Question: Thanks for your efforts/work into the Scion RPG. Now question time: I'm interested in making available to PCs the two following artifacts/Birthrights: 1) The peaches of immortality of Xiwangmu, and 2) the Apples of the Hesperides from Hera's own garden. How powerful should they be? Also, I'd want them to be different both thematically and mechanichally, so could you give me some tips? (PS, English isn't my own first language, so sorry for the grammar mistakes.)
Hey, we love putting effort into Scion, so thanks for noticing. And don't worry about your English - we understand you and that's what's important!
Unfortunately, statting up incredibly powerful relics like these is very difficult and time-consuming, and we don't have an easy answer for you. If you're looking to make these kinds of multi-star or ten-plus dot relics, we'd suggest you take a look at our Reliquary PDF, which has a lot of high-level super-relic examples that might give you a good idea of the kind of power level we'd recommend.
If you're looking for something more appropriate for a Scion to possess before becoming a big bad god, you could still create some relics that are related to the fruits of immortality up there without directly handing them out to Scions who aren't powerful enough for them yet. The two famous fruits have slightly different effects; the apples supposedly provide true immortality, while the peaches grant incredible but limited longevity (one thousand years of life per peach), more similar to the apples of Idun in Norse mythology (another good fruit for this theme!). We would suggest building relics that are small pieces of those famous fruits, or maybe created in their image and infused with a bit of their juice or power; you might want to have them provide a limited number of seeds that could be planted to give mortals or other Scions bonuses, that give a Scion Appearance or Stamina bonuses while they own it to illustrate their enduring youth, or that allow them to use certain Fertility boons more easily or effectively than most. Unless you're starting your Scions around Legend 10, though, we'd say it's always better to give them smaller Birthrights rather than handing out the fruits themselves.
Unless Scions happen to go on quests to get those fruits, of course, in which case, have at it!
Sorry, but I just can't remember the Apples of the Hesperides granting immortality in myth. Could you please point me to the source?
ReplyDeleteIn Greek myth, actually, there is no source. The apples aren't explicitly said to grant immortality, but rather are tangentially associated with the idea, frequently referred to as the immortal fruits or the fruits of the immortal garden. This doesn't necessarily mean the apples actually cause immortality in people who eat them (all Greek myth actually directly says is that they're delicious), but it's long been scholarly theory that that's the implication. It's especially popular among fans of the monomyth and comparative mythology, because the fruit that grants eternal (or at least longer) life is a popular motif in many different cultures' stories.
DeleteI think some of the blame also goes to the Irish. In the myth where Lugh demands that the sons of Tuireann fetch him the golden apples, he explains that anyone who eats them suffers neither illness nor wounds, and that the apples are inexhaustible and therefore render their owner eternally availed of their benefits as long as he has them. Again, there is no direct use of the word "immortality", but many see a strong implication in the apple's effects that one who owns it lives forever.
At this point, it's more folk interpretation than anything else. I'm fonder of the idea that the apples' glow represents the sunrise and is meant to serve as a reminder of Hera's beauty on her wedding day, another scholarly interpretation drawn from the description of them in Apollodorus and Euripides as the wedding gifts presented to Hera.
But I figured I wouldn't be crochety about it today when trying to help the OP. We don't really know what the apples do (other than what Lugh says they do, if you want to take his word for it), so immortality's as good a guess as anything else.
Wait, since when does Lugh know about the Golden Apples of the Hesperides? When did that happen? Does Hera know the Irish have an eye on her Apples?
DeleteLugh is such a contentious bastard. Here's what's going on there:
DeleteTechnically, the Irish translation does not ever say the word "Hesperides"; it rather refers to the apples from the "Garden of the East" (in other words, the sunrise and the apples of Hera) and goes on to describe them as well as a pigskin belonging to a Greek king, not to mention hilarious mention of the "druids of Greece" because Lugh is not here to be multicultural today. The myth centers around Lugh demanding that the sons of Tuireann go globe-trotting to find things to appease them, and in addition to Greece he also sends them to Persia, Iceland and various fanciful Celtic isles in search of other trophies as a price for his father's death. Then he murders them, because he's Lugh.
From a Scion point of view, it's basically a world tour of these hapless dudes running around stealing Birthrights from other pantheons, which is pretty hilarious (and, in the end, tragic). The interpretation of the golden apples as those of the Hesperides (also backed up by the fact that three magical ladies chase the thieves after they steal them, most likely the Hesperides themselves) is so thoroughly accepted by the scholarly community that some translations just call them that outright and only footnote the reasons for it.
Obviously, yon ancient Celts probably did not have a great grasp of Greco-Roman mythology, but since all our myths about them were written down much, much later, it's likely that this story owes a lot to later influences that shaped it. Lugh's one of the pan-Celtic gods that turns up in every Celtic culture and might have had stories about him imported from as far away as Spain or Germany, and once the Romans had made themselves a strong presence in Celtic lands, Celtic mythology naturally picked up some of their tales and incorporated them into itself. Also, these myths were being recorded by later Christian monks who were probably more familiar with classical mythology than the weird barbarian tales they were hearing, and there may have been some coloring there.
Weird and frustrating from a scholarly study-of-myths perspective, because it's hard to untangle the conflicting influences and impossible to guess what the myth might have looked like before them... but pretty awesome for Scion, where a god demanding some hapless Scions go steal a bunch of toys for him from other pantheons is pretty much how life goes.
Lugh didn't steal the apples personally, so it's really unsure whether or not Hera would know to be peeved with him. The myth does not discuss what Lugh did with them after the sons brought them back to him, so he may still have them lying incriminatingly about, though.
DeleteWhat exactly are the star relics? I didn't find what they mean in the Reliquary. Unless I missed something?
ReplyDeleteIn the original Scion rules, a star-level relic was one that was too powerful to be expressed on the 5-dot Birthright scale; the Mask of Mikaboshi (Scion: God, page 214) is the only one that's coming to mind, and it was very much meant to be a plot device, not something granted to players.
DeleteWe allow relics to go up to ten dots, but we then use stars as the rating scale for Artifacts, which are ranything higher than that. Without getting too mathy, once a Birthright gets above 5 dots, the dots' "values" start going up - so it requires two Birthright points to raise a relic from 5 to 6, and goes up from there. Once you get to Artifact level, it's a bit silly to be using dots that represent like +10 or whatever (god I hope John wakes up and explains this better), so we switch to the star system. One star = ridiculously super-powerful, two stars = super-duper unnecessarily powerful, and three stars = the most powerful relics in existence.
I haven't figured out how to put stars on the PCs' character sheets in a meaningful way yet, but Folkvisbrunnr on Folkwardr's sheet is a one-star relic, as is the Gjallerhorn on Jioni's.
Could a fruitcake be a reasonable birthright for a starting scion?XD
ReplyDeleteWho you calling fruitcake?! :-)
DeleteCassara would approve.
DeleteApples of Idunn and the Peaches of Immortality are pretty easy to model. One dot, and eating it gives you the eternal youth knack.
ReplyDeleteYou can make it more snazzy with bonus features if you want, or add limitations like needing to eat an Apple of Idunn once every so often. You wouldn't have to pay more relic dots for more apples, it would just be a plot element where you could lose your eternal youth if you don't get a steady supply.
Lol, yummy fruit. :P
ReplyDeleteAnyways, I can see how powerful these may be. In bizarre coincidence, I recently made a scion of Persephone with a pomegranate based relic. lol. Its one of the seeds that Persephone almost ate, turned into a jewel like thing and place in jewelry. I gave it a simple thing of adding Death to it and then where it summons a weapon, that I call Necrosis. Its a spear with pretty much no mythology around it, just that the wood is made from a limb of the pomegranate tree that bore the ill fated fruit. I'm thinking about talking to the ST for a more soul searing damage from it or a poison that has the wounds fester and die very quickly.