Ten Questions with Excited Waving Arms

On today's blog, project updates, future possibilities, a call to action for you guys, and a whole bunch of questions!

Question: How do you handle "secrets" in myth? Things that supposedly certain gods do not know (and would have extreme reactions if they found out) yet are an established part of the myths about them?

Question: How do you explain the story of King Midas? I mean, the guy's an ordinary mortal who gets the power to turn anything he touches into gold. What Scion powers can give such a power to a mortal?

Question: Can you kill a death god? Should you be able to kill a death god? Does killing a death god really accomplish anything?

Question: What do you think would happen if a Scion, who has not yet received a Visitation, were to simply stumble across a Birthright relic that doesn't belong to an active Scion? Could that result in a kind of "triggered activation" of the Scion's divine blood? Or would nothing happen since it isn't a true Visitation?

Question: How do you determine the damage from some of the more extreme attacks that Scion's power allows? If my Strength monster picks up the Empire State Building and hurls it at a Titan Avatar, or some other powerful foe, how do I determine how badly such an impact hurt the target? If I used Create Earth to conjure up a mess of diamonds, then threw the diamonds into a tornado conjured by Tornado Tamer and hurled the whole thing at a bad guy? How would I determine THAT damage?

Question: How far is too far for you guys at GothamByNight when it comes to PC morality? When do you take one of your Players to the side and ask them if their PC could still be considered "a good guy/aligned with the Gods" and not some Chaotic Evil Titan in waiting that is deserving of a Dark Virtue or two? For example, do you think that a God-level PC Band's active attempts to wipeout humanity or kill off their parents for their own ambitions justify them gaining Dark Virtues?

Question: Do you guys have anyway of setting apart gods and goddesses of hunting mechanically? I'm working on some homebrew and I feel like these hunt gods need some association to really drive the point home, but I don't know what. I almost find myself wanting to make a Hunt Purview, but that's a heck of a lot of work. But what else to use? Is War fitting? An attribute that most fits their hunting style? I'm really at a loss here.

Question: You said in an earlier vlog that the difference between Followers/Creatures and Guides were that Creatures and Followers were below you and Guides were beings above you. Now what if I have a character who's got contact to the Valkyries as a Guide from Hero - would it be possible at Demigod that they turned into more like an equal ally type of thing? That instead of them just giving you good advice, they help you out physically when you really need it.

Question: Nut is a Titan, Shu is a Titan, and Geb is probably going to be a Titan as well - but the most ancient of them, Ra, is not?

Question: So! If everyone on Earth, for whatever reason, suddenly got a point of Legend, and the Gods were then able to get up to their old tricks without having to worry about Fatebinding, would they? If they could without having to worry about Fatebinding, would the Gods return to Earth? Related question, is there anything you can think of from any mythology that would be capable of giving everyone on Earth a legend point? Some Uber Relic or ritual that, if done, would give everyone that kind of power?

To our sixth questioner, we now realize that while we talked about PC morality in answer to your question, we didn't really address Dark Virtues. Our rule of thumb is that Dark Virtues are something PCs gain by contact with Titans or otherwise through magical events, so for the most part we would not give them any Dark Virtues automatically just because they're being jerks. It is entirely possible for Scions (and gods, too!) to be sometimes or even often malicious without actually having Malice, just as it's possible to be interested in knowledge and learning without having Intellect or to bravely run into battle without having Courage. However, Scions who are consistently evil or often do things that are in line with the goals of the Titans are likely to attract their attention, in which case it is entirely possible they might end up corrupted by a Titan Virtue later on.

If you want to email us boons, do it here! Go nuts!

From the Heart of the Vortex!

Today, we're clearing out a bunch of quick and easy answers! Blog attack, go!

Question: Would you use Larceny or Art/Science: Computer/Hacking for hacking?

Art (Computer), or, if you happen to have the Polymath boon, it would fall under Art (Modern). It's too specialized a skill to be done with plain old Larceny.

Question: Do improvements to relics always have to come from a crafter god, or can certain relics gain power through mythical events like their Scion owners gaining legend? For example, if a Scion defeated a powerful monster and gained a Legend dot, would her magic axe gain new abilities?

Relic improvements always need to come from Artistry within the game itself; you won't spontaneously gain new relic points from things you do, because that would be overpowered and difficult for a Storyteller to adjudicate (not to mention making people with Artistry have a purview that was way less useful). However, you gain new Birthright points when you become a Demigod and when you become a God, so you could have relics spontaneously gain dots at those jumps if you wanted to.

Question: Why doesn't Ra have Animal (Scarab)?

Because it's really Khepri, the scarab god, who has that association. Ra was syncretized with Khepri sometimes, where the beetle god was seen as Ra's aspect as the rising sun, but if we gave Ra associations for everyone he was ever syncretized with, he'd be Voltron.

Question: According to your posts, Hecate is still a titan (or at least very, very titanic). Does this mean she can't sire scions, or is she goddess enough to do so? Do her hypothetical kids have any side effects (showing up when scenting the titanic, gaining dark virtues etc) or are they just normal scions who might have to put up with some prejudice due to their heritage?

Hecate is a goddess for purposes of our games, and creates Scions normally as part of the Theoi. She is of Titanic lineage and occasionally called such in Greek mythology, but she's the same generation as Zeus' children and had a strong cult worship that made her close enough to humanity to be considered a god.

Question: What do Pakiy, Emamu and Stvaranje mean?

Etymological roots for all the Titanrealms can be found in this old post.

Question: Aura of Dread doesn't specify that it's only for Scions with Negative Epic Appearance, yet it is clearly the starting point for the Negative Knacks. Since it doesn't say "Negative only" does that mean an attractive Scion can still take that Knack? If I wanted my good-looking warrior Scion to still project a terrifying image on the battlefield, would that work?

No. Aura of Dread, like all the other knacks in the terrorizing tree, us usable by negative Epic Appearance only. It should say that, so we'll fix it, but it should also be pretty obvious, y'all.

Question: Are the Avatars going to get worked over with the boon revamp? Or is that a separate project?

It's a separate project, but one that we hope to work on soon, and we're talking about basic ideas for it while we work on the APP project.

Question: I was looking for how Sanctums worked, and found that your post from April 1, 2012 that said you were working on definite rules. Is that something thats progressing without a bar? has the project been demolished? up for vote? finished but not released?

It isn't being worked on at this particular moment, but we could certainly add it to the voting block if it's something you guys would like to happen sooner rather than later!

Question: Creatures are always lower legend than the scion. Does this also apply to Nahualli? I mean, they're YOU?

No. Nahualli are not Creature Birthrights and are not bound by that rule. They are a unique kind of Birthright all their own.

Question: Hello! If a Scion has a child as a Hero or Demigod, I know that the ichor would still flow from the grandparent and the grandparent will be able to activate the child, but what happens if the Demigod becomes a god - could they THEN activate their own child?

Yep, sure can.

Question: I was looking at your Perceptive Capacity table. Does it mean that the furthest any mortal can see is 12 yards (5 on the table)? That seems a little harsh to me, am I misunderstanding the rules?

You are, but that's okay, we explain it in this old post back here.

Question: Do the Aztecs have a legendary smith like Vølund or Hephaestus?

They do not; most of their armor and weapons were made of non-metal materials like obsidian and stiffened paper or cloth. They had artisans that performed goldsmithing (mostly for jewelry and ritual objects) and occasionally traded with their neighbors for bronze, but it wasn't an important enough style of crafting to merit its own deity.

Question: Do Fatebonds get the XP discount if the player has the appropriate Me PSP associated with a purview?

Yes, both the player and their Fatebonds get to buy (or unbuy) that purview at the lower rate thanks to Me.

Question: Do Empath auto-successes apply to Manipulation + Empathy rolls for lying?

Yes, they apply to anything that you roll Empathy for.

And that'll be it for now! Don't worry, we won't be doing a lot of these (we prefer the big in-depth posts!), but since the questionado has grown to a current maelstrom of 203, we figured we'd get a few of the quick ones out of the way.

Back into the fray!

End Times

Question: Are there any other cultures that have a divine end of days scenario aside from the Aesir and Ragnarok?

Oh, sure, tons of them. Eschatology, the study of the events of the end of the world, is not a purely European concept at all; many other cultures have their own ideas of what will happen at the death of the universe, some of them specifically marked and dated, others only implied.

The Norse stories of Ragnarok are very specific about times, places and people involved and so on, largely because they're predicated on prophecies. Details have been furnished by seers and soothsayers who have the ability to see into the future of Fate's weave; other cultures may not have as strong an emphasis on prophetic visions, and instead base their end-of-the-world scenarios on information gleaned from scripture or estimations based on their cosmological concepts of time and space.

One of the most famous, thanks to its religion still being a thriving and living one, is the end of the Kali Yuga in Hinduism. According to Hindu theology, every "day" - equivalent to literally millions of years, varying from four to several hundred depending on the scripture and sect - for Brahma, who experiences time much more slowly than mere humans, is equal to four ages in the world, roughly 24,000 years total. These four ages are the Satya Yuga (Age of Truth), in which religion, wisdom and prosperity are the rule of the universe; the Treta Yuga (Age of Three, referring to the number of pillars of Dharma remaining to support things at this time), in which evil begins to afflict the world but great heroes also arise to combat it; the Dvapara Yuga (Age of Two, referring to the now only at half-strength number of pillars), in which humanity is flawed but also kingly and learns to expiate their sins through study of the holy Vedas; and the Kali Yuga (Age of Kali, here referring to the asura Kali, not the goddess of the same name), during which humanity has degenerated into wanton sin and depravity and forgotten all but the most basic teachings of Hinduism.

We're currently in the Kali Yuga, which started at the moment that Vishnu left his last earthly incarnation, according to most interpretations of Hindu mythology (yes, just as in Greek mythology, we are the worst ever crop of humanity. Go us). Just as in the Norse myths of Ragnarok, the end of the Kali Yuga - and therefore the end of the world, when Brahma blinks and restarts the world once more at the beginning of the Satya Yuga - there are several prophesied events, culminating in a final showdown between the asura Kali, who is the one who has destroyed all righteousness on earth during the centuries of the Kali Yuga, and Kalki, the final avatar of Vishnu, who is destined to defeat him and in so doing end the world and make it ready for the beginning of the Satya Yuga again.

There's a ton of scripture out there on the Kali Yuga, not to mention reams of literature written by Hindu theologists and philosophers over the past thousand years or two, so if you want to really dig into it in detail, libraries and the internet are ready to help.

Of course, seldom in Scion do we discuss the problems of the Deva without also mentioning the Yazata, so a quick side trip into Zoroastrianism gets us another awesome end of the world scenario. The ancient Persian word for the event is Frashokereti, meaning "things become excellent", and as in Hindu tradition the world is broken up into ages, although in this case there are three instead of four (the first two were the Age of Creation and the Age of Pollution or Combination), and we're currently heading into the Age of Separation, when good and evil fight for supremacy.

According to Zoroastrian prophecy in the Avesta, the end of the world will be ushered in by the Saoshyant, a special hero and the son of the great Ahura Mazda himself (or in other traditions, Zarathustra), born from a virgin who bathes in a lake in which a trace of the supreme god's semen was left in order to impregnate her. The Saoshyant (who in Scion terms is definitely a kind of super specialized Scion, although in what terms totally depends on your take on Ahura Mazda) will wield the weapons of Vahram, resurrect the righteous dead to live again and lead the Yazata against the evil forces of the daeva, eventually defeating them. The gods will then melt the world into rivers of molten lava and metal, which will wash over all living things; the worthy and good will be able to wade through them to become one with heaven in bliss, but the evil will be utterly destroyed, along with Angra Mainyu and all his daeva minions.

Slightly north of Persia we run into the Slavs, who have their own eschatological forecast; according to Slavic tradition, Svarog lives for one million years, each day of which is the entire lifespan of the World (more than a little bit similar to Brahma, eh?). Each "day", he slumbers in the egg of the sun until he awakens in the evening, at which point he sweeps everything in the universe - all creation, living things, even the other gods - into one big pile and reconstitutes them into the pure stuff of creation, which he then fashions into the next world. This is called Sweeping Day and happens continually and regularly, like clockwork, and each time he recreates the Bogovi to take over their traditional foes, reborn with no memory of the last world. There's no specific time frame given for this, so we don't know how many years each world lasts; technically, Sweeping Day could be at any time, which is sobering. Someone with Prophecy should get on figuring that out.

We've also got the Mesopotamian religions; while they don't have any particular predictions for what will happen when the world ends, they do have an exact date. According to Babylonian texts, the world has a lifetime of "twelve times twelve sars", where one sar is equal to 36,000 years, so therefore the world is scheduled to last exactly 5,184,000 years. Furthermore, at the time of their civilization, they believed that there were only twelve sars - 432,000 years - left to go and that the vast majority of the world's lifespan was already over. So if we assume that's counting from the beginning of the major time of power for the Babylonian empire, around 1800 B.C.E., we're looking at a precise date for the end of the world in the year 430,200 C.E. In other words, too far away to care (which is probably what all that theoretical math was supposed to mean in Babylonian texts in the first place).

The two other major end-times scenarios that come to mind - those of the Aztec and Egyptian religions - are conditional, meaning that they aren't scheduled as an inevitability but will happen only if specific events occur first. For the Aztecs, we're currently living in the fifth world; the previous four worlds were each destroyed by large-scale disasters brought on by squabbles between the gods, in each case leading with the defection or destruction of the current sun deity. While there is no forecasted end of the world, it's understood that if the current sun - now embodied by Tonatiuh and protected by Huitzilopochtli - is destroyed or goes rogue, the fifth world will be destroyed as well. Depending on the tradition, some Mexican sources imply that a sixth world would then be created with a new god serving as the sun, while others - possibly more modern or influenced by Christianity - claim that the fifth world is the last one and that its destruction would spell the final and incontrovertible end.

Things are far more uncomfortable for the Egyptians; their cosmology is based on the idea that Ra, as the original creator of the universe, may at any time decide to become tired of it. If that occurs, he will decide to simply go to sleep, and as a result the world will be destroyed until such time as he decides to wake up and give remaking a new one a shot. While this hasn't happened yet, it's been a very near thing at least once; in one Egyptian story, Ra decides he's disenchanted with the whole affair and is about to pull the plug, and Hathor, goddess of beauty, joy and sexuality, narrowly averts disaster by lifting up her skirt and flashing him a full view of her incredibly attractive genitals. Ra is so amused he laughs uproariously, and then decides that he couldn't possibly destroy anything that awesome, so the world lives on another day. He could, however, decide to destroy the world at any moment; the only other end-of-the-world note is that Osiris is the only god expressly said to survive that apocalypse and be able to converse with Ra afterward, although he's not always very thrilled about the prospect.

With all this madness going on, there are plenty of doomsday possibilities to play with for Scion games. This is your hour to shine, oracles and prophets!

Librarian Glee!

John tagged me in for today's vlog, where I will be way too excited and jump around waving my favorite things in front of the camera. Join me!

Question: Some myths say Nut is the granddaughter of Ra, while others say she was his wife. Some myths say he stopped her from having children because he didn't want his throne taken over, others say it was because Ra was jealous of her sleeping with Geb. What's up?

Question: I understand that in your games, all of the different mythological origin stories are true. That being said, how do you tie in the fact that fossils of animals from millions of years ago, and thus don't match up, have been found?

Question: I had someone ask me the other day if a nuclear winter would be anything like Fimbulwintr from Norse mythology. In your opinion, could a nuclear winter trigger Ragnarok?

Question: Do you guys use the Order of the Divine Glory in your games? If so, how prevalent are they?

Question: Do you think Aphrodite's lack of purview's can be accounted for by a butt load of Arete in abilities such as presence and empathy and command that gives her supernatural power over peoples emotions without a purview or misplaced epic attributes.

Question: At least under one interpretation, Christians, Jews and Muslims are (inadvertent) Titan-worshipers (somewhat similar to how C. S. Lewis depicts Muslims as inadvertent demon-worshippers). Would the gods care about this? Would it matter for the Titans in question that they're being worshipped?

Question: Just wondering - have you guys ever used Neith in your games, and how would you handle her if you did?

Question: Do the Aesir have a god of dawn? I'm asking this because I'm making a NPC for my games who represents not the dawn itself, but renovation and new life, and dawn just looks like the perfect role for me. Any ideas? What associations do you think I could use?

Question: How do powers like Control Water affect water-based liquids like most alcoholic beverages or sodas?

Question: You mentioned in a post earlier in the year that divine parents grant Birthrights for purviews that they are not associated with, but what about the Animal purview for animals that no god currently has (such as extinct ones)? Would the Scion simply have to purchase the boons without having a corresponding relic?

If you're interested in joining me on cloud nine, Lacambalam, the codex artist, has a website here where he shows comparisons of his art to the originals, and a Flickr gallery here with prices and much better images of the codices than my webcam could give you.

Lines in the Sand

Question: In the constant war for succession between Horus and Set, which Egyptian gods do you think are on Set's side in the conflict?

It's difficult to say, really! There are a lot of factors in play, plus political situations that might change at the drop of a hat, and on top of all that Isis and Horus are both in there with their Ultimate Manipulation chicanery. But we have a few suggestions.

The most obvious ones are Set's wife and sons; they're likely to be on his side simply through family loyalty, if nothing else. They have a vested interest in his triumph, which puts all of them in a better position, and of course they may be kind of pissed off at cousin Horus for taking the throne if they believe Set's claim is better. On the other hand, they're also all at least slightly on the fence; Sobek tends to help Horus out when asked and isn't particularly hostile to anyone (but then again, do you really expect the crocodile to be much of a politician?), Nephthys was in some variant traditions (which, depending on the interpretation you like, might be true facts or later retcons by priests attempting to make Osiris look better and Set and his family look worse) infatuated with Osiris, not to mention very close to her sister Isis, both of which might be factors that sway her more than Set might like. Certainly Nephthys aided Isis in her burial and mourning for Osiris after Set killed him, which might just be sisterly solidarity but might also indicate that she isn't taking a firm side in all this. Anubis is suspect for the same reasons, thanks to the fact that those same diverging myths disagree on whether he's actually Set's son or Osiris', and he doesn't involve himself in the doings of folks above ground very much anyway.

However, Set is the grand defender of the pantheon and indeed the whole world from the depredations of Apep, so those who are likewise involved in that endeavor with him might view him as a comrade in arms as well as knowing firsthand how much he cares about his people. Ra, who is personally guarded and rescued by Set every single night, is almost certainly firmly in his came, and it doesn't hurt that Isis screwed him over with her tricksy magic spells a while ago and probably ensured that he'll never like her again. Various warlike gods who ride the boat and fight with Set, which depending on the version might include Maahes, Monthu, Khonsu, Serket and others, may also be more inclined to support him as a powerful and capable leader, especially if they were there that day he didn't go on the boat in order to go attend Anubis' birth and the Horus-led defense team got their asses handed to them.

And where Ra goes, the Eye of Ra is likely to go, so those goddesses who are or have been the Eye - Hathor, Sekhmet, Bastet, Tefnut and so on - may also rally behind Set as a result of Ra's influence. How much influence Ra still has after Isis' meddling is up to individual Storytellers to decide, though.

Oddly enough, those paragraphs look backwards: unrelated people Set hangs out with at work are the most likely to be gung-ho about getting him into power, while his own immediate family is kind of unsure and possibly working for the other side. It's a great example of a different set of Virtues at work: when you have Order, Piety, Harmony and Conviction, you're likely to believe in someone you respect with a whole and unflagging heart, but that's more important than pesky things like filial loyalty that other pantheons might hold in higher esteem.

And, of course, there are at least as many gods arrayed on Horus' side in this very, very old argument. Gods probably can and do change sides all the time, based on who they think is winning, new information they learn about one or the other being a douchebag or the manipulative meddling of the social powerhouses among them. It's a Game-of-Thrones-esque labyrinth of byzantine intrigue, where everything might change at a moment's notice and the only surety is that you don't want to end up on the losing side at the wrong moment.

Double Vlog! Two Times Vlog!

Don't get too used to two vlogs in one week - as you can see from the bag under our eyes, we're some tired people. But not too tired for some awesome questions from the mailbag!

Question: I love the Axiom Intelligence knack, but I hardly ever see anyone else use it. It got me thinking: what are some of your favorite underused or underrated powers?

Question: Outside of your games - what with one killing the other and all - how would you describe the relationship between Ra and Horus?

Question: In regards to the Anunna PSP of Me, I noticed that the second-level boon, Direction of Me, lists all the abilities but Brawl is the only one not represented. Is this intentional?

Question: An Aztec Scion marries an Egyptian Scion. How would this affect both pantheons? This is based on my own Quetzalcoatl Scion and his marriage to a Scion of Bastet.

Question: What Aztec gods might have Virtues other than the plain old Aztec ones?

Question: Have you guys ever considered adding a third level of power above the Divine and the Titanic, like the Protogenoi of Greece? This would be a category for vast comic deities like Olodumare or Ophion. It seems dissonant to me that a being like Olodumare and one like Uke Mochi or Hestia are on the same power level.

Hopefully someday soon we'll be slightly caught up, and you guys won't have to wait a month to see your questions make it to the blog in some form.

Lord of the Uttermost Limit

Question: Who is Neb-er-tcher?

Nebertcher is a title borne by a few different gods in the ancient Egyptian religion; it means "lord of the furthest place" or "lord of the uttermost limit", meaning that its bearer is the owner or creator of all of creation. It's been used variously for different gods depending on their functions, and some scholars are still trying to figure out if it was originally a completely separate god of its own or was always just an epithet used for others.

The god most frequently referred to as Nebertcher is Ra (or Amun-Ra, or Atum-Ra, any of the many combinations of Ra). In the Book of Overthrowing Apep, the creation of the world is recounted as being performed by Nebertcher, who also displays many familiar signs of the myths of Ra - being self-created and henceforth creating humanity out of loneliness, creating Shu and Tefnut, being related to Khepri as an alternate form of himself, creating the Eye that shed light but was then lost to him when it wandered off, and so forth. Scholars have occasionally also posited that this might be referring to Ptah as creator god, since the creation is accomplished via the sacred words of Nebertcher just as Ptah's sacred words were considered the force of creating in his cults, rather than the more popular image of Ra masturbating the world into existence.

At other times, however, it's clear that Nebertcher is being used to refer to Osiris; because he had died but was reborn and was believed to do so in concert with the cycles of fertility around the Nile, he was strongly associated with the title as the god who caused the life-giving plants to grow and allowed humanity to live - literally, a creator of life. As Nebertcher, Osiris was worshiped as a fertility god whose sacrifice and return granted the world the ability to bear life again. His attachment to the title is a slightly later one, beginning around the fifth dynasty in the Old Kingdom, but he was still probably given the name fairly popularly.

And, of course, because Nebertcher is a title that implies dominion over all of creation, it was used by Egyptian Christians starting in the first century AD to refer to their one mighty monotheistic god, which may have further muddied the waters. Most references to Nebertcher are from Coptic religious materials and are actually talking about the Christian god, with comparatively few (but strong!) ones dating back to the Egyptian polytheism that preceded them.

It's also entirely possible (as it's always possible with Egyptian myth, in which no one can make up their minds and maybe everybody is actually somebody else) that Nebertcher might have originally been a separate god entirely who only later was strongly absorbed into the myths of Ra and Osiris. We don't have any attestations of Nebertcher in which he isn't obviously aligned with one of the gods above, but that doesn't mean it couldn't have happened; it's possible that the original figure of Nebertcher was some primordial creation Titan who only later was syncretized with Ra and Osiris and began to fade from the memory of humanity.

As far as using him in a Scion game, we'd recommend just considering Nebertcher to be an epithet of Ra (later occasionally borrowed by his homeboy Osiris) - or, if you really want to run with the Coptic connection, that it's either an epithet for the Christian god or perhaps Aten mucking around in Egyptian monotheism again. Nothing Nebertcher actually does in myth isn't covered by that, so unless you have a really amazing idea for a plot in which he's a separate figure, it's probably easiest not to overcomplicate this one.

Seriously, Egyptian myth already gives you way plenty of opportunities to complicate things as it is.

Cooperative Snake-Stabbing

Question: Hey, I was wondering - how does Seth manage to keep Ra safe against Apep, when Titan Avatars are meant to be ridiculously powerful? He's been doing it for eons now, so surely there must be some kind of method he uses to keep the sun-god safe from darkness.

Like any good terrifying defender of cosmic order, Set understands the value of cooperation and delegation. He's not much of a team player under normal circumstances, but for the safeguarding of Ra, he makes exceptions.

While Set is the dude we always remember for guarding the solar barque from the depredations of Apep, and indeed he's probably the most important, he's not the only one on the boat helping out. Various texts and myths around Ancient Egypt in both kingdoms give various other deities that ride the boat and aid Ra and Set; Thoth is sometimes said to stand at Ra's side to provide him counsel in times of need, often accompanied by Ma'at and/or Geb, while more physically adept guards and protectors include Horus, Mehen, Maahes, Serket and Neith (basically whomever that part of Egypt thought of as the most powerful protectors or warriors of the time). Wepwawet, the psychopomp son of Anubis, is also in some areas said to ride the boat to aid it in its journeys, and the Egyptian triumvirate of magical gods - Hu, Saa and Heku - attend the sun-god symbolically as well in order to provide him the magical might he needs.

So really, what we have is not so much Set single-handedly defeating a Titan Avatar every night, but rather a crack team of a bunch of gods struggling to defeat a Titan Avatar every night. The reason Set is the linchpin of the whole affair is that it's always Set who is the only one who has the fortitude of body and mind to survive Apep's most powerful assaults; when Apep hypnotizes, poisons or drops impenetrable curtains of darkness over the rest of the defenders, it's always Set who is the only one to be able to stay standing in the face of the onslaught, and Set who is the only one strong enough to wield the great spear and stab Apep in the face enough to let the barque get by. Apep and Set also have a very personal and nasty rivalry going on, and insult one another pretty heatedly while everyone else is just trying to survive.

This is all underlined pretty strongly in the myth in which Set does not accompany the barque one day and, thanks to his absence, Apep is able to swallow it, causing a sudden eclipse, and Set has to go rescue everybody by cutting the snake's belly open to help them escape. Set needs a team of gods behind him to help fend off the great evil, but that team of gods also needs Set in order to be fully effective. Everybody works together to make sure that Ra makes it through the night and the cosmic order is preserved (and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Pesedjet Virtues of Harmony and Order in action right there!).

The giant spear, said to be too heavy for anyone but Set to wield, that is used to stab Apep and ward him off is probably also a powerful relic in the Scion setting; while it's sometimes referred to as a "spear of fire", which might refer to Set's powers over lightning, it's also called "iron", suggesting that it might be a concrete object. It probably gives him insane bonuses to things like Guardian and resistance rolls, and probably packs a hefty wallop with applied to a snakey face.