Scion AMA: Gangs of New York, Mark I

It's time for some AMA questions again, this time from the most infamous group of all: Michael Chambers, a.k.a. The Great Terrorist, and his band of cronies. New York has never been the same. This set is mostly dudes since most of the ladies are still working on their questions, but never fear, there will be more borderline internationally illegal incidents to come later.

Quick Fix

It's time for another big-bang post full of quick answers! For those who want to keep track of the ever-expanding vortex of the Questionado, it's currently at 194. We're down 7! Success!

Question: Do Scions automatically know the language of their pantheon?

No, they do not. They know whatever language they actually know, and won't magically learn their pantheon's native tongue just from being activated as a Scion. If you're thinking of that weird thing that the Percy Jackson books do, we're sorry to disappoint you - nobody ever has a language "hard-coded into their DNA". (But you can get Language Mastery and that's basically about as good!)

Question: Just noticed that on the Annuna you have a profile up for Nanshe (with 6 associated) but she is not listed as a playable god. Is there any particular reason for this or are you just holding off for a major Annuna update?

Sometimes gods get kicked off our rosters for not being high enough Legend, but we keep their pages around in case other people still want to look at them. You'll also find "secret" god-pages for Sif, Geb, Kebauet, Dian Cecht, and a few others.

Question: What gods would you suggest for an expanded British pantheon? At the moment I’m thinking of adding Tommy Atkins, Merlin, Herne the Hunter and Tom Hickathrift (A.K.A. Jack the Giant-Killer) to Britannia, John Bull and Robin Hood. I don’t want it to resemble Arthurian legend too much, as that’s a little too Christianised for my tastes, but I want it to stand out from the Tuatha and the Welsh gods as well.

Sorry, we can't help you with this one. We are passionate haters of the World at War pantheons, including the Allied/British pantheon, and would never make them a "pantheon" of gods of an equal standing with people like Ra or Zeus. At best, we'd consider them former Scions, undercover personas of various established gods, or in a few cases Legendary Mortals. (But we do consider Herne the Hunter to be an alternate persona of Cernunnos, if that helps you with anything.)

Question: First off, I definitely love what you did with the Inue. In terms of Native American pantheons, most of the fan stuff has been to take some of the gods from each pantheon and bring them together as one like the Manitou. What is your opinion on something such as that and do you feel each of the individual pantheons can stand on their own like the Inue?

We're not fans. We think the pantheons of all different areas of the world should have an equal shot at being Scion parents, and that there's no reason to assume that the tons of Native American pantheons wouldn't be just as distinct from one another as all the pantheons of the other continents.

Question: If a paleontologist Scion wanted to, could they make their personal Santum a chain of islands modeled after Las Cinco Muertes from the Jurassic Park franchise?

You can put whatever you want to in your Sanctum - it's your house and you can decorate it as you please! (But that only goes for in your house, so you won't be able to use it to create a free dinosaur army that can leave to lay waste to New York with you.)

Question: Do you think Gods' Honest is broken knack?

No - if we thought that, we wouldn't be letting our Scions use it all the time. I'm not sure why you think it's broken, since you didn't say, but feel free to tell us why in the comments.

Question: What do you do when a PSP boon requires a roll of a Virtue (like how Familial Sacrifice's pool is Conviction) and the Scion doesn't have that virtue? Do you just have them botch the roll, or do you have them use the next most appropriate virtue?

They can't make that roll; they have zero dice. They probably shouldn't have swapped it out, or should try to get it back if it was taken from them. However, they could still use a Virtue Channel or Legendary Deed to get some dice/autos if they still want to use the boon anyway.

Question: When purchasing dots of Epic Stamina, you get health levels. Are these -0, -1, -2 or -4?

Always -0. Dots of Epic Stamina also remove the wound penalty negatives from the health boxes you already have as you get more of them.

Question: When a Scion spends Legend, are Fatebonds only formed with those physically present? EX: if someone catches a film of them and uploads it onto YouTube.

Yes, you will only gain Fatebonds to people who are actually nearby when you spend the Legend. If someone recorded your deed and uploaded it to YouTube, no one who watched it would get Fatebound because you would not be spending any Legend when they saw it.

Question: I was looking through the graveyard, and Jesus Christ, what happened in Langley?

Vote for Strawberry Fields fiction, and find out. ;)

Question: So, weirdest question ever about Michael Chambers. How would any man or woman he sleeps with want to deal with a cold piece of metal on his penis? I can't imagine any woman wanting that inside them.

We... are not sure whether or not you're serious. But in case you are, you may want to do a careful and discreet Google of the term "Prince Albert piercing", and god go with you.

And we'll stick with those ten for today!

Anne's Fiction Corner

Okay, it's been like ten million kazillion years since I posted fiction, and I'm sorry about that. There are lots of things to blame, like the Inue and the boon rewrites and school and work and my stupid busted arm, but really what it boils down to is that I'm the worst. So... sorry about being the worst.

But today, I am back with a new story, and a long-awaited one at that. Today's story is Mother, Mother, starring Michael Chambers in his debut fiction. It is a tale of children and parents, love, sex and all the things they mean to different people.

Since the polls have been all dramatic lately, here's what I'm going to do with the fiction polls: I'm going to set them with voting options for the storylines that haven't gotten a story in this round of voting, and keep doing that until all of them get a turn. Since last time we voted on everything except Gangs of New York, this time we'll vote on everything except Gangs and the new winner, Better Next Time, and we'll keep doing that until we start over with all the options again.

This is just for the fiction voting - we're still discussing the other polls. And, as always, I reserve the right to go off on a bender and write something just because I want to, because only I am the boss of me. Let's see some more stories faster now!

The poll's being reset, and here are the new options!:

• If you vote for Eastern Promises, you're voting for stories from the nineteenth-century band in a world of colonialism and industry - Leona Middleton, Samuel Vanderbilt and Paniwi Bayteru of the Netjer, Faruza Alinejad and Yadi of the Yazata, Mohini Misra and Padma Billingsworth of the Deva, James Howard and Alvin de Lafayette of the Anunna, and many more. They're currently fighting corruption among local authorities, learning what other cultures have to offer them and finding ways to survive no matter what the cost.
• If you vote for Skeins of Fate, you're voting for stories from our frozen northern band - Aurora Dahl, Woody Anderson and Will Nordstrom of the Aesir, Kettila Blomgren of the Teotl and Vivian Landry of the Orisha. They're currently handling the looming shadow of Ragnarok, the fallout of their parents' political decisions and their own personal desire to deviate from the paths Fate has set them.
• If you vote for Strawberry Fields, you're voting for stories from the wild-eyed Celtic band - Dierdre O'Riordan, Seamus McMann, Jude Shriver and Auggie MacDonough of the Tuatha de Danann and Alaina Bertrand and Ignatius Rex of the Nemetondevos. They're currently gearing up to challenge the combined might of the military and their shadowy puppeteers, while reaching out to their kinsmen around the world.

Enjoy!

Kids in Gangs

Question: What can you tell us about the new characters from the New York game?

Our youngest baby, Gangs of New York, has been affectionately nicknamed "worst game ever" by its players and "home of the stupidest decisions" by its Storytellers. It is consistently batshit insane, but also totally epically fun, so everything's working as intended.

Like Eastern Promises, the Gangs character roster rotates with each story, so several different characters have made appearances in the same continuity.

The first group consisted of James Keenan, Mabel Grey, Michael Chambers, Nic Mason, Rick Nolan and Valentina Radic, and they got their entrance into the problems of the divine when a high-society Manhattan New Year's Eve party was crashed by some human-sacrificin', dude-seducin' ancient Babylonian sirens. Michael, a high-class prostitute Scion of Ishtar who was being paid to attend the party as a celebrity's handsome escort (for the Broadway fans in the area, he was dating Anthony Rapp at the time), was the focal point of the problem, since he accidentally enhanced the summoning ritual that brought in the bad guys and turned out to have previously been sexually involved with their leader, to boot. Rick Nolan, a Scion of Mah and the New York male equivalent of Paris Hilton who was only at the party because Nic had called him and asked him to lend it his star-studded presence, ended up in the basement trying to defuse the situation along with Valentina Radic, Scion of Bastet and an international jewel thief and member of a secret crime syndicate, who had been lying low in New York to await contact from her fellow thieves after a major heist in Toronto. James Keenan, a Scion of Hades and hard-boiled New York private eye, followed Mabel Grey, Scion of Hecate and known peddler of Weird Shit at her magic shop, to the scene of the insanity thinking she was a demon, only to become immediate allies against the security forces that turned on them and then failed to contain the supernatural threat. Nic, a Scion of Enlil and the party's organizer and all-around golden boy of the celebrity party elite, took a look at the devastation left of his carefully-planned event and got drunk out of his mind.

In the process of everything, buildings were blown up, mysterious notes from parents were received, magical teddy bears broke James' knees and got Rick into a photogenically compromising position with Michael, Mabel and James became the best buddy-cop movie in history before he conceived a burning hatred against the New York police force that eventually led to his downfall, Valentina rode an elevator into the sky Willy-Wonka-style and Michael was declared an international terrorist. It was a wild ride.

The second group, currently still playing, consists of Michael, still in the game, and Adira Bazzi, Alan Parillo, Jake Devon, Simon Rockwell and Winona Nelson. Thanks to Michael's involvement in the debacle of the previous story, his terrorist affiliations have made him wanted by the police and Homeland Security, and in the process of trying to escape them he hijacked Alan's boat (leaving the Scion of Poseidon, a Canadian national on retirement vacation with his wife, suddenly implicated in his crimes), got Winona (a Scion of Nergal with a terrifying leper-like appearance and a distinctly unpleasant outlook on life) and her fellow hobos riddled with bullets during a police firefight, ruined Jake's career as a prizefighter on the underground boxing circuit (something his father Vahram is probably not too pleased about), accidentally got Simon, a Scion of Anubis and forensic scientist for the NYPD, on the wrong side of the law, and dragged Adira into magical combat before even figuring out her name. The rest of the characters refer to him as The Life-Ruiner.

So far, they've battled living statues and approximations of gods, fled from massive mobilization of army and national security forces, discovered mortals that can somehow pinpoint Scions and create magical Titanic energy rifts, gotten the local good witch of Central Park killed, created acid bombs from stolen car batteries, crashed several trains, struggled to even find the secret coded puzzles their parents want them to solve, let alone succeed at them, encouraged Poseidon to devastate the city with a tidal wave and moved into a homeless commune in the subway tunnels beneath New York City. They're in pretty bad shape and running scared, but ever hopeful about the situation getting better. After all, it almost has to, right?

We're totally loving this game, by the way. There have already been two character deaths and more would not surprise us, but it's action-packed and hilarious at every turn, and the players are a riot.

I suspect this question is here to drum up interest in Winona on the fiction poll; the next round of voting will probably also include Michael and Valentina as possible storytellers. Show them some love, and we'll write them a story!

EDIT: Hey, did you guys know we also have some awesome fanart of the Gangs of New York characters? In addition to all their awesome character portraits, done by Jon Niemeister, we also have these awesome scenes!

Nic and Rick get into a gentlemanly fight over the charms of a certain Babylonian siren! (Art by Theo Wolff!)


Mabel and James heroically set forth into the dangerous basements beneath the New Year's Eve party! (Art by Steph!)


Valentina bails out of an airborne elevator like a boss! (Art by Theo Wolff!)


In an unfinished sketch, Rick, Michael and an agitated Nic argue over strategy! (Art by Steph!)

Man, we have so much awesome fanart we should probably find somewhere on the site to put it all, eh?