I should have made a more clear post about this when voting went up, so here goes now! Thanks for asking about it!
We're pretty sure Pan is Legend 12, so he doesn't really count as a lower-Legend god, but yes, we would add him to the site along with everyone else (and about time!). Here's the scoop on what that project will hopefully entail:
- Low-Legend Gods. This means any gods from Legend 9-11 who are currently on the site will be slated to get their own writeups, associations and personal page telling about their myths. Since these gods are all capable of having Scions, they should be available to players as potential parents, and while that's technically true right now, in practice the option is seldom explored because they're sort of non-characters in the setting. Hopefully, whenever we work on this project, most (if not all) of the lesser gods on the family trees will be clickable and lead to their own writeups, where players can see all the neat things they've done and all the cool stuff they have to offer as divine parents. If you've ever wanted to play a Scion of Skanda or Tecciztecatl or Nike, this will give you an easy reference to their stats and myths, without you and your group having to try to make them up on the fly.
- Regular-Legend Gods. As a result of all this adding that will be going on, we'll probably also revisit a few gods who probably should be Legend 12 and simply haven't made the leap yet. Pan is one of them; Demeter's another. And hey, even if they don't make Legend 12, they'll still get the full pages that we've heard people asking for for years, so the difference is really only in how a Storyteller plays them. Hooray!
- New Faces. We try not to overload our family trees with every god in every pantheon, because in many of their cases that would be totally bananas and it would be impossible to find anybody. However, if we're adding low-Legend gods to official playable status with everyone else, we'll probably bring in a few famous faces who haven't been on the trees before, making sure they get their normal due. Folks like Xochipilli or Gullveig might make their very first appearances ever.
- Nemetondevos Fix. I'm kinda blowing smoke here because John and I haven't discussed this in a while, but I'm also pushing for this to be the perfect time to fix up the Gauls and restore them to their former pride of place on the pantheon page. Their problem, as a pantheon, is that most of them aren't Legend 12... but if we're going to be letting all the other Legend 9-11 gods out to play, I don't see any reason why we wouldn't brush them up, tighten their associations to more reasonable levels and rerelease them into their natural habitat.
As always, I gotta remind you guys: this is all theoretical. We won't know exactly what our exact plans are until we actually sit down to hash out and do it, and some things will probably change over the course of the project even when we think we have it mostly set in stone. Last time we thought we were just going to fix some of the broken boons in Industry, and look how that hot mess turned out.
We've noticed that whenever we have a post on one of the voting subjects, there's usually a surge of voting in response as people take note (we're pretty sure that's how Seamus won his last round of fiction voting, actually, thanks to someone raising some interest in the doings of the Irish team in this post). We expect to see lots of excitement, but if you're pulling for another option on the poll, by all means start talking about that instead and we'll let them fight it out!
Of course, the Nemetondevos would still need a proper PSP.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I know I'm kinda prejudiced in her favour, but would Durga be one of the Gods you'd consider adding to the site if this project wins through?
ReplyDeleteMmmmmmmaybe. :)
DeleteWould you be adding lower-legend gods to the Shen and Amatsukami as well?
ReplyDeleteEventually yes, but we'll probably wait until their pantheon projects before we do so. It wouldn't make much sense to do workups on them and then redo them again later, and when we do the whole pantheon they'll be able to be part of the big picture.
DeleteAww! Gullveig! She and Kvasir are my favorite Vanir.
ReplyDeleteI'm also a fan. Vanir represent!
DeleteI just realized something...this means the Alihah could get their own page on the site someday!
ReplyDeleteIf John ever gets his terminal case of the crankies under control, maybe. ;)
DeleteEvery time you mention how cranky he is, I imagine him just flailing his arms around and going "raaaaaagggghhhhhh" with his mouth wide open, like a toddler imitating Godzilla. It's rather hilarious to me.
DeleteThat's pretty much what it looks like. You've seen him in shows, you probably have a perfect picture!
Deletespeaking of lesser gods, what is your standing on the warrior monk Benkei (i.e. guide, lesser deity, interesting footnote in Japanese history, etc.)?
ReplyDeleteThanks to his origin myths and generally Hero-level exploits, I'd assume Benkei was probably a Scion, who did some awesome Scion-y stuff before dying a Cu Chulainn-esque death in the pursuit of valor. He could certainly be a Guide if you wanted to use his ghost or had some backstory reason why he's still alive.
DeleteWhat legend rating would Ostara the Anglo-Saxon goddess of Easter be? And would she be considered part of the Norse pantheon or just a mishmash of christian revisionism applied to a mostly unknown goddess?
ReplyDeleteIf you run Eostre as a real goddess - opinion varies pretty strongly, since she's only ever mentioned by Bede and he kind of tended to make things up sometimes - then she's Legend 9, probably with only Fertility associated. She's not just unknown to the layman but also considered by at least part of the scholarly community to have never existed at all, so it's unlikely that she's rocking a lot of Legendary oomph.
DeleteShe's definitely Germanic, but also definitely not Norse, being confined to the continent. You could view her as an adjunct to the Aesir, or perhaps to the Bogovi, who also had a presence in southern Germany at around the right time in history.