Accidental duplicate post

Nothing to see here.

[AD&D] Dark Sun: The Order (motivations)

Dragon Kings has a blurb about The Order, a clandestine organization of high-level (21st-30th level) psionicists with three tenets:

They must personally confront heresy according to their roles; they must pursue greater psionic mastery themselves; and they cannot personally use their psionic powers for any purpose that is completely good or evil.

Furthermore, a PC who reaches level 21+ as a psionicist is "marked for death" if he's not neutral-aligned.

Once any creature attains 21st level as a pure psionicist, his mind attracts the Order's attention. Mediators send one or more entrants to investigate the new psionicist and learn his motivations. If the new psionicist is of neutral alignment, they approach him to join the Order as a new entrant. **If his alignment is either good or evil**, or if he refuses to join the Order, he is marked for death.

(Emphasis mine.)

On the one hand, I get it. The Order isn't supposed to get involved. They may perhaps have the power to turn deserts into verdant forests and free everyone on Athas from the tyranny of the templars and sorcerer kings, but they've been designed not to do that. Instead they're a threat for high-level parties.

They're a stabilizing force, not a destabilizing deus ex machina like Elminster.

But if merely being good-aligned (always kind to children, goes out of his way to help poor folks and old folks) or evil-aligned (happily exploits business loopholes, keeps slaves, bribes templars to look the other way while paying employees the absolute minimum he can get away with and overworking his slaves--or maybe even just because he secretly enjoys watching his commercial rivals go out of business and starve!) is enough to make The Order conclude that you're abusing your psionic purity and need to die... that's just stupid. That's the old Aggressively True Neutral druid thing that Dark Sun thankfully did away with w/rt druids. So... how can we fix The Order so that it stays aloof and uninvolved but not in a stupid alignment-driven way?

Steal from Star Trek and/or space opera. Give The Order their own version of The Interdict or The Prime Directive. "Enlightened minds (a.k.a. powerful psis) must not interfere with the development of lesser beings--must not alter the course of history or affect individual lives on a large scale--because natural [Darwinian] selection is vital to the eventual coadunation (psychomaturation) of the collective planetary mind. The penalty for violation is death." It's still kind of pig-headed and stupid and virtually guaranteed to make The Order an antagonist to many PCs, but it's a coherent motivation that you can actually imagine an earnest NPC reluctantly killing for, as opposed to the ridiculous nonsense of "I'm killing you because you are too nice to widows and orphans."

Maybe Mr. NPC is willing to overlook a 21st level psionicist who seeks out buried water sources (for free) to help farmers establish new farms, because that's small potatoes. But if a psionicist--even a "mere" 15th level metapsionicist--sets up shop Empowering items with metapsionics including the Empower, Receptacle, and Convergence powers to achieve a psionic Singularity of sorts (eventually you'll be creating dozens of new Empowered items a day), wow, that could change the course of Athasian history pretty quick, and Mr. The Order NPC should be horrified and act ruthlessly to prevent that "disruption".

Instead of the story about the little elf boy:

One day, an intolerant shopkeeper, no doubt a recent victim of one of the boy's pranks, sought the strongest psionicists in the village to control the adolescent. But the entire village went wide-eyed with panic when the boy dealt back more than he took, even from the greatest masters in Ledopolus. Enraged, the boy turned his youthful anger full-force on the villagers, killing and maiming, lashing out with all the ferocity that fifteen years of scorn had burned into him. Those he didn't kill he enslaved, controlling their minds to do his wicked bidding. 

But within the month, a stranger appeared at the edge of town, a shrouded elf whose brown wrappings indicated loyalty to no tribe. The elf made no sound, yet the half-breed boy sensed him and appeared. Their mental struggle took only an instant. Then the stranger left, leaving behind the shattered village, its newly awakened (and very confused) inhabitants, and the corpse of the evil half-elf boy. Thankful, the villagers sent out their fastest riders to reward the solitary elf, but they never found nor heard from him again. 

Instead, it would be a story about a dwarven mindmaster with the crazy goal of greening the desert. He worked hard all day every day creating figurines and statues which gave uneasy villagers the feeling they might be alive--and the desert began to green, and the statues began to spread, until one day... the brown elf showed up, broke the dwarf's mind and smashed all his statues, and left. The villagers had mixed feelings about this but overall they were glad because nobody knows where this all could have led, and people fear change, especially on Athas where news is so often bad news.

Explanations

E.,

I want to vent a little to you about something, but first let me explain why. President Nelson said something true and overall immensely helpful to me in a recent conference talk, but there's part of it that I have an issue with, and I want to vent about it, and I want to vent about it with you in part with the ulterior motive of proving that just because we don't have the same religious beliefs any more doesn't mean we can't have a conversation about religion that you and I will both enjoy. I think you will "get" my issue with this quote and also why I don't ultimately consider it a big deal, but that it's still worth noting.

The quote is:

"As you think celestial, you will find yourself avoiding anything that robs you of your agency. Any addiction—be it gaming, gambling, debt, drugs, alcohol, anger, pornography, sex, or even food—offends God. Why? Because your obsession becomes your god. You look to it rather than to Him for solace. If you struggle with an addiction, seek the spiritual and professional help you need. Please do not let an obsession rob you of your freedom to follow God's fabulous plan."

Both emphases mine. The bold part I have zero problems with and find immensely helpful. (I've been struggling with a food addiction for years and it's super helpful to have official sanction to think of it as an actual spiritual problem, as opposed to something I consider a spiritual problem but am embarrassed to talk about to anyone else because they won't understand why it matters.)

The underlined part I find unsatisfying and a bit of a cop-out. There's an answer but it's much deeper than that, and if I were talking to Heavenly Father directly he would probably say to me either "There are psychological dynamics in play that result in food addiction doing X to your habits which results in Y or Z" or he would say "It's harmful but you're not at a stage yet where I can explain to you exactly why, except via [analogy]."

I'm not saying President Nelson was wrong to phrase it that way because his job is to talk to the world, not only to Max, and I think the world would generally respond poorly to the kind of explanation Max would benefit from (especially the "you're not at a stage yet where I can explain to you"). But the Holy Ghost says to me at least that the Max-directed explanation exists and would satisfy me.

If I know you, E., I would say you have probably had your own run-ins with explanations that are unsatisfying and a bit of a cop-out. I know how it feels.

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.