Rome Was Not Built in a Day

Question: What is your opinion on Quirinus, the deified Romulus and Scion of Ares? I noticed you have his associated attributes/purviews as Ares' on the site. Where does he stand within the Dodekatheon?

I was confused for a minute here, because I was like, "Quirinus isn't even on the site anywhere," but then I realized that you meant that Ares' associated powers seem to be similar to Quirinus'. That's a coincidence; Ares was one of the hardest people to stat, and he ended up with that setup because of his own associations, not his son's.

But, Quirinus himself! John and I have had many debates about Quirinus, who is statted up as a playable god-parent in the World at War section of Scion: Companion. John is always the hardball player, while I always want to keep as many of the original books' parents in play as possible, but in the end I had to agree with him; while Quirinus is totally cool and all, he probably isn't Legend 12.

As Romulus, Quirinus does a lot of cool stuff - surviving being reared by wolves! Founding badass empires! Killing all the dissidents! Zooming off to Olympus in a hurricane! - but he does it all before becoming a god, and it's all stuff that is pretty standard Hero- and Demigod-level fare. He never does anything as the god Quirinus nor does he have any really interesting attributes or rituals associated that we remember today; he enjoyed a very strong cult following for a while, but it faded and became less important long before even the Roman Empire itself fell, let alone surviving into the modern day. He's a fantastic example of a Scion of a bygone era who had a whirlwind career up to Legend 9, but as far as we can tell, he proceeded to pretty much stay there.

So off he went to the bin with the rest of the lesser Roman gods. He's probably Legend 9 or 10, and would make a great NPC for any PCs involved or interested in the Roman pantheon, but he's just not on par with folks like Mars, Venus or Jupiter. I imagine he's probably one of Ares' favorites, and he probably lords up his foundation of the great city of Rome; he might also be an ally of Apollo, who theoretically also helped found Rome by sending of Aeneas (a Scion of Aphrodite, who might also be down with the Romans!). He'd be an interesting place for some Roman dissension against the more popular Greek gods.