Question: Have you thought about doing anything the the Kamuii? It seems like they would bring up some uncomfortable questions for your average Amatsukami.
You can only make people uncomfortable about things they've done if they actually feel bad. I'm not sure Amaterasu or the rest of her court are wasting much guilt on the conquest of the Ainu, since they're very much all about their own divine right to rule and general superiority and awesomeness, but I do think the Ainu gods (and the Ryukyuan ones as well, while we're at it) could make pretty excellent agitators, antagonists or rising political powers to spice up the Japanese mythic landscape. Just like the Gauls have a bone to pick with the Dodekatheon or the Nubian pantheon is probably not a collection of the Pesedjet's biggest fans, you could get a lot of very cool mileage out of their history of conflict, what they're trying to do in the modern age and what sides modern Scions with modern morals might come down on.
I haven't been doing much planning for the Kamui as an individual playable pantheon lately, mostly because they're pretty small and didn't immediately strike me as a group that needed to be added as a priority. That doesn't mean that won't change in the future, though (and I happen to know that some folks on the forums are already tinkering around with a few of them). I might actually lean more toward the idea of a Ragnarok-style expansion on the Amatsukami that incorporated the Ainu and Ryukyuan mythologies and their issues - that'd be a super awesome place to go for involving them in stories even if they didn't end up with enough meat to be playable on their own.
Remember the official mythology of the Amatsukami is that they were there first, something being there before them is an uncomfortable truth. That's before you get into the fact that they might be necissary allies against a renewed Titan offensive.
ReplyDeleteFinally you have modern scions who might start percieving their parents as less of a fount of moral authority if they found out that said gods basically wiped out another group and say they never existed.
Hey, if the never admit it's truth, still nothing to be uncomfortable about. They're probably going to stick to their official version no matter what, which means they'll just probably say that the Kamui are either wrong or lying (possibly even to their faces). Cultural jackassery is a fun and educational pastime!
DeleteI agree - I think most Scions hit a point where they discover that the world isn't black and white and their parents may not necessarily be good people (this is especially true of gods, since a lot of them tend to think of humans more as collateral damage than individually important people). There are few pantheons in Scion who haven't pulled some conquer-and-rewrite-history shenanigans on less powerful cultures, and it's always a good place for modern Scions to have to ask some questions and make some moral decisions of their own.
Its hard to be a cultural Jackass when you want them to help you vs the Titans. Even epics only go so far in "you are wrong, you don't exist. Now help us put the Titan of darkness back in his cage"
ReplyDeleteI'd also imagine the Shen and Tibetan Pantheons are currently having similar issues. Though likely the Shen are abit more torn about that as the legitimacy of the "Dynasty of Mao" is somewhat contentious among them.
Another thought occurs these fallen Pantheons might make a good sympathetic titan supporters. I mean the world has failed them, they are probably the most prone to titan offers to "fix what went wrong"
I don't know if that's true, actually. Ultimate Charisma or Manipulation probably makes it completely and totally possible for you to tell people that they're wrong, they're stupid, and now they should help you. It's not good for long-range, of course, but at crunch moments when you want them on a mission, there's no reason they couldn't whammy unsuspecting Kamui to kingdom come to get them to do what they want. Which actually feeds into your suggestion that they might look for powerful allies - i.e., Titans - to help them avoid that sort of thing. I find that gods go Titan most often when they've been royally screwed in some way, so that sounds right up their alley.
DeleteI think the Tibetan pantheon is actually probably having more of an issue with the Devas than the Shen; it's Hinduism (and later Indian Buddhism, now dominant in the area) that rolled over the indigenous religion, not Taoism/Shenism. Mortal China may be fighting over geographical Tibet in the World, but the gods of Tibet lost their war with the invading Indian deities a long time ago. Some of them might be cooperative, but I imagine you're right and there are probably also some angry, disenfranchised dudes up there as well.