Playing the Race Card

Question: I was reading Kettila's character sheet when I realized something: aside from Kettila your characters all match their divine culture's race (Sangria is Mexican, Goze is Greek, Geoff is Norse etc). I would like to know, is having mixed children like Kettila a rare case for the gods, and how difficult making an acceptable origin story for one is?

Actually, most of our characters come from the good old US of A, which means they may or may not match their heritage. Goze, Seamus, Sophia and Geoff, in particular, are indeterminate melting pot kids; they very well might have Germanic or Greek or Irish blood (in fact, it's likely they have at least two out of three!), but in general they're probably mutts like most Caucasians in the United States, with several different strains of European running through them. A lot of players don't really bother with making sure they're from the country of their pantheon's origin, and there's nothing wrong with that; unless you've lived in Iceland, it might be hard to play someone from Iceland, right?

But you're right, some are specifically from their country of origin, and some of our players have a good time researching the area so they can put in cultural touches. Sangria is, indeed, Mexican, but she's really in the minority; even other characters who technically come from their native countries, like the Jolie-Pitt kids, often were just born there and raised in the US, thus avoiding any need for the player to figure out how to play someone who actually lives in Delhi. Others, like Dierdre or the Margaritas siblings, were born in the US to immigrants, so they can be Americans and still retain the flavor of their origin culture (in fact, the Margaritas' have dual citizenship in Greece).

If you want to specifically have a character that is from a totally different culture than their parent, however, that's not too hard to pull off; if I recall correctly, I think Kettila's player thought that it would be neat to be an Aztec god that came from a traditionally Norse culture, and indeed she was mistaken for being Norse like her comrades quite a bit throughout her Demigod career. I'd allow pretty much any story that made sense, and it's not really necessary to get too fancy as long as it works for you. I think Kettila's parents just happened to have their honeymoon in Mexico, and her mother has no idea that she got knocked up by someone other than her husband. And Kettila's actually not the only one with odd ancestry; poor Sora Sato has spent most of his life being looked down upon by Japanese society because of being half white (immediately obvious courtesy of his blue eyes), a result of Hachiman's fling with an American woman in Japan on a diplomatic mission. And, of course, Cora has a very long uphill battle when it comes to being a Creole African-American that has to overcome a lot of racial prejudice among the Dodekatheon.

Ethnic ancestry can be a very interesting place for specific PCs to find character-building and story stuff. Even within an ethnic group, there are shades of grey - Sangria in fact spent a lot of her Demigod career separating out those Mexicans with an appreciable amount of native blood from those who were almost all Spanish, and the theme of what mestizo means to her people has been a big one throughout.