The Heart of Africa

Question: Care to reveal the planned Yoruba virtues? And perhaps highlight how you decide on the proper Virtues for a pantheon along the way?

We pushed this question back a bit because we actually hadn't firmed up our choices for the new Orisha Virtues yet, but now that we have, we're happy to release them as a teaser. The pantheon will be aligned with Conviction, Courage, Expression and Vengeance.

Assigning Virtues is a tricky business, because you're walking a fine line between taking ancient myth into account, taking the overall picture of a culture into account, and trying not to be a racist jerk. Virtues need to represent the overall strongest and most dearly-held values of a pantheon, which in turn usually also translates to the strongest values of the culture that their religion is rooted in.

Since we just did this, we'll walk through the general process we used with the Orisha, and you guys can come along for the ride! First of all, we get out the handy rubric of all the Virtues in Scion: Conviction, Courage, Endurance, Expression, Harmony, Intellect, Order, Piety, Valor and Vengeance.

	Con	Cou	End	Exp	Har	Int	Ord	Pie	Val	Ven
Orisha?

We start with doing a first round where we eliminate things that the Orisha are definitely not aligned with, based on the things they do in their myths and the overall feel of their home culture. Out of the gate, we decided that they probably don't have Valor, since many of their tales involve the intentional and malicious pranking of others, up to and including getting innocent people killed. We also decided that they probably don't have Intellect; they respect strength of arms and cunning trickery, but seldom is wisdom or learning even mentioned, let alone put on a pedestal. Finally, we rule that they don't have Endurance, since they spend a lot of their time being injured, tired, drunk or otherwise slowed down, and they tend to complain about the suffering instead of stoically forging on.

	Con	Cou	End	Exp	Har	Int	Ord	Pie	Val	Ven
Orisha?			No			No			No

It's a start! Now, we go through and attach those Virtues that we're absolutely 100% sure these guys must have, again based on the stories of their exploits and adventures. In the case of the Orisha, we both beelined for Vengeance; these are temperamental gods who have tantrums at the slightest provocation, and from Shango attacking his wives to Eshu destroying any mortal who fails to properly respect him, they are all about the vengeful smiting. We also decided that the strong mythic focus on battle and bravery made Courage a natural fit for them. There were no other Virtues we felt so strongly about that they couldn't be excluded, so we rolled on to the next phase.

	Con	Cou	End	Exp	Har	Int	Ord	Pie	Val	Ven
Orisha?		Yes	No			No			No	Yes

At this point, there are several Virtues that could be applied to the Orisha, so it's a matter of sifting through their cultural imperatives and the stories of their actions to try to decide which are the strongest. Most of these remaining Virtues are associated with the pantheon in some way, and it's our job to figure out which are the most important to the Yoruba gods, since they're all important to some degree. We do a lot of this-but-that; for example, perhaps Order fits here, because you see a focus on Order in the ideas of Shango's jealous guarding of his sovereignty and the pantheon's dedication to the divine design of Olodumare, but then again perhaps it doesn't, as you see chaos just as accepted in the stories of Eshu's blatant destruction of law, Ogun's overthrow of neighboring kingdoms or Oya's theft of Shango's property. Several of the Orisha show strong leanings toward Harmony, especially those like Erinle that embody and switch between balancing and opposing forces, but then again several others seem to have no interest in balance whatsoever, such as Ogun's unbridled bloodlust and destruction or Oshun's demands to overturn death itself at her whim. Piety is also a possibility, since the Orisha are certainly very fond of their own pantheon and believe in their entitlement to worship and the overarching power of Olodumare, but is that strong enough on its own, when that idea appears in many pantheons across the world?

In the end, we settled on Expression, which strongly follows the Yoruba religious traditions of storytelling, divination, individual destiny and the possession of mortals by gods, and Conviction, which supports the idea of a lot of different Yoruba gods with very different outlooks all being similarly gung-ho about their beliefs and roles, despite the fact that they often differ widely in character and ideas. Those Virtues that were cut in the last round are present in the Yoruba religion and its diaspora, and they may still be varyingly important to individual gods, but the overall picture of the pantheon does not include them as its most crucial values.

	Con	Cou	End	Exp	Har	Int	Ord	Pie	Val	Ven
Orisha?	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	Yes

This is also the point where, if you like, you can decide what gods of the Orisha might have a Virtue swapped out and which one it is; for example, you could take this opportunity to say that the mystic and mysterious Orunmila who once hid from cannibals in the desperate hope that someone else would save him probably has Intellect instead of Courage, or that the embodiment of nature Erinle, who oscillates continuously between different worlds and never wins a contest against any other god, probably has Harmony instead of Conviction. This stuff isn't really necessary unless you're planning on using those gods directly in interactions with PCs soon, but it's useful to have in the event that the god is in play and might have to make Virtue rolls that don't quite conform to the pantheon's setup as a whole.

And that's pretty much the process; just like the assignment of associated powers, it depends heavily upon the gods themselves and what they do and represent, both in the stories of their adventures and the beliefs of their people. We generally don't assign Virtues until late in the process of working on a pantheon, simply because the more time we've spent with them and the more stories we've learned about them, the better picture of their motivations and themes we'll have to work with.