Sons of El

Question: Who is Baal's father, Dagon or El?

It's all a matter of translation and interpretation. And since Canaanite mythology is mostly preserved on piecemeal tablets in ritual poetic form, it's every man for himself when it comes to making a call.

In the Baal cycle, Baal is directly referred to as "son of Dagon", which is pretty plain. Setting the storm god as the son of the grain deity makes a lot of sense in the myth itself; it's no wonder that Yam and Mot, sons of the current king and greatest among gods, are mortally offended by an upstart pretender to the throne who both of them should by rights outrank and succeed before. On the other hand, it's also theorized that Baal's connection to Dagon may be a symbolic one, and that as the dying fertility god who renews the world after a drought, he might be called the "son" of the god of grain to illustrate their close concepts.

On the other hand, Baal is also referred to one of the "sons of El", which also seems pretty black and white. The equal powers of Baal as sky, Mot as death and Yam as sea seem to make sense as the forces of three equal brothers, especially when compared to Zeus, Hades and Poseidon (who many scholars believe were probably influenced by them). But, then again, "sons of El" - literally what the word elohim means - is a generic term that seems to be used to refer to all of the gods, highlighting that El is their original ancestor and creator, and may not be meant to mean that Baal is his actual direct issue.

We're inclined to play Baal as the son of Dagon, making him probably El's grandson rather than a direct heir, and to assume that the title of Elohim in his case just means "one of the brood of El" rather than anything too specific. It covers both possibilities and also allows for some interesting interplay between members of different family lines and loyalties within the pantheon.

Who's Your Mama?

Question: Isn't listing Heimdall as Odin's and Frigg's son on the Aesir family tree sort of wrong? I know the myths claim he is the son of nine sisters, who created him through some sort of ritual (in short, he has nine mothers).

Oh, we've actually had this one before! Check out our discussion of Heimdall's parentage over here, and roll with whatever interpretation suits you best.

I'm not sure where you're sourcing from, but there's no mention anywhere of any kind of weird ritual associated with Heimdall's birth; the passages referring to the nine sisters merely call him their son and don't suggest any particular explanation for what that means or how it happened.

Untangling the Clans

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

Fucking Lugh. Every time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Seventy Sons

Question: Is there more information available about the 70 Sons of El and Asherah, other than the stories about their most famous members?

Specifically? No, not really, sad to say. We've lost a great deal of Canaanite myth, and we're lucky to know about the seventy sons at all. But there are a lot of things we can extrapolate from the things we do know!

For one thing, "seventy" may not be a literal number. Just as the Japanese refer to the "eight million" kami or the Aztecs refer to the "four hundred" stars in the sky, it may be intended as a symbolic number, meaning that El has a lot of sons and is the powerful progenitor of the universe and its gods rather than that he has literally exactly that number. You certainly can use it as a literal number if you want to, though, and it still gives you an impression of a pretty large number of gods fathered by the almighty creator.

On another level, "sons" may also be figurative; that is, all the gods are considered El's sons because he's the leader of the pantheon and the creator of the world, so they're referred to as his sons no matter what their actual geneaology is. Daughters aren't addressed at all, so where all these goddesses came from is anybody's guess; most likely they're also offspring of El, and unmentioned because daughters were far less important than sons in an ancient Canaanite mindset. Calling someone the father of a bunch of sons implies that he's strong, virile and commanding; calling him the father of a bunch of daughters only implies that he's going to have to find a lot of husbands for them if he wants his house to himself.

Of the sons of El, we only know the names of five of them specifically: Baal, Yam, Mot, Shalim and Shahar. There's also a little confusion because Baal is sometimes referred to as the son of Dagon instead of El, making Dagon the direct son of the big guy, and our lack of evidence has so far made it impossible for scholars to come to a consensus on that one. Past that point, you're in the realm of conjecture; it's reasonable to assume that the gods whose parents aren't directly named are also sons of El (because El's everybody's daddy, right?), so you can add Moloch, Kothar, Athtar, Melqart, Resheph, Chemosh, Marqod and Yarikh to the list (and possibly Eshmun if you want to assume his father Sydyk = Jupiter = El, but trying to figure out what Sanchuniathon was talking about will give you a migraine if you're not careful).

So that gives us thirteen to fifteen out of seventy, depending on interpretation. The other fifty-five gods remain a mystery, which leaves Storytellers plenty of room to play with who they might be, where they are now and what they're doing in the general landscape of the godly realms of the Canaanite deities. Our writeup on the pantheon suggests that they probably reside in Sedeq as servants of their Titanic father, but there are a lot of them and there's no reason you can't splinter some off to go do other things if you think it would make for a neat story. Some scholars even suggest that Yahweh might originally have been one of the sons of El, so those of you who are always on the lookout for ways to drag the monotheistic religions into things can sneak him in that way while being fully scholarly legit.

I wish I had more for you, but that's about all there is, unfortunately. Unless there's another happy farming accident in Syria or Lebanon, we probably won't know much more any time soon, so let your imagination run wild!

Blood Most Potent

Question: Why do Njord, Freyr, Freya, possibly Frigg and Idun and any of their descendants have Jotunblut? I understand mechanically, but mythically, it seems like they do not have the blood of giants - the point behind the PSP. Is everybody just assumed to be a descendant of giants at some point if they hail from the land of the ice and snow?

Mythically, we actually have no idea where the Vanir come from. Their genesis isn't discussed, and their bloodlines aren't really clear to us other than the understanding that they aren't Aesir.

However, according to the Norse creation myth, Ymir was the first giant and all the gods were descended from him and his son and grandsons, so technically we would have to assume that the Vanir come from somewhere in there, just without the explicit genealogy we have for their Aesir cousins. Vanir tend to be much more concerned with nature, fertility and the earth than the more sky- and civilization-focused Aesir, so they might be a branch descended from the giants in a different direction, perhaps via Jord or another similar figure. If that's the case, they have as much right to Jotunblut as the Aesir do. If you want to get creative, you could also decide that one of Odin's brothers, Vili and Ve, might have been the founding father of the Vanir just as Odin is the founding father of the Aesir, considering that both of them also vanish from Norse myth shortly thereafter and their doings are never discussed.

Of course, you could decide that the Vanir come from some theoretical other provenance that doesn't trace back to Ymir, and even if you do believe they're from somewhere in Ymir's line, that doesn't cover everybody (Idun, for example, is apparently originally at least part alfar, since she's included in the descendents of Ivaldi, and therefore might be a deified lesser immortal rather than of the same bloodline as the other gods). In those cases, you might want to roll with the idea that the Vanir that live among the Aesir (i.e., the only ones that are playable and have Jotunblut anyway) have been officially adopted into the pantheon and their PSPs accordingly changed from whatever the Vanir originally had to match their new pantheon's giant-sized blood. It's theoretically possible for a Scion or god to switch pantheons, provided that they do so through a very important and difficult event involving the Wyrd and the complete abandonment of their original pantheon, and the permanent trading of Njord, Freya and Freyr to the Aesir might have been just such a case (not to mention Sif, Frigg, Sigyn or any of the other possibly-Vanir ladies). It might just be that everyone who permanently lives with the Aesir has been fully converted to join them, while the largely nameless or vague Vanir who remained in Vanaheim retain whatever their original powers were.

Of course, the simplest reason is "because the Vanir and Aesir are not mythically developed enough to be different people and they're both just classes within the Norse pantheon anyway, so it would be mechanically difficult and silly to give them different PSPs". But if you or your players are looking for an in-world reason, there are plenty of options within the framework of Norse myth. This is one area where the general vagueness surrounding the Vanir works for you instead of against you; there's nothing that tells you explicitly where they came from, so you're free as a Storyteller to come up with a theory you like and roll with it.

The Flayed Lord

Question: So, Family (capital F and all) seems pretty important to the Aztecs. And yet, looking at your pantheon page for them, there's an odd man out. So my question is this: what's the deal with Xipe Totec and his relationship to the rest of the pantheon? Is he a welcomed member of the family, or just 'that one god that feeds our people so we don't sacrifice him'? What's it like for him being the only Aztec not related to the others by blood?

Xipe Totec is in a weird position. He's probably actually a pre-Aztec god, adopted by them at some point in their conquests, but he's neither as wildly influential as Quetzalcoatl nor as marginalized as other adopted gods like Xochipilli. He has an incredibly important function - so important, in fact, that he's one of the four Tezcatlipocas - and yet he also doesn't quite seem to fit into the pantheon anywhere, since we have no surviving genealogy for him and his origins are shrouded in pre-Hispanic mystery. Oddly enough for an Aztec god, he also has no apparent consort, not even a representational one; he's somewhat related to other maize and fertility gods like Chicomecoatl, Xilonen or Centeotl, but they're all spoken for and never said to be his true relatives. He also has no children we know of. So where does he fit into this tightly-knit, familially loyal pantheon?

Well, to begin with, there actually is a familial connection for Xipe Totec, although it's buried in a myth that's less well-known than some of the other Aztec stories. In the Five Suns creation myth, Xipe Totec, along with Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli, is born at the beginning of the universe from the original Aztec creation Titan, Ometeotl (sometimes split into two male and female halves that are both the same person, Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl). He is therefore a full brother to all three of the other Tezcatlipocas, a far cry from a disconnected nobody.

However, this myth is in direct contradiction to other stories surrounding the birth of the Tezcatlipocas, the most famous being Coatlicue's parthenogenic mothering of Huitzilopochtli and Quetzalcoatl's status as son of Mixcoatl. Storytellers looking for a way to make Xipe Totec more connected could follow the Five Suns mythic narrative that makes him brother to the other major powers of the pantheon, but if they do so may find themselves wondering what to do with these other awesome stories of different gods' birth. One option would be to simply transport Xipe Totec's relation to his brothers down to the other myths, declaring him a son of Coatlicue so he can keep his original relationship to them despite the fact that we have no record of him as Coatlicue's child. Another would be to say that, since there also exists a variant myth that says the Tezcatlipocas sacrificed themselves to create the world, both myths are true and they were both born originally of Ometeotl and then reborn of Coatlicue and/or Mixcoatl at a later time. In that case, you could again include Xipe Totec with them, or you could decide that he was the only one of the brothers who didn't die in the sacrifice, and thus has no extra story of his birth.

As far as how the pantheon treats him, brother or not, he's probably considered no less a full and important one of their number. While he might not spark the personal dedication of Loyalty if you decide he isn't anyone's relative, he is still one of the all-important Aztec divinities, a Tezcatlipoca in his own right and a necessary person to the continuing preservation of the universe. Both Conviction and Duty are on his side, and, more importantly, not having a specific genealogy may not make much difference to the rest of the Aztlanti anyway. If he's one of them, he shares the same blood; it doesn't really matter who his mother was, because he's Aztec and that's enough to make him an indispensable part of the community. To the ancient Aztecs, being one of their people by blood meant that they were part of the whole; the exact lineage would determine your place in society, but you would still be part of society regardless. So, I would assume, it is with Xipe Totec.

Of course, if you're setting up a game that plays on racial tensions between native Mexican gods and their borrowed Toltec and Maya pantheon-members, you might find it more interesting to consider him an unrelated import, which would give you a nice split down the middle - Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca representing for the Mexica, and Quetzalcoatl and Xipe Totec across the way for the conquered peoples they absorbed.

No matter what you choose, though, Xipe Totec is a Tezcatlipoca and one of the most important of the Aztec gods by anyone's reckoning. What he says matters and what he does is to be respected, so whether he's a native son on par with his brothers or a foreign dignitary who made his way to the top, he's nobody to be ignored.

Three Little Kami from School

Question: Are Amaterasu, Susanoo, and Tsukuyomi considered the children of Izanami, or is Izanagi their one and only parent?

That depends entirely on which version of the myth you prefer, because both are legit.

In the Kojiki, one of the primary sources for Japanese mythology, the three are considered the children of Izanagi alone; after his escape from Yomi, pursued by his grieving and terrible wife, he stopped to purify himself of the uncleanliness of the Underworld by washing in a stream. When he washed his face, Susanoo was born from the washing of his nose, Tsukuyomi from the washing of his right eye and Amaterasu from the washing of his left eye. They're the symbolic result of his act of cleansing himself; purifying himself is such a strong and resonant act that it causes the three most powerful deities of the pantheon to be born.

In the Nihon Shoki or Nihongi, however, one of the other primary sources for Japanese mythology, Izanagi and Izanami decide together before her death that they should create the most splendid of kami to rule the heavens, and together give birth to Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi, one each to rule the day and night. In this version, Susanoo is not directly mentioned, but he's considered Amaterasu's brother, so it would be pretty safe to assume that he was also one of the natural-born children of the first divine couple.

And, to make matters even more confusing, the Nihongi also contains another version of the birth of the major gods, in which it is Izanagi alone who creates Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi, but he does so by creating them from the reflections of two mirrors he holds in either hand. Susanoo goes unmentioned again; he may be one of the Three August Siblings, but he's also clearly not great rulership material, which is probably why he doesn't always turn up in accounts of how the divine rulers came to be appointed.

(Incidentally, it's also the Nihongi that suggests that Amaterasu and Tsukiyomi were created specifically for one another and are or were lovers and consorts as well as siblings. Ooh la la! Work that into your story!)

So the exact parentage of the three premier Japanese gods is up in the air somewhat, and really depends on what version of the myth you prefer. Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi are always born together, with Susanoo only sometimes included (but still their sibling). If you prefer the idea of them as sovereign rulers of the heavens, their parentage by Izanagi and Izanami is probably the version you want, whereas if you prefer the idea of them fundamentally opposed to Izanami and everything she stands for, you may want to instead use the version where they have nothing to do with her, even pre-death.

A particularly interesting setup might be to consider Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi Izanagi's parthenogenic children, but Susanoo a child of both parents, which would explain why he isn't mentioned in that myth and why he so strongly decries his father for leaving Izanami trapped in the Underworld. He would still be the other twos' sibling through their shared father, but the genetic divide would explain why he never gets along with them (and him being Izanami's son while the other two weren't would also explain his death connotations, which they decidedly don't share!).

Personally, I'm a fan of the idea that they're all the children of both ancient parents, but there are plenty of ways to go with it. The Kojiki myth of all three being created by Izanagi is the most well-known, but the alternate versions from the Nihongi are just as legitimate (and might be older, considering that the Nihongi preserves some older folklore as opposed to the Kojiki, which aimed to avoid extra versions in the name of creating an "official" document for the entire country).

Source of Scorpions

Question: Who is Malinalxochitl's mother?

A mystery! Nobody knows, but there are a few possibilities.

Firstly, Malinalxochitl herself is something of an enigma. She's actually more often said to be Huitzilopochtli's sister than his daughter (we happen to use her as a daughter, but I imagine most games probably don't), and in neither case is her parentage discussed. This is not actually too weird for ladies attached to Huitzilopochtli; Coyolxauhqui, who is typically considered his sister, is also in some variant stories referred to as his mother or aunt. As one of the few Aztec gods with no firm consort or wife, Huitzilopochtli is in an odd limbo when it comes to female relationships; the only truly firm constant is that Coatlicue is always considered his mother, while other females in his stories are always antagonistic and dangerous despite being in some way related to him.

If you consider Malinalxochitl to be Huitzilopochtli's sister, then she'd by definition need to be a daughter of Coatlicue, his only parent. She's never said to be one of the Centzonhuitznahua and has no apparent star-connotations, but she still might be a sibling of theirs, most likely a daughter of Mixcoatl and Coatlicue like everyone else. I've even seen some scholar speculation that, if she were sympathetic toward the deceased Coyolxauhqui and her army, she might be intentionally making Huitzilopochtli's life hard and attempting to steal his people as a form of revenge against him for murdering her siblings. If you roll with that, she'd also be at least a half-sibling of several other gods, most notably Quetzalcoatl. There's much less to go on if you want to run her as Huitzilopochtli's daughter instead of sister; since there's no inkling who her mother might have been in that case, it's probably simplest to consider her an example of an ancient Scion who rose to apotheosis back in the day, and that the forgotten mother was some nameless mortal.

Malinalxochitl's name also turns up in accounts of the Acolhua dynasty of Chichimec nobility, where she is said to be married to a king named Xolotl. Of course, this refers to mortal figures who took on the names of their gods to illustrate their nobility and honor the deities who were their patrons, but if you wanted to mess around with what the scorpion-goddess was up to post-exile, you could always consider her to be the same figure, either as a goddess influencing mortal affairs in Avatar form or a Scion or servant of Malinalxochitl, doing her work in the World.

Polygynous Monogamy

Question: In your genealogy of the Devas, Kali is the wife of Shiva as well as Parvati. Is this a mistake, and if not, care to elaborate? Also: can a Scion be born of two gods,? Parvati and Shiva come to mind...

A mistake? All our Hindu research cred is offended!

Actually, it's not; Shiva has a reputation for being faithful and monogamously in love with his wife, from the time that she was the ill-fated Sati through her death and reincarnation as wily Parvati. It is therefore a little confusing why he's attached to two ladies on our family tree, and why Hindu myth talks about both of them as his wives without batting an eyelash at the apparent contradiction. This is because Hindu mythology is big on the concept of divinity as a single thing with many moving parts, and Parvati and Kali are a prime example of that idea in action.

In an essentially boiled-down form, the myth goes that Parvati went into battle with several other Devas against the asura Raktabija, a horrible monster that was murdering gods and despoiling the landscape right and left. Every time the demon was wounded, a new copy of him sprang up from every drop of blood that touched the ground, and the gods soon realized that they were in serious danger of being overrun by Raktabija's endless army of himself. Parvati, who had already become the warrior goddess Durga and was still having no luck with the situation, called upon her powers to create yet another aspect of herself, the even more fearsome warrior Kali. Kali thoroughly trashed the asura, and used her terrible long tongue to lick up and drink every drop of shed blood so that he could not regenerate new copies of himself. She then went batshit and rampaged around murdering stuff for a while until Shiva calmed her down, because that's what Kali does.

Basically, Parvati and Kali are the same person; Kali is an aspect of Durga, who is in turn an aspect of Parvati, who in very large Hindu cosmological terms is merely an aspect of Devi, the great feminine divinity that all goddesses are just little pieces of. Shiva is Kali's husband just as much as he's Parvati's husband; Kali came out of Parvati and is part of Parvati, despite the fact that they have become separate for the purposes of demon-thrashing, and indeed Kali obviously recognizes this since Shiva is the only person who can prevent her from being insane for even small periods of time. Shiva has two wives and is still managing to be entirely monogamous, because that's how Hinduism rolls.

But, at the same time, Parvati and Kali need to be separate goddesses for Scion's purposes, because while Hindu philosophy says they're the same, in practice they have pretty much nothing in common except for Shiva. The two goddesses share no roles, perform no similar functions, and definitely don't do the same things; in fact, they're obviously aware of one another as separate people, as in the myth where Parvati gets all ticked off at Shiva teasing her by saying that her skin is as dark as Kali's. Kali goes off on her own separate adventures, usually involving rampages and cosmic property damage, while Parvati has her own stories as well, most often centered around her husband and children.

They're the same person - but they're also clearly not the same person, and Scion has to make distinctions between Hindu deities in order to use them in the game. In all technicality, there's only one "goddess" in the Hindu religion - Devi, the all-encompassing female divinity and keeper of the power of Shakti - but that's not only boring, it's also highly philosophical, rather than being part of the vibrant myths and legends of the Hindu epics. We don't want the Hindu pantheon to just be Deva, the dude god, and Devi, the lady goddess, so we have to break the different personalities off to be their own gods, which is how they're practically treated anyway (especially in ancient times), with their own temples, offerings, literature and stories. This is one of the many places where the concepts of modern Hinduism - in this case, the idea that all of the Devas are merely aspects of a single figure rather than deities in their own right - don't match up to those of ancient mythological India, in which nobody was suggesting that Indra and Vishnu must be the same guy because that would have seemed insane. Hinduism is the largest long-running polytheistic religion in existence, which means that it's changed vastly over time; its newer stories and myths have evolved from the ancient ones, and as it continues on toward ever more modern permutations, Scion has to make a cutoff point somewhere before running into the practical monotheism of things like Vaishnavism.

In Scion terms, figuring out where Kali came from is a little bit weird, since she's not conforming to the normal interpretations of a goddess. We find it most useful to assume that she's either A) a goddess who Parvati called down and unleashed and who her co-wife just refers to as an aspect of herself because she knows nobody's going to correct her, or B) a renegade Avatar of Parvati that somehow became its own individual being, something that isn't possible in most of the rules but that might have been accomplished with the Wyrd or similar kinds of meddling. Either way, she's as legitimately Shiva's wife as Parvati is; their myths are very clear about the relationship.

As for Scions being the children of two gods, yes, actually, that is possible, though unusual. Scion: Companion actually presents an entire sidebar on it (on page 167) specifically because of the famously monogamous couples of Hindu mythology. While two gods in their full forms will always give birth to another god, if one or both of them have used the Avatar Birthright to drop below Legend 9, the resulting child would be a possible Scion. Of course, this isn't going to happen a lot - having sex with mortals is a lot quicker and easier - but it's a possibility for gods who absolutely don't want to cheat on their spouses. Keep in mind, however, that while a Scion might be the biological child of two gods, he can only be the Scion of one of them; whichever parent performs his Visitation is the one that he'll be getting his associated powers from, not both.

Storytellers and Tall Tales

Two vlogs in a row! It's like poorly-lit Christmas!

Question: What I love about all the stuff you guys have up here is the fact that you stick to the myths and don't just make things up willy-nilly. But there are some cases where there is no solid answer in myth, such as who the previous eight generations of the Tuatha were. How do you guys deal with things like that when they come into your game? Do you try to deflect inquiry, or do you make the most educated guesses you can?

Question: What do you think happened with Cuahuitlicac? The Centzonhuitzhanua and Coyolxauhqui are probably not happy with him.

Question: There was a scenario on the White Wolf forums about gods of different pantheons but the same purviews (the Morrigan and Ares, Apollo and Amaterasu) having children together. From your point of view, is this possible, especially from the more sexually free gods/goddesses of each pantheon?

Tune in next week, when John's rage will have finally abated. Probably.

Dimetor

Question: How would you use Zagreus in Scion? Is he some mysterious child of Zeus, one of the few children of Hades, or just another name for Dionysus?

Oh, man, hide the women and children. The Orphic mystery cults are at the door.

Zagreus, like a lot of mystery cult figures, is someone that every game's going to have to make a specialty call on, I think. The various mystery cults positively delight in deviating from the general canon of Greek myth and establishing alternative geneaologies, powers, and stories for their gods; it's a bit like reading alternate-universe fanfiction, where you know all the characters but they're all doing and saying bizarre things that would make no sense in their normal forms. That's not to say that these cult stories aren't legitimate mythology, because they are; but they're very specialized fringe mythology, and some of them were most likely philosophical or religious ideas rather than literal stories about gods, and we have very little way of telling them apart. Most Storytellers stick to the more mainstream Greek myths, and as a result probably don't even know who Zagreus is; and if you're comfortable with that, more power to you.

But for those who are interested in using Zagreus, he's a complicated, odd figure. Both Nonnus and Diodorus Siculus claim that he is the first incarnation of Dionysus, and that the Dionysus of the Olympians is a god reborn from the heart of the original when he was killed, thus earning the epithet "Twice-Born" (but, in more mainstream Greek myth, "Twice-Born" can also be taken to refer to Zeus having sewn an infant Dionysus up into his thigh to "give birth" to him a second time); further, they note his parents as Zeus and Persephone. The Orphic Hymns sometimes name him as the son of Zeus and Persephone, and at other times only mention Persephone as his mother with no father apparent; Aeschylus, however, refers to him as the son of Persephone and Hades (who was sometimes referred to as the "chthonic/underworld Zeus"). An even older, more fragmentary mention in a lost Theban epic cycle contains no parentage but suggests him as an ancient Titan and partner of Gaia, and he's furthermore syncretized mercilessly wilth various other figures, the most notable being Osiris of Egypt (and, indeed, Osiris is also strongly linked to Dionysus in his normal form as well thanks to syncretization) and Sabazios of Phyrgia.

In short, he's a complete mess.

For most games, it's probably easiest to accept the Orphic assertion that Zagreus was the original Dionysus, and then decide for yourself whether he's permanently dead or truly reborn as the current Dionysus. As far as the question of parentage goes, we're most fond of the idea that Zagreus would be a son of Hades and Persephone; not only is it reasonable in light of the Homerian epithet that links Hades to being called Zeus and the allusions in Aeschylus, but it makes more in-universe sense, as Zeus gave Persephone away to his brother to be his wife, and Persephone is Zeus' daughter (and while he gets very randy with his sisters and other ladies, I can think of no other myth where he goes after his daughters, which might be a level of incest even the ancient Greeks weren't okay with in their gods). If you want to get really awesomely layered with it, you could consider Zagreus the son of Hades and Persephone, and then as new Dionysus the son of Zeus and Semele when he was reborn, making him the legitimate son of three of the major Greek gods in one shot. That theory's one of my favorites, partially because it's a really fun relationship dynamic and especially because it gives you a possible reason why Dionysus' mysterious ability to convince Hades to let him go retrieve his dead mother worked out with no apparent trouble or fallout.

Of course, if all this is too fiddly or uninteresting and it doesn't matter for your games, you could always declare that Zagreus is just an epithet Dionysus has used in the past when he's prankin' people, or even that the Orphic myths about him were entirely fabricated by their members, either on their own or with encouragement from Dionysus himself. Humans do occasionally just make things up, and the mystery cults are definitely a place where that's not an unlikely theory. There's also always the possibility that Zagreus is just a Greek import of the Phrygian Sabazios, and that mortals have syncretized two gods who are actually quite separate by trying to import the non-Greek divinity into their religion.

Zagreus doesn't need to be a major element in anyone's game if they don't have a vested interest in him; aside from his birth, death and rebirth story, he really doesn't appear to do much other than give Zeus an excuse to tell his other kids they can't have nice things. It's easiest to simply leave him out - but if you do include him, he has quite a few meaty possibilities for awesome interactions and history between the gods.

(And this isn't even getting into the Eleusinian mysteries, folks, in which Dionysus has yet another name - Iacchus - and yet another set of parents - Zeus and Demeter, or the Dionysian mysteries themselves, which are basically dedicated entirely to doing weird stuff with Dionysus. This is a guy who really can't stand to see any mystery religion that doesn't feature him prominently and confusingly.)

Geneaology Day Continues!

Question: Was Odysseus a biological grandson of Zeus adopted as a Scion of Athena, a Scion of Zeus, or just a really clever mortal who lived a particularly legendary life surrounded by gods, demigods, and monsters?

Odysseus, in addition to being the Greek hero most disagreed about by scholars in terms of his purpose and philosophical representation, is also one of the messiest to try to pin down geneaologically. In all technicality, by Scion's rules, he couldn't have been a Scion as he's too far removed from his divine forbears, but he certainly has more divine heritage than most mortals could claim.

He's not Zeus' grandson, but depending on the mythic version could be considered either his great-grandson or great-great-grandson. According to Homer, he is the son of Laertes, who was himself the son of Arcesius, himself a son of Zeus, making him three generations removed; at the same time, his mother is Anticlea, who was the daughter of Autolycus, who was the son of Hermes (who is of course the son of Zeus), making him simultaneously Zeus' great-grandson, great-great-grandson and Hermes' great-grandson. And if that wasn't confusing enough, there's a variant myth in which his father is actually Sisyphus, which would again make him a great-grandson of Zeus through Sisyphus' father Aeolus, one of Zeus' many sons.

This is all a bit head-spinning, but what it basically boils down to is that, by Scion's rules, Odysseus could not be a Scion. He would need to be at least the grandson of a god, and he's one step too far away in all cases. This is also supported by the fact that, despite his excellent adventures and exploits, he eventually died of old age in Ithaca, a distinctly mortal kind of deceasement.

But Odysseus also does many great deeds, succeeds on many great quests and sometimes even out-performs dudes who definitely are Legendary; it's hard to believe that a mere mortal could have done all that, or that the gods should have bothered to take that much of an interest in him (or, come to that, that he could have survived Poseidon's snittiness for so long). So what to do with the most famous mind in ancient Greece?

The easiest option is probably just to declare that he was a Scion and insert some plot to explain whose and why his genealogy isn't preserved. Perhaps he was a closer relation of Zeus' or Hermes', hidden from the other gods as a secret weapon, or the son or grandson of some minor god taken under Athena's wing. There are pretty much unlimited ways to do this; the one that's closest to existing mythology would be to consider him the son of Sisyphus, and further to consider that his grandfather Aeolus was in fact identical to the weather-god Aeolus rather than a separate mortal king, allowing Odysseus to be the Scion of a minor god of the Dodekatheon who also happens to be related to Zeus and Hermes. If your plot requires Odysseus to be a Scion, though, you can pretty much assign him any secret parent you want, from a Zeus avoiding Hera's attention to a shocking child of virginal Athena herself. Of course, he will go off to die in peace at the end of his story, but consider that Odysseus, out of all Greek heroes, is the one guy who never wanted to be involved in epic things and just wanted to stay at home with his family. He might be the only example I know of in mythology of a Scion who chooses to allow himself to lose his Legend through inactivity, a possibility the books include but which I've never heard of anyone using in a game.

Of course, that's deciding to make up a new geneaology where normally we take the ancient Greeks and their myths at face value, and that's not our favorite idea. Another simple solution that might appeal is to set Odysseus as a Legendary Mortal; it would give him a little bit of a Legendary boost, certainly enough to remind us who he is and keep his legends and exploits strong, but would accept that his geneaology indicates he wouldn't be a full-blown Scion without fudging. Of course, how he came to be a Legendary mortal is really up to the Storyteller and the needs of the story; the Scion books are somewhat vague on this point. One of the most important themes of the stories of Odysseus is that he is a mortal; he's the example of mortal perfection and mortal excellence that the ancient Greeks so loved, and the fact that he can succeed alongside demigods is important partly because he isn't one of them. Setting him as a Legendary Mortal allows for brief flashes of his legendary awesomeness, but still retains that idea of him as a representative of the greatness of humanity.

Finally, you could look at the possibility that he was entirely mortal, but Fatebound to the major Legendary players in the Trojan war - probably at least Achilles, initially, but maybe even Athena and Poseidon themselves later. It's not very likely that he could hold his own as a mortal in such company, but if he had just the right Fatebound roles - a Boon Companion for Athena, perhaps, or a Rival against Poseidon - Fate itself might have helped him go far above and beyond what he normally could have done as a result. I'm actually not a big fan of this option only because it would suggest that Odysseus is famous because of being a character in the stories of others, and while he certainly isn't spotlighted for most of the Iliad, the following Odyssey is all him, and suggests to me that he was making a legend of his own, not merely acting as an adjunct to someone else's.

But, as you can see, there are plenty of options available. I think I might personally be fondest of the idea of Odysseus as a Legendary Mortal, myself, because I think it strikes a neat balance between staying true to mythology but allowing him to be awesome in his own right, but I think any of them might work in the right story.

Distant Cousins, Twice Removed

Question: Which of the Bogovi are related to which? Specifically, is Veles related in any way to Perun, and are they children or brothers of Svarog?

Man, this is why I love to make family trees, because gods' familial relations are always important to the game, but they can be a real pain to try to remember on the fly. Also, trying to trace a family tree without a visual is really difficult. Stay with me while I try to make this work.

...nope. On further reflection, trying to explain geneaology verbally is a royal mess, so instead, here's a quick and dirty family tree for the Slavic gods. It's ugly, but it'll get the job done until that beautiful day that we can put the Slavs up on the site in all their glory (they're an option on the poll to the right, by the way, for those interested in seeing that happen sooner rather than later).

As with any mythological tree, some choices are being made here between different versions of geneaologies that are out there. Clicking on names that have dotted lines to or from them will open up other parts of the tree that are hidden. The tree's software is limiting - you can't marry siblings, so be aware that Vesna, Chors et. al. are also children of Svarozhich - but it gets you the general picture.

So, to answer your question, Perun and Veles are brothers, both children/creations of Svarozhich (who is kind of the massive pater familius of the Slavic gods); they're also connected through Mokosh, who is Perun's wife but Veles' lover, and through Jarilo, who is Perun's son but Veles' foster-son. Svarog's only children are Svarozhich and Dazhbog, and he has no brothers, being the first thing that existed and hogging all the spotlight as creation Titans tend to do.

Whew. John, I promise I did not spend more than an hour on this.

Lines of Succession

Question: If a Scion had kids before his Visitation - what is the deal about their own status? Are they slightly less powerful Scions waiting for activation? Are they mortal as they were sired before their parents' divine side was active? Or does some measure of ichor get passed down that also kicks in when their parent has their visitation?

If a Scion has children while still mortal, those children will also be mortal. They won't have any special powers or magical attributes, though they may turn out exceptionally good at some things (by human standards) as a result of being so closely related to the divine, just as their parents probably did while they were mortal. They certainly won't "activate" when their parent does or anything; if left alone, they'll live out fully mortal lives.

But if the parent does become a Scion and eventually a god, he can still grant that child a Visitation to in turn make him a Scion; there's no rule saying that you have to be a Scion before the child's birth for that to work, and it's more interesting, in my opinion, if you let new gods deal with their children however works best for them. The grandchild Scion doesn't suffer from any diminished power level; he or she is every bit as Scion-y as any other.

Scion's rules also allow for the grandchildren of a god to be given Visitations to become Scions; it doesn't matter if your dad wasn't a Scion yet when you were born, since your grandfather was already a god. Technically, if the god in question visits his grandchild and not his child, you could be a Scion one generation removed without your parent ever being a Scion themselves. The god could also choose to give both his child and their child a Visitation, making them both his Scions, which could lead to some interesting plots and friction between parent and child.

Grandchildren is as far down as it goes, though; if you're the child of a god, and you have a child, both you and the child are eligible for Scionhood, but any children your child has are not (unless he becomes a god himself, of course). They're too far away from the original god and their ichor is too diluted.

That all seems like it's totally clear to me but about as clear as mud in writing. So here's a direct example instead!

Apollo has a son named David. David, before he knows anything about the divine world, gets married and has a son named Marco.

Apollo can choose to make David a Scion, Marco a Scion, or both, if he's so inclined. If David becomes a god, he can make Marco a Scion on his own if Apollo did not.

If nobody does any visitationing, neither David nor Marco will ever know they were anything but very talented mortals.

I'd totally enjoy seeing a story wherein a character was actually the grandchild of the god and, for some inscrutable divine reason, was chosen to become a Scion instead of his parent. Sounds like a source for lots of fun-filled family drama.

Big Love

Question: I have a question about Heimdall. I've read that he is the son of nine mothers, the daughters of the sea god Aegir, but in the Aesir family tree he is a son of Frigg and Odin. Are you going to change that as you go through the site updating the gods associated powers?

Oh, tricky Heimdall. He is indeed described as the son of nine mothers, a group of giantesses named in the Prose Edda; some scholars do connect them with the nine daughters of Aegir, though the sea-daughters in fact have different names and turn up in different places in both the Poetic and Prose Edda, so it's really a question of whether you want to assume that nine ladies in a group must always be the same nine ladies. Heimdall does have some seemingly ocean-y connotations, particularly in the myth in which he chases Loki into the ocean and the two wrestle as seals for days on end; however, the giantesses named as his mothers all appear elsewhere doing other things in the Eddas, usually fucking with Thor in some way (especially Jarnsaxa, who is with Thor also the mother of Magni and Modi).

However, elsewhere in the Prose Edda, right before the aforementioned tussle with Loki, in fact, he is also described as a son of Odin during a long passage lauding his attributes, relics and deeds. So, as in many things in Scion, the ST gets to make a choice as to what's going on with his parentage exactly.

It's entirely possible that the Edda calls him the son of Odin poetically, meaning only that he's beloved by Odin or works for Odin; then again, it's just as possible that it calls him the son of the nine giantesses poetically (especially if you do connect them to the seafoam daughters of Aegir, it might be a poetic device to suggest he has a link with the ocean). If Heimdall's lineage is important to your game (because you have a Scion of Heimdall, you plan to use his relations in some way or other, or what have you), you can choose to play it a few ways; you can make him a son of Odin, a son of the giantesses, or a son of both (since his father/mother is never named in either case).

We chose to keep Heimdall under Odin because he would actually be a giant rather than Aesir if he were from Aegir's line instead; we were looking for a more unambiguous set of Norse gods to throw the ones who are already outsiders - the Vanir and Loki's line - into more sharp contrast. While he is listed in our family tree under Frigg as well, we're actually more fans of the idea that Odin is his father with the nine giantesses (but you try figuring out how to represent that on a family tree!). However, I think you could also do really interesting things with Heimdall as the son of giantesses alone; not only would that make him half-brother to Thor's kids, but I think there's some fun mythic ground to cover with him, as a giant himself, being the only person at Ragnarok capable of taking on Loki, the other giant in play.

It's just one of those places where myths give you a couple of options, so pick the one you like for the White God and run with it.