Hello folks, your resident Mad Monk here, looking to get the ball rolling on a "Monk Order" and I figured religion would be the right place to start. If this is the wrong forum, please do let me know!
As it stands, the current Monk class seems to be based on the "eastern" Monk orders, and so I am confused as to how to set up something that is almost directly based on "Shaolin Monks" without including ANY references, direct or indirect, to Eastern Philosophy/Religion.
I was thinking of creating something from the "ground up" using modern Zen schools' as a guideline, borrowing what elements make sense in this world, and creating new ones when the old ones do not. This is of course is that this is an "adult" chat room, so having monks that require a vow of celibacy is kinda silly, I think. That would be scrapped in favor of a more dynamic system.
My current idea is to come up with the "Five Vows" and require that a Monk in this order take one of them in order to become a Monk (This is the vow of poverty requirement in the class itself) and can then choose to take the other four depending on the individual nature of their character. One of these would be chastity, as some players might enjoy being a celibate little monk girl who gets continually taken advantage of. The idea is to create a system that works within what we have.
In terms of the religious aspects, that is where I come into a problem, and would like to make sure I do not step on any toes or cause any issues. What I was going to do with this order, instead of having them be like many of the religious sects of eastern thought, go into the more philosophical ones that view everything as relative, thus removing the need for overt religious tones.
For Example; A God is only a God because it is powerful in relation to mortal beings. A God is not "all-powerful" or less there could not be multiple ones. A God is not "all-knowing" as they have been killed before. Just as mortals' are to ants, so we are to Gods, but this does not mean they are somehow holy or "better than", they are more powerful beings. To a member of this order, a Dragon and a God are much the same thing... very powerful, very potentially dangerous, but NOT something to be worshiped as greater than other things.
This removes any ability for this order to bring in its own deities, as they would seek to be shedding themselves of these incorrect ideas in order to better understand the world as it is. It would be totally counter-productive to attempt to add any kind of "God-head" figure as the head of this religion. The closest I was going to get was going to be a man simply called "Buhsso"; a teacher who first shared these lessons, and then died a very mortal death... no rising three days later, no god-hood, no transcendence; he just died. He was just a smart dude who started to share these ideas with others, and they have been passed down through the generations, and now Du`ghal would be bringing them into TLI.
Does this sound like an acceptable light to create a Monk order in? If not, what should I change?
Thanks for your feedback!