Courses (Sensates + Guvners)

The Society of Sensation and the Fraternity of Order aren't fast friends, but neither is there any particular ill will between the two. However, little known outside the two groups is a simple, longstanding joint project which has actually played a role in defining the personality of both factions.

Few collections of data rival the quality and extensiveness of the library of sensory stones overseen by the Society of Sensation. However, it is almost endemic to the faction's philosophy not to separate and categorize experiences, so though descriptions and numberings are available, and some stones are popular indeed, the organizational system has always been something that -- at least in the view of the Fraternity of Order -- could stand improvement. One group of Guvners, spending their time outside the court system back in the days when the faction ran that center of power in Sigil, offered exactly that service in exchange for wide-ranging, low-cost access. The Society jumped at the chance: trustworthy volunteer librarians are a valuable resource (trustworthy anybody in Sigil is a valuable resource), but more importantly, the chance to obtain new insights from their sensations was always useful.

The result was Courses. From the vast library of sensations and experiential narratives warehoused by the Society, the original Guvners and the on-and-off associates who continued the project over the centuries have teased out related groups of sensory stones that, juxtaposed and put into context, provided insight that could not be obtained from each stone individually.

The core of a Course is a properly-identified list of sensory stones to be experienced in order. The list indicates the nature of the experiences and provides commentary and contrast, suggesting that a viewer considering the experience note a particular facet of this stone or a certain event from another, and compare the two or use one to fill in gaps in the other. It may be upfront about the lesson to be learned, or keep mum until the final page. The Society's editors usually take the Guvner's notes and drastically edit them, cutting down the verbiage and sometimes eliminating the description of the intended lesson altogether, to let the user draw his own conclusions. They keep more of the background data, but often attempt to find another related stone to provide that information rather than require the user to simply read about it, as suits the philosophy of the faction. This leads to two sets of Courses -- one kept by the Society, and a 'full' version kept with the Fraternity of Order.

Examples of Courses include:

Sample tours of various collections of planes: the Inner, Outer, transitive, Upper, Lower, lawful, chaotic, Planes of Conflict, and so forth. The Course on demiplanes is extensive and grows even today. If you know you're heading to the Plane of Radiance, "Atlas of Settled Locations on the Plane of Radiance" can be a handy way to lann yourself of the landmarks.

Bestiaries, usually focused on a given type of creature ("Combat Encounters with Known Species of Sphinx" provides dry but insightful commentary on the common mistakes made by the berks who got killed, and the common behaviors of the reporting survivors) or those native to an area ("Fauna of Acheron" can help you tell a scavenger from a predator, say).

Anthroparies, which compare the behavior of different races or go in-depth into the patterns of behavior in a given intelligent race, are often long Courses with layers of experiences. Archibald the Dour's "Economic Encounters with Fey Creatures" is one of the smaller ones -- there aren't many such experiences in the Festhall, nor did he use them all -- but his selection of profitable and unprofitable experiences (usually depending on who tricked who) can be a valuable eye-opener for a berk who thinks he can score some silver off the fairies.

More interesting to some Sensates, smaller Courses look at stories of cause and effect, often with an eye toward the efficacies of particular philosophies or modes of behavior. It's a good day for a Guvner poring through sensations when he finds a stone of a starving man killing someone for the food he's got, then remorsefully giving it away to a third stranger rather than eat it, and remembers earlier encountering another stone of someone's childhood memory of famine in their city, with a generous stranger's gift keeping him alive. There are multi-viewpoint histories (some still ongoing) of dynasties and religions, layers of viewpoints on war or fire or entropy or evil or nature.

The morals of Courses tend to lean, naturally, toward the finding of patterns and laws for the multiverse, given the Guvners' temperaments. It stands to reason that any cutter with the time and inclination to sift through the Society's archives to locate disparate pieces of data and organize them is going to be well-organized himself. Other factions have occasionally tried making courses, with less success -- the Transcendent Order does some fairly good work producing Courses that they claim give hints of the cadence of the planes, but the Athar and the Revolutionary League tend to leave behind unpopular rants and conspiracy theories, the Sign of One and the Fated mostly did vanity publishing, and the one Xaositect Course tends to garble users' speech for days....

Among the Fraternity of Order, being interested in Courses can mark a member as somewhat flighty (guilt by association with the Sensates), but well-lanned members know it's simply an excellent way of assimilating hard data of a unique type. The Society of Sensation, though, finds them particularly useful for one purpose: the frequency with which a Sensate applies them is a good indicator of whether he joined for the parties or seriously believes in finding enlightenment through experience.

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A GM who wishes to use Courses in his campaign may allow cutters to spend the money on one, with a topic as focused (fewer stones) or as broad (usually more stones) as he wishes to permit to exist. Essentially, the character has purchased magical equipment in the form of education. Thus prepared, the character obtains a circumstance bonus to applicable skills in the area covered by the Course. For example, Archibald's treatise above might grant a +1 on Appraise skills when dealing with fey in general, or even Bluff or Sense Motive when dealing with fey in a business capacity. Broad tours of the planes don't provide enough detail for a general bonus to Knowledge (the Planes), but a thorough overview of a small area may call for circumstance bonuses to K(tP) or K(geography) in that area -- even counting as training for that purpose.

Mechanically, a Course costs as much as it normally costs to rent the component sensory stones, whether one is a member of the public or a Sensate. (OOC: Err... does anyone know how much that is?) Theoretically, this is a good deal, since a Course allows you to get more out of each than you would individually. When determining how many stones a Course might need and pricing the Course, bear in mind that a Headband of Intellect +2 costs 4000gp and provides a +1 bonus to all Int-based skills, albeit a losable one.