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After a year of traveling and helping out low level players and seeing the state of the pathfinder society at large, I have decided that the need for the shadow lodge is greater than ever. Sheila Heidmarch continues to send inexperienced recruits out on missions to their certain doom. The decemvirate continues to hoard artifacts for their own purposes. Pathfinders of all experience levels are sent on suicide missions for simple political gains.
Sure, the man who created our brotherhood was a traitor, but the faction he created was greater than him. His ideals, even if they were just a guise, are still ideals worth striving for. Are the lives of our fellow pathfinders nor worth protecting? Is the spirit of camaraderie and cooperation not worth fighting for?
I have seen the lodge fall apart in the last year, splintered by the despondency wrought by our leader's treacherousness. I have seen the grand lodge attempt to absorb our numbers, speaking with their twisted words of reparations and goodwill. Other factions swept in like vultures, picking our family apart, for who else did we have to turn to?
I have a proposal for all former shadow lodge members, and all those who would stand for unity and the common man in our hierarchical society. We should reform the shadow lodge, only this time instead of one man pulling our strings, we should only follow the ideals we have always followed in our hearts. Stand up for the weak, protect each other, question the orders of unscrupulous leaders, root out treachery, and find proof of the misdeeds of the various factions of the pathfinder lodge.
Going forward, I propose that all those that stand for these ideals sign this charter, so that those in power know that someone is keeping tabs on them.
By signing this charter you divorce yourself from any faction to which you may have had ties to in the past. You agree to stand up for your fellow pathfinders, regardless of their current faction.
Hangman Henry IX, your brother at arms
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out of character, what i am suggesting is that we the players reform our beloved lodge. we do not need approval from the top for our faction to exist. it stopped existing for reasons unknown to us, taken away by executive decision. i propose that we protest this by having our characters that are shadow lodge members no longer report as any faction other than shadow lodge.
i understand that this would mean characters in the shadow lodge would no longer be able to purchase gear not on chronicle sheets, no longer to be resurrected, but i personally find this cost worth paying. for any time i see a shadow lodge member at a table, i will know that player is going to stand up for what is right.
all of my current characters are as of now shadow lodge, and i will use all my resources to help all other pathfinders, regardless of faction, as my earlier post proposes.
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i understand that this would mean characters in the shadow lodge would no longer be able to purchase gear not on chronicle sheets, no longer to be resurrected, but i personally find this cost worth paying.Doesn't seem worth the cost to me, from what I hear the leadership doesn't abide by it.
you could still pay to be resurrected of course, just not with prestige
As someone who has started a non-faction "faction" (the Lamplighters), here are some bits of advice.
First: do it. Call yourself Shadow Lodge, tell everyone you meet (in character), recruit other players, etc. Campaign leadership told me they loved the idea of ideal-based grassroots factions led by players. It's an awesome idea, and great fun.
Second: you can't actually report as Shadow Lodge, though, without causing a problem for your GM or event coordinator. Due to the rules of PFS, you have to be affiliated with a legal faction. For the Lamplighters, most of us (probably 2/3rds) are officially Grand Lodge, to avoid being affiliated with an outside political force, but in this case that might not make sense. Or maybe it does - change from within, which is really what the Shadow Lodge tried to do by coming in out of the cold. If even Shadow Lodge members report as Grand Lodge, it may be possible to alter the course of events subversively and bring the Society closer to your way of seeing things. (This has the side benefit of allowing you to use prestige.) And really - what you are espousing is no different from what many members of other factions also believe: that the Decemvirate have been far too callous with agents' lives for their own nefarious purposes. That belief can transcend national or political boundaries, and be a "meta-faction" that exists outside and above the official ones.
Third: It doesn't sound like everyone here has the same opinion of your former faction head. Like it or not, Torch screwed the Society Shadow Lodge over, for his own personal ends; if you really love GMT then there's no way to remain in the Society except as a fifth column, and due to the "no PvP" rules that isn't going to work very well (or be much fun for you or others at the table). I think, ironically, that the lies GMT was telling when he pretended to care about Pathfinders' well-being is the real raison d'etre for the Shadow Lodge, as the OP pointed out. That's a cause worthy of rallying behind.
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Sung to the tune of 50 ways to say goodbye
By ghoul been paralyzed
Cry elsewhere they advised
Won’t explode now like I should
Got Burried in debree
And then drowned in the sea
I’m leaving now for my own good
That's cool, but if my friends ask where you are Tell Aram Zey
That's cool, but if my friends ask where you are Tell Aram Zey
We went down through a storm drain
Died in my last stand
Fell in a death trap squisher full of quicksand
Help me, help me, I'm all out of allies
She met a shark under water
Fell and no one caught her
Matrimony to a blackros daughter
Help me, help me, I'm all out of lies
And ways to say you died
My skin still feels the sting
From veneom on that thing
Not to mention fungal spores
Got captured by gnoll clans
Leave me that’s the plan?
Their poetry was sheer torture
That's cool, but if my friends ask where you are tell Aram Zey
You was caught in a mudslide
Pounced by a lion
Got mind blasted by a third edition Psion
Help me, help me, I'm all out of allies!
I dried up in the desert
Tripped by a wolf cub
Bashed to death by an ogre with a greatclub
Help me, help me, I'm all out of allies
And ways to say you died
You wanna risk a thousand lives do you
You’re gonna be the one I’m disposing of
But you don't want me to