Question: Why do gods need to live in alternate dimensions (Overworlds)? Can't those awesome places just be in the World, hidden from mortal eyes by some shenanigans?
As usual, it's Fate's fault.
Gods certainly can hang out in the World. They can do pretty much anything they want, up to and including creating fabulous castles and crazy wonderlands, and nobody's going to be able to stop them very much. The problem with this, and the reason they don't do it very much, is that the mere fact that they are gods makes this impractical and dangerous for them as well as for everyone and everything that lives in the World with them.
To begin with, gods have Fateful Auras, which means that no matter where they are or what's happening, great events are drawn toward them. Prophecies happen around them, wars spring up under their feet, monsters gravitate straight in their direction, and anything that is heroic, dangerous or impressive is likely to spring up in their general vicinity. This is the same thing that makes it so that Scions are on a pretty much constant adventure, dealing with antagonists who seem to come from nowhere and bizarre situations that would never come up for most people, but the effect is multiplied to a massive level for gods, whose Fateful Auras are that much more powerful. In essence, Fate ensures that crazy shit happens to and around them, because as Legendary beings that's what's supposed to happen.
Unfortunately for everyone and everything else, that means that just being near them is incredibly hazardous. Most people who have played Scion have seen the collateral damage possible when Scions are around humans or doing things in the normal World; now multiply that times a bajillion for the power level of the gods. Gods living on earth means their problems will also live on earth, and neither the fragile normal World nor mortal humanity can survive them having battles with Apep or Riastrading out in the middle of a city, or even in the middle of a desert. The consequences aren't confined to the bad guys, either; a god who busts out some god-level boons or even Avatars in order to shape his environment or defeat an enemy also irrevocably changes the face of the earth and probably kills or permanently changes the fates of a massive number of people.
This is not good for the long-term survival of humans, normal animals or the environment itself, so most gods who aren't insane chaos-mongers stay away from the World partly because they're too big and dangerous for it and they don't want to be a shark tossed into a kiddie pool. As a corollary to this, the dangerous effects of the divine or Titanic on the World is one of the major things that totally wigs out people whoh ave the Harmony Virtue, which is concerned with keeping the natural balance of the universe and normal state of all its worlds constant and undamaged, so no god with Harmony is ever okay with spending too much time in the World. And that doesn't just mean that the six pantheons with Harmony stay out of the World; it means they have a very strong vested interest in keeping other pantheons from blowing it up, too. Wars have started over less.
But all altruistic motivations aside, the World is also dangerous for gods to be in, because it's the central focus of Fate's biggest danger to them: Fatebonds. Being in the World means that any Legend they spend is likely to result in Fatebonds, which may irrevocably tie them to places and people they don't want to be stuck with or reshape the very fabrics of their beings into new and unplanned-for shapes. Gods spend Legend - it's in their natures, after all - and that Legend turns into the iron bars of Fate, trapping them in new roles and situations that they may not want anything to do with. This danger of Fatebonds is why gods have Scions in the first place, so that they can send lower-Legend shock troops into the World to deal with its problems without having to go themselves and get weighted down by Fate.
So, really, living in the World is an extraordinarily bad idea for both gods and the World itself, and it's not worth it for most to even consider. They may occasionally visit, especially for festivals in their honor or at the cities most sacred to them, but living there would be dangerous and uncontrollable, and few gods want to risk Fatebonds and endanger the people that worship them at the same time. However, don't despair that only the Overworlds can be awesome and that no Scions get to do neat stuff in other worlds until they're gods themselves; that's what Terrae Incognita, the pocket worlds that branch off from all the others, are for, and those are usually accessible to Scions or even lucky humans who happen to find their doors.
There is something I always wondered about your fatebond rules. In Scion RAW you could gain fatebonds to anyone regardless of their legend, which could include gods or titanspawn alike.
ReplyDeleteYour rules only talk about mortals, so how does fate affect all the legendary creatures who never interact with mortals?
Thanks ahead of time!
If you're never anywhere near mortals, you'll still get Fatebonds from spending Legend, but Fatebonds to Legendary creatures are different. They don't generate Reverence and can't force any Legendary creatures into Fatebound Roles, and instead only ensure that you're likely to be part of each others' stories, and that Fate will make sure you often turn up around each other. For example, the major gods of the Dodekatheon are probably all heavily Fatebound to one another; that doesn't give them any bonuses or penalties, but it does mean that they are always near one another and that their adventures usually involve one another, and that if one of them tried to go be a hermit, Fate would ensure that things the others did inexplicably affected, involved, or brought friends to that god whether he wanted them or not.
DeleteUnfortunately, this also affects enemies, which is why the Titans and gods are unlikely to ever leave one another alone; they're maximum Fatebound to each other, which means that Fate will see that they are part of the same epic tales unless one of them dies (and maybe even then).
That does bring up a good point - can some Gods reside in Terrae Incognita instead of an Overworld? For example, Mount Meru, the Devas' Overworld, is clearly a Overworld - what with being 'at the center of all existence' and not having a completely defined earthly location.
ReplyDeleteBut at the same time, you have Shiva's home, Mount Kailash, which is very much in the World. It makes sense that Mount Kailash might be the gateway to a Terrae Incognita of itself where Shiva and his family live, right?
They definitely can live in Terrae; it's a magical realm, and many gods probably do (or at least use friendly Terrae as vacation homes or playgrounds). The Overworlds have more advantages when it comes to defense and politics, so probably only hermit-inclined gods live in Terrae much, but it's an option.
DeleteKailash and similar places are probably Sanctums rather than Terrae, tied to that particular god, but Sanctums basically function like Terrae that the god can reshape and control as Birthrights.
Yeah, the distinction between a Terra and a Sanctum might as well not exist. It doesn't bring anything really useful to the gaming table.
DeleteEither you have a Terra with an Axis, a Terra without an Axis, or you just live in your overworld.
It's a useful distinction in the same way a Birthright Creature is a useful distinction from a normal Nemean creature. Folks who own Sanctums can control what is inside them, what doors in them go to what places and what requirements are necessary to get into them, what the native population is and what kinds of special powers are in effects, and so on. Terrae don't have any of these options; they're self-contained worlds of their own that require heavy Legend expenditure and work out of a god to attempt to reshape in that way, not to mention specific powers (i.e., Earth and Psychopomp or whatever else is affected). One is a Birthright that belongs to the god and is subject to his whims; the other is a part of the mythological landscape owned by no one and far less prone to change and control.
DeleteThey definitely have good functional reason to be separate, but in terms of Fatebonds they function the same way. :)
Pretty much whoever made the Terra has control over all those things you mentioned. For all intents and purposes a Terra is a Sanctum and vice versa, even if the only has abandoned it or died.
DeleteEven if the Terra was created through supernatural or mythical circumstances the same thing can happen to Sanctums, so they might as well be the same thing. A Sanctum is basically just an owned Terra.
A Sanctum is an owned Terra, but it's just not true that the creator of a Terra has the same powers. At best, they might be able to make some of those choices at the very beginning when they make the place, and then never again, and making a Terra like that requires the expensive use of purview Avatars anyway. Those with Sanctums can literally just say, "Hey, I changed my mind, remove this ocean and put a shining brass city full of sexy guys over there instead," whenever they want to, and that happens, no powers necessary. People who are in a Terra, even if they created it originally, cannot do that.
DeleteOf course, the books are lazy and don't actually explain much about how a god has control over their Sanctum, only that they do in ways they obviously don't with normal Terrae. We use house rules to tell PCs what exactly they can and can't do with such places.