Closer than Kin

Question: So Lugh is sometimes said to have been fostered by Goibniu, sometimes by Manannan Mac Lir and sometimes by Tailtiu. So was he fostered by all of them? And how does that work? Just something that I've been wondering about and figured you'd know more about it than I do.

Guys, let's talk about fosterage in ancient Irish culture!

Fosterage - the practice of farming your children out to be raised by a different family for a few years during their childhood - was an incredibly important feature of social life among the ancient Celts, especially prominent in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Kids might be fostered anywhere between the ages of two to fifteen, although girls were fostered less often and younger since they were expected to come home and get married younger than boys were, and were generally kept by their host families for at least four to six years. The basic gist of the idea is that one family would send their child, along with some wealth (usually livestock, but it depended on the family) to make sure they were provided for, to live with another family for several years, learning their trade and basic schooling before returning home to enter their adult lives. Richer families fostered more often, since they were more likely to have the goods needed to support the kid they sent off; you couldn't send a child to a foster family with nothing, since then you would be placing an unfair burden on the fosterers to try to feed another mouth with no help. But people of all classes did do it, even those who didn't have a lot of money to start with, and often fostering ended up in a sort of trade arrangement, where two families swapped kids and then later swapped them back again.

There are two main points to fosterage. The first is that, by growing up for a while in another family with alternative parents and siblings, children gained with a strong sense of loyalty to more people in their clans and homelands than they would have had if they had only lived at home. In essence, as adults those people had two families who were not necessarily related but to both of whom they owed gratitude, respect and filial feeling, which in turn meant that they were more likely to keep solid alliances with others in the area and defend more than just their own homestead from invaders or famine. Especially during the periods of history when Celtic areas were populated by several only loosely-connected clans or tribes, fosterage helped make sure that there was a reason for people in the area to work together and respect one anothers' boundaries and honor.

The second reason for fosterage was simply to make sure that the child got a good education. Whenever possible, children would be fostered out to someone that could hopefully provide them good learning opportunities; druids, chiefs and lords were popular choices, as well as monks and other churchmen once Christianity was established. They would have the opportunity to learn different things than they could have learned at home, broadening their experiences and giving them a better perspective on their territory and neighbors, ally and enemy alike, than they could have gotten in only one household. For the lower-class children who went into fosterage, they were also often sent so that they could begin learning a useful trade from their new family, which might later lead into apprenticeship and eventually a career that would be able to feed a family.

While most children were only fostered to a single family, it wasn't unheard of for a child to be sent to more than one, particularly if he didn't get along with the people in his first foster home or there was a political falling-out between the two families, so Lugh could certainly have been fostered with more than one person. Lebor Gabala Erenn does indeed say that Lugh's father Cian gave him to Tailtu to foster, and he's called her foster-son in passing in the Cath Maige Tuiread as well; there is no more information about what happened to him during that time, but the only other thing said about Tailtu after that is that she died while Lugh was king and he founded the summer harvest festival in her honor. In the story of the Sons of Tuireann, Lugh is repeatedly referred to as the foster-brother of the sons of Manannan, and furthermore runs around liberally using a bunch of the sea-god's magical items with apparent impunity, so it seems like there's also a firm fostering relationship there (and indeed, Lugh goes on borrowing Manannan's shit pretty much forever). It's also possible that Lugh is foster-brothers with Manannan's children because they were also fostered with Tailtu at the same time that he was, although his relationship with their father seems too close for him not to have been fostered there as well. To add another layer of complexity, there's some theorization that Tailtu is herself a daughter of Manannan (although she also definitely has Fir Bolg blood connections, so this is up for debate), in which case she and her father could both have welcomed Lugh in as a foster-son at the same time. Finally, Goibhniu does raise Lugh for at least a while and teach him various crafts (which makes lots of sense, since fostering your kids out to their uncles was a common practice and at least one genealogy has Cian and Goibhniu as brothers), and in at least one version it's implied that Manannan might be the one who drops young Lugh off with him instead of Cian, implying a fosterage timeline. (Of course, in another version Goibhniu finds Lugh as an infant, so pick your flavor.)

Lugh's actually a great example of the fosterage system at work, because his special attributes all seem to be traceable back to his fostering adventures as a child. It's because Lugh lives in the family of Manannan mac Lir that he gets access to a bunch of sweet relics and prophetic insight and has ties to the wilder, sea-oriented half of the pantheon that isn't necessarily descended from Danu, which gives him a much better political understanding and position when he later becomes the High King; and because he fosters with Goibhniu, he also grows up knowing, understanding and eventually allying with his Tuatha relatives, even though he is also half Fomorian and grandson of the great Fomorian king Balor. And it's because Lugh lives in the family of Goibhniu that he learns countless different skills, trades and crafts from the craftsmen among the gods, and because he fosters with Manannan that he learns the esoteric arts of wizardry and medicine and herbalism, leading to him becoming the god most reknowned for knowing how to do everything.

It's possible, maybe even likely, that Irish mythology doesn't mean to be strictly literal about who Lugh's foster parents might have been; by referring to various people as his foster parents, it can imply that he has a wide breadth of experiences and training and therefore could be said to be able to do anything, illustrating his position as the most skilled among gods. But on the other hand, bonds of fosterage were considered extremely important, even trumping blood in some cases, so if you want to make some calls to determine where his deepest loyalties lie, that's a valid choice for any game. We personally are pretty comfortable with his status as the foster-son of Manannan mac Lir, but any of the others are good for a game, too.

The Four Fairest

Question: I'd like to know - what are the so called "Tresures of Erin/Ireland", and how could they be adapted to Scion?

The Four Treasures of Ireland, usually better known as the Four Treasures of the Tuatha de Danann, are some of the most important magical items in Irish mythology. They are the great relics of the gods: the spear of Lugh, the sword of Nuada, the cauldron of the Dagda and the stone of rulership that passes from king to king.

The spear of Lugh (or Sleg Luin) is a magical spear that grants its wielder the ability never to be defeated in battle. Lugh used it to kill his grandfather, the Fomorian Balor, by hurling it through his evil eye and then going on to defeat his armies and restore control of Ireland to the Tuatha de Danann. The sword of Nuada (Claimh Solais, meaning "sword of light") is said to burn with a bright, glowing light, and once it is drawn from its scabbard, no one can escape it if its wielder does not choose to let them go. It was with this sword that Nuada conquered Ireland for the Tuatha when they first arrived, and defeated the forces of the fearsome Fir Bolg. The cauldron of the Dagda (Undry) is a great enchanted vessel that pours forth food and drink in so much bounty that no one who ever eats from it can still be hungry, and is one of the Dagda's many food-creating relics (he also has plants that continually bear fruits and pigs that renew themselves after being roasted and eaten); it may or may not be connected to other magical cauldrons in Irish myth, including the one Goibnhiu uses to brew the mead of immortality, but is definitely a symbol of fertility and plenty either way. And, finally, the stone of rulership (or Lia Fail) is a magical stone that the Tuatha brought from their home to Ireland in time gone by, and whenever the feet of the rightful king of Ireland stand upon it, it sings or cries out from joy to inform the land that its ruler has arrived. It was used to crown all the mythical kings of Ireland, and since it refuses to sing for unfit or illegitimate rulers is also an important object for determining the true right to rule the island. (And if that sounds familiar, it might be because a certain legend of a sword in a stone might very well have some of its roots in the old legend of Lia Fail!)

As for adapting the Four Treasures to Scion, you really barely need to do anything to "adapt" them at all. They're clearly relics owned by the Tuatha de Danann, and as such may appear being used by those gods or even granted to sufficiently high-level Scions, either to own or to use for a short time as part of an adventure. All four of them are actually statted in Scion: Companion on page 30, but as usual we would recommend ignoring that except as a starting point; these are clearly divine, star-level relics owned by gods, not three- to five-dot relics that beginning Scions should be starting with, and we would save them for important plot moments or the use of the Tuatha alone unless you have a really good reason otherwise.

You may also be able to do some neat stuff with the legends surrounding the relics; for example, Lia Fail is supposedly still standing in Ireland on the Hill of Tara, but it was damaged by Cu Chulainn long ago and has never sung again, so you might want to spin a plot having to do with repairing it (or perhaps it isn't broken at all, but there has just been no worthy king in Ireland since Cu Chulainn, hmm?). Manannan mac Lir, god of sorcery who acts as Lugh's foster-father and is one of the senior-ranking Tuatha, serves in Irish mythology as the owner or caretaker of most famous relics, so Scions with a connection to him might be able to borrow some of the Treasures - Manannan does in fact lend his relics out, something that few gods do but that he has at least done repeatedly for Lugh - or go to him for advice on how to find or handle them if he does not currently possess them.

The Four Treasures are a great place to start with crazy awesome high-level Irish relics, but they're just the tip of the iceberg; Irish mythology is lousy with magic items and super relics used by both gods and mortals. Scions of the Tuatha might also encounter the eight relics that Lugh demanded the sons of Tuireann recover from faraway lands and bring back to Ireland or other single relics such as the famous harp of the Dagda, sword of Manannan mac Lir, silver hand of Nuada, fearsome spear of Cu Chulainn, and so on and so forth.

Skills Gone Wild

Question: Hey guys, just wondering why you removed Lugh's Athletics associated ability. And why does he have Survival and Empathy? Thanks!

Well, Survival and Empathy are easy; Lugh gained those very recently because he lost Craft and Science in the wake of the new changes to crafting and needed new abilities to replace them. Lugh has something of an impressive instant rapport with the rest of his pantheon, not to mention the ability to lie to the Sons of Tuireann like a stone-cold bitch, so Empathy seemed appropriate as an ability association. He was given Survival as a catch-all for The Guy Who Is Good At Everything, since it covers farming, tracking and everything else that has to do with outdoorsmanship.

For a minute I stared at this and thought, "Hmm, why did we take Athletics away?" Then I realized that we did that a long time ago, when we removed it to make room for Craft and Science, which were much more appropriate for Lugh's jack-of-all-trades abilities. Then, when we removed those, we subbed in the current two.

But you know, I'm wondering about it now, because Athletics certainly seems Lugh-ish, and I'm not sure if it might be a better fit than Survival. John, whatcha think?

Untangling the Clans

Question: I wasn't gonna ask this, since you've been harassed by a lot of Welsh questions, but since it concerns the Irish as well, I figured I'd ask anyway. While Danu has 8 generations seperating her from the Irish gods, Don directly has children, and one of those children is Arianrhod, who in turn has Dylan and Lleu. So if Lleu and Lugh are the same god, should Lugh be treated as older than the rest of the Tuatha? And if thats the case, should he be treated as a member of the Welsh pantheon or the Irish?

Fucking Lugh. Every time.

As we all know, Celtic mythology is a clusterfuck; different Celtic peoples worshiped several of the same figures but told different stories about them, and when those stories include genealogy, everything goes straight to nTech Duinn in a handbasket. Lugh, according to the Irish, is the son of Ethniu and Cian, grandson of Balor and at least ten generations removed from Danu. But according to the Welsh, he's the son of Arianhrod, who is the daughter of Don, which is probably just Danu's Welsh name. To further add to the confusion, he's not the only one with this problem - Don is also the mother of Gofannon, better known to the Irish as Goibnhiu, one of the Tri Dee Dana and a bucket of generations away from the source as well, and of Eufydd, widely considered to be known as Ogma when you skip across the water, also a son of Ethniu in Ireland. And, of course, Irish Nuada is in Wales probably Llud Llaw Eraint, who's the son of Beli Mawr, who happens to be Arianhrod's dad and Don's consort and probably the same as the Gaulish Belenos, so somehow he's even higher in the genealogical chart but now not related to Don/Danu at all and possibly a Gaul.

Basically, Celtic mythology is drunk. Some Storytellers may simply choose to shrug and accept this, and that's a totally valid way of going about things. If your game doesn't have a pressing need for you to sit down and rearrange three different pantheons' worth of family trees and equivalencies, then for god's sake, don't do it.

For everyone else, however, the headache is only just beginning. With all this going on, it's not really surprising that the original Scion books just decided to sweep the Welsh gods under the Tuatha's rug and pretend they weren't an independent force, or that the Nemetondevos supplement just threw its hands up in the air via sidebar and said, "Yeah, well, Lugh can't be in every pantheon, deal with it." A lot of the decision-making surrounding who goes where and why and how far will depend on your game's needs; are your Scions(or your story) interested in playing with a bunch of different Celtic pantheons and their interrelations, or will that stuff just be extra or in the way? Is Wales going to be a major force in your story, or can you safely handwave some of this stuff? Do you have Scions from all three areas, and are the players themselves looking to explore any of this?

The golden rule is, of course, that when a god turns up in more than one pantheon, the pantheon in which he's most important and central should be considered his "home". Of course, Lugh is pissing all over that rule right now by being one of the main characters in all three of the Celtic pantheons, but for some of the smaller figures, you can pursue that line and do all right - for example, Eufydd is much less important in Welsh mythology than Ogma is in Ireland, so it would make more sense to declare that Ogma is a Tuatha god who sometimes visits and gets worshiped in Wales, not the other way around.

As for deciding who's senior to whom based on genealogy... well, as you can see, there are multiple options and none are really more "right" than the others. If you're primarily rolling with either the Irish or Welsh myths, you can ignore the genealogical claims of the other with impunity, but if you're using both, compromises are going to have to happen. The easiest thing to do is just to declare that the eight generations of Tuatha between Danu and her most famous children is a poetic device meaning "a really goddamn long time" instead of a literal number of people. Yeah, that means you're pretending that some of those gods whose names are listed in the Tuatha's historical lineage might not have existed, but since the vast majority of them never did anything and are known only as a name, that might be okay. If you don't like ignoring those poor disenfranchised ancestors, you might also consider that Danu keeps having children even several generations later, possibly with her own offspring, so that when Irish mythology says Nuada is the son of Eochaid and never mentions any woman involved, Danu herself might be the mother, continually procreating on down the tree. You could also rule that one or both of these pantheons is just straight lying about their heritage - either the Tuatha de Danann claiming they have many more generations than they actually do to give them legitimacy, particularly when it comes to their claim on Ireland, or that the Welsh gods are not actually as close to ancient Don as they say and are conveniently omitting some intervening gods to make themselves sound more important.

Lugh is still always the problem, though, because both of his birth stories are very strong and apparently contradictory. While there's a general theme in common - divine princess has accident baby, turns out to be Lugh - Ethniu, the Fomorian princess, doesn't have a lot in common with Arianhrod, as Welsh a goddess as they come. There you may simply need to make a choice about which one you want to use; we have no easy answer for you. As we said, Celtic mythology is drunk. Whichever you choose, treat him as having a family position appropriate to the myth you're running with.

Someday we'll make our own determination on all this and put it in a PDF, whenever we have a chance to really sink our teeth into the Welsh pantheon, but that day is not today. Which is probably good for our sanity.

Bres Votes Himself

Question: Who is the current king of the Tuatha?

Well, that depends on your game's decisions about what, exactly, is going on with those psychotic Celtic warmachines.

In the absolute technicality of Irish mythology, nobody's king of the Tuatha de Danann; they all died at one point or another, and in the strictest interpretation of the stories there's nobody left. Of course, that would make it hard to have any Tuatha to do anything with in Scion, so we'll have to ignore that little detail (as we so often do. Tuatha, why you so crazy?).

If we presume that all the Tuatha on the playable roster are as alive and active as one another, then we have a veritable menu to choose from. No fewer than three of the Tuatha have served as High King in the past.

Nuada Airgetlam was the first king of the Tuatha (well, during the time that their myths are active, anyway). Thanks to his incredible courage, physical perfection and prowess in battle he was among the most beloved of his pantheon, and he led his people to victory over the Fir Bolg and secured Ireland to become their homeland. He has served as High King twice; he lost the office when his hand was cut off in battle because it is required that all kings of the Tuatha be physically perfect, and once his hand was restored he took up ruling the pantheon again until the war against the Fomorians caused him to pass control over to a more capable warrior general.

The Dagda, the jolly old father god of many of the lesser Tuatha and renowned warrior and reveler, was also High King of the Tuatha for a short period of time. It's unclear exactly when his reign was - we know he was king while Aengus was seeking his wife Caer Ibormeith, but it's hard to know when exactly that tale falls on the continuum of Irish myth. The Dagda's sometimes considered the king of the Aes Sidhe as well, suggesting this is perhaps a very late development from the time that the Tuatha depart to go underhill and become the fairy folk.

Lugh, finally, is the wartime king of the Tuatha; though he was never in any official line of succession, his skills as a commander on the field of battle caused Nuada to hand the reins over to him during the war against the Fomorians. Since basically everybody else, including the other two High Kings, died during said war, he remained the de facto king until his own death some time later.

Technically, Lugh was the High King last, so depending on what you rule happened with the Tuatha, he might still be in power. Then again, he was granted that power by Nuada specifically for purposes of the war against the Fomorians, so once that ended it might have reverted back to the Silver Hand. But then again, the Fomorians are loose again now with the release of the Titans, so it's possible Nuada could have handed it right back for the same reasons. And if you decide that the Dagda was High King last, going off the fairy theory, then you could also say he might still be in power. A lot depends on what you decide the "deaths" of the various kings meant, how they avoided true death within Scion's setting and what political motivations might be at play between them.

Personally, we like to run Nuada as the High King; he was the original HK, after all, before it was cool. He's the archetypal perfect king, representing justice, order, beauty and perfection, and the fact that the Tuatha brought him back into power once suggests to us that they probably love him enough to do it again. He's the leader of the Tuatha for us (well... at least he was before Woody ruined everything. Now Manannan mac Lir's in charge. Shit got weird).

But there are other options if you don't want to keep Nuada at the helm, most notably Lugh as a possible wartime king, either on his own or under Nuada's aegis. Every Storyteller will probably want to make a different call based on the politics and feel they want for their individual games.

The Man Who Does It All

Question: I noticed Lugh lost Dexterity and Wits. As the god of skill this seems a strange choice since more skills require Dexterity than Strength. Wits also seems strange since it includes knacks like Jack of All Trades, Talent Mirror, and Don't Read The Manual which would be of great help to Lugh which makes more sense than claiming he has all skills maxed. Even the myth of his contest with Ogma is better explained with a use of Talent Mirror.

This question brings to light a common misconception in Scion: that if a god doesn't have an Attribute or Purview associated, they must not have any of it. I'm not sure where this idea comes from - after all, how many Scions buy only a couple of things to maximum and have absolutely nothing in any other areas? - but it's definitely not a viewpoint we share. Just because a god doesn't have Epic Wits associated with him doesn't mean he can't have, say, six dots of it. In fact, most gods probably do have at least a few dots in most Epic Attributes, and probably a smattering of boons across other purviews. There's just no reason they wouldn't, and it would certainly help explain weird cases in which gods do things that normally fall outside their purviews - say, when a war god heals his lame horse or a fertility god manages to blunder into the underworld.

So, in the case of Lugh, I'm sure he does have very serviceable Dexterity and Wits - but he's not a god of either, so he doesn't end up with them associated. As god of skills, it seems more likely to me that he just has those skills than that he's faking them with Epic Wits knacks; he doesn't need Jack of All Trades because he is actually a jack of all trades, all by himself. That's his thing. Lugh probably has ten dots in pretty much every ability, because that's what he's all about. And while it'd be difficult to have every Art/Control/Craft/Science imaginable maxed out, it only takes one dot of Epic Wits for Lugh to pick up Don't Read the Manual and Jack of All Trades. That's not enough of a reason for him to have Epic Wits associated; he doesn't have any myths in which he behaves particularly wittily or thinks on his feet more than anybody else. I'm sure he probably has five to seven dots of Epic Wits, but there's no reason for him to have it associated.

The myth of his contest with Ogma certainly could be a use of Talent Mirror, but it could also just be a straight-up normal contest; both have Strength and Thrown associated by our reckoning, so they're actually perfectly evenly matched without any need for Lugh to borrow Ogma's expertise. Lugh's already good at throwing things, as evidenced by the story of him spearing Balor's eye right out the back of his head; Lugh's big draw is that he has all the skills the other Tuatha have, not that he can kind of fake those skills for a scene.

Dexterity's basically the same story; while I'm sure he has a respectable number of dots of Epic Dexterity, enough to hit bad guys and successfully perform craft and skill abilities, he doesn't actually come off as a god of Dexterity. He's not particularly faster than anyone else, or more lithe, or renowned for deft hands, or anything like that. We didn't see any reason for him to have Epic Dexterity associated except for the same vague reasoning of "well, he's good at skill", but again that's more likely to be illustrated by him just having tons of dots in Abilities, not Epic Attributes. A goddess who weaves the fabric of the universe with her fingers has Epic Dexterity associated; a god who is so swift he can run across the world in the blink of an eye has Epic Dexterity associated. Lugh doesn't have any comparable Dexterity imagery or stories, so we dropped it like it was hot. Strength, on the other hand, not only plays into his contest with Ogma but also makes a strong showing when he hits Balor's eye so hard that it shoots out the back of his head. So Strength is in, Dexterity and Wits, neither of which have any real basis with Lugh other than vague association with skills, are out.

And at any rate, many of the skills Lugh boasts of having wouldn't have anything to do with Dexterity or Wits anyway. Being a physician, sorcerer, historian or poet, for example, all things he includes in his list of talents, are not exactly heavy Dexterity things; he's not talking about all manual labor tasks, he's talking about whole spheres of expertise, and those are best expressed as Abilities.

We spent a lot of time during our discussions over Lugh just wishing we could give him a zillion Abilities associated instead of just six. Or Arete. But alas, he is not Greek and has to remain fair in comparison to other deities when it comes to lending XP to his Scions, so we chose the six Abilities that seemed most strongly present in his stories and acknowledge that, should Lugh appear in person in a game, he is a goddamn dynamo of Ability dots far beyond just those six.