has been in place for a few generations, you serve your liege because your fathers did, and they treated them well. Loyalty grows, and out of it, respect. You respect them, they respect you.
[/b]

The problem here are 'Henry the Lion'-like situations, where you have to weigh one loyalty against another. When serving the guy upstairs puts the folks downstairs at danger, by forcing you to put your resources out of their reach, who do you serve? While in the real world case, such situations are stressful and messy, they would threaten the system in your case. All in all, the entire country would seem to me to be totally dependent on each other's goodwill, and as soon as one link in the chain scoffs at goodwill, the whole system comes apart.... And with the lack of a divine authority, what is to keep the guys downstairs from picking up arms and telling the guys up there to take a hike? While historically, that DID happen around the time in question, it happened within the religious system, and was shaped in part by the role of the church as a secular ruler in many places. Even then, the church was only dismissed in that role, and its clerics not dismissed for preaching, but for not living what they were preaching.

Stahl strikes me as a no-nonsense nation. The atheism is an extension of this.. They never see the gods, they rarely, if ever, see true sorcery, so why SHOULD they believe? Peasants don't bother to think about these things, often lacking inclination and education, but the nobles have time to think, and the ability to conceptualize these thoughts due to their education.

Historically, low and even mid-level nobility had to be quite busy as well keeping their affairs in order, not being able to hire enough people to do all the work for them. And as the modern world shows, having time to think and education galore doesn't preclude one from being religious. The question why SHOULD they believe can easily be countered by 'Why should they NOT believe?' If they believed all the time it was real, why suddenly believe their ancestors lived a lie?

[Mike Holmes]

The question why SHOULD they believe can easily be countered by 'Why should they NOT believe?' If they believed all the time it was real, why suddenly believe their ancestors lived a lie?

Yeah, this is a hard one to counter. One get's one's culture from one's parents. The move to Atheism requires a mass exodus of one generation away from the culture of the last generation. This is really difficult because the generations overlap. We're talking a great social upheaval.

It would make more sense to occur over time, but, IIRC, didn't Stahl become atheist overnight? In a revolution?

Worse, the peasants who have nothing to gain by throwing off the religion (they have no power to start), aren't going to like this. It would seem that the atheism is being forced upon them. See what happens when you try this be looking up the "wars of religion" in France.

Religion is a lychpin of societies where it exists, it cannot be easily replaced overnight.

Now, we do have one sorta real world example, the Bolshevik revolution. But that only lasted a generation, and already religion is prominently back on the scene in Russia and the former Soviet republics. China took a long while, and several additional revolutions (see the "cultural revolution") to accomplish this. And that's with the advantages of modern militaries and other tools that we can assume that the Stahlish nobility doesn't have.


All this said, reality is stranger than fiction. There have been odd examples of entire cultures transforming overnight (well, in societal terms in just a few years). So I'm willing to entertain that it would happen in Stahl. But I'd agree that the explanations so far need a bit of bolstering to make them coherent. We need a good BS platform for buying into this.

The cool thing, of course, about building such a platform for the idea to stand on is that it often itself then provides ideas for play.

Anyone?

Mike

[Nick the Nevermet]

I don't know as much history as I should, so I'm going avoid making comments about Stahl in relation to Germany.  Now with that being said...

A lot of the differences, IMO, between the TROS setting and Europe can be linked to how different Rome and Xanarium are.  The differences between Rome & Christianity on one side, and Xanarium and the Three Become One on the other, fuel most of teh significant setting rifts.

In our world, Rome rose to be an incredibly powerful empire.  Near its twilight, Christianity emerged on the imperial scene.  Rome fell, leaving western Europe in an intersting spot.  The setting in TROS is waaaaaaaaaaay different.  In year 1 AD, Rome was already a superpower.  Year 1 in Wyerth, however, had no Xanarium; that empire grew up with Xanar.  When he was killed in the battle with the Great Betrayer, the empire outlived him, continuing for a few more centuries to extend across Mainlund, bringing its laws and its state religion.  I would love to see a mini-supplement on Wyerth's classical age, but that is neither here nor there.

Stahl was conquered by Xanarium only a few centuries ago, and assimilation never was complete.  No surprise that it was one of the first to rebel against the political control of Xanarium.  I would also suspect that The Three Became One never truly have become the single pervasive religion of Stahl.  Culturally, Stahl is a mish mash of a lot of different things, none of which has the power to remove all other influences.  

That is why, in my opinion, the Stahlnish nobles rebelled against the religion and not just the Church: all of it was seen as foriegn.  Of course, I am sure some nobles still quietly pray to Xanar for guidance, but publicly, Stahlnish culture in my mind is extremely chauvenistic (sp?).

The next question, though, is why atheism?  Why not paganism or Thayrism?  Mainlund is a place where magic exists, where Gols murder in the mountains and Vilkolak butcher in the forests.  It is a place where 1500 years ago, God and Satan blew each other up and created a new sea.  The mysterious and unexplainable is much more present.  And by the Rennaisance, western man has developed its ultimate saying to throw in the face of the confusion: "Surely, there is a rational explanation for this."

Because the supernatural is more present, I think the push for reason in some places of Mainlund will be stronger.  Stalhnish atheism would reject the existence of divine beings or powers meddling in the affairs of the world.  In its place, everything are 'natural' and unthinking forces.  Powerful, frightening forces, but with no consciousness, and certainly no plan.  The purpose of Man, especially Stahlnish Man to bring these forces under control.  The only design the world shall have is the world Stahl imposes on it with blood and iron.

Your question is where is divine authority.  Stahlnish atheism is just as much of a religion as any other, only its divine authority is not a God, but an absolute confidence in cultural superiority.  Sociologists today would call it a 'civil religion,' probably.  Stahl probably has a belief in destiny as well in the sense of if we do it the Stalhnish way, we win.  I suspect the story of Stahl is because of the constant wranglings against Xanarium, a common cultural ideal was invented, and authority shifted to that and away from a deity.  I am quite confident Stahl has just as many structures for social control as anywhere else, but with different rhetoric behind it.

I'm unsure about the role of cities, so I'm not going to speculate.

One thing I realized about the TROS setting: it only mirrors Europe for the specific time it exists.  Its history is radically different (because of the Xanar stuff), and I suspect its future will also be radically different (counter-crusades, England is attached to the continent, Spain & Italy are the same place, etc.)  European history is good for ideas and inspiration, but it really is on a different historical trajectory.

[Mike Holmes]

Cool notes, but I'm having trouble with this one:

Because the supernatural is more present, I think the push for reason in some places of Mainlund will be stronger. Stalhnish atheism would reject the existence of divine beings or powers meddling in the affairs of the world.

That seems totally contradictory to me. Belief in supernatural things comes because we need explanations for things that we don't understand. If those supernatural things are more present, and just as unexplainable, then wouldn't that just reinforce this?

Mike

[Nick the Nevermet]

The cool thing, of course, about building such a platform for the idea to stand on is that it often itself then provides ideas for play.

Anyone?
Mike

I'm working off the completely out of my @ss assumption that Stahlnish culture started rising a long time earlier.  Yes, there were Stahlnish Tree Become One worshippers, Thahyrists, Pagans, and whatever else...   But somewhere along the line, some noble had the idea of pushing The Stalhnish Way of doing things.  This was done just as a temporary solution to solve some religious strife, but it probably took off.  Nobles would have liked the idea of pushing their culture.  I suspect that religious institutions in Stahl were getting beat up by the nobility long before the actual claim of atheism was made.

Also, keep in mind I highly doubt that Stahlnish atheism is pro reason, pro science.  In my view, it would definitely have a very mystical aspect to it.  The official rejection of the Church was the final straw, not the beginning.  The Stahlnish spirit would have been by that time developed to the point that it was competing with the Church.  As soon as that happened, the nobles all flocked to their homegrown state religion.

[Mike Holmes]

Ah, so the idea of Atheism existed in pre-takover Stahl in some form, and never went away totally. So it was a return to older values.

I'd buy that. As part of the explanation.

Any of that problematic, anyone?

Mike

[Nick the Nevermet]

That seems totally contradictory to me. Belief in supernatural things comes because we need explanations for things that we don't understand. If those supernatural things are more present, and just as unexplainable, then wouldn't that just reinforce this?

Mike

Yeah... I couldda done that better.  My bad.

Originally, all the magical forces of the world were separate from natural forces, according to the religion of Church 3 to 1 (And Thayrism too).  They came in as divine (and infernal) beings spread across Mainlund.  I think Stahlnish atheism rejects that wholesale.  They are all natural forces, even if we don't understand them.  The explanation comes from understanding how different forces connect, not by understanding a god's grand plan.

[Nick the Nevermet]

Any of that problematic, anyone?

Mike

I have some problems with it, but I'm talking too much right now :)

[Mike Holmes]

Here's a hypothetical.

I'm a sorcerer in Stahl, and I cast a spell. How does the Stahlish aetheist respond? Do they have a change of heart? Do they claim that it's smoke and mirrors? Do they say, sure magic exists, it's just a natural force?

Mike

[Nick the Nevermet]

That is the single biggest nag for me with Stahlnish atheism.  You have the two basic options though/

One answer is that the atheist's jaw hits the floor.  He was taught that magic didn't exist.  It obviously does.  At this point, everyone gaming gets to have fun watching (or playing) someone who just had his world-view disproved.  If magic is rare (at least in Stahl), then this works fine.  Alternatively, if you want atheists to be a bunch of disingenuous manipulators and dupes, then this works fine.

The other answer I see is the atheist would see 'magic' as natural forces we don't understand.  Unlike other religions, magic would have no link to demons or gods.  Its just a natural force, like gravity or water or electricity.  The Stahlnish sorceror would be all about calculation and formula.  At this point, I have started the Age of Reason at the beginning of the Rennaisance in Germany.  Not sure how I feel about that...

Personally, I prefer my setting for TROS to be magic-lite.  If it is common in a setting, I would go with the second choice, even though it narrows Stahlnish atheism down to "no god, no design," which I suppose is enough if the campaign ends up involving other characters with strong beliefs.

[Irmo]

Stahl was conquered by Xanarium only a few centuries ago, and assimilation never was complete.  No surprise that it was one of the first to rebel against the political control of Xanarium.  I would also suspect that The Three Became One never truly have become the single pervasive religion of Stahl.  Culturally, Stahl is a mish mash of a lot of different things, none of which has the power to remove all other influences.  

That is why, in my opinion, the Stahlnish nobles rebelled against the religion and not just the Church: all of it was seen as foriegn.  Of course, I am sure some nobles still quietly pray to Xanar for guidance, but publicly, Stahlnish culture in my mind is extremely chauvenistic (sp?).
[/b]

There is a problem with that argument. You present it as a chief difference between Weyrth and our world. In fact, it isn't that different at all. While Rome covered a great deal of the then-known world, only a tiny part of Germany was part of the empire. While that included important cities (one of which even was capital of the empire for a tiny period), Roman influence east of the Rhine was through cultural exchange and trade, mostly, throughout the Christian period. Only a tiny wedge, secured by a wall, of southwest Germany east of the Rhine was part of the empire. Most of the Christianization of Germany happened during and after the decline of the western Empire. The King of Franks, Chlodwig, was only baptized in 498/499 due to the influence of his already christian wife, a Burgundian princess. Allegedly, 3000 of his men followed his example and hit off the wave of christianization, but until it was really a major factor, quite some time would still have to pass. By the 6th and 7th century, the Franks on the Rhine had become christianized pretty much entirely (though that area had Roman tradition), and it was slowly spreading eastward. Bavaria and Franconia followed in the 8th century, and Alemannia was sometime in between. On the other hand, Frisians and Saxons withstood any attempt at converting them for quite a while, and life as a missionary was dangerous (e.g. the irish bishop Kilian died a marthyr's death in Franconia in 689).

None of which prevented German overlords from stepping into the footsteps of the emperors of Rome and declaring themselves the secular protectors and representatives of christianity.

[A.J.]

Hello all,
I've been lurking here awhile and I'm glad to see a post on the setting rather than the rules.  While I love the rules, I think the setting of TROS has a lot of promise and still needs a lot of development. These are the types of discussions I enjoy most.

Maybe the missing piece in Stahlish atheism is universities.  Stahlisn universities could have very easily developed as a result of maratime trade, hense specializations in law, and because it was under the dominion of the Church for so long universities for theology could have started as well.  Now within a university of theology, perhaps one intellectual starting asking those theological questions that so bugger monotheitic religions (i.e. If the Three are all-powerful, all knowing, and all merciful, why is there evil in the world?) This intellectual's answer could have been, 'Because the Three are a human made myth.  They represent nothing but humanity writ large.'  Off course, such a view would have gotten this intellectual kicked out of the university, but that doesn't mean that another noble, or nobles,  wouldn't have personally agreed with him/her and sponsored became a patron of the intellectual.  Years pass, books are made, ideas start to circulate.  There is an undercurrent of doubt within Stahlish society, some nobles still believe in the Three, others pay lip service to the Three, others are not religious at all.  Then the breaking point happens when the king decides he's had enough of the Church, using atheism as his justification, he throws the Church out of Stahl and takes over all Church land, or at least as much as he can get his hands on.  Surprised by this move, and sense the king isn't all-powerful in Stahl, the nobles follow his lead not to be out done in the 'land-grab'.  Whether they truely believe in atheism or not, they don't want the other nobles and the king to seize more land, and therefore become more powerful than them.  Of course, the peasants at the bottom rung care nothing for this land grab and feel no need to take up an atheism that was never very well explained to them.  All they know is that when a noble is around it is better for them and their families to say that the Three do not exist, otherwise they are kicked off their land.  Of course, the Stalish aristocracy knows this, but that last thing they want is a massive religiously lead rebellion with the characteristics of a crusade on their hand.  So they in reality very seldom throw peasants out of their lands (besides, they need the labor) and let the peasants believe what they will, as long as it doesn't threaten their position of social superiority.

Hense, the current status of religiousity in Stahl is shaky.  Some nobles believe firmly in atheism, others pay lip service to it, but the mass of people below them still believe what they will (The Three, paganism, etc.).  Now, if the Church could get a sneaky preacher into the Stalhish countryside to preach a crusade against the heathen athiests, they might be able to spark of a rebellion and put into power people who not only would allow the Church back into Stalh, but would be a valuabe ally against Gelure.

[Nick the Nevermet]

hiya...

I'm not completely sure what you are saying the problem in my argument is.  The history you lay out for Christianity in Germany is much more detailed than anything I could do, I agree.  However, the history you just described of Germany highlights the differences between Germany and Stahl.  I think the single key issue you mentioned was the fact that the Roman Empire and Christianity were not the same thing.  In Wyerth, Xanarium and the Church are EXACTLY the same thing (until only recently).  In 773, Stahl became a vassal-state of Xanarium through political and religious actions, after an earlier, simply military conquest failed.

We don't have much information in the book to go on, but because we know what Stahl ends up like (independent & w/ Stahlnish atheism), I'm adding the information that this may have won over the political elite in Stahl at that time, but I doubt Xanar's Church became the pervasive religion, ever.  

This is very different than the history of Germany you just described.  Germany never became as a whole part of Rome (through conquest, alliance, or whatever).  Likewise, The attempted move of Rome into Germany, and the attempted Christianization of Germany were different events.  Third, The Christianization of Germany, by your dates, was established (if not complete) in the 8th century... the same time roughly the Church of Xanar BEGAN making its headways into Stahl.  In essence, Stahl and Germany are mirror opposites: one was politically but not culturally assimilated.  The other was culturally but not politically.

I hope I didn't misquote or misunderstand.  What was the problem with my argument you saw?  If I'm misunderstanding German history, I apologize.  The point is I'm trying to look at the difference in their histories to understand the difference in results, which I think is the same task we're all doing in this thread.