In the [Paladin Xe] Masonic Snipers thread, Joshua and I were beginning to thrash out a setting, but I didn't want to clog up Actual Play with stuff that, properly speaking, is pregame jamming.

So, hopefully Clinton will let us use this forum as a real-life example of how people develop settings for Paladin (?)

One of my main inspirations in suggesting this time period and moral outlook is William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven & Hell.

For background on Gnosticism, there's the Catholic Encyclopedia and The Gnosis Archive which includes selections from the Nag Hammadi codex. There's also an article in the Wikipedia.

I don't know anything about the Masons/Rosicrucians/(insert name of pseudo-occult Enlightenment secret society), so I'll leave that to somebody else.

Loose thoughts on aspects of the Code:

Thou shalt not reveal other members of the Order.
Thou shalt not show mercy to the Order's enemies.
Thou shalt not yield to temptations of the flesh.

Not sure how to get some good ol' fashioned Gnosis in there... but that's for later I guess.

This enlightenment Paladin thing reminds me of a Paladin setting that came to my mind after watching 'Van Helsing' (although I must confess when I was watching I was thinking of 'Wushu'). It would be a monster stomping campaign based on the premise that the churches have discovered that the Manichean heresy ( http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/heresy03.htm ) is true, and that there is an elaborate alchemy of controlling dark and light spiritual forces.
The alchemy is becoming better known, creating an explsion of wizards, witches,undeads and other dark animus powered monsters (because dark animus tends to hang around while Light tends to go back to it's source.)

The churches are keeping this fact secret while bankrolling an multi denominational organization to deal with the massive increase of dark alchemy (animus) powered weirdies and ghosties. I envisioned the Paladins power as primarily manifesting though a talent for cobbling together unlikely devices,, amazing feats of skill, and superhuman acrobatics and athletics (in other words every Paladin is James West AND Artemus Gordon....). Although the basic ethos would be the standard Sword of Heaven setting the Unbreakable rule being mantaining the secrecy of the order from the public at large, rather than protecting innocents, In other words it may be the DUTY of a knight to kill an innocent person under certain circumstances.........

Unbreakable Law: Do not allow the masses to learn of the order or it's work

Major Laws: Perform all assignments commanded by the order
Show no mercy to the creatures of Darkness or their Agents

Minor Laws: You shall not kill an innocent.
You shall not hold your own safety over that of an innocent

Heh you will notice that the Knights of St. Mani are a little more ruthless than the Sword of Heaven. Obvious conflicts possible between protecting and obeying the order and protecting the public....

I'll try to weigh in on the Code in a little while, but until then, there's also a good intro to Gnostic philosophy here:

http://www.gnosis.org/gnintro.htm

-j

Here is a couple of off-the-cuff ideas for incorporating Gnostic ideals into the Code. Forgive the large amounts of Color I'm mixing in here, the Code (to me) just seems cooler that way. :)

Unbreakable Laws:

You shall protect the Gnosis, keeping it secret from the Minions and Corruption of Jaldabaoth, the Demi-urge, even unto the cost of your own life.

Major Laws:

There are those throughout the world of the Demi-urge who have been freed from the lie that is the Creation of the Half-Maker, those in whom the spark that is the Light of the Pleroma has been given form. These you shall protect, even unto the cost of your own life.

You shall suffer no minion of Jaldabaoth, the Demi-urge, the Half-Maker, Son of Chaos, to live.

Minor Laws:

You shall work always to bring the Light of the True God to the varied peoples of the Earth.

You shall resist the corruption of the Demi-urge in all of it's forms.

You shall own no property, save that which is given unto you in the pursuit of Gnosis and in the effort to protect it.

...plus those that James has already mentioned, which fit very well.

I think I mentioned in another thread that we might want to come up with Codes both for the "old guard" of the enlightened order, and for the dark Paladins.

By the way, does anyone like the name 'Order of St. Jerome' but me? I chose that one because St. Jerome translated the scriptures from the original Hebrew and Greek into Latin, which became (for a very long time) the official translation of the Church. In this way, one could say that it is St. Jerome that is most responsible for spreading the Word of the Demi-urge to the peoples of our setting.

Anyway.

Here is a quote from the Gnostic Meditation for New Years Day, that I think probably very much sums up the thoughts of the 'old guard' folks, most especially the last line:

Your consciousness is in God; draw it into yourself, and it will appear; will, and it takes birth; suspend the senses of the body and the birth of the Godhead takes place. But first you must purify yourselves from the mindless torments of matter, one of which is ignorance, though there are many others, which force the man who is confined to the prison of the body to suffer by way of the passions. But these at once depart from him on whom God has had mercy, and so the body of Gnosis in man is built. This is the way of true rebirth. And now my child be still, and keep solemn silence; and thus will the grace from God not cease to come upon us.

"Order of St. Jerome" is acceptable. The people of "base matter" were called hylics, so maybe "The Hylic Order of St. Jerome"? Also, Jerome = Hieronymous, which sounds cool too, but may be too much H-alliteration.

The Hylic Order sounds great.

On a sidenote, and just because I'm a native German speaker, "Hylic" sounds almost exactly like the German word "heilig," which means holy.

Carry on now, and don't mind the lurkers :)

Remember, folks, we'll be actually playing in this setting, starting tonight at 9pm EST, on IRC. Come check it out if you are at all interested.

-j

Well, we had a great time fleshing out the setting. We've got the French Revolution, the Rosetta Stone, the Gnostics, and a mission to destroy the Universe!

So, we met on-line to work out some little details of the world. We now have:


* The Rosetta Stone
* The Perpetuum Mobile
* A map to the Nag Hammadi Codex of Gnostic scrolls
* Ruptures in the false reality as the Primal Material leaks in
* A secret Paris hide-out across the street from the archbishop's palace
* The Church wants to save our reality
* We want to destroy it, to make way for the Second Creation
* The Order has gifts of mesmerism, charisma, inspiration, and minor reality-editing magic
* Anti-Paladins get super strength, precognition, etc.
* A frustrated archivist of the conservative Masonic branch
* An exiled Scottish laird who dabbles in alchemy
* An imprisoned young guttersnipe who knows too much



Now all we need is a GM!

Well, with all the cool new stuff posted and my thunder having been thoroughly stolen by my fellow Paladins ;), I offer a fairly complete summary of the game as it stands now, complete with setting, character concepts, and the beginnings of a code, in this thread:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=154334#154334

Sorry to split the thread like this, but I figured we'd start new, with a good summary that new players (and, hopefully, a new GM) could read to get on the same page as the rest of us.