Borrowed Feelings, Real Attachment

Question: Each of the Legend 12 Bogovi presumably has Dvoeverie at max for at least one Virtue. Could you give any examples from your own game table or from mythology of a Bogovi god/dess' fifth virtue? Stribog, perhaps, given how large a part he's played in your Bogovi adventures?

John grumbled that this was an unfair question, because it depends so much on how a given Storyteller plays a god's personality and might vary completely depending on how many extra Dvoeverie Virtues you think they actually have. It might be only five, but then again it might be all twelve. Probably not, because that god would be batshit crazy and off the rails and probably dead, but technically possible.

But hey, we can take a few stabs at them anyway! We'd guess that Svarozhich probably has Courage, linked possibly to his Duty, thanks to the tales of his ceaseless near-death battles with Chmarnik. He probably uses it to pick up either Jotunblut from the Aesir, granting him extra badassery in his desperate combats, or maybe Me from the Anunna, bolstering his power over his elemental creation powers. Stribog, John tells me, absolutely has Conviction, which enables him to do whatever he wants if he really wants it enough, even when it breaks rules; he's not very good at truthfulness so despite the history of cooperation between Bogovi and Yazata he probably doesn't use it for Asha, but he, too, might get some use out of Me boons that increase his powers over wind and frost. Perun's a shoe-in for Courage with a healthy side helping of Jotunblut, while on the flip side Veles' love of illusionary shenanigans that teach lessons might manifest itself as Expression, probably giving him some sweet Arete with which to pull off ever bigger and nastier feats. Morena, who murders her husband for his infidelity and makes him live in the underworld in a house made of his own bones half the year, sounds like a lady with Vengeance to us, again probably dipping into the Greek pool.

Of course, while the Virtues are forever, the different PSPs can be swapped out per story, so whatever your Bogovi gods are doing in a given story or plot will affect what they might take on as their extra suite of powers. Which pantheon's powers they align with also always has neat political ramifications - Norse, Greek and Persian are old standbys, but how did a Bogovi goddess get Itztli when she's half the world away from the Aztec lands, and what did that entail? The boon doesn't require swapping fluids with a god of that pantheon or anything, but it's still a great place for Storytellers to nonkey around with politics and cultural crossover.

Orisha Housekeeping

Question: So, love the site, and truly appreciate all the work you guys do in researching the mythologies and pantheons. What I wondered was this: is there any way I can get an easier to read version of the Oruba? The downloadable pantheons you have are great for ease of reasing, but the family tree format is a bit tougher when you just want to look the entire pantheon up at one time. Thanks!

Question: Which Ori boons can a Bogovi Scion use with Dva Dukhom and Dvoinobog?

A little Orisha housekeeping! As the only pantheon that we've done in quite that format - written directly for the site instead of for PDF - it has a few weird wrinkles that others don't.

To start with, there is indeed no PDF version of the Orisha. They weren't the same kind of pantheon project we normally do, like the K'uh or Elohim; instead of writing a new pantheon from scratch, we were in a sense updating one that already existed in the game line, much as we'd edited and updated the Aesir or Pesedjet. It was just on a much more ambitious scale than usual, being as it was an update from the modern Loa to the ancient Orisha and an addition and serious overhaul of the entire pantheon and PSP. But that does mean there's a lot of new stuff in all kinds of different places on the site and it's not centralized conveniently anywhere. Bummer.

We weren't planning on doing a full PDF for the Orisha, partly because it's a lot of extra work and partly because it would lack a lot of the things we normally include in PDFs, such as a Titanrealm, Birthrights and extra non-Legend-12 gods. But we can definitely see that having it all in one document would be helpful. Quick experiment: how many of you would find that useful? I'm happy to whip something up, but it'll be higher on the priority scale if more people would be using it.

As for the second question... holy crap, it's definitive proof that we're the worst RPG game tinkerers ever. Way back when we released the Orisha (which was in March, for god's sake), we said, "Oh, hey, we have to figure out how the Slavic PSP interacts with the Yoruba one, we'll have that done as soon as possible!" Then we didn't do it, because we're terrible. And then we forgot we were even supposed to be doing it, because we're awful. Way to fail, us.

So I'm putting it on the Do It Now, Dummy list to make sure we do it soon, and our profound apologies to everybody. Sorry for sucking.

Anybody got any other Orisha issues, while we're at it?

Me, Me, Me

Question: When a Scion uses the Dvoinobog (Dvoeverie 10) to gain Arete or Me, does the Scion gain the Ability or Purview that the donating Scion or God has taken, or is the Scion allowed to pick an Ability or Purview of their own?

A very good question, and one that should have been addressed in the boon's original writeup! Thanks for noticing that.

Dvoinobog grants the Scion only a single instance of Arete or Me, and only the one that they have highest. Were a Scion of the Bogovi to use Dvoinobog on a Dodekatheon god who had Arete Brawl 10, Arete Larceny 8 and Arete Art 6, she would gain only Arete Brawl, not the other two. On the other hand, if the donating god in question has several at an equivalent level - an Anunna Scion with Me (Fertility) and Me (Fire) both at level 7, for example - the Bogovi Scion could choose which of those highest-level versions of Me she wanted to borrow for the scene.

Since the Scion's just borrowing from that particular god's link with their pantheon's powers, she's only going to be able to pick up what they specifically have focused on; just as she can only get Heku boons from a Pesedjet god if they actually have them (so if they only bought Heku up to level 5, that's all she's getting), she can only get Arete or Me that the god in question actually has. If she's after a specific flavor of either, she'll need to find an Anunna or Dodekatheon god that specializes in the powers she wants.

And, while it would be pretty awesome to get all of another god's Arete and Me, it would also be very overpowered; each full tree of Arete or Me is equivalent to having a whole other purview (just a very specific one), so, just as she only gets one PSP from every other pantheon, she only gets one instance of a PSP from the Anunna and Dodekatheon.

I wouldn't be sad about this, though, Bogovi Scions. Because you're getting free Arete and Me, so... that's still awesome.