Question: I've noticed that Shangdi has been written up as a Titan of Order in the Elohim supplement - is he intended to be the same as one of the Three Pure Ones? If so, are the other Pure Ones also Titans doing whatever it is that primordial entities do in their spare time?
Actually, Shang Di is not intended to be one of the Three Pure Ones; heaven worship with him as the central figure predates Taoism by several centuries, going all the way back to the Shang dynasty and its fixation on a master authority in heaven that handed down laws to all other, lesser deities. He's one of the oldest mythical figures in China; both Taoism and Confucianism came along much later, and though they have since completely replaced heaven worship as the major components of religious thought in China, the imperial dynasties still recognized his authority even into the twentieth century.
The Three Pure Ones are an interesting place to explore, in Scion - I'd probably think of them as Titans as well, but how to run them would be a thorny question. I've always thought that whole "surprise, if you ever think something impure you'll immediately die" trick pulled on them was probably pretty cheap, and in the ensuing millennia they may have had ample time to find ways to get around the Jade Emperor without resorting to "impurity" (what exactly an ancient, probably Titanic figure considers impure is a great question, too - is it acting against Virtues? What if they get Dark Virtues, are they then "impure" if they start being nice?).
We don't currently have any Shen PCs, so Chinese setting work has been on our backburner (the disgraceful state of our Taiyi page makes that kind of obvious). The Three Pure Ones are among the many hordes of cool Chinese mythical figures that we'll hopefully get to tackle at some point in the future.
Questioner here.
ReplyDeleteI though as much, but I'd become confused after perusing a couple of Chinese religion forums where Shangdi was conflated with Yuanshi Tianzun here and there in small places. I didn't think that was accurate, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.
That said, I'm fond of the scenario where the Jade Emperor's actual power is curtailed by the demands and opinions of a number of senior figures like the Three Pure Ones (if they're not titans off doing titanic things and maybe even then), the Queen Mother of the West, and possibly even the Buddha in a syncretistic game. Something similar to Horus's kingship as described earlier on this blog or possibly even something resembling internal power struggles in the mortal imperial dynasties.
After all, even though the Confucian elites condemned such efforts in dynasty after dynasty, there were often very good reasons why the emperors so favored eunuchs.
But I digress - I'm not quite sure what the "surprise, if you ever think something impure you'll immediately die" scenario is referring to. Could you elaborate on that please?
Oh, sorry! One of the origin myths about the Three Pure Ones says that upon creating the world, the Jade Emperor (or Lao Tzu, depending on the version of the story) approached them and offered each one a pill to swallow, saying that it would ensure that creation was completed correctly. When they did so, he then informed them that if any of them ever thought an impure or unharmonious thought, the pill in their stomachs would explode and kill them, thus ensuring that they remained pure for all eternity. In another version, Lao Tzu does the same thing but with a trio of his disciples that he's afraid will mess up the harmony of the world. I always thought that must have seemed like a huge dick move to the Three Pure Ones, even if it was ultimately done with the good of the world in mind.
DeleteThere's a ton of syncretization going on with Shang Di, which I guess happens with any really old figure that has later religions come take over later, so I'm not surprised there's Taoist syncretization of him going on. At this point, he's also been pretty heavily associated with the Christian God, since early missionaries found his name to be the closest synonym they could think of and.
I agree - there are way too many cooks in the kitchen in China, and no emperor is ever going to have solid uncontested power. The four major Chinese religions are at constant loggerheads and engaged in continual revisionism - you could run a totally fascinating game that never strayed out of the realm of zany Shen politics, I think.
Interesting, that's definitely one story that I haven't come across previously.
DeleteI did come across several modern or relatively modern syncretization attempts - Shangdi being identified as the biblical God based on El Shaddai, Fuxi as Enoch, the Xiwang Mu as the Queen of Sheba - and I found them absolutely fascinating to watch in action. But then again, that's one of the big draws of Scion for me personally - the syncretization that goes on as cultures interact and how the syncretized figures themselves react as actual people.
It's fun to think about Yama talking the heads of at least three different pantheons into letting him run their Underworlds, though it's also fun to think about how Yama, Yanluo, and Enma react to each other whenever they have the bad fortune to meet up.
Regardless, who do you think would make for plausible pretenders in a game where the Jade Emperor's throne is in doubt? There are always the players, of course, and there is a story where the Jade Emperor has a successor waiting in the wings. And I can also see Erlang Shen since he's supposed to be related to the Jade Emperor and is fairly personally puissant. But who else would make for good claimants?
I think it'd be pretty easy to set up Huang Di as an aspirant to the throne as well - after all, he was an enormously popular emperor himself, so it seems like the sort of job he'd love to gun for. If you want to get crazy, Yan Di could come back in and try to make a grab for power again after his long-ago defeat (which might be even more complicated if you consider Yan Di and Shennong to be the same person, or at least in some way related to one another).
DeleteHeh, the Yama vs. Yanluo debate rages on at our house. Luckily, our PCs avoid Naraka like the plague and have only been to Di Yu once, so we haven't had to do too much with it... yet.
Remember the Guan Yin thing didn't come out of nowhere, there are Taoists who claim he has replaced the Jade Emperor fairly recently.
DeleteThat is one of the interesting parts of the "Living" mythologies vs the ones that only really have pagan reconstructionalists, you get new myths!
Probably Guan Yu, not Guanyin - can't imagine her seizing the throne. ;) But yes, still-living mythologies (the Celestial Bureaucracy and Devas in particular) provide all kinds of fun when it comes to interpreting their modern changes and forms!
Delete...yeah Guan Yu.
DeleteI'd imagine the Loa and the Kami have similar situations with all sorts of extreme local variations.
I've seen an interpretation where Shennong is a Yan Emperor but not all Yan Emperors, so that's the one that I'd use because it opens up hideous and often hilarious complications for reigning Sovereigns and Emperors who need to navigate between ruling (and enjoying the benefits of rulership) and placating their long lines of predecessors.
DeleteThough the plethora of Sovereigns and Emperors in the Chinese pantheon does open up a potentially interesting scenario based on the Collapse of the Zhou. Since there are so many Sovereigns and Emperors running around with their courtiers and retinues, I don't think it's too implausible to envision the Chinese pantheon as a number of local, subordinate courts answering to the Jade Emperor at the center rather than the unified and deeply centralized imperial bureaucracy that China has almost never been. If something suddenly hampered the Jade Emperor's prestige and power (illness, injury, disruption in his court, or even increasing Titanspawn activity throughout his domains), it could result in all the lesser Sovereigns and Emperors hurriedly polishing up their power bases in anticipation of serious trouble ahead and thereby aggravating the problem of the collapse of central authority.
And once the Chinese pantheon splinters like the Zhou or any of the periods of prolonged chaos in Chinese history, it could make for an interesting game where the players either play the courts against one another for fun and profit, attempt to cobble them back together, or both - with the Mandate of Heaven as the ultimate prize.
Though that does bring up the question of whether the concept of the Mandate of Heaven even apply to heavenly politics and what it would entail. I can't see the pantheon being very comfortable if it was the direct sanction to rule of a Titan like Shangdi.