Question: How important are Maimings in your Relic system? Could a character make a Maiming of a significant portion of himself (such as removing his spine to replace an Axis Mundi, removing his head/other body part to perform some great deed), or are Maimings more personal to the god that bears them?
Maimings are awesome and as important as any other kind of Birthright, and we encourage their use! Of course, part of the joy of maimings is that they also carry weighty downsides because not having functioning body parts is a pain in the ass, which means they aren't nearly as popular as things like relics or Followers, but that's what you're signing up for.
Maimings can theoretically come from any source. They can be self-inflicted by Scions who choose to eschew a particular ability, body part or personal comfort in order to gain power by doing so. They can be injuries suffered in the line of duty or during the most important of the Scion's mythic actions, sealing their deeds with permanent consequences. They can be performed ritually by another god or person important to the Scion as part of a religious ceremony or rite of passage, and they can simply be situations that happen when a Scion gains in Legend or crosses the line from demigodhood into full-blown divinity.
However, there's more to a Maiming than just getting a body part whacked off in some impressive manner. Just like every other Birthright, Magic is required to create your injury as a true Maiming, grant you magical powers from it and bind it to you as part of your Legend. Just like any old sword you pick up won't become a relic just because you happen to kill an enemy with it, so any old wound you sustain won't morph into a maiming just because it happened under cool circumstances. If that were true, all Scions would be paraplegic amputees.
Like Followers and Creatures, there is no specific Magic spell that allows a Scion to create a Maiming. That's intentional, because otherwise Magic-users become even more bananas-level overpowered than some feel they already are; they could just constantly create Followers and Creatures from all the beings that they meet, amassing an enormous army and not just defeating enemies but permanently forcing them to be devoted servants who can never escape them, bind all the gods they see into being forced to act as Guides for them and cut off their fingers one digit at a time, gaining fantastic bonuses all the way. Obviously, they can't all be running around doing that all the time. Gods can't even be doing that all the time, or everyone in the universe would just be the minions of a few all-powerful puppeteer magicians.
Figuring out how to allow Scions to create or gain Maimings and other specialty Birthrights on the fly is something of a sticky spot in Scion, one that we don't have a great solution for yet (nor does anyone else we've asked, alas). We would assume that The Wyrd can do it, of course, so that's always an option, and we're a big fan of very powerful (star-plus) Relics that can also create or enforce Maimings, the Well of Mimir being the most obvious mythological example. Injuries suffered while within the borders of Comprenion, the Titanrealm of Fate, might spontaneously become Maimings thanks to their coming into being under the auspices of destiny itself, or wounds carried during some scene in which Avatar-level powers are going off like firecrackers might spontaneously turn into a Maiming. If you really want Scions and gods to be able to do those things themselves as well, you could experiment with levying a hefty penalty for doing so - allowing them to create a Maiming with some variation on the Birthright Bond spell, but requiring them to drop one or even two or three permanent Willpower on doing so, and perhaps ruling that the result is irreversible by themselves and can only be removed by someone else of equal power.
But if you're just a baby Scion planning out what kind of Birthrights you want to have and contemplating a Maiming, none of that behind-the-scenes stuff matters too much. Work out what kind of Maiming you want with your Storyteller and what powers and disadvantages it brings with it, and they'll come up with whatever background events occurred that brought it into being.
What about trepanning as a maiming? Would you consider that a valid relic if done properly, or would it just be considered another form of medical quackery?
ReplyDeleteThere's some evidence of ancient trepanning, although it's not widespread. I'd say it can be a form of maiming, though like all other maimings it'll have some kind of miserable downside (maybe penalties to Stam + Fort rolls thanks to having exposed brainmatter or something).
DeleteAny injury could technically be a maiming, as long as A) you have a reason it was given to you as a Birthright and B) it has a downside as well as bonuses.