Immortal and Immovable

Question: Why can gods die? It seems like it would make more sense and be more dramatic if they were immortal entities who have to be captured or convinced just like Titans.

I'm a little bit with you my friend, because the truth is that I tend to love the gods as characters, and I hate to see one go down in a game and no longer be around to trail his or her awesomeness all over the landscape. I shed a little tear whenever a god dies, and when I see other peoples' games in which a plethora of deities have kicked the bucket, I always have a little knee-jerk horrified reaction at the idea that all those cool characters and their awesome plot hooks aren't around anymore.

But gods can die, and gods should die, and it makes much more sense that way than for them to be truly indestructible. To have a really useful conversation about gods and why they have to be able to shuffle off their not so mortal coils, we have to leave Greek mythology by the wayside for a bit; we all know and love them, but the Greek gods have the very singular honor in world mythology of being considered truly immortal by their worshipers. It's probably largely because they're the most well-known pantheon to most Scion players that the idea of widespread immortality seems natural (along with a healthy dollop of modern religious theory, in which the Big Monotheistic Godmonsters are of course entirely endless and indestructible).

But there are far, far, far more gods - both in the world of mythology and in Scion - that are not Greek than are, and with the notable exceptions of a few Stamina monsters, they are decidedly not immune to death. Gods die in mythological tales all the time; they give their lives for their people, or they fall in battle, or they betray and kill one another, and on and on and on. Gods don't die easily - they are, after all, gods - but they do die when it's appropriate, and it's important that they do so because their deaths usually serve necessary symbolic and mythic purposes. Guys like Adonis or Baal have to die in order to be resurrected, to mirror the cycle of death and rebirth that the world undergoes every winter. Guys like Osiris have to die to illustrate the concepts of betrayal and treason, forever doomed to the underworld by the actions of the unjust, while guys like Hod have to die to show that there are serious consequences for the betrayers as well as the betrayed and that justice can always find the wicked. Izanami has to die because the powers of death are not always available to or desired by the living and someone has to do the job, and Gugalanna has to die to illustrate the consequences of pride and in-fighting. Their deaths aren't random events that disrupt the story; they're extremely important parts of a story that without them wouldn't have as much meaning.

Death is and always has been a huge, important theme across all world myths, and that's mirrored by the fact that gods can and do die. They don't die spontaneously, like the wretched hordes of humanity, nor do they die often or easily, but they still do die if circumstances warrant it. And they die because, as the mirrors of humanity and the stories told and retold to reflect a culture's values and ideals, they must address and explain death just like they do everything else in the universe.

There are, of course, always loopholes. There are a few cultures, like the Greeks, that do consider their gods literally indestructible, and while that isn't true within the Scion framework because it would be horribly unfair to all other pantheons, it's still an idea that pops up now and then. Death gods sometimes manage to die but still remain active, putting them in a sort of "half-life" state in which their actions can still affect the world of the living but they are for the most part chained to the land of the dead. Some gods die and are later resurrected, as part of an illustrative cycle of death and rebirth. Scion provides rules and ways that all these things can happen within the setting and still make sense with one another.

But sometimes gods die, and they stay dead, permanently and forever. Sometimes they have to in order for the myth to make sense. Stories can't always end with all the heroes alive, and what are myths but the first stories upon which all the later ones are based?

So no, gods being unable to die wouldn't make more sense in Scion; just the opposite, in fact. The idea would invalidate some of their myths and steal the dramatic punch away from those rare times that a god does become deceased. Of course killing them should never be easy, but it also shouldn't be impossible; if a god can never die, his resurrection is meaningless, and if a goddess can never die, there's no courage in her incredible feats. Death is no longer a great and terrible consequence, a rite of incredible importance or a cosmic constant that even divinity can't always avoid. It's been demoted to the level of inconvenience.

That's not to say that gods should drop like flies, either, of course. They're hard to kill, and when they die it's a Big Fucking Deal and the divine and mortal worlds should respond accordingly. And even if a god does die, that doesn't mean he or she has to stay down; resurrecting a full-blown god is a lot harder than just jaunting down into Hades to pick up Eurydice, but it can still happen (and has, in our games!). And you also shouldn't have to feel like the fact that gods can die means that that's always the go-to solution for dealing with them; divine politics makes it an incredibly bad idea for other gods (or even some Titan Avatars, if they're trying to avoid multiple hostile fronts or ill-prepared to deal with the consequences) to kill gods outright, and gods are often just as useful to their enemies alive as dead. Very often they do need to be cajoled, tricked, trapped or otherwise non-lethally controlled; the fact that they can die doesn't mean that's the only approach anyone can take.

Gods - and the Scions who will become them - need the possibility of death. It's an important part of their universe and it allows for more dramatic possibilities, meaningful moments and motivation to succeed than you would have without it. Everything you can do with a Titan you can also do with a god, but gods have that possibility of death and consequence where the Titans do not. It's one of the things that makes them closer to humanity and each other than their disconnected, monstrous forbears; death always matters, and the death of a god matters that much more.