I Roam Around Around Around

Question: What do y'all think of Psychopomp being named Psychopomp? That word has a very specific meaning and except for one-and-a-half Boons, the Purview doesn't have anything to do with it. Why not call it Journeys or Wayfarer or somethin'?

Partly because my own reaction is to immediately think that, and I mean this to come with all the love in the world because I know some of you very fine and intelligent people use those names and there is nothing at all wrong with them, Journeys and Wayfarer sound lame to me. I can't imagine using either name. I guess the closest one that wouldn't make me make a face is probably Travel, but I don't love it.

Honestly, I actually don't have a problem with Psychopomp's name. Aside from its obvious coolness factor, the entire purview is, I think, designed to be used for psychopomping; it's just a pleasant side effect that it can do other things as well. Spirit Lamp and Come Along are the souls of the purview, and everything else is pretty much intended to be used along with them. The purview does a very good job of really supplying every tool a psychopomp could possibly need to do their job, which is something other purviews (looking at you, Death) don't always do, and furthermore it does it with such wide scope that it's appropriate for psychopomps of every culture, from Hermes to Ogma to Xolotl and so forth.

It's a weird purview, because it's totally necessary to the divine landscape, but if you wanted to make a Psychopomp purview that could only be used to escort dead people, you'd end up with just Spirit Lamp and Come Along. Psychopomp's a very narrow job and a very narrow concept, but it's hugely important and has many hugely important gods doing it, so you can't just throw it away and tell them all to get Death. Scion's solution, to give the purview as many boons that are useful for psychopomping as possible, is an elegant one; not only does it give psychopomps plenty of options for doing their jobs, it also lets them have a purview that is not totally useless at all other times.

So I'm pretty comfortable with the name, to be honest. It'd be nice if there were some perfect term that covered everything and didn't sometimes make me raise an eyebrow, because I'm totally with you on the occasional feeling that psychopomp Scions don't bother with much psychopomping... but as far as I know there isn't, so Psychopomp seems like the best (and coolest) option out there.