Sol Invictus

Question: Throughout history Helios has been labeled both a titan and a god. While now it seems like he's more likely to be a god, I was wondering if he has enough legend to be used as a PC's parent (and if he does, then could you add a page for him)?

The Dodekatheon are the oddest people for Titans, which is ironic because it's because of them that Scion refers to its antagonists as Titans at all. To be entirely technical, there's no difference whatsoever between Greek gods and Greek Titans; "titanes" is just the name of the earlier generations of gods, whereas "theoi" is just the name for the younger gods and their offspring. The two certainly treat one another like hostile races, but there's no actual racial difference between Cronus and Zeus, nor even necessarily a functional one, as many Titans were worshiped by humanity just as much as the gods.

So the question of whether anybody is a Titan or a god, among the Greeks, is really just a question of how old they are and whose side they're on. As a general rule, anybody of Cronus' generation or older, and their children with each other, is a Titan, the only exceptions being Zeus and his siblings. Gaia, Ouranos and their direct children certainly are Titans; most Greek historians treat any of their grandchildren who don't come from Zeus and his siblings as Titans as well. Helios is one of these grandchildren, and in fact is often confused with his father Hyperion or even just outright called a Titan.

Which doesn't mean he can't be a playable god, of course, or an ally of the gods at the least (we use Hecate as a playable goddess, and she's certainly in the same boat as he is in terms of ancestry). Helios is a really interesting figure; he was probably the original sun-god and was supplanted for the Greeks by the cult of Apollo, just as his sister Selene was probably removed from prominence to make way for Artemis. Helios is also frequently syncretized with Apollo, turning up doing things like warning Hephaestus of Aphrodite's unfaithfulness that are in other places strictly an Apollo show. And, of course, there's the craziness of the Sol cult in Rome, which was a heyday of Helios worship that restored him to the position of sun-god and shunted Apollo back out to be more of a healing figure instead. I'm actually pretty sure that the syncretization of Helios and Hyperion along with the Sol Invictus cult is the major reason that Scion sets them as part of Aten; the emperor-driven Sol-cult of Rome does bear a striking resemblance to the pharaonically-mandated Aten-cult of Egypt.

But, anyway, Helios can really go either way. The problem is not with whether or not he can be a playable god - he's generally benevolent or at least not malevolent, and he does have a few distinct stories of his own, like the tragedy of Phaeton - but whether or not there's any point in using him as one. Helios has the Sun purview and Epic Perception... and that's pretty much basically it. He doesn't have any tales that really point to him having anything else, and while he's pretty much the best it is possible to be at those things, to a player he just looks like an inferior Apollo who doesn't give as many XP discounts. That, combined with his status as an "old god" rather than an Olympian, encourages us to use him as a Titan rather than a PC parent (though, as always, a player who really wanted to be a Scion of Helios certainly could be, just probably operating at a slight XP disadvantage).