Sunday, April 1, 2012

Home Sweet Home

Question: What are your rules for gods creating sanctums? Things like determining size, contents, denizens (like Eztli's underage dead), & personality (a chart would be helpful). Also, the book says you can make a sanctum in a terra incognitae - does this mean you use a preexisting place like Circe's island or can you make one from scratch, and what would be the pro's & con's for having this kind of sanctum?

The full system, plus chart, is something we're still working on cleaning up enough to be presentable for other people to navigate without a roadmap. So I apologize that there will be no chart madness for a bit. But this question's been sitting in the box for a little while, so I figured I might as well answer what I can!

Like all Birthrights, Sanctums run the gamut from one to ten dots (they can get over ten dots, but most don't barring crazy exceptional circumstances, and if they do it's as a story event, not something that happens when you get them). Size and personality (if the Sanctum has one) are governed by the dot rating. For example, Sowiljr has a ten-dot Sanctum; it is easily several times the size of the World, is easily reshapable by him with a thought, automatically opens doors to large numbers of other places he wants to visit and never causes him even the slightest bit of distress or misbehavior. Further down the scale, Eztli's Sanctum is only six dots; it is roughly the size of Europe and Asia, only provides a few doors to other locations, and retains a bit of wild character that forces her to spend more Willpower to shape it into something that it didn't originally include. At the bottom level, Vala's Sanctum is only one dot; it's the size of a tiny bungalow with a small yard, has only one door in and out, and is prone to opposing or creatively interpreting her attempts to change it, often causing her to have to spend several points of Willpower to change one simple thing the way she wants it.

Denizens are less of a fixed system. Creating living things in a Sanctum is as easy as spending a point of Willpower and thinking them into existence; they can't leave, but within the Sanctum are useful as valets, servants or anything else you want (though they can never be higher than Legend 4 unless you have powers to buff them after the fact). The more interesting denizens of a Sanctum, however, are usually those that the Scion brings in to live there from elsewhere - Eztli's dead children, to use your example, were brought there by her once she decided to start running a deathrealm in a fairly important ceremony, and didn't just spring into existence when the Sanctum itself did. Others have moved mortal family members to live in their Sanctums, or gathered up certain mortal cults to stay there; Zwazo Fou Fou actually set up his Sanctum to allow humans who are in the throes of despair and truly want to reach it to find themselves traveling through it, despite the fact that Sanctums would normally be off-limits to unaccompanied mortals. Basically, Sanctums usually start out as a mostly empty space; if you want someone or something to be in your Sanctum, either create it with Willpower or go get it and deposit it there.

While most PCs, we've found, prefer to create their own unique Sanctums instead of using a pre-existing place, you certainly can attempt to turn a Terra Incognita (or any other location, really) into your own Sanctum. Doing so has its own set of unique challenges; if that location's already owned by someone or something, you'll have to figure out how to convince them to hand it over to you (or steal it and figure out how to avoid their wrath). Since creating Sanctums and attaching them to a Scion requires the Birthright Bond spell like all other Birthrights anyway, there's not really a big mechanical difference between getting some real estate marked out in your Overworld and getting it from somewhere else, so it's more a matter of flavor and politics. Depending on the place, it's also likely that you'll be less able to change and shape it to your will; for example, Sverrir, as one of the last living Vanir in the universe, received Vanaheim as his Sanctum when he hit God, but unlike most Scions with Sanctums that weren't previously established, he can't remove or add doors to it or change its landscape and inhabitants. They are what they've always been, and while he can go try to set about changing that the old-fashioned way, he can't do it just by deciding it like Scions with Sanctums built especially for them can. (On the other hand, owning Vanaheim is fucking cool, so he seems to be fine with that.)

This will all be in a fancy table in black and white someday. But until then, we'll do our best to answer any other questions down in the comments.

3 comments:

  1. Just to be clear is Vanaheim 10 dots, or beyond? Since it's a primordial realm that has existed since the beginning of time along with Asgard, Iteru and the rest? And how does Odin fell about having a neophyte god on the same foot with him and the other Pantheon heads (if not power wise at least politically as king and owner of Vanaheim?)

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    1. I..dont remember and I'm too lazy to get his sheet right now(Im sure anne will in the morning). But its something higher then 10. Maybe its ***? Its something high.

      Odin is completely cool with it. He has enjoyed puppetting will(and the rest of that band) along for quite some time. And having a king that has very little "power" to enforce his wishes, but one that you can control is a very useful thing.

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    2. Yeah, there's no question that Sverrir is on the same "footing" as Odin or any other king gods. He's very obviously not. Odin treats him the same as he's always treated the Vanir - yeah, sure, they can be king of whatever they want, but they have no power and they all know it. Sverrir of course aims to change that, but since he's only Legend 9 he's probably not going to have much success just yet.

      Vanaheim is indeed far more than ten dots, but that's because it came that way. He loves having it, but it's also hard to convince his friends to visit, since he has to say things like "well, I'm not sure where you would look for a door to X" or "well, I can't quite guarantee your safety if there happen to be large animals". It's a tradeoff, but I think he's going to make something awesome out of it.

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