Burn Notice

Question: What happens if a Scion fucks up really badly (through their own actions or because of someone's political maneuverings) - is it possible that they get exiled or kicked out of the pantheon? Would the PSP and Birthrights given to them by the pantheon also be taken away? Also, is it possible to become a god without a pantheon, or would one need to be a part of one? What if you want to gather some other gods and start your own?

Wow. No time for chitty-chat, we'd better dive into that big bowl of questions right away or there's going to be no time left for dinner.

Scions and even gods certainly can make such grievous errors of judgment (or be the poor saps in the wrong place at the wrong time) that they bring down their entire pantheon's wrath on them. They probably don't most of the time, however; Scions and gods are valuable weapons and helpers in the war against the Titans that the pantheons really can't afford to lose unless they have no choice, and it's rare that the entire pantheon will unite against one person when more often they'll end up taking sides and fighting among themselves. Especially in the case of Scions, these are gods who have already invested time and effort into them expressly in order to get them to help with this Titan problem they're having, so you'll much more often see a pantheon try to guide, discipline or otherwise fix a problem Scion than just get rid of one outright. A crime that warranted actual, full rejection would have to be a serious one, well outside the normal hijinks of most Scions.

Such an action would have to be seriously gigantic in scope to merit a full exile; treason, collusion with Titans, killing others of the pantheon and similar sins might all qualify. These are not guarantees that a Scion will be kicked out, however, as it depends on whether or not they still have a parent or other allies among the gods to go to bat for them, people their actions benefited who would rather they stick around, and so forth. And even if a Scion fucks up so badly that the pantheon is Done With Him, he probably won't be exiled simply because most pantheons would rather kill the offender than leave him to pop back up all Saturday morning cartoon villain again at a later date (or, potentially worse, go start working for rival gods!). In most cases, if a god or Scion manages the impressive feat of pissing off the entire pantheon (or, in the case of some pantheons, just its really angry king) enough to be completely rejected, I'd expect it to be more likely that someone just kills her, or maybe dumps her in Tartarus or some other prison. Just exiling someone is begging for her to come back and be a thorn in your side later.

But that doesn't mean it couldn't happen; perhaps Amaterasu has a son she loves too much to have outright killed even if he deserves it and thus only sends him away, or maybe a Scion is repudiated from the Devas and put in jail but manages to escape and run around on his own anyway, or maybe Tezcatlipoca is intentionally exiling his son as some kind of inscrutable Tezcatlipocian test. It still might happen, so if your plot has a good reason for it, by all means, exile away.

As for what an exiled Scion loses, things actually aren't all that complicated there. A Scion certainly could lose her Birthrights, especially if the pantheon wants to make sure she's less of a threat to them in the future. All it takes is a god with a good enough Steal Birthright roll to rip those off her and redistribute them to other, more well-behaved soldiers of the gods.

She won't lose her PSP, however; once she's been Visited by the pantheon, the ichor of the pantheon is in her veins and she always has access to her PSP, even if they're pissed off at her. Johnny being booted out of the Tuatha won't suddenly turn his Enech off; it'll just mean that the other Tuatha won't associated with him or will possibly stab him on sight, not that the divine blood in his veins has become any less Irish than it was at his birth as a Scion. It's maybe theoretically possible for him to lose access to his PSP if someone wants to blow The Wyrd and really go to town on him, but realistically I doubt any god wants to spend that ridiculous amount of resources on it without an epically good reason (again, way easier to just kill him), and even then I'm not necessarily convinced a Scion's or god's PSP could be fully stripped without anything to replace it.

It is technically possible for a Scion to become a god even if he's been repudiated from his pantheon, but it's infinitely more difficult. He can't count on his pantheon having his back (indeed, he may need to avoid them at all costs), and it's likely that he can't count on some of other pantheons to do so either if the original pantheon puts out a divine burn notice on him. He has no directions, information from the gods, no real clue how the war is progressing or where he needs to go, and he may or may not even be able to find any other Scions willing to accept him long enough to help him stay alive. The odds are exponentially worse that he'll survive to apotheosis, but it is still possible, if more improbable than usual.

Creating your own pantheon is, however, totally possible, and you don't need to be an exiled pantheon-less Scion to do so. Many players have told me that their PCs want to use their bands as the starting core of a new pantheon, and we've talked about how you would go about doing that before over here. Basically, it will take a lot of epic planning, enormous power, insane politics and unprecedented awesomeness, but players can definitely pull it off if they put their minds to it. If you're a player, talk to your Storyteller about what they think such a feat would require so you have some idea of what you need to do; if you're a Storyteller, figure out your answer so you're ready when they ask, because while we haven't had anyone try to build a new pantheon in our game yet, the players have still asked about it on more than one occasion.