"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." - Aristotle

There were no posts this weekend because John and I were consumed with the wedding of two of our closest friends (also our players - Terminus and Aiona just got married in real life. Wrap your head around that idea). It was very lovely, even when we were doing things like running up and down ten flights of stairs, giving long-winded speeches or carrying six tuxedos down a dark alley at one o'clock in the morning.

I was struck, watching all the proceedings, by what a mythic, resonant event a marriage really is. It is an ancient constant for all of humanity, an event that has always been of significant importance, whether for celebration or solemnity. It represents the joining and coming together of two different things to create something new, and because of that primal representation, it's one of the mainstays of all mythologies. One of the oldest (possibly the oldest) poems ever written, The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi, is the story of the courting and eventual marriage of some of the first gods ever recorded in mankind's history, ancient Sumerian deities who eventually became Babylon's Ishtar and Tammuz. Every culture's values when it comes to marriage are different, from the steadfast faithfulness so lauded in the myth of Odysseus and Penelope to the fruitful fecundity of Izanagi and Izanami, but for every culture, the root importance of marriage is almost unequalled as a social convention.

And it's not just the obeying of laws or the production of children that marriage myths are concerned with; in many, the marriage symbolizes the two figures becoming one, literally inseparable and bound to one another in a symbiotic relationship. Mythically speaking, if something breaks up a marriage, it is a cataclysmic and tragic event, one that damages the natural order of things, often irreparably. When Hera leaves Zeus, he is unable to rest until he regains her, going so far as to create the Daedala festival in her honor to convince her to return. When Houyi loses Chang'e to the moon, both of them have literally lost half themselves, and she lives in eternally-described loneliness while he ends his life depressed and destitute. Tlaloc's angst at losing Xochiquetzal is so monumental that he literally destroys the world. That idea of an essential fusing, of two things becoming one thing forever (for the most obvious example of this, see one of the myths of Hermaphroditus' origin), is one of the most powerful symbols across the world.

Once in a while, people express surprise to me that marriage turns up as a theme in our Scion games. I am surprised by their surprise. Sure, Scion is about beating up the bad guys and attaining Ultimate Power, but it's also about myths, stories, and the way that humanity has always used those as a literary mirror of themselves. Why should it be odd for budding gods to have to deal with the prospect of marriage? After all, most gods of the pantheons they come from are married, and a large percentage of those have stories told about their marriages, ranging from the reverent to the hilarious. It'd be much weirder if our PCs, in the prime of their lives during most years of the game and surrounded by some of the most interesting and magnetic creatures in the universe, didn't tie the knot now and then.

So, a toast to our characters who have made that most fundamental myth a part of their own stories. To Sowiljr and Eztli, whose shotgun wedding has over the years grown into a strange and troubled but unshakably solid foundation of support between them. To Cora and Max, whose marriage survived the rigors of discovering their divine heritage and has never dimmed in passion. To Terminus and Circe, another shotgun wedding that has against all odds somehow managed not to devolve into curses and vengeance-fueled vendettas yet. To Jioni and Erebus, the most bizarre love match among gods or Titans. To Folkwardr and Ahouva, who married to satisfy local custom and gain a god's blessing, but who have become one of the most sane and touchingly responsible relationships across all characters. To Alison and Kane, too star-crossed to prevent their personalities from eventually leading them to mutual disaster.

And most of all to Tom and Jennie, two crazy players who we couldn't imagine playing games without. Make that single-souled journey together with as much adventure and passion as you bring to your characters, and bring us back something old and dangerous from the Mayan ruins while you're there.