Inconsistency of Xin's Seven Virtues of Rules

[CoeusFreeze]

So I've been reading through a bunch of older adventure paths in preparation for running Return of the Runelords and I've stumbled upon a rather large inconsistency with the writing of Thassilon-based adventures. Namely, Xin's original seven virtues vary from book to book.

Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition wrote:

The star itself is known as the “Sihedron Rune,” and signifies not only the seven virtues of rule (generally agreed among scholars to have been wealth, fertility, honest pride, abundance, eager striving, righteous anger, and rest), but also the seven schools of magic recognized by Thassilon (divination magic, Brodert points out, was not held in high regard by the ancients). Brodert notes with a smirk that much of what is understood about Thassilon indicates its leaders were far from virtuous, and he believes the classic mortal sins (greed, lust, pride, gluttony, envy, wrath, and sloth) rose from corruptions of the Thassilonian virtues of rule.

This is supported by the description of Krune's weapon later on.

The Waking Rune wrote:

Krune’s dragon-tooth spear has insightful patience granted to it by its imperial creator. Meant to embody all that is right and virtuous about inaction, the weapon is primarily concerned with providing for the comforts of its rightful wielder.

However, Shattered Star and other books seem to have a very different set of Virtues

The Dead Heart of Xin wrote:

The runelords took Xin’s seven virtues of rule—charity, generosity, humility, kindness, love, temperance, and zeal—and corrupted them into the rewards of rule, now known as the seven great sins of the soul—envy, greed, pride, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth.

Paths of the Righteous wrote:

At 1st level, a runeguard can master a secret method of using one of the seven runes of Rune magic in a beneficial way to aid himself or others. He must choose one of the seven virtues when he gains this ability, but can choose another at 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 9th levels; by 9th level, he has mastered all seven of the secrets of virtuous runes. A runeguard can use any of the virtuous runes that he has mastered in any combination per day, but no more times per day than his runeguard level overall. Using a virtuous rune is a standard action (unless otherwise indicated in the text) and provokes an attack of opportunity.

Charity...
Kindness...
Generosity...
Humility...
Love...
Temperance...
Zeal...

What happened with this inconsistency? Why have the seven virtues gone from moderated versions of the seven sins to complete inversions of them? Moreover, which set should we use for Return of the Runelords?

[James Jacobs]

Use the virtues given in the hardcover "Rise of the Runelords," which are the same ones mentioned in the Dead Heart of Xin. This was a change I made after the switch to the Pathfinder rules from 3.5; I was never quite satisfied with some of the virtues being two words long instead of one word concepts, and wasn't super happy with the exact word chocies for the first versions anyway.

In the end, of course, feel free to use the version you like more, but the canonical "official" ones are charity, generosity, humility, kindness, love, temperance, and zeal.

(Note that these virtues don't really play a role at all in Return of the Runelords, which is why that topic never came up.)

[CoeusFreeze]

James Jacobs wrote:

Use the virtues given in the hardcover "Rise of the Runelords," which are the same ones mentioned in the Dead Heart of Xin. This was a change I made after the switch to the Pathfinder rules from 3.5; I was never quite satisfied with some of the virtues being two words long instead of one word concepts, and wasn't super happy with the exact word chocies for the first versions anyway.

In the end, of course, feel free to use the version you like more, but the canonical "official" ones are charity, generosity, humility, kindness, love, temperance, and zeal.

(Note that these virtues don't really play a role at all in Return of the Runelords, which is why that topic never came up.)

Thanks for your response.

You may want to double-check the Hardcover version of Rise, because I pulled that passage about the original seven from page 75 of that book.

I could understand wanting to tweak them, but I'm curious as to why you went from moderations to inversions (why Wrath went from righteous anger to kindness, for example).

As for clarifying them, these are what I called the virtues in my run of Rise (a few have altered meanings but stick with the concept of "moderated sins"):

Ambition (Greed/Transmutation)
Vigilance (Envy/Abjuration)
Courage (Wrath/Evocation)
Patience (Sloth/Conjuration)
Tenacity (Gluttony/Necromancy)
Dignity (Pride/Illusion)
Devotion (Lust/Enchantment)

[Revan]

Yeah, while some could have used better wording, I *much* preferred the 'moderations'; the inversions don't fit with their schools of magic anywhere near as well and make the Runelords the more cartoonish for becoming the complete opposite of what they were supposed to be. As well, the moderations spoke to a certain different cultural sense of morality for Azlant and Thassilon, which is a more interesting angle.

[CrazyGnomes]

CoeusFreeze wrote:

Thanks for your response.

You may want to double-check the Hardcover version of Rise, because I pulled that passage about the original seven from page 75 of that book.

Appendix Seven: New Rules on page 416 of the hardcover version lists these sins/virtues:

Envy:Charity
Gluttony:Temperance
Greed:Generosity
Lust:Love
Pride:Humility
Sloth:Zeal
Wrath:Kindness

[OmegaZ]

The original Thassilonian virtue of Eager Striving that got corrupted into Envy is very intriguing to me. I like the idea of someone working really, REALLY hard to achieve what they can in life and having this effort valorized by their society. Eager Striving then gets corrupted as others get the same results of hard work through luck (born noble, born magical, dumb luck, etc.).

[The Shifty Mongoose]

The way I handled it is by claiming that Thassilonian lost a bit in the translation to modern Taldane. Specifically, I claimed that "Charity" could also work as "Compassion", and "Kindness" was also used to mean "Justice".

That way, Charity Abjurers can protect people from icky stuff and Kindness Evokers can zap the wicked and help people with gusts of wind and walls of force without sounding inconsistant.

[CorvusMask]

I'm weirded out by new names being 4 out of 7 catholic seven virtues .-.

I kinda agree that moderations sounded more sense making than straight up inversions. It fits too how the school spells work.

I mean, seven virtues are supposed to be what rightful ruler gets to enjoy as a ruler right? I'm not really sure how ruler is supposed to enjoy charity unless its in sense of "Giving charity and that makes you feel good"? I guess that would make sense too

[James Jacobs]

CorvusMask wrote:

I'm weirded out by new names being 4 out of 7 catholic seven virtues .-.

I kinda agree that moderations sounded more sense making than straight up inversions. It fits too how the school spells work.

I mean, seven virtues are supposed to be what rightful ruler gets to enjoy as a ruler right? I'm not really sure how ruler is supposed to enjoy charity unless its in sense of "Giving charity and that makes you feel good"? I guess that would make sense too

A ruler is supposed to enjoy charity by taking their personal time to support/compliment/bolster those they rule. It's the opposite of envy. You don't covet what other people have, you want other people to have what YOU have. Think of it as the non-money version of generosity.

And the reason the virtues map so closely to the Catholic ones is because the sins ARE the 7 deadly Catholic sins. Opposing concepts to those sins are going to naturally result in similar themes. If it's weird to you, feel free to rename or reassign them as needed.

In the end... the virtues of rule are not something that we tend to do much with in adventures—in world, it's an antiquated concept and modern nations have their own things, so it's an easy enough thing to adjust in your game without much problem.

[CorvusMask]

I mean, reason why I found it weird was that final 3 of them weren't the catholic versions :D Its like "Okay all sins are from catholism and so are 4 out of 7 virtues but final 3 are odd ones out"

[Starfox]

I'm off on a tangent, as I often am.

In my Rise of the Runlelords game, set in the Greyhawk setting, the runelords were draconic in origin. And I decided that draconic (the language) is less precise than human languages on matters of ethics. Thus the same word covered each side of each sin/virtue, possibly by adding a word to specify the value (good/evil) when that was important - which it by dragon logic seldom was.

Thus one word would mean both generosity and greed, with the exact meaning given by the context - and often open to interpretation.

[Chakat Firepaw]

I've been letting a bit of thought roll around about this and I think the original "virtues as purified versions" works better. The fact that three of them end up as compounds is even a benefit: It helps portray Thassalon as being a different culture. In Thassalonian, those are singular short words and that says something about their values.

If it comes up in play, all you need to do to cover the 'clumsy wording' is to point out that an exact translation isn't possible even with the aid of magic. The only way to put those concepts into Taldade is to include qualifiers and even then it isn't going to be quite right.