
|  Archpaladin Zousha | 
 
	
 
                
                
              
            
            The Cosmic Caravan, as a pantheon, has a specific anathema to never "spend the night in the same place twice in a row."
The reasoning behind this anathema is obvious, it's meant to push worshipers of the pantheon to travel and see the world, given Desna's prominent place in it. However, this presents a problem if you're playing a Cosmic Caravan cleric in adventure tightly linked to a singular location for an extended period of time. Unless the GM specifically lets you "cheat" by ruling that technically you can follow the letter of the commandment by just not putting your bedroll in the same specific spot each night, but that probably violates the spirit of it.
I got to thinking about this because the Cosmic Caravan is a big inciting factor in the Abomination Vaults AP through Wrin Sivinxi: the general assumption it makes is your party is either in Gauntlight or in Otari, and even if your party doesn't worship the Cosmic Caravan themselves, Wrin is technically in violation of the anathema if she stays in Otari every night.
How does a player interested in worshiping the Cosmic Caravan or creating a character connected to Wrin square this circle?

| Sibelius Eos Owm | 
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. | 
 
	
 
                
                
              
            
            Although cool and evocative, I felt like this anathema of the caravan's was an overreach. Back when Luis Loza called for people to submit edicts and anathema that made adventuring unusually difficult, I brought this one up. It's fine for a niche deity like the Eldest Ng, but for a pantheon that is supposed to be increasing in popularity, it's hard to imagine how these people live unless they all happen to be travellers who never pause on their journey for any reason, or unless it's intended that bed surfing from one side of town to the next is a reasonable interpretation.
So my first advice is perhaps the least satisfying: ditch that anathema or it's exact wording and come up with a new, perhaps thematically similar one, like not staying in the same place for a month, or never taking a permanent residence.
If trying to play exactly as written, I feel like you could do worse than establishing that the CC character has a couple places in town that they bounce between every night. This can get inconvenient for night attacks where the adventure assumes the party is together, but it's not impossible to work in the idea that these scenes only come up when the characters happen to be together (I don't know AV) or perhaps coming up with a creative way to incorporate the fact that one is missing without leaving them out (maybe the attackers had to split up, etc). Technically two inns in a town would adhere to the letter of the anathema, but to feel like you're not abusing thr spirit you might want to bounce between three. If Otari doesn't have three separate inns, could be on nice nights you camp out under the stars in town somewhere, borrow somebody's barn, or simply stop in at somebody's home and ask for a place to sleep for the night.
This doesn't work as well in the dungeon, since there are a lot fewer safe places to rest unless the entire party agrees to bounce between two safe rooms each night or else leave the dungeon entirely until you have a second safe room. At ths most extreme I'd say picking opposite sides of the room Is probably your only viable option to meet the technical requirements, but thus is also a situation where you might add a "unless doing so risks your life" clause like so many were asking for on other anathema. After all, a traveler caught in a cottage in the middle of a blizzard in the mountains can be killed by this anathema, having nowhere else they can stay until the snow clears and they can safely continue their journey. I don't feel like this anathema should compel the faithful to travel unsafely, so this seems like a fair compromise.

| Castilliano | 
 
	
 
                
                
              
            
            I think "in a row" is telling because yes, you can return to sleep in the same place w/o legalism. The trouble is what is the scope of "same place"?
For the sake of theological simplicity, I'd interpret this in the context of somebody living in a caravan, perpetually on the move. That's the shtick, right? Keep a mobile lifestyle. So moving across the room wouldn't do, but if the locale is different enough that you're speaking with new people, trading at new shops, etc. that should qualify IMO even if it's the same city (or town if it has distinct districts). And if you have access to open terrain, there should be areas distinct enough from each other, new vistas, new watering holes, new caves, etc. So I'd say as long as you've changed the vibe, sights, or people, it's a different enough place.
And perhaps "new" isn't the right word since you can recycle, and while that feels like shenanigans, I think (usually) it would be fine as long as there's no settling and distinct differences (so as to refresh one's soul? Who knows?). For example, one's own houses would be iffy IMO, but adjacent caverns might feel like different worlds, i.e one filled with crystals and the other with sapient fungi.
This Anathema would make certain adventures where you inhabit the same fortress or return to the same safe house/dungeon nook difficult, but many Edicts & Anathema make specific storylines difficult to impossible. This seems like one that can be overcome, even if you're stuck in a loop of sleeping sites.
 
	
 
     
    