Good Music requires Counterpoint: A Bell or Drum shouldn’t play second fiddle to anyone but work together to create a grand orchestra with their friends. Glory should be shared, victories savored with each other, and no one should take the top billing of the show without acknowledging the others. This does not mean you need to lose yourself to a collectivist mindset and no longer have a sense of individuality. Every great piece of music is made up of parts. Take away the bridge of the song, or the Mender of a particular Nakama, and the song is no longer itself. Take away the chorus and you might not even recognize a song you’ve known all of your life.This said, a single note a song does not make. So play off each other. Your identity need not be as simple as ‘Student Council President’ or ‘The Pretty Cheerleader who fights darkness on the side.’ A Bell or Drum’s sense of self often, if not always, spreads out to their friends as well. They are the ones who take great pride in being called a best friend. They are never happier than when someone comes to them for comfort or asks them out for a date. The Bardic Queen believes that these relationships are what will save the world. Your allies are your greatest strength, your friends your strongest allies. It won’t be a singular powerful Noble who wins the day. The true heroes that will strike the final blow against the heart of darkness will be a nakama who live, breath, and think like one and can’t be anything short of that. The final weapon that will purify the world won’t be the blade of one, ...but rather the hearts of many.
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Many stars make a constellation.In each of us, there is a potential for a light to shine. But that light goes through different experiences as it grows, making each light have a very different perspective. This is why we have the Courts: because each has a different view of how best to apply the Light to the world. This doesn’t just apply to Nobles: the Awakened, the Uratha, even the Begotten. All peoples have all sorts of different views on how best to use their gifts.With so many different viewpoints, it can make it very easy for people to enter an echo chamber and only work with those who share similar viewpoints. That’s what the Kingdoms of old did, and look where that got them in the end. Those who follow the Lord of the Open Hand are expected to entreat as many different viewpoints and philosophies in their works as possible, for it is through the work of so many different hands that the end result truly shines. However, that doesn’t mean they have to be rash about it. Viewpoints that are extremely toxic or dangerous to others, such as those who serve the Darkness, are not to be trusted at the speaking table, and too many viewpoints at once means nothing will get done, especially if any of those viewpoints are in direct opposition to one another.There is a second meaning to this philosophy. Our world is a divided one. Almost 200 mortal countries exist on Earth, and who knows how many supernatural ones exist alongside them? And of those countries, it is rare they get along without some form of leverage over each other. But these borders between us were imagined by men and women that lived centuries ago. More connects us than separates us. We all live under the same night sky, after all. So, the Probes must work to bring the people of the world closer together, like billions of stars coming together to form a galaxy. Each individually beautiful, but together making something more.
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Chart the night sky.The Darkness is one of the closest things we have to evil in this world, but it is not the only threat to humanity. Ancient warlocks with egos so big they became embodiments of tyranny itself, mad gods who kidnap mortals and twist them into grotesque mockeries of their former selves, even an alien empire from Mars born from the belief they didn’t exist. The threats facing humanity are innumerable, and have all kinds of origins. So, the Trailblazers have to seek out their holes in the hidden places of the world untouched by the Light or the Darkness. To ignore such things would be the height of hubris.There is a brighter side to this philosophy, though. Not all other powers not of the Light are against humanity. The Werewolf pack defending the neighborhood from a swarm of murder spirits, the Vampire who limits his feeding to blood donors or animals, the Changeling who scares a child away from a battle with a True Fae. Each has the potential to be a boon for humanity rather than a bane, but the instincts that come with their power might twist them into becoming a bane if they are left alone. That is where we must intervene. We must learn about and intervene with these potential allies not of the Light, to further aid peoples of all kinds and keep reaching for the stars.
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Find the light in the darkness.People are a lot like stars. There's plenty all around you and all have the light in some form or another. But like the night sky, many people's light is difficult to see, due to it being blanketed over by layers of the darkness. What led these lights to hide within the darkness is a question that can have many answers. Perhaps they hide the light in fear of it being extinguished, or because they're so used to living in the dark that they have resigned themselves to never showing it. Some rip and tear at themselves and others, never realizing how much good they could do if they didn't let the darkness eat away at them. Like the stars one cannot see with the naked eye alone, the light within some people may need special aid, or extra attention paid to them to truly find the light within them. It may take time and effort, but it's all worthwhile so long as their brilliance is not devoured by the cold darkness.However, the Lord of the Open Hand is not blind to the potential for darkness in people’s hearts. He knows it all too well, and so urges caution in the Probes. A man may lie to a Trailblazer about making good choices out of shame or desperation. And, unfortunately, some people just don’t have any desire to do good at all. They relish being the bad guy. So a Noble has to be ready for those situations, for when there is not enough light in another’s heart for it to grow and outshine the darkness.
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“Forgiveness is a beautiful thing.”People sin everyday. Sometimes, it’s petty things, a spot of littering out of convenience, lying to avoid getting chewed out at work. Sometimes, however, it is much more major. Creating a tainted place, cheating on a spouse, murder. Saints tend to offer a chance at redemption for all kinds from sins, both the small and large ones. They aren’t stupid about this, there are always people who will refuse to ever to be better, and forgiveness does not mean the sins you have commited are erased. A murderer who repents should still serve his sentence. However, everyone deserves a chance to be better.
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Know When to Fold and When to FightNot every game turns out right. Even before the Fall, the Darkness just won sometimes. Fighting a hopeless battle isn’t valorous, it’s foolish. The War of Hope is harsh enough, and wasting your time, reputation, and resources - possibly even your life on a failed effort is pointless. Wars usually aren’t lost in a single battle. In short, look at risk and reward, ask if you could forgive yourself if you failed, and work from there. The Queen won’t blame you if you fight the tide of Darkspawn that’s come after your family, and she won'twouldn’t stop fighting to protect hers.That being said, there’s also wisdom in recovering what you can. Making the most of a bad situation is just recovering some of your bet, and sometimes, you can still at least get a little of what you want. There’s still opportunity in a bad situation, after all. At the end of the long game, what matters is that the Light came out the better. The moral of the story: losers fight battles, winners fight wars.
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Justice for AllJustice often gets a bad rap nowadays, but to the King of Shields it is the seed from which the rest of his philosophy blossoms. The world the Nobility have been reborn into is one where the cruel torment others from the safety of the shadows without fear of discovery or punishment. Whether it be vampire lords abusing their ghouls, Cults sacrificing innocents to the Darkness, or mundane politicians involved in horrific crimes, there are countless examples of monsters both mundane and supernatural who constantly get away with the evils they afflict upon the world. The King of Shields refuses to let these brutes go unpunished and so asks his Nobles to be the heroes that will put a stop to their crimes. The Guardians seek to hold the wicked accountable for their misdeeds and to rescue their victims, even if it means having to delve into the void to find their quarry.It should be remembered that Knights are expected to actually deliver justice instead of just making things worse. Vengeance, hedonism, greed, sadism, pride, and other such vices must never interfere with a Noble’s duties. Judgements must be fair and based on full information, mercy must be used to tamper righteous anger and provide the genuinely repentant with atonement and forgiveness, and personal vendettas and moments of passion must never get in the way of a fair sentence. And of course, no matter what else, the healing and protection of victims needs to come first. Extremism, self-righteousness, and wrath are not tolerated in the Court, and the King himself will personally hold those guilty of them accountable. The King believes that Nobles are supposed to be embodiments of Light for the world. He expects them to act the part.
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The Truth Will Set You Free“Ignorance is Bliss” tends to be the motto of Mortals nowadays. It’s hard to blame them for having it. With the monsters, cults, horrors, and soul-crushing revelations waiting in the night, why would you want answers? If living in ignorance keeps you safe, isn’t that better than whatever truth you could find? People who stick their noses where they don’t belong end up meeting messy ends and even the most stubborn of skeptics subconsciously fear the things that dwell in the shadows. It’s better to just keep your head down and mind your business… right? The King of Shields says otherwise. Yes, the truth can be painful to accept, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing. When horrible things are revealed it might be tempting to hide from it and forget what you’ve seen, but unless you are willing to face the truth head on you cannot live a real life. Any safety someone has is an illusion if they are willing to live blinded by illusions and cowardice. The only way to start making the world a better place is to confront the horrors that lie in wait with courage. Once you accept the Truth it will set you free, and once you are free you can find real happiness. It isn’t always easy, or even safe, to do but it is very much worth it. The King holds hope that people will be able to see that they should be in control of their own lives and always tries to help those who have realized this fact for themselves achieve this dream. People need to live in the Light in order to thrive. Any shadow that would block their way must be cleared, including the ones they weave for ourselves out of fear.
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Shine On to the End of the World The world Nobles are reborn into isn’t called The World of Darkness for no reason. This really is a broken world tainted by fear, despair, and cruelty. Pain, grief, and loss are all things Nobles must confront, death is a very real possibility, and there will always be people who choose to hate and fear them because of the change they represent no matter how good the Enlightened are. Many Nobles can endure all of this so long as there is hope that somehow their suffering will bear good fruit, but what about those horrible times where the things you know to be true fail you? What about the times when you fight the good fight and endure with everything you have, but even after everything you still lose? What then? The King of Shields has thought long and hard over this problem and in the end he has found an answer. So many people in this world get ahead by doing awful things for lofty goals. They justify it by saying that their means will be worth it once they reach their ends, but the choice to do so in the first place is where they have already failed. There is no guarantee that “sacrificing” your morals will achieve victory and even if you do, success won’t undo the sins committed to achieve it. If you seek to drive out evil with more evil, you just replace that which you destroyed and nothing improves. Only goodness can truly defeat evil and if good fails and another evil goes up to defeat the first one, there will be no real improvement regardless of which of the two wins. The Phoenix King’s final lesson is that a Noble should choose to be the Light the world needs even if they stand before oblivion. Many of the Court’s detractors view this as morbidly fatalist, but those who serve him genuinely believe it regardless.
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