Question: Who's Rohe?
There's no context with this, but I'm going to go ahead and assume you mean the Polynesian figure Rohe, who is mentioned as one of the denizens of their Underworld, Rarohenga, in our Atua supplement. We had originally intended to include Rohe under the Antagonists section of the supplement, but there were so many possible choices for that section that we eventually ended up cutting her since we already had Miru as an option for all kinds of unpleasant Underworld tales.
However, Rohe is a neat (and tragic, alas!) goddess, so we are happy to talk about her here!
Rohe is actually the wife of the infamous demigod Maui, and the sister of the sun god Ra (the Polynesian one, not the Egyptian one); like her brother, she was exceptionally bright and beautiful, making her a fine match for Maui and well-liked among the rest of the Atua. However, Maui became jealous of her great beauty since he was himself rather ugly and off-putting, and he demanded that she trade faces with him. Appalled, she refused; Maui then waited until she was asleep one day and stole her face with a spell, applying it to his own head so that he would become beautiful and there would be nothing she could do about it. Rohe was furious and mortified when she awoke, but she could not reverse the spell, so she divorced Maui and fled to the Underworld, vowing to have nothing to do with the treacherous world of the living (and light, which illuminated her loss) any longer.
Now, she lives alone in the portion of the Underworld known as Urangi-o-te-ra, or "sun's arrival", which is the portion that her brother Ra (also grievously mistreated by Maui) limps through each night on his eternal solar journeys. He is the only visitor she's likely to receive warmly; her anger over her treatment has never abated, and she is said to attack, beat and maliciously torment any traveler, living or dead, who comes too close to her domain or bothers her in her solitary home.
We don't know a whole lot about Rohe other than this story; some have theorized that she was a sun goddess thanks to the description of her shining face and similarity to her brother, while others have pointed out that her self-imposed exile and residence in the Underworld echoes the story of Hine, who is up a few levels from her, and that together with Hine and Miru she helps form a triad of dangerous and not necessarily friendly Underworld ladies who are more likely to eat you than make friends with you. There's also some debate about what exactly she looks like now; some retellings of the tale suggest that Maui simply stole her face, leaving her without one, while others say that he exchanged his ugly face for hers or even took her entire head off her shoulders to replace with his own.
Rohe is a great choice of antagonist for Demigod-level Scions who dare to make a foray into Rarohenga to bother her, although what they might need from her and how they would go about getting it without being beaten to within an inch of their lives is up to the individual Storyteller. But kindness, which she's had in very short supply since her ill-fated marriage to Maui, would probably be a good place to start.
Showing posts with label Atua. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Atua. Show all posts
Monday, March 3, 2014
Saturday, October 26, 2013
South Pacific
This was one of the longest pantheon projects ever, but we hope you guys will think it was worth the wait. From the windswept tropical islands of the Polynesian triangle, we bring you the Atua, stormy gods of the natural elements and bringers of supernatural adventure on a cosmic scale. Brace yourselves, because they are out of control.
We've updated the master post for Atua-specific details, but if you have questions, by all means, hit us. We had a blast working with these guys, who are in the interesting position of being worshiped over a wide range of different islands but often in different ways, for different things or at differing degrees of importance, making them a jack-of-all-trades group of gods ready to leap into action in a dozen wildly varying ways.
I don't mind telling you guys that I'm going to take a little time off from pantheons (maybe a whole week!) to recuperate, but when we leap back into action it'll be with the Inuit gods of the far northern reaches of North America. We are way super excited to finally be adding a North American pantheon to our gameset, not to mention getting to flesh out several Inuit characters who have already made appearances in our games, and the unique (and scary, and awful) flavor of the arctic gods is going to be a whole new world of horrific fun.
Voting was really, really close this time; for a while there were three frontrunners that were neck and neck, and every week we wondered if the deciding factor was just going to be who was on top when we finally got the supplement out the door. If you were part of the very vocal factions who didn't quite come out ahead, don't despair; the next round of voting is up and both of the other heavyweight contenders from this time around are back again, as are some fresh new options for folks who have been looking for something different. As always, we're happy to talk about any of the pantheons up for voting if you have questions about them.
As always, thanks to all of you for reading and discussing and cheering us on. Go get yourselves some gods of the islands.
We've updated the master post for Atua-specific details, but if you have questions, by all means, hit us. We had a blast working with these guys, who are in the interesting position of being worshiped over a wide range of different islands but often in different ways, for different things or at differing degrees of importance, making them a jack-of-all-trades group of gods ready to leap into action in a dozen wildly varying ways.
I don't mind telling you guys that I'm going to take a little time off from pantheons (maybe a whole week!) to recuperate, but when we leap back into action it'll be with the Inuit gods of the far northern reaches of North America. We are way super excited to finally be adding a North American pantheon to our gameset, not to mention getting to flesh out several Inuit characters who have already made appearances in our games, and the unique (and scary, and awful) flavor of the arctic gods is going to be a whole new world of horrific fun.
Voting was really, really close this time; for a while there were three frontrunners that were neck and neck, and every week we wondered if the deciding factor was just going to be who was on top when we finally got the supplement out the door. If you were part of the very vocal factions who didn't quite come out ahead, don't despair; the next round of voting is up and both of the other heavyweight contenders from this time around are back again, as are some fresh new options for folks who have been looking for something different. As always, we're happy to talk about any of the pantheons up for voting if you have questions about them.
As always, thanks to all of you for reading and discussing and cheering us on. Go get yourselves some gods of the islands.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
The Great Canoe Voyage
Question: Is there a rough outline of which gods will be included in your Polynesian Pantheon already? On which island group will it probably centre?
There's more than a rough outline; the pantheon roster itself is pretty much complete, and we also have a pretty good list of lower-Legend auxiliary gods that will get writeups within it, too. I don't want to ruin the suspense, though, so I won't be giving you a full and detailed list; just like every other pantheon before them, you'll have to wait for release day to know exactly what's up with the Atua. By the time this post goes live, I hope we're starting to get close to the end of our several-month journey on this project, but anything is possible.
However, if you're thinking of any particularly famous Polynesian gods - Pele is always a fan favorite, isn't she? - they will almost certainly be included in some form. Polynesia is also rife with stories of the exploits of demigods, some of whom become deified and some of whom do not, so you may get to hear about a few of them as well. I will spoiler just enough to tell you that the main roster of Legend 12 gods is currently eight members strong, so feel free to guess who those eight deities might be.
As for the island groups, working with Polynesia is a journey into comparative culture, so there's a lot going on. In a lot of ways, we're technically covering the entire Polynesian triangle; because the Polynesian islands were settled in a sort of wave effect, with people moving from one island to settle on the next and so on for thousands of years, the end effect is of many different, distinct cultures that happen to share the same gods, although they often worship them differently or tell different stories about them based on where they are. Many gods are worshiped all over the triangle despite the fact that it's in different rituals and languages; Tangaroa, for example, is worshiped under only slightly different names (Tana'oa, Tagaloa, Kanaloa and about a million others) all over the place, from New Zealand to Tahiti to Hawaii to Samoa. He's of differing levels of importance in these different places, and each has a few local touches that are unique to their treatment of him, but in the end he's obviously the same deity.
That's happening pretty much all over Polynesia, so we're in an interesting (but weird) situation where we have to try to do right by many different religions' takes on the same gods, and leave room for Scions to do whatever they want, to boot. It's very similar to the Orisha project, in which the goal was to both capture the original root deities but also allow plenty of room to play with their later diaspora religions and figures; and also similar to the Alihah, come to think of it, who were similarly gods known by a lot of peoples in one area but worshiped with differences from one community to the next.
Basically, as usual, world religion and mythology don't care about Scion's approach or problems, so we're doing our best to provide an awesome resource that is accurate but broad enough in scope for players to do things in whatever their island culture of choice might be. Let's hope we do an okay job.
There's more than a rough outline; the pantheon roster itself is pretty much complete, and we also have a pretty good list of lower-Legend auxiliary gods that will get writeups within it, too. I don't want to ruin the suspense, though, so I won't be giving you a full and detailed list; just like every other pantheon before them, you'll have to wait for release day to know exactly what's up with the Atua. By the time this post goes live, I hope we're starting to get close to the end of our several-month journey on this project, but anything is possible.
However, if you're thinking of any particularly famous Polynesian gods - Pele is always a fan favorite, isn't she? - they will almost certainly be included in some form. Polynesia is also rife with stories of the exploits of demigods, some of whom become deified and some of whom do not, so you may get to hear about a few of them as well. I will spoiler just enough to tell you that the main roster of Legend 12 gods is currently eight members strong, so feel free to guess who those eight deities might be.
As for the island groups, working with Polynesia is a journey into comparative culture, so there's a lot going on. In a lot of ways, we're technically covering the entire Polynesian triangle; because the Polynesian islands were settled in a sort of wave effect, with people moving from one island to settle on the next and so on for thousands of years, the end effect is of many different, distinct cultures that happen to share the same gods, although they often worship them differently or tell different stories about them based on where they are. Many gods are worshiped all over the triangle despite the fact that it's in different rituals and languages; Tangaroa, for example, is worshiped under only slightly different names (Tana'oa, Tagaloa, Kanaloa and about a million others) all over the place, from New Zealand to Tahiti to Hawaii to Samoa. He's of differing levels of importance in these different places, and each has a few local touches that are unique to their treatment of him, but in the end he's obviously the same deity.
That's happening pretty much all over Polynesia, so we're in an interesting (but weird) situation where we have to try to do right by many different religions' takes on the same gods, and leave room for Scions to do whatever they want, to boot. It's very similar to the Orisha project, in which the goal was to both capture the original root deities but also allow plenty of room to play with their later diaspora religions and figures; and also similar to the Alihah, come to think of it, who were similarly gods known by a lot of peoples in one area but worshiped with differences from one community to the next.
Basically, as usual, world religion and mythology don't care about Scion's approach or problems, so we're doing our best to provide an awesome resource that is accurate but broad enough in scope for players to do things in whatever their island culture of choice might be. Let's hope we do an okay job.
Friday, June 21, 2013
I Am a Selfishness Beast
Question: If one of your plans for the future is an Atua supplement, have you taken a look at the existing one that some fans already made? Maybe you could get together with the writer and make a new and improved version together.
I assume you're talking about the Atua supplement written by Scion forumites Pashupatastra and Coachman, which was a big fan-supported project on the forums a while ago, released in PDF form and has even recently gotten an update in the form of a new alternative PSP. We're aware of it and really enjoyed watching the community pull together to do some cooperative suggesting, proofreading and enjoying during the time that it was being put together!
It's actually not the only fan Atua out there, though, which shouldn't be a surprise since the Atua are awesome and everyone should love them. The Scion forums feature another version of the Atua, and hunting through websites for various chronicles will get you a slew of other little house versions of the pantheon, invented for individual games to allow players more room to choose new divine patrons. Polynesia's one of the areas that Scion ignored almost totally but that a lot of players obviously really wanted to get involved in, and that translates naturally to a ton of fan-produced material to make up the difference.
Now, I'm going to level with you, question-asker: we're probably not going to go out and look up any of these previous fan writers to ask for input. That's not because we hate them or anything or think they're bad; on the contrary, they put a lot of work in and have a product they should be proud of. But there are several fundamental things about it that we strongly disagree with (the entire Titanrealm opposing the Atua, for starters), and more importantly we have a well-oiled and smoothly-running work plan that we're by now practiced pros at, and bringing more people into that would seriously slow the machine down. While we love to get as many expert opinions as possible while we're working, we don't know any of these other writers and have no idea if they have credentials we'd like to explore or are just enthusiastic fans like us, and if it's the latter, there may not be much they can offer us.
Also, and this is probably the strongest reason, I am super touchy about working with other people. I promise it's not you, other people; it is totally me. I love to hear input from others and I love to share information, but the second there's a real opinion clash and someone wants me to change/add/include/rework something that I think is already awesome/bad/horrible/sublime, I usually throw them out a window. It's a temperamental writer thing and I'm not entirely proud of it, but me saying, "Hey, you want to come work on this creative project with me?" to another writer is pretty similar to me saying, "Hey, you want to come let me plunder you for useful information and suggestions, listen to me ignore any ideas of yours I don't like and deal with me getting pissed off if you want to change something I do like?" Nobody wants to sign up for that. I sure wouldn't, if I were them.
Or, to put it in a much more polite way that doesn't make me sound quite as much like a cannibalistic ogre woman, I take great pride in my writing, am independent and intuitively-minded, and am very invested in creative control. I put up with John, but that's only because I'm married to him and he knows more about game balance than I do.
So... yes, basically I am a terrible person to work with, so currently we're not planning on subjecting any of the previous Polynesian fan-writers to the meat-grinding gauntlet that is my cooperative process. If they're out there reading this and wanted to talk shop, trade sources or discuss what they think worked and didn't in their version, however, we would totally love that! We are all about some fun and friendly talk about a subject we love, and suggestions and sources are always awesome bonuses.
And Polynesia will have its windswept, glittering oceanside day in the sun. Some folks will like our version, some will like the forum version, some may like both or neither or their own homebrew, and all of that is totally fine with us!
I assume you're talking about the Atua supplement written by Scion forumites Pashupatastra and Coachman, which was a big fan-supported project on the forums a while ago, released in PDF form and has even recently gotten an update in the form of a new alternative PSP. We're aware of it and really enjoyed watching the community pull together to do some cooperative suggesting, proofreading and enjoying during the time that it was being put together!
It's actually not the only fan Atua out there, though, which shouldn't be a surprise since the Atua are awesome and everyone should love them. The Scion forums feature another version of the Atua, and hunting through websites for various chronicles will get you a slew of other little house versions of the pantheon, invented for individual games to allow players more room to choose new divine patrons. Polynesia's one of the areas that Scion ignored almost totally but that a lot of players obviously really wanted to get involved in, and that translates naturally to a ton of fan-produced material to make up the difference.
Now, I'm going to level with you, question-asker: we're probably not going to go out and look up any of these previous fan writers to ask for input. That's not because we hate them or anything or think they're bad; on the contrary, they put a lot of work in and have a product they should be proud of. But there are several fundamental things about it that we strongly disagree with (the entire Titanrealm opposing the Atua, for starters), and more importantly we have a well-oiled and smoothly-running work plan that we're by now practiced pros at, and bringing more people into that would seriously slow the machine down. While we love to get as many expert opinions as possible while we're working, we don't know any of these other writers and have no idea if they have credentials we'd like to explore or are just enthusiastic fans like us, and if it's the latter, there may not be much they can offer us.
Also, and this is probably the strongest reason, I am super touchy about working with other people. I promise it's not you, other people; it is totally me. I love to hear input from others and I love to share information, but the second there's a real opinion clash and someone wants me to change/add/include/rework something that I think is already awesome/bad/horrible/sublime, I usually throw them out a window. It's a temperamental writer thing and I'm not entirely proud of it, but me saying, "Hey, you want to come work on this creative project with me?" to another writer is pretty similar to me saying, "Hey, you want to come let me plunder you for useful information and suggestions, listen to me ignore any ideas of yours I don't like and deal with me getting pissed off if you want to change something I do like?" Nobody wants to sign up for that. I sure wouldn't, if I were them.
Or, to put it in a much more polite way that doesn't make me sound quite as much like a cannibalistic ogre woman, I take great pride in my writing, am independent and intuitively-minded, and am very invested in creative control. I put up with John, but that's only because I'm married to him and he knows more about game balance than I do.
So... yes, basically I am a terrible person to work with, so currently we're not planning on subjecting any of the previous Polynesian fan-writers to the meat-grinding gauntlet that is my cooperative process. If they're out there reading this and wanted to talk shop, trade sources or discuss what they think worked and didn't in their version, however, we would totally love that! We are all about some fun and friendly talk about a subject we love, and suggestions and sources are always awesome bonuses.
And Polynesia will have its windswept, glittering oceanside day in the sun. Some folks will like our version, some will like the forum version, some may like both or neither or their own homebrew, and all of that is totally fine with us!
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Tales from the Isles
Since John's out of commission today and some requests have come in, let's do another storytime vlog! In this one, I'll tell some stories from Polynesian mythology, ramble incoherently and try to blame New Zealand for my failures.
Thanks for watching, as always. I'm off to put a bunch of chocolate in my face and type about Irishmen/Hawaiian gods/Illusion boons until I fall asleep.
Thanks for watching, as always. I'm off to put a bunch of chocolate in my face and type about Irishmen/Hawaiian gods/Illusion boons until I fall asleep.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Let's Get Some More Eels and Octopi Up in Here
Question: What is your opinion of the current Polynesian writeup: the Atua?
This will probably sound very weird coming from us, but we haven't read it.
It's not out of neglect, or disinterest! I've been watching the Atua take form as a community project, helmed by the excellent Pashupatastra and Ptah1888 on the White Wolf forums, for lo these many months and years, and they've put in a remarkable amount of time and effort. The Polynesian/Hawaiian/Maori/general islands in that area pantheon is a major area of the world that Scion simply doesn't address in the books, which is a crying shame, and I cheer anyone who wants to fill in those holes in the world, because lord knows I do. The game needs the ability to Tangaroa it up once in a while, and these guys are on a mission to make sure it has that.
The major reason we haven't actually sat down and given that fan supplement a good, thorough read is that we just aren't ready for Polynesia yet. We're on other projects at the moment, and while a Polynesian pantheon is totally a necessary part of the mythic world, we haven't yet had time to start messing around with one. It was temporarily a priority during Sverrir's unscheduled shenanigans in Hawaii, but since he's gone to inactive and his player has moved, it probably won't hit the forefront of our needs again until either another PC wants to get involved in the islands, or you fine folks vote Polynesian in the new pantheon poll over to the right of this blog.
I don't feel right reading things before I'm ready to work on them, because it tends to make me sloppy. I forget things, or I remember them wrong, or I absorb someone's editorializing and don't realize that it's a modern interpretation instead of a legitimate myth. I have no doubt that I'd totally enjoy reading the fan Atua, but until I can actually devote some attention to that area of Scion's world, it probably wouldn't help much and I'd just need to reread it when it was time anyway. Fan supplements, even when well-researched and well-written, are also never first on my reading list when looking at new material for Scion; I like to make sure I have as firm a grounding in the source myths as possible before I start looking at interpretations, and while I've got a good handle on the Pacific badasses that are the Atua, I would be more comfortable raiding several libraries before I seriously get into it.
So it's not you, Atua: it's me. The supplement is saved on my hard drive along with a zillion other things, and I can't wait to unzip it and take a look one day soon, but since it's not a top priority for our game and the writers of the Atua haven't asked for input, it'll remain there until I struggle out of the deserts and jungles of Arabia and Mexico.
For those of you who do want to take a look right now, though, you can find the Atua supplement available for download over here. I know of several games that use it, and it's just waiting for you to take a look at and dig into.
This will probably sound very weird coming from us, but we haven't read it.
It's not out of neglect, or disinterest! I've been watching the Atua take form as a community project, helmed by the excellent Pashupatastra and Ptah1888 on the White Wolf forums, for lo these many months and years, and they've put in a remarkable amount of time and effort. The Polynesian/Hawaiian/Maori/general islands in that area pantheon is a major area of the world that Scion simply doesn't address in the books, which is a crying shame, and I cheer anyone who wants to fill in those holes in the world, because lord knows I do. The game needs the ability to Tangaroa it up once in a while, and these guys are on a mission to make sure it has that.
The major reason we haven't actually sat down and given that fan supplement a good, thorough read is that we just aren't ready for Polynesia yet. We're on other projects at the moment, and while a Polynesian pantheon is totally a necessary part of the mythic world, we haven't yet had time to start messing around with one. It was temporarily a priority during Sverrir's unscheduled shenanigans in Hawaii, but since he's gone to inactive and his player has moved, it probably won't hit the forefront of our needs again until either another PC wants to get involved in the islands, or you fine folks vote Polynesian in the new pantheon poll over to the right of this blog.
I don't feel right reading things before I'm ready to work on them, because it tends to make me sloppy. I forget things, or I remember them wrong, or I absorb someone's editorializing and don't realize that it's a modern interpretation instead of a legitimate myth. I have no doubt that I'd totally enjoy reading the fan Atua, but until I can actually devote some attention to that area of Scion's world, it probably wouldn't help much and I'd just need to reread it when it was time anyway. Fan supplements, even when well-researched and well-written, are also never first on my reading list when looking at new material for Scion; I like to make sure I have as firm a grounding in the source myths as possible before I start looking at interpretations, and while I've got a good handle on the Pacific badasses that are the Atua, I would be more comfortable raiding several libraries before I seriously get into it.
So it's not you, Atua: it's me. The supplement is saved on my hard drive along with a zillion other things, and I can't wait to unzip it and take a look one day soon, but since it's not a top priority for our game and the writers of the Atua haven't asked for input, it'll remain there until I struggle out of the deserts and jungles of Arabia and Mexico.
For those of you who do want to take a look right now, though, you can find the Atua supplement available for download over here. I know of several games that use it, and it's just waiting for you to take a look at and dig into.
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