Parts of the Whole

Question: How do you guys determine what Titan Avatar represents what?

Well, I'm not going to say that's easy, but it's one of the more intuitive parts of the process.

In general, when working on a Titanrealm, we're going to be looking at several figures who are in some way related to the general concept but who may express it in different ways. If we use Fire as an example, then there are probably going to be several Titans who are all about setting things on fire, sure, but that will actually vary in meaning from person to person. Different cultures think of concepts in their own unique ways, which in turn means that the beings they conceptualized as the embodiments or masters of those concepts will differ in some fundamental ways.

So, to use Fire as an example, in there you've got Surtr and Kagutsuchi and Aganju, and at first glance they seem pretty conceptually similar - beings that like burning things. But their actual roles in myth differ considerably; Surtr, who is foretold to destroy the world in a great conflagration, is symbolic in Norse mythology of the fire that consumes utterly and totally, burning not just some things but all things. Kagutsuchi, on the other hand, is in Japanese mythology the source of volcanoes, representing the sudden eruption of natural flame into a world that can neither predict nor prepare for it. And Aganju, the lord of the solitary flame, has some aspects of both but is primarily concerned in Yoruba mythology with the solitude of fire, which can only destroy other things and therefore is constantly singular. All three guys you could describe with "he just wants to watch the world burn", but in actuality very different expressions of the concept of fire.

And those are only the most subtle differences; in a Titanrealm, there may be massive gulfs between different Avatars' concepts and personalities, especially when they come from different cultures. A Titanrealm is the source of all parts of its concept, which means that every way that concept can be imagined or used must be included in it somewhere. This is why Muspelheim includes not only fire that destroys, but also fire that sustains and nurtures (overseen by Hestia, ancient goddess of the hearth), fire that inspires and creates (overseen by Prometheus, the primordial creator who stole fire for humanity), and even the fire inherent in everyday objects and situations (overseen by Chantico, who is associated with food and the flames that cook it as well as the flame-like heat of certain spices).

So, generally, when setting out to populate a Titanrealm, we make a list of all the figures who might be in it. Ancient, primordial figures, disgruntled gods with an axe to grind, monsters who make it their career to oppose the gods, and anyone else who might be a candidate for Titanhood. Then, we look at their individual functions as representatives of that concept, and decide which ones do the best job of representing a wide spread of different ideas within the umbrella of their overall element. Often, a Titanrealm has a grab bag of enemies from different cultures, because it's easier to find different ways of looking at an idea if you observe the different treatment of it across the world; and occasionally there are multiple Titans of a particular concept from the same culture, which most often happens when it's the concept that that culture most fears and opposes and therefore they've put a lot of thought into the different ways it sucks. The Aztecs have Mixcoatl, the lord of constellations, and Coyolxauhqui, mistress of the malevolent influence of the moon, and Itzpapalotl, leader of the monsters that plague humanity, because they have all kinds of different ideas about how horrible the night sky can be; the Egyptians have both Apep, the darkness that consumes and destroys utterly, and Kuk, the darkness from which creation and knowledge was originally drawn, because they understand that such a fundamental concept in their cosmology could not be represented fully by a single expression.

If we can't find a great representation for a Titan, often that's a good sign that maybe she doesn't belong in this Titanrealm after all; a Titan Avatar needs to be strongly tied to their concept, and if we have to stretch to bring them in it may not be something they're actually great at representing. If we have multiple Titans that all seem to be doing the same thing, we may also need to leave one out, just for expediency and space's sake (this is what happened with Nyx, for example; definitely a major Titan, and you should use her all day if you want to, but with Nut and Nott already in there along with her husband Erebus, she wasn't representing anything new).

Sometimes we also approach this process in reverse - making a list of as many concepts for the Titanrealm as we can think of, and then seeing if we have any good candidates who might fill those roles. We've been doing this a lot lately as we work on our Illusion realm, for example, where the list might include "optical illusions", "lies" and "hallucinations" as separate possibilities, all of which are distinct expressions of the idea of illusion that could have their own figures attached. There's a danger of smashing a Titan into a role he doesn't really fit into when you do it this way, though, so we usually start the other way around and only move to this if we're having trouble filling out a roster or need a fresh perspective on the project.

I hope that's sort of helpful, because I always feel like posts about how we write things end up jumbled messes of thoughts instead of useful guidelines. The more you know about a given Titan and how their home mythology represented and thought of them, the better picture you'll have of what aspect of their core concept they best exemplify.