Alderberg: Recontact

I agree with Allie about the changes.

Altough, the Benedictines do not use the expression Second Order, but only because it did not exist at their creation, and thereby they are not a Mendican order. It is a rather technicallity though, therefore I would not get into such a detail in the book.

Oh wow, you weren't joking about spending "a bit" of time on this! I'm sure all GMs and players that will venture here, who find themselves needing to flesh out Alderberg's holy calendar, will find this useful. Well done, Allie!

...which I guess brings me to what I was gonna talk about when I started this thread. As written, Alderberg is self-contained and doesn't have much interaction with the rest of the game, but it doesn't need to be that way, and I've got some thoughts on how it can be integrated while staying faithful to the spirit of canon:

Radio Stella Maris. Give Alderberg a high-frequency broadcast tower. (Also streaming live on CommCore, but HF radio will stay broadcasting even if CommCore collapses.) The programming is usually niche and incredibly dry - theology, lectionary readings, reminders about upcoming holy days of obligation, carefully-reviewed talk about life on Alderberg, the usual cyclonic storm alerts, some Gregorian chant for variety - until someone who can't get satellite coverage calls in on backup radio and the station becomes the first responder to an emergency that could be anywhere on the planet. Not even they know their audience size, but if you flip through the comm channels in your jumpcraft you'll always end up flipping past it.

HIST distance learning. Lore has never really explored that Alderberg's one of the most educated places on Poseidon; most of its residents have advanced degrees, often on top of seminary education. They've been around academia, they have provable credentials, and the abbey has bills to pay.

So what can they do? Offer their services through HIST. Not all of them, of course; they've got praying to do, and physical work, and also lots of weird research that's not part of normal monastic life. But some of them (worth noting: this job is where monks and women are most visible), a few times a week. If your average unchurched Poseidoner is aware of Alderberg as all, it's because they took a class with someone with a name like Sister Scholastica Mary Obasanjo. And their general vibe is that Catholics are really, really smart.

Friars. Alderberg's had mendicants associated with it since '97 (as of writing it's still run by them!), but mendicants aren't sworn to geographic stability. Their job is to go where they're sent, and Poseidon's got the best of the best. The Medical Missionary is far from the only idea of what these guys look like, just the most TTRPG-oriented one.

Since Blue Planet now has campaign archetypes, the obvious spots I can see friars showing up would be everyday-level games; they're generally friendly in Newcomer, deeply ambivalent at best in Azure, and not necessarily hostile but a complicating third party in an insurgent, criminal, or maybe Incorporate story.

Two things bear mentioning. First, Poseidon doesn't have much Catholic infrastructure in place; friars are doing a lot of begging (they're supposed to), and their priors are constantly having very polite gentle turf wars so they don't step on each other's toes. The second thing is that they do have priors - and are regularly reporting back to Alderberg.

Chaplaincies. Poseidon doesn't have a lot of Catholic churches yet, but it does have lots of organizations whose associates need supporting through grief, trauma, and sometimes death. Military bases, GEO Patrol precincts, and ERT stations are obvious places that might want a chaplain, but far from the only ones. (One very important one, off the top of my head: Prosperity Station's hospital wards.)

In campaign archetype terms, an Alderberger NPC can fit into an Operation Polypod or Shenley ERT campaign with no trouble, and maybe Chrome or Nightshift with a bit of creativity - but those are far from the only places that'd have chaplains. Chaplains also work as backup/guest PCs; they usually stay on base but can get sent along if needed, and they're educated enough to keep up.

It goes without saying that their work's not purely selfless. If you call a hospital chaplain in Prosperity Station, they'll probably point you to a planetside congregation; then they'll alert the congregation so it can reach out to you as soon as you're off the Jumbo. Also, much like friars (and there's a lot of overlap), chaplains are Alderberg's eyes and ears; the quiet little abbey on Salvador Island knows a lot about what's going on in Poseidon, sometimes before it's public knowledge.

I wasn't even thinking about a missionary campaign! Just like how these guys fit into the world around them. Westerns have preacher men and Mafia movies have confessional scenes, you know? And parties need healing, sometimes months of it.

Catholicism definitely isn't a major thing outside of Alderberg... yet. But the Monastery of St. John the Baptist is named in his honor for a reason: they're forerunners who go before the Lord to prepare his way. (No idea if Jeff Barber thought of that when he named it, but it works really well.) Even more than the lore lets on, the Church knows its future is on Poseidon, and they're not gonna let it get away.

At some point in the future we'll reach the stage of the Kickstarter's development where those player aid apps will be looked at. But until then, and for the past countless year, your converter is and has been the only - and hugely appreciated - calendar authority, neil ! You rule, sir!
...and I do very much hope, when it comes to this, that you'll be involved in the making of the new app!

Haha, I think Blue Planet offers a slightly bigger playground, than a mere puddle, so lagoon is probably a better choice!