"The Spear of Destiny" Topic

I was unhappy with the fact that I could find no acceptable rules for the Spear of Destiny. What rules I did find assumed the Spear was the Ark of the Covenant a la Indiana Jones, with a pointy end. I made up my own. I have drawn from The Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft link and Secrets of the Holy Lance by Jerry E. Smith (DVD)http://adventuresunlimitedmedia.com/search.php.

We need a figure and West Wind casts one.http://www.westwindproductions.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=126_207_146&products_id=1131 The spear is actually a spearhead and no shaft, but we can assume a shaft is made for the spear head. The spearhead in this mini is too short. I built mine up with green stuff. It is black with a wide gold band around the middle.

The Spear of Destiny is supposed to be the lance used to pierce Christs side, traditionally by the Centurion Longinus. After the Crucifixion, it was taken to Britian by Joseph of Aramathea, along with the Holy Grail. The Spear figures in some Grail romances, such as Parsifal. It was held by Boudiccea, Constantine, and Charlemagne among others. By the 19th Century it was on display in a Nuremberg museum. Shortly before Napoleon took that city it was smuggled out and eventually became the property of the Hapsburgs, who put it on display in Vienna.

Hitler had just given up his ambition to be an artist and went into the museum to get warm, when he heard a tour guide lecture on the Spear. He saw it and was transfixed. Later, as dictator of Germany, he marched on Austria in a bloodless conquest and was given the Spear. He was alone with it for an hour. A spearhead was then sent to the Nuremberg museum. Heinrich Himmler had a copy of the Spear made up, and housed in his castle at Wewelsburg. According to most sources the Spear was taken by the allies at Nuremburg and the Third Reich collapsed. Some sources claim the Spear was retained by an underground Nazi movement and sent to Antarctica or Argentina.

How do we use the Spear in a game? According to the legend, whoever has the Spear, and understands it's mystery, has the power to change the world for good or ill. Smith lists the following powers for the Spear. It makes one invincible in battle, bestows clairvoyance, clairaudiance and precognition and provides guidance from the Power the Spear serves.

This is a heavy duty talisman. To simulate it's use, when the Spear is on the game table, the opponent has to tell the Spear wielder what he plans to do. The Spear player may then move. Then the non Spear player must move just as he has narrated, regardless of the consequences. The Spear does not have any weakness, the weilder is the weak link in the chain. For example assume Indiana Jones has the SpearHis opponent knows about his snake phobia, and hurls snakes at Indy. The Indy player would have to take morale, cool, stress or whatever tests your rules call for. If he fails the test, the non Spear player can move that turn without narrating it. There may also be astrological times when the Spearholder is out of touch with the Spear. Gathering horoscope data on the Spear wielder could make another game.

In addition, a knightly order centered around the Spear could guarentee positive morale checks by all of the knights. (But not the serjants or men at arms.) The SS were organised like a knightly order and SS officers would get this morale bonus, but not NCOs or EMs.

Those are my suggestions, but you will have to decide how they apply to your rules.

Working link for West Wind: link

GURPS Warehouse 23 had the Spear in it, don't remember the rules for it though. I think I also saw it in a PDF I bought from RPGNow years ago about "historical" mythical weapons, would have to search through my old boxes to find it though.

I think it makes a better maguffin – no one knows what it does, but you don't want the other side to have it!

Whomever has it wins the game, campaign… War!

Simple

link

Whomever has it wins the game, campaign… War!

Simple

Sorry Rudi, Charlemagne was 140 and 0 but Boudeccea lost supposedly because the Spear was taken while she slept. Also WW2 was not a victory for the Spear holder.

I'm sorry those links don't work. IIRC SJ Games was not very specific about either the Spear or the Ark of the Covenant.

Hope this doesn't offend anyone, but here's an addition to your history:

Obviously, the US took possession of the spear after WWII and replaced it with the copy. That accounts for America's rise as a superpower and for how it finally brought down the Soviet Union.

However… it should be obvious that sometime in 1999, the Spear was stolen or removed from the US, thus allowing the 9/11 attacks to occur. Based on the current rise in stature of China, perhaps your modern heroes should be looking for the thieves somewhere in the Forbidden Kingdom?

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I think its powers should be related to command and charisma. When used on small groups, it should give the wielder the power to sway the emotions of crowds and instill in them a willingness to fight to the death (this should be more like a berserker rage, not actual mind control). When used to command, it amplifies leadership bonuses (increases their range, turns a +1 into a +2, and so on). But there is a cost -- simply having the spear does not mean you are worthy to control it. If you show weakness or cowardice while using the spear, it will turn on you, leading you to ruin and turning your positives into negatives.

This needs to be played with care -- a tactical retreat is not the same as fleeing in fear. Likewise, a private finding this might advance quickly to corporal or lieutenant, but he will not suddenly find generals bowing to him. It amplifies power and leadership that is already there, but does not create it out of nothing.

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CONSIDER THESE POSSIBLE MAGICAL ABILITIES:
- Influence Crowd: +2 to charisma checks
- Influence Weather/Terrain: Make something favorable happen for you: rain suddenly slows your enemies, fog blows in to hide your advance (or tactical retreat), a rockslide blocks a road cutting off the enemy's retreat, etc.
- Morale Boost: +1, +2, or +3 to morale by giving a rousing speech or leading the charge.

POSSIBLE MYSTIC REQUIREMENTS:
- Perhaps the spear must taste blood every time its powers are used? Perhaps a scratch, or perhaps even a sacrifice once each month?
- Perhaps you must do one courageous act in battle each month or it will turn on you?

Just things to think about.

If Longinus was a Roman in 1st Century Middle East then wouldn't the "spear" actually be a pilum?

Blimey! – the legs on these new Roman minis look a bit puny! Sure they wont snap at the ankles?

Thank you for your excellent response mmitchell. While I totally disagree with your rules they DO succeed in making a more gameable artifact. My objection is that the Spear is supposed to be an extremely powerfull talisman. It should upset game balance, very much as Rudi the German says. The weakness is in the wielder, not the Spear. Grail artifacts are always testing the worthiness of the wielder. If the wielder falters, the artifact withholds it's benefits.

Your statement that the Spear would amplify powers that are already there is consistent with the Spear legend. However, your private may be the current incarnation of Alexander the Great. Whosoever holds the Spear AND UNDERSTANDS IT'S MYSTERY will have the power to change the world for good or ill.

I like your talismans rules, and I am going to use them in my game, but they are not consistent with what I read of the Spears legend.

@Tgunner When I started this project, I considered getting a pilum, but the object on display in Vienna is not a pilum. According to Ravenscroft, it is not a first century AD artefact, either. There is a nail bound up with the blade however, which is said to be one of the nails used in the Crucifixion which does appear to be a first century artifact.

Glad I was of some help. I was definitely writing this from a gaming perspective, not historical.

Remember, also, that this is the spear that pronounced Christ dead. For that reason, it is both imbued with his power, but also bears a taint of evil. It is from the dichotomy of the blood of a healer empowering a weapon of war from which the strange powers emanate.

Good luck with your game.

Good luck with your game.

You can find out here, but it hasn't appeared yet.
link

If Longinus was a Roman in 1st Century Middle East then wouldn't the "spear" actually be a pilum?

I might be talking twaddle but I'm fairly sure that the "Roman" troops in Judea c. 33AD would have been auxiliaries not proper legionaries and would therefore may have had spears. Not sure if they would have been called Longinus though.

It seems to me a mark of near-insanity to believe in the claimed provenence of biblical relics – as if the nails used to crucify some carpenter's kid would have been saved and handed down through the generations – and not rust away to nothing over 2000 years of course. Sheesh…

But these things do make great pulp items.

The number of fragments of the true cross are said to have denuded Lebanon of it's cedars. People in Europe during the Dark Ages were usually simple and out of touch. They only "knew" their church had Jesus foreskin, and never heard that humpty squat other churches claimed the same thing. Jerry Smith points out that psychics can read a lot of details about a person from an object that person possesses. He speculates that hundreds of thousands of people treating an object like the spear with reverence might put a very powerfull psychic vibration on the object. Then too, there is the vague possibility that the whole thing is a lot of balloon juice.

I figure the guy that bought is furious that he was burned by a sharp.

Alex is correct; from what I remember reading about the historical Crucifixion, the "Romans" in Judea werre not legionaries but auxilliaries.

That said, I think that mmitchell has hit the mark with his analysis of the background to explaining the supernatural powers and orientation of this magic artifact. Good work!

Not all Roman spears were pilums.

"… some carpenter's kid." Stone mason, actually. Most scholars today agree that "carpenter" is a mistranslation. So if you want to get all conspiratorial in your plots, Joseph (and by extension, Jesus) was a Mason. (DUN DUN dunn…)

Oh, and yes, I can imagine that somebody might (if they could) preserve the spear head and nails which pierced a revered rabbi. But no, I don't believe any of the ones claimed to do so were in fact the ones actually used. Jews, after all, are not big on the whole idol thing.

As for the spear killing Jesus, well, if you go by the biblical accounts, he was already dead when pierced, though given the description the spear point must have pierced the pericardium (a fluid-filled sack around the heart, which would have appeared to be water), so one way or another it was over at that point.
As for whether that would mean the spear was imbued with evil, one could argue that since according to Christian beliefs the death was part of God's holy plan to redeem mankind, maybe an evil aura isn't necessarily the result.

As for game effects, I do like the idea that such effects are based on the strength (and righteousness) of the wielder. (This could be used to explain why Hitler lost while still possessing the Spear— it won't aid deliberate evil.) I think you could also postulate a requirement that the Spear actually has to be carried into battle; simply having it back home on a shelf is not sufficient to gain the benefits of its powers.

I love that suggestion that the Spear was in US possession and stolen at some point in the recent era. Lots of gaming potential there!

By the way, has anyone seen The Librarian: The Spear of Destiny? Potential ideas might be found there.

link

The Spear would be saved by the Centurian because according to legend the Roman soldier converted to Christianity.
Matthew, Chapter 27, verse 54: "Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God."

The nails used to crucify some carpenters kid would not likely be saved. The nails used to crucify the Son of God might be saved.

Mike "Bunkermeister" Creek
mediatealways.org

I think the spear head in Vienna is about 1,000 years old while the nail is supposed to be a type used at the time of Christ. I "can see" people close to Christ saving the nails. Actually I can't, but I can't see death masks and other funerary memorabilia that are quite common.

In any event, it makes a nice McGuffin for WWW2.

"as if the nails used to crucify some carpenter's kid would have been saved and handed down through the generations – and not rust away to nothing over 2000 years of course."

Crucifixion nails were prized as talismans against the Evil Eye (By Jews as well as Pagans) I suspect the nails were claimed as a perk of the job by the crucifixion detail. So I expect they were indeed kept & treasured for a long time, but but with any association with Jesus, having been quickly sold by the soldiers…

The Spear of Destiny dates to the time of Charlemagne.

Out of curiosity, how does the Bible describe it?

To the best of my apostate knowledge, the bible doesn't describe the spear. But there is a bit of prophecy which the stabbing fulfills, and the bible does go on about that.

huh…very interesting…