Question: If Hermes was born at Legend 9, how did he succeed at all the crazy things he supposedly did at birth? For example, he doesn't have the stats to beat Apollo's Perception.
Hmm, we may have sounded misleading when talking about this in the past - sorry about that, everyone!
When a child is born to two gods who are not in Avatar form, that child is also a god, no two ways about it. That means it's going to be at least Legend 9 - but, when you're looking at the gods of ancient mythology, we think that probably doesn't mean that it's always Legend 9. Some gods do crazy shit their first day in existence, like Huitzilopochtli murdering literally hundreds of other gods on the field of battle, that are obviously not possible for a mere Legend 9 deity (as our formerly-Legend-9 players can attest, I'm sure); they couldn't have been Legend 9, and they probably didn't do enough in the first five seconds of their lives to go up a few dots in Legend, either, so it stands to reason that some gods are born higher than Legend 9.
Which begs the question of how you decide how high in Legend a divine child starts out, of course. Things can be a little bit freeform when working with ancient myth; you can look at what that god was doing his first day or two of life and what power level that suggests and go from there, and you can also take into account crazy stuff that might have been happening during his gestation. Gods that have strong myths surrounding their conception, gestation or birth are likely to be higher in Legend when they're born, simply because they already have some myths surrounding them even when they're in the womb. Gods like Hachiman, whose mother delayed his birth for three years because she was busy conquering Korea like a boss, or Athena, who sprang adult from the cranium of Zeus thanks to his devouring of her mother, or Lugh, whose conception had been foretold in a prophecy and required all kinds of magical shenanigans to come true, are probably more likely to be born at higher Legends than other gods, who would have to work their way from their less-exciting origins on up the ranks of power.
And yes - that does potentially mean that you could have gods who are born already more powerful than their parents. They're pretty easy to pick out on family trees, usually as minor gods with major children, or as people who have little fame of their own other than being the parents of someone important. A divine child eclipsing his parents' Legend is a concern that probably isn't lost on most gods, and one of the many reasons that they don't tend to have many children who are flat-out gods. God-babies are in many ways dangerous, and the fact that your son might be born savvy, powerful and crazy enough to dethrone you during the first year of his life is not a very comfortable idea for anybody.
This is all very excitingly terrifying for god-level PCs, who are often already procreating by the time they hit Legend 9 and suddenly subject to the same worries and problems. We've never had a truly divine baby born to PCs yet - but Eztli's pregnant right now and neither she nor Sowiljr used their Avatars to make the kid partly mortal, so whenever that blessed event occurs, they're in for a whole new world of craziness. Both players are nervous about what's going to happen, especially since they're often rolling dice to determine random factors about who it's taking after and what kind of power level it might be at, and they're dealing with managing this pregnancy through several Titanrealms to boot. And also Eztli keeps turning into a bat when she has bat things to do, which is causing Sowiljr many sleepless nights imagining a litter of baby bat-monsters all calling him Daddy and begging for a little blood. The situation is tense and everyone's pretty excited about seeing what might happen.
But I'm sure they'll be fine.
At any rate, to go back to Hermes, who started all this pontificating: it's totally possible that Hermes was born higher than Legend 9, and you could rule so if you felt that he was doing things that were entirely beyond the pale for a Legend 9 infant to pull off. But then again, I'd also point out that Hermes didn't actually pull off evading Apollo's perception in that story; Apollo was able to track the stolen cattle back to the cave where Hermes was living with his mother, recognize the baby as the thief and then take him to Zeus for judgment (and Zeus didn't believe Hermes' protestations of innocence, either). He's definitely still a precocious child, but it seems pretty clear that he wasn't rocking the Ultimate Manipulation quite yet in that story.
You have often said on the blog that god babies are a pain to their parents. I can only imagine what sorts of trouble for example Texcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl caused as children.
ReplyDeleteYeah, seriously. At least if your kids are half-mortal, you know they probably won't be a problem for at least a couple of decades. God-babies can be out raising Legend 9-12 hell before you've finished recovering from labor.
DeleteWhy make Scions who start as low as Legend 2? Why not have children who start out around Legend 5 so that they are be even more useful to the war effort without being a meaningful threat to your godhood?
ReplyDeleteBecause that's not how Scions work. Because they're half-human, they always start as mortal - Legend 0 (or I've seen some STs run them as Legend 1, but there's not much difference). Visitation allows them to bump up to Legend 2, but they have to build their own Legend - their parents can't make them any higher Legend. It's on the Scions to do enough awesome stuff to gain in notoriety and power; their parents have no control over that other than to encourage them.
DeleteYeah, but if gods can give birth to things that are Legend 9+ and things that are Legend 0, then there is no reason why they cannot give birth to things that are Legend 5+.
DeleteActually, there is. It's very simple.
DeleteA) Gods give birth to other gods. When both parents are fully divine deities, they have no choice but to give birth to other fully divine deities. Being the child of two full gods, born with the glory of their divine ichor undiluted, makes it impossible for those children to be lower than Legend 9.
B) Gods give birth to mortals with mortals. Because the child's divine ichor is diluted with completely mundane, mortal blood, it's born at Legend 0. The divine blood is still there and can be awakened to allow the child to become a Scion that builds its Legend, but he or she will have to do so from zero.
Gods can't change the Legend rating of anyone other than themselves, ever, full stop. They have no control over the Legend rating of their children other than to decide whether they're going to have them be half-mortal - therefore straddling the worlds of mortal and god by growing from one to the other - or fully divine, in which case they start as gods. Scions are unique in that way; their mortality is necessary and is what makes them so important and such favorites of Fate.
Gods can always create higher-Legend beings if they want to - Create Nemean Animal, Genesis, Impossible Hybrid and I'm sure some insane Industry stuff can create creatures of any Legend rating the god can pull off. But they won't be Scions; Scions have to be equal parts mortal and divine, and that means they have to come in on the ground floor.
Scions have to be able to build their own Legends; that's the entire point of the game. If they didn't begin as humans, they wouldn't be Scions; they'd just be as generic as any other lesser immortal.
DeleteWhy do lesser immortals have to be generic? You could build an entire game around them getting chosen by fate to go on wondrous adventures!
DeleteYou certainly could, but you'd be playing a different game from Scion. Scions are so important and special because they combine the human and the divine; just like the demigod heroes of mythology, that makes them Fate's favorites and gives them the unique ability to bridge the two worlds. Conversely, Fate generally doesn't care much about lesser immortals, which are a dime a dozen and don't usually change or grow unless they're part of a god's or demigod's story. They don't become gods; they don't have the connection to humanity; they're simply part of the setting.
DeleteYou could absolutely give them personalities and play them, but you'd be playing Vampire, not Scion.
There we go! I found the post we wrote a while ago about the difference between Scions and Legendary beings and why it's important that Scions have that connection to mortality. I knew we'd talked about it before. :)
DeleteSpeaking of haciman is anything about himikos writeup for the keepers of the world mythically accurate?
ReplyDeleteActually, it's not too bad; most of her tales really do come from the Sanguo Zhi, and her identification with Empress Jingu, mother of Emperor Ojin who became Hachiman, is a common one.
DeleteThe idea that she was a daughter of Amaterasu is partly writer fabrication, as her parentage is never discussed, but the name "Himiko" could be read to mean "child of the sun" (among many other possibilities), so it's not hard to see why some make the leap to considering her associated with Amaterasu in some way. If you follow a variant tradition that claims she's the same as the princess Yamatohime, she is related to Amaterasu in that she received a vision from the goddess and established her famous shrine at Ise as a result (but then she wouldn't be the same as Empress Jingu, so those two myths are kind of conflicting).
The story of her exclusion from the pantheon for annoying Amaterasu is a Scionism without any real basis in myth, alas. It looks like it was just included because they wanted to use her as an antagonist for the Amatsukami and needed to give her some kind of chip on her shoulder to give her a reason to oppose them. None of the possible versions of Himiko have any antagonistic flavor against the Japanese or their gods, and Himiko, Jingu and Yamatohime, while certainly legendary, are never referred to or considered to be goddesses.
Himiko actually really doesn't need to be a goddess at all; I think she's super cool, but she's clearly not a deity, so I'd consider her to have been a Scion who never got past early demigodhood. Amaterasu's a good choice for a parent, but other interpretations of Himiko's name include simply "priestess" or "princess", so you could make her a daughter of any of the Amatsukami that strike your fancy. Hachiman, as the grandson of a god, could easily have been given his Visitation by whatever god was his grandparent, as traditionally he did not become a god until after Jingu died.