It's vlog time! Today's subject is general cosmological goodness, including questions about Titans, god interactions and the general rules of the universe.
Question: Do Scions identify cross pantheon by role? Do all the creator gods hang out and compare notes (or one up each other or just try and make the best bear, whatever)? Do all the fire gods get together and talk about who has the best volcanoes? Do all the psychopomps get together and complain about all the ungrateful mortals? Do the prophetic deities get together at the foretold times and talk about the subjects that they foresaw themselves talking about?
Question: How does each pantheon view masculinity and femininity? If that's a bit too much ground to cover, I'm particularly interested in how the Aesir, the Tuatha De Dannan and the Bogovi view masculinity and femininity.
Question: What gods (or kinds of gods) do you think would be most proud (if at all) of their children breaking off for a new pantheon? What gods would be least ok with it?
Question: Why is Apep in the Titanrealm of darkness? Is it not more closely associated with Chaos?
Question: Does a Justice God have to believe in Character his own laws or can he just ignore it when it is convenient?
Question: How do you handle the gods no longer being worshiped? Fate? The Titans, not caring, something else? Or do you run with the idea that the world of Scion has major cults today with large and active temples/shrines?
Question: What does the process of binding a Titan look like? The corebook provided a specific example in the sample chronicle, but failed to give more general information.
Question: In your game, Do mortals know if a god died or did something new to their legend? Like somehow a myth about the death or event of the god suddenly is found or they retroactively just know it? I was asking because of the fiction where Athena dies and I wondered about that.
And that's the end of that four-installment vlog-filming marathon. We're internet athletes!
Showing posts with label cosmology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cosmology. Show all posts
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Friday, April 18, 2014
Kings of the Cenote
Question: I was rereading your K'uh supplement, and I was wondering why you decided to make Yum Cimil/Cizin a god rather than a titan of Xibalba. After all, he is, well, from Xibalba. Is it because you had to fill the RAW Scion ideas of having an Overworld, Underworld, and Titanrealm for your pdfs, and you needed to put someone in charge of Metnal? Or is there some other reason that he fits more as a god than as a Titan?
Yum Cimil is a very interesting (and weird) dude when it comes to researching Maya mythology, so I'm glad you asked about him! Let's talk about all his unsightly, rotting problems.
Yum Cimil/Yum Cimih, depending on the era of your scholar's translations, is generally better known by letter as are many of the Maya gods; his codical designation is God A, as he's the first identifiable deity appearing in the Yucatec codices, where he often hangs out with God A', his equally skeletal buddy. When the two of them appear together, they are extremely similar in iconography and doubled symbolism to the Lords of Xibalba mentioned in the Popol Vuh, which would lead to the natural conclusion that they're probably the same guys. This is all pretty legit, so you're not wrong about wondering why he's appearing separately from them in the supplement.
The problem with Maya mythology is that it's very fragmented. We have mythology from various different time periods and various different smaller groups within the Maya, not all of which agree with one another; the Classical Maya civilization was very different from the much later K'iche civilization from which we got the PV, and even yet more different were various semi-isolated Maya kingdoms in the jungles of the Yucatana, Belize and Guatemala. Some were so isolated that they even survived relatively late into the modern era, such as the Tzotzil or Lacandon people, who also had their own evolved myths from the same base. And, of course, some of these places and times have more, better, or simply different mythological information than others; for example, the Classical Yucatec Maya mythology we have is largely culled from reliefs, paintings and codices, but lacks any storytelling to interpret the gods and scenes we are seeing, while much farther south you have the PV with its Guatemala-specific flavor and elsewhere you have modern Maya beliefs that have begun to absorb influence from Christianity and/or other Mesoamerican cultures.
So whenever we try to figure out what the "Maya pantheon" looked like, we're facing a pretty giant challenge rating in attempting to not only untangle all of those sources but also to make them make coherent sense with one another. All of the gods in the supplement, and in Maya studies in general, suffer from scholars sometimes just having to make a call and run with it, at least until better evidence surfaces.
But anyway, back to Yum Cimil. Calendrical God A is an ugly son of a bitch, in keeping with the general Maya dislike of death, but nobody can say he doesn't look like he enjoys his job.
His buddy, A', is no more of a joy to look at, and generally even more violent in his death imagery - he's usually committing suicide whenever he appears, which is weird, but that's death gods for you. The dual gods of the underworld seem like shoo-ins to be identical to the twin Lords of Xibalba in the K'iche tradition, but because Yucatec Maya myth is so much harder to interpret, there are also enough differences to cause us to pause when writing. A and A', to begin with, are far more important and active in ritual and life than the Lords of Xibalba; they appear as hunters chasing various uay and mortals, and are present in scenes depicting the Jaguar God of the Underworld (probably K'inich Ahau in his nighttime form), suggesting that they are involved in some way in his carrying of the sun through the netherworld. Some scholars also believe that A at least may be a lunar god, based on his appearance in various sacred calendar texts and the prevalence of a crescent-moon symbol associated with him.
By contrast, the Lords of Xibalba from the PV are purely creatures of death. They do not leave the underworld, have no connection to any celestial or divine powers outside their own realm, and are purely antagonistic toward gods and heroes that are not under their power, which is pretty obviously illustrated by their massive superiority complex and attempts to utterly crush the Hero Twins for basically not a whole lot of concrete reasons. As far as we can tell - which isn't super far, because apart from the PV, which is no doubt not in even its original K'iche form much less the form it might have appeared in earlier Maya civilizations - they have no connection to other deities, locations or powers. They are the dead, and they are pleased to wield their terrible power over the living without any need for further functions.
These aren't necessarily enough differences to definitively decide that A and A' are different people from Hun Came and Vucub Came, but they are still real details and suggest that alternative interpretations might be very possible. In particular, the fact that A and A' don't always appear together and aren't as identical as the Lords (A' in fact seems to be less important than his supposed twin) suggests that they may be more their own bags of bones, and the K'iche story of the Lords' defeat and permanent barring from the affairs of the world seems heavily at odds with A and A', who clearly nobody likes but who also seem to be effective and influential divine figures.
At this point, we could have tipped either way, honestly. We think it's almost beyond question that even if the Lords are basically different figures from A and A' at this point, that they came from the same original root, so deciding when or if to separate them is as tricky as it ever is when considering continual evolution within a religion. We might well have decided to just conflate them and assume that their differences were cosmetic interpretations of different areas of the same religion...
...if it weren't for the Lacandon and others of their ilk. The Lacandon Maya people were possibly the longest-surviving Maya civilization that avoided contact with Europeans and Christianity until the beginning of the twentieth century, thanks to living in generally impenetrable jungle and having little interest in what white people were up to in their general vicinity. The Lacandon had (and still have) the latest and most long-running version of Maya religion still being practiced widely among them, and their death god, Kisin/Cizin, was absolutely not identical to the Lords of Death (although it's still likely they had common roots). As a sole ruler of the underworld, he was the sometime-antagonist to Hachakyum, the lord of the heavens, and both feared as a terrible representative of death but also understood to be the ultimate final authority over most of those who had died. Kisin has a whole slew of myths that are purely unique to him, including the story of his banishment to rule the underworld and subsequent tantrums in which he shakes the world with earthquakes, his treatment of the dead in which the worthy are purified by his horrific torture and the unworthy utterly destroyed, and his creation of animals (and possibly even uay) to parallel Hachakyum's creation of mankind. He doesn't fit with the Lords of Xibalba at all, especially because he performs a duty (however unpleasant) for the souls of mankind, but he does have a few things in common with God A, most especially the belief that he hunts the underworld for the spirit twins of humans who are meant to die, which might be the very scene that our unexplained artwork of A on the hunt is depicting.
So, we've got these Lords of Xibalba, and they are definitely A Thing. And we've got Kisin, and he's definitely A Thing. And then we've got A and A', and while they are Things, they are probably Things that belong aligned with one or the other, and whose information just isn't as easy to interpret as it is for some other gods. Trying to align Lacandon mythology, which had a couple of extra centuries to evolve past other Maya beliefs, with any other religion is tricky anyway, but in this case we're looking at a bunch of deities who are probably very firmly related but not necessarily all exactly the same.
So, based on all of that, we saw no option but to let Kisin, in all his gross-smelling, bad-attitude glory, be the main man of the underworld as he obviously is in Lacandon myth, while the Lords of Xibalba, clearly Titans defeated by the Hero Twins in Guatemalan myths that had no parallel with Kisin, were separate beings. And while we could have aligned A and A' with the Lords instead of Kisin, we found their differences too intriguing and the possibilities for connecting them with Kisin (and possibly his brother Sucuncyum, even) too compelling. Since we wanted to keep the pantheon using their Yucatec names wherever possible, we refer to him as Yum Cimil, the calendrical god A's name, but retained for the vast majority of his characterization the stories of Kisin and his fractious relations with the rest of the cosmology of death in the Maya universe.
The difference between Metnal and Xibalba, by the way, is a whole ball of wax all its own - both are clearly places of the dead, but depending on the material and the scholar, different people consider them the same place, separate places that are linked, that one is inside the other, or even that one is not an underworld at all but merely a place where terrible deathly things reside. Metnal being the Yucatec death-realm (with a name that most likely has a linguistic connection to the Aztec Mictlan as well) and Xibalba the K'iche, we decided to associate the first with Yum Cimil as the representative of Yucatec interests, and the second with the Lords of Death, whose realm to control it clearly is.
I could probably give a pretty massive dissertation on all the gymnastics we did to try to align as much material from various different Maya peoples together to make it both gel into a usable worldview but also still preserve its unique character and mythology wherever applicable, but that would be a whole lotta words. Suffice it to say that, after intense research, consultation with others and thorough consideration, we as writers made a call that Yum Cimil was more likely his own man than merely a manifestation of the Lords, and went from there.
The one thing we weren't doing here, though, was worrying about making sure to have a playable death god in charge of the underworld because that's what Scion always does for every pantheon. As I'm sure you might have noticed, we tend to wave our middle fingers cheerfully at Scion's arbitrary cosmology rules whenever they get in the way of representing a culture's myths in a more fun or accurate way - hell, the supplement for the Alihah didn't even have an underworld. We obey the RAW in areas where we have to in order for people to be able to use our supplements in a compatible way with their current games, but that's pretty much the only way we feel obligated to do so.
Yum Cimil is a very interesting (and weird) dude when it comes to researching Maya mythology, so I'm glad you asked about him! Let's talk about all his unsightly, rotting problems.
Yum Cimil/Yum Cimih, depending on the era of your scholar's translations, is generally better known by letter as are many of the Maya gods; his codical designation is God A, as he's the first identifiable deity appearing in the Yucatec codices, where he often hangs out with God A', his equally skeletal buddy. When the two of them appear together, they are extremely similar in iconography and doubled symbolism to the Lords of Xibalba mentioned in the Popol Vuh, which would lead to the natural conclusion that they're probably the same guys. This is all pretty legit, so you're not wrong about wondering why he's appearing separately from them in the supplement.
The problem with Maya mythology is that it's very fragmented. We have mythology from various different time periods and various different smaller groups within the Maya, not all of which agree with one another; the Classical Maya civilization was very different from the much later K'iche civilization from which we got the PV, and even yet more different were various semi-isolated Maya kingdoms in the jungles of the Yucatana, Belize and Guatemala. Some were so isolated that they even survived relatively late into the modern era, such as the Tzotzil or Lacandon people, who also had their own evolved myths from the same base. And, of course, some of these places and times have more, better, or simply different mythological information than others; for example, the Classical Yucatec Maya mythology we have is largely culled from reliefs, paintings and codices, but lacks any storytelling to interpret the gods and scenes we are seeing, while much farther south you have the PV with its Guatemala-specific flavor and elsewhere you have modern Maya beliefs that have begun to absorb influence from Christianity and/or other Mesoamerican cultures.
So whenever we try to figure out what the "Maya pantheon" looked like, we're facing a pretty giant challenge rating in attempting to not only untangle all of those sources but also to make them make coherent sense with one another. All of the gods in the supplement, and in Maya studies in general, suffer from scholars sometimes just having to make a call and run with it, at least until better evidence surfaces.
But anyway, back to Yum Cimil. Calendrical God A is an ugly son of a bitch, in keeping with the general Maya dislike of death, but nobody can say he doesn't look like he enjoys his job.
His buddy, A', is no more of a joy to look at, and generally even more violent in his death imagery - he's usually committing suicide whenever he appears, which is weird, but that's death gods for you. The dual gods of the underworld seem like shoo-ins to be identical to the twin Lords of Xibalba in the K'iche tradition, but because Yucatec Maya myth is so much harder to interpret, there are also enough differences to cause us to pause when writing. A and A', to begin with, are far more important and active in ritual and life than the Lords of Xibalba; they appear as hunters chasing various uay and mortals, and are present in scenes depicting the Jaguar God of the Underworld (probably K'inich Ahau in his nighttime form), suggesting that they are involved in some way in his carrying of the sun through the netherworld. Some scholars also believe that A at least may be a lunar god, based on his appearance in various sacred calendar texts and the prevalence of a crescent-moon symbol associated with him.
By contrast, the Lords of Xibalba from the PV are purely creatures of death. They do not leave the underworld, have no connection to any celestial or divine powers outside their own realm, and are purely antagonistic toward gods and heroes that are not under their power, which is pretty obviously illustrated by their massive superiority complex and attempts to utterly crush the Hero Twins for basically not a whole lot of concrete reasons. As far as we can tell - which isn't super far, because apart from the PV, which is no doubt not in even its original K'iche form much less the form it might have appeared in earlier Maya civilizations - they have no connection to other deities, locations or powers. They are the dead, and they are pleased to wield their terrible power over the living without any need for further functions.
These aren't necessarily enough differences to definitively decide that A and A' are different people from Hun Came and Vucub Came, but they are still real details and suggest that alternative interpretations might be very possible. In particular, the fact that A and A' don't always appear together and aren't as identical as the Lords (A' in fact seems to be less important than his supposed twin) suggests that they may be more their own bags of bones, and the K'iche story of the Lords' defeat and permanent barring from the affairs of the world seems heavily at odds with A and A', who clearly nobody likes but who also seem to be effective and influential divine figures.
At this point, we could have tipped either way, honestly. We think it's almost beyond question that even if the Lords are basically different figures from A and A' at this point, that they came from the same original root, so deciding when or if to separate them is as tricky as it ever is when considering continual evolution within a religion. We might well have decided to just conflate them and assume that their differences were cosmetic interpretations of different areas of the same religion...
...if it weren't for the Lacandon and others of their ilk. The Lacandon Maya people were possibly the longest-surviving Maya civilization that avoided contact with Europeans and Christianity until the beginning of the twentieth century, thanks to living in generally impenetrable jungle and having little interest in what white people were up to in their general vicinity. The Lacandon had (and still have) the latest and most long-running version of Maya religion still being practiced widely among them, and their death god, Kisin/Cizin, was absolutely not identical to the Lords of Death (although it's still likely they had common roots). As a sole ruler of the underworld, he was the sometime-antagonist to Hachakyum, the lord of the heavens, and both feared as a terrible representative of death but also understood to be the ultimate final authority over most of those who had died. Kisin has a whole slew of myths that are purely unique to him, including the story of his banishment to rule the underworld and subsequent tantrums in which he shakes the world with earthquakes, his treatment of the dead in which the worthy are purified by his horrific torture and the unworthy utterly destroyed, and his creation of animals (and possibly even uay) to parallel Hachakyum's creation of mankind. He doesn't fit with the Lords of Xibalba at all, especially because he performs a duty (however unpleasant) for the souls of mankind, but he does have a few things in common with God A, most especially the belief that he hunts the underworld for the spirit twins of humans who are meant to die, which might be the very scene that our unexplained artwork of A on the hunt is depicting.
So, we've got these Lords of Xibalba, and they are definitely A Thing. And we've got Kisin, and he's definitely A Thing. And then we've got A and A', and while they are Things, they are probably Things that belong aligned with one or the other, and whose information just isn't as easy to interpret as it is for some other gods. Trying to align Lacandon mythology, which had a couple of extra centuries to evolve past other Maya beliefs, with any other religion is tricky anyway, but in this case we're looking at a bunch of deities who are probably very firmly related but not necessarily all exactly the same.
So, based on all of that, we saw no option but to let Kisin, in all his gross-smelling, bad-attitude glory, be the main man of the underworld as he obviously is in Lacandon myth, while the Lords of Xibalba, clearly Titans defeated by the Hero Twins in Guatemalan myths that had no parallel with Kisin, were separate beings. And while we could have aligned A and A' with the Lords instead of Kisin, we found their differences too intriguing and the possibilities for connecting them with Kisin (and possibly his brother Sucuncyum, even) too compelling. Since we wanted to keep the pantheon using their Yucatec names wherever possible, we refer to him as Yum Cimil, the calendrical god A's name, but retained for the vast majority of his characterization the stories of Kisin and his fractious relations with the rest of the cosmology of death in the Maya universe.
The difference between Metnal and Xibalba, by the way, is a whole ball of wax all its own - both are clearly places of the dead, but depending on the material and the scholar, different people consider them the same place, separate places that are linked, that one is inside the other, or even that one is not an underworld at all but merely a place where terrible deathly things reside. Metnal being the Yucatec death-realm (with a name that most likely has a linguistic connection to the Aztec Mictlan as well) and Xibalba the K'iche, we decided to associate the first with Yum Cimil as the representative of Yucatec interests, and the second with the Lords of Death, whose realm to control it clearly is.
I could probably give a pretty massive dissertation on all the gymnastics we did to try to align as much material from various different Maya peoples together to make it both gel into a usable worldview but also still preserve its unique character and mythology wherever applicable, but that would be a whole lotta words. Suffice it to say that, after intense research, consultation with others and thorough consideration, we as writers made a call that Yum Cimil was more likely his own man than merely a manifestation of the Lords, and went from there.
The one thing we weren't doing here, though, was worrying about making sure to have a playable death god in charge of the underworld because that's what Scion always does for every pantheon. As I'm sure you might have noticed, we tend to wave our middle fingers cheerfully at Scion's arbitrary cosmology rules whenever they get in the way of representing a culture's myths in a more fun or accurate way - hell, the supplement for the Alihah didn't even have an underworld. We obey the RAW in areas where we have to in order for people to be able to use our supplements in a compatible way with their current games, but that's pretty much the only way we feel obligated to do so.
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Nordic News
It's another vlog day, and this week, it's all about the Norse. Let's hit it!
Question: How much bigger, physically, are the Aesir Gods than the non-Aesir Gods? How much bigger physically are non-Aesir Gods than normal humans? How much bigger physically CAN the non-Aesir gods get than normal humans?
Question: Is Odin as colossal of a jerk to his brothers as he is to... everyone who does not meet the criteria 'NOT being a dick to this person will help prevent Ragnarok'?
Question: Is it ever explained what happened to Vili and Ve? After the creation myth, they seem to disappear.
Question: Why will Baldur go to Hel when he dies? Shouldn't he end up in Valhalla (or at least in Folkvangr)? Isn't he everyone's favorite person ever?
Question: After looking up seidr & learning men were considered effeminate if they used it, I'm curious about how the Aesir view the three fate purviews and male scions who use them. I'd imagine Magic has a bit of a stigma but what about Mystery & Prophecy?
Question: What is the difference between Helheim and Niflheim. I have seen both being used as Hel's house.
Question: What happens when a Titan with Ultimate Stamina dies and comes back? Does the concept they represent return to normal?
Question: How do you handle the Norse goddess Idun? She's technically not either Aesir, Vanir or giant but as the daughter of Ivaldi, a dwarf or svartalfar. My personal take on it is that she short and childlike looking. Half because she's a dwarf and half because she's the goddess of youth.
Next time, we're going to talk about characters and PCs and fun stuff related to playing and running them. See you then!
Question: How much bigger, physically, are the Aesir Gods than the non-Aesir Gods? How much bigger physically are non-Aesir Gods than normal humans? How much bigger physically CAN the non-Aesir gods get than normal humans?
Question: Is Odin as colossal of a jerk to his brothers as he is to... everyone who does not meet the criteria 'NOT being a dick to this person will help prevent Ragnarok'?
Question: Is it ever explained what happened to Vili and Ve? After the creation myth, they seem to disappear.
Question: Why will Baldur go to Hel when he dies? Shouldn't he end up in Valhalla (or at least in Folkvangr)? Isn't he everyone's favorite person ever?
Question: After looking up seidr & learning men were considered effeminate if they used it, I'm curious about how the Aesir view the three fate purviews and male scions who use them. I'd imagine Magic has a bit of a stigma but what about Mystery & Prophecy?
Question: What is the difference between Helheim and Niflheim. I have seen both being used as Hel's house.
Question: What happens when a Titan with Ultimate Stamina dies and comes back? Does the concept they represent return to normal?
Question: How do you handle the Norse goddess Idun? She's technically not either Aesir, Vanir or giant but as the daughter of Ivaldi, a dwarf or svartalfar. My personal take on it is that she short and childlike looking. Half because she's a dwarf and half because she's the goddess of youth.
Next time, we're going to talk about characters and PCs and fun stuff related to playing and running them. See you then!
Thursday, March 27, 2014
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.
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?
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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.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Forgotten Realms
Question: What do you guys think of Dubnolissos as the Gaulish underworld? I think it's nice, but since there no actual mention what the Gaulish underworld is, it is pretty much closest thing they have sadly. :(
Question: Do the Nemetondevos have an Overworld?
Gaulish cosmology party!
Or rather, lack of Gaulish cosmology party. As you note, we don't actually know... well, anything much at all about the cosmology of the ancient Gaulish religion. Most of our notions of what the ancient continental Celtic conception of the universe might have been are reconstructed and piecemeal; we put things together based on fragments of ancient art, possible related concepts in the iconography and symbolism of various Gaulish deities, and even comparison with other nearby cultures' cosmologies. Some scholars attempt to reconstruct a three-part world from the Gundestrap Cauldron, one of the more famous pieces of Gaulish art:
The theory is that the scenes - which include a clearly identifiable image of Cernunnos, as well as other figures that are theorized to be Taranis and Belenos - show symbolic depictions of three worlds, including a world of humanity, a world of the gods and an "otherworld" beyond it that might be the home of monsters or other strange creatures. The theory is heavily based on drawing parallels between the worlds of Norse cosmology (Midgard, Asgard and Jotunheim) and the worlds of Irish cosmology (Earth, Tir na nOg and Faerie), and while it does have some interesting possible parallels (like the guess that maybe the giant bovine figure on the base of the cauldron is the same as the Norse Audumbla, or the idea that the scenes are meant to depict battles from the Tain bo Cuailgne), in the end it's just a big old pile of guesses. We have no idea if any of them are correct, despite the fact that various scholars with wildly different theories are willing to duel to the metaphorical death over their own personal favorites.
The Gauls were largely pre-literate and what few things we have preserved from their religion were recorded by Roman invaders, which means that they're all highly polluted by syncretism and interpretatio romana, and most of the details that didn't match up to Roman religion were summarily ignored. Julius Caesar, our best written source for Gaulish religion (and isn't that a depressing thought?), describes a few of their gods, funeral rites and sacrificial rituals, but he doesn't bother to explain how they thought the universe was put together. Which in itself sparks more scholarly theories that maybe he didn't describe it because it was very similar to Roman cosmology and he assumed his audience back home would automatically assume that... but really, we have no clue.
So the upshot of all this is that Gaulish cosmology is a giant question mark, and has been for centuries. And unless we discover either an ancient writer's hidden works that describe the religion in detail, or some previously unknown artwork or artifacts that directly depict it, that's the way it's going to stay. A moment of silence for the things we have forgotten and may never be able to remember or reconstruct.
This is one of the major reasons that the Nemetondevos are hard to work with in Scion. We don't know very much about them, and even less about the universe their people believed they inhabited; and that means that we don't have much to go on when we try to figure out what associations their gods have, where their Scions might go, who their enemies might be or what kinds of stories and mythic archetypes best describe them. They're essentially a lost pantheon, which is why the official supplement that details them basically approaches them from a perspective that says that the pantheon was almost eliminated, has been out of play in Scion's universe for a long time, and has as its greatest enemy Fate itself. If anything can erase a pantheon, a group of beings literally made up of pure legend and myth, it's Fate. Fate alone can erase the stories of even the most incredible mythic exploits, so that's what the supplement suggests happened to these gods.
We pretty much agree with you, first questioner; Dubnolissos is a pretty good shot at a posited Gaulish Underworld, but at the end of the day it's almost totally fabricated. The supplement leans heavily on the idea that because the Nemetondevos attempted to oppose Fate itself in the person of the Matrones (whose trinity of Fate-weavers is another repeat of the European idea of the three women who represent destiny, just like the Moirai, Norns or Sudice), Fate lashed back at them by wiping their mortal worshipers off the map via the conquest of Gaul by Rome, and wiping the gods themselves from the history of the world. As a result, Dubnolissos is written as a place where all the Gaulish gods reside with their people - forgotten gods together with their forgotten worshipers. It's designed as a larger-than-life version of what the Gaulish lands would have looked like in the time of the Nemetondevos' heyday, complete with wildlife and villages of mortal souls. In keeping with the theme of the Gauls being tied to their people, which allows them to be wiped out when their people are wiped out, the PSP of Deuogdonio also depends on affecting mortal worshipers, and all of the gods' territories in Dubnolissos are based on the idea that in time gone by they actually lived among mortals rather than in an Overworld away from them.
And you know what? That's a pretty goddamn solid and resonant constructed cosmology. Oh, it doesn't necessarily have much to do with what Gaulish mythology was doing two thousand years ago... but it's still a coherent combination of religious concepts and Scion's mechanics that gives Storytellers a lot to play with. If you're going to write up a pantheon that has almost no history left, this is far from a bad way to go.
So we're cool with Dubnolissos, as far as it goes. We don't actively use the Nemetondevos as parent gods because of their lack of context, which makes it hard to write stories that mesh well with other pantheons that do have a lot of history and symbolism to draw on, so we're not going to leap to use them no matter how much we admire the writing job on them, but that doesn't mean we can't give the writers over at Biblioteque Interdite some mad props.
As for the Overworld, second questioner, we don't have any more historical or mythological idea what's going on with that than we do for Dubnolissos... but if you're a fan of the universe that the writers of the Storyteller Screen created for the Nemetondevos, they do have an answer for you. While they never officially published it, the same writers later released a tiny additional supplement that did add an Overworld to the Gaulish cosmology, and explained why it wasn't included in the original pantheon release. In a nutshell, the Titan who was father to the Nemetondeos, Orgos, also pissed off Fate, which responded by actually killing him as he gave birth to the last of the pantheon; his death, as with the deaths of all Titan Avatars, had horrific destabilizing consequences on the universe, and destroyed the pantheon's Axis Mundi (Orgos' throne) and completely severed the Gaulish Overworld of Albion (meaning "white world", according to at least one reconstructed etymology) from the World, making it inaccessible and marooning the Nemetondevos on earth with no way to return home. This is particularly interesting not only because it continues to carry on the theme of the Nemetondevos as a whole being locked in a serious conflict with Fate (which always defeats them - and is perhaps a cautionary tale to other pantheons who think they can overcome Fate's dictates?), but also because Albion is a traditional name for the island of Britain/Scotland, suggesting that the story might be an allegory for the Gaulish pantheon's split away from their "relatives", the other Celtic gods. Irish mythology in particular loves to set Overworlds and other magical locations as faraway islands, so this is an interesting mirror of that concept.
If you'd like to read the supplement, unfortunately we don't have it in the original French; Biblioteque Interdite has since stopped handling Scion's French distribution in light of the impending second edition of the game and its game supplement site is no longer online. However, we did download it and do a quick and dirty translation into English back in the day, which you can read in all its poor-grammar glory here. Please pardon the bad translation - I could probably do a better job if I retackled it now, several years later, but unfortunately I no longer have the original.
We've actually used the Gauls a little bit in our games, despite their near-total dearth of surviving mythology; the idea that they're a largely dead pantheon that serves as an example of the eventual downfall of pantheons that attempt en masse to fight Fate is a resonant one for young Scions, who are in their own ways learning to make their own Legends and fight their own destinies, and the potential continuing cycle of downfall extending to the Theoi, who conquered the Nemetondevos but are guilty of trying to avoid their own Fates as well (hey, there, Zeus, how's that belly full of Metis?) is a fun one to play with in stories. They're mostly gone now - they were already on their last legs, and Ragnarok took out all but one or two of them - but they were a fun experiment while it lasted.
Question: Do the Nemetondevos have an Overworld?
Gaulish cosmology party!
Or rather, lack of Gaulish cosmology party. As you note, we don't actually know... well, anything much at all about the cosmology of the ancient Gaulish religion. Most of our notions of what the ancient continental Celtic conception of the universe might have been are reconstructed and piecemeal; we put things together based on fragments of ancient art, possible related concepts in the iconography and symbolism of various Gaulish deities, and even comparison with other nearby cultures' cosmologies. Some scholars attempt to reconstruct a three-part world from the Gundestrap Cauldron, one of the more famous pieces of Gaulish art:
The theory is that the scenes - which include a clearly identifiable image of Cernunnos, as well as other figures that are theorized to be Taranis and Belenos - show symbolic depictions of three worlds, including a world of humanity, a world of the gods and an "otherworld" beyond it that might be the home of monsters or other strange creatures. The theory is heavily based on drawing parallels between the worlds of Norse cosmology (Midgard, Asgard and Jotunheim) and the worlds of Irish cosmology (Earth, Tir na nOg and Faerie), and while it does have some interesting possible parallels (like the guess that maybe the giant bovine figure on the base of the cauldron is the same as the Norse Audumbla, or the idea that the scenes are meant to depict battles from the Tain bo Cuailgne), in the end it's just a big old pile of guesses. We have no idea if any of them are correct, despite the fact that various scholars with wildly different theories are willing to duel to the metaphorical death over their own personal favorites.
The Gauls were largely pre-literate and what few things we have preserved from their religion were recorded by Roman invaders, which means that they're all highly polluted by syncretism and interpretatio romana, and most of the details that didn't match up to Roman religion were summarily ignored. Julius Caesar, our best written source for Gaulish religion (and isn't that a depressing thought?), describes a few of their gods, funeral rites and sacrificial rituals, but he doesn't bother to explain how they thought the universe was put together. Which in itself sparks more scholarly theories that maybe he didn't describe it because it was very similar to Roman cosmology and he assumed his audience back home would automatically assume that... but really, we have no clue.
So the upshot of all this is that Gaulish cosmology is a giant question mark, and has been for centuries. And unless we discover either an ancient writer's hidden works that describe the religion in detail, or some previously unknown artwork or artifacts that directly depict it, that's the way it's going to stay. A moment of silence for the things we have forgotten and may never be able to remember or reconstruct.
This is one of the major reasons that the Nemetondevos are hard to work with in Scion. We don't know very much about them, and even less about the universe their people believed they inhabited; and that means that we don't have much to go on when we try to figure out what associations their gods have, where their Scions might go, who their enemies might be or what kinds of stories and mythic archetypes best describe them. They're essentially a lost pantheon, which is why the official supplement that details them basically approaches them from a perspective that says that the pantheon was almost eliminated, has been out of play in Scion's universe for a long time, and has as its greatest enemy Fate itself. If anything can erase a pantheon, a group of beings literally made up of pure legend and myth, it's Fate. Fate alone can erase the stories of even the most incredible mythic exploits, so that's what the supplement suggests happened to these gods.
We pretty much agree with you, first questioner; Dubnolissos is a pretty good shot at a posited Gaulish Underworld, but at the end of the day it's almost totally fabricated. The supplement leans heavily on the idea that because the Nemetondevos attempted to oppose Fate itself in the person of the Matrones (whose trinity of Fate-weavers is another repeat of the European idea of the three women who represent destiny, just like the Moirai, Norns or Sudice), Fate lashed back at them by wiping their mortal worshipers off the map via the conquest of Gaul by Rome, and wiping the gods themselves from the history of the world. As a result, Dubnolissos is written as a place where all the Gaulish gods reside with their people - forgotten gods together with their forgotten worshipers. It's designed as a larger-than-life version of what the Gaulish lands would have looked like in the time of the Nemetondevos' heyday, complete with wildlife and villages of mortal souls. In keeping with the theme of the Gauls being tied to their people, which allows them to be wiped out when their people are wiped out, the PSP of Deuogdonio also depends on affecting mortal worshipers, and all of the gods' territories in Dubnolissos are based on the idea that in time gone by they actually lived among mortals rather than in an Overworld away from them.
And you know what? That's a pretty goddamn solid and resonant constructed cosmology. Oh, it doesn't necessarily have much to do with what Gaulish mythology was doing two thousand years ago... but it's still a coherent combination of religious concepts and Scion's mechanics that gives Storytellers a lot to play with. If you're going to write up a pantheon that has almost no history left, this is far from a bad way to go.
So we're cool with Dubnolissos, as far as it goes. We don't actively use the Nemetondevos as parent gods because of their lack of context, which makes it hard to write stories that mesh well with other pantheons that do have a lot of history and symbolism to draw on, so we're not going to leap to use them no matter how much we admire the writing job on them, but that doesn't mean we can't give the writers over at Biblioteque Interdite some mad props.
As for the Overworld, second questioner, we don't have any more historical or mythological idea what's going on with that than we do for Dubnolissos... but if you're a fan of the universe that the writers of the Storyteller Screen created for the Nemetondevos, they do have an answer for you. While they never officially published it, the same writers later released a tiny additional supplement that did add an Overworld to the Gaulish cosmology, and explained why it wasn't included in the original pantheon release. In a nutshell, the Titan who was father to the Nemetondeos, Orgos, also pissed off Fate, which responded by actually killing him as he gave birth to the last of the pantheon; his death, as with the deaths of all Titan Avatars, had horrific destabilizing consequences on the universe, and destroyed the pantheon's Axis Mundi (Orgos' throne) and completely severed the Gaulish Overworld of Albion (meaning "white world", according to at least one reconstructed etymology) from the World, making it inaccessible and marooning the Nemetondevos on earth with no way to return home. This is particularly interesting not only because it continues to carry on the theme of the Nemetondevos as a whole being locked in a serious conflict with Fate (which always defeats them - and is perhaps a cautionary tale to other pantheons who think they can overcome Fate's dictates?), but also because Albion is a traditional name for the island of Britain/Scotland, suggesting that the story might be an allegory for the Gaulish pantheon's split away from their "relatives", the other Celtic gods. Irish mythology in particular loves to set Overworlds and other magical locations as faraway islands, so this is an interesting mirror of that concept.
If you'd like to read the supplement, unfortunately we don't have it in the original French; Biblioteque Interdite has since stopped handling Scion's French distribution in light of the impending second edition of the game and its game supplement site is no longer online. However, we did download it and do a quick and dirty translation into English back in the day, which you can read in all its poor-grammar glory here. Please pardon the bad translation - I could probably do a better job if I retackled it now, several years later, but unfortunately I no longer have the original.
We've actually used the Gauls a little bit in our games, despite their near-total dearth of surviving mythology; the idea that they're a largely dead pantheon that serves as an example of the eventual downfall of pantheons that attempt en masse to fight Fate is a resonant one for young Scions, who are in their own ways learning to make their own Legends and fight their own destinies, and the potential continuing cycle of downfall extending to the Theoi, who conquered the Nemetondevos but are guilty of trying to avoid their own Fates as well (hey, there, Zeus, how's that belly full of Metis?) is a fun one to play with in stories. They're mostly gone now - they were already on their last legs, and Ragnarok took out all but one or two of them - but they were a fun experiment while it lasted.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Reality Blurs
Question: How does reality work in Scion, anyway? If, say, the current Sun-God fails among the Aztecs, the world will end - but does Ra have to give a damn about that? If Ra gets eaten by the giant serpent, do the Aesir have to care about what happens to the sun?
This question is like a carnation - even when you forget all about planting it, it shows up about once a year anyway. Here's an old post that talks about the issue of universal truth in Scion - everything is indeed true, but that doesn't mean that the truth of one culture necessarily has to override the truth of another. :)
This question is like a carnation - even when you forget all about planting it, it shows up about once a year anyway. Here's an old post that talks about the issue of universal truth in Scion - everything is indeed true, but that doesn't mean that the truth of one culture necessarily has to override the truth of another. :)
Behind Stone Walls
Question: Does the Guardian Titanrealm exist? And if yes, what would it be like, and who would you put in there? (On a sidenote, what about Psychopomp? Same questions!)
Possibly?
While we can usually generally match up a purview to a Titanrealm, for the more "human" purviews this can sometimes be difficult. They're still important, universal mythological concepts that should be represented by a purview, but they aren't quite elemental forces the way some of the other purviews are, so it can be challenging to conceptualize what a Titanrealm dedicated to that idea would be like. Guardian, which has primarily positive connotations thanks to its associations with saving people from harm and preserving things from damage, is also difficult to titanize just because it's so often a thing we would think of as good, and therefore too benevolent for Titans.
However, there probably could be a Titanrealm related to Guardian. It probably wouldn't be the "Guardian realm", however, because that wouldn't make much sense, and we would suggest that it's possibly more of a place dedicated to boundaries, locks, walls and imprisonment - Guardian turned to negative purposes or taken to extremes, so that instead of saving people from danger it locks them down completely. A Titanrealm of Barriers, perhaps, or something like that. It would be populated by Titans who believed that protecting things meant controlling them utterly, or locking them away forever; or who wanted to protect things or people for bad or selfish reasons, for example kidnapping and locking up women to "save them" from actually living their lives and preserve them just for the Titan's pleasure; or who think of themselves as the ultimate authority over who deserves to be protected and who doesn't, and who intentionally let the weak suffer sometimes because they aren't deemed "worthy". We haven't done even a scrap of the research and work on such a realm we would need to do to give you a good potential roster of Titans who represent it, but we would look for figures who are older in generation, and primarily famous for protection and guardianship without being necessarily allies of the gods - Rhea, maybe, or the Jade Emperor. This might also be a great place to put the monotheistic or monotheistic-leaning Titans that Scion has trouble placing; Ahura Mazda might be a great fit for this kind of a place.
As for Psychopomp, we actually already wrote a Titanrealm based on that concept - it was the realm of Whedh, the Titan antagonist to the Arab pantheon the Alihah. Whedh is the Titan of Unity, an idea related to Psychopomp in that that purview is the purview of movement, travel and escorting the dead to their destination, and its ultimate expression is in making it literally possible to travel to and be anywhere in existence. Whedh goes a step further, as Titans are wont to do, and decides that all places should be the same place, thus making it impossible for anyone ever to need any other destination or have to travel any distance whatsoever.
Or exist, really, but that's the problem with Titans; they don't and can't moderate themselves. Even Titanrealms of positive places are, outside of those Avatars that represent positive forces within them, too uncontrolled and all-consuming to be truly safe or beneficial to things outside of them.
Possibly?
While we can usually generally match up a purview to a Titanrealm, for the more "human" purviews this can sometimes be difficult. They're still important, universal mythological concepts that should be represented by a purview, but they aren't quite elemental forces the way some of the other purviews are, so it can be challenging to conceptualize what a Titanrealm dedicated to that idea would be like. Guardian, which has primarily positive connotations thanks to its associations with saving people from harm and preserving things from damage, is also difficult to titanize just because it's so often a thing we would think of as good, and therefore too benevolent for Titans.
However, there probably could be a Titanrealm related to Guardian. It probably wouldn't be the "Guardian realm", however, because that wouldn't make much sense, and we would suggest that it's possibly more of a place dedicated to boundaries, locks, walls and imprisonment - Guardian turned to negative purposes or taken to extremes, so that instead of saving people from danger it locks them down completely. A Titanrealm of Barriers, perhaps, or something like that. It would be populated by Titans who believed that protecting things meant controlling them utterly, or locking them away forever; or who wanted to protect things or people for bad or selfish reasons, for example kidnapping and locking up women to "save them" from actually living their lives and preserve them just for the Titan's pleasure; or who think of themselves as the ultimate authority over who deserves to be protected and who doesn't, and who intentionally let the weak suffer sometimes because they aren't deemed "worthy". We haven't done even a scrap of the research and work on such a realm we would need to do to give you a good potential roster of Titans who represent it, but we would look for figures who are older in generation, and primarily famous for protection and guardianship without being necessarily allies of the gods - Rhea, maybe, or the Jade Emperor. This might also be a great place to put the monotheistic or monotheistic-leaning Titans that Scion has trouble placing; Ahura Mazda might be a great fit for this kind of a place.
As for Psychopomp, we actually already wrote a Titanrealm based on that concept - it was the realm of Whedh, the Titan antagonist to the Arab pantheon the Alihah. Whedh is the Titan of Unity, an idea related to Psychopomp in that that purview is the purview of movement, travel and escorting the dead to their destination, and its ultimate expression is in making it literally possible to travel to and be anywhere in existence. Whedh goes a step further, as Titans are wont to do, and decides that all places should be the same place, thus making it impossible for anyone ever to need any other destination or have to travel any distance whatsoever.
Or exist, really, but that's the problem with Titans; they don't and can't moderate themselves. Even Titanrealms of positive places are, outside of those Avatars that represent positive forces within them, too uncontrolled and all-consuming to be truly safe or beneficial to things outside of them.
Friday, February 14, 2014
Far Beyond the Sea
Question: Hey, I know Asia is a distant memory right now, but how would you deal with Susanoo being assigned to Yomi, especially with Izanami's dubious Titan-ness?
Ooh, Susanoo and his underworld connections is one of my favorite things to speculate about in Japanese mythology!
So, for those who aren't up on their Japanese shenanigans: in the Kojiki, when Izanagi assigns Susanoo as the divine ruler of the seas, he begins weeping and wailing with great sadness, so strongly that the rivers and lakes dry up and all the greenery on the mountains withers. When Izanagi asks him what's wrong, he cries that he wants to be with his mother, which makes Izanagi so furious (because remember, he just escaped from Izanami and walled her up in the underworld, and probably his conscience doesn't appreciate this kid bringing it up again) that he says the courtly Japanese equivalent of "Fine, fuck you, then," and banishes his son to the Underworld.
There are a lot of very interesting things going on in this myth. For one thing, it's an interesting issue that Susanoo knows about and misses Izanami at all; while she is said to be his mother in the Nihon Shoki, the Kojiki where this myth is related claims that he was born from Izanagi alone as he purified himself after escaping Yomi. It seems odd that Susanoo, who was born only of his father and has never even met or seen his mother, should even know about her, let alone be so devastated by her absence; most likely this is because of various older traditions being mashed together during the historical period when Shinto was being institutionalized as the state religion, but in mythological terms it leaves a lot of room for Storytellers to play with Susanoo's exact origin and relationships. It's also interestingly touching; when the entire pantheon has rejected Izanami for being a representative of death, decay and impurity, it seems that Susanoo alone finds this unfair in some way, or at least feels for her situation. Since he's the representative of chaos and breakdown himself, his siding with her may be an example of him going against the normal order, symbolized by Izanagi, and aligning himself with powers that are ultimately detrimental to the universe.
But, anyway, Susanoo does in fact get exiled, and he thereafter retains a lot of death and Underworld imagery, despite not being said explicitly to rule a death realm or actually spend any time with his mother. He is often said to have centipedes, symbols of death and decay, in his hair and clothes in other myths, and to occasionally be said to dwell beneath the ground or to have a home in the Underworld (although not often explicitly Yomi). He's clearly related to death in some way, but he's also clearly not considered to be ruling Yomi, which continues to belong to Izanami; so what's he doing?
One of our favorite theories has to do with the mythic land of Tokoyo. Tokoyo (which means literally "the otherworld") is a mysterious magical location where the spirits of blessed ancestors and the dead live in eternal peace and plenty, along with various kami and magical creatures. It is generally considered a land of the dead, but also a place of happiness and mystical powers, with a lot in common with the faraway Irish concept of Mag Mell. Tokoyo is never explicitly said to have a ruler, but one theory is that this is the Underworld that Susanoo administers; not only does it contain the dead, but it is also usually conceived of as a mysterious island floating somewhere in the primordial sea, which is also Susanoo's traditional domain. Under this interpretation, Susanoo and Yomi would both be rulers of Underworlds but not of the exact same realm, with Izanami receiving the vast majority of the dead but Susanoo administering the disposition of particularly worthy, heroic or otherwise special souls after their deaths. And since there's already potential for multiple Underworlds in Japan if you bring in the imported but still influential Buddhist realm of Jigoku, ruled over by Emma-O, multiple destinations for the dead might fit together well in the greater world of Japanese cosmology.
If you don't want to bring another Underworld into it, or just don't like that theory or want to use Tokoyo for something else like a Terra Incognita, you could also consider Susanoo to live in Yomi somewhere, and simply not to be its ruler. He might be one of Izanami's few allies, which could make for some intense political issues, especially if you consider her to be a Titan, and might also be a motivation for his occasional outbursts and attacks on the gods in the Overworld who abandoned her so long ago. After the debacle with Amaterasu and the cave, he's probably not particularly welcome in Takamagahara anymore, and while he descended to earth at Izumo, it's not particularly practical for a god to actually live among mortals for any period of time so he's probably not there. Alternatively, he might not be friends with Izanami; she has a very bad attitude toward the living, and the fact that he stood up to his father might not be enough to overcome her ingrained resentment and misery, so he may be just as careful about going into Yomi as anyone else (albeit probably better at it since he probably has a good deal of Death boons).
Izanagi's banishment of Susanoo does not explicitly say that he is sending him to rule Yomi; in fact, all it says is that he's banished from the abode of the gods, although the implication is that he probably wanted to go see Izanami as a result. His immediate response is to go bother Amaterasu first, though, so where he eventually ends up living when he isn't in the Overworld is sort of up for interpretation.
Ooh, Susanoo and his underworld connections is one of my favorite things to speculate about in Japanese mythology!
So, for those who aren't up on their Japanese shenanigans: in the Kojiki, when Izanagi assigns Susanoo as the divine ruler of the seas, he begins weeping and wailing with great sadness, so strongly that the rivers and lakes dry up and all the greenery on the mountains withers. When Izanagi asks him what's wrong, he cries that he wants to be with his mother, which makes Izanagi so furious (because remember, he just escaped from Izanami and walled her up in the underworld, and probably his conscience doesn't appreciate this kid bringing it up again) that he says the courtly Japanese equivalent of "Fine, fuck you, then," and banishes his son to the Underworld.
There are a lot of very interesting things going on in this myth. For one thing, it's an interesting issue that Susanoo knows about and misses Izanami at all; while she is said to be his mother in the Nihon Shoki, the Kojiki where this myth is related claims that he was born from Izanagi alone as he purified himself after escaping Yomi. It seems odd that Susanoo, who was born only of his father and has never even met or seen his mother, should even know about her, let alone be so devastated by her absence; most likely this is because of various older traditions being mashed together during the historical period when Shinto was being institutionalized as the state religion, but in mythological terms it leaves a lot of room for Storytellers to play with Susanoo's exact origin and relationships. It's also interestingly touching; when the entire pantheon has rejected Izanami for being a representative of death, decay and impurity, it seems that Susanoo alone finds this unfair in some way, or at least feels for her situation. Since he's the representative of chaos and breakdown himself, his siding with her may be an example of him going against the normal order, symbolized by Izanagi, and aligning himself with powers that are ultimately detrimental to the universe.
But, anyway, Susanoo does in fact get exiled, and he thereafter retains a lot of death and Underworld imagery, despite not being said explicitly to rule a death realm or actually spend any time with his mother. He is often said to have centipedes, symbols of death and decay, in his hair and clothes in other myths, and to occasionally be said to dwell beneath the ground or to have a home in the Underworld (although not often explicitly Yomi). He's clearly related to death in some way, but he's also clearly not considered to be ruling Yomi, which continues to belong to Izanami; so what's he doing?
One of our favorite theories has to do with the mythic land of Tokoyo. Tokoyo (which means literally "the otherworld") is a mysterious magical location where the spirits of blessed ancestors and the dead live in eternal peace and plenty, along with various kami and magical creatures. It is generally considered a land of the dead, but also a place of happiness and mystical powers, with a lot in common with the faraway Irish concept of Mag Mell. Tokoyo is never explicitly said to have a ruler, but one theory is that this is the Underworld that Susanoo administers; not only does it contain the dead, but it is also usually conceived of as a mysterious island floating somewhere in the primordial sea, which is also Susanoo's traditional domain. Under this interpretation, Susanoo and Yomi would both be rulers of Underworlds but not of the exact same realm, with Izanami receiving the vast majority of the dead but Susanoo administering the disposition of particularly worthy, heroic or otherwise special souls after their deaths. And since there's already potential for multiple Underworlds in Japan if you bring in the imported but still influential Buddhist realm of Jigoku, ruled over by Emma-O, multiple destinations for the dead might fit together well in the greater world of Japanese cosmology.
If you don't want to bring another Underworld into it, or just don't like that theory or want to use Tokoyo for something else like a Terra Incognita, you could also consider Susanoo to live in Yomi somewhere, and simply not to be its ruler. He might be one of Izanami's few allies, which could make for some intense political issues, especially if you consider her to be a Titan, and might also be a motivation for his occasional outbursts and attacks on the gods in the Overworld who abandoned her so long ago. After the debacle with Amaterasu and the cave, he's probably not particularly welcome in Takamagahara anymore, and while he descended to earth at Izumo, it's not particularly practical for a god to actually live among mortals for any period of time so he's probably not there. Alternatively, he might not be friends with Izanami; she has a very bad attitude toward the living, and the fact that he stood up to his father might not be enough to overcome her ingrained resentment and misery, so he may be just as careful about going into Yomi as anyone else (albeit probably better at it since he probably has a good deal of Death boons).
Izanagi's banishment of Susanoo does not explicitly say that he is sending him to rule Yomi; in fact, all it says is that he's banished from the abode of the gods, although the implication is that he probably wanted to go see Izanami as a result. His immediate response is to go bother Amaterasu first, though, so where he eventually ends up living when he isn't in the Overworld is sort of up for interpretation.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Fighting the Good Fight
Iiiiit's vlog time! Today we have those fancy new lights and I look less like a zombie, but I'm also on pain drugs so I sound a little bit more like a crazy person than usual. Trade-off. Next week I hope to be more functional, and of course John is here being a helpful rock of sanity.
Today's questions are on a bunch of topics including Titans, relics and politics, but they're all about the greater world of Scion at large. So here we go!
Question: In your games, I'm assuming that the gods are very much besieged on all sides by Titanrealms and Avatars aplenty, and the corebooks make a point of saying how Avatars have to stay in their realms most of the time to avoid being rebound. My question is, if the terrifying nature of the Titanrealms is what is preventing various pantheons from attacking them en masse, what is it that's preventing Avatars from doing the same to the gods? Do Overworlds (and Underworlds, I guess) have similar built-in defenses?
Question: Why do relics bite when not bound to you? There seem to be multiple myths where people take each others' weapons and use them, and I can't name any where that has actually damaged the person (without the involvement of a curse/geasa).
Question: How do you deal with gods that have unique powers that don't seem to fit in with any of the purviews? The best examples I can come up with are mostly from the Deva. For example, Shiva's "Destructo-Eye?" The guy opens his third eye and shit just blows up! How does one make that happen in Scion? For that matter, Shiva and Kali are both known for their destructive dances wherein they dance and the world just starts to fall apart. How do these things work in your system?
Question: How would you represent Diomedes in Scion, given how he's Mr. "I'm totally a mortal man but I'm so badass that I fuck up Scions and gods alike, and then Athena made me into a god when I died?" I mean, the dude got in a fight with *Ares* and kicked his ass!
Question: I've been doing some (admittedly small) amount of research into the Orisha. Is Courage really a valid Virtue for them? They certainly talk a big game, but most of their conflicts are tricks and pranks against each other rather than huge monsters (compare to the Theoi). At the same time, they seem to highly value Intellect. Particularly with Orunmila.
Question: Could the Olympic Games have been a Birthright? It may sound stupid, but you've discussed relic songs before, and your Birthright PDF has a Shinto shrine for the Kami. Could Zeus have gotten some cool bonuses when mortals dedicated their great victories in his honor?
Question: This might be a weird question, but what are the likely consequences (politically) when a Titan (and its Avatar) manages to overpower a pantheon?
Question: How do you guys feel about the idea of making Titanrealms a one-per-purview deal? Currently I'm having to choose between one realm per pantheon (where the realms don't match up to purviews, e.g. the Kami opposed by the realm of corruption) and one per purview (e.g. the kami are opposed by Izanami as a death titan but the realm itself is split between them and the K'uh), and I can't decide which I prefer. What do you think?
Question: So my game master is most likely planning to have my character's godly parent marry her away as part of inter-pantheon politics. I know how common a practice that has been through time; is that something you have dealt with before? I'd like to know more about how the gods use their children in the politics game now that it has expanded so much since the start of the war.
Question: So, among a handful of us, "Goddamnit, Stribog" has become a touch memetic. What the chuffing hell is he doing?
Oh, Stribog. I know the players hope you never change.
Today's questions are on a bunch of topics including Titans, relics and politics, but they're all about the greater world of Scion at large. So here we go!
Question: In your games, I'm assuming that the gods are very much besieged on all sides by Titanrealms and Avatars aplenty, and the corebooks make a point of saying how Avatars have to stay in their realms most of the time to avoid being rebound. My question is, if the terrifying nature of the Titanrealms is what is preventing various pantheons from attacking them en masse, what is it that's preventing Avatars from doing the same to the gods? Do Overworlds (and Underworlds, I guess) have similar built-in defenses?
Question: Why do relics bite when not bound to you? There seem to be multiple myths where people take each others' weapons and use them, and I can't name any where that has actually damaged the person (without the involvement of a curse/geasa).
Question: How do you deal with gods that have unique powers that don't seem to fit in with any of the purviews? The best examples I can come up with are mostly from the Deva. For example, Shiva's "Destructo-Eye?" The guy opens his third eye and shit just blows up! How does one make that happen in Scion? For that matter, Shiva and Kali are both known for their destructive dances wherein they dance and the world just starts to fall apart. How do these things work in your system?
Question: How would you represent Diomedes in Scion, given how he's Mr. "I'm totally a mortal man but I'm so badass that I fuck up Scions and gods alike, and then Athena made me into a god when I died?" I mean, the dude got in a fight with *Ares* and kicked his ass!
Question: I've been doing some (admittedly small) amount of research into the Orisha. Is Courage really a valid Virtue for them? They certainly talk a big game, but most of their conflicts are tricks and pranks against each other rather than huge monsters (compare to the Theoi). At the same time, they seem to highly value Intellect. Particularly with Orunmila.
Question: Could the Olympic Games have been a Birthright? It may sound stupid, but you've discussed relic songs before, and your Birthright PDF has a Shinto shrine for the Kami. Could Zeus have gotten some cool bonuses when mortals dedicated their great victories in his honor?
Question: This might be a weird question, but what are the likely consequences (politically) when a Titan (and its Avatar) manages to overpower a pantheon?
Question: How do you guys feel about the idea of making Titanrealms a one-per-purview deal? Currently I'm having to choose between one realm per pantheon (where the realms don't match up to purviews, e.g. the Kami opposed by the realm of corruption) and one per purview (e.g. the kami are opposed by Izanami as a death titan but the realm itself is split between them and the K'uh), and I can't decide which I prefer. What do you think?
Question: So my game master is most likely planning to have my character's godly parent marry her away as part of inter-pantheon politics. I know how common a practice that has been through time; is that something you have dealt with before? I'd like to know more about how the gods use their children in the politics game now that it has expanded so much since the start of the war.
Question: So, among a handful of us, "Goddamnit, Stribog" has become a touch memetic. What the chuffing hell is he doing?
Oh, Stribog. I know the players hope you never change.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Where Gods Dwell
Question: Where did you get your information on Shamu? The research I did brought up Dilmun as the supposed home of the Anunna.
Hey , it’s Dilmun! Let’s talk about it!
Basically, we don’t actually know very much about the Overworld of the Mesopotamian gods; they certainly had one, in that gods definitely didn’t live anywhere near humans and there were certain events and locations that were far beyond the reach of mortal mankind, but it is seldom described or alluded to as anything more than where the gods happen to be at the moment. We don’t get the convenient descriptions of otherworldly paradises we have with other mythologies’ loving details about places like Asgard, Mount Meru or Takamagahara, so we kind of have to wing it with what we’ve got. Incidentally, the other oldest civilization on Scion’s roster, the Egyptians, similarly do not describe an Overworld, which has led some scholars to theorize that either ancient civilizations didn’t think of the abodes of the gods the same way those that followed them did, or that such cosmological details must be the first to erode in the loss of ancient religions over time.
A lot of people turn to Dilmun as the possible Overworld stand-in for the Anunna, pretty much because it’s practically the only named place, apart from the mortal cities that worship the gods, in most of Mesopotamian myth. In at least one version of the myth of the creation of the world from the earth and water powers of Enki and Ninhursag, Dilmun is named as the site of the event, and at least one deity – Ninlil, later the wife of Enlil – is said to have come from there. So it’s not a bad guess for an Overworld, all in all, and often serves as a stand-in.
However, we’re pretty sure Dilmun’s not the Anunna Overworld, and we have plenty of reasons. Ninlil’s residence there actually argues against it, in our opinion; it’s there that Enlil first sees her and kicks off their giant and sordid courtship myth, but the fact that the myths make a point of saying she lives there suggests that most of the other gods don’t, which is backed up by the fact that Enlil is traveling when he happens to spy her. It seems more likely that Ninlil lives in Dilmun, but that the other gods live elsewhere; and Ninlil’s “home” being in Dilmun may simply refer to that city being dedicated to her worship, the same way Uruk might be said to be Ishtar’s “home”. And Dilmun probably was a city, or possibly a kingdom, that existed in the real world; we have records in various Mesopotamian sources of Dilmun being a trade partner, vassal state and provider of goods to the Sumerians, Assyrians and later Babylonians, suggesting that it was a real place that they had cultural contact with. Scholars usually place its probable location in the Arabian coastal countries of Kuwait and Bahrain, since Mesopotamian mentions of it indicate that they did most of their trade by sea; this is especially supported by the myth of the creation of the world occurring there, since that story stresses that it took place at the place where Tiamat (salt water) and Apsu (fresh water) were able to mingle, and Bahrain was famous at the time for its fresh-water rivers that were conveniently placed to flow up from the sea. And, since Kuwait and Bahrain are to the south of the Mesopotamian empires, saying that Ninlil lives there may just be a poetic way of reminding the audience that she is the goddess of the south wind, and therefore “comes from the south”.
Dilmun’s use in Mesopotamian mythology doesn’t have many hallmarks of an Overworld, but it does strongly resemble the Middle Eastern habit of setting stories of magical happenings in some “exotic” land – one that they knew existed, but that they seldom visited themselves. Saying that something occurred in Dilmun was likely a shorthand way of saying that it was far enough away to be mysterious and foreign, but still within the realm of the known territory of the world, much like Canaanite myths used Egypt as a faraway location for some myths or the Greeks referred to India as a semi-mythical, faraway place in their stories. No one has been able to find the site where Dilmun or its cities might have stood, but considering that the area has been alternately flooded and buried under desert countless times over the centuries and that it’s often very difficult to find ancient archaeological sites from Sumerian times even when that isn’t happening, that’s not particularly surprising.
So, we didn’t want to use Dilmun as an Overworld, since we’re pretty sure it wasn’t one. But in that case, where do the Anunna live? Like the Netjer, they have no described residence aside from occasional mentions of them going to one anothers’ “houses” and the like. So we were forced to invent something as appropriate as we could come up with. Shamu – the name of which means “heaven” in ancient Sumerian – is designed to mirror the probable palaces and luxuries of Mesopotamian royalty of the time, with the individual residences of the gods personalized to their ancient cities and devotees when we know about them, and their personal tastes based on their associations when we don’t. We know a few things from ancient texts – that Enki lives in Apsu, for example, is explicitly mentioned – but the rest was a blank slate, so we whipped up our best estimate of what kind of place Anunna Scions might eventually look forward to visiting.
Hey , it’s Dilmun! Let’s talk about it!
Basically, we don’t actually know very much about the Overworld of the Mesopotamian gods; they certainly had one, in that gods definitely didn’t live anywhere near humans and there were certain events and locations that were far beyond the reach of mortal mankind, but it is seldom described or alluded to as anything more than where the gods happen to be at the moment. We don’t get the convenient descriptions of otherworldly paradises we have with other mythologies’ loving details about places like Asgard, Mount Meru or Takamagahara, so we kind of have to wing it with what we’ve got. Incidentally, the other oldest civilization on Scion’s roster, the Egyptians, similarly do not describe an Overworld, which has led some scholars to theorize that either ancient civilizations didn’t think of the abodes of the gods the same way those that followed them did, or that such cosmological details must be the first to erode in the loss of ancient religions over time.
A lot of people turn to Dilmun as the possible Overworld stand-in for the Anunna, pretty much because it’s practically the only named place, apart from the mortal cities that worship the gods, in most of Mesopotamian myth. In at least one version of the myth of the creation of the world from the earth and water powers of Enki and Ninhursag, Dilmun is named as the site of the event, and at least one deity – Ninlil, later the wife of Enlil – is said to have come from there. So it’s not a bad guess for an Overworld, all in all, and often serves as a stand-in.
However, we’re pretty sure Dilmun’s not the Anunna Overworld, and we have plenty of reasons. Ninlil’s residence there actually argues against it, in our opinion; it’s there that Enlil first sees her and kicks off their giant and sordid courtship myth, but the fact that the myths make a point of saying she lives there suggests that most of the other gods don’t, which is backed up by the fact that Enlil is traveling when he happens to spy her. It seems more likely that Ninlil lives in Dilmun, but that the other gods live elsewhere; and Ninlil’s “home” being in Dilmun may simply refer to that city being dedicated to her worship, the same way Uruk might be said to be Ishtar’s “home”. And Dilmun probably was a city, or possibly a kingdom, that existed in the real world; we have records in various Mesopotamian sources of Dilmun being a trade partner, vassal state and provider of goods to the Sumerians, Assyrians and later Babylonians, suggesting that it was a real place that they had cultural contact with. Scholars usually place its probable location in the Arabian coastal countries of Kuwait and Bahrain, since Mesopotamian mentions of it indicate that they did most of their trade by sea; this is especially supported by the myth of the creation of the world occurring there, since that story stresses that it took place at the place where Tiamat (salt water) and Apsu (fresh water) were able to mingle, and Bahrain was famous at the time for its fresh-water rivers that were conveniently placed to flow up from the sea. And, since Kuwait and Bahrain are to the south of the Mesopotamian empires, saying that Ninlil lives there may just be a poetic way of reminding the audience that she is the goddess of the south wind, and therefore “comes from the south”.
Dilmun’s use in Mesopotamian mythology doesn’t have many hallmarks of an Overworld, but it does strongly resemble the Middle Eastern habit of setting stories of magical happenings in some “exotic” land – one that they knew existed, but that they seldom visited themselves. Saying that something occurred in Dilmun was likely a shorthand way of saying that it was far enough away to be mysterious and foreign, but still within the realm of the known territory of the world, much like Canaanite myths used Egypt as a faraway location for some myths or the Greeks referred to India as a semi-mythical, faraway place in their stories. No one has been able to find the site where Dilmun or its cities might have stood, but considering that the area has been alternately flooded and buried under desert countless times over the centuries and that it’s often very difficult to find ancient archaeological sites from Sumerian times even when that isn’t happening, that’s not particularly surprising.
So, we didn’t want to use Dilmun as an Overworld, since we’re pretty sure it wasn’t one. But in that case, where do the Anunna live? Like the Netjer, they have no described residence aside from occasional mentions of them going to one anothers’ “houses” and the like. So we were forced to invent something as appropriate as we could come up with. Shamu – the name of which means “heaven” in ancient Sumerian – is designed to mirror the probable palaces and luxuries of Mesopotamian royalty of the time, with the individual residences of the gods personalized to their ancient cities and devotees when we know about them, and their personal tastes based on their associations when we don’t. We know a few things from ancient texts – that Enki lives in Apsu, for example, is explicitly mentioned – but the rest was a blank slate, so we whipped up our best estimate of what kind of place Anunna Scions might eventually look forward to visiting.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Astride a Pale Horse
Question: What's the origin of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and how could they be worked into Scion?
The Horsemen are a purely Christian invention, which makes them difficult to work into Scion unless you’re already rolling with the monotheistic punches. They appear in the Book of Revelation (6:1-8), during the description of the end of the world, and each of the four – Conquest, Death, Famine and War – is described and let loose upon the earth, presumably to thoroughly destroy it in the process of the apocalypse.
To begin with, it’s not really certain whether or not the Horsemen are supposed to be literal – in fact, considering the highly symbolic nature of the rest of the things in Revelation, it’s much more likely that they’re poetic personifications of future disasters, rather than supposed to be actual creatures or beings in their own right. The passage indicates that the Lamb (God, in his form as his son Christ) will release these calamities upon the earth without restraining them, allowing humanity to die en masse in the confusion, and thereafter avenge the righteous on all the wicked who oppressed them and end the world so that everyone is taken to their eternal reward in paradise or damnation, respectively. Each of the Horsemen is merely described by color and one or two symbolic items that indicate their function; Conquest wears a crown, War carries a sword, and Famine carries a set of scales to weigh out food, with Death the only one not carrying anything (and the only one actually ever named; the “names” of the others are just labels for their functions, since the scriptures do not name them).
This is the only time the Horsemen are ever mentioned in any religious text. Revelation contains a lot of images of personified creatures that are actually just symbols of ideas – the Whore, for example, represents Babylon as the empire that was traditionally oppressing the Jews rather than being an actual person – and so it’s likely that the Horsemen are likewise a literary convention. Christianity denies the existence of any other deities besides God, so the Horsemen could hardly be gods themselves; if you were to consider them discrete creatures, they would most likely have to be either angels (wreaking havoc at the command of God) or demons (wreaking havoc because God has stopped preventing them from doing so).
As for Scion, you’re going to have to get very creative if you want to work these guys from their totally monotheistic roots into the polytheistic craziness of the game world. If you’re already using God in some fashion – as an alias of Aten or El, a god who is equivalent in level to the others but deluded into thinking he’s more powerful, or whatever – then the Horsemen are best used as creatures at his command. After all, the only time we’ve ever seen them is when he afflicts the world with them during the end of days. If you don’t use monotheism, you can certainly play with the images of horseman gods and their importance in mythology, but you will probably inevitably lose the eschatological scenario attached to them, unless you do some fancy footwork indeed to try to relate the Book of Revelation to some other culture’s apocalyptic scenario.
There are various horsemen gods, including the Canaanite Resheph (who with his bow pears more than a passing resemblance to Conquest) and the Roman Epona (who was long a patroness of soldiers and might stand in for War), but when it comes to why they’d be hanging out together, how they would have gotten roped into Christianity or what all that means, you’re on your own.
The Horsemen are a purely Christian invention, which makes them difficult to work into Scion unless you’re already rolling with the monotheistic punches. They appear in the Book of Revelation (6:1-8), during the description of the end of the world, and each of the four – Conquest, Death, Famine and War – is described and let loose upon the earth, presumably to thoroughly destroy it in the process of the apocalypse.
To begin with, it’s not really certain whether or not the Horsemen are supposed to be literal – in fact, considering the highly symbolic nature of the rest of the things in Revelation, it’s much more likely that they’re poetic personifications of future disasters, rather than supposed to be actual creatures or beings in their own right. The passage indicates that the Lamb (God, in his form as his son Christ) will release these calamities upon the earth without restraining them, allowing humanity to die en masse in the confusion, and thereafter avenge the righteous on all the wicked who oppressed them and end the world so that everyone is taken to their eternal reward in paradise or damnation, respectively. Each of the Horsemen is merely described by color and one or two symbolic items that indicate their function; Conquest wears a crown, War carries a sword, and Famine carries a set of scales to weigh out food, with Death the only one not carrying anything (and the only one actually ever named; the “names” of the others are just labels for their functions, since the scriptures do not name them).
This is the only time the Horsemen are ever mentioned in any religious text. Revelation contains a lot of images of personified creatures that are actually just symbols of ideas – the Whore, for example, represents Babylon as the empire that was traditionally oppressing the Jews rather than being an actual person – and so it’s likely that the Horsemen are likewise a literary convention. Christianity denies the existence of any other deities besides God, so the Horsemen could hardly be gods themselves; if you were to consider them discrete creatures, they would most likely have to be either angels (wreaking havoc at the command of God) or demons (wreaking havoc because God has stopped preventing them from doing so).
As for Scion, you’re going to have to get very creative if you want to work these guys from their totally monotheistic roots into the polytheistic craziness of the game world. If you’re already using God in some fashion – as an alias of Aten or El, a god who is equivalent in level to the others but deluded into thinking he’s more powerful, or whatever – then the Horsemen are best used as creatures at his command. After all, the only time we’ve ever seen them is when he afflicts the world with them during the end of days. If you don’t use monotheism, you can certainly play with the images of horseman gods and their importance in mythology, but you will probably inevitably lose the eschatological scenario attached to them, unless you do some fancy footwork indeed to try to relate the Book of Revelation to some other culture’s apocalyptic scenario.
There are various horsemen gods, including the Canaanite Resheph (who with his bow pears more than a passing resemblance to Conquest) and the Roman Epona (who was long a patroness of soldiers and might stand in for War), but when it comes to why they’d be hanging out together, how they would have gotten roped into Christianity or what all that means, you’re on your own.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Red Sky at Morning
Question: We have a whole heck of a lot of Indo-European sky gods fighting chaotic sea monsters, don't we? Is that supposed to be some kind of metaphor for Chaos vs. Order or Civilization vs. Savagery?
Yep, that's exactly what it is. The idea of the sky god fighting the sea dragon is so pervasive in Indo-European mythology that it's one of the most commonly-studied examples of a "monomyth" in comparative mythology: that is, a myth that contains an idea that is common to all kinds of people across different cultures and areas, and that may arise spontaneously even if that culture has never contacted any other with the same myth before.
The cosmic battle is widespread and includes many of the most famous enemies in Scion's cosmology: Thor vs. Jormungandr in the Germanic religions, Baal vs. Yam in Canaan, Zeus vs. Typhon in Greece, Marduk vs. Tiamat in Mesopotamia, Indra vs. Vritra in India, Fereydun vs. Azhi Dahaka in Persia and Teshub vs. Illuyanka among the Hitties are all prime examples that involve a god of storms or sky battling and eventually overcoming a serpent or dragon that is related in some way to water. Even the Bible may get in on the action, with some passages in the Old Testament possibly pointing toward a battle between Yahweh and the Leviathan at some point, and much later Christianity unintentionally picks up the same imagery for the battle between the archangel Michael and Satan in the form of a dragon. Some other cultures have changed the details but retained the basic idea of the neverending battle, such as Egypt retaining the storm god (Set) but realigning his serpentine enemy away from water and toward shadow (Apep).
In many ancient mythologies, water - especially the ocean - is often symbolic of chaos, thanks to its position as the fundamental cosmic source of all life. The ocean is deep, unknowable and full of strange creatures and dark murkiness, all obvious signs to ancient cultures that it was a sort of giant melting pot of chaos, and the fact that it was often considered to be the original source of all kinds of different living things, no matter how dangerous or bizarre they might be, combined with this idea to suggest the idea of the untameable ocean as a sort of vast womb of chaotic creation. Humanity, which can barely interact with the ocean via sailing or fishing, let alone overcome its incomprehensible powers, can't fight the ocean; the age-old idea of the sea serpent is a direct embodiment and terrifying symbol of that unconquerable enemy. A higher power is therefore needed to overcome the serpent, and that is usually represented by the sky, the only thing in nature that can overpower the ocean by lashing it to storm heights or withholding its winds to make it calm. So it is the gods of the sky, especially in its most warlike and powerful form as the source of storms, that fight and overcome the serpents.
Of course, while the idea is widespread, it's not universal; you don't see it nearly as much in landlocked societies (the Mongolians or plains Native Americans, for example, have no need for a sea serpent concept), and even parts of the world that do have ocean-facing territories don't have the idea (the Yoruba, for example) or express it in different ways (the Australian idea of the Bunyip, which is a chaotic sea-monster but a lesser race of beings rather than a god-level cosmic antagonist). And it is totally possible for the metaphor to be taken too far, and scholars have definitely come up with extremely sketchy theories for mythologies based solely on the idea that the culture should have this concept so therefore they invent one with little to no evidence beneath it.
But it's absolutely a legit, fundamental, old-as-the-dirt-under-Tiamat's-nails religious concept, that chaotic dragon being fought by the heroic storm god so that order can be restored. It's a perfect place to come up with new modern-day expressions of the idea beginning to challenge Scions, too!
Yep, that's exactly what it is. The idea of the sky god fighting the sea dragon is so pervasive in Indo-European mythology that it's one of the most commonly-studied examples of a "monomyth" in comparative mythology: that is, a myth that contains an idea that is common to all kinds of people across different cultures and areas, and that may arise spontaneously even if that culture has never contacted any other with the same myth before.
The cosmic battle is widespread and includes many of the most famous enemies in Scion's cosmology: Thor vs. Jormungandr in the Germanic religions, Baal vs. Yam in Canaan, Zeus vs. Typhon in Greece, Marduk vs. Tiamat in Mesopotamia, Indra vs. Vritra in India, Fereydun vs. Azhi Dahaka in Persia and Teshub vs. Illuyanka among the Hitties are all prime examples that involve a god of storms or sky battling and eventually overcoming a serpent or dragon that is related in some way to water. Even the Bible may get in on the action, with some passages in the Old Testament possibly pointing toward a battle between Yahweh and the Leviathan at some point, and much later Christianity unintentionally picks up the same imagery for the battle between the archangel Michael and Satan in the form of a dragon. Some other cultures have changed the details but retained the basic idea of the neverending battle, such as Egypt retaining the storm god (Set) but realigning his serpentine enemy away from water and toward shadow (Apep).
In many ancient mythologies, water - especially the ocean - is often symbolic of chaos, thanks to its position as the fundamental cosmic source of all life. The ocean is deep, unknowable and full of strange creatures and dark murkiness, all obvious signs to ancient cultures that it was a sort of giant melting pot of chaos, and the fact that it was often considered to be the original source of all kinds of different living things, no matter how dangerous or bizarre they might be, combined with this idea to suggest the idea of the untameable ocean as a sort of vast womb of chaotic creation. Humanity, which can barely interact with the ocean via sailing or fishing, let alone overcome its incomprehensible powers, can't fight the ocean; the age-old idea of the sea serpent is a direct embodiment and terrifying symbol of that unconquerable enemy. A higher power is therefore needed to overcome the serpent, and that is usually represented by the sky, the only thing in nature that can overpower the ocean by lashing it to storm heights or withholding its winds to make it calm. So it is the gods of the sky, especially in its most warlike and powerful form as the source of storms, that fight and overcome the serpents.
Of course, while the idea is widespread, it's not universal; you don't see it nearly as much in landlocked societies (the Mongolians or plains Native Americans, for example, have no need for a sea serpent concept), and even parts of the world that do have ocean-facing territories don't have the idea (the Yoruba, for example) or express it in different ways (the Australian idea of the Bunyip, which is a chaotic sea-monster but a lesser race of beings rather than a god-level cosmic antagonist). And it is totally possible for the metaphor to be taken too far, and scholars have definitely come up with extremely sketchy theories for mythologies based solely on the idea that the culture should have this concept so therefore they invent one with little to no evidence beneath it.
But it's absolutely a legit, fundamental, old-as-the-dirt-under-Tiamat's-nails religious concept, that chaotic dragon being fought by the heroic storm god so that order can be restored. It's a perfect place to come up with new modern-day expressions of the idea beginning to challenge Scions, too!
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
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.
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.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
End Times
Question: Are there any other cultures that have a divine end of days scenario aside from the Aesir and Ragnarok?
Oh, sure, tons of them. Eschatology, the study of the events of the end of the world, is not a purely European concept at all; many other cultures have their own ideas of what will happen at the death of the universe, some of them specifically marked and dated, others only implied.
The Norse stories of Ragnarok are very specific about times, places and people involved and so on, largely because they're predicated on prophecies. Details have been furnished by seers and soothsayers who have the ability to see into the future of Fate's weave; other cultures may not have as strong an emphasis on prophetic visions, and instead base their end-of-the-world scenarios on information gleaned from scripture or estimations based on their cosmological concepts of time and space.
One of the most famous, thanks to its religion still being a thriving and living one, is the end of the Kali Yuga in Hinduism. According to Hindu theology, every "day" - equivalent to literally millions of years, varying from four to several hundred depending on the scripture and sect - for Brahma, who experiences time much more slowly than mere humans, is equal to four ages in the world, roughly 24,000 years total. These four ages are the Satya Yuga (Age of Truth), in which religion, wisdom and prosperity are the rule of the universe; the Treta Yuga (Age of Three, referring to the number of pillars of Dharma remaining to support things at this time), in which evil begins to afflict the world but great heroes also arise to combat it; the Dvapara Yuga (Age of Two, referring to the now only at half-strength number of pillars), in which humanity is flawed but also kingly and learns to expiate their sins through study of the holy Vedas; and the Kali Yuga (Age of Kali, here referring to the asura Kali, not the goddess of the same name), during which humanity has degenerated into wanton sin and depravity and forgotten all but the most basic teachings of Hinduism.
We're currently in the Kali Yuga, which started at the moment that Vishnu left his last earthly incarnation, according to most interpretations of Hindu mythology (yes, just as in Greek mythology, we are the worst ever crop of humanity. Go us). Just as in the Norse myths of Ragnarok, the end of the Kali Yuga - and therefore the end of the world, when Brahma blinks and restarts the world once more at the beginning of the Satya Yuga - there are several prophesied events, culminating in a final showdown between the asura Kali, who is the one who has destroyed all righteousness on earth during the centuries of the Kali Yuga, and Kalki, the final avatar of Vishnu, who is destined to defeat him and in so doing end the world and make it ready for the beginning of the Satya Yuga again.
There's a ton of scripture out there on the Kali Yuga, not to mention reams of literature written by Hindu theologists and philosophers over the past thousand years or two, so if you want to really dig into it in detail, libraries and the internet are ready to help.
Of course, seldom in Scion do we discuss the problems of the Deva without also mentioning the Yazata, so a quick side trip into Zoroastrianism gets us another awesome end of the world scenario. The ancient Persian word for the event is Frashokereti, meaning "things become excellent", and as in Hindu tradition the world is broken up into ages, although in this case there are three instead of four (the first two were the Age of Creation and the Age of Pollution or Combination), and we're currently heading into the Age of Separation, when good and evil fight for supremacy.
According to Zoroastrian prophecy in the Avesta, the end of the world will be ushered in by the Saoshyant, a special hero and the son of the great Ahura Mazda himself (or in other traditions, Zarathustra), born from a virgin who bathes in a lake in which a trace of the supreme god's semen was left in order to impregnate her. The Saoshyant (who in Scion terms is definitely a kind of super specialized Scion, although in what terms totally depends on your take on Ahura Mazda) will wield the weapons of Vahram, resurrect the righteous dead to live again and lead the Yazata against the evil forces of the daeva, eventually defeating them. The gods will then melt the world into rivers of molten lava and metal, which will wash over all living things; the worthy and good will be able to wade through them to become one with heaven in bliss, but the evil will be utterly destroyed, along with Angra Mainyu and all his daeva minions.
Slightly north of Persia we run into the Slavs, who have their own eschatological forecast; according to Slavic tradition, Svarog lives for one million years, each day of which is the entire lifespan of the World (more than a little bit similar to Brahma, eh?). Each "day", he slumbers in the egg of the sun until he awakens in the evening, at which point he sweeps everything in the universe - all creation, living things, even the other gods - into one big pile and reconstitutes them into the pure stuff of creation, which he then fashions into the next world. This is called Sweeping Day and happens continually and regularly, like clockwork, and each time he recreates the Bogovi to take over their traditional foes, reborn with no memory of the last world. There's no specific time frame given for this, so we don't know how many years each world lasts; technically, Sweeping Day could be at any time, which is sobering. Someone with Prophecy should get on figuring that out.
We've also got the Mesopotamian religions; while they don't have any particular predictions for what will happen when the world ends, they do have an exact date. According to Babylonian texts, the world has a lifetime of "twelve times twelve sars", where one sar is equal to 36,000 years, so therefore the world is scheduled to last exactly 5,184,000 years. Furthermore, at the time of their civilization, they believed that there were only twelve sars - 432,000 years - left to go and that the vast majority of the world's lifespan was already over. So if we assume that's counting from the beginning of the major time of power for the Babylonian empire, around 1800 B.C.E., we're looking at a precise date for the end of the world in the year 430,200 C.E. In other words, too far away to care (which is probably what all that theoretical math was supposed to mean in Babylonian texts in the first place).
The two other major end-times scenarios that come to mind - those of the Aztec and Egyptian religions - are conditional, meaning that they aren't scheduled as an inevitability but will happen only if specific events occur first. For the Aztecs, we're currently living in the fifth world; the previous four worlds were each destroyed by large-scale disasters brought on by squabbles between the gods, in each case leading with the defection or destruction of the current sun deity. While there is no forecasted end of the world, it's understood that if the current sun - now embodied by Tonatiuh and protected by Huitzilopochtli - is destroyed or goes rogue, the fifth world will be destroyed as well. Depending on the tradition, some Mexican sources imply that a sixth world would then be created with a new god serving as the sun, while others - possibly more modern or influenced by Christianity - claim that the fifth world is the last one and that its destruction would spell the final and incontrovertible end.
Things are far more uncomfortable for the Egyptians; their cosmology is based on the idea that Ra, as the original creator of the universe, may at any time decide to become tired of it. If that occurs, he will decide to simply go to sleep, and as a result the world will be destroyed until such time as he decides to wake up and give remaking a new one a shot. While this hasn't happened yet, it's been a very near thing at least once; in one Egyptian story, Ra decides he's disenchanted with the whole affair and is about to pull the plug, and Hathor, goddess of beauty, joy and sexuality, narrowly averts disaster by lifting up her skirt and flashing him a full view of her incredibly attractive genitals. Ra is so amused he laughs uproariously, and then decides that he couldn't possibly destroy anything that awesome, so the world lives on another day. He could, however, decide to destroy the world at any moment; the only other end-of-the-world note is that Osiris is the only god expressly said to survive that apocalypse and be able to converse with Ra afterward, although he's not always very thrilled about the prospect.
With all this madness going on, there are plenty of doomsday possibilities to play with for Scion games. This is your hour to shine, oracles and prophets!
Oh, sure, tons of them. Eschatology, the study of the events of the end of the world, is not a purely European concept at all; many other cultures have their own ideas of what will happen at the death of the universe, some of them specifically marked and dated, others only implied.
The Norse stories of Ragnarok are very specific about times, places and people involved and so on, largely because they're predicated on prophecies. Details have been furnished by seers and soothsayers who have the ability to see into the future of Fate's weave; other cultures may not have as strong an emphasis on prophetic visions, and instead base their end-of-the-world scenarios on information gleaned from scripture or estimations based on their cosmological concepts of time and space.
One of the most famous, thanks to its religion still being a thriving and living one, is the end of the Kali Yuga in Hinduism. According to Hindu theology, every "day" - equivalent to literally millions of years, varying from four to several hundred depending on the scripture and sect - for Brahma, who experiences time much more slowly than mere humans, is equal to four ages in the world, roughly 24,000 years total. These four ages are the Satya Yuga (Age of Truth), in which religion, wisdom and prosperity are the rule of the universe; the Treta Yuga (Age of Three, referring to the number of pillars of Dharma remaining to support things at this time), in which evil begins to afflict the world but great heroes also arise to combat it; the Dvapara Yuga (Age of Two, referring to the now only at half-strength number of pillars), in which humanity is flawed but also kingly and learns to expiate their sins through study of the holy Vedas; and the Kali Yuga (Age of Kali, here referring to the asura Kali, not the goddess of the same name), during which humanity has degenerated into wanton sin and depravity and forgotten all but the most basic teachings of Hinduism.
We're currently in the Kali Yuga, which started at the moment that Vishnu left his last earthly incarnation, according to most interpretations of Hindu mythology (yes, just as in Greek mythology, we are the worst ever crop of humanity. Go us). Just as in the Norse myths of Ragnarok, the end of the Kali Yuga - and therefore the end of the world, when Brahma blinks and restarts the world once more at the beginning of the Satya Yuga - there are several prophesied events, culminating in a final showdown between the asura Kali, who is the one who has destroyed all righteousness on earth during the centuries of the Kali Yuga, and Kalki, the final avatar of Vishnu, who is destined to defeat him and in so doing end the world and make it ready for the beginning of the Satya Yuga again.
There's a ton of scripture out there on the Kali Yuga, not to mention reams of literature written by Hindu theologists and philosophers over the past thousand years or two, so if you want to really dig into it in detail, libraries and the internet are ready to help.
Of course, seldom in Scion do we discuss the problems of the Deva without also mentioning the Yazata, so a quick side trip into Zoroastrianism gets us another awesome end of the world scenario. The ancient Persian word for the event is Frashokereti, meaning "things become excellent", and as in Hindu tradition the world is broken up into ages, although in this case there are three instead of four (the first two were the Age of Creation and the Age of Pollution or Combination), and we're currently heading into the Age of Separation, when good and evil fight for supremacy.
According to Zoroastrian prophecy in the Avesta, the end of the world will be ushered in by the Saoshyant, a special hero and the son of the great Ahura Mazda himself (or in other traditions, Zarathustra), born from a virgin who bathes in a lake in which a trace of the supreme god's semen was left in order to impregnate her. The Saoshyant (who in Scion terms is definitely a kind of super specialized Scion, although in what terms totally depends on your take on Ahura Mazda) will wield the weapons of Vahram, resurrect the righteous dead to live again and lead the Yazata against the evil forces of the daeva, eventually defeating them. The gods will then melt the world into rivers of molten lava and metal, which will wash over all living things; the worthy and good will be able to wade through them to become one with heaven in bliss, but the evil will be utterly destroyed, along with Angra Mainyu and all his daeva minions.
Slightly north of Persia we run into the Slavs, who have their own eschatological forecast; according to Slavic tradition, Svarog lives for one million years, each day of which is the entire lifespan of the World (more than a little bit similar to Brahma, eh?). Each "day", he slumbers in the egg of the sun until he awakens in the evening, at which point he sweeps everything in the universe - all creation, living things, even the other gods - into one big pile and reconstitutes them into the pure stuff of creation, which he then fashions into the next world. This is called Sweeping Day and happens continually and regularly, like clockwork, and each time he recreates the Bogovi to take over their traditional foes, reborn with no memory of the last world. There's no specific time frame given for this, so we don't know how many years each world lasts; technically, Sweeping Day could be at any time, which is sobering. Someone with Prophecy should get on figuring that out.
We've also got the Mesopotamian religions; while they don't have any particular predictions for what will happen when the world ends, they do have an exact date. According to Babylonian texts, the world has a lifetime of "twelve times twelve sars", where one sar is equal to 36,000 years, so therefore the world is scheduled to last exactly 5,184,000 years. Furthermore, at the time of their civilization, they believed that there were only twelve sars - 432,000 years - left to go and that the vast majority of the world's lifespan was already over. So if we assume that's counting from the beginning of the major time of power for the Babylonian empire, around 1800 B.C.E., we're looking at a precise date for the end of the world in the year 430,200 C.E. In other words, too far away to care (which is probably what all that theoretical math was supposed to mean in Babylonian texts in the first place).
The two other major end-times scenarios that come to mind - those of the Aztec and Egyptian religions - are conditional, meaning that they aren't scheduled as an inevitability but will happen only if specific events occur first. For the Aztecs, we're currently living in the fifth world; the previous four worlds were each destroyed by large-scale disasters brought on by squabbles between the gods, in each case leading with the defection or destruction of the current sun deity. While there is no forecasted end of the world, it's understood that if the current sun - now embodied by Tonatiuh and protected by Huitzilopochtli - is destroyed or goes rogue, the fifth world will be destroyed as well. Depending on the tradition, some Mexican sources imply that a sixth world would then be created with a new god serving as the sun, while others - possibly more modern or influenced by Christianity - claim that the fifth world is the last one and that its destruction would spell the final and incontrovertible end.
Things are far more uncomfortable for the Egyptians; their cosmology is based on the idea that Ra, as the original creator of the universe, may at any time decide to become tired of it. If that occurs, he will decide to simply go to sleep, and as a result the world will be destroyed until such time as he decides to wake up and give remaking a new one a shot. While this hasn't happened yet, it's been a very near thing at least once; in one Egyptian story, Ra decides he's disenchanted with the whole affair and is about to pull the plug, and Hathor, goddess of beauty, joy and sexuality, narrowly averts disaster by lifting up her skirt and flashing him a full view of her incredibly attractive genitals. Ra is so amused he laughs uproariously, and then decides that he couldn't possibly destroy anything that awesome, so the world lives on another day. He could, however, decide to destroy the world at any moment; the only other end-of-the-world note is that Osiris is the only god expressly said to survive that apocalypse and be able to converse with Ra afterward, although he's not always very thrilled about the prospect.
With all this madness going on, there are plenty of doomsday possibilities to play with for Scion games. This is your hour to shine, oracles and prophets!
Saturday, November 23, 2013
The Moon and Beyond
Today, we answer questions about cosmology, setting and crazy goddamn alien lifeforms. Hooray!
Question: Can Avatars create Legendary creatures? Such as the Shaper creating a living golem, or the Glory creating light entities?
Question: You statted up Tiamat and Apsu for your Anunna supplement, but what about their son Kingu? Would he be an Avatar of a greater Titan, or just a disenfranchised god?
Question: The books and PDFs have a lot of details about different ways that a living Scion can get INTO the Underworlds. I imagine if they had clearly-marked exist, the dead would just use them all the time - but how is a living Scion whose time has not yet come supposed to get back OUT? Do they have to ask the local death god for a way our? Can they just retrace their steps and spent a point of Legend to emerge into the World?
Question: How would you do a Chaos Titanrealm? Not asking for which Titans you'd pick, just asking what you think it would look like. (And batshit crazy isn't a real answer.)
Question: How would you kind folks at GBN do a Chaos Titanrealm? Hundun always seemed to be a cop-out, to be frank. I've already seen your awesome Inca Destruction realm, and wonder if that would basically be it.
Question: So, aliens! Where do aliens fit into Scion? Have you ever included them in your games? By "alien", I mean both the common perception of aliens (greys, reptilians, etc.) and mortal races not originating on earth or in an Overworld. Second, what are "Lyrans" and what connection do they have to the Anunna?
I don't think a vlog has been this saturated with pop culture since... ever.
Question: Can Avatars create Legendary creatures? Such as the Shaper creating a living golem, or the Glory creating light entities?
Question: You statted up Tiamat and Apsu for your Anunna supplement, but what about their son Kingu? Would he be an Avatar of a greater Titan, or just a disenfranchised god?
Question: The books and PDFs have a lot of details about different ways that a living Scion can get INTO the Underworlds. I imagine if they had clearly-marked exist, the dead would just use them all the time - but how is a living Scion whose time has not yet come supposed to get back OUT? Do they have to ask the local death god for a way our? Can they just retrace their steps and spent a point of Legend to emerge into the World?
Question: How would you do a Chaos Titanrealm? Not asking for which Titans you'd pick, just asking what you think it would look like. (And batshit crazy isn't a real answer.)
Question: How would you kind folks at GBN do a Chaos Titanrealm? Hundun always seemed to be a cop-out, to be frank. I've already seen your awesome Inca Destruction realm, and wonder if that would basically be it.
Question: So, aliens! Where do aliens fit into Scion? Have you ever included them in your games? By "alien", I mean both the common perception of aliens (greys, reptilians, etc.) and mortal races not originating on earth or in an Overworld. Second, what are "Lyrans" and what connection do they have to the Anunna?
I don't think a vlog has been this saturated with pop culture since... ever.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Gods on the Sidelines
Question: What do you think about obscure pantheons like those in the Philippines, Burma or Melanesia? Are they great enough to be Scion pantheons or...?
Of course they are!
One of our absolute favorite things about Scion is the fact that it's completely global, and that any religions or mythologies that exist anywhere can and should be used in its gameworld whenever the Storyteller wishes. All myths are true in Scion, and that means all of them, not just the most widely known or popular or adapted-for-television. The mythologies of places like the Philippines were no less part of a vibrant ancient belief system, nor were their gods any less worshiped, feared or beloved, so why should they be automatically excluded from the game? Because they aren't very well-known outside their native land? Plenty of pantheons weren't once upon a time, and still aren't now, and for those intrepid Burmese players out there it would be super unfair for them not to be able to play games set among the gods of their own country just because people in other countries haven't heard of them.
However, that doesn't mean that every Storyteller is going to have the time or inclination to go out there and stat up every pantheon that has ever seen the light of day. Nobody's got the time - even we don't have the time, and we love doing that! - and if a particular game's stories don't involve those deities, it's not useful for the game anyway. Some games may have players or Storytellers who mostly want to interact with gods they already know and are interested in, and there's nothing wrong with that as long as everyone has fun. But if a given game's players or story do want to have Degei roll up and start dispensing some snaky Fijian god-justice, well, damn, they can do that exactly as much as they want to.
Of course, we can't expect the Scion universe to really be able to release all the gods everywhere, and there've been lots of in-game excuses for why that is - the lesser pantheons were destroyed by Titans, or conquered by other pantheons, or they don't have enough power to bother helping in the war, or they're just more famous gods slumming it in disguise, or whatever. We don't like those explanations and never have, but that doesn't mean your game can't use them if you need a plausible answer when your players go, "Hey, what are X pantheon that you weren't planning to get involved here doing right now?" We like to dream of the entire world's pantheons all being alive and ready to kick some ass in Scion, and we do our best to try to slowly but steadily write some of them up for use, but it's a long, long road and not one every game has the time or inclination to embark on.
But sure, never let anyone tell you that you can't have a certain pantheon in the game because they're "not important enough". Every pantheon is important to the people who believed in it, and can be important to your story if you want them to. The obscure ones just require a little more legwork when it comes to learning about their powers and stories, but they're out there waiting if you want them.
Of course they are!
One of our absolute favorite things about Scion is the fact that it's completely global, and that any religions or mythologies that exist anywhere can and should be used in its gameworld whenever the Storyteller wishes. All myths are true in Scion, and that means all of them, not just the most widely known or popular or adapted-for-television. The mythologies of places like the Philippines were no less part of a vibrant ancient belief system, nor were their gods any less worshiped, feared or beloved, so why should they be automatically excluded from the game? Because they aren't very well-known outside their native land? Plenty of pantheons weren't once upon a time, and still aren't now, and for those intrepid Burmese players out there it would be super unfair for them not to be able to play games set among the gods of their own country just because people in other countries haven't heard of them.
However, that doesn't mean that every Storyteller is going to have the time or inclination to go out there and stat up every pantheon that has ever seen the light of day. Nobody's got the time - even we don't have the time, and we love doing that! - and if a particular game's stories don't involve those deities, it's not useful for the game anyway. Some games may have players or Storytellers who mostly want to interact with gods they already know and are interested in, and there's nothing wrong with that as long as everyone has fun. But if a given game's players or story do want to have Degei roll up and start dispensing some snaky Fijian god-justice, well, damn, they can do that exactly as much as they want to.
Of course, we can't expect the Scion universe to really be able to release all the gods everywhere, and there've been lots of in-game excuses for why that is - the lesser pantheons were destroyed by Titans, or conquered by other pantheons, or they don't have enough power to bother helping in the war, or they're just more famous gods slumming it in disguise, or whatever. We don't like those explanations and never have, but that doesn't mean your game can't use them if you need a plausible answer when your players go, "Hey, what are X pantheon that you weren't planning to get involved here doing right now?" We like to dream of the entire world's pantheons all being alive and ready to kick some ass in Scion, and we do our best to try to slowly but steadily write some of them up for use, but it's a long, long road and not one every game has the time or inclination to embark on.
But sure, never let anyone tell you that you can't have a certain pantheon in the game because they're "not important enough". Every pantheon is important to the people who believed in it, and can be important to your story if you want them to. The obscure ones just require a little more legwork when it comes to learning about their powers and stories, but they're out there waiting if you want them.
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Socializing in the Sky
Are you guys ready for another session of marathon vlogs? Here they come! Today's is about politics and insanity among the gods, who never seem to have getting along near the top of their to-do lists.
Question: From a social perspective, what does it mean to the gods when one god has more associated purviews and/or Epics than another god?
Question: Would it be possible for a god, through either Fate-dickery or Magic or just sheer force of will, to change their modus operandi? I have a game idea that partially revolves around the idea of Odin abandoning his normal methods to try the novel approach of honesty and good faith in order to avert Ragnarok. Is this plausible?
Question: Can you elaborate on the relationship between the Yazata and the Deva? Why do they see each other as enemies?
Question: You always talk about gods leaving the World because of Fatebonds. Why did they stay in the first place? They would have known about Fatebonds during that time. Was the risk just worth the reward?
Question: Would it be accurate to say that pantheons that have more Virtues in common (such as the Aesir and Nemetondevos) would be on better terms with each other than those that have few in common (like the Anunna and Theoi)?
Question: Every god has a rivals and enemies listing on their page, but what does that MEAN to them? To be specific, Odin has enemies - does he hate them, or are they merely names on his "to kill list"? When you say a god has enemies, does that mean hatred and active attempts at murder and sabotage, or something less intense and more passive?
Question: I've got a Scion game coming up where all the PCs are either Kami or Teotl. I was wondering if you had any ideas for ways in which those two pantheons would interact, as I'm currently drawing a blank.
Just be nice, everyone. Is that so hard?!
Question: From a social perspective, what does it mean to the gods when one god has more associated purviews and/or Epics than another god?
Question: Would it be possible for a god, through either Fate-dickery or Magic or just sheer force of will, to change their modus operandi? I have a game idea that partially revolves around the idea of Odin abandoning his normal methods to try the novel approach of honesty and good faith in order to avert Ragnarok. Is this plausible?
Question: Can you elaborate on the relationship between the Yazata and the Deva? Why do they see each other as enemies?
Question: You always talk about gods leaving the World because of Fatebonds. Why did they stay in the first place? They would have known about Fatebonds during that time. Was the risk just worth the reward?
Question: Would it be accurate to say that pantheons that have more Virtues in common (such as the Aesir and Nemetondevos) would be on better terms with each other than those that have few in common (like the Anunna and Theoi)?
Question: Every god has a rivals and enemies listing on their page, but what does that MEAN to them? To be specific, Odin has enemies - does he hate them, or are they merely names on his "to kill list"? When you say a god has enemies, does that mean hatred and active attempts at murder and sabotage, or something less intense and more passive?
Question: I've got a Scion game coming up where all the PCs are either Kami or Teotl. I was wondering if you had any ideas for ways in which those two pantheons would interact, as I'm currently drawing a blank.
Just be nice, everyone. Is that so hard?!
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Animalia
Question: Scion treats all myths as real, right? So then, how does it treat animism? In some cases it is obvious, like how the Aztec gods have the nahualli animal forms, or how certain gods occasionally take on the form or aspects of animal (Zeus as a cow, Ganesha and his elephant head). But what about before them, when people revered certain animals? Does every pantheon have a couple of animals among their number?
This question is a giant complicated ball of wax that is trying to ask about a bunch of different stuff at once. I'm going to try to untangle it - stay with me, folks!
To begin with, I'm not sure if animism means what you think it means; I might be wrong, but the question makes it sound like you're implying that animism refers to the reverence of animal spirits and/or the belief that animals themselves are religious figures. Those ideas are bound up in animism, but the term actually means much more than that. It comes from the Latin word animus, which means spirit or breath, and refers to the much broader religious concept espoused by some cultures that all things have religiously significant spirits. That includes not just animals but also plants, natural features of the landscape, inanimate objects such as rocks, or even the abandoned bodies of the dead. Native American religions are most often cited as the best examples of animist belief systems, since many of them believe in the spiritual essence of the animals and landscape around them, and the Shinto religion of Japan also has more than a touch of that idea of spirits-in-all. When Disney's Pocahontas sings "Colors of the Wind", she's trying to describe to John Smith the animist religion of her people.
So while animism includes the idea of animal spirits, it is actually a much larger concept. This question seems to be more about the animals only, though, so we'll skip all that spirits-of-trees-and-wind stuff for now.
As you note, most religions have some kind of concept of animals and their place in the general spiritual hierarchy of things. Some consider the animals themselves to be magical or spiritually powerful in a way that humans generally are not; American religions, in particular, often do this. Sometimes it's because they believe in a spirit world, as the Inuit do, into which animals are naturally more able to enter and understand than humans, or sometimes it's because animals are more beloved by the gods, such as in some Middle Eastern cultures, and were therefore created with more powers than humans. In a few cases, especially in Africa and North America, myths will outright say that animals were given such spiritual powers as compensation for the fact that people hunt and kill them for food.
However, as with all mythologies, the religions they came from are vastly different in character, so even when animals are important, that doesn't necessarily mean that the ways in which they are important are comparable. Most pantheons have at least a god or two who have animal totems in some way, but the Teotl, who acknowledge animals as the second half of themselves, are very different from the Netjer, who use animal imagery to represent abstract concepts about themselves, who are in turn very different again from the Aesir, who only command beasts but do not embody them themselves.
What's important to remember about the All Myths Are Real model - which we've talked about in depth before, if you missed it - is that all things are true, but that truth isn't necessarily universal, and it may be true in a variety of ways without cheapening the authenticity of the game's treatment. If the Japanese believe that there are little kami inhabiting many inanimate objects, well, that's true, then; but it might be true only in Japan, or only when interacting with certain Japanese elements, or correlate to some concept in another culture that is fundamentally similar but that they experience in a different way. Often this is done through PSPs, as is the case in our Japanese example here; theoretically, the game says that there are kami everywhere, but since nobody who doesn't have Tsukumo-gami can interact with them in any way, they might as well not exist except for the gods of the Shinto religion. It's a little bit like the way light doesn't "exist" for people who have been blind since birth; you can tell them about it, but since they can never experience it in any way, it's both true for you and not true for them.
I think the ultimate place this question is going (see? it's all over the map!) is toward the idea of animal totems as the original deities or spirits worshiped by ancient societies, and whether or not they count as "gods" in Scion's framework. It's a concept visited by both Joseph Campbell in his Primitive Mythologies and Neil Gaiman in his excellent novel American Gods, and definitely one that's food for thought, especially when we think about the commonly-held theory that the earliest religions of humanity probably involved worship of important animal totems rather than anthropomorphic figures. If, in the ancient pre-recorded times of man's history, we worshiped the bear or the deer or the eagle as themselves, then where are those gods now?
Part of the answer lies in the fact that religions, even ones with strong structure and hierarchy, are living and changing institutions and they have all evolved and adapted over time. Many of those ancient animal gods actually are still around, right under your nose, because they've evolved into the familiar forms of the gods of Scion's current pantheons. The Netjer are a great example of this; many of them were originally zoomorphic in form, and the Old Kingdom artwork of them shows them simply as animals, worshiped without any humanoid form whatsoever. Sobek was originally just a crocodile, Hathor just a cow, and Sekhmet just a lion, and they only became human-like and gained human-like stories later in the religion's evolution. Figures like the Coyote deities of North America are still animal in shape most of the time, but they have gained human-like myths of their exploits and may even take on human form sometimes, placing them perhaps a little earlier on this evolutionary continuum than the older Netjer.
So, for some pantheons, those gods didn't go anywhere; they just changed. Some of them still run around in their animal forms, like Tezcatlipoca rolling up as Tepeyollotl when he doesn't feel like being humanoid, while others, like Baal, have translated from embodying their totem animal to becoming its master instead. This process also works in reverse, by the way, with some animals that were once worshiped as deities being demoted to merely monsters or magical talking animals in half-forgotten folklore; and even more rarely the god and the animal may split entirely, as in the spectacular case of Ninurta in Mesopotamian mythology, who sheds his animalistic form which becomes the Anzu bird, and he the god who controls it.
Another option is indeed that those animal-level gods are still around, but are just lower Legend than most of the heavy hitters of the current pantheons. They don't have much in the way of surviving mythology or stories, after all, and long ago lost their worshipers; in some cases, even the people who used to worship them are gone, moved away, become part of new ethnic groups or even gone extinct. They may still linger on alone, pantheonless if they were not part of a larger group, or perhaps they died in the first Titanomachy, when they had no fellow gods to take care of them and not enough power to defend themselves. If they were part of a pantheon that still exists, they may roam the Overworld, Legend 9 and all but forgotten by humanity and even their fellow gods. Some of them might now be minions of the Titans, absorbed easily into the greater realms of the ideas they once represented.
But if such prehistoric animal totem gods do exist, we know nothing about them, and anything we tried to do with them for Scion would be invented; by definition, they predate recorded history and we therefore know only what we theorize about them. We can look at cave paintings or make guesses about what might have come before those animal beliefs we did have the opportunity to write down or preserve orally, but they're just guesses.
It would be over-simplistic to say that every pantheon has some of these animal gods; not every ancient culture assigned the same importance to animals or, if they did find them important, thought of that importance in the same way. Many cultures, for example, had a concept of a "master animal" - usually the most important animal in the local ecosystem, which was revered above the others and believed to be able to spiritually interact with humans, but was not actually deified and instead conceived of as a race comparable to humans that existed alongside them. And even the master animal concept wasn't always thought of the same way by every culture; some western African cultures thought of the antelope as the master animal because it was their most important food creature and they needed its permission to catch and eat it, but some of the Brazilian rainforest cultures thought of the jaguar as the master animal because it was the most powerful predator of the area and could therefore be considered its "ruling race".
But it's definitely possible for many pantheons to have such gods, and if you want to do something in a story with them, they certainly might be out there. The animal kingdom - everything living, in fact - has been thought of as a power in its own right by most peoples throughout history, and Scion has many, many ways of illustrating that power. As many as there are different treatments of animals across world myths, in fact.
This question is a giant complicated ball of wax that is trying to ask about a bunch of different stuff at once. I'm going to try to untangle it - stay with me, folks!
To begin with, I'm not sure if animism means what you think it means; I might be wrong, but the question makes it sound like you're implying that animism refers to the reverence of animal spirits and/or the belief that animals themselves are religious figures. Those ideas are bound up in animism, but the term actually means much more than that. It comes from the Latin word animus, which means spirit or breath, and refers to the much broader religious concept espoused by some cultures that all things have religiously significant spirits. That includes not just animals but also plants, natural features of the landscape, inanimate objects such as rocks, or even the abandoned bodies of the dead. Native American religions are most often cited as the best examples of animist belief systems, since many of them believe in the spiritual essence of the animals and landscape around them, and the Shinto religion of Japan also has more than a touch of that idea of spirits-in-all. When Disney's Pocahontas sings "Colors of the Wind", she's trying to describe to John Smith the animist religion of her people.
So while animism includes the idea of animal spirits, it is actually a much larger concept. This question seems to be more about the animals only, though, so we'll skip all that spirits-of-trees-and-wind stuff for now.
As you note, most religions have some kind of concept of animals and their place in the general spiritual hierarchy of things. Some consider the animals themselves to be magical or spiritually powerful in a way that humans generally are not; American religions, in particular, often do this. Sometimes it's because they believe in a spirit world, as the Inuit do, into which animals are naturally more able to enter and understand than humans, or sometimes it's because animals are more beloved by the gods, such as in some Middle Eastern cultures, and were therefore created with more powers than humans. In a few cases, especially in Africa and North America, myths will outright say that animals were given such spiritual powers as compensation for the fact that people hunt and kill them for food.
However, as with all mythologies, the religions they came from are vastly different in character, so even when animals are important, that doesn't necessarily mean that the ways in which they are important are comparable. Most pantheons have at least a god or two who have animal totems in some way, but the Teotl, who acknowledge animals as the second half of themselves, are very different from the Netjer, who use animal imagery to represent abstract concepts about themselves, who are in turn very different again from the Aesir, who only command beasts but do not embody them themselves.
What's important to remember about the All Myths Are Real model - which we've talked about in depth before, if you missed it - is that all things are true, but that truth isn't necessarily universal, and it may be true in a variety of ways without cheapening the authenticity of the game's treatment. If the Japanese believe that there are little kami inhabiting many inanimate objects, well, that's true, then; but it might be true only in Japan, or only when interacting with certain Japanese elements, or correlate to some concept in another culture that is fundamentally similar but that they experience in a different way. Often this is done through PSPs, as is the case in our Japanese example here; theoretically, the game says that there are kami everywhere, but since nobody who doesn't have Tsukumo-gami can interact with them in any way, they might as well not exist except for the gods of the Shinto religion. It's a little bit like the way light doesn't "exist" for people who have been blind since birth; you can tell them about it, but since they can never experience it in any way, it's both true for you and not true for them.
I think the ultimate place this question is going (see? it's all over the map!) is toward the idea of animal totems as the original deities or spirits worshiped by ancient societies, and whether or not they count as "gods" in Scion's framework. It's a concept visited by both Joseph Campbell in his Primitive Mythologies and Neil Gaiman in his excellent novel American Gods, and definitely one that's food for thought, especially when we think about the commonly-held theory that the earliest religions of humanity probably involved worship of important animal totems rather than anthropomorphic figures. If, in the ancient pre-recorded times of man's history, we worshiped the bear or the deer or the eagle as themselves, then where are those gods now?
Part of the answer lies in the fact that religions, even ones with strong structure and hierarchy, are living and changing institutions and they have all evolved and adapted over time. Many of those ancient animal gods actually are still around, right under your nose, because they've evolved into the familiar forms of the gods of Scion's current pantheons. The Netjer are a great example of this; many of them were originally zoomorphic in form, and the Old Kingdom artwork of them shows them simply as animals, worshiped without any humanoid form whatsoever. Sobek was originally just a crocodile, Hathor just a cow, and Sekhmet just a lion, and they only became human-like and gained human-like stories later in the religion's evolution. Figures like the Coyote deities of North America are still animal in shape most of the time, but they have gained human-like myths of their exploits and may even take on human form sometimes, placing them perhaps a little earlier on this evolutionary continuum than the older Netjer.
So, for some pantheons, those gods didn't go anywhere; they just changed. Some of them still run around in their animal forms, like Tezcatlipoca rolling up as Tepeyollotl when he doesn't feel like being humanoid, while others, like Baal, have translated from embodying their totem animal to becoming its master instead. This process also works in reverse, by the way, with some animals that were once worshiped as deities being demoted to merely monsters or magical talking animals in half-forgotten folklore; and even more rarely the god and the animal may split entirely, as in the spectacular case of Ninurta in Mesopotamian mythology, who sheds his animalistic form which becomes the Anzu bird, and he the god who controls it.
Another option is indeed that those animal-level gods are still around, but are just lower Legend than most of the heavy hitters of the current pantheons. They don't have much in the way of surviving mythology or stories, after all, and long ago lost their worshipers; in some cases, even the people who used to worship them are gone, moved away, become part of new ethnic groups or even gone extinct. They may still linger on alone, pantheonless if they were not part of a larger group, or perhaps they died in the first Titanomachy, when they had no fellow gods to take care of them and not enough power to defend themselves. If they were part of a pantheon that still exists, they may roam the Overworld, Legend 9 and all but forgotten by humanity and even their fellow gods. Some of them might now be minions of the Titans, absorbed easily into the greater realms of the ideas they once represented.
But if such prehistoric animal totem gods do exist, we know nothing about them, and anything we tried to do with them for Scion would be invented; by definition, they predate recorded history and we therefore know only what we theorize about them. We can look at cave paintings or make guesses about what might have come before those animal beliefs we did have the opportunity to write down or preserve orally, but they're just guesses.
It would be over-simplistic to say that every pantheon has some of these animal gods; not every ancient culture assigned the same importance to animals or, if they did find them important, thought of that importance in the same way. Many cultures, for example, had a concept of a "master animal" - usually the most important animal in the local ecosystem, which was revered above the others and believed to be able to spiritually interact with humans, but was not actually deified and instead conceived of as a race comparable to humans that existed alongside them. And even the master animal concept wasn't always thought of the same way by every culture; some western African cultures thought of the antelope as the master animal because it was their most important food creature and they needed its permission to catch and eat it, but some of the Brazilian rainforest cultures thought of the jaguar as the master animal because it was the most powerful predator of the area and could therefore be considered its "ruling race".
But it's definitely possible for many pantheons to have such gods, and if you want to do something in a story with them, they certainly might be out there. The animal kingdom - everything living, in fact - has been thought of as a power in its own right by most peoples throughout history, and Scion has many, many ways of illustrating that power. As many as there are different treatments of animals across world myths, in fact.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Power Plays
Our vlogging spree continues! This is only the second of the many vlogs we filmed at the same tinme, so we barely look fatigued at all yet! This week's theme is boons, knacks and powers, because you guys never run out of questions about those things. Never.
Question: If a player wants to dip into a new general purview, how should accessing these new powers be handled? Do they always need a new relic, or can divine forces add access to new purviews to old Birthrights? If the latter, is there any mechanics involved or is it a strictly storytelling decision when that happens?
Question: So, Scion of Hermes/Mercury. Super speedster, concept of "Flash wannabe". Assuming maximized Dexterity, Epic Dexterity, and Psychopomp to facilitate dash speed, what are your thoughts on the Justice League "around the world punch"? Ultimate Dexterity? Use of The Way? What about speed-based bonus damage? When you punch a person at Mach 17 in Scion, what happens?
Question: What kind of penalty/bonus should exist for sexual orientation? If Zeus tries to sleep with a straight guy or gay girl, do they get some moderate +X bonus to resist?
Question: The writeup of Emamu mentions "attacks made by Death or Health boons". Obviously negative Health boons can be used offensively, but what Death boon can hurt something that isn't a ghost?
Question: How many Avatars do you have to pop to make a planet? How do you accomplish anything meaningful in space without constantly using Avatars and Ultimates?
Question: Is it possible for a craft god like Hephaestus to use the Creator to "forge" a full grown adult Scion with human blood along his own ichor? The idea came to me when I read about Hephaestus' sentient robo-maids in the Iliad and thought it would be a neat concept. So, would this actually create a Scion, or would it be some kind of Lesser Immortal or construct?
Question: I have been immensely curious about something lately as I am going back through and reading the core rules, specifically about Animal. I've noticed that as the Scion Seth Farrow goes through his ascension, he begins to naturally look much more like a snake, which to me it seemed was implying an evolution in his natural state over time. How would this be done, handled or represented from both a player perspective and a ST perspective?
Question: Is it possible that Machu Pichu could be a massive Huaca (possibly to Inti)?
Question: In Scion, would you have storms without storm gods? That is, are ALL storms caused by storm gods, or are some (most?) storms natural unless the local storm god chooses to intervene? In Scandinavia, would ALL lightning be directly caused by Thor, or just some? As a corollary, if all storms are directly created by the storm gods more or less at their whim, how come meteorology often works? (This obviously goes for other phenomena as well, like sunrise or love, but storms make a nice example.)
Wandering from cosmology to sexuality to space travel. We are like frontier vlog pioneers.
Question: If a player wants to dip into a new general purview, how should accessing these new powers be handled? Do they always need a new relic, or can divine forces add access to new purviews to old Birthrights? If the latter, is there any mechanics involved or is it a strictly storytelling decision when that happens?
Question: So, Scion of Hermes/Mercury. Super speedster, concept of "Flash wannabe". Assuming maximized Dexterity, Epic Dexterity, and Psychopomp to facilitate dash speed, what are your thoughts on the Justice League "around the world punch"? Ultimate Dexterity? Use of The Way? What about speed-based bonus damage? When you punch a person at Mach 17 in Scion, what happens?
Question: What kind of penalty/bonus should exist for sexual orientation? If Zeus tries to sleep with a straight guy or gay girl, do they get some moderate +X bonus to resist?
Question: The writeup of Emamu mentions "attacks made by Death or Health boons". Obviously negative Health boons can be used offensively, but what Death boon can hurt something that isn't a ghost?
Question: How many Avatars do you have to pop to make a planet? How do you accomplish anything meaningful in space without constantly using Avatars and Ultimates?
Question: Is it possible for a craft god like Hephaestus to use the Creator to "forge" a full grown adult Scion with human blood along his own ichor? The idea came to me when I read about Hephaestus' sentient robo-maids in the Iliad and thought it would be a neat concept. So, would this actually create a Scion, or would it be some kind of Lesser Immortal or construct?
Question: I have been immensely curious about something lately as I am going back through and reading the core rules, specifically about Animal. I've noticed that as the Scion Seth Farrow goes through his ascension, he begins to naturally look much more like a snake, which to me it seemed was implying an evolution in his natural state over time. How would this be done, handled or represented from both a player perspective and a ST perspective?
Question: Is it possible that Machu Pichu could be a massive Huaca (possibly to Inti)?
Question: In Scion, would you have storms without storm gods? That is, are ALL storms caused by storm gods, or are some (most?) storms natural unless the local storm god chooses to intervene? In Scandinavia, would ALL lightning be directly caused by Thor, or just some? As a corollary, if all storms are directly created by the storm gods more or less at their whim, how come meteorology often works? (This obviously goes for other phenomena as well, like sunrise or love, but storms make a nice example.)
Wandering from cosmology to sexuality to space travel. We are like frontier vlog pioneers.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Librarian Glee!
John tagged me in for today's vlog, where I will be way too excited and jump around waving my favorite things in front of the camera. Join me!
Question: Some myths say Nut is the granddaughter of Ra, while others say she was his wife. Some myths say he stopped her from having children because he didn't want his throne taken over, others say it was because Ra was jealous of her sleeping with Geb. What's up?
Question: I understand that in your games, all of the different mythological origin stories are true. That being said, how do you tie in the fact that fossils of animals from millions of years ago, and thus don't match up, have been found?
Question: I had someone ask me the other day if a nuclear winter would be anything like Fimbulwintr from Norse mythology. In your opinion, could a nuclear winter trigger Ragnarok?
Question: Do you guys use the Order of the Divine Glory in your games? If so, how prevalent are they?
Question: Do you think Aphrodite's lack of purview's can be accounted for by a butt load of Arete in abilities such as presence and empathy and command that gives her supernatural power over peoples emotions without a purview or misplaced epic attributes.
Question: At least under one interpretation, Christians, Jews and Muslims are (inadvertent) Titan-worshipers (somewhat similar to how C. S. Lewis depicts Muslims as inadvertent demon-worshippers). Would the gods care about this? Would it matter for the Titans in question that they're being worshipped?
Question: Just wondering - have you guys ever used Neith in your games, and how would you handle her if you did?
Question: Do the Aesir have a god of dawn? I'm asking this because I'm making a NPC for my games who represents not the dawn itself, but renovation and new life, and dawn just looks like the perfect role for me. Any ideas? What associations do you think I could use?
Question: How do powers like Control Water affect water-based liquids like most alcoholic beverages or sodas?
Question: You mentioned in a post earlier in the year that divine parents grant Birthrights for purviews that they are not associated with, but what about the Animal purview for animals that no god currently has (such as extinct ones)? Would the Scion simply have to purchase the boons without having a corresponding relic?
If you're interested in joining me on cloud nine, Lacambalam, the codex artist, has a website here where he shows comparisons of his art to the originals, and a Flickr gallery here with prices and much better images of the codices than my webcam could give you.
Question: Some myths say Nut is the granddaughter of Ra, while others say she was his wife. Some myths say he stopped her from having children because he didn't want his throne taken over, others say it was because Ra was jealous of her sleeping with Geb. What's up?
Question: I understand that in your games, all of the different mythological origin stories are true. That being said, how do you tie in the fact that fossils of animals from millions of years ago, and thus don't match up, have been found?
Question: I had someone ask me the other day if a nuclear winter would be anything like Fimbulwintr from Norse mythology. In your opinion, could a nuclear winter trigger Ragnarok?
Question: Do you guys use the Order of the Divine Glory in your games? If so, how prevalent are they?
Question: Do you think Aphrodite's lack of purview's can be accounted for by a butt load of Arete in abilities such as presence and empathy and command that gives her supernatural power over peoples emotions without a purview or misplaced epic attributes.
Question: At least under one interpretation, Christians, Jews and Muslims are (inadvertent) Titan-worshipers (somewhat similar to how C. S. Lewis depicts Muslims as inadvertent demon-worshippers). Would the gods care about this? Would it matter for the Titans in question that they're being worshipped?
Question: Just wondering - have you guys ever used Neith in your games, and how would you handle her if you did?
Question: Do the Aesir have a god of dawn? I'm asking this because I'm making a NPC for my games who represents not the dawn itself, but renovation and new life, and dawn just looks like the perfect role for me. Any ideas? What associations do you think I could use?
Question: How do powers like Control Water affect water-based liquids like most alcoholic beverages or sodas?
Question: You mentioned in a post earlier in the year that divine parents grant Birthrights for purviews that they are not associated with, but what about the Animal purview for animals that no god currently has (such as extinct ones)? Would the Scion simply have to purchase the boons without having a corresponding relic?
If you're interested in joining me on cloud nine, Lacambalam, the codex artist, has a website here where he shows comparisons of his art to the originals, and a Flickr gallery here with prices and much better images of the codices than my webcam could give you.
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