Bullet Time

Question: What was a god's power like before they got their legendary relic (Mjolnir, Zeus's thunderbolt, Hades' helmet, etc)? Did they have the same level of access to the purview of their relic? And is Zeus's thunderbolt an actual relic? I thought it was an allegory for his mastery over the heavens.

All the answers, in bullet attack format!

• While having an awesome three-star relic to access your purview of choice is badass, all you need to access the purview completely and totally is to have a relic with that purview on it. Zeus' thunderbolt doesn't somehow give him more Sky than any other relic with Sky on it.
  
  
• The thing about super-awesome badass legendary relics is that they are legends unto themselves... but that doesn't necessarily mean that they make the god they're attached to less legendary (in fact, it should always be the opposite of that). A Legend 12 god is still a Legend 12 god, a being of extraordinary power and significance, especially if, like Zeus, Hades or Thor, they're cosmic gods who were never human to begin with. Any of those gods were incredibly powerful before they got their relics; the relics give them awesome bonus powers, but if you take away Zeus' thunderbolt, he's still the most badass of thunder-and-justice-gods ever to walk to halls of Olympus.
  
  • Those relics probably give them awesome bonuses, though. Like, Zeus' thunderbolt probably adds all his Sky boons as autos to every Justice roll he makes, or Mjolnir lets Thor spend extra Legend to add his Sky boons as autos to damage when he hits something, or Hades' helmet of invisibility gives him his Death boons as bonus autos to all Stealth or Darkness rolls.
    
  • Before that, they were still super awesome at those purviews, though, rolling along with their Avatars and their maximum Fatebonds. They would have been as good at those things as it is possible to be without a relic boost.
    
  • It's basically the same idea as any Scion; you can be awesome all by yourself, but relics give you nice little boosts and bonuses. We all love boosts and bonuses.
    
• Zeus' thunderbolt is indeed a real relic, but it also represents his mastery over the heavens (so does Thor's hammer, in fact). Most famous relics and objects in mythology represent something about their owner, in fact; that's what they're there for in the story, to illustrate something about the god who owns them and represent what they support or oppose. They can do both handily; in Scion, there's no reason not to make a cool item a relic unless you just don't like the idea or don't want to have it in the game.
  
  • Other fancy star-level relics that are representative include Odin's missing eye, Marduk's tablet of destinies, Huitzilopochtli's fire serpent, Poseidon's trident, Hermes' caduceus, Shango's axe, Anubis' scales and the Dagda's club. And many more.
    
  • In some cases, you may want to rule that not all the items associated with a god are relics, though, or at least not huge-level relics. The Devas, for example, all come with a minimum of six richly representative and cosmically powerful things; you may want to scale them back lest the Trimurti be proven right about the vast power gulf between them and the other gods.
    
  • On a related note, relics that are representative are way cooler than those that are not, so try to make that happen with your Scion's relics, too. A relic sword that has no attributes except bonuses to damage is boring. A relic sword that is made of wood because it was grown from the thorns of the suffering earth and represents your mastery over the wilderness is cool.
    
• Bullets are fun.