Fire in the Sky

Question: Would you consider it acceptable to have magma based powers to be in the Fire purview? I mean, I understand that magma is ultimately molten rock, but just like ice and water are scientifically the same substance, but mythologically representative of different things, thus necessitating two different purviews, it just seems more likely that an ancient culture looking at a volcanic eruption would go "Fire!", not "Earth!".

Actually, yes, and thank you for asking about it so we can be excited about it on the blog! We've been discussing moving Magma Control over to Fire for a while now; it's almost universal that gods of volcanoes and eruptions are considered gods of fire in most cultures, and while they sometimes do have Earth connotations as well (usually for the rumbling and the shaking that often precedes or follows a volcanic eruption), those are never attached to the idea of the lava itself. To most cultures, lava raining down from the sky or swimming malevolently toward your village has nothing to do with Earth and everything to do with liquid fire that is coming to kill you.

The original rules place it in Earth because, of course, modern science understands that magma is just rock that has been melted down until it's liquid and dangerous, but this is one of the many places where that scientific knowledge doesn't match up with mythic ideas, so we're planning to move it soon. Just as Eclipse belonged in Darkness, not Moon, and boons having to do with freezing belong in Frost, not Water, so Magma Control clearly belongs in Fire instead of Earth. (Of course, Earth gods could still totally legitimately cause volcanoes to erupt by getting down there and shaking shit up until they caused one to blow, but I'm just saying that that is probably a one-way ticket to Firey Fatebond Town.)

The only reasons we haven't moved it yet are A) we haven't had a chance to work on APP boons in quite a while, but it's definitely on the list for as soon as we do, and B) we're still looking for something to replace it with in Earth. Earth does have Seismic Disruption, so the dirt-aligned gods among us won't be left entirely out in the cold, but we're still hoping to come up with something cool (but not so cool that it belongs in The Shaper) to take the sting out of Magma Control's defection.

It may not change on the site for a little while as we continue to feverishly work through projects on our way to it, but I'd say considering Magma Control to belong to the realm of Fire is an obvious choice. Run with it, and you kids try not to despotically control too many island cultures with your reigns of terror.