Do Not Kill Other Scions

Question: In your games, how do the gods react if the PCs kill a Scion of a different god? I know it varies by god, but can you give general guidelines for each pantheon?

Honestly, no, not really. This isn't a case where you can do a neat division by pantheon, even in generalities; with something as emotional and/or incredibly irritating as the loss of a child, it's every god for himself in terms of how they'll react. The gods don't have a culturally unified stance on something that's so personal in nature.

Generalities for all gods, though, we can do! Players never like hearing this, but it's important, so we're saying it anyway: Do Not Kill Other Scions.

Sometimes they're blowing your things up. Sometimes they're showing you up in front of the gods. Sometimes they're stealing your girlfriend, sometimes they're stealing your relics, and sometimes they're insulting you like there's no tomorrow. Sometimes they started it first. Sometimes they're just being huge dicks. Sometimes you feel like no one in the universe would convict you for killing this evil/insane/assholish Scion to make the world a better place.

But that is not true. Many people will convict you, no matter what the Scion you killed was doing, and first and foremost among them will be the Scion's parent, screaming for blood.

Look, gods have to invest a lot of time, energy and political favors into creating a Scion and keeping up with him enough for him to be useful to them. Even if he's kind of a fuckup or causes problems for other people, as long as he's saving them time or energy or getting things done that they couldn't or don't have time to, they're probably going to be epically pissed off if you kill him. You didn't just kill their flesh-and-blood son, fruit of their loins (though that's certainly enough to make many gods angry enough to destroy you); you also killed all the Legend and Willpower and time and favors to other gods that they sank into him, leaving them back at square one looking at either not having a useful tool anymore or having to do the whole thing over again. Imagine you don't have enough time to get everywhere by walking, so you spend several weeks and all your free cash building yourself a homemade racer bicycle that makes your life much easier and frees you up to do other things. Now imagine someone just walked by and smashed it with a sledgehammer. That's what you just did by killing this god's kid.

And, I mean, the god or goddess in question also might have loved this dead Scion - sure, lots of gods are callous asses who create Scions as shock troops, but once in a while you do have one who genuinely cares about his children and is emotionally invested in them. So now you smashed his bicycle and his baby. You're doomed.

How a deity responds to your murder will always depend on the specific god's personality and, sometimes, the situation under which her child was killed. Deities who have hot tempers or who believe in an eye for an eye will probably just kill you, full stop, no appeal, and tell your divine parent that they're square now. Others, particularly trickster-types or sadists, will choose instead to constantly torture you, killing off your family members, ruining your projects, dropping random negatives on you and ensuring that your life is as hellish as possible until they feel like you've properly atoned (which might be never). Those who are politically savvy or recognize an opportunity when they see one may instead go to your parent and demand recompense, which might take any form from magical toys, that god being forced to help them do something dangerous or demeaning, punishment inflicted on you as the Scion who did this, getting to use you as their errand-bitch now that you got rid of theirs, or even the dreaded Divine Blank Check, to be cashed in when it's most inconvenient and problematic for you and/or your parent. That sort of thing also usually leads to your own parent raining down displeasure on you - they created you to help them out, not to do stupid shit that forces them to do things for other people, and unless you're already god-level yourself, what you do is almost always going to come back home to your parent. You, after all, are just a Legend 3 Scion who represents your parent; you're not important enough to bother with other than possibly calling for your death, but your parent is a juicy plum full of reparations as far as an offended god is concerned.

Gods who are particularly invested in honor or chivalry may take what was happening into account, but that usually only means they'll mitigate the consequences, not waive them. If you killed their Scion in self-defense because he was attacking you, then those with a sense of fair play are less likely to want you killed in return, but they're still going to demand something for the loss of their child - that was an important and expensive resource you just destroyed, and they're not about to let it go for free. Often they might just demand that you now take the dead Scion's place, so you're finding yourself running the errands and doing the dirty deeds of two gods instead of just one, trying to juggle both sets of expectations.

And then, of course, there's the Justice purview. Gods who are Justice- or Order-focused may very well slap you with that purview's miserable consequences, from locking you in psychic prison for decades to banishing you from your homeland forever to branding you as a Scion-killer for all to see. Often they'll want to do this on top of whatever remuneration they just got from your divine parent; sure, getting paid a nice weregild for the loss of their son is a step in the right direction, but they won't really be happy until they're sure you've also been punished for your actions. Welcome to the Star Chamber, and good luck.

So, really, to reiterate: Do Not Kill Other Scions. It's a horrible idea for everyone; it pisses off the gods, it weakens your own divine parent, and it'll probably have terrible consquences for you. It's almost always a bad idea.

...but there will be times that you have to go for the bad idea, so don't think that it's not possible to kill other Scions and survive or that it never happens. Particularly if different gods are working against one another, sometimes you come up head-to-head against another Scion and it's you or him, or sometimes he's doing something so evil or wrong that you have to put him down for everyone's good. And when that happens, you take your lumps; once in a while your divine parent might shield you from some of the fallout (especially if she directly told you to do it in the first place), but that's never guaranteed, and even if the dead Scion's parent understands or even agrees with why you did it, they'd be a fool not to take advantage of it for all it's worth. Our PCs have killed other Scions before - children of Set, Andarta, Teutates, Izanami and Hachiman - and while sometimes they really couldn't see any way around it, it was never, ever free.

Just like any other big, impactful decision, you shouldn't do it and it's never free, but once in a while you can't avoid it. Sometimes Scions have to make the painful decision in order to preserve the greater good, and killing other Scions will usually be that kind of a situation.

So Do Not Kill Other Scions. But if you have to, be ready to manage the fallout and to make the best case you can to both your parent and whatever other gods are about to start gunning for you.