Sunday, May 26, 2013

The Gift That May or May Not Keep on Giving

Question: How possible is it for a trickster god of a pantheon to tinker with the Birthright given to a Scion by their divine parent in their Visitation? (I.e.: Hermes getting Athena to give her Scion a Birthright related to spiders.)

Very possible, but how that goes down depends on what kind of shenanigans you have in mind.

To begin with, a trickster god can't actually turn a relic intended for a Scion into something other than it already is; that's a specialized power that doesn't come automatically with the trickster portfolio. Gods who wish to change the properties of a relic need Industry (specifically Reforging to do a whole-item transformation, or lower-level boons to mess with other specifics) in order to do so, reshaping it into a new form or set of powers, and it's generally not something they could do instantly while it was being handed over. A trickster with Industry and the determination to change a relic's powers could, however, find a way to discreetly "borrow" it for a little while and then put it back after reforging with none the wiser. There aren't many trickster gods out there with Industry, but they could also find a way to shanghai a crafter god into doing it for them (and bonus: there's a fall guy to take the blame if someone finds out and gets mad!).

Another option is just good old crazypants trickery. Hermes can't make the Animal (Owl)-infused relic Athena's handing over turn into an Animal (Spider) one on the spur of the moment, but if he plays his manipulative and confusing cards just right, he might be able to work on convincing her that her kid really needs a relic with Animal (Spider), because insert convincing-sounding reasons here. Tricksters are often (not always, but often) also the people with the Magic purview, meaning they're intimately involved in the granting of relics thanks to being in charge of the Birthright Bond spell, so they could also surreptitiously just bond a different item to the kid than they said they were doing at the time. And even if they aren't the person in charge of binding a relic, if they happen to have Illusion powers or are otherwise great at distraction and misdirection, they might even be able to hornswoggle the actual magician into accidentally binding the wrong item to a Scion (or binding the right item to the wrong Scion, for that matter!).

Like most trickster behaviors, this is of course dangerous; other people with Magic can usually see changes to relics easily by activating The Unlidded Eye, and any suspicious god with a really badass Perception + Occult roll will probably be able to see that a trickster is doing some magic flim-flammery (or regular flim-flammery, with a Perception + Empathy roll). Hermes can probably get Athena at least a little bit turned around if he really puts his mind to it, but he's probably not going to want to try the same thing on, say, Apollo unless he's really, really invested in it. Heaven forbid someone try to perform some kind of skullduggery with the relics being granted by someone like Mithra, who has Perception and Justice and The All-Seeing Eye and absolutely no tolerance for wacky hijinks.

But shoot, yeah, tricksters are pros at confusing and bedazzling their friends into doing things they didn't mean to do. Relic-granting is no more immune to that than any other activity, though it might require a little more creativity on their parts.

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