Today, the Vlog of Unanswered Questions. A big fat grab-bag of stat- and point-oriented questions that may or may not be answerable in a vlog format.
Question: How do you guys develop NPC/antagonist stats from scratch at different levels?
Question: You’ve made it clear that you don’t like the way that antagonists are statted in the books. How do you stat your antagonists?
Question: When increasing the Legend of a Creature or Follower, how do you determine what bonuses are given? I just got done looking through the Reliquary and I couldn’t really figure out if there was a pattern.
Question: Did you rework the point distribution system for character creation? Because the low points for Hero-level Birthrights makes it seem like you would have to give every beginning Scion at least three Hero-level Birthrights to use the five points.
Question: What changes in your character generation rules do you implement in light of the escalating cost and dependencies of various knacks and boons?
Also, hey, have you guys been to Better Myths? Because you should go. It's awesome. He will yell myths at you until your ears bleed.
Edit: We now think we might have figured out question number four up there after the fact. Were you saying that Hero-level Birthrights only cost a few points, so Scions would need to have several of them to use up their starting 5 Birthright points? If so, we'd like to point out that Hero-level Birthrights can go up to 5 dots, so you should have no trouble simply having a single, more powerful Birthright instead of several smaller ones.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Shiny
Question: Can something like Rust/Shine be used to affect Relics?
Yes! Or at least, yes in the case of Rust/Shine, which you can use on your relic sword as easily as you could on a normal piece of iron. Because I'm sure that opens up a bunch of fiddly questions for those that are into fiddly questions, a quick bulleted list to head them off at the pass:
Did I miss any?
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "something like" Rust/Shine, but most other boons that enhance weapons and items can be used on relics when appropriate. Blazing Weapon, Flamin' Bullets, Hrimthurssar's Touch, Silver Blessing, Storm Augmentation, Starfire, Flare Missile, Solar Shield, Mortal Stroke and Blessing of Ammunition may be used to give bonuses to any appropriate item, relic or otherwise.
Yes! Or at least, yes in the case of Rust/Shine, which you can use on your relic sword as easily as you could on a normal piece of iron. Because I'm sure that opens up a bunch of fiddly questions for those that are into fiddly questions, a quick bulleted list to head them off at the pass:
- Yes, that means you can spent a point of permanent Willpower to permanently Shine your own relic.
- Yes, if you do that it will add one dot to the relic's rating.
- Yes, that means that if you permanently Shine a mundane weapon, it becomes a one-dot relic, though it isn't bound to anyone as a Birthright.
- No, you can't use Shine to make something a relic only temporarily; it doesn't turn into a relic unless you spend the permanent Willpower.
- No, that doesn't step on Trusted Tool's toes, because Trusted Tool doesn't cost permanent Willpower to make relics.
- Yes, you can try to Rust an opponent's relic weapon, but you'll have to roll against the relic as if you were trying to use it, and if you fail the boon will have no effect.
- Yes, if you want to spend a permanent Willpower on truly being a dick, you could permanently Rust someone else's relic if you won the roll against it.
- Yes, that would drop the unlucky relic's rating by one.
Did I miss any?
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "something like" Rust/Shine, but most other boons that enhance weapons and items can be used on relics when appropriate. Blazing Weapon, Flamin' Bullets, Hrimthurssar's Touch, Silver Blessing, Storm Augmentation, Starfire, Flare Missile, Solar Shield, Mortal Stroke and Blessing of Ammunition may be used to give bonuses to any appropriate item, relic or otherwise.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
The Social Contract
Question: Do the gods of each pantheon have 5 dots in every Virtue espoused by their pantheon?
Oh, dude. Definitely not.
While almost all gods of a pantheon are going to share the same basic set of Virtues, they obviously don't all just have them at maximum level with no variation. You don't need to look any further than the myths themselves to see that; Vidar may have five dots of Loyalty, but Loki probably doesn't, and while Hera obviously has five dots of Vengeance, Hestia's probably a lot more laid back. A god's Virtues are usually very clear in their personality and behavior, so it's often an easy thing to look at Set and Osiris and realize that one of these things clearly has more Order than the other.
The important thing, when working with the Virtues of the gods, is that you keep in mind that they should have appropriate amounts of that Virtue as shown in their myths, not as you would have statted them if they were PCs. Sure, it would be more convenient for a god (and sometimes the Storyteller playing him) to have one in each Virtue so he doesn't have to be as much at the mercy of his divine instincts, but unfortunately that's obviously not the case for anyone; everyone has crazy, insane, over-the-top Virtue reactions in their myths, so if you want Shiva to ignore his Endurance, you'll need him to have to climb over all five dots of it and possibly go crazy in the process. Gods are much less prone to trying to ignore their Virtues than Scions are, generally; not only do they probably have more of them, making it very difficult for them to do so, but they're old and set in their ways. Most of the time they probably believe that following that Virtue is a good idea; they might need a lot more motivation than just "well, I wish I could do it this way" to be convinced to ignore their own ancient settings.
It's also entirely possible for a god to have a Virtue that isn't one of his pantheon's native ones; just as Scions occasionally have foreign Virtues, so gods might, too (though it's likely to be more rare and shouldn't be overused!). Just as with normal Virtues, Storytellers should look at what the goddess does, says and embodies in her myths; if she's generally following her pantheon's pattern, all well and good, but if she repeatedly or spectacularly demonstrates caring a lot about a foreign Virtue, she might have that one instead. To give some examples, Tsuki-Yomi probably has Harmony, evidenced by his murderous freakout when confronted with Uke Mochi; I'd lay odds that Lugh has Vengeance, considering his epic destruction of the sons of Tuireann and decision to poison Bres to death even though he'd already defeated him and rendered him harmless. Those aren't Virtues the pantheon as a whole espouses, but those specific gods show them so strongly that it's reasonable to assume they're deviating just a little bit from the standard.
Again, that shouldn't be overused, however; Virtues are one of the things that ties a pantheon together as a whole and shapes their divine culture, and it should be an exception when a god doesn't have one of those Virtues, not a commonplace occurrence. Other gods of the pantheon are likely to be exasperated or just not understand a god with different values, and those who consistently fail to live up to the pantheon's Virtues are probably going to be viewed as substandard at best, possibly traitorous at worst.
A general guideline for god Virtues is usually to assume that they have the two most appropriate at a rating of five, and the others at levels that match their behavior in mythology; if they show a really, really strong inclination toward a foreign Virtue, you might want to replace their lowest native one with it, but only with good reason. Virtues are the general template for a pantheon's outlook on the world; there can be variation within them, but on the whole they should average out to a basically united front.
Oh, dude. Definitely not.
While almost all gods of a pantheon are going to share the same basic set of Virtues, they obviously don't all just have them at maximum level with no variation. You don't need to look any further than the myths themselves to see that; Vidar may have five dots of Loyalty, but Loki probably doesn't, and while Hera obviously has five dots of Vengeance, Hestia's probably a lot more laid back. A god's Virtues are usually very clear in their personality and behavior, so it's often an easy thing to look at Set and Osiris and realize that one of these things clearly has more Order than the other.
The important thing, when working with the Virtues of the gods, is that you keep in mind that they should have appropriate amounts of that Virtue as shown in their myths, not as you would have statted them if they were PCs. Sure, it would be more convenient for a god (and sometimes the Storyteller playing him) to have one in each Virtue so he doesn't have to be as much at the mercy of his divine instincts, but unfortunately that's obviously not the case for anyone; everyone has crazy, insane, over-the-top Virtue reactions in their myths, so if you want Shiva to ignore his Endurance, you'll need him to have to climb over all five dots of it and possibly go crazy in the process. Gods are much less prone to trying to ignore their Virtues than Scions are, generally; not only do they probably have more of them, making it very difficult for them to do so, but they're old and set in their ways. Most of the time they probably believe that following that Virtue is a good idea; they might need a lot more motivation than just "well, I wish I could do it this way" to be convinced to ignore their own ancient settings.
It's also entirely possible for a god to have a Virtue that isn't one of his pantheon's native ones; just as Scions occasionally have foreign Virtues, so gods might, too (though it's likely to be more rare and shouldn't be overused!). Just as with normal Virtues, Storytellers should look at what the goddess does, says and embodies in her myths; if she's generally following her pantheon's pattern, all well and good, but if she repeatedly or spectacularly demonstrates caring a lot about a foreign Virtue, she might have that one instead. To give some examples, Tsuki-Yomi probably has Harmony, evidenced by his murderous freakout when confronted with Uke Mochi; I'd lay odds that Lugh has Vengeance, considering his epic destruction of the sons of Tuireann and decision to poison Bres to death even though he'd already defeated him and rendered him harmless. Those aren't Virtues the pantheon as a whole espouses, but those specific gods show them so strongly that it's reasonable to assume they're deviating just a little bit from the standard.
Again, that shouldn't be overused, however; Virtues are one of the things that ties a pantheon together as a whole and shapes their divine culture, and it should be an exception when a god doesn't have one of those Virtues, not a commonplace occurrence. Other gods of the pantheon are likely to be exasperated or just not understand a god with different values, and those who consistently fail to live up to the pantheon's Virtues are probably going to be viewed as substandard at best, possibly traitorous at worst.
A general guideline for god Virtues is usually to assume that they have the two most appropriate at a rating of five, and the others at levels that match their behavior in mythology; if they show a really, really strong inclination toward a foreign Virtue, you might want to replace their lowest native one with it, but only with good reason. Virtues are the general template for a pantheon's outlook on the world; there can be variation within them, but on the whole they should average out to a basically united front.
Animated Mayhem
Question: I suppose that wanting a catbus is a bad reason for joining the Amatsukami? Or, to what extent should anime (such as Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away) be used to get an idea of the Japanese folkloric and mythological landscape?
Man, what a fun question! Anime, as an artform, absolutely loves mythic and folkloric tropes, to the point that it includes them from all over the world in frankly insane configurations at the drop of a hat. You can't swing a dead catbus in the world of anime without hitting something inspired or outright copied from some culture's myths and folktales.
But, like any artform, it has good examples and bad examples, and the bad ones far outweigh the good. For one thing, you can almost always be sure that you don't want to rely on an anime's interpretation of a non-Japanese culture's myths; they're usually crazily skewed and rewritten to appeal to a Japanese audience and have next to nothing authentic left to carry them along except for the names and basic premises. Animes like Mythical Detective Loki or RG Veda or Fushigi Yuugi can be a lot of fun, but they're perfectly awful sources for mythology.
However, when it comes to the purely Japanese tales, those have a better chance. In most cases, they're still not good sources; there are animes out there (Urusei Yatsura is a good example) that, while absolutely steeped in Japanese folklore and Buddhist/Shinto practices, interpret them in a distinctly modern, science-fiction or tongue-in-cheek way that prevents a reader from being able to really get a good sense of what those myths are about without already knowing them ahead of time. A lot of manga and anime on purely Japanese subjects assumes that the audience will also be purely Japanese and that they will already have a good grounding in this stuff, so a western viewer trying to figure out Japanese mythology from watching it would be kind of like a viewer from Africa trying to learn Norse myth by watching The Almighty Johnsons.
But it's cool that you mention Hayao Miyazaki, because he's one filmmaker whose movies are absolutely brimming with neat Japanese folklore. Spirited Away is, by far, the best for that; it's full of wacky folkloric creatures and situations, and it really gives a viewer a great idea of the flavor and behavior of creatures out of Japanese myth. Of course, it doesn't really touch on the Amatsukami themselves much and also presumes that its audience is Japanese and therefore recognizes and understands a lot of things that it doesn't bother to explain, so if you don't recognize a tanuki or shikigami on sight as the camera pans past it, you may miss out on a ton of stuff. But even so, the imagery and ideas of a lot of Japanese culture and folklore are really, really strong in the film, and you can't help but get a good read on them. The same is true of My Neighbor Totoro, to a lesser, more child-friendly extent; though it takes more liberties (for example: catbus not really a thing, sad to say), it's also doing a good job of getting some of the images and ideas of Japanese folklore across, if not the particulars.
But even Miyazaki films aren't necessarily good go-to sources. Princess Mononoke is a movie that draws heavily on metaphor and features a mostly made-up mythic landscape, and while its style is obviously very Japanese thanks to its origin, most of the business with the forest gods and so forth is fiction, not folklore. Other Miyazaki films (like Howl's Moving Castle), while gorgeous, have nothing to do with Japanese folklore at all.
Basically, you're probably never going to get a good idea of Japanese mythology from watching anime. That's not what it's for; it's there to entertain and be creative, and to those ends it makes changes, rewrites history, ignores important concepts that don't jibe with its plot, and so forth. You can sometimes get good flavor from it, because anime is above all else still very Japanese and often gives you a good window into Japanese culture, but it's far from a good source for actually learning anything about the myths or how they're treated by their people, past and present.
But to go back to the catbus: you're playing a modern Scion, and that means that modern ideas, including anime, can be as much a part of your backstory, personality and ideas as you want them to. Your Japanese Scion may have grown up watching anime, too, so even if he doesn't have a good grasp on the Amatsukami as a result, he might still view himself in those terms or want to try things he's seen in anime or concepts he's absorbed from it. The Forest God from Princess Mononoke isn't part of the Japanese mythic landscape now, but a Scion who wanted to become that could make it so.
Just make it reasonable for the character, like anything else. Dodekatheon Scions might have their conceptions of their parents colored by modern fiction surrounding them; so might Scions of the Amatsukami. I wouldn't recommend making anime the sole focus of your character because that's likely to get boring and one-note very quickly (not to mention annoy your divine parents), but Scions are by definition modern, so their modern ideas, including those from anime, are always fair game for them to expand on and try to bring into the godly arena. You will probably never get a catbus as a Birthright gift from the Amatsukami, who have never heard of it and would know that half the pantheons would probably think it was a Harmony-opposed abomination if they had, but as a Scion you have the potential power to change the divine world. If you invent catbuses, catbuses might become a real thing.
In the spirit of fun, check out this comedic modern manga version of the story of Amaterasu in Urusei Yatsura. Not mythically accurate, but definitely fun!
Man, what a fun question! Anime, as an artform, absolutely loves mythic and folkloric tropes, to the point that it includes them from all over the world in frankly insane configurations at the drop of a hat. You can't swing a dead catbus in the world of anime without hitting something inspired or outright copied from some culture's myths and folktales.
But, like any artform, it has good examples and bad examples, and the bad ones far outweigh the good. For one thing, you can almost always be sure that you don't want to rely on an anime's interpretation of a non-Japanese culture's myths; they're usually crazily skewed and rewritten to appeal to a Japanese audience and have next to nothing authentic left to carry them along except for the names and basic premises. Animes like Mythical Detective Loki or RG Veda or Fushigi Yuugi can be a lot of fun, but they're perfectly awful sources for mythology.
However, when it comes to the purely Japanese tales, those have a better chance. In most cases, they're still not good sources; there are animes out there (Urusei Yatsura is a good example) that, while absolutely steeped in Japanese folklore and Buddhist/Shinto practices, interpret them in a distinctly modern, science-fiction or tongue-in-cheek way that prevents a reader from being able to really get a good sense of what those myths are about without already knowing them ahead of time. A lot of manga and anime on purely Japanese subjects assumes that the audience will also be purely Japanese and that they will already have a good grounding in this stuff, so a western viewer trying to figure out Japanese mythology from watching it would be kind of like a viewer from Africa trying to learn Norse myth by watching The Almighty Johnsons.
But it's cool that you mention Hayao Miyazaki, because he's one filmmaker whose movies are absolutely brimming with neat Japanese folklore. Spirited Away is, by far, the best for that; it's full of wacky folkloric creatures and situations, and it really gives a viewer a great idea of the flavor and behavior of creatures out of Japanese myth. Of course, it doesn't really touch on the Amatsukami themselves much and also presumes that its audience is Japanese and therefore recognizes and understands a lot of things that it doesn't bother to explain, so if you don't recognize a tanuki or shikigami on sight as the camera pans past it, you may miss out on a ton of stuff. But even so, the imagery and ideas of a lot of Japanese culture and folklore are really, really strong in the film, and you can't help but get a good read on them. The same is true of My Neighbor Totoro, to a lesser, more child-friendly extent; though it takes more liberties (for example: catbus not really a thing, sad to say), it's also doing a good job of getting some of the images and ideas of Japanese folklore across, if not the particulars.
But even Miyazaki films aren't necessarily good go-to sources. Princess Mononoke is a movie that draws heavily on metaphor and features a mostly made-up mythic landscape, and while its style is obviously very Japanese thanks to its origin, most of the business with the forest gods and so forth is fiction, not folklore. Other Miyazaki films (like Howl's Moving Castle), while gorgeous, have nothing to do with Japanese folklore at all.
Basically, you're probably never going to get a good idea of Japanese mythology from watching anime. That's not what it's for; it's there to entertain and be creative, and to those ends it makes changes, rewrites history, ignores important concepts that don't jibe with its plot, and so forth. You can sometimes get good flavor from it, because anime is above all else still very Japanese and often gives you a good window into Japanese culture, but it's far from a good source for actually learning anything about the myths or how they're treated by their people, past and present.
But to go back to the catbus: you're playing a modern Scion, and that means that modern ideas, including anime, can be as much a part of your backstory, personality and ideas as you want them to. Your Japanese Scion may have grown up watching anime, too, so even if he doesn't have a good grasp on the Amatsukami as a result, he might still view himself in those terms or want to try things he's seen in anime or concepts he's absorbed from it. The Forest God from Princess Mononoke isn't part of the Japanese mythic landscape now, but a Scion who wanted to become that could make it so.
Just make it reasonable for the character, like anything else. Dodekatheon Scions might have their conceptions of their parents colored by modern fiction surrounding them; so might Scions of the Amatsukami. I wouldn't recommend making anime the sole focus of your character because that's likely to get boring and one-note very quickly (not to mention annoy your divine parents), but Scions are by definition modern, so their modern ideas, including those from anime, are always fair game for them to expand on and try to bring into the godly arena. You will probably never get a catbus as a Birthright gift from the Amatsukami, who have never heard of it and would know that half the pantheons would probably think it was a Harmony-opposed abomination if they had, but as a Scion you have the potential power to change the divine world. If you invent catbuses, catbuses might become a real thing.
In the spirit of fun, check out this comedic modern manga version of the story of Amaterasu in Urusei Yatsura. Not mythically accurate, but definitely fun!
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Slavs!
John and Anne spend all night fighting over slavs. Even with our massive amount of super rare slav books....we don't have enough info some of them for our liking. We are sad, but still working and searching.
...and fighting
...and fighting
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.
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.
This Party is So Dead
Question: If you have Death Senses active, are you able to use social knacks against ghosts since you’re now able to interact with them socially? Or is it only possible to use Death boons on them, such as Corpse Oracle?
Ooh, a tricky question. Most of the time, interaction with the dead needs to be handled by the Death purview; that's what it's all about, after all. But at the same time, those with Death Senses can talk to and interact with ghosts just as if they were living people, and it doesn't make too much sense to claim that you can't be charming or manipulative when talking to a ghost just because she's dead. After all, she can still listen to your persuasive patter, right?
In most cases, we'd say that yes, you can use your social knacks on ghosts. They're beings you can interact with socially, so there's little reason you shouldn't be able to try to Charmer them into giving you your way. But it's important to distinguish between the powers you can achieve with social knacks and the ones possible with the Death purview; Death should never come up short when compared to normal social stats. Boons like Corpse Oracle and Ghost Control should be more powerful than knacks like Blurt It Out or Overt Order; they have to do with your ironclad control over the spirits of the departed as a god of death, so make sure their effects are distinct. A Scion with Blurt It Out might be able to get a ghost to spit out a single answer, but he can't question it thoroughly, without resistance and in a way that makes it think answering is its own idea the way a Scion with Corpse Oracle can. A Scion with Overt Order can give a ghost a single command, but a Scion with Ghost Control can literally puppetmaster the spirit effortlessly and as often as she wishes. A Scion with Come Hither can try to call a ghost to come see him, but he can't instantly force it to come in spite of being trapped in an Underworld the way a Scion with Summon Ghost can. The powers of death-aligned gods and Scions over the bodies and spirits of the departed are near-absolute; the social powers of any Scion can still have an effect, but it will never match up to what a true god of death can do.
At Storyteller discretion, we'd suggest also sometimes altering the roll for social knacks when using them on ghosts. We often substitute Occult for Presence, Empathy or Command in those rolls to illustrate that the Scion is working with magical, otherworldly forces instead of just using his silver tongue as normal. And, of course, some knacks should probably be considered not to work much on ghosts; Seductive Mien probably just isn't as useful when used on something that doesn't have a body and can only physically manifest for brief moments now and then.
Ooh, a tricky question. Most of the time, interaction with the dead needs to be handled by the Death purview; that's what it's all about, after all. But at the same time, those with Death Senses can talk to and interact with ghosts just as if they were living people, and it doesn't make too much sense to claim that you can't be charming or manipulative when talking to a ghost just because she's dead. After all, she can still listen to your persuasive patter, right?
In most cases, we'd say that yes, you can use your social knacks on ghosts. They're beings you can interact with socially, so there's little reason you shouldn't be able to try to Charmer them into giving you your way. But it's important to distinguish between the powers you can achieve with social knacks and the ones possible with the Death purview; Death should never come up short when compared to normal social stats. Boons like Corpse Oracle and Ghost Control should be more powerful than knacks like Blurt It Out or Overt Order; they have to do with your ironclad control over the spirits of the departed as a god of death, so make sure their effects are distinct. A Scion with Blurt It Out might be able to get a ghost to spit out a single answer, but he can't question it thoroughly, without resistance and in a way that makes it think answering is its own idea the way a Scion with Corpse Oracle can. A Scion with Overt Order can give a ghost a single command, but a Scion with Ghost Control can literally puppetmaster the spirit effortlessly and as often as she wishes. A Scion with Come Hither can try to call a ghost to come see him, but he can't instantly force it to come in spite of being trapped in an Underworld the way a Scion with Summon Ghost can. The powers of death-aligned gods and Scions over the bodies and spirits of the departed are near-absolute; the social powers of any Scion can still have an effect, but it will never match up to what a true god of death can do.
At Storyteller discretion, we'd suggest also sometimes altering the roll for social knacks when using them on ghosts. We often substitute Occult for Presence, Empathy or Command in those rolls to illustrate that the Scion is working with magical, otherworldly forces instead of just using his silver tongue as normal. And, of course, some knacks should probably be considered not to work much on ghosts; Seductive Mien probably just isn't as useful when used on something that doesn't have a body and can only physically manifest for brief moments now and then.
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