okay so 86 Obediance and maybe Attendance. What about our Belief/Oath/Limited Membership? What exactly will we base that on? Any ideas?

The belief could be that the corrupt aztlanian threat must be defeated. that could be broken by failing to act against a known, tangable, threat. It could also be something more general, like the members must show respect for all life within reason.

Yes, I believe that secrecy (I called it silence in my last post. Doh) is a good choice. It would be best if the rest of the Ghosts, GW and possibly Nicholas Whitebird could be told of our existance, which I believe is a fairly neat group who aren't going to be telling tales without ruining the whole thing.

Attendance depends on wether or not everyone is willing to give the mages a day off, every one to three months, on specific (non negotiable) days (based on the phases of the moon), without fail. If that's OK then I'm fine with Attendance.

I don't think obedience is a bad thing - we set up a way to rank people in the group based on something, say power or wisdom or voted or amount sacrificed for the group and then they become an unspoken (secrecy) leader of the awakened - we already are defering to Rheiv - adding a magical leader shouldnt be a biggy - just make certain we have a way to change the leader if the leader gets to big for his britches

In the games I've played in Attendance hasn't been a problem, although those have always been shadowrunner groups (for the most part) so not certain how it'll impact a merc group *8->

How about this - the goals of our group are to explore our magical talents and enhance our powers, skills, and knowledge and to do it in a way that allows us to exploit the advantages of working as a team. We should know each other well and act as brothers. We keep the arrangment secret so that what benefits we derive from the group can be kept secret. Once a month we have an astral meeting where we discuss goals and plans, decide on leadership and exchange information important to the group. The leader is responsible for the welfare of all members and must look use the resources of the group to benefit the group and it's members. Members are expected to follow the instructions of the unimpaired informed leader. Once we are initiated, we can start performing astral quests together to help the group in various ways. We believe in the sanctity of life in a naturalistic way, such that death is inevitable for all and inevitable in conflict, but gratuitus murder or death caused by recklessness is not allowed. Our reverence for our magical gifts requires us to do all we can to preserve them and therefore we must take geasa upon magic loss. Our fraternal interests are such that we all voluntarily provide a material link in case we are seperated nd we trust each other to use it to find or to use ritual sorcery to help whoever needs help. Because of the secretive nature of being Ghosts for GW and the secrecy required of our group, we cannot invite anyone into the magical group who isnt also already involved and aware of our mercenary work. Finally, we require anyone who joins the group to take an oath to follw these strictures.

This gives us nine strictures namely: Attendance, belief, deed, fraternity, geasa, secrecy, limited membership, material link, and oath.

as far as customs - we can come up with those as we develop - thats kind of the definition of a custom anyways, they develop over time to handle issues not adequately handled by the rules

Please respond with your impressions, objections, corrections, ...

-3Threes

I don't like astral quests as they leave the possibility of the character being left with serious physical injuries, especially for people such as primal who have no melee combat skills. Again, Attendance is fine as long as we pass it with Rheiv (well (we should pass everything, allong with a brief explanation, to rheiv and he can decide wether occational injuries from quests and strictly defined periods off for meetings are OK). Aside from that, everything is fine.

we can do diff deeds besides astral quests - just figured they would be good since you can tailor the difficulty and because often they take little to no time in the meat world - as far as passing anythign through Rheiv - dunno if secrecy would let us pass it through rheiv - remember this isnt military where the minutes of your day belong to your officers - plus since we can hold the meeting astrally - we can just have it at night when we should be sleeping $$ then nobody but us will know - as far as occasional injuries from astral quests - we can just play up the mystical nature of our talents - not like he can command us not to practice magic - there are risks involved in everything we do, we dont have to pass everything by him - he knows there are risks and can be expected to have to compensate sometimes

Awakenened Gentleman and Ladies,

I, personally, like everything about the magical group so far. It is well thought out, and it shows a good amount of planning. However, you have to remeber one thing about secreacy: Inside the group and the Chain, it'll be fine. If you insisit on doing things inside your own group, inculding having a magical leader that is more than semi-autonomous within the Merc group, there might be promblems. Not OOCly, of course. since we understand what you all are doing in the OOC world.

ICly is another matter all together. You all are already mages, you all have access to a realm that we unawakened mundanes cannot comprehend. This it self breeds a bit of speration, which can be a healthy thing. The mundane characters will be more distressed if the Mages create a group, but, after hereing the pros and cons of it, will most likely allow it. If you have secret, Astral meetings and do secret, magical things in this group, not bothering to tell the commander all the mundanes have to go through, that will breed more than unease, it will create distrust.

ICly.

Just thought those are some things you might want to consider. Again, good job so far!

looking over the secrecy stricture again - it all has to do with releasing the info to the public - i dont think that three mundane members of a secret ops group includes the public unless they blab - and knowing those three, we dont have anything to worry about - so unless Sphynx feels strongly the other way - i think we can safely tell the mundanes about our magic group and still satisfy the secrecy stricture

although, any Rheiv impersonations that Hector does at our astral meetings should be kept in confidence

I think I'm just as inclined not to tell Rheiv or the others anything, though obviously if my partner blabs it won't matter much.

~J

Rheiv ain't no mage, hes just a good ol' soldier. YOu want your mage stuff, thats just fine. You want to do astral things in secret, thats just fine as well, as long as you submit a report afterwards. Although, it /will/ drive spikes through awakened-mundane relations within the group. Not saying many In game problems will be created, but just throwing that at ya.

Also, remember. You people are under the emply of GW, Rifle (Rheiv),Utah (Kalinn), and Strife, however, are 'assigned' to GW as there commanding officer. /There/ obligations havn't bee dissolved. Something to think about as well.

Gentlemen, I hate to do this again, but something's come up and I have to take my wife somewhere this evening. I won't be back til around 8pm (GMT+1). We can start then (which is an hour later than last week).

Sphynx

I have to leave at about 3:00 PM EST/8:00 PM GMT/9:00 PM CET, but this ought to be the last game I'll have to duck out on for the immediate future. Apologies again.

~J

You still looking for new players?

Seriously, I've been looking for another SR game to pick up. I want to test out some new character designs/ideas.

The game shifted to the Welcome To The Shadows Forum but is currently on-hold due to lacking a GM (and is now a coupple of pages back). I'm offering to GM it myself but I have finals this month and a dissertation due in next month so I'm not doing anything just yet. The game may be able to accept new players, I think Sphynx's initial idea was to split it into 2 groups.