Question: Hey, do you know any good reference material for Iroquois mythology? I think about doing an Iroquois pantheon for Scion, but it seems the sources are pretty rare because much of that religion is lost. Greetings from good ol' Germany!
Hey, there, we're waving at you from the States!
While we did sadly lose a great deal of native American religion and culture when the European invasion rolled through the Americas, Iroquois mythology isn't as lost as all that. Much of it was preserved through oral retelling and later recorded in the written word, and there are people who continue to follow versions of those ancient beliefs today, although it's always uncertain how much it may have changed in the past few centuries since the introduction of Christianity and other European ideals.
The most major problem with trying to research Iroquois mythology - or any native American mythology, really - is that the majority of reference works are on "Native American Mythology" instead of focusing on any one group. Obviously that tends to make them less than a thorough overview, since these books are trying to cover a billion different religions in a single text, often with overgeneralizations based on outdated scholarship or misguided ideas of cultural similarity. It's the same problem that you'll run into with southern American religions, which are often presented as part of anthology-style reference works about the Aztec AND the Maya AND the Inca, but at least those cultures only have to fight two other squatters in the book for attention. Native American cultures have to compete against every ethnic group on the entire continent, and you never know how successful a general book like that is at providing useful information on any one culture until you do the slog-work of going through it.
But don't get discouraged, because there is stuff out there about Iroquois mythology and you can find it and enjoy it to your heart's content! A couple of the books I would start with include Alex Mogelon's The People of Many Faces and Anthony Wonderley's At the Font of the Marvelous, which are both good overviews of the Iroquois area's myths. Remember that Iroquois is itself an umbrella term for several nearby cultures as well, so you can find plenty of good material by zeroing in on some of them - for example, Arthur Parker's Seneca Myths and Folktales is a good source specific to the Seneca, who are a specific part of the Iroquois nation.
If you don't have access or funds to get hold of print books, you can find some older scholarship on Iroquois religion online, especially at Sacred Texts, which provides links to free copies of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century books on the subject. As always with old sources, take them with a grain of salt, since they're likely to be biased with the outdated perceptions and opinions of a bunch of old white Christians, but they can still contain some useful information, especially when they stop trying to analyze things and just tell stories so that you can make your own judgments.
I believe I know of at least one occasional visitor to our site who is also working on an Iroquois pantheon, so if he's around, hopefully he'll weigh in with what he's found most useful. :)
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Friday, November 8, 2013
Bad Seeds
Question: Loki: So polarizing. So tragic. So evil. Love 'im. Anyway, all his kids are borderline eldritch horrors. What if you wanted to play this up in a game where you had a kid of Loki? How would YOU handle it? More prophecy stuff, or some weird, unique power that's kinda useful in game, but a MAJOR plot point in Ragnarok? Also, you guys should TOTALLY design your own game. In the future. After you make Scion as awesome as it can be. (I'd pre-order it!)
Indeed, most of Loki's children are not fun to be around at all. Jormungandr, the monstrous world serpent, and Fenrir, the great wolf, are some of the showstopping end-of-the-world monster powers of Norse mythology, and their sister Hel is clearly no picnic to be around, either, even though she's mostly humanoid. His children with his wife Sigyn (as opposed to with the giantess Angrboda, who brought us the exciting trio above, or the stallion Svadilfari, by whom Loki gave birth to eight-legged spider-horse Sleipnir) are generally normal in contrast and are never said to have any abnormal traits or frightening attributes, but even Vali and Narvi end up with similar problems when Odin turns the former into a monster wolf and has him eat the latter, after which Narvi's guts end up being used as chains to bind Loki to his prison. It's not your normal happy family landscape.
Honestly, however, we wouldn't handle that with unique powers or plot devices most of the time; Scions of Loki are, like all Scions, free to make their own Fates and may or may not choose to become monsters as their characters progress. Don't get us wrong - we love it when Scions end up embodying something from their parents' myths or bringing some cosmic story cycle around full circle with their actions, but while we're happy to lay some groundwork for that as Storytellers, the choices are always ultimately theirs. After all, it would be pretty shitty to tell people who wanted to play Scions of Loki that they were going to turn into monsters whether they wanted to or not. They might be predisposed that way, it might be something they worry about, they might do it or they might not, but PCs are always in charge of themselves. We might make a point of offering plot decisions or possibilities that could lead to monsterfication, but we'd still want pursuing them to be something the player decided to do independently.
NPC Scions of Loki are mostly the same deal, but a little more flexible; as Scions they still have free will and are perfectly capable of not being monster people if they don't want to be, but we'll be working them into the story wherever they're most important and relevant based on the metaplot and the actions of the PCs that might affect them. We still wouldn't have them born with any special power or random features just because Loki's their dad, any more than we'd say all Netjer Scions were born with animal heads or all Scions of Agni had to have Fire, even though those are things that always happen to those peoples' children in mythology. But as agents of the story instead of independent player-driven characters, it's totally possible we'd move them toward filling mythologically resonant roles as children of Loki. It all depends on the story.
As for children of Loki who aren't Scions, that's a lot easier; if they were children with Titans, like his kids with Angrboda, then the little monsters will be titanspawn and of course prone to coming out weird, twisted and ready to rumble from day one. Children with lesser immortals, such as alfar, could go either way, and would again depend on the plot of the game, what the players were doing in the story and what our overall goal for the cycle is. Children with other gods are likely to be gods themselves, like Vali and Narvi, but whether or not they have some monstrous features would again depend on what's going on in the story and would be a natural part of their divine powers, whether due to Birthrights or purviews. Gods often have weird stuff going on, after all, and far be it from Loki's family tree to be the exception.
We've had a few Scions of Loki in our games, and wouldn't you know it, they actually did not go the monster route at all (or at least not overtly). Two of them were pretty regular joes, albeit sneaky and underhanded; they both died in demigodhood, so whether or not that would have ever changed is a question that may never be answered. The other one did end up repeating the roles of some of Loki's children, but unfortunately for him, it was not any of the tales of powerful monsters but rather the doom of poor Narvi that most affected his life with its echo. Ironically, the fenrir pup one of these Scions owned, a titanspawn descendent of Loki several generations renewed, actually managed to rebel against his monstrous nature, become more humanoid, and join the Netjer as a wolf-headed god working under Anubis in the Duat.
But we did actually have this exact situation come up, only in regards to Hermes instead of Loki. Hermes, who has similar issues with children his pantheon considers weird and abnormal (Pan and Hermaphroditus, in particular), got progressively more and more pissed off with Goze as the Scion started collecting animal parts and failing to be socially acceptable to the rest of the Theoi, and finally just started sending him to various gods to be "fixed" in the hopes of avoiding being embarrassed by his progeny yet another time. Goze being Goze, it was a rocky road, but that same concept - of there being patterns in the cycles of the gods and even of the gods being aware of them - was very present in their intra-familial struggle.
But anyway, have fun with your Scions of Loki. They don't have to be monsters, but then again they don't have to avoid embracing monsterhood if that's what they want to do. The world is their oyster (at least until the Aesir decide to use them as devices to punish their wayward father).
Indeed, most of Loki's children are not fun to be around at all. Jormungandr, the monstrous world serpent, and Fenrir, the great wolf, are some of the showstopping end-of-the-world monster powers of Norse mythology, and their sister Hel is clearly no picnic to be around, either, even though she's mostly humanoid. His children with his wife Sigyn (as opposed to with the giantess Angrboda, who brought us the exciting trio above, or the stallion Svadilfari, by whom Loki gave birth to eight-legged spider-horse Sleipnir) are generally normal in contrast and are never said to have any abnormal traits or frightening attributes, but even Vali and Narvi end up with similar problems when Odin turns the former into a monster wolf and has him eat the latter, after which Narvi's guts end up being used as chains to bind Loki to his prison. It's not your normal happy family landscape.
Honestly, however, we wouldn't handle that with unique powers or plot devices most of the time; Scions of Loki are, like all Scions, free to make their own Fates and may or may not choose to become monsters as their characters progress. Don't get us wrong - we love it when Scions end up embodying something from their parents' myths or bringing some cosmic story cycle around full circle with their actions, but while we're happy to lay some groundwork for that as Storytellers, the choices are always ultimately theirs. After all, it would be pretty shitty to tell people who wanted to play Scions of Loki that they were going to turn into monsters whether they wanted to or not. They might be predisposed that way, it might be something they worry about, they might do it or they might not, but PCs are always in charge of themselves. We might make a point of offering plot decisions or possibilities that could lead to monsterfication, but we'd still want pursuing them to be something the player decided to do independently.
NPC Scions of Loki are mostly the same deal, but a little more flexible; as Scions they still have free will and are perfectly capable of not being monster people if they don't want to be, but we'll be working them into the story wherever they're most important and relevant based on the metaplot and the actions of the PCs that might affect them. We still wouldn't have them born with any special power or random features just because Loki's their dad, any more than we'd say all Netjer Scions were born with animal heads or all Scions of Agni had to have Fire, even though those are things that always happen to those peoples' children in mythology. But as agents of the story instead of independent player-driven characters, it's totally possible we'd move them toward filling mythologically resonant roles as children of Loki. It all depends on the story.
As for children of Loki who aren't Scions, that's a lot easier; if they were children with Titans, like his kids with Angrboda, then the little monsters will be titanspawn and of course prone to coming out weird, twisted and ready to rumble from day one. Children with lesser immortals, such as alfar, could go either way, and would again depend on the plot of the game, what the players were doing in the story and what our overall goal for the cycle is. Children with other gods are likely to be gods themselves, like Vali and Narvi, but whether or not they have some monstrous features would again depend on what's going on in the story and would be a natural part of their divine powers, whether due to Birthrights or purviews. Gods often have weird stuff going on, after all, and far be it from Loki's family tree to be the exception.
We've had a few Scions of Loki in our games, and wouldn't you know it, they actually did not go the monster route at all (or at least not overtly). Two of them were pretty regular joes, albeit sneaky and underhanded; they both died in demigodhood, so whether or not that would have ever changed is a question that may never be answered. The other one did end up repeating the roles of some of Loki's children, but unfortunately for him, it was not any of the tales of powerful monsters but rather the doom of poor Narvi that most affected his life with its echo. Ironically, the fenrir pup one of these Scions owned, a titanspawn descendent of Loki several generations renewed, actually managed to rebel against his monstrous nature, become more humanoid, and join the Netjer as a wolf-headed god working under Anubis in the Duat.
But we did actually have this exact situation come up, only in regards to Hermes instead of Loki. Hermes, who has similar issues with children his pantheon considers weird and abnormal (Pan and Hermaphroditus, in particular), got progressively more and more pissed off with Goze as the Scion started collecting animal parts and failing to be socially acceptable to the rest of the Theoi, and finally just started sending him to various gods to be "fixed" in the hopes of avoiding being embarrassed by his progeny yet another time. Goze being Goze, it was a rocky road, but that same concept - of there being patterns in the cycles of the gods and even of the gods being aware of them - was very present in their intra-familial struggle.
But anyway, have fun with your Scions of Loki. They don't have to be monsters, but then again they don't have to avoid embracing monsterhood if that's what they want to do. The world is their oyster (at least until the Aesir decide to use them as devices to punish their wayward father).
Thursday, November 7, 2013
A Great Personality
Question: What is the interplay between high Epic Charisma and high Negative Appearance?
An uncomfortable one, sad to say for those on the receiving end. Those two social stats can and do coexist, but they do so in an uneasy and distressing way.
First of all, everything that you would normally have with either of those Epic Attributes is still in play. Your high Epic Charisma makes you a focus of attention and makes your actions and speech relevant and noticeable, whatever form you choose for your Charisma to take; you're noticeable, important, magnetic, and difficult not to pay attention to. Your high Epic Appearance makes people instinctively dislike you, again in whatever form you manifest that; you're hideous, terrifying, disgusting, and you inspire revulsion and fear in those who see you.
Not a fun cocktail for the viewer, right? You're horrifying, but they want to be near you anyway. They're revolted, but they can't take their eyes off you.
The exact specifics of that interaction really depend on a given character's manifestation of their stats, though. The most common combination of those is probably Epic Charisma that manifests as the character being commanding and fearsome, inspiring obedience rather than encouraging friendship, which is then magnified by the Epic Appearance also making anyone who sees her gut-wrenchingly terrified of being around her in the first place. Such characters are powerhouse dictators or generals - people jump when they say jump, not just out of respect but also out of fear. Another way of combining the two would be Epic Charisma that manifests as the character being sympathetic and endearing along with Epic Appearance that makes them physically disgusting or pitiful - the Beauty and the Beast approach, where the physicality is undeniably ugly and unsettling but there's clearly a good heart within that might be able to win people over in spite of the exposed organs or gross gravelly skin. You might also go with a respected old warhorse concept, with your Epic Charisma affecting others as your noble spirit and admirability but your Epic Appearance going along with it as the harsh scars of whatever heroic life you've led. There are tons of ways to combine the two; just decide how Charisma and Appearance happen to appear for your character, and the rest will follow.
Keep in mind, too, that a lot of how social stats affect someone depends upon their roleplaying decisions, so your stats will not always give you a perfect predictor of what others around you will do. Sure, you might be an uggo-monster with an irresistible heart of gold for most people, but it's still possible that a given character has a particular personal issue with your appearance that makes him too grossed out to give your sparkling personality a chance, or that another character notices your hideousness less thanks to having been exposed to worse in her time. There's always a little room for interpretation from the side of the person being affected as well, so don't get hung up on the idea that everyone always has to respond the same way.
If you're a Storyteller and you're wondering how an NPC ought to respond to a PC's Charisma/Appearance happy/ugliness combo, we recommend edging them toward whichever stat is higher; if someone's charismatic but they're more hideous, NPCs are apt to be more freaked out than drawn in, whereas if someone's ugly but they're more charismatic, they're more likely to be forgiving of her physical eccentricities. If both stats are equal, check to see if the NPC has anything in their background or personality that would sway him or her one way or the other, and if not, play it by ear and try to give both stats equal importance based on what the PC is doing. If it's just a conversation, Charisma might make everything fine and dandy, but if the rotting slime monster comes in for a hug, all bets may be off.
An uncomfortable one, sad to say for those on the receiving end. Those two social stats can and do coexist, but they do so in an uneasy and distressing way.
First of all, everything that you would normally have with either of those Epic Attributes is still in play. Your high Epic Charisma makes you a focus of attention and makes your actions and speech relevant and noticeable, whatever form you choose for your Charisma to take; you're noticeable, important, magnetic, and difficult not to pay attention to. Your high Epic Appearance makes people instinctively dislike you, again in whatever form you manifest that; you're hideous, terrifying, disgusting, and you inspire revulsion and fear in those who see you.
Not a fun cocktail for the viewer, right? You're horrifying, but they want to be near you anyway. They're revolted, but they can't take their eyes off you.
The exact specifics of that interaction really depend on a given character's manifestation of their stats, though. The most common combination of those is probably Epic Charisma that manifests as the character being commanding and fearsome, inspiring obedience rather than encouraging friendship, which is then magnified by the Epic Appearance also making anyone who sees her gut-wrenchingly terrified of being around her in the first place. Such characters are powerhouse dictators or generals - people jump when they say jump, not just out of respect but also out of fear. Another way of combining the two would be Epic Charisma that manifests as the character being sympathetic and endearing along with Epic Appearance that makes them physically disgusting or pitiful - the Beauty and the Beast approach, where the physicality is undeniably ugly and unsettling but there's clearly a good heart within that might be able to win people over in spite of the exposed organs or gross gravelly skin. You might also go with a respected old warhorse concept, with your Epic Charisma affecting others as your noble spirit and admirability but your Epic Appearance going along with it as the harsh scars of whatever heroic life you've led. There are tons of ways to combine the two; just decide how Charisma and Appearance happen to appear for your character, and the rest will follow.
Keep in mind, too, that a lot of how social stats affect someone depends upon their roleplaying decisions, so your stats will not always give you a perfect predictor of what others around you will do. Sure, you might be an uggo-monster with an irresistible heart of gold for most people, but it's still possible that a given character has a particular personal issue with your appearance that makes him too grossed out to give your sparkling personality a chance, or that another character notices your hideousness less thanks to having been exposed to worse in her time. There's always a little room for interpretation from the side of the person being affected as well, so don't get hung up on the idea that everyone always has to respond the same way.
If you're a Storyteller and you're wondering how an NPC ought to respond to a PC's Charisma/Appearance happy/ugliness combo, we recommend edging them toward whichever stat is higher; if someone's charismatic but they're more hideous, NPCs are apt to be more freaked out than drawn in, whereas if someone's ugly but they're more charismatic, they're more likely to be forgiving of her physical eccentricities. If both stats are equal, check to see if the NPC has anything in their background or personality that would sway him or her one way or the other, and if not, play it by ear and try to give both stats equal importance based on what the PC is doing. If it's just a conversation, Charisma might make everything fine and dandy, but if the rotting slime monster comes in for a hug, all bets may be off.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Fortunate Sons
Question: What kinds of evidence suggest that a god has Magic associated for you guys? I think it's up there with Illusion as one of the hardest associations to pin down.
Magic can be hard. I wouldn't say it's quite as hard as Illusion - you do get a lot more myths that will outright say someone is a magician than will label someone an illusionist - but it's definitely one of the trickier ones.
One of the problems with Magic is that its name is used for a shitload of things in mythology and folklore, not all of which actually match up to what Magic, as a purview, really does in Scion. In Scion, Magic is the purview that involves manipulation of, controlling or interacting with Fate, that great and awesome web of predetermination and destiny that all Scions and gods are inextricably linked to. In the rest of the world, however, magic is used as a casual term for anything supernatural, from lycanthropy to love potions to fireballs to mind-reading and everything else you can possibly think of. In general terms, every purview and set of knacks in Scion is actually some form of magic, which can make it very difficult to untangle what's just magic and what's actually Magic.
So one of the first things to do is to ignore use of the word magic in myths and legends, because it doesn't mean the same thing there that it does in Scion. If a myth says someone is a magician because he can throw fireballs, that means he has Fire, not Magic. This confusion over terminology is one of the reasons that Magic is associated with seemingly random gods all over the landscape of the original books, because some writers gave it only to gods that actually needed to have it because they fuck around with Fate on a regular basis (Odin, for example) while others gave it to gods that were called "magician" a few times in their literature but didn't actually have any Fate connotations (Huitzilopochtli comes to mind here).
The easiest people to give Magic to as an association are always the luck gods. Gods who are heavily associated with luck, fortune or chance - usually either bestowing it or withholding it - are obvious users of Magic, because they directly control the Fate of a person by changing their fortunes for better or for worse. Gods like Lakshmi, Supay or the Norns obviously have Magic associated, because one of their most important roles as deities is the control and administration of the fates of others. It's not 100% foolproof, since once in a while there'll be a god of good fortune who is actually a Fertility god who just gets called that because he keeps the fields green or what have you, but most of the time the gods of luck are also gods of Magic.
When it comes to those who use Fate in less direct ways, however, things are trickier. Since we can't rely on the idea of magic in a swords-and-sorcery manner because that's everything in Scion's toolset, we have to look at what those gods are doing and how it relates to Fate in a less obvious but still meaningful sense. Gods who levy curses are often good candidates for Magic, because again they're directly affecting the fate of the person they turn their powers against; these are people like Tezcatlipoca, who can flick their fingers and change not just your life but your Fate forever. Gods who perform complex ritual spells (Baba Yaga, for example, or Isis) are another possibility since such rituals have long been mythological shorthand for magical powers that affect the fates of others, although as always you have to keep a sharp eye on what the results of those spells are and whether or not they might actually just be stunts in other purviews. Occasionally there will be a few gods who were said to directly participate in the creation of Fate or to oversee its administration in a cosmic sense, like the Arab fate-goddess Manat, and those are the easiest to spot but also the rarest creatures among Magic-users worldwide, since not every culture thinks about Fate the same way or conceives of a god needing to (or being able to) control it.
Like all association decisions, it's done on a case-by-case basis for each god who has it, and we have to use all those guidelines as well as our own judgment to make the final call. If we were rewriting the game, we'd probably name the purview something else to help avoid all this confusion; Magic's many extra connotations make it hard for people to conceptualize the purview, so we'd rather call it something more centered on the idea it represents. Calling it simply Fate would probably work, although it might cause confusion between Fate-the-purview and Fate-the-concept and be a bit simplistic since Prophecy and Mystery both involve Fate as well; Fortune would be my personal favorite vote for a purview renaming.
Magic can be hard. I wouldn't say it's quite as hard as Illusion - you do get a lot more myths that will outright say someone is a magician than will label someone an illusionist - but it's definitely one of the trickier ones.
One of the problems with Magic is that its name is used for a shitload of things in mythology and folklore, not all of which actually match up to what Magic, as a purview, really does in Scion. In Scion, Magic is the purview that involves manipulation of, controlling or interacting with Fate, that great and awesome web of predetermination and destiny that all Scions and gods are inextricably linked to. In the rest of the world, however, magic is used as a casual term for anything supernatural, from lycanthropy to love potions to fireballs to mind-reading and everything else you can possibly think of. In general terms, every purview and set of knacks in Scion is actually some form of magic, which can make it very difficult to untangle what's just magic and what's actually Magic.
So one of the first things to do is to ignore use of the word magic in myths and legends, because it doesn't mean the same thing there that it does in Scion. If a myth says someone is a magician because he can throw fireballs, that means he has Fire, not Magic. This confusion over terminology is one of the reasons that Magic is associated with seemingly random gods all over the landscape of the original books, because some writers gave it only to gods that actually needed to have it because they fuck around with Fate on a regular basis (Odin, for example) while others gave it to gods that were called "magician" a few times in their literature but didn't actually have any Fate connotations (Huitzilopochtli comes to mind here).
The easiest people to give Magic to as an association are always the luck gods. Gods who are heavily associated with luck, fortune or chance - usually either bestowing it or withholding it - are obvious users of Magic, because they directly control the Fate of a person by changing their fortunes for better or for worse. Gods like Lakshmi, Supay or the Norns obviously have Magic associated, because one of their most important roles as deities is the control and administration of the fates of others. It's not 100% foolproof, since once in a while there'll be a god of good fortune who is actually a Fertility god who just gets called that because he keeps the fields green or what have you, but most of the time the gods of luck are also gods of Magic.
When it comes to those who use Fate in less direct ways, however, things are trickier. Since we can't rely on the idea of magic in a swords-and-sorcery manner because that's everything in Scion's toolset, we have to look at what those gods are doing and how it relates to Fate in a less obvious but still meaningful sense. Gods who levy curses are often good candidates for Magic, because again they're directly affecting the fate of the person they turn their powers against; these are people like Tezcatlipoca, who can flick their fingers and change not just your life but your Fate forever. Gods who perform complex ritual spells (Baba Yaga, for example, or Isis) are another possibility since such rituals have long been mythological shorthand for magical powers that affect the fates of others, although as always you have to keep a sharp eye on what the results of those spells are and whether or not they might actually just be stunts in other purviews. Occasionally there will be a few gods who were said to directly participate in the creation of Fate or to oversee its administration in a cosmic sense, like the Arab fate-goddess Manat, and those are the easiest to spot but also the rarest creatures among Magic-users worldwide, since not every culture thinks about Fate the same way or conceives of a god needing to (or being able to) control it.
Like all association decisions, it's done on a case-by-case basis for each god who has it, and we have to use all those guidelines as well as our own judgment to make the final call. If we were rewriting the game, we'd probably name the purview something else to help avoid all this confusion; Magic's many extra connotations make it hard for people to conceptualize the purview, so we'd rather call it something more centered on the idea it represents. Calling it simply Fate would probably work, although it might cause confusion between Fate-the-purview and Fate-the-concept and be a bit simplistic since Prophecy and Mystery both involve Fate as well; Fortune would be my personal favorite vote for a purview renaming.
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
And They Will Call Me...
Question: The players in my group are approaching Legend 9, and we were wondering, how did your Legend 9+ players decide on what their 'god names' would be (ex: Sowiljr, Eztli, etc.)?
Question: Hey guys. I had a question. How do you find or create names for your characters who reach godhood? I see these evocative names and would like to know so when my characters reach God one day, they too can have culturally relevant new names. :)
Hey, there! I'm not sure if this is the same person twice, but if it is, please accept our apologies for only now slogging through the question backlog to get to you.
We've actually talked about this one before, so check out ye olde post about our god-level characters and how they came by their names. The short answer is that there's no official process, but hopefully there will be some helpful pointers in there that you might be able to use.
Question: Hey guys. I had a question. How do you find or create names for your characters who reach godhood? I see these evocative names and would like to know so when my characters reach God one day, they too can have culturally relevant new names. :)
Hey, there! I'm not sure if this is the same person twice, but if it is, please accept our apologies for only now slogging through the question backlog to get to you.
We've actually talked about this one before, so check out ye olde post about our god-level characters and how they came by their names. The short answer is that there's no official process, but hopefully there will be some helpful pointers in there that you might be able to use.
Phenomenal
Question: If every natural phenomenon is created by a God or Titan via Avatar, does that mean there are no 'mundane' things and everything is technically magical?
Not at all! Just because something was created by magic doesn't mean it's magical itself. Dirt created by the Earth Creation boon is not magical. It's just dirt. Ditto things made by any other boon or power. Unless something specifically says it creates a magical item - some Artistry boons, for example - it doesn't, and whatever was just created is a perfectly normal, non-magical example of its kind.
So when it comes to solid objects, if it's not a relic, trophy or piece of a magical creature, it's mundane. The vast majority of things that exist in the Scion universe are mundane, which is pretty normal - after all, that's how you know the Legendary things are special. Similarly, living things are always mundane unless they're expressly acknowledged to be Titanspawn, lesser immortals, Scions or some other magical creature. Tigers created by the Paper Tiger boon are just normal tigers; you have to use Nemean Scroll, which specifically says it makes Nemeans, if you want to end up with magic tigers.
If you're thinking more along the lines of the elements, that's where things are a little more tricky. If you can use Fire or Sky boons to attack people with elements and those are magical attacks that are specially treated in Scion's system, aren't all fire and lightning in the entire world also magical? They're not, actually, but there is a little bit more to it. The basic idea is that at some point the god of that element used their Avatar to create a permanent phenomenon in the World, and that phenomenon now runs itself and obeys its own natural laws, becoming a natural and mundane thing rather than a direct use of a power.
We explain it in much more depth in this vlog, starting at about 33 minutes in, so check it out if you'd like to listen to us jibber-jabber about it for a little while.
Not at all! Just because something was created by magic doesn't mean it's magical itself. Dirt created by the Earth Creation boon is not magical. It's just dirt. Ditto things made by any other boon or power. Unless something specifically says it creates a magical item - some Artistry boons, for example - it doesn't, and whatever was just created is a perfectly normal, non-magical example of its kind.
So when it comes to solid objects, if it's not a relic, trophy or piece of a magical creature, it's mundane. The vast majority of things that exist in the Scion universe are mundane, which is pretty normal - after all, that's how you know the Legendary things are special. Similarly, living things are always mundane unless they're expressly acknowledged to be Titanspawn, lesser immortals, Scions or some other magical creature. Tigers created by the Paper Tiger boon are just normal tigers; you have to use Nemean Scroll, which specifically says it makes Nemeans, if you want to end up with magic tigers.
If you're thinking more along the lines of the elements, that's where things are a little more tricky. If you can use Fire or Sky boons to attack people with elements and those are magical attacks that are specially treated in Scion's system, aren't all fire and lightning in the entire world also magical? They're not, actually, but there is a little bit more to it. The basic idea is that at some point the god of that element used their Avatar to create a permanent phenomenon in the World, and that phenomenon now runs itself and obeys its own natural laws, becoming a natural and mundane thing rather than a direct use of a power.
We explain it in much more depth in this vlog, starting at about 33 minutes in, so check it out if you'd like to listen to us jibber-jabber about it for a little while.
Monday, November 4, 2013
I'm Not the Interesting Part of This Post
This evening, a plea for volunteers and a peace offering for everyone else!
As most of you know, I'm doing some graduate work right now, and with all graduate work comes the ever-looming spectre of research. If anybody out there has about ten minutes and would like to help me out, I've got two polls here asking about ethics issues in libraries and museums, and I figure since you fine folks have a vested, mythology-lovin' interest in libraries and museums, you'd be good people to ask.
Ethics in Libraries/Museums
Legal Issues in Libraries/Museums
It's totally anonymous, I will still love you if you don't feel like doing it, and there are only 20 total questions so if you do go for it, it should be pretty quick. There are comment boxes for each question, but feel free to skip them if you don't have anything in particular to say.
For those of you in the audience that didn't feel like being recruited for my academic exploits, here's something totally unrelated but incredibly awesome. The video below - which you should totally listen to until the end because it is so very, very worth it - is of a live performance of the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf by professional modern-day skald Benjamin Bagby. Bagby tours the world performing the six-hour epic for sold-out audiences, and it's not hard to see why; he performs it with traditional harp and entirely in the original Old English, and he is fucking fantastic.
If this man ever comes even vaguely within range of our house, we will climb a mountain of corpses and fight the entire MMA lineup in single combat to get tickets. If you want to invite him to be intimidatingly Anglo-Saxon in your living room, you can get a copy of his DVD on his website. The medieval musical group he founded, Sequentia, also does a pretty killer musical reconstruction of what the Edda might have sounded like in the original Old Norse.
So if I offended you mortally by asking for research volunteers, please let me buy your love back with traditional Viking poetic performance. Back to your regularly scheduled programming tomorrow!
As most of you know, I'm doing some graduate work right now, and with all graduate work comes the ever-looming spectre of research. If anybody out there has about ten minutes and would like to help me out, I've got two polls here asking about ethics issues in libraries and museums, and I figure since you fine folks have a vested, mythology-lovin' interest in libraries and museums, you'd be good people to ask.
Ethics in Libraries/Museums
Legal Issues in Libraries/Museums
It's totally anonymous, I will still love you if you don't feel like doing it, and there are only 20 total questions so if you do go for it, it should be pretty quick. There are comment boxes for each question, but feel free to skip them if you don't have anything in particular to say.
For those of you in the audience that didn't feel like being recruited for my academic exploits, here's something totally unrelated but incredibly awesome. The video below - which you should totally listen to until the end because it is so very, very worth it - is of a live performance of the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf by professional modern-day skald Benjamin Bagby. Bagby tours the world performing the six-hour epic for sold-out audiences, and it's not hard to see why; he performs it with traditional harp and entirely in the original Old English, and he is fucking fantastic.
If this man ever comes even vaguely within range of our house, we will climb a mountain of corpses and fight the entire MMA lineup in single combat to get tickets. If you want to invite him to be intimidatingly Anglo-Saxon in your living room, you can get a copy of his DVD on his website. The medieval musical group he founded, Sequentia, also does a pretty killer musical reconstruction of what the Edda might have sounded like in the original Old Norse.
So if I offended you mortally by asking for research volunteers, please let me buy your love back with traditional Viking poetic performance. Back to your regularly scheduled programming tomorrow!
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