Question: Hey! The Bogovi have no Justice gods... what's up with that?
Actually, they do! He's just not Legend 12. His name is Prove, and he is the justice-y badass who presides over the legal affairs of a pantheon that is totally obsessed with law and order.
Prove is, like many of the Bogovi, a son of Svarozhich, created from the primordial stuff of creation at the beginning of the universe. As the god of law and justice, he always sits in judgment whenever an issue or dispute arises among the ranks of the Bogovi; it was he who ruled that Mokosh be punished for creating the first Scion, that Chors' unborn child had to be sacrificed to properly punish Stribog and that the Simargl had to face judgment for attacking Veles' children.
Prove's generally characterized as a pretty nice guy; he obviously has a full five dots of Order and never contravenes it, but the stories in which he sits in judgment often make a point of mentioning that he's not happy when someone is judged harshly or wishes he could have ruled differently but has his hands tied by the law. As the god of justice, his children are also related to legal matters; the Simargl is actually a composite being made up of his twin sons Sim and Rygl, who are conjoined twins who share a spine that forces them to look in opposite directions, allowing them to see both sides of every legal issue. His triple daughters, the Sudice, are the Slavic version of the Fates or Norns, and they both control the fates of humanity and ensure that their necessary punishments are meted out.
We actually had a hefty debate, when we were statting the Bogovi, over whether or not Svarozhich should also have Justice. As you can probably guess from the fact that he has it in the PDF but not in the website version, I was a fan of him getting it to illustrate the fact that he makes most of the divine laws the pantheon lives by and occasionally levies judgments himself, but John felt that Prove's supremacy in the area of law made it unlikely that Svarozhich, who occasionally submits to his rulings himself, is rocking the Avatar. Either way, Svarozhich certainly has a hefty number of Justice boons to his name.
How can Prove have the arbiter if he isn't level twelve? If you've change the level system so much that a person can have an avatar without being fully legend twelve, that's a step to far.
ReplyDeleteNah, I never said Prove had the Arbiter. He's not Legend 12, so he can't. But he's still the pantheon's preeminent justice god.
DeleteIt's just, the second last sentence of the post is 'made it unlikely that Svarozhich, who occasionally submits to his rulings himself, was ALSO rocking the Avatar.'
DeleteThat kinda makes it sound like Prove has it.
Oh, good point, that is bad wording. I'm the worst.
DeleteI just meant that Prove is so justice-y that it's hard to give Svarozhich the Avatar and put him on the same playing field. Or so John says in his objections. :)
but don't legend twelve gods have senority over gods of lesser legend. That's how it seems to work for scions of who achieve apotheosis, being bossed around by gods of higher legend. In the framework of the game it seems Svarozhich accepts the rulings because he wants to. Even if Prove is legend elven he's still a legend lower, and without the arbiter to seal his judgment, the legend twelve gods can reject his ruling by blowing their own will power to reject the ruling or popping off an avatar he can't match to beat him down. Come to think of it, why didn't Chors do that to save her baby? She's legend twelve whose power can overwhelm some dinky legend eleven justice god.
ReplyDeleteprobably because they have Order. It would make even Legend 12 Gods submit to Justice.
DeleteMost Justice powers can't be ignored, especially at higher levels. The majority of them aren't resistable or Willpower spendable; if you did something that Justice can target, it just happens to you. Unfortunately for misbehavors, that applies even if they're a Legend higher than the guy with Justice.
DeleteChors could certainly do bad things to Prove, but she couldn't do anything about his Justice. That's kind of the whole point of Justice.
But on the flip side, whoever is hit with it comes out of it eventually and they're going to be pissed, and likely wanting vengeance. That is whey if you hit assholes like Zeus or Marduk with Justice, it will make them submit, but once they come out of the mind prison boon like what happened to goze, or whichever other boon is affecting them they are going to want to atomize you for you're presumption. So justice may make you submit for a time, but what about afterward?
ReplyDeleteOh, you can certainly make enemies. Any time you do anything to someone they don't like, they're likely to get mighty upset. Although a lot of Justice boons are intended to point out to the person hit by them that it's their own actions that put them in this predicament, I'm sure a few people never get the hint.
DeleteBut then again, if they don't want to get re-Justice'd, they'd better find a legal way of getting back at you.
(Kings almost never get Justice'd - they usually can't. They make the laws, so unless you can get Zeus or Marduk to break his own law, he's usually teflon. Not saying it can't happen - it did in one of our games, recently! - but it's super rare, especially if they also have Order like Marduk does.)
You can hit the kings with Justice if you're from another culture, I think?
DeleteOh, true, you could Code of Heaven them.
DeleteDefinitely asking for trouble, but sometimes the road to justice is thorny!
It makes me unreasonable amounts of happy, that the foremost Justice god of the Bogovi is called 'Prove' as in 'to prove something' or 'proven guilty.
ReplyDelete*snickers*
Come to think of it, how do you pronounce his name?
DeletePro-vay, or thereabouts. :) Proto-Slavic does have a lot of roots in the proto-Indo-European language, so it's totally possible that it does come from the same root as the Latin probus and therefore our modern word prove in English.
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