[HoE] Something About a Sword (potential Spoiler seperated from main text)

[Matthew Steflik <grifflik@stny.rr.com>]

In response to a post by Ralph Dula, Christopher Merrill wrote:

> Templar are people and so each has his own idea of how best to help. In my
> game there are places that some Templar call home, but like Ritter they
> mostly use it a base and cache stopping by from time to time to catch up on
> his friends and a good (uninterrupted and safe) night's sleep.
>
I'm with Chris on this.  While admitably implied strongly by the
material we've seen so far, I don't think I've seen anything written
that implicitly states that Templars MUST live a purely nomadic
existence.  If a templar found a specific area that he felt was both
worthy and needed assistance for an extended period of time, even his
own home town, what's to keep him from setting up a base of operations?
Area knowledge: home county would be an incredible boon in this
situation.  In my own campaign setting I have a ville run by an aging
Templar that worked in children's day care before the war.  The ville is
based in the remains of an outlying suburb of Tucson around where her
day care center used to be and she takes in and raises
orphaned/abandoned children (most of the ville is children ages infant
to 16 with a lot of them muties).  This is her chosen form of service,
and its best suited for her now to stay put in the ville most of the
time (more due to responsibility than to age), letting older children
scour the surrounding area for more children in need.  She keeps in
semi-regular contact with Boise, and sends children showing particular
promise to be trained as squires.  That's slightly more than my posse
knows already so I need to stop there, but I think you get the idea.  I
think Ritter's setup in SAaS is fine and just requires a little open
thinking as to how Templars are usually portrayed.

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From said post, Ralph Dula wrote:

> Okay, the church Ritter resides in has become affected by the equivalent of
> the Blessed miracle Sanctify, due to the extreme faith the townsfolk have
> in Ritter.  What the #$@$ is up with this?  The setting of HOE is one in
> which the Reckoners now walk the earth, their evil perverting everything,
> yet the townsfolk are able to have such faith in Ritter that they can tap
> the ambient mystical energy of the Wasted West to duplicate the magic of
> the Blessed?
>

Yep - Ritter's actions and the faith of the townsfolk in him created a
"Sanctify" effect.  So what's the big deal?  If you're perceiving this
as some sort of game mechanics issue, don't.  This is simply an example
of a WAHOO Marshal effect thrown into a campaign to add a bit of color
and atmosphere - personally I didn't have a problem with it at all.
Faith is a hard thing to come by in HoE - its a pretty grim setting.  As
presented, this type of thing would not be something that occurred on a
regular basis by any means.  IMHO, carry on with your adventure concept
and don't sweat it.  From what you wrote, it sounds interesting.  Good
luck with it.

Matt Steflik
Master of Wa-Hoo