Saintly Saturday: St. Basil Ratishvili of Georgia

Today is the Feast of St. Basil Ratishvili of Georgia. He was a monastic saint of the 13th century who lived on Mt. Athos at Iveron Monastery. He is considered a wonderworker and was endowed with the gift of prophecy, the most famous of which was leveled at King Denetre of Georgia.

St. Basil received a vision of the Theotokos (the Virgin Mary) to travel to Georgia to censure the King and his court for their profligate lifestyle (in his youth, Demetre took more than one wife). The saint appeared in court and implored the king and his court to turn away from their lifestyle. When they dismissed St. Basil, he was impelled to respond with this prophecy:

A vicious enemy will kill you, and your kingdom will remain without refuge. Your children will be scattered, your kingdom conquered, and all your wealth seized. Know that, according to the will of the Most Holy Theotokos, everything I have told you will come to pass unless you repent and turn from this way of life. Now I will depart from you in peace.

At the time, Georgia was a client state of the Ilkanid Mongols under Abaqa Khan, who died in 1282. What followed was a turbulent period of succession wars. Abaqa’s brother first took the throne but was overthrown by Abaqa’s son Arghun. Another of Abaqa brothers, Qonguram, plotted to overthrow Arghun but failed.

King Demetre’s son was married to the daughter of Mongol Chancellor Buqa, who was one of the conspirators against Arghun. Thus, the armies of the Mongols were poised to fulfill St. Basil’s prophecy. Seeing this truth, King Demetre repented and acquiesced to appear before the court of Arghun Khan in order to sacrifice himself for the safety of his Kingdom. He was imprisoned and executed and the anger of the Khan was sated.

At his death, those present witnessed the sun grow dark and the city enshrouded in gloom and shadow. His body was guarded by the Georgians present and then secreted away with help of fishermen back to Georgia. Today he is revered as a martyr saint with the title “the Devoted” or “Self-Sacrificer.”

Prophecy is a trope in fantasy and sci-fi storytelling because it is great tool for crafting interesting and exciting tales, as can be seen above with the story of King Demetre. In RPGs, however, prophecy is a tricky and even dangerous thing to play with. An author has complete control over everything that happens in the worlds she creates. A GM, however, has ceded that complete control to the players. Thus, if a prophecy is leveled at PCs, it can be abusively used to wrest that control back from the players begging the question: why play an RPG when the story can more properly be told as a short story or a novel?

If prophecy is to be used in an RPG setting, it really should to be part of what I call background noise. In other words, in context of St. Basil and St. Demetre the Devoted, the PCs would hear the rumor that the King had a prophecy leveled against him. The PCs can get involved if they want, or simply ignore it. Note that a good prophecy is one that has an “If…then” statement so that should players want to mess with it, they can be part of the force that can place pressure on whatever variable they wish.

At some point in the campaign (or even prior to the campaign) the prophecy is fulfilled and the PCs then have to deal with the consequences. To continue the example of Sts. Basil and Demetre, the PCs could be called upon to be those who secret the body of the King out of enemy hands.

In other words, prophecy in an RPG can still be a great tool; however, it needs to be a source of adventure background that players can interact with rather than something that is leveled at PCs that then players need to deal with.

Saintly Saturday: The Presentation of Our Lord and Savior in the Temple

Today is one of the Great Feasts of the Orthodox Church: The Presentation of Our Lord and Savior in the Temple. This comes from the second chapter of Luke where Christ fulfills the Law (found in Exodus) by being presented forty days after His birth at the Temple as the first born son with a sacrifice of two turtledoves or two pigeons.

Waiting for Him is the elder Symeon, who had been moved by the Holy Spirit to be at the Temple that day. Upon seeing the Christ child, he takes Him in his arms and cries out:

Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel. — Luke 2:29-32

This story gets really interesting if one looks into the hagiography of Symeon. He was an Alexandrian Jew who was born over three centuries before Christ and was one of the scholars gathered together to do the Spetuagint Greek translation of the OT. When he came to Isaiah 7:14, he did not want to translate the key part of this verse as the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son. As he was about to write maiden in place of the word virgin an angel stopped his hand and declared that he should not die until he saw this prophecy fulfilled.

In other words, when Christ arrives at the Temple forty days after His birth, Symeon has been alive for over three hundred years and when he says, “Lord now let your servant depart in peace” he is asking God to finally allow Him to die.

In fantasy, prophecy is one of those tropes that I do not care for. This is in large part due to the fact that it fails to understand the real purpose of prophecy, which is the revelation of God. I also dislike it because it is lazy storytelling that largely removes free will from the equation.

Due to the fact that RPGs (especially the way that I prefer to play them) are largely dependent upon player choice, prophecy is not something I have ever seen work well in the context of an RPG. One of two things is likely to happen: the campaign gets railroaded into fulfilling the prophecy (thus begging the question, why is this an RPG game and not short story, novella or novel?) or the character in question does something (like dying) so that the prophecy proves to be false.

A far more productive use of prophecy within the context of an RPG is that found in the historical context of the prophets: they were warning the people of God about the consequences of their behavior. If you continue to ignore God (and the fact that you are made to become like Him), bad things are gonna happen.

This does two things: 1) it honors the true purpose of prophecy — it reveals the characteristics of God that we can aspire to be like; 2) it honors human freedom — there is no coercion when you tell a child that if you touch a hot burner on the stove, you will be burned. This use, of course, assumes you are interested in including the kind of theology into the hobby that I am.

Even so, the aspect of this story that interests me the most is the idea of an NPC who cannot die, but rather than seek ways to exploit it (as the various flavors of undead are want to do), this person is seeking out the circumstances in which they can die. Due to the simple fact that this undeath is not being exploited, such a character is obviously trying to either undo some wrong or seeking out a specific kind of good.

This makes for a potentially fascinating interaction with PCs who are normally obsessed with not only not dying, but exploiting the various powers granted them through experience and adventuring. It turns a lot of gaming (and life) assumptions on their ear and challenges everyone to look at the game (and life) from a different perspective. Not to mention the fact that such an NPC would make an absolutely fascinating patron, because once the criteria of what this person needs accomplished is known, a direct interaction with the NPC is not actually necessary. Thus, whenever circumstances come up that might fit the criteria, the PCs are given a choice — do we make a side-trek to help the patron on our own or do we do what we really want to do and continue to potentially doom this person to what he or she perceives as a curse? What happens when those opportunities are ignored?

This is the kind of NPC that has the potential to be a catalyst for players making interesting choices that result in great gaming sessions — something the fantasy trope of prophecy never can.