Showing Your Colors

Question: If your PC had a Birthright in the form of a tattoo, scar, brand or other body marking, would they have to display it (or at least have it exposed) to use it?

Not necessarily, but that's also not out of the question. It really depends on the Birthright in question.

It's not always a requirement for a tattoo or maiming or what have you to be visible to "work" - that is, if you wear a shirt over your Birthright tattoo, it will still give you access to the Darkness purview and +Legend dice to fishing, or whatever else it does, regardless. That doesn't mean you'll necessarily have much success keeping it hidden, however; you're going to be hanging out around people with Epic Perception, after all, not to mention the fact that it'll glow like a beacon to anyone using The Unlidded Eye no matter how many clothes you put on over top of it. This is all pretty standard for any Birthright, though - you could also have a relic piece of jewelry you carry around in your pocket but don't actually wear, and that would also work fine.

However, it's also totally possible that you could have a Birthright that does require usage or display, which will be one of the terms attached to its powers. We see that sort of thing all the time - a sword that grants a bonus to damage when you attack with it (but not when you attack with other swords, because that wouldn't make much sense) or a cell phone that gets reception from anywhere are both examples of relics that have to be used by nature. You can also have a relic that requires a special action to activate its powers; in our games, for example, Mohini's ghungroos grant her a bonus to social rolls against anyone who watches her dance while wearing them, and John Doe's battle standard gave him combat bonuses only if he first planted it in the ground and declared himself to his enemy. In both those cases, the Birthright has to be used in a certain way for its powers to work, and otherwise is meaningless; Mohini's dancing is spectacular, but if she leaves the ghungroos on the sidelines or hides them in her clothing, they can't add their magic to her social interactions, and if John doesn't roll into battle front and center with his own name on his lips as a battle cry, that standard is just an annoying log he drags around everywhere.

Usually, that kind of a restriction is there to provide balance - that is, the power the Birthright grants is particularly potent or dangerous or special, so there are guidelines for when and how it can be used. Both of those relics above could have been built as objects that just gave the Scion bonuses for owning them and didn't require them to do anything special to use them, but they would have been less powerful as a result. Basically, you're trading convenience for power; if you want a relic that is super easy to use and on all the time, it'll always be less flashy and badass than a relic of the same dot rating that requires its Scion to put some time or effort in first. The more specific and complex a relic's requirements, generally, the more powerful the end result is - that's both good storytelling and necessary mechanical balancing.

Of course, there are always times we want to hide our divine light under a bushel, especially when stuck at Hero level and trying not to alarm the local populace/get mugged/alert the authorities to our possession of alien technology. But in general, we normally find that most Scions don't want to hide their Birthrights all that often, because they're cool. That's half the point of Birthrights, after all - they're cool! They're neat! They're part of your character's imagery! If nobody ever sees them, it's kind of hard to get excited about how awesome they are. And, actually using or displaying magical items instead of carrying them around in a backpack almost always leads to more opportunities for stunting, and stunting is a Scion's lifeblood.

So check in with your Storyteller about whether or not a given Birthright requires anything to use its powers. As a general rule, we normally assume that granting access to a purview works no matter what as long as the Birthright is in your possession, but that any other bonus or power is fair game for a relic designer to decide that it has some other requirement for its use.