Monday, October 14, 2013

Call Once in a While!

Question: What happened to mortal parents of your God PCs?

Various fates. It's hard to be a human who has been touched by the divine; your life never goes smoothly or normally, and when it ends (which is often) it's usually in an unusual way.

Sowiljr's mortal mother, Marlene Matheson, was a Las Vegas showgirl and single mother who raised him on her own before dying of cancer when he was in his twenties. Her story, and Geoff's rise to Scionhood, are told in the story Close to the Sun.

Folkwardr's mortal parents, Benjamin and Margaret Anderson, are long dead of natural causes; they lived in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and while Woody had Eternal Youth and whiled away the centuries until today, they had no such option.

Jioni's mortal mother, Eugenia Landry, was a devout Catholic stay-at-home mother who was put into the care of a nunnery shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit, right before Vivian was called away to go become a Scion. No one ever checked in on her again, so it's generally assumed that since she was in frail health anyway, she probably died during Fimbulwinter. If she didn't, she'd be somewhere in Africa right now with the rest of the population of New Orleans that Zwazo Fou Fou and Shango hijacked and relocated. The story of her interactions with Vivian is in her backstory, Godless.

Eztli's mortal mother (her name was Necahual but she went by Maria if anyone wonders, although Sangria never knew her and doesn't know her name herself) died in childbirth with Sangria, who came into the world bloody from the beginning. Since the Aztecs considered women who died in childbirth to have died in glorious combat, it is generally assumed she went to the House on the Left, although no one ever checked.

Vala's mortal mother, Hilda Dahl, died in a car accident the night of her Visitation. No one has any proof, but it seems like there might have been some kind of foul play involved. Read the story of Hilda and Aurora, Colors of Fate, and decide for yourself.

Kettila's mortal parents (her real ones, not any of the random ones she adopted), Oskar and Emma Blomgren, were never checked up on and probably also died during Fimbulwinter and Ragnarok. If they survived, they'd be among the meager few post-apocalypse people that live under Sowiljr's protection, although he would have no way of recognizing them.

Zwazo Fou Fou's mortal mother, Katherine James, died of natural causes somewhere during his Hero-to-Demigod career. He and his twin brother Mathias visited her grave once in a while, but not much once they got busy enough to make trips home impractical for them.

Aiona's mortal parents, Richard and Brenda Archimedes, were actually adoptive and she was aware of this from the start, consequently giving the poor couple little of her attention. Her real mother, Olivia, was seen several times in Hephaestus' company while he was posing as a mortal scientist, but her current whereabouts and what might have happened to her are unknown.

Sverrir's mortal mother, Amelia Nordstrom, was killed by a criminal during a holdup when he was a teenager, something that deeply affected his life and outlook thereafter. His stepfather, Michael Whitman, knew he wasn't Will's real father but was actually coopted to become his Guide by Njord, and helped his stepson as much as possible until he arrived at godhood, at which point he was lost to the furor of Fimbulwinter and Ragnarok.

Terminus' mortal mother, Claire Gozer, continued living in Wisconsin after his abrupt departure until he returned at Legend 9 to save her from Fimbulwinter, relocating her to his cult at Delphi. After Goze's death, Sowiljr took her in out of honor for his dead comrade, transplanting her to his Sanctum for a short period of time before resettling her in his cult lands in Iceland. She's one of the few parents of god-level Scions who is confirmed to still be alive and active, although she's pretty broken up over the loss of her son. Some of the story of their interaction is in his backstory, Wayward Son.

Elissa Margaritas, mother of both Alison and Colin, was left something of an emotional wreck after being left by both Apollo and Dionysus, but she was last seen still living quietly alone in her home in North Carolina. Alison saw her briefly just before her apotheosis and she seemed normal; no one has checked on her since, so it's unsure whether she survived Fimbulwinter to the end.

Saki's parents, Ichiro and Natsumi Kimura, are extremely not alive anymore. You can see why in her backstory, Little Fish.

And that's everybody that's a god right now! Many of the younger Scions of the Eastern Promises and Gangs of New York games are very much still part of their parents' lives; Zoe went to get nagged incessantly by her mother about getting married this weekend, while James sends telegrams home to the family when possible, Leona is deeply put out with her father for kicking her out of the house to go have adventures, and Skylar's poor mother is beside herself with worry trying to figure out what to do about her son being a mentally unstable superhero that the government won't let her see.

Any of you guys got any interesting stories about what mortal Scion parents are up to these days?

26 comments:

  1. I realized all of your players have male divine parents.

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    1. You know, you pointing that out made me remember that I forgot somebody: Hachiro, Scion of Izanami, did make it to God. Sophia's actually a Scion of Athena, not Hephaestus; she was adopted out and it took her a long time to even find out that Hephaestus was her dad. But you're right, all the other god-level characters seem to have chosen male patrons.

      I just did a quick headcount of all our characters, and male patrons outnumber female ones 66 to 22. The main universe is the most unbalanced, with 34 gods versus 7 goddesses; Gangs is slightly better with 10 gods versus 3 goddesses; Eastern Promises is the closest to even with 16 gods versus 9 goddesses.

      It's not surprising that there are more male gods than females on the player rosters - there are way more male gods than females in most of Scion's ancient mythologies, which in turn makes most of the playable gods male which trickles down to it being much more likely that a player chooses male than female. Of the currently playable gods on our site, 90 of them are dudes, versus only 41 being ladies (counting the Orisha in their most common forms there).

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    2. Hmm, look at that - today's the day I realize our HR purviews page doesn't include the Bogovi. They have 3 ladies and 8 dudes, bringing the total up to 44 to 98.

      The supplement pantheons don't help the situation, either - with them in the mix, the grand total is 128 males to 57 females.

      Incidentally, most of our players are male, too, with 9 male regulars and only 3 females. That almost certainly tips the scales toward male patrons because male players almost always choose them - of the characters created by male players in our games, only about 19% of them have female parents, compared to the female players making 33% of their characters the children of goddesses (about the same percentage as there are female patrons vs. male ones).

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    3. Statistics are SO much fun, aren't they.

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    4. For purposes of statistics, Anne, are you counting Olokun, Erinle, and Obatala as male, female, or both?

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    5. Male, in this case, since they appear that way a greater amount of the time in myth than female (although at least Erinle supposedly splits his/her time evenly half/half).

      We have no Scions of any of them, so they're only affecting the larger number of potential parents.

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    6. I think it might make most sense for this exercise to not include them at all, though? Since a player could interact with his or her parent as any gender upon choosing those three, they may not be relevant to a question that just talks about binary male/female sex.

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    7. Huh, so far both my characters have divine mothers! Thanks a lot stats I feel the odd one out.

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    8. Why-Login-Ever GlennOctober 14, 2013 at 7:14 PM

      Yeah, just realized, of the PCs I can recall a surprising percentage of mine have female mothers. And not to mention the various incarnations of Eric Inan, scion of Ishtar, who still hasn't been played.

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    9. I have to ask: How many had male mothers? :p

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    10. Well since none were Orisha, 0

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    11. Any Scions of Loki? They could join Sleipnir in calling him 'mommy'.

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    12. We had two Scions of Loki, but he was their father, not their mother. Considering that he only gave birth once, under extreme shapeshifted duress, we assume he probably isn't normally up for that and has most of his Scions the same way any other Aesir dudes do. (Though it is technically a possibility, far be it from us to tell you no!)

      Actually, any god with shapeshifting powers could swap sexes for purposes of making Scions, so there are more of them that could be any gender they want as a parent than not. Most of them probably hang out in the form they were most famous for, as they do for most other things, but it's still a possibility for a lot of them.

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  2. Is there any pantheon that has mostly female Legend 12 gods? I'm guessing nope.

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    1. Not that I know of right now, although I'd always be happy to be surprised. There are always some important female gods in a pantheon, usually in roles that the ancient world would have deemed "feminine" (fertility, moon, healing, motherhood), but usually not more than three or so.

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  3. My Scion of Susano-o killed his mortal mother.
    Long story short, it was around high level demigod, and he was visiting his mother on New Years. Cue a giant group of titan spawn attacking, and him Riastrad-ing for the first time due to overwhelming odds.. The illusions by his jerk-ass of a Nemsis dissipated (he spactacularily failed his perception roll) and the only targets left were the mother, and the band. The mother died in the ensueing chaos. So, that sucked for everyone. [[Exept the roleplay that was caused by it; not happy, but really satisfying.

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    1. Alas, that is how the Riastrad cookie crumbles.

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  4. Too-Lazy-to-Sign-In GlennOctober 14, 2013 at 6:22 PM

    Well, will take a moment to get my past PCs in order, but the NPC scions of the most recent game I've ran (and thanks to how busy everyone is recent is a relative term) I can def say. One has a still living father running a influentuial mafia family in NYC, with the scion himself a city councilman. Another has her mortal mother left behind in some small town in Russia, with her father having died from a bear attack that was part of her visitation; poor guy never knew he wasn't the father. The last of the trio hasn't seen his family in over a decade at least, they're both presumably still alive but never visited him during his stay in an asylum (for the criminally insane, and shockingly not in Gotham) out of shame. I await eagerly the day I can bring back into play City Councilman (possibly soon Mayor) Marcus Fattore, Svetlana Lyubovich, and Dr. Corenthal (scions of, respectively, Athena adopting from Zeus, Veles, and Tezcatlipoca).

    As for PCs...one had his mother die leading to his visitation from Hermes. Good god, I just blanked on all my PCs save for him. AH! Right, radiation student Haru (I think that was him name) of Amaterasu! His father...wasn't important after visitation, but it was a while ago he was played so I can't recall if dad died or not. His "sister" is around (daddy did statuary, and Amaterasu modeled before he...did the inspiration for statuary. Later it was brought to life during my visitation). Former club owner turned international terrorist Laurent Renault, of Samedi, has a still living mother, a voodoo priestess. Professor Jasper Harley (Cambridge, of Persian History), of Anahita, has a still living grumpy sexist father, and a mysteriously vanished granfather he takes after (if only that game had continued!). Hong Kong Private Investigator Mike Mingxing, of Chang-e, has a troubled past centered around his family now in San Francisco...but that was never explored. Sadly they're all heroes, as I so often mention.

    I'm sure if Jacob hops on he can help me recall the PCs I've played if there are any others.

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    1. Still neat! Hero is really the best time for relationships with humans to still be shaping a character, so enjoy it while it lasts. :)

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  5. Characters:

    Kyle Watson, Scion of Zeus: Character who is now trying to survive his demi-god career saw his mother killed by her mortal husband in a brutal murder suicide when he was a boy.

    Mikael Eriksen, Scion of Hel: His father was a corrupt judge seeking the runaway 17 year old, who outlived his divine son, eventually running for prime minister of Canada.

    Daniel Blake, Scion of Nuada: His mother turned out just fine, the celtic hero is off running off doing the will of the gods as she enjoys her retirement from archaeology viewing various ruins around the world, this time as a tourist.

    Michael Chambers, Scion of Ishtar: Michael's poor mortal mother died of a massive drug overdose unable to find a rush as exciting as her brief time with the goddess of love, leaving Michael and orphan.

    Russel Pride, Scion of Sekhmet: Russel grew up with his father and eventually became a UFC champion his father acting as his manager and trainer. When Russel left the league to do the works of the gods his father retired on a surplus of cash from their partnership. They have yet to discuss the divine changes that have occurred in Russel.

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    1. You go, Mikael Erikson! You're a message of hope to all Scion parents.

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    2. I believe Mikael Erikson died... it's his mortal father who is running for Prime Minister of Canada...

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    3. Yeah Mika was a terrible horrible child who met his end due to his own brash actions now enjoying a permanent stay in his mother's realm. His father has quickly become an antagonist to the remaining band starting up an anti-supernatural political movement.

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    4. Reading comprehension... that'll teach me to answer comments before ten a.m.

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  6. Nicholas Mason, Scion of Enlil: Nic's mother is not particularly maternal, he is the evidence of infidelity. His mortal "father" does not know. After briefly leveraging the family's lawyers to clarify his association with the Michael Chambers, his mother is happy that he has taken an extended vacation backpacking in Europe. She hopes he stays there for a long time.

    Jake Devon: He does not know where his mother is currently. His biggest concern is his little brother, Peter. Realizing he was a danger, to his brother, he left Peter in a shelter before his groups final confrontation with the Athena statue and departure from NYC.

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    1. Man, Nic's mom has no idea how lucky she is to have escaped the Michael Chambers bullet. Peter could tell her.

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