Clapping on the Irons

Question: Situations may arise in games where player characters choose to take prisoners rather than simply killing off nameless NPC antagonists. Apart from the logistical difficulties they present to themselves in doing so, how do the different pantheons encourage the handling of prisoners of war?

Alas for NPCs, but there is no Geneva Convention among the divine; each pantheon treats prisoners (of war, spoils, or just because the conqueror didn't like them) differently, and most of them are pretty harsh. As with most cultural situations among the gods, I would assume they respond mostly in the way their home cultures would.

The Aesir are easy: if they didn't kill it, it gets to be a slave! Huzzah! Scion calls a specific class of jotun-enhanced warriors thralls, but the word originally referred to any common serf in the Viking lands, and most prisoners who aren't executed tend to end up as thralls, serving their new master after having been defeated. Considering that defeated enemies usually aren't big fans of the people who defeated them, however, pumping a little Jotunblut into them might be just the ticket to try to stave off impending revolt. PCs who take prisoners to serve them are signing up for a hilarious world of shenanigans, hijinks and heartbreak unless they're lucky enough to pick up a servant with no ambitions toward freedom, but the plots you can spin out of them are endless. Other cultures that just dump their POWs into slavehood include the Anunna (because dude, you don't want to draft your real citizens unless you can help it - that's how revolts get started!), the Dodekatheon (every slave that's foreign instead of Greek is a slave we don't have to feel guilty about!), and the Loa (because that's how you deal with uppity dissenting tribes in your territory!), though more modern among the African gods may have changed their views on slavery in the last few centuries.

The Amatsukami are pretty similar; since they tend to view surrendering or losing in war without dying as dishonoring oneself, prisoners of war are by definition dishonorable people who don't deserve a lot of politeness or consideration. They probably won't outright kill them, at least not for no reason, but I doubt it's much fun to end up in Amatsukami prison. Japanese Scions (at least those with a grasp on their divine parents' ancient culture) might find that it's kinder to fallen enemies to kill them, rather than making them live with the shame of their defeat. The enemies may or may not agree.

As on so many other subjects, the Celestial Bureaucracy are too wildly different to agree on much, and China has done so many different things with its prisoners over the centuries that each individual god may handle it differently. The really old-school who remember the Shang and Chou dynasties may see prisoners as prime sacrifice-to-the-gods material, and the practice of wearing items or even tiny body parts taken from a defeated enemy survived until pretty comparatively recently in Chinese warfare. Those gods more invested in the concepts of harmony and inaction may instead prefer to make prisoners comfortable but unable to escape, the better to make them think about their actions and hopefully approach enlightenment. But they're a cantankerous and difficult people, the Shen, so whatever they decide to do will probably take a long time and involve a lot of forms. If I were a Shen PC, I'd probably wing it.

The Devas, at least historically, are pretty chill about prisoners of war; if they surrendered and aren't fighting anymore, it's not only not okay to kill them, you're actually required to get them medical attention if they need it. The Ramayana and Mahabharata mention taking POWs as slaves, but it's just as often true that they hang out with the heroes as sort of honored guests or get sent home to their lands, no hard feelings. The ancient Hindu war-code was very big on chivalry and politeness once the violent murdering part is over, so politique ways to be nice to your prisoners probably never go amiss among the Devas (if all else fails, remind them that whatever you're doing is way better than the traditional execution by elephant).

Entertainingly, the ancient Egyptians tended to just draft prisoners of war en masse into their army; after all, they knew they were already trained as soldiers, and since there were a good number of perks to being members of the Egyptian army it was generally assumed that most of them wouldn't defect. Members of the Pesedjet may actually find their pantheon pleased when they bring home prisoners of war, particularly those that are powerful enough to really be useful when repurposed toward Egyptian goals. Of course, the Scion in question might find himself in charge of making sure that prisoner becomes useful... but if you beat him once, you should have no trouble keeping him down thereafter, right?

The Yazata, drawing from ancient Persian war models, are probably similarly pragmatic. The Persian empire had a long and glorious tradition of just imprisoning captives from the battlefield pretty much indefinitely unless paid ransom by their home countries, which meant that a large and successful enough war could be a pretty effective moneymaker just from selling prisoners back to their homes. Those POWs not lucky enough to be ransomed off usually ended up in a similar kind of polite jail to the Hindu practice, if they were important enough, or as servants to whomever had captured them (or whatever nobleman they decided to farm them out to) if they weren't. Yazata Scions have a lot of options even if they don't succeed in getting any treasures out of their prisoner, but whatever they decide, the Persian gods probably expect them to handle their shit.

And finally, two cultures who can agree on only violent things: both the Aztlanti and the Celtic pantheons probably view prisoners of war as destined for sacrifice to the gods, which is clearly the most useful thing they could be doing now instead of cluttering up all this newly conquered space. The many creative sacrificial methods of the Celts are almost description-defying, and since they tended to view all prisoners of war as criminals, there's not much of a moral problem involved in just icing those living souls left over after a battle. The Aztecs almost always prefer to sacrifice foreigners instead of themselves - I mean, there is only so much precious Mexica blood to go around, guys - and fairly regularly initiated wars intentionally to gather new sacrificial victims, so I imagine that Aztlanti parents would look at their kids funny if they did anything but get their ritual murder on as soon as they had managed to take a captive. Ah, those cultures with Courage and no Valor - all the warfare, none of the guilt hangover!

All this can lead to particularly interesting intra-band arguments about what to do with prisoners and who has the best claim where, especially if the divine parents get involved. The number of times we've seen Dodekatheon Scions start bellowing in outrage when some Aztlanti just rips a harmless POW's chest open is beyond counting, and watching PCs come up with creative ways to compromise among themselves veers from the clever and sneaky to the hilarious and over-the-top. Not every group of players will want to bother with prisoners - a lot of them will just kill them off so they don't have to worry about it - but those that do are sitting on plots just waiting to happen.