Vlog time again! We continue our Greatest Hits of the Inbox series (and may for a few more until we've gotten the number of questions under control again). Today, Titans and warriors and Yazata, oh my!
Question: If a Yazata Scion has Ashavan for Guardian and summons his Amesha Spenta, who then activates Unseen Shield, does he need to remain non-violent for the shield to function if he's not in it? Similarly, does a Stars Amesha Spenta need to see the stars?
Question: Is Olodumare a god or a Titan? And how can he be the greatest creator and power in the universe if his children like Eshu and Oshun keep punking him?
Question: Have you watched "Grimm"? If so, please give us your opinion of it and how the Grimms might fit into the Scion setting (I think they would fit better in Changeling, but I'm not the only one here). If not, please watch it, it is a neat series.
Question: Are there Titans or Titan Avatars that are sympathetic toward mortals, even if they battle against the gods?
Question: My Storyteller wants to divide the War purview into two separate paths (like the Health purview). I've told him it would be easier just to write two separate Avatars, but he's determined. Any advice?
Yay videos and productivity!
stripping the personal berserker parts from war kind of kicks ares in the balls. He represents personal berserker combat while Athena represents stragy. If you adjust war like you say, then Ares can't have it.
ReplyDeleteThat's just not true. Ares is the god of war; that is literally what he embodies and represents. He is indeed in charge of berserker fury and craziness, but it's in context of war and battle, not just general insanity (that'd be Chaos). He's given epithets in Homer including "rallier of men", "savior of cities" and "aider of warriors", making it clear that he's not just a dude you throw into battle but also in a very real way a patron and commander of the armies involved.
DeleteYou're right that he's definitely not the same kind of war god as Athena, but different gods can express the same purview in different ways - they do that all the time. Leading armies doesn't always mean you have to be about strategy; Athena certainly is, but Ares leads from the front and charges in with his men. Neither's any less a god of war; they just do it differently.
You're totally right that murder skillz don't a war-god make - lots of gods are good at murder without having anything to do with War. Luckily for Ares, however, he happens to be doing both.
Your idea of Prometheus giving fire to humanity to be a dick to Zeus is actually really cool. In my Scion game I'm running, the main antagonists are the Cult of Aten, which are sort of now the entire Western world and Middle East (Queen Elizabeth II is the head of the Cult in England, Barack Obama turned the White House into a Pyramid,) because they have successfully convinced Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fanatics that they have all been fanatical towards One God the whole time, and that God, of course, is Aten.
ReplyDelete(I say fanatics for a reason. Obviously most of its sane members have a hefty dose of Epic Manipulation in their faces, and the rest are total fanatics. In no way am I saying Aten IS the Monotheistic God, but the fanatics sure believe so.)
Anyway, I realized now that (my) Aten might not be doing this because he cares about having worshippers, but because he is depriving the Gods of their precious humans, just like he did in Egypt long ago.
Quick question, what if a character is blind & also has stars? Can they never use it because they can't "see them" or can they sense they in other ways?
ReplyDeleteAnne actually wrote up an entire blog post about this one question right here -
Deletehttp://johnsscionresources.blogspot.com/2013/03/star-sense.html
:)
I totally did!
DeleteI realized just how poorly worded that question was after I sent it in. What I basically wanted to know is how the Amesha Spentas are afected by the restrictions on certain Purviews. So I kinda also wanted to know if Vohu Manah can only use Animal Boons for animals you have (I'm assuming yes) and if you and a Health Amesha Spenta can both heal the same person in the same day (I'm assuming yes)?
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, how come Stars requires you to see the Stars but the other Celestial Purviews (Sun and Moon) don't?
Thanks for the Guardian clear-up. I now realize I had that entire Boon wrongly visualized, and since Guardian is a Purview I love, I think I'll put in a more detailed question regarding it in the Box.
Ah, I see. Yes, they are, though they get to use your stats where applicable and they count as a separate person, so they get around some of those restrictions. A Health Amesha Spenta could heal the same person you'd already healed in the same day. As for Animal... hmm, that's actually a really good question. For ease of not cheesing I would normally say they could only use your totem, but by this point you already have the ability to buy Protean Understanding so it will probably be a moot question more often than not.
DeleteStars is treated differently from the other celestial purviews in most mythologies, simply because it's a bunch of little lights as opposed to one big important one. Gods of the sun and moon usually embody that thing in some way - they wear it or carry it or are it themselves - but gods of the stars don't have that luxury since the stars are always separate and myriad. Star gods therefore almost always do things by calling upon the stars that are already in the sky, so they have a restriction that gods who can embody their single celestial light usually don't.
I think there are a couple of Stars boons that maybe ought to be usable if you don't see the stars - Aurora, for example - but it's under discussion for whenever we get to work on some APPs.
We'll look forward to more questions. :)
I'm almost (almost) tempted to change my vote from Titanrealms to Celestial Boon Edits, since Stars is my other favourite Purview (can you tell that I also absolutely adore Isis?), but the way the polls been going haywire lately, it'd probably be lost somewhere (and besides, I really do want to see Tiamat).
DeleteIn the meantime, thanks for the Stars explanation, and the Guardian question has been sent.
Stars is a wonderful purview and I always want to play a character with it. I've played plenty of Gods who have 'Stars' associated! But I can never think of a good relic to attach Stars to, so it always ends up a moot point...
DeleteQuetzalcoatl's not going to drop me a telescope and be like 'hey kid here's a magic Stars telescope jajajaja' or anything. And if he did it'd be totally lame. Screw you Kukuldad. :(
How about a miniature Mayan Calender (though that's probably occurred to you already)? That could conceivably channel all three Celestial Purviews, and it totally makes sense for Quetzalcoatl to have it around from his old Maya days. Of course, you'd better make sure Huitzilopochtli never finds out.
DeleteAnne in this video: *professional*
ReplyDeleteJohn in this video: *ADHD*
That's our life.
DeleteI don't know if you have made a boon for this or not for the stars, but I thought I'd ask. I know that moon allows you to pluck the moon out of the sky and use it as sort of a shield against range attacks, I don't know if you can with sun, but have you though about doing it with Stars? I mean, with the limit of having to see the stars on the Stars Purview, it could be hard for some people to see the stars or could be in an area, for some odd reason to not have stars (or a sky for that manner.) I mean, it could be a minor effect of where you maybe pluck your lucky star and keep it in your pocket. Maybe the effect could be that it allows you to be able to use the stars purview when all other stars are not seen and possible a boost of some kind? (Maybe appearance as the soft light of the stars are giving her a radiant glow, so bonus dice to appearance rolls possibly?)
ReplyDeleteI don't know enough of the purview and the lore around the stars to know what is best. Just food for thought.
IIRC BrentNotBroken over at Modern Mythos has a Boon called 'Borrowed Light' at Demigod that lets you pluck a Star out of the sky which then functions as a Star for all intents and purposes (as in it can be used as the focus for Celestial Beacon etc.) He also has a God level Boon called Celestial Self that currently does not have a description but the description of another of his Boons leads me to believe that it lets the Scion himself count as a Star. I'm not sure how those interact with the 'you must see the stars' rule JSR has since Modern Mythos as far as I can tell doesn't use such a rule.
DeleteSun does have an equivalent DV boon in Solar Crown. The original RAW version of the Stars boon Aurora also provided DV bonuses, actually, although we've since changed it. Frankly, DV bonuses from blinding light are kind of boring in our opinions (especially for level 10 boons, which should be way cooler than that!), which is why we changed Aurora and are probably going to change Solar Crown and Finger Moon when we get around to more APP edits, as well.
DeleteI think a high-level boon where you can keep a star with you for purposes of using the rest of the purview might be a fun idea to play around with, though. :) And totally go pillage Modern Mythos if you need more neat Stars boons - Brent and we borrow from each other all the time and he writes some really good stuff.
Yeah, I have to agree with you there on DV. I'd say to pluck a star out of the sky, legend 7 is lowest and legend 9 is the highest in my opinion. From there, it can be played around on what it does and what it gives exactly. lol. But I don't have enough time to work on this unless I had help. lol. Too many different game systems going on at once. lol.
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