Let's Get Some More Eels and Octopi Up in Here

Question: What is your opinion of the current Polynesian writeup: the Atua?

This will probably sound very weird coming from us, but we haven't read it.

It's not out of neglect, or disinterest! I've been watching the Atua take form as a community project, helmed by the excellent Pashupatastra and Ptah1888 on the White Wolf forums, for lo these many months and years, and they've put in a remarkable amount of time and effort. The Polynesian/Hawaiian/Maori/general islands in that area pantheon is a major area of the world that Scion simply doesn't address in the books, which is a crying shame, and I cheer anyone who wants to fill in those holes in the world, because lord knows I do. The game needs the ability to Tangaroa it up once in a while, and these guys are on a mission to make sure it has that.

The major reason we haven't actually sat down and given that fan supplement a good, thorough read is that we just aren't ready for Polynesia yet. We're on other projects at the moment, and while a Polynesian pantheon is totally a necessary part of the mythic world, we haven't yet had time to start messing around with one. It was temporarily a priority during Sverrir's unscheduled shenanigans in Hawaii, but since he's gone to inactive and his player has moved, it probably won't hit the forefront of our needs again until either another PC wants to get involved in the islands, or you fine folks vote Polynesian in the new pantheon poll over to the right of this blog.

I don't feel right reading things before I'm ready to work on them, because it tends to make me sloppy. I forget things, or I remember them wrong, or I absorb someone's editorializing and don't realize that it's a modern interpretation instead of a legitimate myth. I have no doubt that I'd totally enjoy reading the fan Atua, but until I can actually devote some attention to that area of Scion's world, it probably wouldn't help much and I'd just need to reread it when it was time anyway. Fan supplements, even when well-researched and well-written, are also never first on my reading list when looking at new material for Scion; I like to make sure I have as firm a grounding in the source myths as possible before I start looking at interpretations, and while I've got a good handle on the Pacific badasses that are the Atua, I would be more comfortable raiding several libraries before I seriously get into it.

So it's not you, Atua: it's me. The supplement is saved on my hard drive along with a zillion other things, and I can't wait to unzip it and take a look one day soon, but since it's not a top priority for our game and the writers of the Atua haven't asked for input, it'll remain there until I struggle out of the deserts and jungles of Arabia and Mexico.

For those of you who do want to take a look right now, though, you can find the Atua supplement available for download over here. I know of several games that use it, and it's just waiting for you to take a look at and dig into.