Jamouran Reminiscence and Past Lives

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Jamouran Reminiscence and Past Lives

Postby Koth on July 21st, 2013, 12:17 am

Hey all,

I don't know who exactly is involved in creating and managing Jamouran lore, so I'm posting this here. I recently created a Jamoura and in the future, I would like to get him to begin remembering bits and pieces of his most recent past life. Unfortunately there is not very much information on Reminiscence (at least not that I could find), so I have a few questions about how it works and on past lives in general:

1. First of all, is Reminiscence currently allowed to be used by PCs?
2. Is Reminiscence its own skill or does it depend on other skills (such as Meditation)?
3. What are the requirements for activating Reminiscence (other than being a Jamoura)? For example, does one need a certain amount of XP in a Reminiscence or Meditation skill to be able to remember past lives? If so, what is the scaling like (how much XP is required for how much past lives are remembered)?
4. Can a past life be of any animal, sentient or otherwise? What about past lives as monsters (pre- or post-Valterrian)? Can a past life even be a plant?
5. Will Jamoura eventually be able to remember all of their past lives, up until their very first, or are they limited in some way?
6. If a Jamoura PC is able to remember a past life, can we use flashback threads to explore this past life (possibly even gaining skills and lores the Jamoura never learned)?

Those are all the questions I have for now, though I make think of some more later. Thank you for your time.
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Jamouran Reminiscence and Past Lives

Postby Gillar on July 30th, 2013, 5:49 am

I am the one who originally created the Jamoura and will attempt to answer your questions as thoroughly as I can.

1. First of all, is Reminiscence currently allowed to be used by PCs?

Reminiscence is currently allowed to be used by PCs however the form it takes that is most playable is known as Dreamwalking. Dreamwalking is the primary way of discovering one's past lives. That said, Reminiscence as it relates to the Jamoura, is a much longer, more involved process that can often take centuries to fully realize and is often too constraining to PCs. It involves heavy meditation and focus on ones inner self. The idea is that by attaining a greater understanding of one's self, it opens the way to discovering more of who and/or what someone was in times and places long ago. When I say a long and involved process, this is to say that most Jamoura will only be able to discover brief snippets of images, feelings and thoughts from past lives. They are fleeting and out of context similar in a way to the Ethaefal, who, in their more glorious forms, can sometimes remember tiny slivers of out-of-context, vague imagery from their past existence before falling from the heavens.

For example, a Jamoura who spends many days straight in meditation; stopping only for biological process of sleep, eating/drinking, and such, may discover in the later days of their meditating the tiniest snippets of enlightenment. He may touch upon a memory of a man dressed in very dated, common clothing, kissing a young woman under a tree. This image could be anything from one of his past lives. It could simply be a couple the past life saw at some point or it could be that the past life was either the man or the woman in the memory. There are no real feelings tied to the image or any context at all beyond the simply memory of a man dressed in dated, common clothing, kissing a young woman under a tree. Then, the Jamoura would likely direct his meditations toward that image and see if he can discover more. Over another 20 or 30 days, maybe sooner, maybe later depending on time spent in meditation as well as a little luck, the Jamoura may discover in his meditation that the woman was wearing a simply yet nice silk dress and that she also wore a small, copper pendant with some sort of face on it. So then, the Jamoura continues meditation on the image to see if he can discover more details. Eventually, after a season or more of meditation, he may discover that he was in fact the female in the image. With greater amounts of time spent in mediation, the Jamoura may eventually discover what race the two were, gain a greater understanding of setting and possibly even remember a feeling or two.

As you can imagine, this Jamoura form of Reminiscence can take an immense amount of time. However, the concept of the Jamoura as a whole is that they are in no hurry. They have no known end to their lifespan meaning they could very well be immortal as far as natural aging is concerned. This allows them, from their perspective, potentially unlimited time to discover every aspect of their past lives. Something else to keep in mind is that only the oldest and most knowledgeable Jamoura spend vast amounts of time in meditation. Most others will attempt to learn as much as they can out of life before turning to insanely long periods of meditation. Their feelings are that by learning as much as they can of themselves and the world around them, they can better prepare themselves for their next life and perhaps retain some of those memories and experiences through the reincarnation process.

2. Is Reminiscence its own skill or does it depend on other skills (such as Meditation)?

For the Jamoura, Meditation is required in order to attempt the process of Reminiscence. The higher the Meditation skill, the more likely a Jamoura is to discover a fragment of a past life. Don't expect much of anything to be possible with only an L1 Meditation. L2 Meditation will maybe get you something like the first part of the example above with the image of the man and woman kissing. L3 Meditation would get you more like the later parts of that same example while L4 would cause it all to happen a bit more quickly. The whole ability of Jamouran Reminiscence in general is meant to be more a tool to spur character development where the character looks at their own self and tries to understand who they are. As they dig deeper and deeper they eventually find those slivers of past life memory that may make them question more about themselves and continue growing as a character.

3. What are the requirements for activating Reminiscence (other than being a Jamoura)? For example, does one need a certain amount of XP in a Reminiscence or Meditation skill to be able to remember past lives? If so, what is the scaling like (how much XP is required for how much past lives are remembered)?

I kind of touched on this in answering the previous question but I will elaborate a bit more. You don't really activate Reminiscence. Instead it comes to you in vague, out-of-context imagery that at first lacks most details. Details are gained as one continues digging into their own inner self. Meditation is required and nothing is possible as far as Reminiscence is concerned until L2 and even then it is next to nothing beyond a fragment or two of very basic, un-detailed imagery that lasts maybe a second in time. L3 allows you to gain a bit more detail in your slivers of memory while L4 makes it so the slivers come slightly more often. As I said, it is more of a character development tool than a truly active skill.


4. Can a past life be of any animal, sentient or otherwise? What about past lives as monsters (pre- or post-Valterrian)? Can a past life even be a plant?

The past life can be of any animal, sentient or otherwise or even as monsters. Plants would have no memory that a mortal mind could grasp so a past life as a plant wouldn't really be possible to remember. That said, you would need Storyteller Approval for specific past lives with more common incarnations being easier to get approved.


5. Will Jamoura eventually be able to remember all of their past lives, up until their very first, or are they limited in some way?


NPC Jamoura are not limited however only the oldest have been able to discover any useable, relevant information from the past lives. These Jamoura are over 500 years old. There are Jamoura, mostly younger ones, who have found greater enlightenment in the pursuit of their past lives through Dreamwalking. While not forbidden to do so, these Jamoura and their discoveries are often glossed over by the elder Jamoura. This is because the elders believe that knowing one's past lives and truly understanding them are two completely different worlds altogether. They feel that through Reminiscence, one gains a greater understanding of current self as well as past self. In the end however, all knowledge is valuable to the Jamoura.

6. If a Jamoura PC is able to remember a past life, can we use flashback threads to explore this past life (possibly even gaining skills and lores the Jamoura never learned)?

The rules for this are much the same as in Dreamwalking (I would suggest reading up on it for more info). Understand however that the chances of a Jamoura remembering a past life enough to use it to the extent of exploration and gaining skills and lore, at least through Reminiscence, is next to impossible for PCs. If you are looking to go down that route, I would suggest gaining a mark of Nysel and thus become a Dreamwalker as what you are asking is much more possible for PCs of any race.


EDIT: Reminiscence has yet to be fully written up. It could and very well may change from the above statements.
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Jamouran Reminiscence and Past Lives

Postby Koth on July 31st, 2013, 2:25 am

Thank you for the detailed response. That answered all of my questions perfectly.
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