Help with a monastic "graduation/monkhood/vow" ceremony

Aloli

Hey everyone,

(If I'm not posting in the right place, I apologize!)

I'm a little stuck and I'm hoping I can get help.

I'm stuck with creating a graduation or monkhood ceremony for the Sentaari, which is supposed to be where the students take their 'final vows' and become a Brother/Sister/Monk of the monastery. So, I thought to ask the community for thoughts, opinions, common practices, anything that can help me work through this last piece for the guild.

A little background: My experience with Aloli's "monkhood induction ceremony" as it was called at the time was minimal, to say the least, and had very little to do with a monastery culture. It involved being given robes...and that's really all I can remember! I'm not the kind to create a bunch of alternate characters just to learn what is common practice in other guilds, so I hope someone can point me in the right direction.

I hope to create something memorable or meaningful that is also authentic with respect to monasteries but I keep drawing a blank on what steps should be taken. I can't find a lot of information on this specific stage with initiates are sworn into a monastery, either.

If you were a monk what would you want your ceremony to be like?

So far, what is concrete about this is they will write their own vow and make/take it at the event.

What are common practices in the guilds for these ceremonies? Would calling it a "monkhood ceremony" be appropriate or is there an actual word for this such as Carnifex/Templars being Knighted or Consanguine being Blooded/Embraced, etc.?

Thanks so much in advance!

Nava

The process of graduating from a postulant to a monk is called ordination/being ordained (also used in religious practices, when graduating from a layman to a priest). I'd sub 'monkhood ceremony' out for that.

As for actual steps in the process, I've got no suggestions, sorry! As far as I know, joining a RL monastic order typically involves things like bestowing robes (as you mentioned), shaving the head, and lots of praying.

Aloli

Thank you, that pointed me to a lot of exciting reading.

Haven

Personally, I think the most effective way to promote someone to "full member" of an organization is to create a bridge between their personal motivation of being there and the central themes of the guild. It should be a culmination of the tasks that came before. I don't know what the Sentaari are about these days but from back in the day a strong theme they portrayed was about preservation of balance and being at one with oneself.

To that end, if that's still a thing, you guys can do a dream-like sequence or a "inhale special herb" ceremony of enlightenment. Perhaps there is some special guild lore they weren't "mature enough" for before that you guys now dump on them that kind of wraps up all their special training up to this point. Maybe there's a special location rooted to the guild history that you can reveal to them and explain their duties/mission for the world. Then give them a special token (e.g., robes, mantle, title, lands, tattoo, badge, whatever really.) as a reward for their achievement.

Alternatively, you can have a trial by fire / combative approach where you can do a mock-fight (or real) to kind of test their resolve via mixture of RP and mechanics. The Dreadknights in the Infernals had something similar to this and it was awesome. But that might be too player dependent or combat orientated for people these days. The important thing, in my opinion, is to draw a link between player interest in the guild and one of the central themes of the guild. All tasks prior to this point should be a build up to this moment for it to be a memorable pay-off.

Disclaimer: I'm assuming this is like a GR 5 thing and not an obtain class thing at GR 3.

Aloli

I think that's a great idea, creating a bridge between personal investment and guild ideals. To that effect, Imvra gave me the suggestion of using meditation stones that can be engraved with a personal message then placed in the guild's pond. The only problem with that is meditation stones are not yet a thing that crafters can customize. Another idea was to have something like a pensieve in the pond since the Sentaari place heavy values on proper telepath ethics this can be a cool idea. Another was to hang customized Tekura belts on a stone wall...but I love the idea you just gave of a mock-fight that can test their resolve and knowledge of being a Sentaari as opposed to just a monk.

This could be a qualifier before their ordination, but I'll ask Imvra if it's something they'd allow.

GR2 is where you get class now, I haven't done anything very special for G2 but I can, once the bigger things are out of the way! I wasn't privy to the GR1-20 ranks and their names in the past either, so that's all lost on me.

The flavor I feel the admins and players want is something far more rugged, salt of the earth, type of environment and less cloistered. Plus Slyphe! So you make a great point about the ordination bringing all these elements to a point that makes sense for them.

Thanks for taking the time to write!

Edit: I forgot to mention: YES the guild still focuses on preservation of balance and being one with oneself, it's just approaching that from a different angle than it used to in the past