Our PCs Hate These People

Question: How do you handle Hod in your games? Does he come up? Is he the'elephant in the room no one talks about or what? Does he hate Baldur? Also, how does Odin get along with his various children? Does he have a soft spot for them, or is he a king first and a father second?

Aww, Hod! Hod has actually appeared as a major character in our games, thanks to both Geoff Matheson's and Aurora Dahl's bands being heavily involved in Ragnarok and the events leading up to it. If you're interested in reading some of our interactions with Hod "live", so to speak, there are stories involving Geoff's interactions with him here and here, and detailing Aurora's relationship with him here and here.

But if you're not into our stories, that's cool, we'll talk about Hod here, too! The Scion books do a really weird number on Hod, from trying to suggest that he wants to kill Baldur to demanding that Aesir Scions who don't try to kill him roll Loyalty (what? that's the exact opposite of Loyalty, dudes!). We have many opinions, because when do we not?

First of all, prior to Ragnarok, Hod is certainly around, though in what dimension is entirely up to the Storyteller. He may know he's destined to kill his brother, but until that time he hasn't actually done anything and can't be punished for a crime he has yet to commit, so just like Loki is still given free run of Asgard until such time as he starts misbehaving, so is Hod still allowed to live in his homeland. In fact, he's probably more welcomed and better-treated than Loki, considering that he's a native son of Odin and Frigg, although his blindness would make him an object of pity and/or scorn for a culture that values fighting ability above most other things. In our games, once Fimbulwinter started, Hod took to hiding in the Mirkwood in the hopes that he would be trapped there and unable to kill his brother; you might decide he does something similar, or else is still in Asgard hoping to overturn his Fate or fatalistically awaiting the day it comes for him.

As for Hod's relationship with Baldur, it's a complicated one, but hatred is probably not in the cards there. It's almost literally impossible to hate Baldur, who is the epitome of lovableness and whose Ultimate Charisma and Ultimate Appearance make him impossible to ignore or dislike even a little. Even without the strong bonds of brotherhood and family, Hod would have trouble thinking nasty thoughts about Baldur, let alone actually nursing hatred of him. On the other hand, Baldur has very concretely Done Him Wrong in taking Nanna from him to be his wife; according to the story of their awesome rivalry over the goddess, she loved Hod and he successfully fought for her and defeated Baldur, but she's now married to Baldur anyway. The Norse sagas don't explain where that switcheroo happened, so you're free to draw your own conclusions; we think it's most likely that Baldur just up and used his Ultimate Mojo on her, possibly in some kind of permanent Engender Love that left Hod utterly unable to compete with him, but it's also possible that some outside agency (Loki, is that you again?) engineered it or that Nanna has motives of her own that we don't know about. Whatever happened, the fact remains that the love of Hod's life is now his brother's wife, and that's bound to put some sour raisins into the bread pudding of his emotional state. That still doesn't override either Baldur's social mastery or Hod's own Loyalty to him, but it surely makes for a confusing and upsetting relationship between them sometimes.

It's pretty well-established in Norse myth that Hod does not kill Baldur on purpose; he's tricked into doing so by Loki, for mysterious reasons that are never fully explained (theories range from "attempting to prevent Ragnarok" to "giving Odin a big fuck you" or even "matchmakng Baldur to marry his daughter"). We don't see any reason to assume Hod would want to kill him, and although he's almost certainly extremely sad and even angry over the loss of Nanna, it's not enough of a motivation to explain him suddenly deciding to take vengeance on his brother after centuries of playing nice. What Hod is doing and feeling up to Ragnarok depends on the Storyteller, but our Hod was always pretty despondent over the idea that he was going to kill Baldur and there was nothing he could do about it, and would have loved to find a way to avoid it, just like most of the Aesir are not enthused about their eventual fates.

As for Odin... well, as you all know, Odin is more than a little bit of a humongous dick. This extends to his children as well as to everyone else; you only have to look at the stories of him cheerfully punking Thor's face off in disguise or nodding sagely as Tyr gets his hand bitten off to know that. That doesn't mean he doesn't care about them, of course, but he's always been very much about his own schemes first and foremost, and everybody's welfare somewhere a distant second. He would undoubtedly want to help his kids when they need it, provided he can do so without some kind of heinous penalty, but if there's something else he needs to be doing or helping them out would be just too much of a pain in the ass, he's likely to let them figure it out themselves rather than stepping in. He's trying to simultaneously avert Ragnarok, hold onto his own power and still have time for prankship along the way; he ain't got time for your problems right now, Bragi.

Of course, if you asked him, I'm sure he would tell you that averting Ragnarok is in everyone's best interests and he is therefore constantly working to safeguard his people. It just happens to come with the delicious side benefit of himself not getting eaten by a giant wolf. He's an altruist!