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?
Showing posts with label Sun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sun. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Friday, August 2, 2013
Arrows of the Sun
Question: Is it just me, or do a lot of sun deities seem to be ranged combatants most of the time? Could you explain how that came about?
It's not just you! Many solar deities do indeed have ranged combat associations. Huitzilopochtli is famous as the Divine Hurler, Apollo's golden arrows are renowned among his people, Houyi is a divine archer before all other things and Lugh is a danger to the universe with his trusty sling.
The major reason for this is that the sun itself is traditionally seen by many cultures as a source of incoming objects or power. The rays of the sun radiate outward and down to the earth, inescapable and ever-present; for an ancient person seeing the first shafts of sunlight appearing in the morning, penetrating through the chinks in walls and clearing away all shadows, it was an easy leap to see those rays as missiles or arrows that came from the sun. These religions are ancient and in many cases the arrow or sling was their highest level of ranged technology, but if these myths were being written in the modern day, people would probably conceive of many sun gods as being armed with lasers, carrying on the same imagery with a new example. Because the sun is in the sky, always unreachable for humanity, it was also understood by many cultures to be extremely far away, which naturally led to the assumption that its rays must be in some way hurled across that great distance to reach the earth. The same reasoning is often applied to thunder gods, who are usually also hurlers or archers thanks to humanity's perception of lightning as a missile hurled toward the world from the far-distant sky.
Many cultures also conceived of the sun as a warrior; after all, it drives away darkness and cold and returns each day to battle anew, so it only made sense to associate its far-flung rays with potent weapons. Not every sun god is a ranged combatant, of course, but even those who aren't often retain that combat imagery; Mithra's mighty arm with magical mace or Svarozhich's dragon-slaying prowess with a sword are both examples of that concept of the sun god as a cosmic soldier who overcomes the forces of darkness using melee as their preferred form of combat instead of ranged.
It's a very common image in solar mythology, which is why things like Flare Missile appear in the Sun purview, although it's not universal and your sun-related Scion has no obligation to learn guns or bows if he doesn't feel like it. There are also plenty of sun gods who don't bother with combat, either ranged or close-quarters, and if such august characters as Amaterasu and Shamash can ignore the tradition of solar archery, PCs certainly can, too. We've seen both types in our games, from Alison's explosive marksmanship combat literally blowing the heads off of her foes to Geoff's general preference for melee or just smiling really big at potential enemies.
It's always neat to see those kinds of cross-cultural similarities. It's fun to be reminded that no matter how uniquely different each pantheon's gods are, they're still creations of collective humanity, which has some universal ideas no matter where they are in the world.
It's not just you! Many solar deities do indeed have ranged combat associations. Huitzilopochtli is famous as the Divine Hurler, Apollo's golden arrows are renowned among his people, Houyi is a divine archer before all other things and Lugh is a danger to the universe with his trusty sling.
The major reason for this is that the sun itself is traditionally seen by many cultures as a source of incoming objects or power. The rays of the sun radiate outward and down to the earth, inescapable and ever-present; for an ancient person seeing the first shafts of sunlight appearing in the morning, penetrating through the chinks in walls and clearing away all shadows, it was an easy leap to see those rays as missiles or arrows that came from the sun. These religions are ancient and in many cases the arrow or sling was their highest level of ranged technology, but if these myths were being written in the modern day, people would probably conceive of many sun gods as being armed with lasers, carrying on the same imagery with a new example. Because the sun is in the sky, always unreachable for humanity, it was also understood by many cultures to be extremely far away, which naturally led to the assumption that its rays must be in some way hurled across that great distance to reach the earth. The same reasoning is often applied to thunder gods, who are usually also hurlers or archers thanks to humanity's perception of lightning as a missile hurled toward the world from the far-distant sky.
Many cultures also conceived of the sun as a warrior; after all, it drives away darkness and cold and returns each day to battle anew, so it only made sense to associate its far-flung rays with potent weapons. Not every sun god is a ranged combatant, of course, but even those who aren't often retain that combat imagery; Mithra's mighty arm with magical mace or Svarozhich's dragon-slaying prowess with a sword are both examples of that concept of the sun god as a cosmic soldier who overcomes the forces of darkness using melee as their preferred form of combat instead of ranged.
It's a very common image in solar mythology, which is why things like Flare Missile appear in the Sun purview, although it's not universal and your sun-related Scion has no obligation to learn guns or bows if he doesn't feel like it. There are also plenty of sun gods who don't bother with combat, either ranged or close-quarters, and if such august characters as Amaterasu and Shamash can ignore the tradition of solar archery, PCs certainly can, too. We've seen both types in our games, from Alison's explosive marksmanship combat literally blowing the heads off of her foes to Geoff's general preference for melee or just smiling really big at potential enemies.
It's always neat to see those kinds of cross-cultural similarities. It's fun to be reminded that no matter how uniquely different each pantheon's gods are, they're still creations of collective humanity, which has some universal ideas no matter where they are in the world.
Friday, May 10, 2013
Fast Cars
Question: Regarding the Chariot Boons: Can a Scion stunt them as something other than chariots? An Egyptian Scion especially seems more likely to use a solar barque, not a chariot. Or something decidedly more modern, like a lunar limo? Also, could Water have a n equivalent Water Chariot Boon?
Yes to the first part, no to the second!
Scions can absolutely use their Sun Chariot or Moon Chariot boons to create vehicles other than the classic two-wheeled contraptions! While the idea of the sun or moon god rolling across the sky in a vehicle of some kind is widespread in various mythologies, it's not always the classical Greco-Roman chariot. Gods like Resheph, Surya, Chandra, Helios, Selene, Apollo and Artemis use chariots, but Ra shepherds the sun on his solar barque, Belenos and the Dagda are most often shown with a giant solar wheel and Dagr and Nott directly ride the horses of day and night. Chariots are the most common form of solar and lunar transportation in Indo-European myth, but they're only the majority, not the rule, and a Scion who hails from another culture or simply wants her moon ride to be that much more awesome can decide on any appropriate vehicle she chooses.
It's worth noting that cultures outside of Europe do the sun-chariot thing much more rarely; Mesoamerican myths almost always involve a god directly carrying the sun on his back or arms while running across the sky, while Asian myths often claim the sun moves on its own, usually out of fear of a sun god who keeps it in line. These are also totally valid sun-god archetypes, but they're a little harder to make tick with the Sun Chariot boon; our advice is to let a Scion stunt whatever makes sense for them as long as they don't start bending the rules of what the boon can actually mechanically do, and don't ruin anyone's fun if they want to go against type a little by starting a new vehicular trend or being very creative about what a "vehicle" really constitutes.
Actually, of our major solar and lunar PC gods, neither has chosen to use the classical chariot. Sowiljr's vehicle of choice is a massive Viking longboat made of golden light, rocking grimacing bear-heads to ornament its prow, and Zwazo Fou Fou's lunar conveyance was a shimmering silvery fanboat straight from the bayous of his youth. We look forward to more celestial characters getting powerful enough to pimp their own rides; it's a fantastic place for a Scion to really customize his own image.
As for the possibility of some kind of Water Chariot, however, that answer is no. While solar and lunar chariots are a major theme that stretches across many mythologies, there's no corresponding proliferation of watery chariots in the same way. We could easily name ten to twenty solar or lunar gods rocking out some form of the chariot, but water vehicles are nowhere near as common, and furthermore the few that are out there aren't tied to a major concept in their purview the same way. Sun and Moon get chariots because the sun or moon god needing to physically carry the celestial lights across the sky is a major mythological theme; Water isn't doing anything similar, and instead has boons tailored to what it does and represents in various mythologies.
You may be thinking of Poseidon and the other Greek sea-deities, and they do indeed have badass chariots, but you should also remember that every god in Greek mythology has their own chariot, pretty much, and it's more likely that they're relic vehicles and status symbols than that every god has some weird custom boon for charioteering. Poseidon's just happens to be suited for the ocean because that's where he does most of his hanging out.
However, if you really want an awesome watery chariot and don't have any Birthrights points to spare, you could totally shape normal waves into the image of a chariot or other vehicle using Water Mastery or similar boons; as long as you keep it rolling around with you, you can get the effect of a water chariot with no need for an extra boon. Plus, you'll be able to unform and reshape it into anything you want with the wave of your hand - let's see the celestial gods try that!
Yes to the first part, no to the second!
Scions can absolutely use their Sun Chariot or Moon Chariot boons to create vehicles other than the classic two-wheeled contraptions! While the idea of the sun or moon god rolling across the sky in a vehicle of some kind is widespread in various mythologies, it's not always the classical Greco-Roman chariot. Gods like Resheph, Surya, Chandra, Helios, Selene, Apollo and Artemis use chariots, but Ra shepherds the sun on his solar barque, Belenos and the Dagda are most often shown with a giant solar wheel and Dagr and Nott directly ride the horses of day and night. Chariots are the most common form of solar and lunar transportation in Indo-European myth, but they're only the majority, not the rule, and a Scion who hails from another culture or simply wants her moon ride to be that much more awesome can decide on any appropriate vehicle she chooses.
It's worth noting that cultures outside of Europe do the sun-chariot thing much more rarely; Mesoamerican myths almost always involve a god directly carrying the sun on his back or arms while running across the sky, while Asian myths often claim the sun moves on its own, usually out of fear of a sun god who keeps it in line. These are also totally valid sun-god archetypes, but they're a little harder to make tick with the Sun Chariot boon; our advice is to let a Scion stunt whatever makes sense for them as long as they don't start bending the rules of what the boon can actually mechanically do, and don't ruin anyone's fun if they want to go against type a little by starting a new vehicular trend or being very creative about what a "vehicle" really constitutes.
Actually, of our major solar and lunar PC gods, neither has chosen to use the classical chariot. Sowiljr's vehicle of choice is a massive Viking longboat made of golden light, rocking grimacing bear-heads to ornament its prow, and Zwazo Fou Fou's lunar conveyance was a shimmering silvery fanboat straight from the bayous of his youth. We look forward to more celestial characters getting powerful enough to pimp their own rides; it's a fantastic place for a Scion to really customize his own image.
As for the possibility of some kind of Water Chariot, however, that answer is no. While solar and lunar chariots are a major theme that stretches across many mythologies, there's no corresponding proliferation of watery chariots in the same way. We could easily name ten to twenty solar or lunar gods rocking out some form of the chariot, but water vehicles are nowhere near as common, and furthermore the few that are out there aren't tied to a major concept in their purview the same way. Sun and Moon get chariots because the sun or moon god needing to physically carry the celestial lights across the sky is a major mythological theme; Water isn't doing anything similar, and instead has boons tailored to what it does and represents in various mythologies.
You may be thinking of Poseidon and the other Greek sea-deities, and they do indeed have badass chariots, but you should also remember that every god in Greek mythology has their own chariot, pretty much, and it's more likely that they're relic vehicles and status symbols than that every god has some weird custom boon for charioteering. Poseidon's just happens to be suited for the ocean because that's where he does most of his hanging out.
However, if you really want an awesome watery chariot and don't have any Birthrights points to spare, you could totally shape normal waves into the image of a chariot or other vehicle using Water Mastery or similar boons; as long as you keep it rolling around with you, you can get the effect of a water chariot with no need for an extra boon. Plus, you'll be able to unform and reshape it into anything you want with the wave of your hand - let's see the celestial gods try that!
Friday, April 26, 2013
Eyes of the Heavens
Question: The Moon and Sun purviews, mostly Moon, feel really weak to me. I just feel like they are either too specified and nuanced in what they do or what they do just won't come up enough to be worth spending time learning those boons. Thoughts? Comments? Also, are these the purviews that your celestial boons adds/edits option is talking about in the latest poll?
Yep, Sun and Moon are among the celestial purviews we are talking about working on in the poll option. Stars and Darkness, as the other major powers in the heavens, are also included.
Well... honestly, we're not sure how to help you. Since you didn't explain why you think those purviews are weak or what you're comparing them to, it's hard to know what might be tripping you up or what options might help you. But we do love Sun and Moon, so we'll talk about how they're awesome and hopefully something will come out of that that you can use!
First of all, we wouldn't say the boons don't come up - far from it, really. One of our flagship characters, Sowiljr, has been abusing Sun for all it's worth since his wee Hero level days, and when Zwazo Fou Fou was alive he was a scourge to be feared with Moon. Sun's baseline abilities - shedding light, creating heat and enhancing the user's presence - are pretty much always great to have around, while Moon's powers that allow Scions to manipulate others and literally disappear are hella useful. Seldom do games go by in which characters with these boons don't use them; how effective they are depends on what they're doing, of course, but nobody's sitting around thinking, "Man, what a useless purview I bought."
Let's get into specifics, starting with Moon. Moon is a grab-bag of insanely (ha!) useful stuff, making it one of the most versatile and fun purviews out there; it's got more than enough to keep any reasonably creative Scion happy, and is generally one of the purviews envied by other players when they don't have it. Scions with Moon can inflict madness and Virtue Extremities on their enemies or heal them from their allies, vanish from sight and resist mental meddling, literally turn the tides of battle and at high levels inflict lasting curses and incredible cures as they see fit. Scions with Moon are forces to be feared, especially since so many of them are half-mad themselves; they hold exclusive powers over the mind that other Scions can't hope to compete with.
Scions with Sun, on the other hand, rely on the bright flashiness of their powers to stun, awe and overcome all who see them. They can inflict penalties from heat and blindness on enemies or bolster their allies with the gentle warmth of sunshine, enhance their own weapons and attacks with blistering heat and at high levels instantly decimate anything related to Darkness, see through the most potent disguises and super-cook anything in their vicinity with a thought. Control of the sun is one of the most beloved powers across all cultures' mythologies, and Scion's expressions of it retain that feeling of incredible power to enhance life or harm it.
And that's not even counting the ridiculously useful stuff like the Moon and Sun Chariots and Lunar Estate, which are so awesome and applicable to so many situations later in the game that the crying over not having access to them is like the wails of a thousand orphaned children in some of our games. If you don't want an awesome inviolate free moonbase where you run the entire show, I don't know what you do think is useful or neat.
Now, if you're talking about purely combat applications, as some players do, Sun and Moon are not the strongest purviews you could get for those purposes. They still have excellent combat applications here and there - Tidal Interference and Silver Blessing are already rocking it up in Moon for the fighters as early as Legend 3, while Sun's Flare Missile and Burn make solar Demigods fearsome on the battlefield indeed, not to mention the later insanity of Bleach - but they are not dedicated solely to the destruction of monsters. If you're just looking to buff your beating fists, you'll probably be happier picking up something like War or Animal.
How different Storytellers run their games is also a factor in how useful these purviews (or any others, for that matter) will be in your game. If your Storyteller never pays any attention to Virtues or runs Extremities as humorous asides that don't really affect anything, Moon's powers over insanity will of course be less potent than they would be in a game where the Storyteller enforces the madness of damaged Virtues. If your Storyteller never runs a story that involves vampires or werewolves or other creepy crawlies, the purviews' special abilities to destroy those things obviously aren't going to come up, and so on. Every Storyteller runs their game a little (or a lot) differently, so it's possible that yours might simply not be giving you very many opportunities to use your powers, which would be a bummer. If you feel like that's the case, go ahead and talk to him or her; explain that you think these powers are really neat but aren't being given a fair shake in the game, and see what they have to say. If they aren't going to change anything or dismiss the problem, then yeah, you'll probably want to just buy something else, but some Storytellers may not realize that's happening or may be interested in your ideas to make the powers pop more. You'll never know if you don't ask!
And, of course, in the end it's up to the player to take ownership of his powers and use them. If you buy a bunch of Sun boons and don't use them, then of course they're going to look useless; if your first instinct is always to find a different way to solve the problem or shine in a scene, then you probably aren't really interested in having these boons at all. If you never try to find creative ways to use boons and just sit around wondering when the Storyteller's going to hand you a platter marked USE MOON NOW, you're going to miss out on a lot of opportunities that you might have been able to sieze if you were on the ball. It's okay, of course, to not want to use these or any other purviews - maybe they just don't fit your play style or you enjoy something else more or you have specific goals in mind they don't cater to - but that's the case with all powers in the game. Every purview could be considered useless if you don't, you know, use it.
But all of those above are extenuating circumstances that can affect the purviews, not failures of the purviews themselves. Moon and Sun are not only useful, they're useful for a wide range of different character types - fighters who take advantange of their awesome buffs, social characters who use them to affect the hearts and minds of those around them, defensive characters who take advantage of the protections they award or tricksters and psychopaths who just want to watch the world burn and aren't afraid to inflict a little exhaustion, blindness and insanity to see it happen. And they're also really neat; Moon is a Swiss army knife of purview versatility with all kinds of cool powers that have different applications, and Sun is like an instant to-the-front-of-the-line set of powers for those who want to be front and center and noticed. They're not just adequate purviews, they're awesome purviews.
If you're out there, feel free to comment and let us know if you have specific problems that you've encountered using the purviews that we didn't cover. We'd love to help find a way for the celestial lights to be as awesome for your game as they are for ours!
Yep, Sun and Moon are among the celestial purviews we are talking about working on in the poll option. Stars and Darkness, as the other major powers in the heavens, are also included.
Well... honestly, we're not sure how to help you. Since you didn't explain why you think those purviews are weak or what you're comparing them to, it's hard to know what might be tripping you up or what options might help you. But we do love Sun and Moon, so we'll talk about how they're awesome and hopefully something will come out of that that you can use!
First of all, we wouldn't say the boons don't come up - far from it, really. One of our flagship characters, Sowiljr, has been abusing Sun for all it's worth since his wee Hero level days, and when Zwazo Fou Fou was alive he was a scourge to be feared with Moon. Sun's baseline abilities - shedding light, creating heat and enhancing the user's presence - are pretty much always great to have around, while Moon's powers that allow Scions to manipulate others and literally disappear are hella useful. Seldom do games go by in which characters with these boons don't use them; how effective they are depends on what they're doing, of course, but nobody's sitting around thinking, "Man, what a useless purview I bought."
Let's get into specifics, starting with Moon. Moon is a grab-bag of insanely (ha!) useful stuff, making it one of the most versatile and fun purviews out there; it's got more than enough to keep any reasonably creative Scion happy, and is generally one of the purviews envied by other players when they don't have it. Scions with Moon can inflict madness and Virtue Extremities on their enemies or heal them from their allies, vanish from sight and resist mental meddling, literally turn the tides of battle and at high levels inflict lasting curses and incredible cures as they see fit. Scions with Moon are forces to be feared, especially since so many of them are half-mad themselves; they hold exclusive powers over the mind that other Scions can't hope to compete with.
Scions with Sun, on the other hand, rely on the bright flashiness of their powers to stun, awe and overcome all who see them. They can inflict penalties from heat and blindness on enemies or bolster their allies with the gentle warmth of sunshine, enhance their own weapons and attacks with blistering heat and at high levels instantly decimate anything related to Darkness, see through the most potent disguises and super-cook anything in their vicinity with a thought. Control of the sun is one of the most beloved powers across all cultures' mythologies, and Scion's expressions of it retain that feeling of incredible power to enhance life or harm it.
And that's not even counting the ridiculously useful stuff like the Moon and Sun Chariots and Lunar Estate, which are so awesome and applicable to so many situations later in the game that the crying over not having access to them is like the wails of a thousand orphaned children in some of our games. If you don't want an awesome inviolate free moonbase where you run the entire show, I don't know what you do think is useful or neat.
Now, if you're talking about purely combat applications, as some players do, Sun and Moon are not the strongest purviews you could get for those purposes. They still have excellent combat applications here and there - Tidal Interference and Silver Blessing are already rocking it up in Moon for the fighters as early as Legend 3, while Sun's Flare Missile and Burn make solar Demigods fearsome on the battlefield indeed, not to mention the later insanity of Bleach - but they are not dedicated solely to the destruction of monsters. If you're just looking to buff your beating fists, you'll probably be happier picking up something like War or Animal.
How different Storytellers run their games is also a factor in how useful these purviews (or any others, for that matter) will be in your game. If your Storyteller never pays any attention to Virtues or runs Extremities as humorous asides that don't really affect anything, Moon's powers over insanity will of course be less potent than they would be in a game where the Storyteller enforces the madness of damaged Virtues. If your Storyteller never runs a story that involves vampires or werewolves or other creepy crawlies, the purviews' special abilities to destroy those things obviously aren't going to come up, and so on. Every Storyteller runs their game a little (or a lot) differently, so it's possible that yours might simply not be giving you very many opportunities to use your powers, which would be a bummer. If you feel like that's the case, go ahead and talk to him or her; explain that you think these powers are really neat but aren't being given a fair shake in the game, and see what they have to say. If they aren't going to change anything or dismiss the problem, then yeah, you'll probably want to just buy something else, but some Storytellers may not realize that's happening or may be interested in your ideas to make the powers pop more. You'll never know if you don't ask!
And, of course, in the end it's up to the player to take ownership of his powers and use them. If you buy a bunch of Sun boons and don't use them, then of course they're going to look useless; if your first instinct is always to find a different way to solve the problem or shine in a scene, then you probably aren't really interested in having these boons at all. If you never try to find creative ways to use boons and just sit around wondering when the Storyteller's going to hand you a platter marked USE MOON NOW, you're going to miss out on a lot of opportunities that you might have been able to sieze if you were on the ball. It's okay, of course, to not want to use these or any other purviews - maybe they just don't fit your play style or you enjoy something else more or you have specific goals in mind they don't cater to - but that's the case with all powers in the game. Every purview could be considered useless if you don't, you know, use it.
But all of those above are extenuating circumstances that can affect the purviews, not failures of the purviews themselves. Moon and Sun are not only useful, they're useful for a wide range of different character types - fighters who take advantange of their awesome buffs, social characters who use them to affect the hearts and minds of those around them, defensive characters who take advantage of the protections they award or tricksters and psychopaths who just want to watch the world burn and aren't afraid to inflict a little exhaustion, blindness and insanity to see it happen. And they're also really neat; Moon is a Swiss army knife of purview versatility with all kinds of cool powers that have different applications, and Sun is like an instant to-the-front-of-the-line set of powers for those who want to be front and center and noticed. They're not just adequate purviews, they're awesome purviews.
If you're out there, feel free to comment and let us know if you have specific problems that you've encountered using the purviews that we didn't cover. We'd love to help find a way for the celestial lights to be as awesome for your game as they are for ours!
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Eyes Full of Light
Question: Are there no sun or moon gods among the Orisha? Were they not important to the Yoruba, or not prominent enough to feature as PC parents?
Actually, there really aren't. There is no Huitzilopochtli among the Yoruba gods, nor is there an Orisha equivalent to Artemis. It's an apparent omission that baffled scholars studying the religion early in the nineteenth century, especially the crazy ones who were convinced that the Yoruba religion must have grown out of the Egyptian one but who couldn't figure out where Ra and Horus disappeared to. The sun and the moon are certainly important, the way they are for most human cultures, but they don't have dedicated deities of their own.
One of the reasons the lights in the heavens don't get their own deities is that they're assumed to be the purview of Olodumare, the great father-god of the Orisha. Olodumare created sun, moon and stars and, as the lights in the vault of heaven, they are controlled and owned by him as the great primordial sky god. None of the Orisha can really compete with the big man when it comes to the affairs of the sky; even Shango is only in charge of storms, not the sky in which they rage.
The only myth we know of that directly involves someone other than Olodumare affecting the sun or moon is about Obatala, which isn't surprising since he's the second-most powerful creator deity in the pantheon. In that story, Obatala consecrates a sacred tree, turns it into sparkling metal and sends it off to Ogun to have it fashioned into a pot. He then puts the pot into a boat with his slave (possibly the same slave that once tried to kill him with a rock) and sends him to fly it back and forth to the earth each day, driving a solar boat for the rest of time. Based on that story, Obatala's the only one close to having Sun, but it's still a bit fishy - Ogun's crafting abilities are also involved and the slave is technically the guy actually doing the sun-driving - and we ended up deciding that it might not be quite strong enough on its own since the god has no whisper of solar connotations in any other story or cult practice.
Our only other possibility is Shango, who at some point during the religion's evolution was syncretized with a neighboring culture's deity named Jakuta who some scholars believe might have originally been solar in nature. Shango has of course lost that association almost completely at this point, but you could decide that he might have a few boons from the purview still kicking around.
It is surprising to see a culture that really doesn't do much in the way of direct veneration of the celestial bodies, especially sun-worship, which is nearly ubiquitous across a great number of different cultures. But every mythology is different, and in the case of the Yoruba there's no direct person representing for the sun or moon. Instead, everyone is covered in water, dirt and plants, and that's how the gods of western Africa roll.
Actually, there really aren't. There is no Huitzilopochtli among the Yoruba gods, nor is there an Orisha equivalent to Artemis. It's an apparent omission that baffled scholars studying the religion early in the nineteenth century, especially the crazy ones who were convinced that the Yoruba religion must have grown out of the Egyptian one but who couldn't figure out where Ra and Horus disappeared to. The sun and the moon are certainly important, the way they are for most human cultures, but they don't have dedicated deities of their own.
One of the reasons the lights in the heavens don't get their own deities is that they're assumed to be the purview of Olodumare, the great father-god of the Orisha. Olodumare created sun, moon and stars and, as the lights in the vault of heaven, they are controlled and owned by him as the great primordial sky god. None of the Orisha can really compete with the big man when it comes to the affairs of the sky; even Shango is only in charge of storms, not the sky in which they rage.
The only myth we know of that directly involves someone other than Olodumare affecting the sun or moon is about Obatala, which isn't surprising since he's the second-most powerful creator deity in the pantheon. In that story, Obatala consecrates a sacred tree, turns it into sparkling metal and sends it off to Ogun to have it fashioned into a pot. He then puts the pot into a boat with his slave (possibly the same slave that once tried to kill him with a rock) and sends him to fly it back and forth to the earth each day, driving a solar boat for the rest of time. Based on that story, Obatala's the only one close to having Sun, but it's still a bit fishy - Ogun's crafting abilities are also involved and the slave is technically the guy actually doing the sun-driving - and we ended up deciding that it might not be quite strong enough on its own since the god has no whisper of solar connotations in any other story or cult practice.
Our only other possibility is Shango, who at some point during the religion's evolution was syncretized with a neighboring culture's deity named Jakuta who some scholars believe might have originally been solar in nature. Shango has of course lost that association almost completely at this point, but you could decide that he might have a few boons from the purview still kicking around.
It is surprising to see a culture that really doesn't do much in the way of direct veneration of the celestial bodies, especially sun-worship, which is nearly ubiquitous across a great number of different cultures. But every mythology is different, and in the case of the Yoruba there's no direct person representing for the sun or moon. Instead, everyone is covered in water, dirt and plants, and that's how the gods of western Africa roll.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
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.
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.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Staring into the Sun
Question: If a Scion with the Sun purview stares into the sun or any bright light that would normally blind a Scion lacking the Sun purview, would it stand to reason that the scion that has the Sun purview would be able to see perfectly fine without any hindrances?
Not necessarily. Simply having Sun will not make you immune to any and all lights, the same way that simply having Illusion will not make you immune to all illusions or having Animal (Bear) will not make you instantly bear-proof. Some purviews have no immunity boons, or express them in different ways (i.e., you can command the bear not to hurt you, but you'll have to beat its roll); others specifically have immunity boons that allow you to ignore the effects of that purview's powers and energies, and those are the ones you need to try to pull off being able to shrug away anything that the purview might control. A Scion with Sky who doesn't take Electrical Immunity is going to be just as susceptible to lightning bolts as a Scion without Sky, because he chose some other powers to represent his control over the purview.
The Sun purview does not technically have an immunity boon, mostly because the problem of light overload is usually covered with Stamina + Fortitude or Perception + Awareness rolls; because withstanding simple brightness can be covered by those mechanics in a way other purviews with immunities can't (for example, you can't Stam + Fort your way out of being on fire), it's not as necessary for there to be an immunity boon, especially since one would probably come up a lot less than mosst other immunities. For most characters, determining how much you can see when there are very bright lights impeding you is a matter of having a high enough Stamina roll to avoid being blinded and/or a high enough Perception roll to see despite the glare.
However, if you happen to have Penetrating Glare, some Storytellers do allow it to function as a sort of light immunity for those Scions who have purchased it. While we don't technically have that built into the boon for the reasons above, we do occasionally allow it with a good stunt, when a Scion does something particularly neat or unexpected with his affinity for sunlight. A Scion who's just squinting at something on the horizon while the sun's there probably wouldn't get anything from us, but one who describes how he opens his eyes wide and they take on the golden sheen of the setting sun while tears pour down his cheeks from the light et cetera will probably get a pass (or at least some stunt dice to mitigate the normal penalty for effects that make it hard to see).
Even if you do prefer to use Penetrating Glare as an immunity boon, however, we'd suggest limiting it to normal lights and situations most of the time, or at most only to other Sun boons. Your powers over the sun should not make you immune to being blinded by a Sky god's lightning bolt hitting you in the face or a Star god's flash of blinding whiteness; those are magics that are clearly not covered by your powers over the sun, and a boon that could do that would need to be significantly higher-level than Penetrating Glare currently is. If you did choose to expand it to all lights, I'd suggest removing its power to see in low light in order to balance it out a little better, and letting Scions with Sun roll their Perception + Awareness like everybody else when it's mostly dark.
Not necessarily. Simply having Sun will not make you immune to any and all lights, the same way that simply having Illusion will not make you immune to all illusions or having Animal (Bear) will not make you instantly bear-proof. Some purviews have no immunity boons, or express them in different ways (i.e., you can command the bear not to hurt you, but you'll have to beat its roll); others specifically have immunity boons that allow you to ignore the effects of that purview's powers and energies, and those are the ones you need to try to pull off being able to shrug away anything that the purview might control. A Scion with Sky who doesn't take Electrical Immunity is going to be just as susceptible to lightning bolts as a Scion without Sky, because he chose some other powers to represent his control over the purview.
The Sun purview does not technically have an immunity boon, mostly because the problem of light overload is usually covered with Stamina + Fortitude or Perception + Awareness rolls; because withstanding simple brightness can be covered by those mechanics in a way other purviews with immunities can't (for example, you can't Stam + Fort your way out of being on fire), it's not as necessary for there to be an immunity boon, especially since one would probably come up a lot less than mosst other immunities. For most characters, determining how much you can see when there are very bright lights impeding you is a matter of having a high enough Stamina roll to avoid being blinded and/or a high enough Perception roll to see despite the glare.
However, if you happen to have Penetrating Glare, some Storytellers do allow it to function as a sort of light immunity for those Scions who have purchased it. While we don't technically have that built into the boon for the reasons above, we do occasionally allow it with a good stunt, when a Scion does something particularly neat or unexpected with his affinity for sunlight. A Scion who's just squinting at something on the horizon while the sun's there probably wouldn't get anything from us, but one who describes how he opens his eyes wide and they take on the golden sheen of the setting sun while tears pour down his cheeks from the light et cetera will probably get a pass (or at least some stunt dice to mitigate the normal penalty for effects that make it hard to see).
Even if you do prefer to use Penetrating Glare as an immunity boon, however, we'd suggest limiting it to normal lights and situations most of the time, or at most only to other Sun boons. Your powers over the sun should not make you immune to being blinded by a Sky god's lightning bolt hitting you in the face or a Star god's flash of blinding whiteness; those are magics that are clearly not covered by your powers over the sun, and a boon that could do that would need to be significantly higher-level than Penetrating Glare currently is. If you did choose to expand it to all lights, I'd suggest removing its power to see in low light in order to balance it out a little better, and letting Scions with Sun roll their Perception + Awareness like everybody else when it's mostly dark.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Just a Flesh Wound
Question: Do Resilience and Life-Giving Rays work together on the same subject? I can see why Life-Giving Rays wouldn't work with most Health Boons, but the two of them just speed up the healing process...
Yes, indeed, they do! While Life-Giving Rays only affects natural healing rate and can't double the healing you receive from magical sources like Regeneration or Heal, it doesn't interfere with Resilience, which also merely bolsters your natural healing speed. Someone with both Resilience and Life-Giving Rays in effect is healing at four times her normal healing rate; someone with those and a Body Geas can basically watch her wounds close in real-time.
Basically, if someone has to spend Legend to heal you, then Life-Giving Rays won't help that, but if you're healing just by resting, it always helps, even if something else is also boosting your recovery.
Yes, indeed, they do! While Life-Giving Rays only affects natural healing rate and can't double the healing you receive from magical sources like Regeneration or Heal, it doesn't interfere with Resilience, which also merely bolsters your natural healing speed. Someone with both Resilience and Life-Giving Rays in effect is healing at four times her normal healing rate; someone with those and a Body Geas can basically watch her wounds close in real-time.
Basically, if someone has to spend Legend to heal you, then Life-Giving Rays won't help that, but if you're healing just by resting, it always helps, even if something else is also boosting your recovery.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Blinding Us with Science
Question: Where do you draw the line between science and myth as far as purview powers are concerned? E.g., one of my players wants to expand his lightning-based Sky boons to electromagnetism. I understand why you took the time powers out of Stars (they made no sense), and I understand your reasoning for why Time as a purview doesn't work, because it's too modern-science based. But what about boons like Fusion and Solar Prominence, in Sun? They seem to me to be equally non-mythic. Ditto Starfire's cosmic radiation.
Groannn, Fusion... we meet again, my nemesis.
As I'm sure you've gotten an impression of by now, we don't particularly like science-based boons, because they're very un-mythic, which runs counter to the flavor of the game, and in many cases they don't make any sense, either (what've Thor or Marduk been doing with those electromagnetism boons all these centuries - just sitting around wondering what they were for until the nineteenth century?). Science and Scion are not incompatible, of course; Scion's a game about modern children of the gods, and modern children means they'll bring their modern ideas with them, and that's good. They can invent, innovate, combine and challenge the old order with the new in any way they can conceive of; they're the new generation of gods, and if a Scion wants scientific concepts to be a big part of their role as a god of this new age, then he should pursue that.
But purviews are almost never the way to do so. Purviews represent the massive, cosmic forces of the universe; the sky, thunder, lightning and all, is one of these cosmic forces, but the tiny scientific applications of minute amounts of its power (i.e., human electricial pursuits) is just the way that humanity manages to understand and use a tiny fraction of it. Electromagnetism is not one of the underlying mythic forces of the world but rather a modern scientific way of looking at a very small part of one of them. Purviews have been in existence since the dawn of time; they are the underlying forces of the Titans and the great powers that fuel the gods, which means that the powers they grant are equally ancient and universal. Indra, Zeus and Susanoo don't have powers the have to do with electromagnetism; they have powers that have to do with thunder and lightning, because thunder and lightning are part of the collective mythic consciousness of humanity, and specialty sciences of the past two measly centuries are not. If a boon is doing or representing a concept, principle or way of looking at the world that didn't exist in the ancient times that the stories of Titans and gods come from, odds are it's not really appropriate for a boon.
Does this mean your Scion can't be a god of electromagnetism? Of course it doesn't. If that's what he wants to be god of, that's what he should be god of; it just means that he'll have to be a little more creative about how to go about it than just trying to stat up some ill-fitting, obviously modern boons. He's already halfway there, with the power of lightning at his command as a Sky god - remind him that it can be used as a tool as well as a weapon, and try to be sensitive to times when he stunts his lightning powers in such a way that he could legitimately be getting scientific applications out of them (using Storm Augmentation to scramble a computer's brains, for example). Find other powers that might enhance the ideas of magnetism, gravity and electricity he's leaning toward; for example, picking up Axis of the Heavens from to use along with his Sky powers will help him subtly simulate magnetic effects, or getting Unusual Alteration will allow him to give his own body electrical impulses and receptors (like an eel, but more divine). Industry is practically made for gods who want to be scientifically inclined - or, if he isn't interested in making a bunch of awesome electrical toys and relics, encourage him to find someone else who is and find a way to threaten, steal, cajole or quest to gain them. Have him use science in his stunts, his speech, his behavior; being a god of something is about embodying and representing it, so even when he isn't using powers, his badass connection to the forces of electricity can still be expressed.
Really, this is the case for everyone who wants to be god of something off the beaten path, not just those who are science-inclined. Life's easy for the schmoes who just want to be God of Fire or Goddess of Water, but for those who want to be God of Fickle Fortune or Goddess of Inevitable Decay or Goddess of Comforting Humanity, there's always an element of finding the right combination of powers, relics and personal exploits to get that idea across. A god who's strongly about electromagnetism is certainly more esoteric and thus harder to plan for than a god who is merely associated with thunder, but it'll be all the more awesome a payoff for that guy when he becomes a unique young god with his own unique modus operandi. Encourage him to be creative; really, just writing custom boons is about the most boring way I can think of to go about becoming a god of something new or complex.
As for other scientific boons, we've been slowly paring them off the game for years now, leaving only a few small brown spots on our otherwise deliciously mythic apple. Starfire doesn't pose a problem for us, as our rewrite of it has nothing to do with radiation and everything to do with searing, overpowering starlight, but Fusion is possibly my most-hated boon still in the game at the moment. The only reason we haven't removed it is that we genuinely haven't been able to come up with anything better to replace it yet; Sun is very difficult to write for at the high levels, as sun gods tend to spend all their time either moving the sun or being the sun, both of which the purview has already been doing for ages. We're actually not fans of Solar Crown, either, because it's intensely boring for its supposed power level, but if we took both of them out there'd be no level ten Sun boon, so we're keeping the two bad options and working diligently on finding something to replace them before Sowiljr gets to Legend 11 and starts complaining about buying his tenth level of "oh, look, guys, I'm really bright".
Personally, I could see moving Fusion over to Industry, where the gods do have a definite feeling of destroying/devouring/repurposing things into something new. But that's for another day and another great industrious writing project!
Groannn, Fusion... we meet again, my nemesis.
As I'm sure you've gotten an impression of by now, we don't particularly like science-based boons, because they're very un-mythic, which runs counter to the flavor of the game, and in many cases they don't make any sense, either (what've Thor or Marduk been doing with those electromagnetism boons all these centuries - just sitting around wondering what they were for until the nineteenth century?). Science and Scion are not incompatible, of course; Scion's a game about modern children of the gods, and modern children means they'll bring their modern ideas with them, and that's good. They can invent, innovate, combine and challenge the old order with the new in any way they can conceive of; they're the new generation of gods, and if a Scion wants scientific concepts to be a big part of their role as a god of this new age, then he should pursue that.
But purviews are almost never the way to do so. Purviews represent the massive, cosmic forces of the universe; the sky, thunder, lightning and all, is one of these cosmic forces, but the tiny scientific applications of minute amounts of its power (i.e., human electricial pursuits) is just the way that humanity manages to understand and use a tiny fraction of it. Electromagnetism is not one of the underlying mythic forces of the world but rather a modern scientific way of looking at a very small part of one of them. Purviews have been in existence since the dawn of time; they are the underlying forces of the Titans and the great powers that fuel the gods, which means that the powers they grant are equally ancient and universal. Indra, Zeus and Susanoo don't have powers the have to do with electromagnetism; they have powers that have to do with thunder and lightning, because thunder and lightning are part of the collective mythic consciousness of humanity, and specialty sciences of the past two measly centuries are not. If a boon is doing or representing a concept, principle or way of looking at the world that didn't exist in the ancient times that the stories of Titans and gods come from, odds are it's not really appropriate for a boon.
Does this mean your Scion can't be a god of electromagnetism? Of course it doesn't. If that's what he wants to be god of, that's what he should be god of; it just means that he'll have to be a little more creative about how to go about it than just trying to stat up some ill-fitting, obviously modern boons. He's already halfway there, with the power of lightning at his command as a Sky god - remind him that it can be used as a tool as well as a weapon, and try to be sensitive to times when he stunts his lightning powers in such a way that he could legitimately be getting scientific applications out of them (using Storm Augmentation to scramble a computer's brains, for example). Find other powers that might enhance the ideas of magnetism, gravity and electricity he's leaning toward; for example, picking up Axis of the Heavens from to use along with his Sky powers will help him subtly simulate magnetic effects, or getting Unusual Alteration will allow him to give his own body electrical impulses and receptors (like an eel, but more divine). Industry is practically made for gods who want to be scientifically inclined - or, if he isn't interested in making a bunch of awesome electrical toys and relics, encourage him to find someone else who is and find a way to threaten, steal, cajole or quest to gain them. Have him use science in his stunts, his speech, his behavior; being a god of something is about embodying and representing it, so even when he isn't using powers, his badass connection to the forces of electricity can still be expressed.
Really, this is the case for everyone who wants to be god of something off the beaten path, not just those who are science-inclined. Life's easy for the schmoes who just want to be God of Fire or Goddess of Water, but for those who want to be God of Fickle Fortune or Goddess of Inevitable Decay or Goddess of Comforting Humanity, there's always an element of finding the right combination of powers, relics and personal exploits to get that idea across. A god who's strongly about electromagnetism is certainly more esoteric and thus harder to plan for than a god who is merely associated with thunder, but it'll be all the more awesome a payoff for that guy when he becomes a unique young god with his own unique modus operandi. Encourage him to be creative; really, just writing custom boons is about the most boring way I can think of to go about becoming a god of something new or complex.
As for other scientific boons, we've been slowly paring them off the game for years now, leaving only a few small brown spots on our otherwise deliciously mythic apple. Starfire doesn't pose a problem for us, as our rewrite of it has nothing to do with radiation and everything to do with searing, overpowering starlight, but Fusion is possibly my most-hated boon still in the game at the moment. The only reason we haven't removed it is that we genuinely haven't been able to come up with anything better to replace it yet; Sun is very difficult to write for at the high levels, as sun gods tend to spend all their time either moving the sun or being the sun, both of which the purview has already been doing for ages. We're actually not fans of Solar Crown, either, because it's intensely boring for its supposed power level, but if we took both of them out there'd be no level ten Sun boon, so we're keeping the two bad options and working diligently on finding something to replace them before Sowiljr gets to Legend 11 and starts complaining about buying his tenth level of "oh, look, guys, I'm really bright".
Personally, I could see moving Fusion over to Industry, where the gods do have a definite feeling of destroying/devouring/repurposing things into something new. But that's for another day and another great industrious writing project!
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