Lux Veritas
Lux Veritas is the light of truth and the march of progress, the expression of the potential that resides in the human mind and spirit. Lux Veritas is not a pantheon of gods but rather a personification of principles arising from the better part of humanity, the part that is compassionate, rational, progressive and that banishes superstition in search of genuine knowledge and understanding.
The Lux Veritas is emergent from the ‘Noosphere’ of human thought, anthropomorphic personifications of these qualities in mankind, they demand no worship and accept no prayers, manifesting instead in the form of inspiration and the elation of understanding. For Lux Veritas there is no room for superstition, for prayer or for blind guesses, everything can – and should – proceed logically, one thought after another towards a logical and reasonable conclusion.
Today Lux Veritas finds itself under assault from resurgent superstition, the crimes of the evangelical lobby in the U.S. with homeschoolers and ignorant school boards ensuring the raising of a scientifically illiterate generation, the excesses of extreme faith in the Middle East and the distrust of men of science, cheapened by the adoption of scientific language and appearance by so many adverts and so much New Age junk.
Lux Veritas’ weakness is seeming arrogance, it knows it is right and can prove so, empirically but then cannot understand why people reject this logical and inevitable reality. If the argument is logical and watertight the persistence of the willfully ignorant is considered proof of the person’s insanity – or stupidity.
The Scions of Lux Veritas are ‘The Inspired’, Demigods are ‘Exemplars’ and their gods are ‘Paragons’, ruthlessly logical they wield rationality like a knife, are masters of evidence and embody the scientific spirit of questioning and scepticism. They tend to maintain their distance from the other pantheons, though there are obvious links with the Dodekatheon, classical civilisation being responsible for so much in the advance of human civilisation. Even so, Lux Veritas’ place amongst the other pantheons is only a marriage of convenience until the threat of the Titans is put to bed.
Virtues: Harmony, Intellect, Order, Valour
Logos
Description: Logos is the incarnation of logic, rhetorical argument using the principles of the universe to justify and explain a course of action or to dismiss that which is obviously fallacious. Logos incarnates in the form of the popular image of Socrates, a bearded scholar with a wickedly cruel sense of humour and laughter – bordering on scorn – in his eyes.
Associated Powers: Epic Perception, Epic Intelligence, Epic Wits, Guardian, Veritas, Arete.
Abilities: Academics, Awareness, Command, Control, Integrity, Politics.
Ratio
Description: Ratio is the incarnation of reason, the puzzling out of mysteries using observations, scepticism and process to arrive at the most probable outcome. Ratio incarnates as a French woman with the fire of revolution in her eyes and a rebellious spirit.
Associated Powers: Epic Perception, Epic Intelligence, Epic Wits, Arete, Veritas, Prophecy.
Abilties: Academics, Awareness, Craft, Integrity, Medicine, Science.
Evidentia
Description: Evidentia is the incarnation of evidence, the process of collecting and collating useful information from which one can proceed to understanding. Evidentia incarnates as in the form of a distinguished but distant British man, often in the form of a detective or scientist.
Associated Powers: Epic Perception, Epic Intelligence, Epic Wits, Arete, Veritas, Mystery.
Abilities: Academics, Awareness, Control, Integrity, Investigation, Science.
New Purview
Veritas
Veritas is the ability of the Lux Veritas to assert truth, to iron out reality and to slap down the supernatural and the nonsensical. In order for the power to take effect the Scion must have the Veritas power at a level equal to or greater than the effect they are preventing and it can be stopped, utterly, with the expenditure of a single Legend point. Other Lux Veritas are immune to this power.
Birthrights
Lux Veritas may not take Creature or Followers as Birthrights.
Relics
Occam’s Razor
Relic: 2
Purviews: Guardian, Veritas
Occam’s Razor is an ever-sharp, never blunt, short knife that aids the Lux Veritas with the simplest solutions to the most complex problems – which can, all too often, be violence.
Gordian Knot
Relic: 4
Purviews: Veritas, Prophecy
The Gordian Knot is a complex ball of golden thread that forms an almost impossibly complex enigma. As a special and unique power the Gordian Knot can be attuned to a particular problem and then solved, by the expenditure of a Legend point using Dexterity + Awareness instead of what would normally be rolled. Even if that roll fails the knot can still be cut – which will destroy it – but reveal the solution to any problem.
Philosopher’s Stone
Relic: 5
Purviews: Veritas, Guardian, Prophecy, Mystery, Sun.
Much sought after by men of both reason and the occult the true philosopher’s stone is but a simple pebble, a reminder that true power lies inside oneself and not, truly, the relic.
The Singularity
Relic 5
Purviews: Veritas, Mystery
The Singularity is a small silver bead in a padded box, a physical representation of the sheer potential the human species can have. Once per session a character can peer into the bead and see the boundless possibilities of the future of a rational humanity, immortality, an interstellar civilisation, the birth of artificial intelligence and wonders we cannot even begin to imagine where all of humanity are ‘gods’. Doing so restores all the character’s Willpower and a single point of Legend.
Terrae Incognitae
The Invisible College
The invisible college is the secret university, the place where many of the truly inspired amongst humanity have learned their secrets – and more importantly the methods of uncovering secrets of their own. The Invisible College is a dreamlike place, truly existing only within the minds of humanity and their interactions. In the halls of The Invisible College one can converse with the memories of the truly great men and women of history and the unconscious minds of the modern geniuses to plumb the depths of quantum theory, cosmology, relativity and other esoteric matters of the mind, modelled in exquisite detail by the imaginations of the multitude.
The Underworld
The Garden of Memory
There is no underworld for the Lux Veritas but so long as someone is remembered or so long as their genes survive then echoes of them exist, not only in The Invisible College but in the Garden of Memory where just about anyone who has ever lived at all can be found in some form of echo, like a recording, less ‘alive’ than those famous minds present in The Invisible College but seen, heard and remembered nonetheless.
Realms of the Gods
The Noosphere
There is no heaven for the Lux Veritas, they have no pretensions about what they are, they come from the human, they are part of the human. The Lux Veritas realm is the Noosphere, the sphere of human consciousness, imagination, thought and dream. An ever shifting landscape made up of memory and dream in which the Lux Veritas and their Paragons can dwell in the never-ending ebb and flow of human imagination and possibility and from here they can inspire and direct.