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!

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!

Psychic Real Estate

Question: A few gods seem to creep over into other religions. In a previous post you mentioned Vayu and Haoma having identities in Hinduism so strong that they can be considered members of that pantheon, so I gotta ask, do these cross-pantheon gods have Sanctums in these other Godrealms? And if they do, are these Sanctums well-known or hidden from the natives? Final question, do you think a Scion of one side of such a god could have a Sanctum in the other Godrealm (ex. Yazata Scion with a Hindu Godrealm)?

There aren't many gods who can cross pantheon lines so easily, and each one is a special case; whether or not they have a true Sanctum in both Overworlds, or maybe only one Sanctum but some dedicated space in both, or some other configuration largely depends on how they got there, how you want to handle them in a game and what their individual preferences might be. In Vayu's specific case, I imagine he has a Hindu Sanctum as well as a Persian one, because the other Devas would probably find it mighty strange if he didn't seeing as how he's a fairly major figure among them, but that needn't necessarily be the rule for all cross-pantheon gods (the few, the lonely). Maintaining two Sanctums is a serious energy-sink; I imagine Vayu also has fewer other cool toys than some of his pantheon-mates because of it.

As for whether or not they're hiding their cross-pantheon alliances, that probably depends on the god, too; whether they're someone who prefers secrecy, whether there are political considerations to be taken into account, and so forth. Vayu, to use him as a convenient example again, probably doesn't advertise his ability to cross back and forth much thanks to the two pantheons having such a violent hate-on for one another, but someone in a less volatile situation might not mind or might even view it as an advantage to let others know he was versatile. Keep in mind that having "space" in an Overworld doesn't necessarily have to mean a full-blown Sanctum, too - gods in our games often have "visiting houses" in the Overworld proper where they can hang out with others without having to drag everyone into their Sanctum, and areas are usually available for visiting gods there on business as well.

As for Scions, where their Sanctums and other god-level Birthrights fall is always a matter of what they plan, do and attempt in-game. It would probably be easy for a Scion raised in the bosom of one pantheon to gain a Sanctum among them, less so if she were more of a stranger or at odds with them. God-level Birthrights are so subjective and tailored to each budding god that there's really no general answer; it depends on the plans and needs of the game, PC and Storyteller.

A Place to Call Home

Question: What are the realms of your PC gods? How many of them share their parents' houses, and how many have homes of their own? And how many children has Kettila killed that she currently cares for in her father's realm, and how many are pissed at her for it?

As a matter of fact, all of our God-level PCs have their own realms; not one of them so far has elected to not take the Sanctum Birthright, and I believe Will will also be getting a place of his own upon his imminent ascension.

Sanctums vary in size and fanciness depending on their owner and who wanted to sink the most points into them; Sowiljr's place is easily the size of several earths and overflowing with riches and servants, while on the other end of the spectrum Vala just has a very small, homey cottage with a wooded yard. Eztli and Yoloxochitl both have mid-sized realms off Acopa, filled with their nahualli animal and mostly inaccessible to others, while Terminus has a small, kind of dumpy place near Hermes' on Olympus and Aiona, being unpopular with most of the Dodekatheon, lives in an underground cave halfway down the slope away from them. Jioni has a nice-sized slice of the African veldt to call her own where she occasionally hosts parties, complete with servants who look suspiciously like a composite of her husband and a certain deceased Norseman, and Zwazo Fou Fou owns a long, desolate stretch of land where humans who have reached the depths of despair occasionally find themselves as they search for relief.

Few of the PCs actually spend very much time in their Sanctums, as they're usually off running errands and getting into trouble; I think Aiona, who uses it as a forge and workshop, and Terminus, who prefers to return there every so often to check on his wife and give himself the chance to use Avatar, are the most frequent visitors to their homes. Vala has been known to hide in hers for months at a time during dangerous missions, directing the rest of her band via magic spells and clairvoyance, while Folkwardr has never visited his since his apotheosis due to his duties in the World. The interior of Eztli's pyramid is designed to be an enormous nursery, though as of yet the only child there much is Chicahua, and Yoloxochitl's place is entirely populated by axolotl salamanders.

I don't think any of our PCs could resist having a place to call their own; after all, who wants to live with mom and dad forever? A few do have designated spots in the Overworld proper as well - Odin has dedicated a large hall with alfar servants to Vala, though she doesn't visit it much, and Sowiljr and Terminus also have outside "houses" in their Overworlds proper - but generally, the coolness factor of owning your own world was too awesome to pass up and most of them seldom visit their parents.

We've also had fun with Sanctums having sort of a personality of their own, though that's just a quirk our game uses; those with high dot ratings are more obedient, those with low more fractious. Sowiljr's realm treats his every thought as command and is eager to please, while Vala has been known to get into fights with hers when it decides it knows what she wants better than she does.

As for Yoloxochitl, she actually has no children to take care of at all; it's Eztli that the Aztlanti have asked to help take charge of the many souls of the underaged dead. It's not odd when you think about it - Eztli's a mother and dedicates a good portion of her time to taking care of children, while Yoloxochitl is a child herself and thus not very good at taking care of other children. She also doesn't have any Death to speak of, which makes her pretty much incapable of taking care of dead anything; I don't believe she's ever even seen any of her victims on her infrequent visits to Tlalocan, let alone done anything for them. Out of sight, out of mind; they've been passed on to her father and that's the way things are.