Foreign Fever

Question: How common is it for Gods to have Scions from outside their cultural race? Also, how do the pantheons react to this sort of thing? I imagine the Amatsukami would collectively bay for blood, but I'm not really sure how the others would react.

Exactly as common as your players make it with their backstory choices, really. In most cases, gods tend to descend to the World in their own traditional territories - a god of the Amatsukami is more likely to appear in Japan than in Africa, and a god of the Anunna is more likely to appear in Iraq than in Siberia. This makes it more likely that they'll engender Scions with people of their own cultures, especially if they choose from among the more devout mortals or those who remind them the most of their own Virtues. After all, theoretically these gods espouse values and ways of life that mirror those of their ancient peoples', so they'll naturally be more attracted to mortals that are similarly inclined. Keep in mind that different gods have different behavioral patterns - sure, Amaterasu might eschew ever touching some stranger from a strange land, but do you really think Zeus or the Dagda is going to see a gorgeous woman they want to sleep with and say, "Well, I wish I could, but she's Brazilian so that's not okay"?

Also, this is a modern world, in which people of every ethnicity live pretty much everywhere, so a god of the Aztlanti is going to find people from all kinds of places and races immediately available, even if he lands in the heart of Mexico City. Gods can (and do) also go anywhere in the World they wish pretty easily, so it's not as if being a god of Hawaii is preventing you from jetting off to enjoy a summer affair in Sweden. There's no boundary to the possibilities for cross-cultural romances between gods and mortals except for their own choices and those of your game. We assume that most Scions, at least for NPC purposes, are probably found within their parents' home cultures, in part because it's usually easier to keep them involved in their pantheons' affairs and in part because it allows PC Scions who break that mold to be more unique, but we've been known to have the odd cross-bred NPC when there's a specific plot purpose behind it.

We've found that PCs are often genetic "mutts"; some characters are carefully crafted to be part of their home culture, but many are half-breeds, undefined or children of the great melting pots, usually so that players can go with something they're more comfortable with (that is, sometimes they'd rather just play a guy from Wisconsin than try to figure out how to accurately portray someone from a different culture). I wouldn't worry too much about this - if you think there's potential for a cool plot or interesting character dynamics in a character's parentage and how the pantheon reacts to it, by all means, run with it, but there's no reason to police the players' choices by telling them that their mother would never have slept with a dirty foreigner or that they have to figure out the nuances of childhood in rural China rather than just playing a student from UCal.

The pantheons' responses are probably going to depend on the Scion's actions as well as parentage, but those with a traditionally stronger emphasis on blood, like the Amatsukami or Yazata, are much more likely to snub the kid than those who really don't care all that much, like the Loa. I doubt anyone's going to demand that the kid be put down, but they might mistreat him - racism is pretty universally unpleasant, and this would just be on a godly scale instead of a mortal one, and would also vary depending on how that pantheon's culture tends to behave during snubbing (the Amatsukami would probably pointedly ignore or express polite disappointment in their halfbreed Scion until he withered from shame; the Yazata would be more likely to just constantly send that kid out to the front lines, because it's not as great a tragedy if he dies as it would be for some other, more proudly Persian Scion). And pantheons aren't always massively homogeneous, so while Huitzilopochtli might find non-Mexican Scions inconsequential or disappointing, Tezcatlipoca might have no problem with them as long as they did their jobs well.

It's something you'll have to plan depending on the gods and Scions in question. As I said above, generally I'd run NPC Scions as originating from their pantheon's culture in most cases unless you have a reason to do otherwise, but there's no magical ratio nor universal response. For our games, we've seen everything from mixed-parentage Scions being strongly snubbed or mistreated (Sora Sato, son of an American diplomat with incriminatingly blue eyes) to being generally regarded as disappointments but still encouraged to try to fit in (Kettila Blomgren, fondly referred to by players as "the worst Aztec ever"), but those often depend as much on what they do and who they are as where they came from.

Racism is strongly present when dealing with gods and their treatment and views of other cultures; they are always likely to translate that into their treatment of similarly mixed-culture Scions, but Scions may be able to turn those tides with their own actions, powers or social badassery.