Arafelis/FairFolk

Staff and Ring ought to be reversed (staff and ring). Temperance and Valor are male virtues, Conviction and Compassion female.

Comments

I have to wonder what relevancy the whole male/female virtue thing actually has. Could you explain a bit further? -FrozenHermit

Actually, [Thus_Spake_Zaraborgstrom/GracesPwnJ00] explains how she was able to justify a requisite of the outline. One could just as easily have said that Staff = Temperance by talking about a monk's staff or Yggdrasil (or any other pillar between the worlds).

The Staff and the Sword are both male-associated, for hopefully obvious reasons. Temperance and Valor are both about honor- a sort of heiarchical status organization, male society. The Cup and the Ring are both female-associated (indeed, RSB says that the Fountainhead, Ring Grace of a freehold, requires feminine or passive symbolism). Virtues occur in two sets in Exalted, Conviction/Compassion and Temperance/Valor. It's subtly misleading- not in a way most people would even think about, but still irksome to me- to simply place Male and Female at the two ends of each. It would be more appropriate to give each it's own spectrum, and then to work from there. - Arafelis

...We don't have the same understanding of Temperance at all.
That's fine. YKIOK, IJNMK. But it also means I probably have nothing useful to say here, and so I'm deleting my previous comment. --MF

I don't have the core-book on me, but I'm interested in how you treat the virtue. I think of it as a character's honesty, trustworthyness, resistance to temptation, etc- everything that defines the "civilized" aspect of honor. Knights of the Round Table who were most excellently chivalrous would have excellent Temperance- they would treat all people equally, never lie, always stand by a given word, and resist all lures to infringe upon their code. They might ALSO be compassionate, but this isn't actually required by the Code- only that one gives aid (money, strength of arm, etc) to those weaker than oneself.

Galahad is perfectly temperate and perfectly valorous. He exhibits essentially no compassion other than what is required by the Code, and whether or not he feels conviction is essentially irrelevant, since he's listening to what the Code says is right and wrong, and following that course of action without deviation. Lancelot, on the other hand, has excellent Valor and Conviction, which is why he is- and I know this sounds a bit bass-ackward, but it makes some sense with a little bit of study of Hindu thought, which I am fairly sure RSB is influenced by- feminine enough to fall for Gwenevere. That's a nutshell explination of how I see it; as I said above, I'm interested in differing interpretations. - Arafelis