The power of prophesy

I've been playing fast and loose with prophecies in my campaign. The wizard of the group has been the focal-point of a prophecy dealing with a mad sorcerer's attempts to gain Godhood. And recently things came to a boil.

The group just found out that their leader (the wizard PC) is descended from one of the most reviled sorceresses in history, Iggliv Shadowbourne. (The last name isn't known to most historians even, and she was last seen 3,000 years ago.) She was actually quite... well, she wasn't the demon they expected. She offered the wizard the Shadow sword (a shadow blade with the ability to channel and deflect magickal energies) and the Book of Bone, a tome of sorceress Death magicks. Expecting a trick, they stalled... and that's when the true enemy arrived, taking the sword and tome using a Timestop enchantment.
The mad Sorcerer? Iggliv's father. Who has been imprisoned magickally for over 3,000 years, and only released a couple decades ago (by the grandfather of the Fire Shaman, though they don't know that). Garrick plans on using the Book of Blood (which he has already stolen after the wizard accidentally opened it... he was the only one who could), the Book of Bone, and the Book of Flesh to finish the Prophesy and achieve Godhood. (Seeing that he's the one who had the visions and wrote the Prophesy, he knows how. *grin*)

My problem?

Well, the group now wants to *know* what the prophesy is.

I've been using time-honored techniques of evasion and lying and downright refusing to give it to them. (Time-honored that in other instances in literature of prophesy, we never get to see it. Nor (often enough) do the heroes. The Belgariad, The Wheel of Time, etc.)

However... I doubt I'll be able to put it off anymore.

Any suggestions on how to go about writing a prophesy? Or how I can again avoid telling them it? :) Though I don't know how much longer they'll let me live if I keep on dodging that particular bullet... :)

Rob
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The power of prophesy

From: "Robert A. Howard" 
> Any suggestions on how to go about writing a prophesy? Or how I can again
avoid telling them it? :) Though I don't know how much longer they'll let me
live if I keep on dodging that particular bullet... :)
>
A lot of my prophecy and legend material was written at ungodly hours of the
morning mullocked on red wine after playing or talking roleplaying for many
hours.  You don't necessarily need a poison to free up the creative juices,
but it can help in producing stuff that isn't s obviously "from your hand".
You also want to write A LOT so that you can cull the crap and pull together
sufficiently obscure elements.

To write a targeted prophecy is more difficult (I always wrote first and
made sense of it later).  You've got to get your head to where-ever and
who-ever the author was at the time of writing, while also being in tune
with the goals and personality of whoever is providing the vision.

The other thing I found useful was to have a raw document that formed the
original prophecy and to add notes written by different researchers down
through time as they attempted to explain the prophecy.  This let's you make
the actual prophecy really vague and surreal, but identify and explain
elements of it.  The advantage of the notes is that they can be wrong, or
they can disagree with each other.

Do you have a style in mind?  Have you written anything at all?

Chris.

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The power of prophesy

In a game I have been playing for about 5 years now we frequently discover
prophesies.   The gampaign is in an action genre with a dark future / horror
flavour and the Apocalypse / Gehenna / Ragarock etc is approaching.

We have found out various things about what will happen, but very little
detail.

There is a prophesy which states before the end of all things the Tiger will
fight Fenris.

My character has discovered he is the Cat Lord.   He has a "Nemesis" who is
not yet, but wants to be the "Wolf Lord".

Thus we know that at some point the existing Wolf Lord will be displaced and
there will be a massive fight scene between my character and his nemesis.

But we know nothing of when this will happen and I'm not sure the GM does
either.

So the key to using prophesy is to keep it vague.  Always use the "delphic"
style of ambiguity.   You must have an idea as to how the story arc will go,
but if you keep it lose and a player suggests something better - then of
course that is what it always meant!

Go for clauses along the type of "If {something vague which might refer to a
character} happens then {something vague which sounds significant}."

That way you can't lose.  Never name the chatacters outright, never identify
the actual event - unless it is a recent discoverey which is going to
resolve in this or the next adventure.

Another ploy is to specify the "The Prophesy" is actually a massive "scroll"
with lots of trivia in it.   Then you only have to hand over bits of it
saying "your studies of the {scroll} indicate that this section might have
significance".  If you throw something at your players each session, even if
it is total twaddle they might be able to find something sesible in it and
then you have an instant sub-plot which is always useful.

This sort of thing takes time, but if you can print then up in advance using
nice graphics then whipping something out of your file (which is also seen
to contain numerous other sheets of paper which you make a point of not
showing anyone) impresses your players no end!

Another thing the GM of this campaing has said on the meta-level is that he
alters the future such that he can wrap the capaign up in a minimal number
of adventures while satisfying all the prophesies so far in the public
domain.   We can never be sure how soon the world will end, or for that
matter if it will end or just change to the point where several of our
character races (no player is a normal human) cannot exist any more.

Mean while the end of the world approaches.   Bangladesh is underwater, but
the bad guy who flooded it dind't survive.  Romania discovered they had
"built a nuclear reactor on a previously unknown fault line" - but we
managed to keep the reactor core intact so there were only 60K fatalities
and we killed the bad guy that time too.

Meanwhile, the ancient city of Petra is now total rubble (the bad guy
sleeping there got away) and if an aged Russian crone flies a large cauldron
into your garden - don't argue about it - we've only two no-score draws
against her.   She is a "ravening one" - a vampire who can only drink the
blood of lesser vampires - and therefore no threat to normal humans.   (Yeh,
well actually that means normal humans have no value to her...)

Don't bother trying to visit the Sphinx - it walked off somewhere - but you
can walk at night in an ever increasing number of cities and not have to
worry about having your blood drained...

A recent crimewave rocked China as everyone fought over a large stone egg -
or was it the egg of the Phoenix?   One of the three great dragons managed
to keep the Phoenix from falling into the power of either of the other great
dragons and stop The Cat from eating The Bird.   (Of coursre The Cat has to
hunt The Bird, just as The Wolf must hunt The Cat - it is part of the
natural order of things.)

Very little of this is in the prophesy so far revealed, but all is
consistant with it.  That is the key to its successful use.

Rgds,
Michael.

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The power of prophesy

Well, one thing I have decided on the Prophesy is that the person who wrote
it is the big bad guy himself. The one who's trying to become a God. :)

3000 years ago he had visions of becoming a God and wrote them down. And
when he did so, his daughter (Iggliv) saw the prophesy, and especially the
bit about him stripping her of all power and dignity, said "No way!", and
sealed him up in a magickal prison for 3000 years. (And in revenge, he sent
a demon to attack her with her True Name, and she was Sundered - broken
magickally so that she cannot regain magickal enchantments once they are
cast... thus stripping her of her power.) She also went into a magickal
stasis for 3000 years. ;)

Another bit is that one of the characters (not the wizard, but the Fire
Shaman) will serve the True Shadowbourne. The wizard will likely assume it's
him. Garrick thinks he's the True Shadowbourne. ;) (The True Shadowbourne is
in fact the aunt, who's a Paladin of Surn. But I'm not going to let them
know that until the time comes for him to swear fealty to her. *grin*)
Assuming, of course, that he doesn't decide to fall for the demon woman
who's after his... ahem, body and soul. *grin*

They don't know the four ladies are demons. But they do know they aren't
good. Well, three of them aren't. The last is a bit vague on this whole
evil/good thing. Doesn't really care. But has found herself growing rather
attached to the wizard who's polite and nice to her and trying to not fall
in love with the rather cute red-head who pretends to be a Ranger but slings
spells nearly as good as he. ;) (They are allies together against the
Hellspawn Devils who are working with the Aboleth. And they don't care one
way or the other about the prophesy or Garrick. They just wanna kill
Devils!)

Hmm... well, I have little tidbits. And pieces of the prophesy that have
happened. For instance, only one who is Pure of Heart could open the Book of
Blood after it had been sealed. That being the wizard. ;) And that they
would awaken the daughter of Iggliv, and Iggliv herself.

That a common past would bring the Fire Shaman and the wizard together (both
had their parents slain by Garrick).

And a few other tidbits I can't remember right now.

That help at all? :)

Rob

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The power of prophesy

Chris' suggestions are some I would have made it he hadn't already done so.  The presence of a commentary on the prophecy adds verisimilitude to your world plus can lead to little sub-adventures if your players should ever be bright enough to seek out other works by the commentators (alas, none of mine ever were).  Think of Nostrodamus and the Book of Revelations.  The thing might be in an unknown language or have been translated from that language.  If you already have revealed some of the details of the prophecy, then I suggest writing an outline of the thing, breaking it into verses and/or stanzas.  Be explicit as to what the thing means.  Hide this document from the players.  As part of the explication (I love using these big words :) process, you should have tied the characters' actions and history into the prophecy.  Cheat and use things that never were planned.  Now you can start obscuring the thing.  Substitute allegory and metaphor wherever possible.  Remember that when you get done, the whole thing is going to look blindingly obvious to you.  You probably don't need to make it harder; if you're lucky, your players will figure out the parts they have done.

Joe
--- "Chris Tutty" 
> wrote:
>From: "Robert A. Howard" 
>> Any suggestions on how to go about writing a prophesy? Or how I can again
>avoid telling them it? :) Though I don't know how much longer they'll let me
>live if I keep on dodging that particular bullet... :)
>>
>
>The other thing I found useful was to have a raw document that formed the
>original prophecy and to add notes written by different researchers down
>through time as they attempted to explain the prophecy.  This let's you make
>the actual prophecy really vague and surreal, but identify and explain
>elements of it.  The advantage of the notes is that they can be wrong, or
>they can disagree with each other.

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The power of prophesy

Rob wrote :
>>>Any suggestions on how to go about writing a prophesy? Or how I can
again avoid telling them it? :) Though I don't know how much longer they'll
let me live if I keep on dodging that particular bullet... :)<<<

I'd suggest getting your hand on a "real" prophety book, the most famous
and most easilly available being Nostradamus'. This can give you a good
example of the cryptic style to use (and if you end up with one of the
funky versions that include the "interpretations" of the editor, you'll
realise that in fact, no mather how your "prophecy" is phrased, people (and
players) will always manage to twist it afterwards to interprete it in
regard to the past events...)

Eve
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