Trouble at Home

Question: My friend uses your Darkness boons in our game. He just used his Heart of Darkness boon on Hera (he is a son of Zeus). Is he fucked?

Well, that depends.

First of all: which Virtues did the boon affect, and is she still under its effects right now? If he successfully turned her Vengeance into Forgiveness, she will not only not be upset with him for existing right now, but will probably actively seek to accept, forgive and welcome him into her family. The reversed Virtue will make her feel an overwhelming need to turn the other cheek when it comes to her husband's offenses against their marriage, and to accept his illegitimate offspring even though doing so flies in the face of both her own emotions and the laws of the pantheon.

While that's going on, he's safe - at least, from Hera herself. He is still an example of total not-okayness according to Greek law, so while no one will probably outright call him on it since they wouldn't want to risk going up against Zeus (and lots of them are in the same boat anyway, being illegitimate children themselves), people are still probably going to give him a bit of the side-eye. People like Apollo, Artemis, Dionysus, Persephone and Hermes are all Zeus' offspring by women other than his wife, and all of them have had to suffer her vengeance as a result, so many of them might be outright offended that your friend is "cheating" by bypassing that. They all had to pay their dues and have to live in constant awareness of Hera's bad mood, so they may not appreciate some uppity little former human child getting special treatment that they didn't. (A few of them might be okay with it for the moment just because Hera would also be willing to forgive and welcome them abnormally right now, too... but they probably know better than to think that's permanent.)

Secondly: does Hera know he did that? Did he straight up use a boon on her while standing in front of her when she was going to smite him, or something? Is there any chance she could think someone else might have done it? Because when she snaps out of it, not only is her Vengeance going to shoot back like the most painful, terrifying rubber band ever to be shot at your Scion's forehead, she's also going to be on the warpath for whomever dared screw around with her emotions that way. Hera is not stupid, and even if she didn't know the power was used at the moment it was, there's no way she'll think that she randomly had a change of heart for no reason when she hasn't had one in the past three millennia, that just happened to make her behave in a way that is counter to not just her own feelings but her entire existence as goddess of legitimate marriage. She will know someone used magic on her to force her to act in a way she will find abhorrent, and she's going to want someone's head for it. Like... she will have double Vengeance against him now.

Your friend's best bet at surviving (and/or not being consigned to misery forever because of unending curses/madness/murder of everyone he loves) Hera's likely backlash is to try to pin the crime on someone else. If she thinks somebody else did it - Hermes, say, who she never liked much anyway - he might escape the mightiest part of her wrath if it gets pointed at the messenger god instead. Of course, that won't protect him from her violent backlash if he's stupid enough to be in her presence when Heart of Darkness wears off, nor will it prevent him from being in trouble if she does blame Hermes and Hermes gets on the hatetrain to find out who just ruined his day, but it might give him a chance to prudently hide himself while the fallout dusts the lovely fields of Olympus.

The good news is that Hera also has Valor, and a hefty respect for her cranky husband, so she probably won't outright kill your friend. (Unless he is dumb enough to be like lying there letting her feed him grapes when she comes out of it or something, in which case he might be toast before she even thinks about it.) But she will destroy his tools and friends, kill people he loves, cause horrible misfortunes to follow him everywhere he goes, and generally make him wish he was dead in order to punish him for his deeds. He's already a Scion of Zeus, so some of that might have been in store for him anyway; maybe he thinks it was worth it for the couple of days of relief, since she hated him anyway, or maybe he'll discover that it somehow got way worse than he ever imagined. A lot of that is up to your Storyteller, and we can't predict what they might decide to do.

He could, I suppose, try to keep using it on her all the time so she never snaps out of it. But that's super hella dangerous and unlikely, since he would have to be near her every time it was time to refresh it, keep beating her probably very rad resistance roll every time, and hope that none of the other gods realized what he was up to and took issue with it (Ares, for example, is probably going to come at him with a dose of his own Vengeance if he realizes that this guy is mind-whammying his mom and setting himself up to be a member of the family the way only legitimate children like himself are supposed to be). And Hera having a ton of anti-Theoi Virtues is just going to cause general problems anyway; if your friend is changing all of them, there will be inevitable conflicts with the other gods when her Sadism Virtue starts causing massive problems for her pantheon full of Valor, or her Censorship clashes with their Expression in an ugly way.

And finally, when I posed this problem to John, his immediate response was, "Oh, shit. Zeus is going to kick that guy's ass." It might seem at first blush that Zeus would not care about this, because Hera being pissed off about his affairs is probably something he doesn't love dealing with, but honestly, this is way not worth it for him. Not only is it going to cause disharmony and fights within his already very temperamental and fractious family, but he's going to have to deal with a wife who has directly opposed Virtues to his own, which can't help but get nasty pretty quickly. And, while he does have to hide from Hera when he's out schmoozing or occasionally try to run interference to keep her from taking out his kids, that's probably not actually all that big a deal for him. Yeah, he loses some lovers and kids here and there, but he still gets to go have affairs, most of the kids live long enough to do important things that enhance his Legend, and at the end of the day he's still got Hera and his legitimate children, all of whom he loves. The current system has been working for him for thousands of years, and your friend probably just screwed a lot of it up.

So... I mean, yeah, he is going to have problems, your friend. Not necessarily insurmountable problems; he can probably find ways to weasel his way out of the worst of the trouble, find the gods who will high-five him for his actions instead of going after him with a pike, and add the tale to the canon of legends about impressive things he's done. But he's done a dangerous deed, and it's going to have dangerous consequences. You may want to avoid standing too close to him for a while.

Two-Faced

Question: What are the reversed Virtues given to people via Heart of Darkness? Like, would Courage be replaced with Cowardice, or with an alternate Virtue that's deemed an opposite... somehow?

Hmm. Well, we first got this question and we were like, "Duh, question-asker, it is obvious, they are the opposites, this person was probably drunk when they sent it in," and then we went to go congratulate each other and eat doughnuts and generally be assholes. But then we thought about it a little more and we were like, "Oh, wait, this is actually pretty complicated," so here we are to apologize for our earlier behavior.

The problem with Heart of Darkness is that it seems totally straightforward and easy in its assertion that a Virtue is reversed to its opposite number, but in reality that is actually a totally subjective call, so it's understandable that there's some confusion. While what something's "opposite" is usually looks pretty obvious, it's got room for interpretation, so one man's obvious may be another man's second-best, I-guess-that-makes-sense version of what they think should actually be the Virtue's opposition. One person might say that the opposite of Order is obviously Chaos, moving that person to support entropy, breakdown and madness at every turn; but another might say that the opposite of Order is obviously Injustice, moving that person to intentionally commit crimes, subvert the law and otherwise be a massive pain in everyone's ass.

So here's what we're going to do. We're going to give you a quick table of about what we would consider the opposite Virtues for Heart of Darkness (some of which have been used in our games before), so you can refer to it as a handy reference if you want to. But it's pretty off-the-cuff, so if you happen to be a Storyteller who firmly believes in a different interpretation of a given Virtue's opposite, feel free to go wild with it instead.

Virtue	Opposite
Ambition	Complacency: This person wants to keep the status quo.
Conviction	Apathy: This person doesn't believe in or care about anything.
Courage	Cowardice: This person is terrified of and actively avoids danger.
Duty	Irresponsibility: This person refuses to accept accountability.
Endurance	Sloth: This person avoids difficulty and revels in laziness.
Expression	Censorship: This person shuts down all forms of expression.
Harmony	Excess: This person destroys balance wherever she sees it.
Intellect	Ignorance: This person hates knowledge and learning.
Loyalty	Treachery: This person looks for every chance to betray others.
Malice	Compassion: This person wants to help and take care of others.
Order	Anarchy: This person hates rules of all kinds.
Piety	Hubris: This person accords respect to no one but herself.
Rapacity	Asceticism: This person avoids all sustenance and pleasure.
Valor	Sadism: This person revels in the suffering of others.
Vengeance	Victimhood: This person refuses to stand up for herself.
Zealotry	Divinity: This person opposes the Titans and supports the gods.

The idea here is not just to have a Virtue with a word that is opposed to the word that represented the original Virtue, but also to encourage those afflicted to behave in ways directly counter to how they would normally act.

I feel like, in that faraway future when we rework Darkness, we will probably end up making a similar table. But in the meantime, this should give you a basic jumping-off point.

Vice Roulette

Question: Can the Heart of Darkness boon be used to reverse Dark Virtues?

Yes, it can! In fact, that's what we've most often seen it used to do in our games; while flipping your friends' Virtues to encourage them to be ridiculous has many situational uses, flipping a Titanspawn creature's Virtues so that it suddenly fundamentally opposes its dark masters is almost always hella useful. When you successfully use Heart of Darkness on a Titanspawn enemy or other entity with Dark Virtues, you suddenly instill new and militant virtues where none existed before:

Dark Virtue	Reversed Virtue
Ambition	Apathy
Malice	Compassion
Rapacity	Asceticism
Zealotry	Rejection of the Titans

If you don't think that's amazing, check out the most famous time it was used that way in our games: Vivian and her band were in a Terra Incognita connected to the Drowned Road and were confronted with a daughter of Mami Wata, a powerful Titanspawn enchantress with an eye for conquest. When it became obvious that combat against her hordes of faithful minions was not possible, Vivian marched in front of her and made an impassioned speech about the principles of the Loa and the wrongness of her crusade to pollute the World's waters. She then used Heart of Darkness to turn the Titanspawn's Zealotry into visceral horror and rejection of Mami Wata and the rest of the Titanrealm, and she immediately defected with Vivian to join the Loa and aid their cause. The Loa, who were not about to pass up an opportunity that came knocking with such watery determination, held a pantheon-wide ritual to officially induct her into their ranks and sever her connection from her home Titanrealm.

Of course, everything was not smooth sailing and this event led to some distressing Titan-related problems down the road, especially once Heart of Darkness wore off and they were left with a very confused and conflicted young goddess with some remaining Dark Virtues and some new god-oriented ones that didn't get along. But no large-scale religious conversion is ever easy, after all.

Of course, the boon can also be used on the normal Virtues of Scions, gods and lesser immortals, turning Endurance to Sloth or Vengeance to Forgiveness, which is not only a hilarious party trick but also very useful when someone's berserk Virtues are ruining your life. It's a crapshoot whether it'll come back and bite you in the ass later... but really, that describes Virtues in general anyway.