Oaths
Oaths and oathtaking are a very important part of the FaerieMUD world. They are the anvil upon which the world of stories is made and broken.
An oath is created whenever a character who has a True Name uses phrases like "I swear," "by [name]," or "I promise." Each oath sworn also creates a covenant, which is the game representation of the social contract between the characters involved in the oath. The covenant is also the means by which the participants are either rewarded or punished based on the adherence to the oath.
The traits of the covenant created by an oath are governed by a number of things determined at the time the oath is first taken (although important oaths may be resworn to create new traits). The developmental statitistics of the new covenant always start out at 3 (making a reswearing ceremony for a well-developed covenant a major decision). The kinds of thing which help determine these traits are:
- the difficulty of fulfillment
- the relationship between the participants (an oath of friendship between two long-warring nations has greater effect than a pact between long-time friends)
- the size of the groups involved (swearing friendship between races is more potent than swearing friendship between cities, which is more powerful than swearing friendship between two people)
- the strength of the god invoked by the oath (if any) -- note that this creates a situation where gods (who are affected by poor efforts to fulfill oaths by their worshipers) may take exception to oaths taken without their permission; they may also wish to monitor compliance; expect that they will know all about oaths by which they are invoked
- the Mana of the location where the oath is taken
- the time of day, date of the year, and the astrological meanings of these
- the quality of loci (particularly objects) the oath is sworn by (as in "I swear by the spear of Odin" -- particularly when sworn by the person possessing the item)
- the value and quality of items dedicated to the covenant (as in "we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor"); this one may be deprecated in the future if we cannot find a way to fairly represent ownership by a covenant in code
Besides the participants and the immortals (who are themselves participants), the location itself is also impacted by the outcome of the oath. The mana level of any location, or the ease of access to it, is influenced by oaths which are sworn or broken in the vicinity. For this reason, a wide variety of personages may have a direct interest in the degree to which you fulfill your oaths, and the places in which you swear them.
Broken oaths reduce mana. Fulfilled oaths increase mana. For this reason, some heavily-trafficked areas are generally reputed to have a lower mana level than more isolated sites. See Magic Users for a more detailed look at this subject.
Characters who have not yet reached the level of emotional/moral development represented by a karma of 46? do not yet have a True Name and thus do not create a covenant when they swear an oath. Many cultures will have a coming-of-age ceremony to celebrate this passage (usually around the middle-school or junior high years).
— Scotus - 04 Jun 2000
— Ged The Greys Hain - 13 Dec 2001 [Moved discussion of MagicUsers to that topic, and rewrote some parts for clarity]
— Scotus - 2 June Dec 2003 [Added part about Oaths and TrueNames per Ged]
Updated Oath Information
An oath affects more than just the being saying it, the being(s) he's saying it to and their location. It can also involve words themselves ("Amen" or other words can take on a magical significance when used to affirm oaths), names ("I swear upon my name"), abstract concepts ("by all that is holy and good"), physical objects (sorta like putting up collateral), and many others. The magical strength of any of these objects can be affected by the making/breaking of an oath.
— Stillflame - 11 Dec 2001
Updated Updated Information
While this note of Stillflame's still represents something we would like to see, it is now somewhat deprecated due to ged's concern about making every word an object. At the moment, we are expecting the module which contains the interface for containing mana to be mixed into the Locus class. So all areas and physical objects can have mana and thus be nodes in a ley-line network. Note that physical object may also be foci for mana (thus allowing them to be edges in such a network as well; Randalf says this is OK in Graph Theory; ged says he can code it).
— Scotus - 07 Jun 2003
