Interracial Marriage

Question: I took another look at Geoff marrying Sangria, and now I have a question. What view does each pantheon have toward cross-pantheon marriages; which ones are for or against such matrimony?

There's no perfectly simple answer for that; it mostly depends on which pantheons are colliding, which specific gods are involved and what the dramatic setup and needs of a specific game are.

In general, I think cross-pantheon marriages are a fun place for modern Scions to make waves and blaze trails where their old divine families probably haven't before. To use Geoff and Sangria as an example, it's unlikely that the Norse gods and the Aztec deities really ever had much contact before that; they might occasionally see one another across the battlefield at giant Titan offensives, but in general they live so far away from one another and have so little in common that it's doubtful that they bothered to interact much. Geoff marrying Sangria not only forces the two together, it provides a stage for a lot of action as a result of that marriage (not always in ways Geoff would like, alas). Uniting two pantheons that way makes good story sense and opens up a lot of possibilities that probably didn't exist back in the olden days of gods hanging out only in their own territories. It's a good way for new Scions to make their mark on the world politically.

The pantheons themselves all have different outlooks on foreigners and interacting with them, so it really depends on which ones you're looking at. Some pantheons are less foreign-friendly than others; the Aztlanti, who tend to view foreigners as things to be sacrificed, or the Amatsukami, who have an entire philosophical system in place to explain why non-Japanese people are inherently inferior, are not as likely to play nicely with other cultures as those with a history of expanding to new areas and coexisting with other gods like the Dodekatheon or the Shen. Then, there's also the matter of some pantheons just hating each others' guts - a pair of young Deva and Yazata Scions are going to have a significantly harder time getting parental sanction on their Montague-Capulet-style marriage than a couple of Dodekatheon and Pesedjet Scions whose families have been hanging out together for thousands of years.

The specific god involved matters, as well. Some may not mind their children hooking up wherever they want; then again, more volatile gods like Shango may shoot on sight any time his daughter tries to bring a white boy home with her. Things may work the other way around, though - marrying your children advantageously can be a powerful diplomatic and political tool, and parents may intentionally try to get their kids married off to the children of foreign gods (or even the foreign gods themselves, if they're available!) in order to cement alliances or forge new friendships. Some Scions might actually find themselves in the unenviable position of getting stuck in arranged marriages to other pantheons - the practice might be outdated, but try telling that to your three-millennia-old mother.

I'd say that the best thing to do is roll with whatever makes sense for the story and the characters and is dramatically fun. If it's entertaining and provides good story hooks for a pair from different pantheons to unite, go for it. If some of their in-laws hate them and that has interesting potential, do it. If the characters need somebody in their corner, maybe some of the other relatives love this step forward in progress and support them. If it seems like it'd be more fun for the players, have their parents forbid the marriage and force them to go on quests to prove their love, find a way around the edict or even elope. There are endless possibilities in this area, so look at which gods and pantheons are involved, figure out what their history and likely reaction to the proposed match is, and then run with whatever's going to be the most dramatic and interesting.

So far, we've never had a boring marriage in Scion. I don't think they exist.