Question: Occasionally I find myself wondering how the various gods deal with the mergers and schisms that run through mythology. Ares and Mars are very different, but even similar figures like Jupiter and Zeus merge together. Egypt is just as bad, with figures like Amun-Ra. How do y'all work that, is there still Mars running around, but he's a shadow of his former self because Ares has taken most of his Legend? Or was he absorbed into the Legend of Ares and disappeared totally?
Syncretism is a very real, very messy thing throughout pretty much all mythologies and religions, and addressing which parts of what combinations you consider legitimate is a daunting project for any Scion Storyteller (or player, for that matter). There's no hard-and-fast answer; we consider each one on a case-by-case basis, based on what seems most likely and what will work best for the players' story.
In a lot of cases, it's easiest just to say that two different figures are the same god, just being called different names by different people. Zeus and Jupiter are the same guy, but the Greeks and the Romans have their own different names for him; minor variations in their beliefs on him can be chalked up to him having different Fatebonds and cults in the different areas. If two gods are similar enough to make this work and don't have clearly different stories or origins, that's usually the best choice.
It's harder with direct syncretism of two figures into one (which describes basically all of the Egyptian pantheon... freaking Egyptians). In those cases, it might be the results of a divine political coup, where a greater god intentionally pushes humanity to view a lesser one as part of him, thus preventing the lesser god from ever increasing in Legend and becoming a threat (Seker and Osiris, for example). Humans are quite capable of doing this on their own, too - if they happen to find some gods' characteristics similar and start worshiping them together for their own convenience, that's not going to change the gods any, but it might annoy, befuddle or amuse them. Most minor Egyptian gods stay pretty minor (in the Legend 9 to 10 range) because their cults get absorbed and they don't get a chance for their Legends to grow on their own - as soon as someone says, "Oh, I bet that guy is just an aspect of Horus" or "Oh, that goddess is just an expression of Hathor", it's over.
No god ever "disappears" spontaneously, though - that's not a thing in Scion (certainly you wouldn't want it to happen to PCs!). Even if you happen to be a Legend 9 god who never does anything after your apotheosis, that isn't going to make you suddenly vanish into the aether, even if Vishnu comes along and starts telling everybody that you were him all along. It's much harder for a god to get individual notoriety and thus increase Legend if everyone thinks he's some other god, so the odds of you ever getting more powerful and renowned start to get worse, but theoretically you could still climb back up out of that hole. Just because people have been assuming that Chandra was just a smaller version of Soma for centuries doesn't mean Chandra somehow suddenly stopped existing. He's still around, doing whatever it is minor moon-gods do.
A mechanic to cause any god to disappear after they fell below a certain threshold of being known strikes me as a very bad idea for Scion, actually; not only would it be very messy to keep track of and probably difficult to quantify (how do you decide who's well-known enough to stay and who isn't? It's all very subjective), but it actively removes gods that your PCs could be interacting with and shrinks the divine landscape down considerably, which makes for fewer options when telling stories. I'm seldom in favor of something that takes cool things out of the toybox instead of putting them in. Plus, not having Legend doesn't make you not exist, or else there'd be no such thing as humanity.
So really, it depends on the god, the situation, and what you want to do with him in a given story. If you want Menrva to be Athena, you can claim that that's just the name the Etruscans knew Athena by. If you want her to be her own goddess, you can claim that Athena's popularity eclipsed hers and she's still a minor goddess hanging out in Italy, possibly to be used as a character in a story or a player in an attempted coup. But I'd never rule that she mysteriously "vanished" for no apparent reason; got killed by Athena to remove her from the equation, sure, that could happen, but spontaneous divine de-existence doesn't seem like a good option.
I like the idea that once a God's identified as being REALLY part of another God, their Legend hits a brick wall.
ReplyDeleteAs to your No-Disappearing-Gods policy, I think I agree with that as well. I still feel that having your Legends usurped by another God could cause issues, though. Now all your stories and fatebonds are being stolen from you, so your Legend should decrease. Possibly this is why groups like the Etruscans and Romans are no longer Pantheons in their own rights. They once had enough Legend 12 members to do it, but as the Greeks kept eating up their stories and claiming the others were really just other names for them, the original Italian Gods actually ended up LOSING Legend.
It's already possible in Scion to intentionally reduce your Legend rating by abandoning your stories and fame. If someone sets about going through the process of convincing Humanity and Fate that you're really just them, it should have a similar effect. You could of course fight it... but not everyone wins that fight.
Hard to answer question answer succinctly. I generally chalk huge HUGE stuff, like making a god disappear. I think it would need a lot of different avatars and probably someone to take his place, BUT I believe it can be done. However Im not sure it would qualify for the large scale that the etruscans, romans, greeks are dealing with.
ReplyDeleteI dont however see it as a slow process where one slowly loses legend, or even eventually becomes mortal. That doesnt seem to fit thematically, especially with becoming full ichor once you're a god etc.
Another possibility that makes people seem less jerky would be perhaps the origional was killed by a Titan but taking up the name allowed said God to go round two. Or perhaps Humans conflated the two.
ReplyDeleteO yeah, death by titan(or other god?) makes great sense also.
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