The Lady is a Tramp

Question: I'm still not convinced the Morrigan has Manipulation. She disguises herself from mortals, Cu Chuchulainn and the Dagda, but none of them are known for being very perceptive. She could have been using Social Chameleon or Perfect Imposter. Are there more examples of her being manipulative?

Well, if you aren't convinced by our reasoning, we probably can't make you be. The Morrigan has an uncanny ability to disguise herself so that no one ever sees through it, and she does it in several stories, establishing it as a clear pattern of legendary behavior. Sure, the people she does it to aren't renowned for their perceptive powers, but they also aren't renowned for being bad at perception, either, and the Morrigan is consistently awesome at her undercover skillz in either case.

That sounds like plenty of good reasons to us, and we don't have a backup argument prepared in case someone doesn't agree. Not that everyone has to agree with us all the time, of course. You'll just think we're wrong and we'll just think you're wrong and everyone will go on being mildly offended at the internet.

However, I do want to address the second half of your question, because it made both John and me say, "Huhwha?" when we read it. There must be some confusion, because if there's one thing the Morrigan definitely isn't using to disguise herself at every turn, it's Social Chameleon and Perfect Imposter.

Those knacks just don't do that. They allow the Scion or god who uses them to fit into social situations and seem like they belong there, but they don't disguise them or somehow prevent people who know them from recognizing them. They're knacks that allow you to know approximately what to say, how to act and what kind of accent to put on to avoid anyone realizing that you're a wedding crasher or stranger in a strange land, but that's all. They make you good at blending into the crowd in terms of general mannerisms and common knowledge.

But they do not disguise you. Someone who knows you is still going to know you; your face did not disappear or change, and the fact that you intuitively know which fork to use and understand the local popular view of the people in charge is not somehow obscuring it. There are many, many powers in the game that make it impossible for people you know to figure out who you are - Manipulation and Illusion have most of them, as well as scattered powers throughout Appearance, Darkness, Magic and so forth - but these Wits knacks are not any of them. That doesn't even make sense; how does being epically quick on the uptake make you suddenly look like somebody else? That's not a power that would even fit into the skillset here. And if it did, holy hell, that would be insanely overpowered - all I have to do is take these knacks and I can basically be just as good at disguising myself as someone who dumped a bunch of XP into Manipulation or Illusion?

To use Sowiljr as an example because he commonly uses these knacks, he could absolutely pop up Perfect Imposter, stride into a hall full of Vanir gods and mingle like there's no tomorrow. He would know exactly what to say, how to respond and what to avoid so that none of the Vanir (assuming they didn't beat his roll) realized he wasn't one of them. He'd blend seamlessly into the crowd, and if some of them thought it was a little odd that he didn't look quite right, well, they'd brush it off. However, if his occasional nemesis Sverrir happened to be there, he would still instantly recognize Sowiljr and know who he was, because he's met him before, knows what he looks like and is fully aware that he isn't Vanir. The fact that Sowiljr knows when to raise his ale and how to gossip about the forest-god politics of the day is not going to somehow stop Sverrir from recognizing a dude he has spoken to and interacted with before. Sowiljr is still there in all his glory, regardless of his current ability to act like he was raised from birth in the forests of Vanaheim, and Sverrir knows what he looks and sounds like. At best, Sverrir might be mildly confused about when Geoff got so good at Vanir society, or think that maybe he was infiltrating Vanir society all along, but he won't not know that it's Sowiljr.

It's the same story for the Morrigan. She could use Perfect Imposter to hang out with a bunch of random human peasants, and they wouldn't know she wasn't a human peasant, too. But she could not use those knacks to prevent Cu Chulainn or the Dagda from recognizing her, because she's still the Morrigan, no matter how peasanty she's acting. She looks, sounds and smells like herself unless she does something to alter that. She has to actually use the powers in the game that disguise you - the chief among which is Manipulation - in order to not be recognized by people who know her.

As we said back in the dawn of time when we first talked about it, we know that Manipulation seems like it's a weird choice for the Morrigan, who has all the subtlety of a maddened steer in a Swarovski outlet. But she's definitely doing something that can fool even fellow gods into believing she's not what she appears to be, and Manipulation seems by far the most likely candidate to us. When the Morrigan decides to play pretend, the only way you're going to see through it is if she decides to reveal herself in order to taunt and/or stab you.

Witchy Woman

Question: So, there's been some talk about romancing goddesses, but the best one is missing (for shame, internet people!); what'd it take to successfully romance The Morrigan? How would she react to some brave (perhaps foolishly so!) Scion seeking to court her?

Mostly my immediate response to this is similar to the last time someone asked this question about Nemesis, and runs along the lines of "why would you want to?", "what a terrible idea" and "are you suicidal, is that your problem?" But the Morrigan is technically less of an insane choice for romance than someone like Nemesis, and other gods have theoretically had (short, violent) affairs with her before without dying, so the possibility is there!

How the Morrigan would react to attempts to court her... would depend largely on the Charisma of the would-be courtier, I imagine, but certain approaches are likely to help, at least. She's an Irish goddess with Irish virtues; you could try to play those up by demonstrating your Courage by killing something large in her honor or demonstrating your Expression with paeans to her best qualities. I'm not saying these will necessarily work, because the Morrigan is insane and even the rest of her pantheon has difficulty trying to predict what she's going to do or why, but it probably won't hurt unless you really botch your attempts. The Morrigan is kind of a terrorfest who usually threatens people into having sex with her, so she might be either flattered or suspicious if a Scion were interested without her initiating it (but then again, maybe terrorizing dudes into sex is her thing, considering that it's the only kind of relationship we ever see her have).

If you succeeded in getting her attention, it's unlikely that you're headed for loving and wedded bliss, though; the Morrigan's trysts are historically always short and often violent, usually with kind of disastrous results. She's probably not about to become faithful unto death to anybody (unless you could get her with a Handfast geas, perhaps, but do you really want to go there?), and it's hard to believe that all of the spillover of sleeping with someone who represents inevitable doom is going to mysteriously miss the Scion who goes for it. There would probably be bonuses, too - that "cannot be defeated in battle today" thing is pretty sweet, just ask the Dagda! - but the "success" of a Scion's courting really depends on what their goal is. If they're looking for the prestige and benefits of taking a roll in the hay with the Morrigan and living to tell the tale, that's definitely doable; if they're looking for her to become their lawful wife and bake them cookies every Saturday, they're going to have to be rocking some Ultimate Charisma and really impressive good luck.

We've actually had a PC have what could very loosely be termed a romantic encounter with the Morrigan; as part of an alliance with the Tuatha, Sverrir brokered a deal with her and Manannan mac Lir that he would sire some children on her in exchange for their support. She reacted to his brief, ill-fated attempt at courtship with violent rape that he eventually passed out during, but she did then keep him in one piece in the melee that happened shortly after and is carrying his children now, so theoretically it mostly ended well for everybody. Except the mental health of those present, anyway.

Third One's the Charm

Question: Is the Morrigan really one person, or three people? Or do the myths offer more support to the idea that the term 'Morrigan' is a title held by any pissed off female war leader, and the title might just be held by some people longer than others?

While there are some schools of scholarly thought that believe that female Irish war leaders might have used the title of Morrigan for purposes of shock and awe on the battlefield, that practice shouldn't be confused with the real thing; there is most definitely a mythological entity called the Morrigan, and she's her own show whether or not there were also mortals using her name. A mortal war leader calling herself the Morrigan might be badass on the field, but she isn't going to be making binding prophetic announcements or shapechanging like it ain't no thang. I would suggest, however, that if you use the idea of little Morrigans, it might be fun to explore how they're connected to the big one - are they related? Does she give them any special blessing? Do they have nothing to do with her and not realize what crazy thin ice they tread by using her name?

As far as whether or not the Morrigan is truly triplicate, that mostly depends on which scholarly theory you like best. When the Morrigan appears in myth, it's always as herself singly, hitting on the dudes until they drop dead or ruining everything with declarations of doom. Those who stick to a pure interpretation of the stories (handed down by word-of-mouth and recorded by Christian monk revisionists, so "pure" is not really a good word here) won't find much to support her as a goddess who is actually three instead of one. But ancient Irish art that depicts her (or is thought to depict her) often shows her standing with two other unexplained women, and debate continues to rage over whether these are attendants, other goddesses of the pantheon (specifically her sisters), symbolic figures or truly separate aspects of the Morrigan herself. The triplicate goddess theory is especially popular, I suspect in part because of the nice parallels it historically made with the Holy Trinity of Christianity.

If you do roll with the Morrigan as a triple goddess, it's pretty clear that she's the star of the show and that her alternate aspects don't get nearly as much press or respect. No one can even agree on who exactly make up the other two parts of her triad; Anand, Badb, Fea, Macha and Nemain are all attested as alternate names of her other parts, and few of them have nearly the impressive resume of their sister. I generally tend to favor Badb and Macha, since the former is often doing things that clearly seem to be the Morrigan's area and the latter is outright noted to be an aspect of the Morrigan in late texts (and also pretty badass for a pregnant lady).

If you don't want to use the Morrigan as a triple goddess because you don't want to wade into that weird pool of theoretical symbolism, it's also perfectly easy to just treat the other two ladies (whichever of them you prefer) as her sisters, goddesses who resemble her but are not Legend 12 due to their lack of comparable badassery. They could easily accompany her around, but could be free agents if necessary. Another scholarly theory points to the Morrigan's similarity to the Norse goddess Freya, and suggests that the women shown with her in art might represent a host of valkyrie-like followers that come with her into battle, making it easy for them to be Followers of any power you like, or even for all five of the possible Morrigan analogues to be with her at any given time, thus fostering confusion and awe (similar to Ares rolling into battle with all his panic-causing children).

When you get into scholarly theory (and, especially in Celtic and Norse myth, you really can't avoid it since it's almost all there is to go on), every Storyteller pretty much has to make a choice as to what they like best, feel will work most smoothly, and fits their game's atmosphere the snuggest.

We personally like to keep the Morrigan ambiguous; sometimes she shows up alone, sometimes she shows up with other scary ladies, and none of the PCs have ever wanted to get close enough to really figure that out, so her true nature remains one of the game's many mysteries. Triple or double gods are certainly possible - our PCs have met Hecate, who confused them pretty severely - but whether or not the Morrigan's one of them is a matter of debate.

Maneater

I read Three Times a Lady and it sounds like the Morrigan can be just as much of a hard assed rapist as any male god. She can also switch between ugly and ravishingly beautiful, so why does she need to force such lusty gods like the dagda to have sex with her? Is her reputation really that fearsome?

In a word, yes. The Morrigan is goddamned terrifying. She's not a very nice person and all the Tuatha tend to know it. I'm not going to repeat any of the vile colloquial phrases John is saying behind me, but there's a certain level of insanity that starts to make dudes feel uncomfortable about having conjugal relations with a lady, and the Morrigan meets it. I'd also keep in mind that while by Scion's rules she probably has Visage Great and Terrible and can swap from scary to beautiful at a moment's notice, the Morrigan is almost always described as terrible to behold (though I would note that the Dagda seems to think her backside is quite fetching when he happens upon her bending over the river).

If I can get outside of rules for a second, though, I think some of the reluctance probably comes from a more subtle idea: when the Morrigan is demanding sex, that's kind of a scary reversal of power for a culture in which the male warrior-king archetype is supposed to be the one in charge. A lot of mythologies have a certain distrust of strong female sexuality and tend to feature male figures freaking out about it, such as when Cu Chulainn refuses the Morrigan or Zeus has to get somebody to marry Aphrodite just to get her sexuality under control so the whole pantheon doesn't blow up. There are a lot of psychological theories about why this is, ranging from fear of the mysterious power of females to reproduce to equation of the initiator of sex with the person with the power to control the situation to fear of the male's power (symbolized by semen) being outright stolen by the female. Even if you don't particularly believe in or ascribe to any of those theories, there's definitely a strong feeling across many mythologies that women who demand sexual favors are scary as shit.

In essence, there's a lot of men raping women going on in ancient myth, but when women start doing the same in return (and the Morrigan's not the only one; Ishtar and Aphrodite are also pretty fearsome when they decide they want a dude), people start wigging out. It's just not something that makes sense for most ancient cultures; a man might rape a woman and that would be, if not necessarily socially acceptable, an understandable part of the natural order of things. A woman raping a man, on the other hand - that's some scary, unnatural madness when you're living in first-century Ireland.

Three Times a Lady

Why did you give the Morrigan Manipulation? She has almost no myths about being sneaky, and is about as subtle as a rock even when she uses animal forms to harass people. She has more than a dozen myths about being blunt and having a forceful personality and making people love her (she only failed once). That definitely sounds way more like Charisma than Manipulation.

Ah, navigating the choppy waters of social Epic Attributes.

I'd have to disagree strongly with giving the Morrigan Charisma; she's pretty much entirely the opposite of Charisma. While she does indeed have a forceful personality - she knows what she wants, is not afraid to tell you about it and will probably fucking shiv you if you don't give it to her - she does not ever use that personality in any way, which is really the key for Charisma in our opinions. She's definitely not well-liked or -respected, even by her own pantheon, who avoid her whenever possible (which is understandable; she's a crazy lady who foretells doom and wades in blood, that sort of thing). She's also definitely no leader; she doesn't inspire followers or even intimidate them into doing anything and tends to lone-wolf it up whenever she's hitting the battlefield. I'd say that "making people love her" is misleading as well - she certainly makes people have sex with her, usually by threatening them or promising them rewards, but they're not doing it out of love. Sexytimes with the Morrigan, in myth, has everything to do with lust, power and not wanting to get wrecked later, but it does not have anything to do with love.

So we put Charisma on the "do not ever ever give this to this person" list for the Morrigan pretty early on. Charisma doesn't always have to be fluffy bunnies of love and friendship; it can refer just as much to hardassed respect, inspirational leading or a certain je ne sais quoi of always being the focus of attention, but just being a thoroughly unpleasant person isn't enough to qualify for it.

Manipulation, on the other hand, is a more complicated issue with her. You're 100% correct that the Morrigan is not subtle when she talks to people; she pronounces prophecies, threatens, or states what she wants, but she never tries to maneuver the conversation around with tricksy politics or anything. For us, the Morrigan gets Manipulation because she's the most badass undercover agent in the history of the Tuatha. You mentioned above her shapeshifting craziness, which usually involves her throwing herself at somebody, and you're right, being charged by a cow is not subtle, either.

But the key here is that nobody ever has any idea it's the Morrigan doing that. With the exception of the wolf/heifer situation, wherein she specifically tells Cu Chulainn ahead of time that it's her, nobody is ever aware that the Morrigan is fucking with them until she says the ancient Irish equivalent of "Gotcha, bitch". Take Cu Chulainn healing her, for example; without her specifically telling him ahead of time that it's her, he has no idea that the old woman he heals of her wounds (wounds he personally inflicted, yet) is actually the goddess until she tells him (which is further illustrated by his hilarious ancient Irish utterance of "Goddamn it, I would never have healed your obnoxious ass if I'd known it was you"). Cu Chulainn can't see through the crone disguise to avoid letting the Morrigan break his geas and effectively kill him; the Dagda has to ask who she is when he meets her as the Washer at the Ford. Shit gets even more crazy if you ascribe to the scholarly theories that think various other figures in the Irish sagas, such as Macha or the Nemain, are actually the Morrigan in disguise as well.

It's definitely a little weird-looking for someone as blunt and willing to stab in faces to be associated with Epic Manipulation, but that's where we ended up after examining her stories. The Morrigan does not have a subtle personality, but the fact remains that in Irish myth, if she wants you to be tricked, you are abjectly tricked. She may not feel the need to use Manipulation very often (why manipulate when you can just murder, am I right?), but when she does, she's always impressively effective.

I would note that, depending on your view of the Morrigan and what she does, you could rule that she has either Illusion or Magic to cover all the crazy shapeshifting shenanigans. We didn't end up going either route; Magic seemed ill-fitting since all her Fate-style connotations seem to be bound up in Prophecy (more likely that she just has Beast Shape), and Illusion, while a possibility, seemed again like she probably just had a few boons from it rather than the avatar of the entire purview.