The Cycle

Question: Do you think the cycle of gods and titans repeats itself? Titans beget gods who overthrow them, then the titans win again until they beget more gods who overthrow them?

Actually, no - or at least, not in that way. The struggle of the gods and Titans is indeed cyclical, but not quite in the way you're suggesting.

Part of the problem with the idea is that Scion's very setting does something that is entirely contrary to the setup in most world mythologies: it allows the Titans to escape. While it makes for an excellent framework in which Scions are needed and can face many challenges in their rise to apotheosis, it isn't actually something that happens in most world myth. Titans are huge, dangerous and destructive beings, so when humanity tells a story about the gods conquering them, they stay conquered. They have to, in order for humanity to be safe and continue existing. The role of the gods is not to constantly fight escaping Titans, but to kill or imprison them permanently; as long as they keep that going, they maintain the universe. Because, sociologically speaking, we as humanity partially invent deities to reassure ourselves that the universe is in order and everything is okay, those deities have to have the power to save the universe and make it habitable. The Greek Titans are imprisoned, never heard from again unless occasionally let out on parole by Zeus; the Japanese Titans are killed and their bodies turned to useful materials for the World; the Egyptian Titans are constantly held at bay and eternally unable to gain a foothold. In the great story of most world mythologies, the Titans lost a long time ago - and that's the end of it.

Scion, by allowing the Titans to escape and start being their Titany selves all over the landscape again, raises interesting new questions that are part of the game rather than part of Scion; how often does this happen? Did it ever happen before, and if not, why now? Could it happen again in the future, even if the gods succeed in putting them away again? The greater Titans themselves, of course, can never be truly eradicated, only harnessed by the gods and kept quiescent by the imprisonment of their Avatars, but does that mean that all any god has to look forward to is the constant threat that they'll turn back up again? Is this even really a different Titanomachy, or has this been an ongoing process that never really ended, as new Titan Avatars take the place of imprisoned ones?

Scion gives us black and white answers, of course. No, this is the only time it's happened, no, we don't know what caused it, no, if the gods and their Scions succeed they will have saved the universe. And there's nothing wrong with those answers if you'd rather run your game without sweating the weird macro questions; the Scions themselves won't care much, right?

But myth is full of cycles, and the cycle of gods and Titans is one of them. It's just that it's not traditionally a cycle involving the Titans escaping and being put back over and over again; it's a cycle that asks exactly who the Titans are in the first place.

The truly central cycle behind the struggle of the gods against the Titans is that of the new generation usurping the position of their elders. Ouranos is defeated by his son Cronus, who is in turn defeated by his son Zeus, who in turn lives in fear of the prophesied son who will one day defeat him as well. Alalu is defeated by Anu, who is in turn defeated by Kumarbi, who is in turn defeated by Teshub. Shu is usurped by Geb, who is removed from power to make way for Osiris, who in turn dies to make way for his son Horus. Ymir is defeated by his progeny Odin, Vili and Ve, and Odin is destined to in turn perish to make way for his sons Vidar and Baldur. The cycle of the younger generation defeating or replacing the elder repeats itself over and over again.

This, too, is a symptom of human belief and religion; the younger gods must always overthrow the older, because the older a god is, the more they are part of the natural forces of the world instead of the civilized universe that is friendly to humanity. Each generation of gods creates a new, better world for themselves and for humanity, and each previous generation becomes relegated to obscurity or villainy as Titans, who were not necessarily evil but who were not the friends of humanity that the current gods clearly are. And the implication that this cycle may continue - that Zeus should worry about being overthrown by his son, because that's going to happen inevitably - is there because, as human society changes and evolves to have new needs and ideas, they need new gods who embody those.

And that's really actually what Scion is all about; Scions are that new generation of gods, rising to power as products of the new World, more inclined to embody the ideas and needs of the current races of humanity than the outdated or barbaric customs of their forefathers. Scions look at spear-and-shield warfare and find it outmoded, at human sacrifice and find it horrendous, at letter-writing and find it hilariously slow. Oh, they're still impressed by their incredible parents and relations, but the gods they will become are often just as likely to carry a tablet computer as a stone tablet, or to choose cyberspace as their domain instead of the mountains and wildernesses. Scions are the beginning of the next new order of gods; they are the forerunners of a new age of mythology.

So is it any wonder that their divine parents ride herd on them, that they don't make more than they need, that they sometimes crush their ambitions ruthlessly in favor of their own gain? They know this game; they've played it before. They won last time, but they're not on the winning team this time. Scions are coming to become the new order of gods - they can't help it, because it's in their very nature - and the old order of gods, while they need them and may even love them, are not necessarily comfortable with that.

Now, this doesn't mean that Scions have to be out to overthrow their pantheons or anything like that; they can embrace traditional ways instead of new ones, or integrate themselves into the pantheon despite being of much younger stock, and everyone can keep on doing what they've been doing. The escape of the Titans, being a strange, non-mythic event invented expressly to make the game work, actually helps them with this; the Titans provide an ancient foe for Scions to fight other than their parents, and because Scions were created in a concerted effort to respond to the Titans rather than occurring naturally, it may not be "time" yet for that cycle to repeat itself. Or perhaps the cycle will never repeat itself again, because the Scions themselves will choose to refuse it; they can do that if they want to. Scions can do just about anything if they want to.

Not every mythology involves the cyclical overthrow idea, especially the far eastern pantheons; not every Scion chronicle needs to, either. The Big Ideas of a given game always depend on the Storyteller's goals and the actions of the players, and no one should feel like they're forced to act against their pantheon or like they have to write stories that involve the destruction of beloved divine figures. Scion is a big game with an infinitely big store of possibilities to be explored and adventured through. The possibility of the new gods overthrowing the old ones is only one of them.

But the cycle is still always there, standing just behind every divine parent's shoulder.