Question: What if humans were to learn about the battle between the gods and Titans, and the governments of the world mobilized all their resources to reach the Overworld to eliminate the gods and Titans threatining them, and did? Since virtually anything is possible in Scion, how would both the gods and the Titans deal with invading humans?
I hate to crush your dreams, because it sounds like you have a really cool scenario in mind that you want to play with, but that's not going to happen. Humanity is absolutely and completely incapable of pulling this off.
It's not the humans aren't cool, because they are. It's not even that they aren't important, because, thanks to Fatebonds and the enduring magic of storytelling, they're hella important. But they are so far below the power curve of gods that they don't have a single prayer of threatening them as a power in their own right, and even less of trying to do so to a Titan.
Mortals could maybe, maybe, theoretically kill a Legend 12 god if they managed to hit him directly in the face with an atomic bomb or something. But that assumes that whatever poor mortals are calibrating and aiming the missile can hit his divine DV, and that he doesn't see it coming and just leave using divine speed or teleportation before it ever hits where he's standing, and that he doesn't have the divine stamina to survive it, and that he has no boons, knacks or relics that will help mitigate its effects. And even then, even if they manage to kill him which is unlikely enough... he might just get right back up if he has Epic Stamina. Or Fertility. Or is a Deva. Or has friends with Death.
And that's a single god. Mortals have a teeny-tiny almost negligible chance of killing a single god provided he's on their home turf and bad at pretty much all forms of divine survival. There's no way they could possibly take out an entire pantheon of beings that are that incredibly powerful and durable. They're gods, and that's not just a nice title for powerful space aliens or impressive mutants; it means that they are completely and totally outside the realm of mankind's abilities.
And that's also assuming that that god must have exactly zero social powers, because mortals are literally incapable of trying to hurt, inconvenience or do anything to gods that have even middling levels of social Epics. It's unthinkable to hurt someone with Epic Charisma, who is so impressive, lovable or friendly that mortals are completely incapable of doing anything but loving and obeying them. It's impossible to disobey someone with Epic Manipulation, whose commands are completely ironclad and whose slightest suggestions sound to mortals like the best idea they've ever had in their lives. And gods with Epic Appearance are either so incredibly terrifying that mortals can't entertain any thought except fleeing or dying of a heart attack, or so unbelievably beautiful that their brains leak out of their ears.
Gods with Ultimate Perception can see all the way around the planet and hear what you're thinking. Gods with Ultimate Intelligence are not only impossible to outthink, you can't even conceive of a fraction of what it would take to do so. And gods with Ultimate Wits could take fifty coffee breaks in the middle of building themselves a bunker and still be easily out of the blast radius before your nuke ever got near them.
And those are the things gods are all the time, without even using any of the powers those Epic Attributes grant them. If you are a mortal, you cannot ever point a nuke at Baldur and pull the trigger. It will not happen. You are helpless.
It's even more impossible for mortals to invade the Overworlds and Titanrealms, even if they massed all their armies and technological know-how in order to try to do so. Mortals are literally incapable of entering Overworlds; most of them can't even get into the vast majority of Terrae Incognita, which often require Legend to be spent, and Axes Mundi are completely out of the question. Even Scions can't use Axes Mundi until they're Legend 9, and these mortals are not going to fare better sitting at Legend 0. It takes magic to cross over from the World to the Overworld or vice versa, and mortals by definition don't have any.
And god forbid they ever went into a Titanrealm, because they would all instantly and irrevocably die. Titanrealms are incredibly difficult to survive even for full-fledged Legend 12 gods; no mortal, however determined, would be anything but vapor the moment he or she set foot there. That's not exaggeration. In most Titanrealms, the mortals would die so hard that there wouldn't be anything left, in the very first fraction of a second they were there. They would never know what hit them - and that's without even getting near the Titan Avatars, who are actually more difficult to try to put down than even the gods.
The answer to your question is that no god or Titan is ever worried about an invasion of humans, because that would be like us worrying about an invasion of mayflies in our houses. Maybe slightly annoying, depending on whether or not you like mayflies, but completely incapable of hurting us and prone to just dropping dead constantly anyway. Mortals can't even get close to invading the homes of the gods and Titans, would not survive the attempt if they did, and have only the slimmest, most pathetic chance of hurting any gods that they can somehow miraculously find and hit in their own World.
Now, we often talk about how awesome it is that anything is possible in Scion, and we're not liars; but we're talking about for the PCs, not for mortals. The PCs are Scions, by definition extra-mortal and destined to become gods; they will rise to powers that the entire massed governments of the mortal world couldn't dream of and go places and do things that would be entirely impossible for humans. That's the draw of playing a Scion - you're going to be a god! You're going to be as powerful as a god, as durable as a god, and as important as a god! And you're going to be those things specifically because you aren't fully mortal, and the ichor of the gods runs in your veins.
Everything we've talked about above is based on the assumption that mortals are trying to fight the gods and Titans on their own, a completely impossible prospect. It is possible for some mortals to make some progress against gods, at least in a limited capacity; other gods could grant them powers and tools, use Psychopomp to take them places they couldn't go on their own, build them magical machines and otherwise champion them so that they had a better chance of trying to fight things on such a cosmic scale above them. But the key there is that they would need gods to have any hope of affecting gods, and that in itself wouldn't be mortals winning a victory over the divine. It would just be one set of gods fighting with another, using mortals as tools, something they've all been doing since time immemorial.
And that's the way mortals traditionally fight back against the gods and Titans - they pray to other gods for help. They call upon Set to save them from the depredations of Apep, beg Odin to take their souls to Valhalla instead of letting them fall into dreary Hel, and trust Huitzilopochtli to save them from all foreign armies and gods that might threaten them. Humanity has always recognized that gods are greater powers than themselves, and that's why they offer them prayers, sacrifices, offerings and praise. They know that the gods could support them or snuff them out, protect them or destroy them, with very little effort at all. For those gods who care about humanity, whether their own people or all mortals everywhere, the massed prayers of the faithful turning to them for help or salvation is a powerful motivator on its own, and in that way mortals can and do directly influence the behavior of some gods into helping them.
Mortals can make perfectly fine antagonists for Hero-level Scions, and in large groups - like, armies large - can also be a serious pickle for a Demigod. But they can't do anything to a god, not even just one, let alone all the gods and their terrifyingly powerful progenitors. Scion has a divine power curve that perfectly illustrates this, and you don't have to look any further than the numbers to realize it.
There are tons of ways to meaningfully and excitingly use mortals in and for Scion games, but setting them up as an antagonistic force capable of destroying the gods and Titans is not one of them. It's not just improbable but impossible, and it's not just weird but actually entirely counter to the premise of the game itself.
o question asker....anne answered this so that she could give you a long passionate answer.
ReplyDeleteBecause I would just laugh at you.....forever.
Owww... Not the question asker, but I still feel the third degree burns...
ReplyDeleteNow then, I think this question asker was trying to ask about the WW2 supplement and how it goes. Idk for sure, but it seems that way.
Anyways, isn't there tales of humans trying to defy the gods and getting stomped or is that a more modern conception?
And I mean the mortals get stomped, not the Gods and Goddesses.
DeleteThe proud mortal being shown their place is anything but modern
DeleteIt's true - many, many myths have a mortal being absolutely smashed down for daring to aspire or claim divine power that was above them. It's pretty much the entire Greek concept of hubris.
DeleteAside from the prophetic mortals and some of the lesser immortals like werewolves; are there even places low legend (but have very specific uses)humans can be in a Scion game? At least in the very early levels.
ReplyDeleteMost mortals can by definition never be legendary, so they can never be even low-Legend; they're made of mortal stuff, not divine. However, the game doesn't include the concept of Legendary Mortals; they can never go above Legend 1 and so can't compete with any but the lowest-level Scions, but they give you a nice middle ground for mortals who are important actors in Hero stories but not true children of the gods. Fatebound mortals who are acting out their roles can also sometimes pull off things that are a little beyond the normal possibilities of humanity, thanks to Fate boosting them.
DeleteThey're still no threat whatsoever to gods, of course, but they can still be a lot of fun.
You guys are totally right.. but there are stories where Gods are humiliated and outwitted by mortals. And Ares got hit in the head by some mook at Troy and had to run home.
ReplyDeleteThe solution? Avatars. Ares was in an Avatar at that point, as Gods almost always are when they appear in the mortal World. Generally if a mortal is out-thinking a God, that God is Avatar'd down or a particularly stupid God. Maybe the God just isn't paying attention.
Scion tries hard, but it can't model everything every time.
Oh, yeah, Avatar for the win. Most of the Trojan war is easily (and hilariously) explained by gods in Avatar (maybe to satisfy Valor's constant whining that staying gods is unfair, maybe to avoid Fatebonds, maybe both), running around getting schooled by mortals. It's hilarious and awesome.
DeleteAhhh...And here I was thinking of a future punk scenario where humans had heavy duty Si Fi inter dimensional technology and beyond nuclear weapon grade weapons, and finding the existance of the over world and titans decided to invade, and when that didn't work and they got vaporized decided to laid siege from earth while looking for a way with their super future technology to contain both the gods and titans. This isn't modern day, this is year xx with space ships and laser canons. human technoloy is to a point that it is a threat even to the gods, and fate won't let the gods blast humanity back to the stone age for it's own inscrutable reasons. Laugh if you want, call me what you will, but I think it's an interesting scenario.
ReplyDeleteOh, dude, I'm not trying to make fun of you or anything. I'm sorry if I gave you that impression.
DeleteIt definitely helps to have the science fiction background of your idea, because it's very different in flavor - but unfortunately, it also doesn't make a difference. Mortals can progress, change and become way awesomer than previous mortals, but they can never approach gods. The entire point of the power system in Scion is to model how incredibly, cosmically powerful gods are in comparison to humans. That's what the system is balanced around. If we say that a modern gun is about as effective as spitting against a god, that's an expression of that power curve; if you forwarded the setting to a thousand years in the future, a futuristic weapon that could wreak a lot more havoc on humans still wouldn't be able to do much, if anything, to a god, because the system is balanced around gods being basically immune to mortal weapons. The problem isn't that humans haven't invented the godkiller yet; the issue is that they literally never can. They're mortals. They can never, ever, ever achieve godlike power; they can only get more powerful in comparison to other mortals.
Look, a mortal's absolute highest possible dice pool for any action is ten dice: five of an Attribute (assuming he's the absolute human pinnacle of perfection) and five of an Ability (if he's the Albert Einstein of that ability). His average successes are 5, and his absolute best possible roll of all tens - a one in ten billion chance - is 20.
A Legend 12 god with even middling, completely average stats has an average DV of 22. That mortal, even if he makes the one in ten billion shot, still can't even hit him, let alone do any damage. That's the difference in power curve we're talking about here, and technology can't and won't solve it.
Human technology can never reach a point where it threatens gods, because it's always going to be human. It's bounded by human abilities, human conceptions and human possibility. Gods are not limited by those things, and literally nothing a mortal can create is going to be able to threaten them. Think about it this way: if all of humanity progresses two thousand years to create a new incredible supertechnology laser beam weapon... it still won't be as good as a weapon Thoth or Hephaestus could have whipped up in literally minutes. Gods aren't just really powerful beings that humanity has to work hard to overcome; they're beings that are unfathomable in comparison to mortals, and who cannot be overcome or even vaguely equaled. A civilization of fleas, no matter how hard it works, can never threaten a civilization of whales.
I actually do think that your idea's a really interesting one; it has a lot of cool themes involved, including that whole advanced-science-equals-magic idea, that concept of an ever-involving humanity and the question of what exactly a human's perception of a god means. But it's a really awesome idea that needs a game other than Scion. Scion's entire premise is built around the idea of gods as the most powerful, unrivaled and cosmic beings in existence; it's a game in which humanity is important, but because of its power over Fate, not any force of arms or military power.
Actually, it reminds me a lot of the awesome Roger Zelazy novel Lord of Light, in which a race of super-advanced space-settlers set themselves up as the Hindu gods on the new planet they claim and are eventually toppled by the colonized planet's new religion. One of my all-time favorite sci-fi mythology fusion books.
Im gonna disagree with anne here a bit. I think, that technology, can, possibly, hurt gods. I think if they got super tech, and they MIGHT be able to hit a god, they MIGHT be able to do some dmg with a nuke. I think all that might be possible.
DeleteThe problem comes in that the gods are gonna see them starting to do that, and starting to plan attacking the gods long long before that happens. And they'll be using their amazing social abilities to redirect it.
And more importantly. No amount of human tech stops a death god from just ending your existence. No amount of tech stops you from combusting, stops armies from combusting when a fire god wants them to. Humans might be in protective bunkers that protect them from the massive lightning of a storm god, and maybe technology lets the lightning bounce off. But when the pyschopomp teleports the storm god directly into the bunker, all bets are off.
I'm starting to get a Fred Saberhagen "Books of Swords" vibe here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_the_Swords). Vulcan made twelve magical swords that were then given to mortals, while the gods (mostly Greco-Roman and Hindu) watched, wagered, and treated the whole thing as a giant game. Sometime later, they discovered that Vulcan's swords were so well-crafted, so powerful, that they even proved dangerous and fatal to the gods themselves.
DeleteSo, in this case, I'm imagining an instance where some god (or group of gods) has secretly been influencing a group of humans and providing them with some sort of super-tech: showing them how to use it, providing them with materials, keeping them hidden and protected from other gods.
I think you could definitely make a fun story or campaign setting based around something like this, but if you're really factoring in all of the extensive powers other gods would have, I'm not sure your humans would get terribly far.
Those books look awesome
DeleteI imagine humans with super technology could do a lot of damage to a god if they could catch the god unaware. Humans can be very potent glass cannons with the right equipment and enough people assisting each other for tons of bonus dice.
DeleteBut glass cannon is really the right term here. As soon as the god goes on the offense the mortals become devout worshipers, their armies are burned to ash, their technology is hacked to serve the god or just stop working, and their whole house of cards comes tumbling down.
You could even create a self improving AI like super Skynet that could react faster than any mortal, and calculate data like a demigod. But a super intelligent god would take one look at it and turn it into a toaster.