Karma, Fate and the Spirits of Eden

When the final fires of the Last Cataclysm died down and the monumental task of rebuilding the world, of stopping the earthquakes, calming the seas, mending the skies, taming the winds, the foremost thing on all of their minds was how to stop this from happening anew. The Spirits at this point were at their most primeval and almost mindless.

Slowly they gained new consciousness as man did after the Cataclysm – this was an effect of the essence flow around them that no subjugating force Fate could muster would ever deny them. With this consciousness came the realization that there seemed to be no way of controlling mankind. Soon they would find another way to cause another cataclysm – inadvertently or not. If it had happened before, it was doomed to happen again.

But the Spirits knew not that structures in the world were already in place, woven by the unseen strands of creation and the unseen hands of the world itself, that were tasked with keeping a delicate, unseen order that would help prevent or slow more destruction. Not only among people, but among the Spirits themselves.

Whenever a die is rolled, people call it luck. Fortune, randomness, odds, are all just one small part of the structure in place that both gives everyone a fair chance, a fair reward, and anyone a fair punishment – Karma.

The Purpose of Karma

Everyone in Eden knows or is taught a good few dozen things that might be taboo to someone else, and a few more that are utterly reprehensible. Karma is the force that controls and, in a very loose sense, enforces taboo. Breaking a mirror might not be seven years of bad luck, but breaking a mirror to prove it either way may be bad karma, since it is wasteful.

Karma is the reality that for every right or wrong you commit, a similar right or a similar wrong will be committed to you. However, the righteous aspect of Karma is rarely thought about. One does not expect to be rewarded for good deeds by an unseen force – it is much too subtle or consequential an occurrence than being punished by an unseen force.

The people of Eden abide by karma insofar as it aligns with their individual world views. Many people know many taboos and break them anyway. Some of these taboos are outright cultural falsehoods, such as the thought that burning food is bad luck, but nobody feels happy when they sear a boar’s leg black and render it inedible. Some taboos, like murder, are enforced by laws that keep the peace. At least subconsciously, Karma is seen as ineffective in handling these issues. It is not visible enough.

These traditions are ingrained in people and they pick and choose which to follow. To never break taboo and never tempt karma is to be a saint – this is outright impossible. Even the Spirits themselves, who are closer to these forces than any other creature, break taboos regularly. Yet, the idea of taboo gives a moral ground to people – don’t do unto others what you would not want done to you. They teach their children to be good because out there, something is watching them and keeping score.

But that does not mean that Karma keeps everyone in check. Spirits can break Karma almost more easily than anyone else. An Asura spirit is decidedly evil – it is born from evil notions, made of dark-tinged essence, and its goal is to feed upon those lesser to it. Spirits keep the world at a balance by being irredeemably evil, unchangeably good and, most importantly, sometimes malleable. Some spirits can’t change, others can, and they keep themselves and humans in a balance between all of the forces, philosophies and elements in the world. Spirits are inexorably bound to this fate, and it is the strongest element of Karma.

Breaking Taboo

If, in the world of Eden, Karma is such an understood concept, even going as far as to be semi-recognized as a pulling and pushing force in the world, why is it broken? Why isn’t everyone in Eden an innocent that avoids any actions that would result in punishment? Why willingly tempt fate and break taboo?

The answer is that the punishments of Karma are not overt enough to always be considered.

For example: a young man inherits mounds of gold from a dead relative. He uses this money each day to throw himself grand feasts. He buys land, establishes a manor and hires servants. He pays them very little – he himself, when he was poorer, was paid the exact amount he pays them now. He thinks only of himself. He buys a local girl from a poor village as a bride and heaps her with money as well, when he isn’t forcing himself on her.

Every year for five years he lives a life of excess, selfishness and pleasure until he dies, his heart having stopped one night. He dies, for all intents and purposes spiritually and socially alone at a young age, most of his life still ahead of him.

Each year, did he think he would die the next year unless he changed his ways? He was young, rich and powerful in his local area. Could he have foreseen than in exactly 5 years, not two, not three, he would have died? Each year reinforced in him that what he was doing wasn’t harming him. In fact, it made him feel great. The punishment, the bad karma catching up to him, was entirely unpredictable.

He could have lived 10 years, had he been a person of greater endurance or had he bothered to pay for a physician and take care of himself. Some other thing might have happened then – his mansion might have burnt down, he might have spent so much of his money he has nothing left to invest or to use to create more wealth for himself so he returns to poverty.

Something bad would have happened, but it did not happen then. It did not happen for so long that he ceased humoring the notion that anything would happen at all.

To live in fear of Karma is not to live. It is paranoia that nobody but the truly paranoid entertain There is a saying that punishment occurs, but perhaps not in our lifetime. This is untrue. It will occur in our lifetime, but we will not be able to gauge when it will happen.

Justice and People

Taboos associated with tangible laws which are enforced by people are the ones most respected. These, of course, are called crimes. If you commit a crime, a person will see to it that you are punished. This keeps most people in check – but karma is kept out of that equation. At that point, murder has ceased to be a religious or metaphysical matter. People commit murder, make war, steal from others and ignore the ails and needs of their fellows because they think they can get away from other people.

Law substitutes an intangible punishment with a tangible one, and an intangible agent with a physical one.

This creates a sense of opportunity cost. A thief always prepares for the possibility of being caught. But the possibility he won’t be caught right away, depending on his skill, might be much lower. You can avoid capture, defeat people, with skill. The pay off of stealing and enjoying what he stole (or the money made off it) outweighs the idea that someday, perhaps, he will be caught and made to pay for his crimes. This is the element of chance, fortune, randomness, that reinforces a person’s free will.

Laws immediately punish you when able. This creates a barrier more effective at keeping the majority of people from breaking taboo than Karma. But it also enables a good amount of other people to do as they will, because if you are skilled enough, you can escape the law and defeat people. Nobody except the most arrogant would believe they can outwit Karma.

Some people, it might seem, have no karmic punishment coming to them. Not any time soon. Criminal organizations, wicked cults, violent goblinoid militias hiding from the world, greedy politicians – there exist many people seen in the world as being deserving of punishment they have not received. When people take a stand against these acts, it could be interpreted as an act of Karma. This is not a stretch, but it is something most people don’t think about when they are smiting their enemies.

In this way, Karma can field deputies against its greatest threats, while delivering the random, unseen justice to the lesser.

But Karma can be seen as unfair. Killing, for any reason, can engender revenge and hatred from someone. Even the most righteous may be judged in this way. It is a force as powerful as its mystery and deeply rooted in emotions and wills.

Karma In The Game

In essence, Karma in a game of Spirits of Eden is at the hands of the Dungeon Master. It is not to be seen as a sledgehammer he or she can deliver to a player’s head whenever he or she feels like – it isn’t a rule, it has no mechanics. It should be applied when it would make the story more interesting or as a subtle reminder to a player of any great transgressions being made.

Not all punishments are lethal. A player that goes greatly against his or her established beliefs, such as a supposedly chivalrous, Lawful Good character that gains a massive lust for looting bodies after every combat, could be punished with a taboo (see Eden’s variant rules). This is not a punishment on the level of meeting a Balrog on a bridge, or having rocks fall on the party, or stealing the party’s resources or powers. It is a punishment that can be played off of and made interesting if the player accepts it.

Karma can be used to enrich the game. A player character’s story, its development and change, can be influenced by tragedies, by joys. Karma is not overwhelmingly negative. It is already built into the game in the form of treasures and experience points earned for performing deeds. In an overly evil game, Karma represents the obstacles facing the Players – the forces of good against their evil, and the punishments the players suffer if their evil is ever defeated. Karma is represented in a player’s epic destinies – characters defy karma and move towards a greater, ultimate fate.

Ultimately what Karma is most is a way to enrich the setting and the characters. It is the fate that even Gods fear because they cannot control it or foresee it even with their incredible power. It is the stories that children are told when they go to sleep, of great heroes and great villains, so that they grow to aspire to be good and decent adults. It is the fables that villains scoff at, thinking themselves invincible until the characters conquer the odds and defeat them. It is mortality even to immortals. If Karma is nothing more than “god-fearing” in your game, it is not serving as a useful device, or perhaps it is being overplayed.