Like Every Goddamn Question, Our Inbox Is So Full You Guys

It's time for another big fat post full of quickly-answered questions! Just know we love each and every one of you, question-askers, honest, and you can always ask for clarification in the comments if you didn't get what you were looking for.

Question: is there any mythological basis for Thor's greatest fear being a warm bed? (Just something I read in a novel).

Not that we know of, but we would hazard a guess that your book might be referring to the idea that Norse warriors aspired to die gloriously in battle, and would therefore be very unhappy with the idea of dying in bed.

Question: Sorry if this has already been covered, but doesn't Aengus have Artistry associated with him?

Nope, sure doesn't. While Aengus is theorized to be possibly associated with music and the arts, we don't have any real evidence of this and no stories of him being particularly artistic, so we did not give him the Avatar of Artistry. However, if your game likes a more artsy interpretation of Aengus, you can always assume he has some Artistry boons at his disposal.

Question: Months ago I asked why Cernunnos was so powerful because he had nine purviews. Rather than allude to his purviews this time, I'm just asking, why is he so powerful in general? Like, I know that he's the Horned God of Wicca, and I know he's a heavily occultic fertility deity, but based on his description in the Nemetondevos description, he seems like he should have intelligence and/or maybe wits as Associated as his attributes.

Cernunnos is undeniably the most recognizable (and therefore Legendary) of the Gaulish gods whose legends survive into the modern day, but unfortunately we don't really know all that much about him, nor do we have anything but piecemeal information about his associations and exploits. Cernunnos on our site is presented as an Odin-like patriarch because that's how he's written in the Scion Storyteller Screen, but honestly most of that is conjecture. You might want to check out this post about the problems of reconstructing Gaulish mythology.

Question: I want a sentient, witty, wise-cracking animal sidekick. Which would be better: creating a Follower or using Create Nemean/Typhonian? Thanks guys, love you guys and all your work!

Nemean and Typhonian creatures are generally not very bright or socially graceful, so you would probably want something smarter than that if you wanted a wise-cracking sidekick who you could actually have conversations with and hurl witty insults at enemies alongside. Birthright Creatures give you more opportunity to tailor your animal's stats to what you want it to do, and you can also use Epic Enhancement on them if you want to bolster any of their stats, so that's probably more what you're looking for.

Question: Was Anshar really evil? He kinda looks like a really senile sky god to me.

Anshar's clearly a Titan, so that really depends on whether or not you think all Titans are evil (we don't think so, although they are all pretty dangerous even if they aren't actively malicious). Like other ancient sky-father Titans, you could certainly play him as simply distant from and uninvolved in his pantheon.

Question: Are Dwarves and Svartalfar the same creature? Norse mythology is confusing.

No, but they do both live in Svartalfheim and some named svartalfar are occasionally also referred to or alluded to as dwarves, so the confusion is understandable. The Norse word for dwarves is dvergr, and is used to refer to creepy little short creatures that are crafty, morally questionable, and really awesome at making magical items like Mjolnir and Brisingamen. Svartalfar means "black elves" and is confusing because it's equated to both dverger and dokkalfar ("dark elves") in various places, which are fairly clearly attested as two different races, with the dark elves described as dwelling underground and being black of skin, and different in appearance from their light elf cousins.

Basically, some scholars think the svartalfar must be the same as the dvergr since they seem to live in the same or similar places and share some traits, but others point out that there are different terms and associations at work and that there's no reason to make that leap. So really, Storyteller's call on that one. We play them as different.

Question: Would it be possible for Artistry Gods to design relics that could enable Gods and Scions to better navigate the Titan Realms? Like relic goggles to give people temporary Epic Perception rankings to see around Keku? Or some kind of Fire-resistant suits to allow survival in Muspelheim?

Yep, sure is! Hephaestus actually made some flame-retardant armor for one of our groups to go to Muspelheim at one point. Artistry can make all kinds of neat stuff, although it's probably difficult and time-consuming to do so.

Question: When you have the Animal purview, you choose an animal to specialize in. We, in my game have been in minor fights about how specific you have to be. For example, the guy with Animal (Jackal) complaining over how he has less utility as the guy with Animal (Dog). Should one be penalized for being more general, or should I allow the more specialized guy to go outside the limits of his animal from time to time?

You might find this post helpful when trying to determine how specific an animal should be! Animals that are less commonly available do often have less utility than your Animal (Housefly) or Animal (Cow) people who can be fairly assured of their animals being around a lot, but Scions can always go seek out their animals at zoos, parks or in natural areas where they might occur, and of course at later levels they can summon or even create them at will. We do occasionally allow Scions with animals that are kind of close to try to use their boons on something that isn't technically their creature, but always at a disadvantage; for example, if your guy with Animal (Jackal) wanted to use his boons on a coyote, we would have him only understand some of what it was saying since the message would be garbled, or increase the difficulty of using other powers on it significantly to illustrate that he was trying to affect something that he isn't really aligned with.

Question: I know shape-shifting Appearance knacks makes this somewhat of a mote point, but for those Scion who don't invest in them, I was wondering what rolls would you make for disguise. And when say disguise, I'm taking about everything from putting on a wig and Groucho Marx glasses to applying Hollywood SFX prosthetics to change your race or sex.

It would depend on exactly what you were doing, but most of the time we would have you roll something along the lines of Appearance + Stealth or Manipulation + Stealth to actually sell the disguise itself, and probably a side order of Manipulation + Empathy and/or Wits + Empathy to not look suspicious while doing it. Tailor to individual Storyteller tastes.

Question: Can a scion with Animal Communication use social knacks on animals he can communicate with, or does he have to use Animal Obediance?

He has to use Animal Obedience, or else just be able to convince it to do what he wants through good old-fashioned charm. His refined powers of pulling a fast one on humanoids are lost on their animal brains.

Question: Have you ever considered a more free-form system for boons (e.g. Mage spheres or Dark Ages fae magic)? If you have, what worked? If you haven't, what would you imagine succeeding?

Nope, sorry. Spheres work pretty well in Mage, but we have no desire whatsoever to import them into Scion. You might want to check out the official forums, though, since we know there are a few games out there that do that sort of thing.

Question: What does the Darkness Virtue which Reverses Virtue due to the Inue? Nothing? Fire becoming Water? etc.

It reverses exactly; someone affected by Heart of Darkness with the Fire Virtue would abruptly have Anti-Fire. They would hate Fire in all its forms, attempt to stamp it out and campaign against its use and existence, and generally do everything that they could to destroy it with exactly as much fervor as they would normally want to protect and encourage it.

Question: What do you think the Godrealm and Underworld of the Orisha are?

You're looking for this post!

Question: How are Fatebonds handled with the Doppleganger boon from the Illusion tree? For example, say someone created a doppleganger of a fellow Scion and had the doppleganger interact with mortals--utilizing the boons it would have such as subtle knife and stolen face--would it be possible to incur a Fatebond in that way to the person being 'doppleganged'?

Question: Hello, John and Anne! Hope you guys are well. My group uses your resources and revisions on Scion (love 'em!) and I just recently started looking at the blog. You've answered a lot of questions that I've been curious about, and many that haven't even occurred to me. Now, I was wondering if you could answer another question, or if perhaps it's already been addressed. How exactly does a Fatebond work if you've stolen someone's face and then committed the acts that would Fatebond?

Fate is not fooled by your piddly doppelgaenger, nor your attempts to pretend you're someone else. It knows that the person being impersonated is not the one spending Legend, and therefore will not attach any Fatebonds to her; it also knows that you are the one spending Legend, so you're going to get the Fatebonds from doing so no matter what you look like. And before you ask, the same goes for any other way of impersonating someone or meddling with the free will of other people.

As always, jump into the comments if you're so moved.

Closer than Kin

Question: So Lugh is sometimes said to have been fostered by Goibniu, sometimes by Manannan Mac Lir and sometimes by Tailtiu. So was he fostered by all of them? And how does that work? Just something that I've been wondering about and figured you'd know more about it than I do.

Guys, let's talk about fosterage in ancient Irish culture!

Fosterage - the practice of farming your children out to be raised by a different family for a few years during their childhood - was an incredibly important feature of social life among the ancient Celts, especially prominent in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Kids might be fostered anywhere between the ages of two to fifteen, although girls were fostered less often and younger since they were expected to come home and get married younger than boys were, and were generally kept by their host families for at least four to six years. The basic gist of the idea is that one family would send their child, along with some wealth (usually livestock, but it depended on the family) to make sure they were provided for, to live with another family for several years, learning their trade and basic schooling before returning home to enter their adult lives. Richer families fostered more often, since they were more likely to have the goods needed to support the kid they sent off; you couldn't send a child to a foster family with nothing, since then you would be placing an unfair burden on the fosterers to try to feed another mouth with no help. But people of all classes did do it, even those who didn't have a lot of money to start with, and often fostering ended up in a sort of trade arrangement, where two families swapped kids and then later swapped them back again.

There are two main points to fosterage. The first is that, by growing up for a while in another family with alternative parents and siblings, children gained with a strong sense of loyalty to more people in their clans and homelands than they would have had if they had only lived at home. In essence, as adults those people had two families who were not necessarily related but to both of whom they owed gratitude, respect and filial feeling, which in turn meant that they were more likely to keep solid alliances with others in the area and defend more than just their own homestead from invaders or famine. Especially during the periods of history when Celtic areas were populated by several only loosely-connected clans or tribes, fosterage helped make sure that there was a reason for people in the area to work together and respect one anothers' boundaries and honor.

The second reason for fosterage was simply to make sure that the child got a good education. Whenever possible, children would be fostered out to someone that could hopefully provide them good learning opportunities; druids, chiefs and lords were popular choices, as well as monks and other churchmen once Christianity was established. They would have the opportunity to learn different things than they could have learned at home, broadening their experiences and giving them a better perspective on their territory and neighbors, ally and enemy alike, than they could have gotten in only one household. For the lower-class children who went into fosterage, they were also often sent so that they could begin learning a useful trade from their new family, which might later lead into apprenticeship and eventually a career that would be able to feed a family.

While most children were only fostered to a single family, it wasn't unheard of for a child to be sent to more than one, particularly if he didn't get along with the people in his first foster home or there was a political falling-out between the two families, so Lugh could certainly have been fostered with more than one person. Lebor Gabala Erenn does indeed say that Lugh's father Cian gave him to Tailtu to foster, and he's called her foster-son in passing in the Cath Maige Tuiread as well; there is no more information about what happened to him during that time, but the only other thing said about Tailtu after that is that she died while Lugh was king and he founded the summer harvest festival in her honor. In the story of the Sons of Tuireann, Lugh is repeatedly referred to as the foster-brother of the sons of Manannan, and furthermore runs around liberally using a bunch of the sea-god's magical items with apparent impunity, so it seems like there's also a firm fostering relationship there (and indeed, Lugh goes on borrowing Manannan's shit pretty much forever). It's also possible that Lugh is foster-brothers with Manannan's children because they were also fostered with Tailtu at the same time that he was, although his relationship with their father seems too close for him not to have been fostered there as well. To add another layer of complexity, there's some theorization that Tailtu is herself a daughter of Manannan (although she also definitely has Fir Bolg blood connections, so this is up for debate), in which case she and her father could both have welcomed Lugh in as a foster-son at the same time. Finally, Goibhniu does raise Lugh for at least a while and teach him various crafts (which makes lots of sense, since fostering your kids out to their uncles was a common practice and at least one genealogy has Cian and Goibhniu as brothers), and in at least one version it's implied that Manannan might be the one who drops young Lugh off with him instead of Cian, implying a fosterage timeline. (Of course, in another version Goibhniu finds Lugh as an infant, so pick your flavor.)

Lugh's actually a great example of the fosterage system at work, because his special attributes all seem to be traceable back to his fostering adventures as a child. It's because Lugh lives in the family of Manannan mac Lir that he gets access to a bunch of sweet relics and prophetic insight and has ties to the wilder, sea-oriented half of the pantheon that isn't necessarily descended from Danu, which gives him a much better political understanding and position when he later becomes the High King; and because he fosters with Goibhniu, he also grows up knowing, understanding and eventually allying with his Tuatha relatives, even though he is also half Fomorian and grandson of the great Fomorian king Balor. And it's because Lugh lives in the family of Goibhniu that he learns countless different skills, trades and crafts from the craftsmen among the gods, and because he fosters with Manannan that he learns the esoteric arts of wizardry and medicine and herbalism, leading to him becoming the god most reknowned for knowing how to do everything.

It's possible, maybe even likely, that Irish mythology doesn't mean to be strictly literal about who Lugh's foster parents might have been; by referring to various people as his foster parents, it can imply that he has a wide breadth of experiences and training and therefore could be said to be able to do anything, illustrating his position as the most skilled among gods. But on the other hand, bonds of fosterage were considered extremely important, even trumping blood in some cases, so if you want to make some calls to determine where his deepest loyalties lie, that's a valid choice for any game. We personally are pretty comfortable with his status as the foster-son of Manannan mac Lir, but any of the others are good for a game, too.

Highland Fling

Question: Were the Tuatha worshipped in Scotland as well as Ireland? I know that culturally Scotland and Ireland have a lot in common, but does that extend to their gods? (The question was brought on by watching Brave for like the 50th time and wondering who I’d make Merida a Scion of.)

Yep, they definitely were. Various Celtic gods are widespread across Scotland, and the Tuatha are the most major group of them, although their names are often slightly altered by the local dialects. Irish settlers crossed the water to Scotland around the second or third century and brought their deities with them, to mix with local figures as well as other imports from the Norse and even the Romans. Scotland's a giant melting pot that way, and is itself a mystical destination in several Irish legends, including the tale of Muireartach, the one-eyed goddess of the sea crossing between Ireland and Scotland who the Fianna claimed sometimes crossed the water to fight in their battles, or the story of Cu Chulainn traveling to Scotland to train under Scathach, the most demanding warrior woman known to the Irish.

Scotland does have a few figures that were probably deities of the local peoples, but for the most part their mythologies are imported from other nearby areas, and the Tuatha are the primary contenders when it comes to foreign gods with power in the area. If you're planning to mess around with the interplay between Scottish and Irish gods, you might be able to get some very interesting stories out of who came first, who took what territory from whom, and what kinds of political dynamics still remain in the area.

Personally, if I were statting Merida, I would probably set her up as a Scion of Scathach. I could see her running circles around Cu Chulainn at the same Legend level.

Terms of Invasion

Question: Would you consider Partholon, Nemed and the previous generations of colonists to be gods like the Tuatha?

What a neat question! Yes, we probably would!

For those who aren't up on their Lebor Gebala Erenn, Partholon and Nemed were the leaders of previous invasion forces that took and colonized Ireland, before their eventual descendents the Tuatha held it for the most major part of Irish mythology. Irish mythology is very fond of the idea of magical lands being located beyond the sea, so that those who come to the World from elsewhere do so by sailing across the waters. The earliest stories of the Irish universe are therefore about successive waves of sailors from across the sea, coming to Ireland to colonize it and wave their banners of kingship before the next set of people come to repeat the process.

Now, the sources we have the invasion myths from are heavily Christianized; they were rewritten after most of Ireland converted in order to change older stories into Christian ones to prevent lingering paganism from being remembered for too long. The first inhabitants of Ireland were the survivors of a great flood (the Flood of the Bible, in the rewritten version), who called upon an unnamed god to advise them so that they were able to sail through the disaster and land on and settle Ireland. Their leader was Cessair (granddaughter of Noah, according to the Christian writers), who successfully brought her people to Cork but eventually died of grief after her family was destroyed in the ensuing years.

After all of Cessair's people died, Partholon (another descendent of Noah, but one many generations further away) led the next invasion of Ireland, and after a seven-year journey established his people as its new rulers. Partholon shaped much of Ireland, creating new lakes, hills and other landscape features, but he and his people died en masse of a plague (another recurring feature in Irish myth), leaving the island once again empty.

Three generations later (in the same family tree according to one tradition, although the Noah genealogies don't agree), Nemed took his fleet of ships to sail to Ireland, although disasters along the way caused only the ship he himself sailed on to actually reach its shores. This is the first time the Fomorians appear as major characters in Irish mythology; they were inhabiting Ireland already when Nemed arrived, which means they must have settled there some time after the end of Partholon's reign, and Nemed is forced to defeat two Fomorian kings before he can solidify his hold on his territory. But alas, you guessed it - there's another plague, and Nemed and most of his followers go belly-up. The remainder are reconquered by the Fomorians, and eventually only a single ship of them makes it back off the island, to return to wherever they came from.

A period of "uninhabited" Ireland follows, which really just means that Ireland was populated by people that Irish mythology doesn't consider to be people: the Fir Bolg, who were said to have lived on the island on and off over the centuries and to have returned to colonize it in force after the end of Nemed's reign, and the Fomorians, whose origin is unexplained but who probably come in some way from or across the ocean (after all, everyone else does). Scholars spend a lot of time trying to come up with historical explanations for this period, including claiming that the Fir Bolg and/or Fomorians might be in actuality invasions of other Celtic peoples such as the Picts or the Gauls mythologized over time, but no one really knows for sure, especially with Christianity muddying the waters. At this point, Nuada shows up with his people and conquers the island again, and the rest is the period of Irish myth we all know and love, at the end of which the last invasion - that of the Milesians, who become the modern-day Irish - ushers in the end of the age of myth in Ireland.

So who are these waves of folks? We would say they're most likely definitely previous generations of gods, probably part of the mysterious generations of descendents between Danu and the Tuatha who sprang from her. It's hard to know the exact line or where people like Nemed and Partholon fall on it because of the rewriting of the myths in a new Christian context, but they definitely display a lot of the same kinds of behavior and imagery the Tuatha themselves do, not to mention doing distinctly god-like things like creating features of the landscape. Nemed even has a very interesting feature in that he's married to a woman named Macha, which is one of the possible aliases of the Morrigan; there's no proof that the two Machas are the same, of course, but it would certainly be a neat twist if she'd been around meddling even in previous invasions, wouldn't it?

These ancient figures are mostly dead, usually of plague, so you might rule that they're long gone; but then again, most of the regular Tuatha are also technically dead and we still run them as living, so it's really up to you whether you'd like them to be historical figures or living, breathing Legend 9 and 10 gods. You could also perhaps consider them Titans; while most of them aren't particularly nasty, they are obviously of an older generation with little to no connection to humanity, and exploring the idea of the waves of invasions fighting Fir Bolg and Fomorian as a raging ongoing battle between Titans that was only interrupted by the coming of the Tuatha might be some good story fodder, too. You could even say they might have been some of the ancient forbears of the fairy folk, predating even the Irish gods in their habitation of the Emerald Isle.

Irish mythological history is both very well-attested and hopelessly difficult to figure out, thanks to strategic rewriting and conflicting genealogies, so it's likely that every game that tackles it will come up with a few unique takes on it of their own. Go bananas.

The Source of Saturday

Question: Can you recommend a good source for the Baron Samedi-Samhain connection theory you once mentioned?

Actually, no, although I can tell you where we tripped over it. This is one of those theories that is floating around and referenced by several different works, but that is never visited in-depth enough that we could say, "Oh, here's the book/article/whatever that explains it thoroughly."

For those who haven't seen us mention it before, the basic gist of the theory is that Baron Samedi, a New-World-only loa with no African roots that we know of who seems to have sprung up out of nowhere to become part of his current religion, is influenced by or even a later version of the lesser Irish god Samhain, who was brought over by Irish migrant workers and indentured servants who shared their stories with the local African slaves, thus creating a modern synthesis deity where none had existed before.

We first ran into the idea of Irish influence on African diaspora religions in Margarite Olmos & Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert's Creole Religions of the Caribbean, which does not mention Irish influence on the Baron but does point out that his wife, Maman Brigitte, has been pretty obviously influenced by the Irish Brigid and that the rainbow-goddess Ayeda Wedo has gained a few suspiciously Celtic traits, most noticeably the legend that her crown or treasure may be found at the end of the rainbow (and, incidentally, Ayeda is married to Damballah, who is frequently associated with the Irish Saint Patrick because of the former's status as a god of serpents and the latter's famous exploits driving said serpents out of Ireland). From the other end of the spectrum, Sean O'Callaghan's To Hell or Barbados, which is mainly concerned with the cultural movement of Irish people displaced or forced into slavery in the Americas in the seventeenth century, spends some time discussing the influence of Irish myth and religious practices on both indigenous people and African diaspora slaves that they came into contact with, including a nod to the Baron. We've also seen the Samedi theory pop up in various books on modern vodun worship, but not much from the scholarly end of the spectrum, so I don't have a great citation for you there.

Maman Brigitte's Irish roots are much easier to find information on, and you can usually find at least a throwaway line about how Brigid probably influenced her in both diaspora religion texts that mention that Brigid might have been imported to color Maman Brigitte and Irish mythology texts that mention that Maman Brigitte may be a much later form of the older Brigid (in particular, they often cite Maman Brigitte's connection with death as possibly being descended from Brigid's invention of mourning for her slain son Ruadan). Her clearer connection to Celtic myth doesn't necessarily mean that her husband also came from the isles, of course, especially given the cavalier mix-and-match of American religions around that time period, but it still does paint a picture of some filtered European influence from that area in Loa that don't occur in the old African religions.

Basically, to us it looks like a theory someone once came up with that a lot of people said, "Hey, that might be plausible, neat!" but then no one ever actually did any thorough research or wrote any authoritative paper on it, so it remains ethereal and homeless in the scholarly community.

We like to use the theory of an Irish-based Baron Samedi (because what other theories do we even have about that guy?)and Maman Brigitte as an in-game universe explanation for where the "rootless" gods of the American religions might have come from, but it's only a theory, and not a very solid one at that. No one should confuse it for gospel truth, and while we might use it as an in-game plot device, it would be super religiously incorrect (not to mention very douchey) to try to use it to tell actual modern-day worshipers of vodun that any of their loa don't "belong to them" or are otherwise secretly Europeans in disguise. Even those gods who clearly do have European influence in their history are firmly part of the diaspora religions now and have their own unique character and religious importance.

So for us, in the game world where gods are discrete beings who can run around and do things and be interacted with as characters, Samedi and Brigitte are former members of the Tuatha who migrated to the New World and reinvented themselves as loa who spend their time bolstering the ranks of the Orisha; but don't go extending that to how real people might experience their religions in the real world. We like our games rooted in authenticity, but they're still just games, and like everyone else on the planet, sometimes we just have to take a guess and pick the theory we like most.

The Four Fairest

Question: I'd like to know - what are the so called "Tresures of Erin/Ireland", and how could they be adapted to Scion?

The Four Treasures of Ireland, usually better known as the Four Treasures of the Tuatha de Danann, are some of the most important magical items in Irish mythology. They are the great relics of the gods: the spear of Lugh, the sword of Nuada, the cauldron of the Dagda and the stone of rulership that passes from king to king.

The spear of Lugh (or Sleg Luin) is a magical spear that grants its wielder the ability never to be defeated in battle. Lugh used it to kill his grandfather, the Fomorian Balor, by hurling it through his evil eye and then going on to defeat his armies and restore control of Ireland to the Tuatha de Danann. The sword of Nuada (Claimh Solais, meaning "sword of light") is said to burn with a bright, glowing light, and once it is drawn from its scabbard, no one can escape it if its wielder does not choose to let them go. It was with this sword that Nuada conquered Ireland for the Tuatha when they first arrived, and defeated the forces of the fearsome Fir Bolg. The cauldron of the Dagda (Undry) is a great enchanted vessel that pours forth food and drink in so much bounty that no one who ever eats from it can still be hungry, and is one of the Dagda's many food-creating relics (he also has plants that continually bear fruits and pigs that renew themselves after being roasted and eaten); it may or may not be connected to other magical cauldrons in Irish myth, including the one Goibnhiu uses to brew the mead of immortality, but is definitely a symbol of fertility and plenty either way. And, finally, the stone of rulership (or Lia Fail) is a magical stone that the Tuatha brought from their home to Ireland in time gone by, and whenever the feet of the rightful king of Ireland stand upon it, it sings or cries out from joy to inform the land that its ruler has arrived. It was used to crown all the mythical kings of Ireland, and since it refuses to sing for unfit or illegitimate rulers is also an important object for determining the true right to rule the island. (And if that sounds familiar, it might be because a certain legend of a sword in a stone might very well have some of its roots in the old legend of Lia Fail!)

As for adapting the Four Treasures to Scion, you really barely need to do anything to "adapt" them at all. They're clearly relics owned by the Tuatha de Danann, and as such may appear being used by those gods or even granted to sufficiently high-level Scions, either to own or to use for a short time as part of an adventure. All four of them are actually statted in Scion: Companion on page 30, but as usual we would recommend ignoring that except as a starting point; these are clearly divine, star-level relics owned by gods, not three- to five-dot relics that beginning Scions should be starting with, and we would save them for important plot moments or the use of the Tuatha alone unless you have a really good reason otherwise.

You may also be able to do some neat stuff with the legends surrounding the relics; for example, Lia Fail is supposedly still standing in Ireland on the Hill of Tara, but it was damaged by Cu Chulainn long ago and has never sung again, so you might want to spin a plot having to do with repairing it (or perhaps it isn't broken at all, but there has just been no worthy king in Ireland since Cu Chulainn, hmm?). Manannan mac Lir, god of sorcery who acts as Lugh's foster-father and is one of the senior-ranking Tuatha, serves in Irish mythology as the owner or caretaker of most famous relics, so Scions with a connection to him might be able to borrow some of the Treasures - Manannan does in fact lend his relics out, something that few gods do but that he has at least done repeatedly for Lugh - or go to him for advice on how to find or handle them if he does not currently possess them.

The Four Treasures are a great place to start with crazy awesome high-level Irish relics, but they're just the tip of the iceberg; Irish mythology is lousy with magic items and super relics used by both gods and mortals. Scions of the Tuatha might also encounter the eight relics that Lugh demanded the sons of Tuireann recover from faraway lands and bring back to Ireland or other single relics such as the famous harp of the Dagda, sword of Manannan mac Lir, silver hand of Nuada, fearsome spear of Cu Chulainn, and so on and so forth.

Ranks of the Tuatha

Question: So, it seems really likely that Enech it is going to win the poll, and since you're going to be neck-deep in Tuatha anyway... you think you might find the time to add a god or two to their roster? I'm a greedy bastard, I know, but hey, might as well ask!

Indeed, you might as well! Unfortunately, no, that probably won't be included in the Enech project. Overhauling that beast will be a work all its own, never mind also trying to do another association marathon!

Adding new gods to the Irish pantheon will be included in the low-level gods project, however! I can't promise anything, but I personally would love to see Boann, Goibnhiu and Midir as playable deities, albeit probably not Legend 12 ones.

A Wild Wind

Question: I'd like to know some more about the Wild Hunt. I know that each culture has its own version of it. In Scion, how do you handled it?

Well, rolling in first of all with the fact that each culture actually doesn't have a version of the Wild Hunt - far from it, really. The concept is a very northern European one, and you won't find it in the same form in the rest of the world. But there are several possibilities for handing the Hunt within the lands of the European gods, so let's check them out!

First of all, there are basically just buckets of different interpretations of the Hunt, who's on it, who's leading it, who it's chasing, and what it means all over the place, so Storytellers have a veritable smorgasbord of folklore to choose from. In Germany and the Celtic lands surrounding it as well as the British Isles, the Hunt was thought of as made up of the spirits of the dead and the demons that attended them, frightful and dangerous to an living soul unlucky enough to be caught out at night while they were riding; they chase the living in order to add them to their number, and are especially fond of prideful young men and beautiful young women, who should always be cautious to make it indoors before sunset. In other Celtic areas, however, particularly England and Ireland, the Hunt is instead made up for fairy riders who ride with wild and ecstatic abandon, hunting magical animals, mortals who will be taken back to Faerie with them or even unlucky members of their own kind; whether they're dangerous to people or merely frightening and supernatural depends on the area and how comfortable a particular village or shire is with their relationship with the faeries. Sometimes, helping the fairy Wild Hunt can gain you magical prizes or favors (although, as with all things that come from fairies, they are often double-edged swords), but in other areas in any way interacting with them dooms you to share their Hunt, either for the single night or for eternity, and hindering them in any way (even accidental) will surely bring down their supernatural wrath on your head. Some parts of Wales split the difference and claim that the hunt is the hounds and gods of the underworld, chasing down ghosts or spirits that have escaped their final destination, and in areas where Christianity has strongly colored the folklore this is often transformed into a tale of the hounds of Hell chasing down the souls of sinners.

The biggest question, though, is always this: who is the leader of the Wild Hunt? There we have many options as well, all of them interesting and rife with possible plot hooks. Odin himself is one of the most popular options, and indeed the idea of the Wild Hunt in Scandinavia was almost exclusively associated with him, a legend that set him as the wild-eyed leader of a hunt of belling supernatural hounds and the dead warriors of the einherjar; remote areas even today still retain folksayings surrounding Odin being out on particularly stormy or ominously silent nights. On the continent around Denmark and Germany, the Hunt is often said to be helmed by a woman, however - the goddess Holle, who might be either Hel or Freya, leading her own horde of the dead for her dark amusement. In Britain, the figure of Herne the Hunter is often said to be the leader of the Wild Hunt, comprised of both the dead and the beasts of the deep woods, and more than a few scholars have pointed out that his name is etymologically very similar to that of Cernunnos, not to mention that both figures are often represented as horned or antlered. In Wales, the terrifying god Gwyn ap Nudd (literally "Gwyn, son of Nudd", who is the Welsh version of Nuada) leads the hunt from the Underworld flanked by the demons of death, the better to catch the fleeing souls of those who have just died and take them home with him again; Nuada himself isn't associated with the hunt over in Ireland, but Manannan mac Lir, god of the galloping waves which are his horses, has been theorized by scholars to perhaps do the same, possibly in search of the souls of heroes who have died in the crossing to Mag Mell. In areas where the Wild Hunt is a fairy event, it is often said to be led by Auberon or whomever the local king or queen of the fairies is considered to be. And, one of the youngest but most interesting versions, it's also a matter of myth in some parts of Britain that the Wild Hunt is led by King Arthur himself, still searching for the Questing Beast with the shades of his loyal knights, spending the ages searching for it until, on the day he succeeds, he returns to lead England to glory again.

As for us, our games have actually seen the Skeins of Fate group participate in the Wild Hunt, which was held by the fairies of the Autumn Court with a hapless Gaulish Scion as their quarry. It was led by the Autumn King, who was a creature of indistinct nightmare that no one got a very good look at; it's still unsure if he's simply a fairy they had an encounter with, or if he might have been a god in disguise that they didn't recognize. Certainly, Aurora pulled off some very ballsy maneuvers there and largely got away with it, so one has to wonder whether or not there were two eyes under that dark crown. One of the Eastern Promises groups also heard tell of the Wild Hunt beginning soon somewhere nearby, but they ended up going somewhere else to solve their problems, and consequently still have not encountered whomever or whatever hunts at midnight.

We like to keep the Hunt ambiguous - who knows if they players will ever investigate enough to learn the real truth? But there are myriad possibilities for anyone who wants to use them in a game, and the plots practically write themselves.

P.S.: Do you guys know this song? It's on our playlist for the Strawberry Fields game thanks to Seamus, our Scion of Manannan mac Lir, and although not strictly about the Hunt, you can almost feel the hoofbeats shaking the ground as they go.

Hand Off

Question: Hey, I know this may be a weird question, especially since I am mixing up two genres, but how open are you to the concept of relic robotic limbs? I mostly got the idea from the Irish and the idea that you have to be perfect. The particular tale I was thinking about was with Nuada losing his hand and having one crafted from silver before he got a flesh one again. I was mostly wondering if in mythology of other pantheons this can be allowed, or if it's a taboo.

It doesn't come up very often, actually. There are surprisingly few cyborgs in ancient myth. There are pantheons that are more concerned about physical perfection than others, though, so we can make some guesses about who would have a problem with it and who would probably not mind!

Alas for Nuada, but unfortunately having the silver hand did not actually solve his troubles; no matter how cunning and useful it was or how much it allowed him to avoid suffering from the handicap, it actually didn't restore him to "physical perfection" status. He remained considered maimed and imperfect until his actual flesh was regenerated, and only then was he able to become High King of the Tuatha again. Irish mythology's emphasis on physical perfection is closely linked to the idea of face, which implies that one's physical appearance and form is directly affected by one's honor and reputation, so those who are perfectly honorable and heroic are always physically perfect, and those who are physically imperfect are assumed to have some flaw of character or behavior that prevents them from achieving true greatness. Of course, Nuada's deformity was an injury, not his own fault, but that law is there to make sure only the most worthy can serve as king, so even with a fancy prosthetic he was barred from the post.

Now, this doesn't mean it's impossible to have a relic limb or prosthetic as a Tuatha Scion, but it does mean that other Irish gods and heroes may make assumptions about you. They might wonder what's wrong with you that you were deformed in the first place, or even decide on what that flaw might be and spread the rumor of it to others among their people. Young Scions who didn't grow up in ancient Ireland probably won't always cling to that idea and be more likely to be sensitive to the physical challenges of their fellows, but it'll probably always be a stumbling block when dealing with the old guard.

The other pantheon that will probably be a big old bucket of asses about a robotic fixture is the Theoi, which is made up of gods with a serious fixation on physical awesomeness. In their case, it's not a matter of honor and moral fiber but rather the result of an obsession with ultimate excellence in all things, including physical athleticism and appearance. The Theoi don't accept less than the best, and anyone with a physical handicap is, by their reckoning, automatically less than the best; that's why Hephaestus got hurled off of Olympus at birth, because he was physically unfortunate and his mother automatically rejected him. (Unless you prefer Homer's and Apollodorus' versions, in which Zeus is the one who threw him off for trying to prevent him from punishing Hera, which is less about physical perfection and more about Zeus being a dick as usual.)

The Theoi take it one step further; they don't just view people with physical handicaps as failures, they view anyone who doesn't approach physical awesomeness as a failure, meaning that even if you have all of your parts in working order they'll still look down their noses at you for having a poor Appearance score (or, god forbid, negative Appearance). They're probably not going to praise you for having the ingenuity to rock an awesome Skywalker-esque cyborg arm; they're just going to pity you for having the epic patheticness of a permanent injury or congenital defenct. Hephaestus might be understanding... but even he lives in that culture of peak physicality, so it'll depend on the Storyteller's take on him.

But despair not, you intrepid pioneers in the field of robotic replacement! There are plenty of pantheons with less of a fixation on your physical perfection who would have no problem with relic body parts, especially if they're particularly artist or useful. In fact, some pantheons have examples of magical prosthetics in their myths already; Vishpala, a legendary warrior from the Rig Veda, lost her leg in battle and had an iron replacement made so that she could head right back in and continue kicking ass, and of course the Egyptian story of Isis creating a golden penis replacement for her castrated husband is one of the most famous myths among those gods.

We've had a few prosthetics among our characters, as a matter of fact. Tyler Hamilton Orton, missing his right arm, has a hammer grafted on to render him the most efficient face-smasher around, John Shimoda and Sora Sato have actually had their entire bodies replaced by robot parts, and several young Egyptian Scions have started out with a magical eye in place of their original organs. We haven't had anyone go fully ambitiously robotic yet, but I feel like it must be only a matter of time.

Otherworlds On Parade

Question: I've asked this question a hundred times before but I get the feeling my phone eats it: With Enech Overhaul drastically in the lead, could we maybe get a blog post on the REAL Tuatha Overworld and Underworld (and possibly general cosmology) instead of what's in Companion?

You sure can. Irish cosmology, coming up!

First of all, the cosmological landscape of ancient Ireland is one of those that really doesn't conform to the Underworld-Overworld-World setup of the Scion books, which used more obliging cultures like the Norse and Greek to base it. It's probably because of its general weirdness that the Scion books do such a hackjob on it, but that's no excuse for making up the shoddily-conceived likes of Tir na Marbh, no matter how much the idea of the Tuatha cooperating with the Welsh gods might otherwise appeal.

Other than the earth where humanity dwells, there are three to four major worlds in the Irish cosmology: the Overworld (Tir na nOgh), two Underworlds (Mag Mell and Tech nDuinn), and Faerie. Collectively, these are called the Otherworld by many scholars, since Irish mythology embraces a concept of all the worlds being apart from the world of humanity but also ephemerally close to it in some way.

Tir na nOgh ("Land of Youth") is one of the most misunderstood, which is weird because it's perfectly clear in the Irish sagas and most of its problems come from later people interpreting it through the lens of Christianity. It is not, contrary to confused popular opinion, an Underworld; the dead do not dwell here, nor is the disposition of souls part of its function. It is the home of the gods, and here all is beauty and contentment and art and peace, with no misfortune or danger, no old age or hunger, and definitely no bad guys to plague the gods who are busy enjoying it. It's to Tir na nOgh that the Tuatha retired when they left the World, and because it is conceived of as a beautiful land far across the western sea, there are occasional stories in Irish mythology of heroes attempting to reach it by sailing off into the sunset. A few mortals do live here once in a while, always because they were brought there by some god or quest, and they remain indefinitely since they can't age or die (in mechanical terms, they probably become Legendary Mortals the second they set foot in the place).

Mag Mell ("Joyful Plain"), on the other hand, is an Underworld, but is similarly pleasant and wonderful. It's owned and ruled by Manannan mac Lir, who dwells here with his seemingly neverending horde of fancy relics, and is the eventual destination for Irish heroes who die after glorious and honorable lives (like Valhalla or the Elysian Fields, it admits only the awesomest mortals to spend eternity in its sweet fields). Like Tir na nOgh, it's full of nothing but beauty, joy and eternal youth, and nothing bad ever touches its inhabitants. The same idea of a place far across the sea is preserved here - which makes especial sense thanks to Manannan mac Lir's involvement - and it is also sought after by sailing heroes once in a while, though it's not found as often as Tir na nOgh. An interesting variant tradition has been interpreted as saying that this Underworld is ruled over by the Fomorian king Tethra, who is mostly unattested in other Irish mythology; it's hard to say if perhaps he was considered its lord before the victory of the Tuatha saw him supplanted by Manannan, or if maybe in reverse he became an important personage in the Underworld after dying in glorious battle against the gods. He's also said to be married to Badb, a sister or alternative name for the Morrigan, which gives him another connection to the idea of death.

Tech nDuinn ("House of Donn") is the other Underworld, and the destination of everyone who isn't badass enough to be granted a golden ticket to Mag Mell. It's also an island, but unlike the first two was usually assumed to be much closer, in the neighborhood of what is now North Bull Island off Ireland's northeast coast. It was believed that below that island lay the isle of the dead, where all the souls of the departed traveled and were stored under Donn as the king. This particular myth is Donn's own fault, since he insulted Eriu - the personified goddess of Ireland, most likely Danu under another name - and was drowned by Manannan mac Lir for it, and therefore now holds court under the sea where he himself died. Not a lot is actually written about what Tech nDuinn is like, other than that it's underground, ruled by Donn, and not as happy a place to end up as Mag Mell, more likely a closer equivalent to the difference between Valhalla and Hel.

Faerie, finally, is a much younger but very entrenched world, the dwelling place of Ireland's vast hosts of sprites, elves, brownies and kobolds. It's generally believed to be inside or beneath the hills of Ireland - thus the word Underhill often being used as an equivalent name for it - which are often accorded respect as fairy places, but beyond that there are as many different ideas of what Faerie is and who's in it as there are counties and villages in Ireland. Some split it into two courts, one good and one evil; others split it into courts revolving around the seasons or the Virtues; still others believe it's a single unified realm ruled by a fairy king or queen, and of course the identity of that king or queen also differs from place to place. Much later English writers, taken with the charm of the legends of Faerie, have also muddied the waters a great deal - Shakespeare, for example, who invented the fairy queen Mab in his play Romeo and Juliet (probably basing her on some form of the Morrigan), or the invention of the fairy king Auberon in the thirteenth-century French epic poem Huon de Bordeaux. There are also several traditions that claim that the fairies are in fact the Tuatha de Danann themselves, who went Underhill to escape Christianity after the coming of the Milesians, and therefore there's also some muddying of the waters between Faerie and Tir na nOgh, depending on who's telling the story. It's an epic mess, and we couldn't even try to tell you which way is "right"; that's a call for every game's Storyteller to make.

A thing that does not exist, however, is Tir na Marbh ("Land of Death"), which was invented by Scion purely in an attempt to plug something in where the usual Hades or Hel or Mictlan would go. We have no idea why they did this when there were two perfectly good Irish Underworlds already hanging around - maybe they thought Mag Mell was too nice/the same as Tir na nOgh, and Tech nDuinn too obscure? - but it's a pretty terrible conglomeration of random things and should probably be ignored, like most of the Tuatha chapter of Companion's attempts at worldbuilding.

The idea of the Tuatha collaborating closely with the Welsh gods, however, is a great one, since they clearly know one another well and appear in each others' epic stories, so keep that. Just throw away all the Underworld junk surrounding it.

Ten-Question Roulette

Here's something you guys haven't seen before - it's a magical extra bonus vlog! The question box has been blowing up lately, so in an effort to catch up a little bit, here's a ten-question smorgasbord of Scionness!

Question: What happens when someone with divine socials manages to insult the Virtues of another Scion? What takes precedence - the ichor boiling in response to the insult or the inability to hurt someone divinely likeable?

Question: For Haunted Mists, the more powerful you are, the more time you need to concentrate for the mists to gather. That doesn't make much sense to me... someone who hasn't branched out much in the Death purview can summon forth the mists much more quickly.

Question: It sounds like in many of your games, the Scions quickly become the bad guys, at least in the mortal world. Have any of your characters had the strength of will or luck to be a good guy? For instance, causing more good in the world than bad?

Question: What happens when you use two Avatars simultaneously with a multiple action? Do you combine the narrative awesome of both, or does one just fizzle?

Question: Kin-slaying is a big taboo among the Greeks, but how close does someone have to be to be considered "kin"? Could Hera contract a Scion of Hades to bump off some of Zeus' more offensive bastards without anyone receiving a visit from the Kindly Ones? Would she even go there, if she thought she could get away with it?

Question: Have you guys ever considered officially moving Goibnhiu from the Nemetondevos to the Tuatha? Or is he too minor a figure to bother moving?

Question: Are Norse dwarves immortal?

Question: How do you justify a number of boons metric when not all purviews have the same opportunity to get them? Prophecy and Stars come to mind - they both only have 1 boon per level, compared to, say, Magic, which has more boons than any other.

Question: You've mentioned a couple times that you believe that most of the Nemetondevos aren't Legend 12. Well, I just wanted to know which ones, in your opinion, are.

Question: You once mentioned a possible bestiary, but it never shows up on the voting poll. Why is that?

John is such a grumper. Fantastic at it, though.

Brigid, Brigid, Brigid!

Question: Why is Brigid not a god with Artistry as an associated purview? For that matter, why does she not have ANY associated purviews? If the implication is that she is not as important/powerful of a god in that pantheon, then that seems strange, seeing as how she is still venerated under the name of St. Brigid. Just curious.

Hey, friend! We've covered this one before (Brigid is so popular, it comes up a lot!), so check out previous discussions about Brigid and her saintly syncretizations here and here. The short version of it is that, in Irish mythology, Brigid is almost a non-entity; she barely appears and does nothing of real consequence, and is clearly far less important to the myths than pretty much everyone else. She marries Bres to legitimize him as ruler of the Tuatha; when he goes rogue, it's said that she fights with the Tuatha instead of with him; and when her son Ruadan is killed, she invents the art of keening. And that is literally the sum total of all the things Brigid ever does in Irish mythology. She is at about the same level as folks like Sif or Hebe when it comes to not being particularly important.

As for Artistry, we are super excited about it being in the world now for gods and Scions to use, but we don't want to give it to every god who wanders by with a passing familiarity with crafts. For those who aren't doing anything special with it, it's likely they have some levels of Artistry but not the whole purview, or even just a good number of dots of Art. Brigid is said to be the patron of metalworkers, but she never does anything even remotely related to it in any story, so she's not rocking the Avatar alongside people like Hephaestus or Brahma.

Tea and Crumpets and So Forth

Question: Are there any Legend 12 gods that are exclusively English? I know Britannia doesn't count and isn't Legend 12, but I'm interested in what associations she has.

Alas and indeed, Britannia doesn't count. She's a neat lady, but while she's the goddess of Britain, she is not actually British herself, being a thoroughly Roman deity. You're also right that she's not Legend 12, since the Romans mostly personified her to represent the territory and to have something to show their own gods and emperors as superior to, and there are no surviving myths about her other than some images of her being conquered by Mars or Caesar. She probably would have vanished from everyone's consciousness almost completely if Elizabeth I, that sexily badass paragon of queenliness, hadn't spearheaded her resurrection in the sixteen century as a symbol of the power of England, and since then she's been on a lot of coinage, stamps and other official symbols of the country's government even unto the modern day. She's now basically the Uncle Sam of England, though of course more antiquitious and Britishly fancy, and her origins as an actual divinity have been lost far into the mists of time.

All that is interesting, but it doesn't give us much to go on in terms of associated powers for her. We would assume she's Legend 9 and has been for a long, long time, and that her most likely association is War, since she was usually shown as fighting the (losing, but give her props for trying) war against the Romans when she first appeared and later represented British military and naval might and colonization. She's a good example of a goddess who came up sort of out of the blue and might have been a Scion herself, most likely of Athena, to whom she's markedly visually similar.

As for exclusively English gods... I'm afraid I have to disappoint you, because there aren't any, or at least not in the way we tend to think of England right now. The British Isles were populated by an ever-shifting murk of Celts and Norsemen, their influence waning or waxing in different areas depending on the current wars and rulers, and thus the evidence in England's ancient times all points to worship of the gods of those people. The Saxons brought the Norse gods with them, leaving traces of Odin, Thor and Volund before Christianity swallowed most of the island whole, and the Celts who predated and coexisted with them worshiped the Tuatha and the gods of Wales, leaving evidence of Lugh and Nuada and the Dagda and the rip-roaring tales of the Cath Maige Tuired and Mabinogion as well as infrequent shrines to other Celtic divinities such as Cernunnos. England wasn't considered its own cultural or ethnic group for a long, long time, and during that time it was pretty much a neverending party of northern European gods meeting at the crossroads between their territories.

And, of course, there were Romans in southern Britain, so the Dodekatheon had their say as well. If you're looking to play a historical game set in the wayback times, you could probably throw a rock in any direction and hit a religious observance dedicated to at least one of these three sets of gods. If you're wanting to play the most English Scion possible, my personal recommendation would be one of the Aesir, since the Anglo-Saxons became the basic stock of Englishmen until the Norman invasions, but the Celtic gods are equally reasonable choices.

Doctor Danger

Question: Hey, John and Anne, or Jo-Anne, as it were. Just wondering why you nerfed Dian Cecht to only having Health? And why does he now have so many enemies?

Man, Joanna is my sister. You've made this weird.

Anyway, one of these is a question we've already answered in olden days. Dian Cecht's nerfment was discussed over here, and it's pretty simple reasoning. He only has Health because he only does Health.

As for his enemies, that's also pretty simple. Dian Cecht is notorious for being insanely jealous and spiteful against anyone who might rival him for the title of Most Awesome Doctor, to the point that he killed his own son for being better at prosthetics than him and then punished his daughter and made human herbal medicine next to impossible for most people when she dared to get upset over it. His enormous enemy list is just a list of all the other major healing gods in the world; any and all of them would not only be rivals to his self-proclaimed title, but people he would probably intentionally take action against to stack the deck in his favor or punish them for presuming to doctor on his turf.

Penis Party

Question: What's with the Dagda dragging his dick across the ground?

Heh. Oh, Dagda, you crazy dude.

The image is most strongly found in the second Cath Maige Tuireadh, when the Dagda is sent by the rest of the Tuatha to go try to be diplomatic and buy time among the Fomorians. Because the Dagda is not exactly what you would call the most awesome politician, it doesn't go awesomely, although he does manage to keep everyone distracted with his ridiculousness for quite a while. Knowing his penchant for unappetizing Irish food, they make him a massive cauldron of porridge and demand that he eat it all in one go, which he does because Tuatha, and he promptly passes out from massive overeating. He then has to drag himself home with his belly as large as the cauldron, his clothes too small to cover his ass and his giant penis hanging down and waggling around as he trudges off beneath a hail of Fomorian insults. It's not his finest hour.

However, mere boyish Fomorian pranks are not all that is going on here. The Dagda is the major fertility figure of Ireland, and fertility gods are notorious for having gigantic junk; it's an easy shorthand symbol to let you know that their powers of penis (and thus their powers over all kinds of fertility, including that of the land) are prodigious, often seen in other fertility gods like Freyr, Oko, Priapus and Min. (Guys, those pictures are not safe for work. Because of the penis.)

In fact, the CMT up there is enjoying some good old-fashioned punning, which is one of Irish myth's favorite things to do. In the same passage where it describes the Dagda's sorry state, it explains that he's dragging his club behind him and leaving a massive furrow in the ground; however, the word most often used to describe the Dagda's club, lorg, is a double entendre that can mean both "club" and "penis". So yeah, maybe he's dragging his giant relic club around leaving furrows in the ground that divide the provinces of Ireland... or maybe he's leaving giant dick-ditches everywhere. Irish mythology thinks Irish mythology is hilarious.

So, really, the dick is enormous because the Dagda's job is to be the enormous dick of nature, or something. And it's enormous so it drags along the ground, because no one had invented dance belts in ancient Ireland. And that's what's up.

Untangling the Clans

Question: I wasn't gonna ask this, since you've been harassed by a lot of Welsh questions, but since it concerns the Irish as well, I figured I'd ask anyway. While Danu has 8 generations seperating her from the Irish gods, Don directly has children, and one of those children is Arianrhod, who in turn has Dylan and Lleu. So if Lleu and Lugh are the same god, should Lugh be treated as older than the rest of the Tuatha? And if thats the case, should he be treated as a member of the Welsh pantheon or the Irish?

Fucking Lugh. Every time.

As we all know, Celtic mythology is a clusterfuck; different Celtic peoples worshiped several of the same figures but told different stories about them, and when those stories include genealogy, everything goes straight to nTech Duinn in a handbasket. Lugh, according to the Irish, is the son of Ethniu and Cian, grandson of Balor and at least ten generations removed from Danu. But according to the Welsh, he's the son of Arianhrod, who is the daughter of Don, which is probably just Danu's Welsh name. To further add to the confusion, he's not the only one with this problem - Don is also the mother of Gofannon, better known to the Irish as Goibnhiu, one of the Tri Dee Dana and a bucket of generations away from the source as well, and of Eufydd, widely considered to be known as Ogma when you skip across the water, also a son of Ethniu in Ireland. And, of course, Irish Nuada is in Wales probably Llud Llaw Eraint, who's the son of Beli Mawr, who happens to be Arianhrod's dad and Don's consort and probably the same as the Gaulish Belenos, so somehow he's even higher in the genealogical chart but now not related to Don/Danu at all and possibly a Gaul.

Basically, Celtic mythology is drunk. Some Storytellers may simply choose to shrug and accept this, and that's a totally valid way of going about things. If your game doesn't have a pressing need for you to sit down and rearrange three different pantheons' worth of family trees and equivalencies, then for god's sake, don't do it.

For everyone else, however, the headache is only just beginning. With all this going on, it's not really surprising that the original Scion books just decided to sweep the Welsh gods under the Tuatha's rug and pretend they weren't an independent force, or that the Nemetondevos supplement just threw its hands up in the air via sidebar and said, "Yeah, well, Lugh can't be in every pantheon, deal with it." A lot of the decision-making surrounding who goes where and why and how far will depend on your game's needs; are your Scions(or your story) interested in playing with a bunch of different Celtic pantheons and their interrelations, or will that stuff just be extra or in the way? Is Wales going to be a major force in your story, or can you safely handwave some of this stuff? Do you have Scions from all three areas, and are the players themselves looking to explore any of this?

The golden rule is, of course, that when a god turns up in more than one pantheon, the pantheon in which he's most important and central should be considered his "home". Of course, Lugh is pissing all over that rule right now by being one of the main characters in all three of the Celtic pantheons, but for some of the smaller figures, you can pursue that line and do all right - for example, Eufydd is much less important in Welsh mythology than Ogma is in Ireland, so it would make more sense to declare that Ogma is a Tuatha god who sometimes visits and gets worshiped in Wales, not the other way around.

As for deciding who's senior to whom based on genealogy... well, as you can see, there are multiple options and none are really more "right" than the others. If you're primarily rolling with either the Irish or Welsh myths, you can ignore the genealogical claims of the other with impunity, but if you're using both, compromises are going to have to happen. The easiest thing to do is just to declare that the eight generations of Tuatha between Danu and her most famous children is a poetic device meaning "a really goddamn long time" instead of a literal number of people. Yeah, that means you're pretending that some of those gods whose names are listed in the Tuatha's historical lineage might not have existed, but since the vast majority of them never did anything and are known only as a name, that might be okay. If you don't like ignoring those poor disenfranchised ancestors, you might also consider that Danu keeps having children even several generations later, possibly with her own offspring, so that when Irish mythology says Nuada is the son of Eochaid and never mentions any woman involved, Danu herself might be the mother, continually procreating on down the tree. You could also rule that one or both of these pantheons is just straight lying about their heritage - either the Tuatha de Danann claiming they have many more generations than they actually do to give them legitimacy, particularly when it comes to their claim on Ireland, or that the Welsh gods are not actually as close to ancient Don as they say and are conveniently omitting some intervening gods to make themselves sound more important.

Lugh is still always the problem, though, because both of his birth stories are very strong and apparently contradictory. While there's a general theme in common - divine princess has accident baby, turns out to be Lugh - Ethniu, the Fomorian princess, doesn't have a lot in common with Arianhrod, as Welsh a goddess as they come. There you may simply need to make a choice about which one you want to use; we have no easy answer for you. As we said, Celtic mythology is drunk. Whichever you choose, treat him as having a family position appropriate to the myth you're running with.

Someday we'll make our own determination on all this and put it in a PDF, whenever we have a chance to really sink our teeth into the Welsh pantheon, but that day is not today. Which is probably good for our sanity.

Irish Mystery Theatre

Question: What's the story of Danu aligning with the Titans in your games? Alternatively, if there is fiction written on the subject, could you point me to it?

Actually, there is no story of Danu aligning with the Titans in our story, at least not yet. For most games, we'd recommend she start as a Titan and never be available as a playable parent. She was way too ancient, remote and uninvolved to really be a candidate for godhood, but since Dierdre is there, clearly we are Up to Something and the plot must needs explain what the hell is going on.

And that I can't tell you, because players are still involved in that plot. If Dierdre is a true Scion - and she does seem to be - then Danu must have been a goddess when she created her, but what does that mean? Was she the last Scion of Danu before the ancient mother of the Tuatha departed to join the Titans? Is she the first Scion of Danu, returning to aid her people after centuries apart? Is she really a Scion at all, and if she's not, how does she so perfectly approximate one? What was Danu's reason for creating her, when she hasn't had children since she founded the Celtic pantheons in the mists of ages past? Are there secret clues embedded in the fiction surrounding the plot?

Nobody knows. All they know is that she's for some reason Important, at least enough for the Tuatha to dedicate an entire band of Scions to a rescue mission to retrieve her, and Manannan mac Lir, when he can be convinced to talk about the subject, has vaguely implied that there may be A Prophecy. And for the moment, that's all anybody knows about it.

Speculation! Mystery!

Bres Votes Himself

Question: Who is the current king of the Tuatha?

Well, that depends on your game's decisions about what, exactly, is going on with those psychotic Celtic warmachines.

In the absolute technicality of Irish mythology, nobody's king of the Tuatha de Danann; they all died at one point or another, and in the strictest interpretation of the stories there's nobody left. Of course, that would make it hard to have any Tuatha to do anything with in Scion, so we'll have to ignore that little detail (as we so often do. Tuatha, why you so crazy?).

If we presume that all the Tuatha on the playable roster are as alive and active as one another, then we have a veritable menu to choose from. No fewer than three of the Tuatha have served as High King in the past.

Nuada Airgetlam was the first king of the Tuatha (well, during the time that their myths are active, anyway). Thanks to his incredible courage, physical perfection and prowess in battle he was among the most beloved of his pantheon, and he led his people to victory over the Fir Bolg and secured Ireland to become their homeland. He has served as High King twice; he lost the office when his hand was cut off in battle because it is required that all kings of the Tuatha be physically perfect, and once his hand was restored he took up ruling the pantheon again until the war against the Fomorians caused him to pass control over to a more capable warrior general.

The Dagda, the jolly old father god of many of the lesser Tuatha and renowned warrior and reveler, was also High King of the Tuatha for a short period of time. It's unclear exactly when his reign was - we know he was king while Aengus was seeking his wife Caer Ibormeith, but it's hard to know when exactly that tale falls on the continuum of Irish myth. The Dagda's sometimes considered the king of the Aes Sidhe as well, suggesting this is perhaps a very late development from the time that the Tuatha depart to go underhill and become the fairy folk.

Lugh, finally, is the wartime king of the Tuatha; though he was never in any official line of succession, his skills as a commander on the field of battle caused Nuada to hand the reins over to him during the war against the Fomorians. Since basically everybody else, including the other two High Kings, died during said war, he remained the de facto king until his own death some time later.

Technically, Lugh was the High King last, so depending on what you rule happened with the Tuatha, he might still be in power. Then again, he was granted that power by Nuada specifically for purposes of the war against the Fomorians, so once that ended it might have reverted back to the Silver Hand. But then again, the Fomorians are loose again now with the release of the Titans, so it's possible Nuada could have handed it right back for the same reasons. And if you decide that the Dagda was High King last, going off the fairy theory, then you could also say he might still be in power. A lot depends on what you decide the "deaths" of the various kings meant, how they avoided true death within Scion's setting and what political motivations might be at play between them.

Personally, we like to run Nuada as the High King; he was the original HK, after all, before it was cool. He's the archetypal perfect king, representing justice, order, beauty and perfection, and the fact that the Tuatha brought him back into power once suggests to us that they probably love him enough to do it again. He's the leader of the Tuatha for us (well... at least he was before Woody ruined everything. Now Manannan mac Lir's in charge. Shit got weird).

But there are other options if you don't want to keep Nuada at the helm, most notably Lugh as a possible wartime king, either on his own or under Nuada's aegis. Every Storyteller will probably want to make a different call based on the politics and feel they want for their individual games.

Something is a Virtue

Question: Dear JSR: Please change the Tuatha Virtue from Intellect to Vengeance. They were all about holding grudges.

We'll take it under consideration!

We've had a lot of conversations about the Tuatha Virtues and whether or not they need tweaking, actually. We're cool with Piety - if there's one thing the Tuatha believe in, it's the awesomeness of the Tuatha and their right to invade wherever the hell they feel like as a pantheon - and Expression and Courage are no-brainers, but Intellect's a more complicated choice. We're not entirely sure it fits; sure, Irish mythology respects brains, but it respects physical badassness and honorable insanity more, and they definitely don't fit into the same model of Intellect as, say, the Devas. But at the same time, the Tuatha love cunning and cleverness, and when they succeed, they succeed big-time, such as when Aengus wins his divine estate from his father with the badass Power of Motherfucking Grammar. So we're unsure.

There definitely is a theme of vengeance running through some of the stories of the Tuatha, but we're similarly unsure about it. When it appears, it's insanely violent, but there are also Tuatha figures for which it seems entirely absent, so we're not sure if it's really a Tuatha-wide thing. Cu Chulainn refuses to sleep with the Morrigan and she's like "I will kill everything you love," and Lugh manages to pull off the greatest revenge-caper in anyone's history on his father's murderers, but when the Fomorians threaten and then mock the living shit out of the Dagda he just sort of sad-Eeyores his way back home, and when Sreng lops off Nuada's arm, he's just like, "Well, damn, that's inconvenient, you guys want to just live in Connacht and we'll call it even?"

We're still thinking about it. Feel free to weigh in in the comments if you have strong feelings one way or the other!

Flidais Foltchain

Question: Who is Flidais of the Golden Hair?

Flidais is a character from Irish mythology most famous as the patron of animals and hunting - both protecting animals from hunters and apportioning them out to humanity to be domesticated or consumed as necessary. She's Manannan mac Lir's mother-in-law through her daughter Fand, and is also rather widely famous as a figure associated with sexuality, most prominently in the Tain bo Flidais when she marries the hero Fergus (a grandson of Aengus and probably a Scion), who claims that if he didn't have her it would take seven other women to satisfy him. She also owns one of the famous magical cattle that so much of Irish mythology revolves around, and is obliquely to blame for a lot of the shenanigans in the Tain bo Cuailnge thanks to her aiding Fergus in his on-again off-again feud with Medb and company.

Like many of the women of Irish mythology, Flidais was almost certainly a goddess who was later euhemerized into a semi-historical mortal figure (like all of the Tuatha, really). Her ownership of the cow that could feed three hundred on its milk, her strong ties to sexuality and her connections to animals and the woodlands in which they live make it pretty likely that she was a sort of wilderness or fertility goddess, concerned with both the bounty of the land and the creatures that lived on it. There are no real myths of her left outside the cattle raids, but she was certainly a fairly prominent figure in ancient Ireland, especially around Ulster and Mayo, and most likely one of the goddesses of the Tuatha. Certainly she's old enough that two of her daughters aid the Tuatha in the battle against the Fomorians.

You'll find a writeup for Flidais as an Avatar of Emamu in the Anunna supplement on our Downloads page; as a mistress of beasts and a figure of feared feminine sexuality, she seemed like a good opportunity for a rare non-Fomorian Irish Titan, and too interesting a figure to ignore. However, you could also play her as a minor goddess or even a Scion from the era of the heroic deeds of Ireland. Whatever you choose, she's definitely an interesting addition to the many possibilities for Irish misbehavior.