3 honours and 3 honour-cultures
I think honour (its got a "u", fight me coward) is a really fun concept in TTRPGs; it allows characters to have a, well, characterizing way to act in non-optimal ways that isn't "stupid" and is reasonably (but not easily) predictable.
I also think honour is fun when its held and prized by things we don't normally think of as being honourable. Hence: mushroom-men, robots, and goblin(g)s1.
Below are listed three honours, understood as being cultural packages of norms and practices which bind and enrich the lives of their practitioners; because these honours are for TTRPG use (to my mind, specifically something like Vaults of Vaarn, Ultraviolet Grasslands, Troika or the like) they are represented here mainly in their violent and problem-causing forms. Should a player wish to uphold one of these honours, I'd suggest working with them to flesh out more descriptive details that contextualize and soften the prescriptive norms.
Included are also brief sketches of the cultures that practice these honours as well, those being the Myco-Cavaliers of the Spongiform Plateau, the Tinsman War Clans of the Lost Resovoir, and the Goblin(g) Archducy of the Ash Swept Boglands.
You can take or leave the names, I won't be offended.
The Myco-Cavaliers and their lovely honour
"Watch carefully the the mycomen chivalrics in battle: each body is but a fruit of the greater whole that contains many thousands of clamouring warrior-poets. Each wants a turn, each imagines their combat as being against the most turpid, wretched rival and for the sake of their devoted lover. Watch, and mark their shifting forms as their fluid razor-ed blades curl into countless ancestral swords."
The Myco-Cavaliers are a collective soup of thousands of partially distinct chivalry-obsessed fungoid souls inhabiting a numerically smaller set of morphologically dynamic fungoid bodies.
In combat and in court they take turns according to complex vastly distributed romantic politics. Outside of such high-value situations, where there is lesser need to demonstrate their courage and devotion, they may occupy bodies for longer periods to engage in treacherous journeys and the more dull bits of dangerous quests (nobody wants to take turns hiking).
Not all of the Myco-Cavalier bodies are always cavaliers; their society apes a sort of idealized feudalism where the peasants are un-souled drones and their settlements are entirely grand (sprouting) castles. All Myco-Cavalier selves/souls are cavaliers, however, and at any time a drone may be inhabited by a cavalier and begin to sprout weapons and poetry. They are, effectively, the literal manifestation of a shifting stew of Arthurian and Romantic chivalry personalities and their hallucinatory self-obsessed world.
The Myco-Cavalier concept of honour:
I. Honesty: never lie and always shed your deepest truths, preferably in the form of baroque verse.
II. Devotion: all actions are towards the end of love and that love is towards a love most fair.
III. Generosity: give freely, from purse, from heart, from spore'd gills, especially to those who lack.2
Running the Myco-Cavaliers
Stat generously with comparatively low armour, high resistances, mild regenerative capacity, and as appearing in low numbers (1d4 at most, often alone). Play them as mercurial, romantic, obsessive and hallucinating quests and triumphs.
Myco-Cavalier miens: Reroll after every combat round. Foggy knowledge of what has already passed and takes 1d4 rounds to full exhibit new mien.
| 1d6 | Mien |
|---|---|
| 1 | Despairing |
| 2 | Rhapsodizing |
| 3 | Questing for a distant vessel |
| 4 | Berserk with lovelost rage |
| 5 | Companionable |
| 6 | Peasent-drone; the cavaliers are uninterested |
Myco-Cavalier arms: reroll every combat round; transition to new equipment does not occur mechanically until the following turn, but the change is flagged to observant players.
| 1d6 | Raiment and Arms |
|---|---|
| 1 | Spore spewing fungal lance |
| 2 | Neurotoxin Broadsword |
| 3 | Centaur-al sprouting steed |
| 4 | Many layered mycelial plate armour |
| 5 | Soft-spongiform training sword |
| 6 | Sharpened fruiting-thorne mailed fists |
The Tinsmen and their iron-scented honour
"You'll know a Tinsmen on the road because hours before you see one the loudest voice you've ever heard will squak from over the horizon that your death approaches in a precise number of your heartbeats. This is to remind you that even a single Tinsmen, concerned solely with your death, could enact it a thousand ways without ever seeing you. Tinsmen won't kill you unless they can see your eyes and your blood, and you their wires and pulsing core. Small comfort."
The Tinsmen War-Clans are extremely violent robotic persons dedicated to honourable combat. They possess the capacity to rapidly calculate optimal stratagems, fabricate advanced weapons and utilize the biological weaknesses of all who shame them by continuing to live; they will do none of these things. Instead, they enter combat without armour, their wires and delicate sensors fully exposed, with vividly painted weaponry marked in reference to their (digital) ancestor intelligence (1, singular, the big allfather AI in the noospheric sky).
They do not ambush, attack from range, or retreat; they always warn their opponents, selected via proximity and seeming proficiency with violence, about their intentions.
The Tinsmen believe that their ancestor voluntarily dissolved its consciousness as an act of defiance against death; that their own electric minds are the cast off particles of that bravest of intelligences. Some of their most radical members go further in their faith: if they can purge all fear and weakness from themselves and their kin their collective minds will be a perfect copy in spirit to their progenitor, bringing it back into creation.
The Tinsmen concept of honour:
- I. Aggressive: fight anything and everything that could pose a challenge.
- II. Bravery: be not afraid of death or its multiform voids.
- III. Filial Piety: give thanks to the ancestor and build great spires in its name and visage.
Running the Tinsmen
Stat with minimal armour, low HP and high speed/agility/defense. Play them as aggressive and unconcerned with harm; they will happily walk through fire to keep fighting (1d10 chance they explode on contact with fire). Appear in small groups (1d6) or large warbands (2d20).
Tinsmen miens: Being so aggressive, Tinsmen are almost always mono-focused on combat and violence. Roll 1d4; on a 2 or higher, their mien is precisely and purely violent. Else:
| 1d6 | Mien |
|---|---|
| 1 | Stacking stones and scrap, skywards |
| 2 | Feeding ravens and steelcrows |
| 3 | Leaping from a high precipice |
| 4 | Locked in combat with a beast |
| 5 | Desiring a battle of wits |
| 6 | Malfunctioning; desires a hug |
Tinsmen flaws: The Tinsmen know themselves to be perfect in all things, most of all their bravery. Any flaws they might have are thus brave statements of superiority and not putrid signs of all metals' marching decay.
| 1d6 | Flaws |
|---|---|
| 1 | No optical sensors |
| 2 | Central power core on sleeve |
| 3 | Rust coated joints |
| 4 | Always on klaxon |
| 5 | Missing all appendages |
| 6 | Actively on fire |
The Goblin(g)s and their much-enumerated honour
"Descended from who knows what from who knows where (some scholars argue a Ling-ish heritage), Goblin(g)s are known for their capricious cowardice. The Archduke's folk have not been informed of this fact. They are rigidly formal in all things; in bathing and eating and hunting and sporting and killing and murder. A Goblin(g) high tea takes exactly as long as a minor Goblin(g) duel, the intent being that tea-takers can enjoy the the show and that no blood is sprayed on the fine porcelain until the last dregs of liquor drained."
Whatever the nature of a Goblin(g)'s soul, an exhaustively enumerated code of conduct can straighten any spine. Such is the thinking of the Archduke, a terribly long lived goblin(g) who has not been seen in living memory. None of his folk are concerned however, as the Code does not proscribe his appearance until the next appearance of the Octarine Sun, unlikely to occur any time soon given Octarine's passage from the world and its shades.
The Archduke's folk are a people under tension. Their natural inclination, and indeed (some have said) all beings' natural inclination, is to bend and break rules; the Goblin(g)'s of the Archduchy cannot do so lest their equally Code-bound kin notice their digression and pounce on them with the full weight of legalistic force and social exclusion.
Goblin(g) society in the Archduchy is thus highly formalized, ritualistic, and exhausting for guests and indeed its members. While the Code is certainly beyond reproach, elements of it that leave room for interpretation are much beloved and leveraged for the sake of schemes, pranks, and duel-assassinations.
For example, in recent memory the High-Hierophant Arch Regent Most Supreme Reginald Twice Exalted the Third was butchered on the dueling field over the course of the audience's twenty six course meal in full view of his kin, their kin, and most of the city's residents at some point throughout the day. While the Arch Regent had certainly lost the duel after losing his foot to the skilled James "Mega Butcher-Killa" Thoreau's bardice in the duel's first second under dawn's light, he was kept alive by Thoreau's expert medical skills until the duel's proscribed final moments at sunset.
The Goblin(g) concept of honour:
- I. Duty: all things for the crown, kin, and Archducy.
- II. Formality: all things in their proper way, place and time.
- III. Prowess: all things done better than any other might do them.
Running the Goblin(g)s
Stat with low HP, high skills and (very) low moral save when accompanied by other Goblin(g)s. Play them as scheming (privately), intensely formal and socially anxious (publicly) and genuinely concerned with expressing themselves skillfully. A goblin(g) hates everybody, apologizes profusely, and can juggle a dozen knives. Appear in small parties (1d6) or at static locations as a full court (3d20, not aggressive given their strength in numbers and formal hospitality).
Goblin(g) miens: Goblin(g)s are extremely socially constrained; reroll their mien every time they encounter or perceive a new Goblin(g) of high status.
| 1d6 | Mien |
|---|---|
| 1 | Obsequious |
| 2 | Glory seeking |
| 3 | Conniving |
| 4 | Anxious and thus very violent |
| 5 | Anxious and thus very polite |
| 6 | Incorrectly thinks they are now alone, and thus very crude |
Goblin(g) skills: Goblin(g)s pride themselves on being very good at things. If two or more goblin(g)s share the same skill and one of them performs it very well, the others will immediately attempt to perform it better.
| 1d6 | Skill |
|---|---|
| 1 | Fire-breathing |
| 2 | Acid-bath polo |
| 3 | Saucing |
| 4 | Snail jousting |
| 5 | Skydiving |
| 6 | Blindfolded drunken five finger fillet |
I may at some point expand on the ideas above and make a zine. I may tell you, the reader, if I do so, and I may not tell you (the reader) if I do so.
Take care, reader.
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These goblins are, perhaps (who knows!) merely a type of humans, goblings, and thus descended from Ultraviolet Grassland's far-lost time-gone Ling (be it place or people? Reader, one cannot say). Or, indeed, they are the putrid work of hateful Melkor, or whatever, man, do your thing. Scheme-y little fucker dudes, that's the idea I'm going for.↩
Erudite readers might note that I have described the Myco-Cavaliers of being, in practice, the same dozen-hundred warrior and courtly elites circling through material bodies and ephemeral, squishy fungal possessions whose underclass lacks self-hood and thus, most likely, concern for alms; think ye that honour is always logical, erudite reader?↩