Question: So I am watching I, Claudius and it got me thinking about deification of mortals and how that works or at least worked at one time in Scion. While it's definately an epic quest for the Slavic gods, for the Dodec, Shen and Amatsukami it seems the power to deify mortals was in some fashion granted to to their followers. Is this just a case of mortals misunderstanding something?
For once, Scion makes this perfectly easy to solve! All Scions start their lives as humans. They are in fact mortals who become deified. In the case of most gods that are widely known to be originally mortal (Guan Yu, for example), that probably just means that they were a Scion who ascended to godhood. Mortals can't tell the difference between a normal human and a human who could someday be divine if they got a Visitation, so to them it just looks like a human eventually became a god. That particular feature of Scion's system takes care of almost all issues regarding human deification.
It's also likely that some "deified" mortals aren't actually gods at all; there's nothing stopping an emperor from claiming he's a god in order to exert control over his people or increase his own fame and honor, so some of those (especially serial offenders, like the Roman Emperors, who can't all be Dodekatheon Scions) may just be lying (or deluded, or they might just have a lot of really enthusiastic fans who believe it). Don't kill yourself trying to match a divine parent to every yahoo who's ever claimed to be a deity, because chances are some of them are probably just megalomaniacs, politicos taking advantage of religion, or crazy people. Humans are fully capable of making up stories about themselves instead of about gods, and "deified" mortals who don't really seem to have a lot going on are likely to just be fabrications. If you like playing the deified mortal angle, minor gods, lesser immortals or even Titanspawn might take advantage of the situation by moving into that slot and "becoming" the god that the mortal claimed to be, riding the coattails of an already established Legend to give themselves a little leg up.
In general, a pure mortal with no divine blood becoming a god is something that shouldn't happen in Scion; it detracts from the awesomeness of Scions if any old person can become a god and changes the fundamental basics of the setting. If a culture has a specific myth about the process of doing that - you mentioned the Slavs, who have a perfect example in Pizamar - then I'd totally allow it, but such things are (and should be!) incredibly rare and difficult. Mortals who become super awesome badasses can express their coolness through being Fatebound to a god and thus part of their story, or by becoming Legendary Mortals, both awesome ways to elevate special humans without muscling Scions out of their exclusive ability to climb to godhood.
Given Guan Yu's recorded death, wouldn't Taiyi's Divinize Kuei be a more likely explanation, despite John's marked dislike for the boon?
ReplyDeleteWell, definitely not for us, since we are not fans of that purview and Divinize Kuei probably won't exist anymore after we're done rewriting it. And probably not for anyone else, either, since Divinize Kuei can only create lesser immortals that can't progress past Legend 4, and Guan Yu is significantly more badass than that.
DeleteEven without those issues, I'd say no. They're probably at the least equally likely; in fact, Guan Yu being a Scion all along is probably more plausible than some god deciding they wanted to grab his soul at the moment of his death and expend some resources to turn him into a deity.
I think Divinize Kuei is in part a response to the Chinese habit of making minor divinities of its dead heroes, but while it works for very low-Legend folks who don't have much of a claim to fame beyond being on the giant list of Bureaucracy members, it can't measure up to the big deities. And anyway, I think it's an unnecessary and messy attempt at solving that issue; not only do gods (even Chinese gods) die and come back to life plenty frequently without its help, but China's far from the only culture that deifies mortals after death, and making it a China-specific power undercuts the other people who do the same thing.
It seems a lot more likely to me that mortals didn't quite understand what was happening among the gods, rather than that the gods went through some oddly complicated mechanical process that did exactly what the humans thought it did.
I feel you on the weirdness of dead gods, though - as we're fond of noting elsewhere, like all of the Tuatha have myths detailing their spectacular deaths and yet are still alive and kicking, and Osiris is even still fielding Scions despite being dead AND castrated AND locked in a basement. It's a weird place Scion doesn't really like to make decisions.
But isn't chinese myth solidly full of people gaining(and losing) their immortality, I mean even the Monkey king gained it via magic pill. Many tales of the 8 immortals have them earning it via odd trick of sorcery and there's Chang'e and Houyi.
DeleteThe transition between god and mortal just seems so much more flexable in Chinese and Indian based myths.
There's a difference between becoming immortal and becoming a god, though, especially when you're talking Legend 12. I've always run mortals turned immortal in the CB as around Legend 1-2 with the Eternal Youth Knack (voiding the Epic Stamina requirement). Yes, they're very special mortals who figured out a way to achieve eternal life, and sometimes Heaven taps them for some simple functionary positions (because really, Yanluo is going to need SOMEBODY to help him sort through all those souls and what punishment/rewards they need), but they're far from the massive, awe-inspiring Gods.
DeleteYeah, I'm with Pete - being immortal just means you're Legend 1 with Eternal Youth. There are dozens of ways to do that to a mortal in Scion (Legendary Mortalhood, various PSP boons, etc.), but it's not at all the same as making a pure human into a god. Chinese gods certainly do it a lot (as do Hindu, Japanese and other Asian societies' deities), but they're far from the only ones, and they don't elevate humans from zero to the greatest powers in the universe, generally. When that infrequently happens, I'm always most inclined to assume it was a Scion, because there doesn't seem to be a good reason to me to construct a different system for it when that one works so darn well.
DeleteWhich is fine by me, because turning into a god is the PCs' bag, so they should get to enjoy their specialness. :)
It takes more than a basement to stop Osiris! Ask Set - the guy has tried everything. Everything.
ReplyDeleteBut this is a really interesting topic of discussion, especially for Scion. I always find it fun to look through history as well as mythology and cast figures as Scions - they didn't necessarily have to reach Godhood, but some of my favorite 'historical Scions' are Hannibal, Alexander the Great, Joan of Arc, and Temujin/Genghis Khan.
Because why not?
Osiris wields so much influence from his basement in our games... some of the PCs are very tired of him. Heh.
DeleteI can definitely see Alexander, who has a bunch of half-formed myths about his origins and is a great Scion candidate. Hannibal's a great choice, too (though I set him as a mortal chosen by one of the Canaanite gods with Malak in the Elohim supplement). And, I mean, Temujin - he actually cooled the earth's atmosphere because he killed so many people. He is a dude to be reckoned with.
Since a lot of Scions die in their Hero and Demigod careers, there's no reason historical people couldn't have been some if you want them to be. It's a little weird because Scion's setting specifically says that Scions are a recent development in response to the Titans' escape - before that, gods were avoiding the earth and mortals to avoid Fatebonds - but I'm sure once in a while a god got rowdy and stuff happened.
I usually explain it that the Titans are why there are now a BUNCH of Scions running around in Bands across the Earth. Before that, just ONE Scion every several hundred years was a big deal.
ReplyDelete