Question: How would you handle someone wanting to use prehistoric animals (read: dinosaurs)?
Players are always welcome to choose prehistoric animals as their totems if they want to, whether for the Animal purview or simply in general, representative terms. The problem with this for most players is that prehistoric animals aren't around much, so there aren't very many opportunities to do things with them, which can be depressing when your marmot-aligned friend is getting to hang out with all kinds of furry, cuddly friends. There are also no mythological connections between the gods and prehistoric animals for the most part (because the gods are inventions of a humanity that didn't exist in the prehistoric eras by definition), which means that you don't have anything to go on when it comes to what that animal means to your pantheon's culture or religion.
But that definitely doesn't mean it can't be done! Scions are, after all, trailblazers, a new order of gods creating their own new ideas, associations and myths, so the fact that no one's done it before doesn't mean that Scions can't do it now. For purposes of the Animal purview, we're always willing to let a Scion choose an animal that is currently extinct; we just make sure they know before they go into it that their Animal boons will not be useful most of the time as a result. Animal Communication, Animal Obedience, Faunaphagia, Call of the Wild, Ride Animal and Hive Mind will all be pretty much useless as the Scion progresses, because there simply won't be any animals around to use them on. Other Scions have this problem on a smaller scale sometimes - somebody with Animal (Penguin), for example, doesn't run into a lot of flightless waterfowl in most of the world, but they always have the option to go out and find some, which Scions who are aligned with extinct animals can't do.
The Animal purview isn't totally useless if you're aligned with an animal that doesn't exist anymore, of course; Animal Aspect, Animal Feature and Animal Form/Natural Army work just fine without actual dinosaurs in the vicinity, so there's still some utility if you slog through the first couple of levels. The big point at which Animal becomes awesome for those Scions who choose extinct animals is when they make it to Legend 8 and get access to Create Animal and Paper Tiger; at that point, they can create as many of that creature as they want, and suddenly there are specimens of it in the world that they can use their boons on. Scions who take on prehistoric totems may do so expressly with the purpose of bringing those animals back to the world; it's a hard road, but at the end of it they can reintroduce the triceratops if they want to, which is definitely a cool and godly thing to do (also ecosystem-destroying, but let's not rain on the parade too much. Maybe the Scion also has Fertility).
As a Storyteller, you can backdoor a few extra opportunities for your long-suffering archaologically-inclined Animal Scion to use his or her powers; some Terrae Incognita may still have living specimens of creatures long dead, and gods or Titans might occasionally create some for their own purposes. I wouldn't overuse these devices, since players know when they're being pandered to and you don't want either the player of the dinosaury Scion to feel like he's a charity case or the other players to feel like he's getting unfair consideration, but in small doses it can really help keep that power relevant and fun for the game as a whole. You can also suggest to the player interested in extinct creatures that he might want to get one as a Birthright Creature at character creation; I'd need a good justification or at least general idea of why the god in question is giving this kid a mammoth instead of an elephant, but if the player and Storyteller can work something out, that would at least give the Scion one animal to interact with before he makes it to the upper stratosphere of Demigodhood.
Choosing an Animal totem that isn't around - whether it's extremely rare and lives deep in inaccessible jungles, or is actually extinct and gone - is always harder than choosing a simple, easily available one like cats or pigeons. But it's not impossible, so as long as a player understands that they're going in for a power that will be useful only in rare, specific cases until they can take matters into their own hands, we're all for it. You rock that archaeopteryx all day long, brave Scion.
During my sole instance as an ST I did include an antagonist who was a Scion in the thrall of Gaia, who had Dinosaur as a generic totem (Sure it's way too inclusive, but he's a Titan-aligned NPC). His goal was to restore Mother's children, all of them, to the mortal realm, and the dinosaurs were his focus in that more than the giants of hekatonkhires. I suppose that Gaia COULD have transported a few dinos as Creature birthrights, but I went one better. He couldn't outright transport dinosaurs from the Titanrealm to the World, he didn't have enough power and the environment couldn't support them...
ReplyDeleteSo, instead, using a mix of the Animal, Death, and Earth Purviews, he resurrected fossils as dinosaur zombies.
Sure, it requires a lot more energy to accomplish it, but Unquiet Corpse doesn't have a limit to when a skeleton can no longer be ressurected. And it means that your paleontologist Scion can go into a natural history museum and come out like a badass unleashing a T. rex skeleton!
But the question is did he have a birthright polka band?
DeleteOh no. He was evil, but not THAT evil!
Delete(And yes, I know the reference you're making)
We actually allow anyone with Unquiet Corpse to raise the bodies of animals as well as people - a zombie's a zombie, after all, and since it's dead we figure you really only need Death boons to interact with it, not also Animal (I mean, you can't hold a conversation with it, it's a zombie). Vivian once raised a giant Titanspawn octopus to fight for her on the sea floor. She named it Ceviche.
DeleteHmm... I wonder. I mean, technically fossils aren't actually bodies anymore, right, but rather deposits of minerals in the shape of already-decomposed bodies? Would that make it more like trying to animate a golem than a real corpse? Hmm.
Depends on how technical you wanna be. Theoretically, there is still genetic material left in the bones, though this is like 20% if lucky. Fossils that are encased in ice to be frozen solid or have right circumstances and be in mud would have more, like skin and muscle. But other then then that, yeah. Its basically a golem. A giant rock skeleton golem. Though the rock is brittle.
DeleteSo either way, its a bunch of bones, though most of it may be rock. I'd leave it up to the GM how he would want to hash that one out.
No....thats just false. If there are bones with genetic material, its no where NEAR 20%. And cases of fossils with skin or muscles of dinosaurs are incredibly rare....like insanely rare...like, we have 1 that we can still reference and 4 from all time.
DeleteFossils arent bones that are mostly rock. They are just rock. Thats how the fossilization process works.
If you want to learn more its a quick google search away. We usually shy away from science, but fossils are strange aborations. To a death god, fossils are as much bones as a culture is people.
Would that make sense in a mythological context, though? I mean if you hand an ancient person a bunch of bone-shaped fossil-rocks, are they gunna say its bones, or are they gunna say "obviously that is mineral deposits in the SHAPE of bones, but not actually bones?"
DeleteEssentially, fossils WERE living creatures at one time and still retain the shape and remainness of that creature. I'd allow someone to raise a critter from fossils, despite fossils not being strictly 'remains'. I know I'm a melty piece of taffy when it comes to rules, but it makes sense to me.
We actually talked about that some last night. It's in a weird place, because dinosaur fossils are entirely the province of science; they're prehistoric, so they have no mythic connotations or associations. They might have given rise to legends of giants, dragons or other critters, but those are discrete beings in Scion's mythic landscape, so dinosaurs themselves are in a kind of mythic limbo.
DeleteMostly we arrived at the conclusion that gods and Scions with Death know a dead thing when they're holding it, and a fossil isn't one. Conversely, a god or Scion of Earth would have power over fossils because they would recognize them as the earthen constructs they are. But if a Scion managed to find, say, a frozen mammoth or dinosaur that was actually still non-fossilized tissue under all the layers of ice, it would be fair game for Death.
Take your same question though, and replace fossils with masterfully made forgeries out of rocks by an artist.
DeleteJohn, sorry, but I have to disagree. Modern science has been able to grind up fossils and get to 20% of the DNA code from Fossils. Then also North Carolina State University were also able to find collagen in some fossils, the most famous being a T. Rex and were able to get DNA from it to see how they compare from chickens. Now then, I know people are skeptical, cause DNA should not last as long, but some cells in our body are harder to break down then others. Though 'bones' are most minerals and stuff now, but they have tiny fragments of DNA still, that science can (severely expensively) extract from them.
DeleteSo I'd say its more of an earth purview thing than death or animal. Be interesting to use echo location and have an earth purview that brings fossils to the top and use them as golems.
There's a reason I made the antagonist a master of Animal, Death, AND Earth. I wasn't entirely sure myself which power precisely was causing the zombie dinosaurs, so I made it deliberately vague.
DeleteAlso since Scion's relationship towards actual science is somewhat like that of a male character towards the protagonist of a Lifetime original movie, I'd say that a fossil could either be a bone or a rock. If an Earth god wanted to animate it, it's because they're inorganic rock. If a Death god wanted to animate it, it's because those ARE the bones of something that was once living.
You could even use them in tandem. Let's say you're a paleontologist Scion. You take a fang from a sabertoothed cat, either by digging it up yourself, buying it, or stealing it from a museum. Maybe you then use Shaping to recreate the skeleton, and use the life from the fossil fang to Unquiet Corpse it into a golem. Then, you use the Animal purview to communicate with and control the beastie.
It may be a lot of effort to put it all together, and once you hit upper tier Demigod, it becomes redundant, but if you want that zombie Triceratops, you need to EARN it!