Question: What are some spawn of Aten that beginning level heroes can fight?
Most of the published servants of Aten are fairly high-Legend and probably too powerful for beginning Scions, but Scion: God will come to your rescue on page 287 with the Rasap Warriors, beings of light and superlative archers that are statted out at a mere Legend 2. One or two of these could make fine antagonists for Legend 2 Scions, and you can add a few more to make larger groups still tough as the Scions progress through Legend 3 and 4. Past that point, you'll need more grown-up bad guys for them to fight.
Incidentally, "rasap" is an Egyptian corruption of the name of the Canaanite archer-god Resheph. If you're using the Elohim, his relation to these creatures or his opinion of Aten using his name for them might be an interesting place for a plot hook.
While the book suggests that Aten's cherubs be statted at about Legend 5, I'm fond of using them for lower-Legend antagonists as well, which is easy to do if you just drop their soaks/attacks/damage a bit to put them on the same level as your PCs. They have several fun extra abilities, like blinding flashes and super speed, that make them a nice challenge even though they're pretty easy to kill. It's also a lot of fun to introduce cherubs to your PCs early, then upgrade them to angels when they get higher in Legend, and then to archangels and so forth. Nothing makes PCs hate Aten more like discovering every time they Legend up that there's yet another level of nasty sanctimonious creatures just above them.
If you're trying to think outside the box (or the book, as it were), any mythical creature you can think of that has ties to the sun or light might be a good candidate. They're difficult to find, however, so be prepared to dig in and do a little reading; most cultures are fans of light and don't demonize it the way they do darkness or hostile weather, so there's a scarcer supply of nasty creatures having to do with light than there are in other areas.
maybe I could also have fire giants form an alliance with the creatures of Aten, they seem to have a sort of affinity and alliance based on the giant Aten gave Surt to guard muspelheim with. perhaps there can also be Jin, made of fire and light?
ReplyDeleteYou can definitely have any Titans form alliances that work for your game's politics - if Aten and Surtr have a reason to be cooperating, by all means, their creatures could always be hanging out together if it helps your story!
DeleteI personally don't care for the book's habit of putting random creatures "on loan" in various Titanrealms, like the Ice Jackal in Akhetaten - it seems unnecessary, since each ST can decide which Titans are cooperating on their own, and it breaks up the theme of the place to have random creatures that have nothing to do with it living there.
But hey, in actual play you can pretty much do whatever you want.