“Seek out the poison in your neighbour’s fields, lest your own crops be blighted.”
“Be alert to all dangers; within and without.”
“Seek out falsehood and expose the truth.”
“Prepare for malice, yet thwart malice before it strikes against you.”
“Despise that which threatens what you watch over, whether by malice, lies, folly or carelessness.”
So my Vigilant friends what would you tell a new player about dedicating yourself to the pursuit of Vigilance? What kind of things have you got up to while being Vigilant and what bits of the game work well with Vigilance as a virtue? Please feel free to flag up some of the questions and debates that Vigilance priests and pilgrims might talk about but make sure you’re careful to leave the meat of the debates IC for the field.
Oh one bit of advice while I think of it would be read up on your Paragons, The Sentinel and Vardas and the Exemplar Berechiah (aka “Shifty” Bertolli de Tassato) .
“Despise that which threatens what you watch over” means that your character gets to choose what they care about protecting. Vigilance doesn’t equal Law or Order. Your PC can Vigilantly oppose laws or supposed defences that threaten something they care about.
Vigilance doesn’t equal personally kicking the problem in the face. Have a look at the Hallows of the Bell, the Archivist and the Torch. You can be super vigilant without ever wielding a weapon or a healing spell. Vigilance can be making sure the right person or equipment shows up to deal with the threat.
There’s a great line in the Berechiah page: Inaction is a choice, just as action is.". Vigilance can easily be taken as “don’t do the thing, it might be dangerous”. The question you can ask is “Is it too dangerous a way to solve this problem?”.
Vigilance is an awesome assembly to be part of; we run the gamut from priests who inhabit the ideal of vigilance as warriors, to inquisitors who seek out corruption, to spies completely normal people who take notes and collect information.
Vigilance doesn’t have to be the ‘bad guy assembly’ as some see it to be. There are more vigilance priests who aim to seek out virtue and reward it, than priests who go looking for heresy to smite.
The vigilance assembly is a great place to get information. Need info on something? Go ask the cardinal and they should be able to point you in the right direction (or at least we could in my day!)
I like Vigilance because it is the most flat-out evil of all the seven Imperial virtues.
It encourages you to poke your nose disapprovingly into other peoples business and simultaneously indulge paranoid fantasies about what your neighbours could be up to. it actively empowers you to attack first as well, which is good games, and it doesn’t need you to have any actual evidence of WMDs before you send the army in.
The double fun bit is that you can also identify the mithril-foil hat wearing Vigilance followers as a dangerous threat to the stability of the Empire and declare a Vigilant schism on their faces. (Waves FIGHT! banner)
Vigilance is about watching and looking for threats, yes but also about putting that into action. It doesn’t have to be physical, there are many ways to crack a nut, but it’s about action. My character’s biggest annoyance at herself at the moment is that she spotted something but believed others were dealing with it so she didn’t follow it up. She won’t be so lax next time.
Vigilance has lots of potential for getting involved with people. Right of Witnessing things, following your gut, talking.
We had a Vigilance assembly quest at one of the first events (S1E2 I think?) that sent us to deal with some Freedom cultists. I’m not sure how it was meant to unfold, but it basically turned into a bunch of heavily-armed priests beating up some relatively peaceful peasants and then pardoning ourselves once we got back to Anvil, all in the name of our Virtue. It was brilliant.
It’s worth acknowledging that hypervigilance is a strongly bleed-y emotion. Bleed means that you might keep feeling it even when you drop out of character. If you are playing the kind of vigilance priest who is anxious about what is behind every shadow, you may need to be really careful about your IC/OC boundaries to keep enjoying playing. Be sure to spend time with people frothing OC and think about what techniques you will use to get fully out of character when you are finished playing. Recommend taking some time to do some breathing excersises or similar, or just shaking it off. But be aware that continuing to feel jumpy or anxious after the event can be pretty normal if you are playing with these kinds of themes, just so it doesn’t take you by surprise if it does happen to you.
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