Not that IC historical / theological discussions are really fair game to be spoken outloud.
White-wolf never did bother to actually publish the contents of the Testaments of Longinus that every Sanctified worth his Status dot should have memorized. The book isn't supposed to be particularly long.
I'm not even asking for the Sanginus Catachism here, just the Story of Longinus, as told to the Monachus.
I found it exceedingly lame to stand around even for a few minutes with Pete and Jezz talking about stuff like the first 300 years etc. when I know from specific snippits of Lancea Sanctum and Vampire: The Requiem that such information is commonly known and recorded by the Lancea Sanctum, but simply is not available for players to read and quote from.
It would be simple enought to work around in table-top, but in the more verbose social game of the LARP, lacking this information is a giant pain in the ass and unfairly makes the Lancea look like mornons because other players aren't willing to gloss it over.
There are plenty of other bushes to dance around (like the hypocrisy of Embrace), without having to play the "you don't know your covenant history" game. >:P
Actually the first 300 years is not part of the story Longinus told. He told the Monachus about his life and becoming a vampire and then fst forwarded. Read the history section of the LS book and it's pretty clear either A) Longinus skipped lots of stuff B) It wasn't the actual Longinus just someone gripping the story from Torpor memories or C) whatever he said was omitted for some reason
Having read the history of the Lancea Sanctum section of their Covenant Sourcebook again, I can emphatically say that I have no idea what you are talking about. About the only time they ever quote the Testaments of Longinus is on the section openning page. Everything else is general LS history, not the Testament itself.
Like I said, the Characters have seen the Testaments. The Players have seen maybe a page worth of scraps.
As to the history, I think you have your accounts wrong on that too:
LS Timeline out of the LS book:
33 A.D. - Longinus Damned at the Crucifixion 66 A.D. - Longinus meet Angel Vahishtael at the Tomb of Christ 70 A.D. - Destruction of the Temple circa 200 A.D. - Embrace of the Monachus - Longinus passes on the Lance, disappears into history 232 A.D. - First Midnight Mass 241 A.D. - St. Adira and St. Gilad Martyred 244 A.D. - Sanctum takes refuge in Thebes 286 A.D. - St. Daniel and the Theban Legion - St. Pazit dies defending the Spear of Destiny 329 A.D. - St. Maron dies in the foothills of Italy 335 A.D. - Monachus seizes a Monastary, founds the Black Abbey
So given this timeline, the Testaments of Longinus and Longinus's known active span cover merely 200 years, not 300, and plenty of his activities within that period are documented within the Testaments as testimonials and instruction to other Kindred.
Remember, only the Monachus knows the full Testament, everyone else gets copies of copies of copies of the versions he handed down. That's the whole idea of the Covenant, that they have no /objective/ truth only their subjective truth.
I disagree with that conclusion. There are fundamental objective truths within the Lancea's history. The subjective part is how to best act upon those teachings. This is the distinction between the side of history / scription and the side of dogma. Dogma is a very subjective matter to the Sanctified, varying often time from Parish to Parish. The History as set down by the Testaments of Longinus and later writings of Monachus, however, is a lot less maleable.
Pete's point, and my point, was that the Council of Nicea did not occur until 325 AD. That's the point that the RC church really became organized along the lines we know today,
The Creed helped draw a line between Heresy and Orthodoxy in beliefs while the Canons helped give titles and positions meaning beyond the borders of individual regions. Organization wasn't so much the issue as uniformity.
The Roman Catholic Church still lacks much uniformity today. Though we in Western Europe and the Americas seldom see much past the Latin Rite practice of Roman Catholicism, there are other Rite practices are wholely a part of the Roman Catholic Church as well.
the lines that the LS follows.
The Lancea Sanctum uses the same titles, but the responsibilities and organization of those titles are extremely divergent from Roman Catholicism.
There is no Pope in the LS. The Pope appoints Bishops and distributes Bishoprics in the RCC. In the Lancea Sanctum a Bishop is whoever manages to be acknowledged as "wisest" among the Sanctified of a Parish. Archbisop and Cardinal are likewise completely non-Catholic in the LS.
Further, "Bishop," "Priest," and "Deacon" derived from Latin and Greek terms with different meanings in 4th century and were used by more religions and organizations than just Roman Catholicism.
So what was it like for the first 100 years?
The books say that it was teh sux for Longinus as the Camarilla constantly dumped on him and he went to ground for a while after destruction of the Temple. He couldn't use proper philosophy or literature in his arguments and that ultimately lead him to find the Monachus and spend 20 years refining his message before passing the Spear of Destiny.
The Monachus then founded a proper religious order. The Five Martyrs and the Monachus spread the word and established a proper religion, celibrating midnight mass 100 years before the Council of Nicea. Heck, all of the Five Martyrs died before Nicea really took. Those 100 years are accounted mostly in the tales of those Martyrs and the Monachus before the founding of the Black Abbey - supposedly recorded in Lancea Scriptures that are again accessible by Characters but not published for Players.
The Lance believes that Longinus told the truth. They believe that the Monachus recorded it faithfully and without embellishment or alteration. But that is subjective belief and not objective truth.
You're right. Objective is the wrong term. Even "historical" is debateable. It certainly isn't verifiable post-facto. It's witness testimony handed down that you can either choose to believe or not. It's a matter of belief as to whether the accounting of the facts is truthful or not. I know that our supposedly factual accounts of history can be incorrectly reported or even fabricated.
But there is no way you can say the Lancea history is accurate when there are large gaps of that first 200 years unaccounted for
Again, with the work in question unpublished we can't make a definative conclusion as to where and how the IC Testaments actually leaves a significant gap. Without knowing the actually IC contents of the book in question, we as players are flailing around in the dark in a way that the Characters might not be. That's a problem with the resources available for use in play.
Longinus' story doesn't match Bible and pseudo-historical accounts,
Nor do the canon Gospels and other pseudo-historical accounts agree on everything with one another. It certainly leaves questions.
and the Lance as known now could not have been organized prior to 325 AD.
I don't see how that point is truly relevant to the discussion.
Your question is fundamentally "what happened back then?" to which the Testaments could offer at least some answers or stories (not necessarily the Truth, mind you) but players bereft of the Testaments are left flailing like dumbasses.
My beef isn't about subjective truth or historical inaccuracy, but about simply not having the reference material (subjective or otherwise) as a Player to actually contribute to the argument IC that Characters would have.
Further, when you start arguing "history" of a game world without understanding the fundamental design premises of that world, you really start to be irritating.
If it irritates you, Mark, I can just let it drop. Did you design the new World of Darkness, btw? That's an honest question. I've got no insights into who did what on it, only what I've read within the published pages. I'm approaching this as a discussion between fellow players. If you feel like I'm so out of my league in terms of information and insight that I can't contribute anything meaningful and am just an annoyance, I'll just go away and leave you to your thoughts.
Some things to keep in mind:
I've read about most of those points already, and I think I'm tripping over a lot of definitions / semantics as I write. I apologize.
You are correct in that the Roman Catholic Church as an Institution / formal Religion didn't start to really form up until the later part of the 4th Century. What I mean to imply is that the Christian faith, Apostolic tradition, and regional Christian cults from which that Institution would be drawn from existed before that.
5) Bishop comes from episkopoi which were not set down by Christ but rather evolved naturally in the first and second centuries.
Indeed, the Greek term predates Christ and translates commonly to "overseer."
Basically, there was no organization akin to what we know of the Sanctum now PRIOR to 300 AD. When the humans changed, the Lance changed.
The Sanctified where extremely few in number during Longinus's time from what little the source material gives us to work with. It seems to me that the Monachus and the 5 Martyrs really got he ball rolling in their travels.
I get the impression that prior to the departure of Longinus around 200 A.D. there wasn't much of a Lancea Sanctum at all - at least not in public. Perhaps a few scattered cults here and tere. I'd even venture to place the founding of the Sanctum as a formal Religion to the first midnight mass in 232 A.D. rather than 33 A.D. when Longinus was Damned.
As for existing organizations, however, there were organized churches dedicated to Judaism, the Imperial Roman Cult, and various local pagan practicies before Nicea. It isn't like the Catholics truly invented Institutional Religion, the jobs, or their associate titles. They cop-opted them out of Judaism and pagan faiths along with a lot of holidays and ritualism over many centuries.
So, Pete's question is still valid...what was Longinus up to for the first 300 years of his existance?
The first 200 years would have at least some information provided in the Testaments that Monachus took down from his instruction under Longinus. After 200 A.D. or so, he fell off the face of the earth. In the gap between the passing of the Lance and the founding of the Black Abbey, we've got the era of the the 5 Martyrs.
Again, the problem I have with dealing with this in RP is that the information that would be available to the Characters is not available to me as a player thus I can't RP the discussion.
Did you design the new World of Darkness, btw? That's an honest question.
No, but if you open your tabletop blue book and read the playtesters you'll see that we playtested the rules for WW. Plus, I was a WW playtester for LARP from the beginning.
And, I happen to have read the book, specifically I point you at p86 of your Requiem MET book and the section on Kindred memory. There are no objective sources on the creation of the Clans, where Vampires come from, etc. It is supposed to be a mystery that is solved through play, as decided by each ST. Remember the developer chats laid out the golden rule: "Your game is the most important one in the universe". No metaplot. No overarching story. The Storyteller provides that not the source material. You can read the developer chats on the WW site.
Other notes: I never claimed that the Catholics invented religion. The Jews would cruzify me too for the suggestion. What I claimed was that the Sanctum is organized off the Catholic model which indicates that its codification happened hundreds of years after Longinus' becoming a vampire.
Further, I'm not seeing any information where the Testament as shared by the Monachus has History. It's dogma. It's philosophy. Probably Longinus shared some parables with the Monachus, but they would be by no means a complete accounting. And for the record, I ask Christians the same question about Jesus...what was he doing from ages 12 to 33 (mind you, marriage usually happened around 14 to 16 in that time period and 33 was old)
I contend that your PC would NOT have access to those writings. Marcus, maybe. Pawel, no. Because what if one of those stories is about how Longinus became a Crone for a decade or two...do you think the Sanctum would let that get out?
Black Popes are declared all the time and when they die, people pretend it didn't happen.
I hadn't heard about a Black Pope ever being elected by the Lancea Sanctum. Wouldn't someone nominating themselves as Popa Obscura just wind up being labeled another crazy Heretic? It doesn't seem like much of a Papacy unless you take over the bulk of the Sanctum.
Exactly my point. Exactly Pete's point. It is a history based on faith not on any objective "truth". Two guys sit down and work out a religion ... and revise the "original message" which got the first guy treated like crap. And THEN they wrote down that message and you seem to think it's gospel truth OOCly ... it's fine for Pawel to believe that, but Marty needs to understand that it's a load of bunk.
See, this is my point, Marty has no evidence that this is a load of bunk. It might be conspiracy. It might be truth. It could be a bit of both.
It is entirely possible that Longinus just revised his own history and made up a completely new religion than the old one he was failing with. It is also entirely possible that the Monachus and Longinus faithful recounted the events of Longinus lived them to the best of their ability. The change in response could be caused by revisionist history, or by improved skill in Persuasion, Expression, Academics, and Empathy when it comes to delivery.
But are the Testaments any more accurate then the Camarilla accounts (if any existed)? No way. Do you think Lilly or Nick's journal records of the Longinian Heresy (if they existed) would be any more accurate then the Testament?
See, that would be a great discussion to deal with IC, except that OOC the details of the Testaments themselves are generally unavailable to nit-pick, research, or cross-examine. That's the part that is frustrating.
It doesn't matter if they are truthful or false. The part that is irritating is that you can't effectively reference them. Bible-thumping isn't half as much fun without your Bible.
White-wolf never did bother to actually publish the contents of the Testaments of Longinus that every Sanctified worth his Status dot should have memorized. The book isn't supposed to be particularly long.
I'm not even asking for the Sanginus Catachism here, just the Story of Longinus, as told to the Monachus.
I found it exceedingly lame to stand around even for a few minutes with Pete and Jezz talking about stuff like the first 300 years etc. when I know from specific snippits of Lancea Sanctum and Vampire: The Requiem that such information is commonly known and recorded by the Lancea Sanctum, but simply is not available for players to read and quote from.
It would be simple enought to work around in table-top, but in the more verbose social game of the LARP, lacking this information is a giant pain in the ass and unfairly makes the Lancea look like mornons because other players aren't willing to gloss it over.
There are plenty of other bushes to dance around (like the hypocrisy of Embrace), without having to play the "you don't know your covenant history" game. >:P
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Having read the history of the Lancea Sanctum section of their Covenant Sourcebook again, I can emphatically say that I have no idea what you are talking about. About the only time they ever quote the Testaments of Longinus is on the section openning page. Everything else is general LS history, not the Testament itself.
Like I said, the Characters have seen the Testaments. The Players have seen maybe a page worth of scraps.
As to the history, I think you have your accounts wrong on that too:
LS Timeline out of the LS book:
33 A.D. - Longinus Damned at the Crucifixion
66 A.D. - Longinus meet Angel Vahishtael at the Tomb of Christ
70 A.D. - Destruction of the Temple
circa 200 A.D. - Embrace of the Monachus
- Longinus passes on the Lance, disappears into history
232 A.D. - First Midnight Mass
241 A.D. - St. Adira and St. Gilad Martyred
244 A.D. - Sanctum takes refuge in Thebes
286 A.D. - St. Daniel and the Theban Legion
- St. Pazit dies defending the Spear of Destiny
329 A.D. - St. Maron dies in the foothills of Italy
335 A.D. - Monachus seizes a Monastary, founds the Black Abbey
So given this timeline, the Testaments of Longinus and Longinus's known active span cover merely 200 years, not 300, and plenty of his activities within that period are documented within the Testaments as testimonials and instruction to other Kindred.
Remember, only the Monachus knows the full Testament, everyone else gets copies of copies of copies of the versions he handed down. That's the whole idea of the Covenant, that they have no /objective/ truth only their subjective truth.
I disagree with that conclusion. There are fundamental objective truths within the Lancea's history. The subjective part is how to best act upon those teachings. This is the distinction between the side of history / scription and the side of dogma. Dogma is a very subjective matter to the Sanctified, varying often time from Parish to Parish. The History as set down by the Testaments of Longinus and later writings of Monachus, however, is a lot less maleable.
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The Creed helped draw a line between Heresy and Orthodoxy in beliefs while the Canons helped give titles and positions meaning beyond the borders of individual regions. Organization wasn't so much the issue as uniformity.
The Roman Catholic Church still lacks much uniformity today. Though we in Western Europe and the Americas seldom see much past the Latin Rite practice of Roman Catholicism, there are other Rite practices are wholely a part of the Roman Catholic Church as well.
the lines that the LS follows.
The Lancea Sanctum uses the same titles, but the responsibilities and organization of those titles are extremely divergent from Roman Catholicism.
There is no Pope in the LS. The Pope appoints Bishops and distributes Bishoprics in the RCC. In the Lancea Sanctum a Bishop is whoever manages to be acknowledged as "wisest" among the Sanctified of a Parish. Archbisop and Cardinal are likewise completely non-Catholic in the LS.
Further, "Bishop," "Priest," and "Deacon" derived from Latin and Greek terms with different meanings in 4th century and were used by more religions and organizations than just Roman Catholicism.
So what was it like for the first 100 years?
The books say that it was teh sux for Longinus as the Camarilla constantly dumped on him and he went to ground for a while after destruction of the Temple. He couldn't use proper philosophy or literature in his arguments and that ultimately lead him to find the Monachus and spend 20 years refining his message before passing the Spear of Destiny.
The Monachus then founded a proper religious order. The Five Martyrs and the Monachus spread the word and established a proper religion, celibrating midnight mass 100 years before the Council of Nicea. Heck, all of the Five Martyrs died before Nicea really took. Those 100 years are accounted mostly in the tales of those Martyrs and the Monachus before the founding of the Black Abbey - supposedly recorded in Lancea Scriptures that are again accessible by Characters but not published for Players.
The Lance believes that Longinus told the truth. They believe that the Monachus recorded it faithfully and without embellishment or alteration. But that is subjective belief and not objective truth.
You're right. Objective is the wrong term. Even "historical" is debateable. It certainly isn't verifiable post-facto. It's witness testimony handed down that you can either choose to believe or not. It's a matter of belief as to whether the accounting of the facts is truthful or not. I know that our supposedly factual accounts of history can be incorrectly reported or even fabricated.
But there is no way you can say the Lancea history is accurate when there are large gaps of that first 200 years unaccounted for
Again, with the work in question unpublished we can't make a definative conclusion as to where and how the IC Testaments actually leaves a significant gap. Without knowing the actually IC contents of the book in question, we as players are flailing around in the dark in a way that the Characters might not be. That's a problem with the resources available for use in play.
Longinus' story doesn't match Bible and pseudo-historical accounts,
Nor do the canon Gospels and other pseudo-historical accounts agree on everything with one another. It certainly leaves questions.
and the Lance as known now could not have been organized prior to 325 AD.
I don't see how that point is truly relevant to the discussion.
Your question is fundamentally "what happened back then?" to which the Testaments could offer at least some answers or stories (not necessarily the Truth, mind you) but players bereft of the Testaments are left flailing like dumbasses.
My beef isn't about subjective truth or historical inaccuracy, but about simply not having the reference material (subjective or otherwise) as a Player to actually contribute to the argument IC that Characters would have.
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If it irritates you, Mark, I can just let it drop. Did you design the new World of Darkness, btw? That's an honest question. I've got no insights into who did what on it, only what I've read within the published pages. I'm approaching this as a discussion between fellow players. If you feel like I'm so out of my league in terms of information and insight that I can't contribute anything meaningful and am just an annoyance, I'll just go away and leave you to your thoughts.
Some things to keep in mind:
I've read about most of those points already, and I think I'm tripping over a lot of definitions / semantics as I write. I apologize.
You are correct in that the Roman Catholic Church as an Institution / formal Religion didn't start to really form up until the later part of the 4th Century. What I mean to imply is that the Christian faith, Apostolic tradition, and regional Christian cults from which that Institution would be drawn from existed before that.
5) Bishop comes from episkopoi which were not set down by Christ but rather evolved naturally in the first and second centuries.
Indeed, the Greek term predates Christ and translates commonly to "overseer."
Basically, there was no organization akin to what we know of the Sanctum now PRIOR to 300 AD. When the humans changed, the Lance changed.
The Sanctified where extremely few in number during Longinus's time from what little the source material gives us to work with. It seems to me that the Monachus and the 5 Martyrs really got he ball rolling in their travels.
I get the impression that prior to the departure of Longinus around 200 A.D. there wasn't much of a Lancea Sanctum at all - at least not in public. Perhaps a few scattered cults here and tere. I'd even venture to place the founding of the Sanctum as a formal Religion to the first midnight mass in 232 A.D. rather than 33 A.D. when Longinus was Damned.
As for existing organizations, however, there were organized churches dedicated to Judaism, the Imperial Roman Cult, and various local pagan practicies before Nicea. It isn't like the Catholics truly invented Institutional Religion, the jobs, or their associate titles. They cop-opted them out of Judaism and pagan faiths along with a lot of holidays and ritualism over many centuries.
So, Pete's question is still valid...what was Longinus up to for the first 300 years of his existance?
The first 200 years would have at least some information provided in the Testaments that Monachus took down from his instruction under Longinus. After 200 A.D. or so, he fell off the face of the earth. In the gap between the passing of the Lance and the founding of the Black Abbey, we've got the era of the the 5 Martyrs.
Again, the problem I have with dealing with this in RP is that the information that would be available to the Characters is not available to me as a player thus I can't RP the discussion.
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No, but if you open your tabletop blue book and read the playtesters you'll see that we playtested the rules for WW. Plus, I was a WW playtester for LARP from the beginning.
And, I happen to have read the book, specifically I point you at p86 of your Requiem MET book and the section on Kindred memory. There are no objective sources on the creation of the Clans, where Vampires come from, etc. It is supposed to be a mystery that is solved through play, as decided by each ST. Remember the developer chats laid out the golden rule: "Your game is the most important one in the universe". No metaplot. No overarching story. The Storyteller provides that not the source material. You can read the developer chats on the WW site.
Other notes:
I never claimed that the Catholics invented religion. The Jews would cruzify me too for the suggestion. What I claimed was that the Sanctum is organized off the Catholic model which indicates that its codification happened hundreds of years after Longinus' becoming a vampire.
Further, I'm not seeing any information where the Testament as shared by the Monachus has History. It's dogma. It's philosophy. Probably Longinus shared some parables with the Monachus, but they would be by no means a complete accounting. And for the record, I ask Christians the same question about Jesus...what was he doing from ages 12 to 33 (mind you, marriage usually happened around 14 to 16 in that time period and 33 was old)
I contend that your PC would NOT have access to those writings. Marcus, maybe. Pawel, no. Because what if one of those stories is about how Longinus became a Crone for a decade or two...do you think the Sanctum would let that get out?
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I hadn't heard about a Black Pope ever being elected by the Lancea Sanctum. Wouldn't someone nominating themselves as Popa Obscura just wind up being labeled another crazy Heretic? It doesn't seem like much of a Papacy unless you take over the bulk of the Sanctum.
Exactly my point. Exactly Pete's point. It is a history based on faith not on any objective "truth". Two guys sit down and work out a religion ... and revise the "original message" which got the first guy treated like crap. And THEN they wrote down that message and you seem to think it's gospel truth OOCly ... it's fine for Pawel to believe that, but Marty needs to understand that it's a load of bunk.
See, this is my point, Marty has no evidence that this is a load of bunk. It might be conspiracy. It might be truth. It could be a bit of both.
It is entirely possible that Longinus just revised his own history and made up a completely new religion than the old one he was failing with. It is also entirely possible that the Monachus and Longinus faithful recounted the events of Longinus lived them to the best of their ability. The change in response could be caused by revisionist history, or by improved skill in Persuasion, Expression, Academics, and Empathy when it comes to delivery.
But are the Testaments any more accurate then the Camarilla accounts (if any existed)? No way. Do you think Lilly or Nick's journal records of the Longinian Heresy (if they existed) would be any more accurate then the Testament?
See, that would be a great discussion to deal with IC, except that OOC the details of the Testaments themselves are generally unavailable to nit-pick, research, or cross-examine. That's the part that is frustrating.
It doesn't matter if they are truthful or false. The part that is irritating is that you can't effectively reference them. Bible-thumping isn't half as much fun without your Bible.
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Then Marty needs to go read the books again.
And stop believing everything he reads.
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