Question: I love Artistry just... just SO much. Quick question about Breath of Life - is a humanoid thing brought to life biologically human, capable of reproducing and such? Or are Health boons needed for Nuwa's little clay people or Pygmalion's statue girlfriend?
Awesome. We love it, too. Yay!
Breath of Life and Genesis can both create life where none was before, but they don't have identical results. Genesis creates humans - literal breathing humans just like the rest of the world's population, which can eat, reproduce, bleed and anything else you would expect from them. Breath of Life can grant life to inanimate objects, but it can't create humanity, instead resulting in magical constructed creatures.
When you see a god do something that actually creates humans - Ninhursag's brick-people, for example - they are probably using Genesis. When you see a god do something that grants life to something normally unliving that doesn't become human - Hephaestus' mechanical assistants are a good example - they're probably using Breath of Life. There are a few other boons that can also create new beings, like Quicken probably being what was used to create the Welsh flower-maiden Blodeuwedd, but for the most part those two cover almost all instances of mythic life-creation.
Nüwa's creation of mortals is a pretty clear-cut case of Genesis, but Aphrodite bringing Pygmalion's statue to life is more problematic. She's not renowned for either Artistry or Health, so it's a little bit of a conundrum exactly how she pulled that off. It could be that she did something funky with her Ultimate Appearance since the statue was in her image, or she might have gotten another god who did have the right powers to do it for her. It's one of those weird points in Greek mythology where a god is doing something they never do anywhere else in their canon of myth, so you just kind of have to guess if you need to know what happened in terms of exact mechanics.
John and I have talked about the issue, and we think it's maybe possible that The Creator, the Avatar of the Artistry purview, might be able to actually turn a creation into something totally different as well as granting it life. But Breath of Life and other boons at its level or lower aren't capable of something that falls so far outside the purview's normal abilities.
Interesting note about Quicken...I had always pictured it creating Ents. I did not imagine that you could use it to make plants look like people...and to be honest, the Boon description does not remotely hint this.
ReplyDeleteYou wouldn't, but you could use Twist Plants to make them look like people, and then Quicken to bring them to life. :)
DeleteHmm...I'd never imagined Twist Plants doing that either. Fertility just got a helluva lot more interesting for me.
DeleteIt can technically twist plants into any shape you want... so if you're patient and good at an Int + Surv roll (or maybe an Int + Art roll, at Storyteller discretion?), you can turn them into any shape you want, even that of people. It's the most perfect topiary boon.
DeleteAnd speaking of Greek Gods doing things they shouldn't be...does every last one of the, have nine levels worth of Star Boons? Cuz they are inordinately fond of using Constellation Weaver!
ReplyDeleteStupid Greeks. Like five of them do that but clearly have nothing else to do with stars. Jerks.
DeleteAn easy solution might be to assume that there's a region of Olympus that contains constellations, so any of the gods can go drop someone in there. But it's one of those cases where a mythology is just refusing to conform to Scion's systems.
I like the idea of them hitting up an actual star god for favors. Like there is some poor star god who does it, and the other greek gods just steal his thunder.
Delete"I WILL SEND YOU TO THE STARS!"
"Psst. Joe. Throw them up there."
I guess if you don't have many socials, a social god can totally steal your press while whoring you out to throw people into the stars.
DeleteAny mention of Greeks is sure to start a riot around here it seems. We need some bread and circuses.
DeletePeople are just passionate about them. They are the most well-known to those of us in the US, after all. :)
DeleteI'm just going to be sitting over here not remarking on how Aphrodite's reason for having Animal (Swan) is that she's depicted riding a Swan in a picture whereas she brings a statue to life and is the Goddess of Sex but doesn't get Health or Artistry
ReplyDeleteNope, not I.
But I will remark on how Fertility has ALWAYS been plain awesome since RAW but nobody believed me :(
I will also totally not agree with what Jacob's not remarking about the Health.
DeleteBut I will do is A. Ask Why does Aphrodite have Fertility? and B. We SOOOOO need a Love Purview!
Sex doesn't necessarily translate to Health. Lots of people have sex, but she ain't got no healing powers of any kind, nor diseasing, nor even affecting childbirth in any particular myth. Alas, there is no Sex purview. Artistry would be nice, but that's literally the only thing she ever does that could be called that. She can dance, but that's just normal Art.
DeleteShe has Swan for more reasons than the picture I linked back when we talked about it - that was one example. :) The swan (also goose, weirdly) is a common symbol associated with her.
...as we said then, though, we are not big fans of her having Swan. Sigh. Greeks are so hard. She really needs a Love purview, but we're still unsure about trying to invent such a thing.
Fertility always HAS been awesome! It's the best!
Amazing as it is (and amazing as Aphrodite is), it still doesn't answer why she has it. I mean, at least she rides around on swans...what does she ever do with plants?
DeleteThat's because I was already replying to Jacob before you posted. :P
DeleteAphrodite has a lot of fertility connotations thanks to being a goddess of sex, leading to fertility of people, leading to fertility of the earth. Aeschylus says that she is responsible for the growth of all things in the world by creating the love and union between rain and earth, while Nonnus calls her the "midwife of nature" and root of all life.
As with her other associations, it's not the strongest one in play and we wish we had something better, but she's a goddess whose most major association is un-purview'd, and that makes her hard. :( She needs help. We need to help her.
See I can get that. Fertility with Aphrodite, even if she doesn't come across as a plant goddess, conceptually that makes sense. I COULD get behind Swan, but as I argued last time, to stop me from feeling totally grumpy about it I'd want Zeus to have Animal (Eagle) as well, given that he's associated with Eagles in just about everything.
DeleteI'd love to see her with Ultimate Manipulation, but I understand she's incredibly gullible and often falls for Hera's schemes. I just think without a Love purview, her ability to manipulate Gods and mortals alike into falling in love with each other is a pretty big case of Divine Manipulation.
I just want the Genetrix to shine in glory, she is the Mother of Rome. :( Right now she just seems like a naked swan lady.
Fertility of people means Health. And if Aphrodite gets Animal(Swan) then Freya needs Animal(Cat).
DeleteFertility of people would mean Health, but Aphrodite doesn't do actual fertility of people. She does sex. It has conceptual ties but she actually has almost zero to do with actually having babies, which is way better covered by Hera and Artemis.
DeleteAs we've said before, Aphrodite and Ares are getting the rules bent because they're way too important to not be Legend 12, so we have to fudge a bit to give them enough associations. Freya doesn't have that problem, so she's not getting a pass to get extra associations she doesn't really qualify for.
Are they really that important? You've said before that mortal popularity is not a good metric to judge the legend of a god. So maybe Ares and Aphrodite are only Legend 11?
DeleteThey're not just mortal cults, though - even though that is a very important part of this, because they weren't just popular, they had massive and long-lasting worship. They're also major characters in a plethora of myths, with tons of stories to their names, and explicitly set on an equal level with the greatest members of their pantheon as members of the Twelve. It doesn't get more important than that in Greek mythology; literally the only people more of a big deal than them are Zeus and Hera.
DeleteThey're not just popular gods in a religion; they're backbone gods that form major parts of the entire mythology's stories and narrative. They're indispensible.
@Jacob: You could probably check out Modern Mythos' Emotion Purview here
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thecbg.org/wiki/index.php?title=Emotion_%28Modern_Mythos%29
Whether or not you agree with the concept of an Emotion Purview, it's not too difficult to retool it into a pure Love Purview.
And while it is tempting to go the Manipulation route, the fact remains that the Love Gods are kinda evenly split on the issue: it works for Oshun and Ishtar and Aengus, who are great at tricking people into doing what they want, but it doesn't really work for the likes of Hathor, Xochiquetzal (who're both the carefree love god type), Freya (who can't even talk a bunch of dwarves down from their asking price) and Aphrodite herself (couldn't hide an affair to save her life).
I've seen the Emotion purview before and I don't really dig it. Like it's cool but I feel like it's all stuff Manipulation could do.
DeleteAnd Aphrodite "not being able to hide her affair" seems to be a recurring reason why she doesn't have Epic Manipulation associated and I honestly find that strange given that I had never gotten the impression she was -trying- to "hide" it. Obviously she didn't want to get caught in a net in the nude and laughed at in front of all the Dodekatheon, but it wasn't exactly a grand masterwork of a scheme hiding her affair with Ares behind their back.
On the other hand, when Aphrodite WANTS to scheme, she schemes. Myrrha and her father, and the birth of Adonis, is classic manipulative Aphrodite. Her Homeric Hymn outright states that she, as the Goddess of Love, is directly responsible for all the horny shit Zeus does. The difference, I feel, between Goddesses like Xochiquetzal and Hathor versus Ishtar and Aphrodite is that Xochiquetzal and Hathor are more Goddesses of the -celebration- of love, ruling over its "province" (or purview) so to speak, but not actually causing it directly. In the case of Aphrodite, she is the one who schemes and decides who's gonna hook up with who and then makes it happen. That feels like Manipulation to me.
The reason I worry about Aphrodite's manipulation is that, outside of her getting everybody to hook up, she's extremely gullible and outright trusting. In the Iliad, Hera comes up to her and tells her "I need your sexy lingerie" and Aphrodite says "you're not going to use it to seduce Zeus thus preventing him from stopping the Greeks from winning are you?" (Aphrodite being on the Trojan side with Zeus) and Hera responds with "oh no it's for dear old mother Tethys, you remember dear sweet mother Tethys, she raised me as her very own stepdaughter - she and Oceanus need to spice up their sex life" and Aphrodite, without a moment's hesitation, happily hands over her magical sexy lingerie saying "oh Hera you are just so sweet to think of your foster parents like that!" And Hera just grabs it and cackles evilly whispering "bimbo."
I see your point. I thought of mentioning Freya, and then I realized that, much as she's called Goddess of Love, she doesn't really DO much in that area.
DeleteAs for Mhyrrha though, as far as I remember, Aphordite's entire contribution to that affair was making Mhyrrha fall in love with her father. There was no actual social interaction explicitly involved, unlike other Manipulation Gods who explicitly act in a social setting. And that, to me at least, seems to indicate that Aphrodite didn't talk her into it...she used Purview magic. And that is, of course, ignoring Ovid, who says the Furies did it, taking Venus out of the picture. (incidentally, I prefer the version inj The Elohim supplement, where he's a Scion of Anat, but that's neither here nor there).
In fact, in most cases of love Gods causing love, they don't actually DO anything. No interaction that is the hallmark of any Social attribute. They just kind of decree that such and such mortal fall for this that or the other, and it happens, and that just seems Purview like to me.
Thanks for the Iliad example...I'd completely forgotten about it.
Incidentally, I am aware that Ultimate Manipulation could do precisely what I described...decree it and have it be so...but is it really feasible to say Aphrodite popped an Ultimate every time Zeus had an affair?
DeleteHonestly sounds like a magic boon. "Fateful Encounter"
DeleteYou pick two people and they are destined to either become hateful of each other or fall in love with each other.
There isn't actually a Spell at the moment that can do that though...or am I missing something obvious that I'll facepalm about when it's pointed out to me?
DeleteOf course, there's a dangerous number of things that could be put under the heading of manipulating destiny. At the end of the day, I suppose it's kinda like Frost...Water and Sky could potentially do everything that Purview does (Sky CAN, in fact, duplicate any cold weather affecting boon with Weather Husbandry, though obviously not with those mechanical effects), but as a mythic ideal of power, it stands as its own Purview. I just think Love is similar. Manipulation and Magic could do most of what it does, but it's still one of the great powers of mythology, worthy of standing on its own.
@Anne: The Reforging link at the top of the Magic page isn't working.
DeleteI actually think Aphrodite is a great candidate for Manipulation, she does do allot of it.
ReplyDeleteAdvantageous Circumstance could be used like crazy to get people to meet and fall for one another, she is able to keep her affair silent for awhile and when she finally is caught, it's Ares who has to go on trial/gets most of the blame (Who Me perhaps?)
And as far as the "bimbo" attitude, I feel like that too, could be part of an act, wanting to be viewed as an idiot so her schemes are less obvious to others. Also a great use of Opening Act or maybe just not super high Intelligence.
I sort of understand the point of her being tricked alot herself, but hey, so is Loki (Odin, Giants and the like) and he is still a bad ass manipulator himself.
Though all this may just an argument for her having alot of Manipulation but not the Ultimate.