Family Feud

Question: Hello. I'm curious. How would you deal with an Amatsukami Scion who tried in-game to reunite the pantheon? Such as getting Izanagi and Izanami back together or fixing the rift between Amaterasu and her brothers? How do you envision that going?

Well, in our games right now, that would be a pretty vast undertaking. Japan has sustained some serious damage, and I'm not sure where we would even advise them to start. When Ryujin and Susanoo are the major powers in charge of the pantheon, it becomes clear that everything has gone horribly wrong.

For those not stuck in our crazy post-Ragnarok hellscape, things are arguably easier! But definitely not easy. Trying to change a pantheon's political landscape is never easy, even for people who are rocking Ultimate social Attributes.

While this is one of those questions that's too big for a really thorough answer, we can still tell you some places to start. The most major thing to remember is that this is possible, but that there's no magical perfect solution that the Scions just have to find and then succeed with. There are probably many, many ways to go about doing this and just as many outcomes, both good and bad, and both what a Scion does and how she does it will influence the results.

The first step is probably just convincing some or all of these gods that they even want to be reconciled in the first place. If you perform the mother of all diplomatic apologies on Tsukuyomi's behalf and then he stands up and spits in his sister's face, well, that particular plan failed despite your awesomeness, simply because he wasn't on board with it. The Amatsukami are very structured and court-oriented, which means that there are multiple layers of politics, politeness, ritual and ceremony you have to go through just to talk to them meaningfully, and anyone trying to serve as a liaison between two gods will be doing double duty when it comes to perfecting their political clout. If you approach it the wrong way, one or both gods may be offended - at each other, at the idea, at you - or may get the wrong idea. You might end up widening the rift instead of closing it if you don't handle their delicate sensibilities just right.

A Scion will also need to figure out under what terms these reconciliations are happening; is Susanoo coming back to humbly beg Amaterasu's forgiveness? Is Izanagi coming to call upon his children for their aid against his estranged wife? Who's doing the reaching out and why make a massive difference to how things will probably go, so make sure you know whether you're trying to spin this as Izanami wanting to return to the children she loves so much, Susanoo wanting her brought home because he feels she's been treated unfairly, or Amaterasu decreeing she should be penned up on the Heavenly Reed Plain where she can keep an eye on her. The same outcome, but three very different ways of going about it.

Once you've figured out who you want to get talking and gotten at least one of the gods involved on board to help you out (or at least not actively sabotage the proceedings), it's time for the actual hard work: how do you get these people to like/tolerate/not scream at each other when they've been busy doing the opposite for centuries? Apologies and gifts are a good start and some favors or magical trinkets never hurt when it comes to getting a god to play nice, but in the case of these extremely volatile and entrenched relationships, just bringing candy and flowers clearly isn't going to cut it. Just finding out what a god wants most is a whole adventure on its own, possibly involving calling upon Prophecy or Mystery (or those who control them) and immersing yourself in the world of political intrigue and influence-brokering just to figure out what would make it worth it for these guys. There are a ton of ways that each relationship could go, but we suggest any of the following:

• If you want to get Izanagi and Izanami back together: finding a way to resurrect Izanami certainly wouldn't hurt, though doing so would no doubt be insanely difficult and leave you with the question of who's running things down below if she leaves. Convincing Izanami to stop murdering all of Izanagi's creations would probably make him more kindly inclined toward her, but what's in it for her? Izanagi making some kind of pledge to deal with Izanami's ugliness and/or respect her authority would be nice, but is that enough after their centuries of estrangement? Can you get their kids to stage a pantheon-wide intervention or something?
• If you want to get Amaterasu and Susanoo on speaking terms again: Susanoo will have to practically shit a mountain of gold for Amaterasu to be willing to deal with him, so your job is to figure out what that gold is and how to get him going. You could try appealing to reason for Amaterasu, pointing out that Susanoo's power is sorely needed by the pantheon and they'd do better cooperating, or you could go the other direction and try to convince Susanoo to get his grovel on, threatening him with Amaterasu's wrath. Justice that could enforce binding oaths of behavior on Susanoo would go a long way, but is he going to be willing to give those oaths under those terms, and is the risk that he'll break them and render himself useless at a critical moment worth it?
• If you want to get Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi to share the sky again: Not gonna lie, this one is practically impossible. You'll have to find a way to convince both of them to come down from their morally offended ivory towers (that or convince one of them to suck it up, but how likely do you think that is?) and make nice. If Tsukuyomi could help reform Uke Mochi, the original cause of his fall from favor, that might help, so is the long, hard road of trying to bring a Titan Avatar back into the pantheon the right call here? What about the old rumors of the siblings being consorts - do you want to bring that up, and will it help if you do? Since day and night are so incompatible, can one or both of these gods get a new role that allows them to play nice, and what would that look like?
• If you want Susanoo and Izanagi to make up: I'm pretty sure you have to accomplish the first bullet point to get this to happen. So... good luck, then.

Of course, even if you do convince some gods to kiss and make up, there's no guarantee that they'll stay that way; Amaterasu and Susanoo, in particular, have calmed down and dealt with one another in the past only to explode in fiery sibling offense again later. If you really want pantheon-wide harmony, you're going to have to do a lot more than just getting gods back together. You're going to have to give them reasons to stay together, and play nicely, you guys, which may be just as difficult (or, more probably, a lot more difficult). You'll also want to keep in mind that the battle lines in this or any other pantheon are more complicated than God A versus God B, and some of these gods' allies (or enemies) may not want to see them reconciled and may actively go out of their way to stop you, while others will remain angrily offended on their friends' behalf even if said friends decide to let it go. It's hard enough to fix one relationship schism among the divine, but the more of them you try, the more likely it is that things you do to help one group will just piss off another.

Not that any of this should stop a Scion who wants to go for it, of course. Epic diplomacy is a totally valid thing to pursue, and the rewards and legendary deeds that might come out of the attempt, even if it doesn't succeed, will no doubt be well worth the investment. As with almost everything in Scion, whatever you want to do might be incredibly difficult, but it's probably not literally impossible. If a PC can try to rewrite the destiny of an entire country or destroy a planet with her fury, she can probably give getting mom and dad to sit down with a marriage counselor a shot.