The nature of the Scriptures was described as:
"we have the collected ramblings of people who mistook schizophrenia for demonic possession, felt that a powerful body odour was the best means to ward off the tormenting spectre of disease,"
This was challenged, and sources for these were asked for.
We do not feel that this was an unreasonable request, because while those attitudes were present in the beliefs of prehistoric jews and medieval christians, they're not something that's in Amarr religion.
Why not? The first settlers on Athra were canonically a cult of Catholic extremists, I consider that all the justification I need for ripping a few bits from the Bible and changing them enough to represent ten thousand years of translation, mutation and revision.
In any case, there have already been examples of people making up some of what's in the Scriptures. They define which specific bits of the Empire's scientific understanding are included in it, they talk about Saint So-and-So or claim that Scripture justifies or underpins their character's behaviour, even when none of the few scraps of Scripture we actually have mention anything of the sort.
Is that godmoding too? Because If they get to do that, so do I. I didn't claim that the bits other people have made up don't exist or aren't based in PF, so please don't do it to me.
All I've done is fold some of the wackier and less savoury parts of existing Abrahamic religions - on which Amarr is not just thematically based but historically derived according to the PF - into the argument.
You don't get to have a religion that's all nobility and niceness, not when that religion clearly and unapologetically endorses slavery. I'm sorry if you consider it godmoding when I rub a little dirt on, but given that nobody calls it that when I invent the names of Splinterz teams, or non-DUST infantry gear, or the names of cities on unimportant planets, or conduct an (inconclusive) experiment based on a theory I have about how Sansha's mind control nanites work, or hell, if I invent NPCs that my character is supposed to have talked to....
Why is it suddenly Godmoding when I describe some of the themes that I consider it perfectly realistic would appear in the Amarr Scriptures? I didn't invent quotes, I invented ways in which said quotes could be interpreted. I didn't provide imaginary chapter and verse when challenged, I said "go read your own damn holy book" thereby opening the door for the character to provide an alternative interpretation. I've bent over backwards to do nothing more than detail-building.
The Amarr were a primitive people, once. They're still, in many important regards, a primitive people today. They may be scientifically highly literate and extremely advanced, but ethically and morally they're still medieval at best. They're a theocracy that practices slavery for goodness' sake, what's clear about them from that is that they're not going to excise stuff from the scriptures for good, thinking, modern moral reasons, but rather because it interferes with the Theocracy's grip of power.
That means that wherever something in the Scriptures looks and reads a lot like Leviticus is very probably still there, and most people just sort of gloss over that it exists. It's not detrimental to the faith therefore the Theology Council never edited it out, and it sticks around like clutter in a busy house that nobody has the time to deal with.
I don't agree that I've been godmoding. I'm sorry if you feel that I have been and if it continues to upset people I'll have Verin quit the conversation entirely out of frustration, how's that sound?
