Mortality

Mortality in Ariath

In Crossover, there will be, perhaps unsurprisingly, means for PCs to resurrect if they are killed. How these means work is not well known, but players may learn more about them in game.

This is not the case for most people on Ariath, though. While some rare NPCs might have means of returning from death (most notably certain Undead or Mythic Race characters) the vast majority of people on Ariath have no such recourse. If killed, they will pass into the keeping of the God of Death, and will not return.

This makes killing Folk a very serious matter. Life is not cheap in Ariath, and some people will take a very dim view of anyone that kills casually or without thought. As in Earth history, many Ariathan cultures have traditions of exchanging hostages after a battle, granting parole to those who promise to have no further part in a conflict, or allowing a pause in a battle for each side to collect their wounded.

That's not to say that killing isn't an option, though. Certain serious crimes are often punished by death, and people who are Wicked are felt to be much less deserving of mercy. The world needs people who are hardened to these truths and can mete out justice, as much as it needs people who are merciful and choose to spare life where it can be reasonably spared.

In Practice

How is this meant to work in play?

In many fights, it won't have any impact. When fighting creatures that are not Folk, players will seldom have to worry about killing at all. Players can fight monsters like oozes, elementals, certain undead, and others enemies that are not "people" without a qualm. Most of them will not need to be deathstruck (oozes melt into the ground when cut down, undead may simply dissipate or turn to dust, etc.) and the ones that do will often be vulnerable to special skills like "Lay to Rest" or "End Their Suffering."

When fighting Folk, though, players will need to make decisions as to whether to slay them or spare them, and these decisions are meant to be meaningful and possibly have consequences. That's not to say that staff will necessarily be inclined to make moral judgments about a player's actions in that sort of situation, but that either choice may have an impact on the game world, whether positive, negative, or ambiguous. Killing a criminal might rid the world of his evil, but start a vendetta with his family, while sparing another person might result in her reforming, or in allowing her to harm others in the future.

In a more general sense, by taking certain skills players are making a statement about what sort of person their character is. Merciful or hardened? Squeamish or bloodthirsty? All of these are meant to be viable choices, create interesting situations for your character, and give them opportunities to shine.

Having killing be rarer runs the risk of causing issues in a Larp setting, where for some fights it's impractical to allow PCs to simply capture their enemies. In a long battle against an enemy army, for instance, the NPCs will need to recycle multiple times to represent the size of the army, and it's not viable to encourage the PCs to stabilize all of the fallen and pile them in a corner if we want to have a satisfying fight. That's why I created the "Parole" skill, which allows the players to get a certain enemy character (who may well have been enslaved, coerced, or magically controlled to fight) off the field, without killing them. When players use skills like Parole, their enemies will see that their wounded are being spared, and they may be less likely to slay the players in return. They might even fight less fiercely, or be more prone to retreat or honor a truce.

Reasoning

My point in setting things up this way is to reflect a game world that is less "fantasy game," and more "fantasy story." Not that there's anything wrong with the "kill them and take their stuff" sort of game, but that's not the sort of world I'm building in Crossover. Ariath is a world where the answer to "should I kill him?" shouldn't always be "duh, of course," and I'm trying to set up the game's skills and background to reflect that, and to reward playing in such a way that reinforces the setting.