Mythic Truth

Question: Please explain how the Sun and Stars purviews get to be different when the sun is just another star that is closest to us.

Because, my friend, this is a game about mythology, and from a mythological perspective, the sun and the stars have nothing in common other than both being celestial lights in the sky.

You have to remember that the ancient cultures that created these gods had no idea that the sun was actually a star. As far as they could tell, the two were completely different things - one a giant ball of life-giving light and warmth that only appeared in the day, and the other a collection of uncountable tiny lights in mysterious patterns, almost always visible only at night. Consequently, they had separate gods to be in charge of both of these phenomena; they created sun gods like Apollo, Huitzilopochtli, Amaterasu and Ra to be associated with the bright light of the sun, and they created star gods like Isis, Ishtar, Quetzalcoatl and Radegast to control the spangled majesty of the stars.

These gods are distinctly different and have nothing to do with one another - Radegast has absolutely no power over the sun, while Huitzilopochtli is firmly tied to the day and has nothing to do with the nighttime skies. A single purview couldn't serve both of them, because they do completely different things and have completely different ideas and symbols attached to them. More importantly, a single purview shouldn't serve them both, because we're not talking about science but rather about mythology. Modern science knows that the sun is a star; mythology doesn't, and therefore the gods and myths that Scion is based on are founded on the idea that they're different.

In general, science usually needs to take a backseat to mythology for things that are part of Scion's background setting, because otherwise many of the gods don't make sense and wouldn't have different powers. Science tells us that moonlight is just the reflection of the sun's light, so does that mean we also shouldn't have a separate Moon purview? Since we know that life and death are governed by the brain and nervous system of a living creature, why bother having a Death purview when Health gods can control all of that? What's the point of a Frost purview when we know that frost is just frozen Water? Outside of purviews, do you also want to say that giants don't exist because science tells us that they couldn't be so large without their organs collapsing, or that it's impossible for the gorgon's gaze to work because the receptors in your eyes can't trigger body-wide calcification? Scions thrives on magical things that science says can't exist, and the division of purviews is only a small part of that.

The point is that, while science tells us that these things are related, ancient people didn't know that and as a result constructed their myths and legends around those being separate concepts. Mythically speaking, they are separate concepts, regardless of later advances in scientific discovery; a water god like Poseidon is a very different creature from a frost god like Uller, and they require different powers and areas of influence as a result.

That doesn't mean that science can't have its place in Scion, of course, because it definitely can and should! Scions themselves have grown up with science and probably understand how it works unless they slept through school, so they can use scientific concepts and ideas when building their own divine identities if they want to. Just as the ancient gods are products of the time of their religions, so Scions will be the product of the current culture, meaning they may be gods of electronics, physics, outer space or whatever else they think is awesome, and they'll express that with creative new power combinations, relics and legends.

But the ancient gods, and their ancient powers, can't be those things - and shouldn't, because Scions get to be the first ever to do that! - and thus have the same separate powers they've always had. Apollo's not a god of stars, and he never has been. Just because people figured out the sun's identity as a star in the nineteenth century doesn't mean Amaterasu is going to be retroactively rewritten to have as much power over the night skies as her brother.

There's an important distinction between mythic truth and scientific truth, and Scion, because it depends so heavily on the myths and legends of the ancient world, almost always needs to use the former. The default setting is based around the powers and ideas of the ancient gods; new ideas, including scientific ones, are up to Scions to introduce and are not already in play. The sun and the stars are two very different things in the landscape of mythology, and combining them when such deities as Shamash and the Zoryas are clearly not similar would make very little sense.