Bring Me Back a Souvenir

Question: In your games, how do your gods give their children Birthrights and powers not associated with said god, particularly if that god has little pull to get Birthrights for powers not their own?

Well, first of all, associated powers are incredibly easy to grant to a Birthright. All you have to do is have the purview at god-level (so level 8 or higher), bleed on the thing and spend some Legend, and bang! Birthright with that purview on it. Of course, it isn't going to do anything but grant that purview, but other stuff is what Industry gods are for.

As far as that other stuff - or granting purviews that a god doesn't have high enough to grant himself - that's actually also an easy proposition, so much so that we really seldom bother with figuring it out. If a Scion has an idea for a great Birthright, we're happy to roll with it, regardless of whether or not it's something their parent god would be able to make on their own. If the player has an idea for how the unusual Birthright came to be, we're happy to work that into the story, but if they don't, it's not always necessary to know exactly where it came from. You only really need to know that if you plan the Birthright's origin to be part of your story; if it doesn't matter enough to be in the plot, it probably also doesn't really matter enough to bother with figuring it out when you could be doing other things to plan your game.

But, if it is important or you just want to know for your own peace of mind, it's epically easy for most gods to get Birthrights made for their children just by trading favors. There's no such thing as a god without any pull to get Birthrights made; even if he has no wealth or ability to reciprocate, he still has skills and power within his pantheon, and that means that it's always valuable to someone for him to owe them a favor. Someone like Erinle, who has no particular building skills and no social powers to make him able to wheedle toys out of others for free, can still probably easily convince Ogun to make him something in return for a nice fat blank check in the future. Of course, that means that some gods are better at getting Birthrights created for less of a price, but none of them, even the most unpleasant and disliked, are incapable of it. It's just probably going to cost you more if you're Stribog than if you're Baldur.

Also, remember that the pantheons all collectively have an interest in seeing to it that Scions are well-equipped and successful, because the more of them succeed, the better the overall war against the Titans goes for them. The more Scions are good at their jobs, the more Titanspawn are killed, diplomatic situations are defused and alliances can be formed, all of which are important to eventually win the war. That doesn't mean Hephaestus is giving out relics for free, of course, but it does mean that even if he hates Ares, he has a reason to outfit his Scion (for an appropriate price) instead of telling him to take a long walk off a short pier. Some gods will create Birthrights for the greater good of the pantheon, even if they don't like it, and exact a heavy price for doing so; others may be ordered to do so by the leaders of their pantheons, who need their Scion shock troops operating like the badasses they were meant to be.

If you'd like to make a relic's origin a part of your plot and the player doesn't know where it came from (or has ideas that patently don't make sense), you should never feel afraid to come up with it on your own. Figure out who traded what favors and resources to whom to make it happen, so you're armed and ready if it comes back to haunt the Scion who owns it. If a goddess making a Birthright is particularly feisty, vengeful or whimsical, she might also add some unexpected things to a Birthright she makes for someone else's child - trick or joke powers, hidden side effects or irritating curses. Hephaestus is a great example; when Aphrodite and Ares wanted a relic made for their daughter Harmonia, the resulting necklace is one of the most famously cursed items in all of Greek mythology, a testament to Vengeance in action.

No Storyteller should ever tell a player they can't get a Birthright because their parent couldn't make it; if it's a Birthright you'd allow in the game, then a player should be able to get it. If you need a justification for where it came from, work with the player or come up with your own, but never ban something just cause the parent in question doesn't have Fertility or isn't skilled enough with smithery to build it. If some god somewhere can make it, it can be passed to a Scion.