Powers from the Future!

Question: Frost and Illusion, the two purviews introduced in Ragnarok, are incredibly light in terms of boon numbers. Do you have any ideas for other boons in those purviews?

Throw in Stars, too, which was introduced in the Yazata supplement. The three purviews have seventeen, sixteen and thirteen boons respectively, which puts them significantly below the beefier sets of parties in the game.

We do indeed have ideas for new boons in these purviews. We have ideas for all kinds of boons, but we haven't been working on them as a project since they seem to be unpopular in the voting. However, we can give you some idea teasers here, and you guys can either let them inspire you to lobby for more boons or use them as starting points to write your own.

Frost: For this purview, we're considering more powers involving temperature and environmental effects, imprisoning others in ice, or imparting spiritual chill rather than physical.

Illusion: For this purview, we're considering powers involving dreams and the creation or control thereof, effects that give longer lasting duration or permanence to illusions, glamours and mirages, or things that the illusionist can make use of as if they were real.

Stars: For this purview, we're considering powers that allow Scions to see through the stars, embody stars and constellations themselves, guide others, or create portents or signs in the heavens that can be seen by all.

So hopefully that will give you some idea of what we're thinking of, and some hope for the future of purviews. We're aware of which purviews need the most love, and we hope to give them that love someday soon.

Light My Way

Question: This is going to roam a bit, but what are the core concepts to the Stars purview? How does starlight differ from either sunlight or moonlight and so on?

Hmm, well, this is really talking about two different things: core concepts for Stars, and core concepts for light in general.

Light is of course a big deal in mythology because it's a big deal in the world, especially for ancient peoples who didn't have things like reliable or portable artificial lights to help them out when things got dark. The sun, moon and stars (and to a lesser extent fire, although it tends to more often be celebrated for heat than light) are the natural lights of the cosmos and therefore objects of reverence and worship in many ancient religions, simply because they kept away the terror of darkness and the things that might lurk in it. They are, however, different in the quality of that light. The sun was celebrated because it was the great light of day; it gave mankind the ability to move and trade and craft and do things during the brightly lit daylight hours, and its light was also recognized to feed plants and contribute to the fertility of the earth. The moon, on the other hand, was beloved as the great light in the darkness, the strongest comfort during nighttime when almost all else was black and dangerous, and the one thing that could help a lost traveler in the night find his way. The stars, finally, were objects of awe because of the mysteriousness of their lights, which were visible but not strong enough to really illuminate anything; ancient mankind wondered what that light was for if not for seeing, and invented hosts of different stories to explain it.

The Stars purview is therefore a little more eclectic than Sun or even Moon. Where Sun is all about light all the time because most mythological concepts for it are all light all the time, and Moon depends on several boons that refer to its light in the darkness roll and the changing light shed by its phases, Stars has to be and do a lot more than just light, since it has such a varied role in mythologies around the world.

Light is a concept that Stars uses, but in a less in-your-face role than the other two purviews; things like Aurora or Starfire trade on that idea of the light of the stars, but they focus on its conceptualization as a strange and faraway beauty rather than something people would use to light their way in the dark. Another major theme is that of navigation; once humanity realized that the stars appeared to have fixed patterns and movements, they became used widely as points of reference for travelers and seafarers, which is what boons like Axis of the Heavens or Celestial Beacon are working with. Another very strong theme is the idea of supernatural knowledge from the stars, which many cultures believed held secrets, writing or wisdom from the very gods in their unfathomable patterns, and that's where you'll see boons like Astronomer's Eye or Portent come into play. That concept's a little harder to deal with without stepping on Mystery's or Prophecy's venerable toes, but it's still a strong one for the overall global myths about stars.

Some other star themes are present in the purview, including creatures that live there (Summon Northern Spirit and Star Beast), the stars as the walkway or traveling path of the gods (The Milky Road) and stars as governers of fortune and fate (Lucky Star, Red Star), which is particularly popular in Asian astrology. Between you and me, we do have quite a few other potential Stars boons now that we've had some time to think about it since the great overhaul from the original rules, although I don't know if they'll get to come to light any time soon. Something for the voting poll, eh?

Portals

Question: Can a more combat-savvy Scion hold a victim while his friend opens up the gate to the Oubliette? Similarly, can someone else hold a victim down while the Scion uses Constellation Weaver on him?

Alas, no. Those boons require their users to be able to grapple their victims for a reason, and that reason is that it would be both overpowered and underthematic to do otherwise.

While a badass brawler could certainly hold an enemy down while his friend worked up the mojo for an Oubliette, he wouldn't be able to hurl him in on said friend's behalf; the Oubliette isn't like a wormhole in front of you that anybody can access, but is rather a power accessible to the darkness god - and only the darkness god - who actually controls it. There's nothing for you to throw the guy into unless you, too, can pay for Oubliette and send him launching into the trackless abyss. A god using Oubliette has the ability to hurl his foes away into the depths of unending blackness, but he does not have the ability to let other people who don't have that boon do the same; that power is his and his alone. You can hold that enemy down for him all day if you want to, but when it's actually time to toss him into the dark, the god with Oubliette is on his own.

Similarly, there's no invisible "door" that a god with Constellation Weaver is opening for you to throw a person through, nor is it a power that can be used on folks just standing around on earth minding their own business. The boon represents a star goddess's power to pitch people she doesn't like permanently into the firmament, and if you don't have star powers yourself, you can't do a damned thing to affect the outcome one way or the other.

It sounds like you may be thinking of these powers as opening a "door" that you could throw someone through no matter who you are, or as affecting a person as long as they're held down, regardless of what else is happening. That's not how they work; you would get that effect if you could convince a psychopomp to hold open a Storm the Gates portal into an Overworld, but that's a very specific power that only the masters of travel between worlds have. It's the same story for other powers that allow some gods to interact or communicate between worlds - you can't follow a god using Open Underworld Portal into Hades for free if you don't have the same power, you can't sneak into someone else's Otherworldly Portal for a free teleport and you can't try to hitch a ride on The Milky Road unless a star god expressly brings you along on purpose. These gods aren't really opening doors; they're harnessing their awesome powers over the stars, the blackness, the underworld, or the paths that connect them all. If you don't also have those powers, you can't hope to follow, nor can you force anyone else to.

So if your fellow Scion wants to consign an enemy to the lightless reaches of Keku with Oubliette, she's going to have to do it herself. She's the one with the powers over darkness; she has to be the one who visits them on her victim.

...actually, I take it back. If you're really and truly dedicated to helping someone else use Oubliette on an enemy, I'd say that if you grappled that person and then let the darkness god grapple you and throw both of you forever into the darkness, that might work, pending Storyteller approval. Of course, you'd be stuck hugging an enemy in an oubliette forever, and anyone who retrieved you would also retrieve the enemy, but hey, if you're really, really committed to this, it's a heroic way to go.

Star Sense

Question: How would you handle a blind Scion with the Stars purview? Since the boons require you to be able to see them, would she be completely banned from having it?

Not at all! Man, we should really fix the wording on those. In fact, I'm going to go do that right now.

The Stars purview depends upon a Scion being able to interact with the stars, but it doesn't necessarily have to be visual; if she can perceive them in some other way, she can still call upon their powers. It's a Perception + Awareness roll to perceive the stars, and while a Storyteller may impose a penalty on blind Scions depending on how they feel about enforcing blindness (-4 dice is usually a good number), if that Scion can make the roll, she's able to tell the stars are there. Her player is free to stunt however she wants to explain that happening, whether it's the faint sound of the cosmic song of the stars, her skin being so sensitive that she can feel their pale light on it, or just that she senses their presence above her and knows instinctively that they are there.

In general, blind Scions can do most things regular Scions can, just at a disadvantage due to their handicap. How well they're able to function and find things around them depends on their Perception, just like it does for any other Scion, so those with low Perception are hamstrung by their blindness and those with high have uncannily sharp other senses compensating for it. We've had both kinds in our games: Aurora, who could hear into space and feel the tiniest pinprick of the smallest star on her skin, and Jude, who despite wearing twelve pounds of glass lenses strapped to his head still couldn't see well enough to back the car out of the garage without running over one of his bandmates.

I'll make it a point to go through and change the word "see" in the Stars purview to something more appropriate, like "sense" or "perceive", though, to avoid confusion!

Mythic Truth

Question: Please explain how the Sun and Stars purviews get to be different when the sun is just another star that is closest to us.

Because, my friend, this is a game about mythology, and from a mythological perspective, the sun and the stars have nothing in common other than both being celestial lights in the sky.

You have to remember that the ancient cultures that created these gods had no idea that the sun was actually a star. As far as they could tell, the two were completely different things - one a giant ball of life-giving light and warmth that only appeared in the day, and the other a collection of uncountable tiny lights in mysterious patterns, almost always visible only at night. Consequently, they had separate gods to be in charge of both of these phenomena; they created sun gods like Apollo, Huitzilopochtli, Amaterasu and Ra to be associated with the bright light of the sun, and they created star gods like Isis, Ishtar, Quetzalcoatl and Radegast to control the spangled majesty of the stars.

These gods are distinctly different and have nothing to do with one another - Radegast has absolutely no power over the sun, while Huitzilopochtli is firmly tied to the day and has nothing to do with the nighttime skies. A single purview couldn't serve both of them, because they do completely different things and have completely different ideas and symbols attached to them. More importantly, a single purview shouldn't serve them both, because we're not talking about science but rather about mythology. Modern science knows that the sun is a star; mythology doesn't, and therefore the gods and myths that Scion is based on are founded on the idea that they're different.

In general, science usually needs to take a backseat to mythology for things that are part of Scion's background setting, because otherwise many of the gods don't make sense and wouldn't have different powers. Science tells us that moonlight is just the reflection of the sun's light, so does that mean we also shouldn't have a separate Moon purview? Since we know that life and death are governed by the brain and nervous system of a living creature, why bother having a Death purview when Health gods can control all of that? What's the point of a Frost purview when we know that frost is just frozen Water? Outside of purviews, do you also want to say that giants don't exist because science tells us that they couldn't be so large without their organs collapsing, or that it's impossible for the gorgon's gaze to work because the receptors in your eyes can't trigger body-wide calcification? Scions thrives on magical things that science says can't exist, and the division of purviews is only a small part of that.

The point is that, while science tells us that these things are related, ancient people didn't know that and as a result constructed their myths and legends around those being separate concepts. Mythically speaking, they are separate concepts, regardless of later advances in scientific discovery; a water god like Poseidon is a very different creature from a frost god like Uller, and they require different powers and areas of influence as a result.

That doesn't mean that science can't have its place in Scion, of course, because it definitely can and should! Scions themselves have grown up with science and probably understand how it works unless they slept through school, so they can use scientific concepts and ideas when building their own divine identities if they want to. Just as the ancient gods are products of the time of their religions, so Scions will be the product of the current culture, meaning they may be gods of electronics, physics, outer space or whatever else they think is awesome, and they'll express that with creative new power combinations, relics and legends.

But the ancient gods, and their ancient powers, can't be those things - and shouldn't, because Scions get to be the first ever to do that! - and thus have the same separate powers they've always had. Apollo's not a god of stars, and he never has been. Just because people figured out the sun's identity as a star in the nineteenth century doesn't mean Amaterasu is going to be retroactively rewritten to have as much power over the night skies as her brother.

There's an important distinction between mythic truth and scientific truth, and Scion, because it depends so heavily on the myths and legends of the ancient world, almost always needs to use the former. The default setting is based around the powers and ideas of the ancient gods; new ideas, including scientific ones, are up to Scions to introduce and are not already in play. The sun and the stars are two very different things in the landscape of mythology, and combining them when such deities as Shamash and the Zoryas are clearly not similar would make very little sense.

Starlight, Starbright

Question: How would you handle people like Chiron, Perseus and all the other Greek heroes who got turned into constellations?

We've built a power into the game especially for those guys: Constellation Weaver, your go-to power for throwing people into the sky and then giving yourself a high five underneath the awesome new constellation you just created. In most cases, unless you have a specific reason in mind for why not, we'd consider beings like Chiron to have had this boon used on them, and to be functionally out of the game unless someone used the boon a second time and retrieved them from the skies (thus sending all of modern astronomy straight to hell in a handbasket). If you did retrieve them - which would require beating the original user of the boon on the roll, but it can be done! - they'd return exactly the same as they were when they were put up there, so in some cases it's probably best to leave well enough alone. I doubt Chiron would thank you for returning him to eternally undying torment, and it's just morbid to bring down all the people and creatures who were put into the sky after death.

While that's our main method of constellation interaction, it's been obliquely suggested in some of our games that gods might also be able to travel to Tamoanchan, the Titanrealm of the Heavens, in an attempt to find a constellation on its native turf, so to speak. Doing so would be exceptionally dangerous and it's hard to know if a constellation thus rescued would return to "normal" once brought back to earth, but it's an alternative option that some who aren't skilled in the Stars purview might want to explore.

Of course, our PCs haven't tried it yet. What are you guys, chicken?

A Thousand Points of Light

Question: Do you think that the Aztlanti would consider taking the Stars purview a punishable offense, considering the role of stars (the Centzonhuitznahua being my main thought on this) in their mythology (other than Quetzalcoatl’s creation of the Morning Star)?

We've actually dealt with this some in our games thanks to Eztli, who has a great number of Stars boons thanks to confused Fatebonds convinced she must be a star-goddess, but who tends to shoot first and not bother with asking questions later when encountering other astrally-oriented gods.

I don't think it's necessarily a universally banned purview, but any Aztlanti Scion who picks up Stars (or Moon, while we're at it, which doesn't exactly have many thrillingly positive connotations what with Coyolxauhqui and Tecciztecatl ruining it for everybody) is probably going to engender mistrust, suspicion or even violence from the Aztec gods. The night sky tends to be the source of evil, misfortune and danger in Aztec religion, and the Aztec deities are used to opposing and fighting it rather than making friends with it. Quetzalcoatl aside, there aren't likely to be many gods among the ranks who are inclined to encourage Scions to start down a road that has so often led others in the pantheon to become traitors or forces for evil, and it's very likely that they might respond to Scions who ally themselves with the powers of the night with deep suspicion and discouragement at best, with violent removal at worst.

It's not a response that blankets all the Aztec gods, of course; Quetzalcoatl himself is a star-god, though one that pointedly has nothing to do with such miscreants as the Centzonhuitznahua or Centzonmimixcoa, and if there's anyone among the pantheon who knows that you can have those powers without automatically turning into a Titan, it's him. Tezcatlipoca, while not actually a master of the celestial purviews, is associated with the night and darkness and is notoriously pragmatic to boot, so if he thinks a Scion is using those powers repsonsibly or usefully, he'd probably be fine with it (and that pragmatism will help him have no problem deceasing said Scion if he or she becomes a problem, so there's always that). Xolotl has minior star-associations according to some sources, mostly because of his association with Quetzalcoatl as the counterpoint evening star, so he also might be more willing than most to let a Scion with those powers prove their loyalty.

But Huitzilopochtli is the very violently literal opponent of the stars and moon, so he's just as likely to murder a Scion who demonstrates those powers as look at them (or, if he's feeling charitable that day, dump the kid in Tezcatlipoca's lap and say, "Fix him, he's broken"). And since he's the leader of the pantheon and a person not to be trifled with on pain of decapitation, it's quite likely that most of his fellow deities would follow him in this behavior (not to mention that they probably aren't big fans of the celestial powers themselves).

I don't think it's totally impossible for an Aztec Scion to decide to be a night god of some variety, nor do I think it will always result in immediate death or expulsion from the pantheon for their powers to come to light. But a Scion who chooses those traditionally "evil" powers will have a difficult road ahead of her, whether she chooses to hide them for the most part, put them out in the open and hope she can win her pantheon's trust or use them in the hopes of transforming the night from a realm that the Aztlanti fear and hate to something that becomes part of their godly influence along with the rest of the world. Some of the Aztlanti will no doubt be mistrustful, angry, perhaps even fully hostile to her (and I'd be quite surprised if the Titanic powers of the stars, seeing a new recruit full of potential, didn't come sniffing around now and then trying to bend her to their will or convince her to join their cause).