The Other Side

Question: Do your characters have to go to the underworld (I.E. death and back) to reach apotheosis, or have some other near-death experience?

Strictly speaking, no, they don't have to. We judge when a character's ready for apotheosis on a lot of factors - how many legends have sprung up about them, whether or not they have cults worshiping them, what purviews and concepts they represent and so forth - but Underworld participation is not one of them. You could theoretically go from Legend 1 to 9 and never set foot in an Underworld in one of our games, provided you were doing a lot of other awesome things along the way.

But Underworlds are a great way for characters to confront new and mythic creatures and situations and to make a name for themselves in the world's legends. Traveling to the Underworld for any reason is always a heroic and exciting event; you can also do heroic and exciting things outside of it, of course, but why wouldn't you include an adventure in Hades or Duat if you have the chance? Underworld myths are some of the ones that grab our attention most in mythology, because the crossover into death is such a major event and the escape back to the living so rare and special.

We tend to send characters to the great belows on missions around mid- to high-Demigod level because it's such a fantastic place for exploration and beginning to really get into the meat of divine worlds and politics. It's also a good way to let players get a taste of the big leagues; nothing makes a player feel badass like going to the Underworld and coming back out again alive, and it's a good gateway to the eventual visits to the Overworlds that they'll experience once they're gods.

No PC of ours has, to date, reached apotheosis without going to an Underworld; various characters have been to Hel, Duat, Hades, and a slew of other short jaunts in and out of the deathrealms before reaching Legend 9. I don't know that we'd make it a requirement, but when there's something as cool as spelunking in the Underworld available for PCs to do before they become gods, I don't know why an ST would avoid it.