More Human than Human

Question: What are your thoughts on the Keepers of the World and/or any god who indentifies with being human more than being a god?

For the most part, I think the Keepers of the World are well-intentioned but ineffective. None of them are deities that have any business being Legend 12, and it's therefore difficult for me to really take them seriously as an actual threat to the established pantheons. Imhotep is pretty excellent and is probably the highest Legend among them, but I still wouldn't put him above 11, and the others really aren't close; Heracles I'd peg around Legend 10 (beloved? certainly! beloved for doing anything after his widely publicized apotheosis? not really, because apparently he just retired at that point), Marinette's scary but recent and not particularly storied, probably a 9 or at best a 10, and while I love Himiko's secret persona as Jingu and status as Hachiman's mother, she really doesn't do very much aside from conquering mortals and probably isn't higher than 9 or 10. Wayland Smith is probably actually a demigod, judging from his exploits and total lack of worship. Cortes can leave by the back door and we will never speak of his presence again.

So, yeah, I really can't take them seriously as an actual threat to any established pantheon unless they get some really important allies really quickly. Trying to sever the Overworld from the World is going to require some insane purview Avatar shenanigans, and they just don't have the juice for them. I also don't really believe in their motivations; Marinette is nuts but she's nuts in a distinctly not-planning-ahead-well way, Imhotep and Heracles were celebrated and beloved by humanity and the gods alike and seem to have no reason to decide they want to "liberate" the world from divine interference, and Himiko's spat with Amaterasu is entirely fabricated by the writers of Scion: God and has no basis in myth. The basic idea is good - that some gods might want to sever ties with humanity and let them run on their own, as they've been doing for the past few centuries anyway while the gods were all under their non-intereference-due-to-Fatebonds agreement, but the Keepers of the World are not doing a very good job of executing it.

But to get philosophical with your question, I don't think there's any such thing as a god who identifies more with humanity than the gods. It's actually almost completely impossible; gods are on such a different plane from humans that they are almost incapable of relating to them as equals. How can you possibly consider yourself relating to someone who can't possibly hold a conversation with you because they're on the mental level of a slug compared to the thoughts going on in your head? How can you relate to somebody whose personality you could literally rewrite almost by accident just by making a suggestion, or who can't do anything but slavishly stare and and obey you? You may understand them, but they can never hope to fathom you, and understanding someone and being able to in any way relate to them are not the same thing. Past the point of about five Epic Attributes, humanity and demigods just can't deal with each other as normal equals anymore, because they aren't. It only gets worse as you go up to godhood.

But, of course, this doesn't mean that gods can't care about mortals or be involved in their affairs - far from it. There are tons of gods who want to take care of humanity, who want to teach and better them, or who even enjoy wandering among them incognito to enjoy their much simpler lives for a while. Gods can be and are concerned with humanity in a lot of ways, and that's something that is just as important in Scion as the cosmic battles and struggles against Fate that happen around them. The basic premise of the Keepers of the World, that humanity is better off without the interference of gods, is a valid point of view that some gods might espouse, and while most probably aren't doing so quite as violently and on such a large scale as the Keepers in the book are attempting to do, they still might find ways to safeguard mortals and leave them the freedom to be themselves.

Just like everywhere else in Scion, there's a clash of opinion between gods that believe one thing - that they are the reason humanity has survived this long and that they're helping or benefiting from it by remaining involved - and those who believe another, that humanity is better off without divine intereference. Some pantheons, like the Aztlanti or Loa, are so closely connected to humanity that they wouldn't dream of leaving; others, like the Bogovi, have a unilateral ban on getting that close to fragile mortality. Scions, who are in the unique position of coming up from humanity and experiencing the whole spectrum into godhood, might fall anywhere between those opinions, and seeing what they do about it once they've started to become powerful enough is one of the great parts of the game.