Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Ye Mortal Men

Question: Which pantheon has moved the most mortals to their godrealm?

I'm not really sure if you're asking about the general behavior of pantheons around the world or events in our games specifically, or further if you're talking about living mortals or dead ones, but I'll give 'em all a shot and try to cover my bases.

In general, pantheons don't move mortals to the Overworlds. Overworlds are very specifically not for mortals - they're for gods and the immortal servants of the gods. Living mortals hang out in the World, or occasionally in Terrae Incognita; dead mortals hang out in the Underworlds. But they don't really hang out in the Overworlds at all, because that really isn't a concept that exists strongly in ancient myth.

There's a strong modern idea of humans dwelling with the gods after death, but it's almost exclusively the result of Judeo-Christian thought; while the most ancient roots of the Judeo-Christian religions also conceived of the dead as going to an Underworld, the strong emphasis on the joy of being near to God and the idea of an eventual, post-mortem reward for mortals who were appropriately pious eventually gave rise to the idea that mortals could enter a heavenly abode and live with God and the angels in their eternal paradise. This is a strong idea that has influenced a great deal of thought on the afterlife for the past few centuries. But for most ancient polytheistic societies, it doesn't really apply; they conceived of the world as in three basic parts (arranged vastly differently depending on the culture, but basically the same in theme) - the world of the gods (the Overworld), the world of men (the World) and the world of the dead (the Underworld), and there's no real overlap between them. When someone who doesn't belong there journeys from one world to the other - the dead come back to haunt the living, or a hero tries to go to the Underworld without dying first - it's a big deal and often has tragic or frightening consequences, because it goes against the very natural order of the universe.

So, in almost all cases, the answer is that none of the pantheons really ever make a practice of moving mortals to their realms, because it's simply not something you do. Depending on your point of view, you could theoretically argue that some gods do this; for example, you might say that slain warriors go to Valhalla and Valhalla is in Asgard, ergo mortals get to go to Asgard, but in cosmological terms Valhalla itself is just another kind of Underworld, not a secret backstage pass to the Overworld where the gods themselves dwell. You might also say that sometimes gods carry mortals off to the Overworld, but specific examples usually don't turn out to actually be mortals - Ganymede, the youth carried to Olympus by Zeus, for example, is colloquially referred to as a "mortal" that Zeus loved, but considering that his mother was a naiad, he'd be a lesser immortal, not a true mortal at all. Even Pizamar, a truly mortal maiden loved by the god Svarozhich, had to be ritually and cosmically transformed into a goddess before she was allowed to live in Dub with the rest of the gods.

As far as our games go, some of the god-level PCs have indeed moved mortals to their Sanctums and thus into the Overworld. Eztli and Sowiljr routinely keep their still-mortal but probably one day Scion children there to keep them out of harm's way in the World, and during Ragnarok several PCs moved humans who were particularly important to them into their divine houses, but it was all on a very small scale and most of them were summarily moved back out as soon as some un-scorched earth was found to put them on. Vivian actually encountered strong resistance and even Virtue Extremity when her pantheon found out what she'd done, because Harmony, concerned with the proper place and balance of all things in the universe, wigged the fuck out on a lot of the Loa when they realized she was keeping mortals in a decidedly immortal environment. There was an incident with the Baron and his cane. She and Woody, who got hit by the fallout in a big way, don't like to talk about it.

By Scion's rules, the only Overworld that really has mortal visitors much is probably the Slavic Thrice-Tenth Kingdom, which is technically accessible by any mortal who accidentally finds it and then manages to get past Baba Yaga. Even in that rare case, though, the mortals are getting in and out under their own power rather than because a god intentionally brought them there.

Incidentally, we'd consider any mortal that spent an appreciable amount of time in an Overworld to probably become Legendary anyway; it wouldn't really be possible for them to remain normal over a long period of time spent there.

7 comments:

  1. what about the Elohim that have moved entire cities to there overworld? there were comments in an earlier post that that was a way to avoid going to Nepheresh.

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    1. Technically, the cities preserved with Malak are not Overworlds but actually specialized Terrae Incognita. Their Overworld, Tagarit, maintains doors to each of these Terrae, but the Terrae themselves are not Overworlds.

      It's an easy confusion, because Malak cities are similar to the Sanctums of other pantheons, but they're places created and preserved by the Elohim PSP, not as portions of a pre-existing Overworld.

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    2. Doesn't the writeup for Sumeru Parvat describe it as home to a number of faithful mortals? As in, Vishnu devotees get to spend eternity in Vaikunth. Or is that modern Hindu religion influencing ancient Hindu myth?

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    3. It certainly might - I'm not near my Companion at the moment so I can't check. :( My recollection is that Sumeru Parvat/Mount Meru is set as actually being located in the World, probably due to the Hindu idea of the mountain as the center of the universe. Like a lot of the Deva chapter of Companion, I'm not sure how I feel about that choice - I see where it's coming from, but it's poorly explained and doesn't really address what it means in cosmological terms. Either way, though, from a mythic standpoint I don't recall tales of mortals going to Mount Meru - the only one I can think of is Manu, who in some versions parked his flood-surviving boat on it until the waters receded.

      Could it be syncretism with Indra's hall Svarga, maybe, which is supposed to be supported by the clouds around the mountain? It does receive the souls of deceased warriors, sort of like a Hindu Valhalla, though we consider it therefore an Underworld of its own rather than a part of the Overworld proper.

      There is a modern Hindu idea of very devout souls eventually going to live with Visnhu in his portion of the Overworld, but as far as I can tell it has no roots in the Vedic mythic age.

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    4. I doubt it was syncretism with Svarga, exactly, since Companion details that as a separate part of Sumeru. I do know that modern Hindus have a tendency to equate Svarga with the Christian Heaven and Naraka with Hell, and if I remember correctly, Comapnion runs with this idea. Naraka is solely meant for wicked souls, while good souls are whisked off to Sumeru, and honestly, that's how most Hindus see it. However I don't really know what the case was back before Christianity influenced modern Hindu outlooks. What is Naraka like in Vedic myth?

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  2. Of course, nothing stops the Titans from grabbing thousands of mortals and marching them into Overworlds as part of their offensive. Especially if they have primed the mortals to think particularly negative things beforehand.

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    1. Oh, definitely. Titans aren't burdened by an overabundance of feelings about the proper order of things, since they tend to be all about blowing that up anyway.

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