Twelve Titans Smiting

Question: What sort of Titanrealms do each of the 12 Titans of Greek Mythology belong in? I could easily see the types of Titanrealms most of them could be placed in, but what of Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Theia, Krios and Iapetus? I know Mnemosyne is Memory, Phoebe is Prophecy (maybe), Theia is Sight (maybe) and Iapetus is Mortality (maybe) and no clue about Krios, so what sort of Titanrealms could they be placed in? I can't see there being a memory Titanrealm just for Mnemosyne.

I agree, there probably isn't a Titanrealm dedicated just to Mnemosyne. Let's break all these guys down.

Of the original twelve Titans, we have full writeups already completed for Cronus, the dominant Avatar of Ourea, Titanrealm of Fertility and Coeus, Avatar of Tamoanchan, Titanrealm of the Heavens. That leaves us with Oceanus, Tethys, Iapetus, Theia, Hyperion, Phoebe, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne and Crius to try to place. Some of them, as you note, are very easy to place. Oceanus and Tethys, as the embodiments of the oceans, streams and springs of the World, obviously belong in a Titanrealm of Water; likewise, Hyperion, as the Titan of Light, belongs in a realm dedicated to the same.

But what about everyone else? While we definitely know the first generation of Titans and their defeat by Zeus, we don't always have particularly clear details on what they were doing most of the time, either because as the defeated enemies it didn't matter much or (most of the time) because Greek writers tended to assume everyone already knew what they were talking about. Which was a reasonable assumption to make - after all, most people probably know as much as is generally available about the antagonists of their own religion, right?

Iapetus, unless our plans change, will most likely end up as an Avatar of the Titanrealm of Death; while there isn't much solid information on him, his scholarly reconstruction as a god who presides over mortality and the limits of life, especially in regards to violent or battlefield death, makes him a natural for the post. We're looking forward to his contrast with the more neutral but no less fearful Thanatos.

Theia's a little firmer; like her husband, we would place her in a Titanrealm of Light, most likely as an Avatar representing illumination and sight, or perhaps reflection on the strength of her ties to the "light" of gold and other precious metals. Her association with sight, from an ancient Greek point of view, directly ties her to light, and it's for that reason that she's part of an entire family that surrounds the concept - Hyperion as Light, and her children Helios, Selene and Eos as Sun, Moon and Dawn.

Phoebe has a couple of possibilities. Her name's meaning ("bright") and connection to the heavenly bodies as wife of Coeus and namesake of the later celestial gods Apollo and Artemis suggest that she has heavenly connotations of some kind herself. However, she's also a strong candidate for an Avatar of a Titanrealm of Fate; as one of the longest-running prophetic goddesses and owner of the oracle of Delphi before she handed it over to Apollo, she's clearly an oracular figure, and there's much scholarly theorizing that she might be intended to function as a polar complement to her husband - Phoebe as a prophetic oracle in the world, with Coeus as a mystery oracle in the sky above. It's your call; there's a glut of heavenly Titans already, so I'd send her over to the Fate realm unless you really want to put her elsewhere.

Themis is very simple - that's a lady who belongs in a Titanrealm of Order! She embodies tradition - that is, the first laws handed down since time immemorial by the gods and ancestors of humanity - and is so strongly associated with the idea that her children (the Horae, setting the boundaries of the limits and hours, the Moirai, limiters and decision-makers over destiny itself, Eunomia, goddess of order and preservation, and Dike, goddess of justice and equality) are just further expressions of the concept of law and order. Zeus' affair with her is probably largely intended to legitimize and support him as the lawful power in the universe. She's a natural for the job (and the Scion books themselves agree, placing her in their slim neutral Titanrealm Logos).

Crius we've actually already dealt with, though we didn't give him a separate writeup; he's over in Tamoanchan along with his brother Coeus. He has strong ties to constellations, starting with Aries (which the Greeks referred to as Krios, his name), and scholars often extrapolate that out into a general patronage of all constellations and the measurement of time by their movements. Like a lot of these Titans, it's also clue-worthy that many of his children have celestial connotations. We didn't want to overload Tamoanchan with a huge pile of Avatar writeups, but Crius should be considered a Titan there in his own right.

But then we arrive at Mnemosyne, who insists on defying all currently projected Titanrealms. Memory, enlightenment and knowledge aren't the stuff of Titanrealms, nor are her other side associations with art and performance. She's the keeper of glory thanks to being in charge of whether or not anyone will remember your name and deeds, but there's also no Titanrealm of Glory.

After much thought, we think there are two possibilities. The first is that you can indeed make a case for Mnemosyne to be an Avatar of the Titanrealm of Fate; she does have minor oracular connotations, mostly because all the Titan goddesses of her generation do, but more importantly she might be a good choice for a rare Mystery-oriented Titan. Mystery's a major part of the Titanrealm of Fate, but most of its Avatars have to do with Prophecy or Magic instead; Mnemosyne, whose memories contain all things that have ever happened, could be considered the representation of that wisdom and knowledge that is called upon from beyond the veil.

An alternative - which we think fits better but is also a giant pile of hissing work, so feel free to avoid it like we are currently doing - is to make her a Titan Avatar of a currently nonexistent Titanrealm of Eternity. We've occasionally discussed coming up with this kind of place; essentially, there are Titans of time in the eternal and genitive sense (like Chronos, Ananke, Zrvan and so on), and it's possible that a Titanrealm of the same could exist, though who it would oppose we currently have no idea. Mnemosyne, as the keeper of all memories and thus representationally of all things past, would be a natural fit for such a place, but you would have to write a whole Titanrealm to accommodate her. (Unless you're using Zrvan as it appears in Scion: Yazata, which gives us hives but would make this a lot simpler!)

And finally, Rhea. We've talked about her problems at length before, so where she ends up really depends on your favorite version of her. If we were going to assign her to a specific realm, I'd go with Earth; she's the goddess of mountains, in most of her forms comes across mountains to be worshiped, fools Cronus with a rock, hides people in caves and generally seems to be down and literally dirty a good amount of the time. As a Titan Avatar of Earth, she makes a good complement to her husband as an Avatar of Fertility. She also has links to fertility and water if you want to branch out.

So those are our suggestions for the Uranides, that merry band of cranky and cosmic irritations that may or may not blow Olympus sky-high with the force of their collective displeasure. They're not the only possibilities, but we're pretty big fans of the above picks. And remember, if you're not directly using those Titans in your game right now, you don't have to kill yourself figuring out where they fit in the grand cosmological scheme of things unless you want to; it's unlikely that any of your Legend 4 Scions are going to have anything to do with grand cosmic Phoebe, so don't sweat it if you're not sure where you want her yet.