1. Any religion based upon love, peace and tolerance is apparently going to lead inevitably to hate, war and bigotry. While we all have our opinions on the subject, ranging from indifference to fanaticism, they don't have any useful part to play in a fantasy sex game.

So references to the major religions, including anything such as angels, should be avoided in character creation.

2. Demons, succubi, and other malevolent beings are considered corruptions of pre-Christian religions and so are not exempt.

3. Actual named deities from any pantheon are not going to be hanging around the Campus, either disguised as monsters or students.

4. You're also not the reincarnation of any major historical or religious figure either.

5. Minor historical beings which are unlikely to offend anyone are fine. So if you believe you are a miscellaneous Egyptian priestess reborn, go for it. But you are not Cleopatra or Osiris.

6. General use of supernatural or demonic stereotypes isn't normally a problem, though to keep in topic it is generally best to assume those early beliefs were corruptions of actual visits to Earth by aliens rather than something to take literally.

I'll be adding / deleting / revising as necessary. So please do comment, and help clarify what we all know the actual intention of these restrictions to be.

First question that springs to mind is...

Are these changes retroactive? In the even that you have a student and/or monster that is in violation of these restrictions, are you expected to redact/alter it to be in line with them?

I don't really want to disrupt the game and those who have been playing here happily so I'd sooner not have to do that but it's rather an open-ended question to provide a blanket answer without knowing what I'd be signing up for

I suppose fictional religions is okay?

Say that a monster has been to Earth some centuries ago, and was worshipped as a lesser known (fictional) deity.

Worshiped by the citizens of Atlantis?

That's good. It's even good if a monster came to Earth centuries ago and was identified as a demon or a yeti or the Loch Ness monster or an unspecified religious figure who flew through the air in a fiery chariot. Most stuff is fine, we just don't want a character who claims to be an angel, or the second coming of Christ, or Thor, or the reincarnation of Joan of Arc.

What about in the case of someone like Linny's angel character Altima, or my succubus Jezebel?

I think what stormbringer is getting at is a character can look like a angel, succubus, some sort of demon. They just can't have any sort of religious affiliation behind them. For instance they might be mistaken for a succubus or angel by appearance by people on campus due to what they were taught. They just can't "literally" be from the 4th circle of hell, or from the heavens. When talking about heaven or hell its to be presumed the character is talking about there home world. I think an example is needed to understand what I'm saying.

My old succubus character Destra was originally a human turned into a succubus through a parasitic reproduction trait in the sucore. The sucore themselves came from a planet called helios, which the surface of the planet is too hot to live on, so they live underground. The sucore visited earth centuries ago to feed, and reproduce. Its believe a few interacted with humans on a none feeding/reproductive level. How the humans came to know them as succubus, or they looked similar to a alien species visiting earth centuries ago that they were lumped into the same group which humans called succubus. For all intents and purposes Destra looked like a succubus, but her history didn't have any religious connections to the earth lore of succubus.

This is just my interpretation of what stormbringer said. I could be very wrong on my interpretation, so it might be better to wait for his actual reply. Also I believe that it falls into the same category as A. Rhipsime question. That these rules aren't retro active to existing characters, but affect characters being created after this topic was posted.

So, basically, I'm going to have to completely re-write my demon's background and erase almost every post I ever made with that character in the last few years (or however long she's been around) then.
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Lovely...


But then again, after reading Stormbringer's last comment, I'm at least hoping that that won't have to be the case.

... and of course I already know the answer to this one, but just adding to the list of "No's" ...
No nuns or former nuns as students.

@Ike - I find myself almost completely agreeing with what you wrote. That must be a first

@Sondra - If you read my first post you'll find that demons can exist in TLI. Ideally they are aliens who came to Earth and gained that reputation in an age of superstition but I'm not going to insist on rewriting established characters which fall into that area.

On the subject of angels, what place does a heavenly babe who fies around on wings while wearing a white nightie have in SHS anyway? They can't be students, they're not human. They can't be monsters; what are they going to do, torture everyone with old Jim Reeves tunes played on a harp? They can't be ADD agents, they're non-violent. They can't be SFA, they're not aliens if they are actual angels. Now if you wanted an SFA non-student victim character who had big white wings and a glowing aura but who came from the planet Angelica, be my guest.

@Allirabeth - thanks for reminding me about that. I'd forgotten it already

Well.... To be stubborn about it, in the Torah, the various angels were all horrific, alien things with visages nearly incomprehensible to human understanding. The various classes represented all sorts of absurdities from flaming wheels to chimera to creatures that will make you blind if you so much as glance at them. In short, they were reflections of the wrath and intimidation of the Old Testament God. The harps and halos and wings are all apocryphal. They don't appear anywhere in scripture and are instead the result of Renaissance artists taking huge creative liberties.

I rest my case

No seriously, make them horrific alien things and stay away from the Christian angels whose mawkish imagery plagues the internet and there will be no real problems, will there.

You sure can rely on the Jews, huh? No interpretations needed at all. They just put it down as it happened, no questions asked.

Weeeeeeeeell.... The "Christian" angels is more a cultural thing than a religious one, whereas the Hebrew angels are straight from the source, so if you made horrifying surreal David Lynch angels, you'd be drawing more from legitimate religious source than if you made them pretty adrogynous things with wings and harps.

And as far as traditional Christian angels, well, it can be done. There are some legitimately terrifying interpretations of Christian angels in popular culture (I'm looking at you in particular, comic books).