Friday, August 10, 2012

Mortality Makes the World Go Round

Question: What is the difference between Legendary Creatures and Scions? Sometimes gods sleep with people and get Scions. Sometimes gods sleep with people and get Legendary Creatures. Sometimes Legendary Creatures increase in Legend. Sometimes Scions don't increase in Legend.

Both Scions and Legendary beings (including Nemean creatures, Lesser Immortals, and other variants) are legendary in nature, but it's not that that makes a Scion a unique creature. It's the combination of humanity, divinity and free action that combine to make the protagonists of this game the most flexible and destined-for-greatness beings around.

Legendary creatures are just that: they're creatures that are Legendary. In most cases, they have always been Legendary; they were born that way because of their origin, whether that was a from a god, a Titan, or some even weirder genesis. Being Legendary is a basic part of the fabric of their beings; it's "normal" and inborn. There are also a few Legendary creatures out there that were originally mortal, like the berserker thralls generated by Jotunblut, but they are turned into (usually low-Legend) Legendary beings by the interference of a god or Titan, and are really just a subset of the overall Legendary Beings umbrella.

But Scions are not like that, because the all-important mark of a Scion is half human parentage. Scions are the children of awesomely Legendary gods and thoroughly non-Legendary humanity. They are exactly between the two, and thus able to take on all of their qualities; they begin their lives as un-Legendary mortals, become Legendary beings as they progress, and eventually join the ranks of the gods themselves. They are Legendary, destined for greatness, because of their link to the divine; and at the same time, they are free agents, able to weave and affect their own fates, because of their link to Fate's greatest tool, humanity. Where Legendary Creatures are something - simply are, in most cases, with no real development or progression behind them - Scions are only and exactly what they make of themselves. Legendary Creatures are; Scions do.

Legendary Creatures are simple beings; they're not the main actors of any given legend, merely parts of it. Cyclopes are amazing and awesome and impressive, but they are not the heroes of the story - at best, they're assistants or antagonists to the heroes. They're part of the divine landscape and don't change or grow into something new; they're cyclopes, and they do and are what cyclopes have always done and been. If one ever does anything different, it's because someone who is a main actor of the Legend caused him to. Cyclopes aren't running around gaining Legend, building stories about themselves or founding religions. They're part of the very divine landscape itself.

But Scions are the main actors, because they are the chosen few who are able to create their own myths, grow into anything they want to be, even change the course of Fate if they try hard enough. They get to be those things because, unlike cyclopes or elves or Nemean beasts, they are the beings in the story that change. What they do matters, because they combine the divine power of Legend with the human capacity to change their Fates.

Scions are the main characters of the story; they can do and be anything, and there are no limits on them but those they choose for themselves. Legendary Creatures are simply themselves, and they don't change without help. The fact that they start with more Legend than a Scion doesn't mean that they're more Legendary; it only means that they have a greater role in Legend at the beginning than a Scion who was only a human a little while ago. But the Scion can and will change that, while the Legendary Creature never will.

...on the off chance you were just asking about mechanics and not philosophy, the major difference is that Scions are always the result of a god having a child with a mortal, no exceptions. Legendary Creatures may result from gods having children with other gods, Titans, landscape features, animals, other Legendary beings, or anything else in the crazy catalogue of world myth. Scions, however, are unique and must always have that component of humanity.

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