Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Can't Live With Them...

Question: My character has Vengeance and Loyalty. Someone got on both lists, so is there a way to drop that person from one of them or am I doomed to be a walking, talking Virtue Extremity?

You are doomed. Virtues are not convenient things; it sucks for there to be someone who makes you so insanely angry you must act against them, but who is also your family member/bosom friend/wartime comrade/someone you owe, but that doesn't mean you get to weasel out of one of those things. It is a part of your divine personality to take care of those you're loyal to and back them up no matter what, and it's also a part of your personality to smite people who have done you wrong, and neither of those things will stop being true. You're about to ride a very sad train.

However, that doesn't mean you're unable to do anything ever again, or that you'll spend your life in shrieking Extremity all the time. As with all Virtues, if you want to act against them you're going to have to dedicate some Willpower, so find ways to make sure you're as juiced up on it as you can be if you're going to have to be around this person a lot (I assume they're in your band or something from the question, but if not, also avoid the shit out of them when you can!). If that other person is a player, they can also get Willpower-granting powers to help you not go bananas on them, and if they really want to be proactive (possibly because they fear your vengeful rage), they might be able to invest in powers to trick or misdirect you so that your Virtues never activate, such as only appearing in disguise as someone you don't hate.

Of course, the really balls-to-the-wall heroic Scion thing to do is to not fight those Virtues all the time. You're not really meant to; do it too long, and you'll eventually Extremity and they'll take over whether you want them to or not, right? You have two options here: you can try to satisfy both of them when you can, or you can commit fully to one and tell the other to go to hell. If you try to satisfy both Virtues, you'll play a constant dangerous game of deciding which is more dangerous, which you can afford to indulge right now and how much Willpower you have to cover it; generally speaking, following one will almost always trigger the other, so choose your battles wisely. If you commit to one completely, you'll be saying that either this person's transgression against you is so great that they have to pay no matter who they are, or that your loyalty to them can't be broken even by whatever they did and you'll have to swallow the anger down. You'll probably want to choose the one you have the most dots in to commit to, since it has both a stronger hold on your Scion's personality and will prevent you from having to roll the higher one and thus risk Extremity more, but it's a roleplaying decision that only you can make. Once you do that, do it to the hilt: go all out to murder or bring this person to ruin, or righteously defend this person from all ills and dangers and suffer in silence. Choosing one of the Virtues to follow is easier in that it doesn't involve all the balancing and considering of trying to play both of them, but it also means that there will be a lot of times you hate what's happening and simply have to ride that feeling out.

If you're still a pre-God-level Scion, you can also try to lose one of those Virtues completely, thus preventing you from having to follow its dictates. The Shape the Soul boon in Magic allows a high-level magician to rewrite your Virtues, potentially changing them to new ones; however, you might have a hard time finding a magician god who A) feels like doing that for you and won't feel any conflict with his Virtues, B) is accessible and willing to pay for it, and C) you can convince or give something he cares about to get him to do it. That's a pretty tall order, more so the lower in Legend you are, but technically possible. You could also try to find relics or artifacts that might affect your Virtues, such as Kebauet's waterfall in Duat, which are few and far between but definitely do exist. Figuring out what those things are and where to find them will be a task in and of itself, possibly one requiring Mystery or tracking down other people who have secret knowledge, and your Storyteller will be the final arbiter of where those things are and whether it's feasible for you to go after one. And if you want to play the most dangerous game, you can try hanging out with a Titan Avatar or its servants long enough to get one of your Virtues replaced with a Dark Virtue; you have a 50% chance of losing either Loyalty or Vengeance that way, but of course also the massive downside of fraternizing with a dangerous enemy and ending up with a Dark Virtue that is probably even more problematic than your original one.

Actually, having a single person who activates both your Loyalty and Vengeance is a pretty fantastic roleplaying tool, no matter how you try to handle it; you're a divine hero trying to do whatever you think is right or good or pragmatic in your fight to aid the gods, and here's this person who you both love and hate, who you have to deal with but who drives you to distraction. That's a perfect recipe for heroic saga and inner conflict, and your story sure as hell will be interesting and emotionally charged. Those Virtues are maneuvering you to become part of a classic tale, one that only you will choose your role in, and that's what Scion is all about.

3 comments:

  1. your pretty much in the same boat as Hera. She is forever loyal to Zeus as sister, wife, and queen, but is also eternally vengeful for his philandering.

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  2. My sister and I have this same set up. I can tell some amazing family stories.

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  3. Do Virtues extend beyond Death (not your's, but the subject's)? As in, could the question asker straight up suppress her Loyalty for a scene and murder the guy?

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