Round Round Around

Question: Would it be interesting if the Midgard Serpent was fatebound from being a destructive monster into the wise, mystical, and powerfully magical oroboros, the serepent of time and wisdom that is more prevalent in popular culture and modern mysticism? Oroboros did start out as the Midgard serpent eating it's own tail, representing time without end.

Actually, the ouroboros is probably much older than Jormungandr - or, at least, we have evidence of it in other cultures far predating when we have evidence of Thor's snakey nemesis. The Norse are one of the youngest pantheons in Scion; our sources on them are mostly from the eleventh century onward, while other cultures that use the snake-and-tail symbol, like the Greeks and Egyptians, were talking about their gods three or four thousand years earlier than that. Which doesn't mean that the Norse aren't cool, of course, nor that you can't consider Jormungandr an expression of the widely-used ouroboros symbol, but he's definitely not its origin.

I'd have a great deal of trouble believing that Fate would bind Jormungandr away from his role in Ragnarok, because his role in Ragnarok is a direct order from Fate in the first place. Not only would it be nearly impossible for him to get Fatebonds on his own, considering that he's locked out of the World and will have no opportunity to get direct mortal notice until he comes rampaging in at the end of days anyway, but Fate, I think, is unlikely to work against itself for no good reason. For better or for worse, Fate's decided that Jormungandr is going to fuck up some unlucky gods' shit at Ragnarok. It's not fallible like gods are, so I doubt it's going to shoot its own plan in the foot.

However, that doesn't mean you can't find ways around things! Rather than approaching from a point of view of Fate removing Jormungandr from the equation, I'd say that characters are the best place to do that. If your PCs can come up with some crazy harebrained heroic plot to turn Jormungandr to the light and try to align him with reason instead of animal ferocity, let them go for it! And if it seems reasonable, even let them succeed. The important thing to remember about Ragnarok and all the kerfluffle surrounding it is that prophecies are not exact; they're vague, idiosyncratic and frequently talk in metaphors, so when they say something, they may actually mean something quite different. It's all in the interpretation. I don't have any trouble believing that Jormungandr could be removed from the Ragnarok equation - but if he is, then he has to destroy Thor in some other way, or some other creature or symbolic power will need to take his place. The prophecy still has to come to pass, but as long as you can do it in some form that makes sense, it doesn't necessarily have to be as a literal interpretation.

The ouroboros is one of those symbols that, according to well-respected psychologists and mythographers like Jung or Campbell, is universal across most human cultures and times. You might also be able to experiment with some interesting stories when it comes to what monkeying with one of those many expressions does to the others; they might all affect one another, much as Touchstones could be said to do for locations.