Green Growing Things

Question: Fertility seems like a very difficult purview to utilize. Useful only in the sense that if you could do what the purview does in real life you could end world hunger. How does it get used in YOUR games? Can you share some examples of the might of gods of fertility (purview) please?

Oh, man, Fertility's a blast! We have two dedicated Fertility gods (Yoloxochitl and Sverrir) and have had many more Scions who were all about it. Sowiljr's band, in fact, was just bemoaning the fact that they didn't have anybody with Fertility at game last night, because it would have made their lives a lot easier and instead they had to go bribe someone else to take care of their plant-related problems.

Fertility is indeed very good for producing food and life-giving crops, but don't handwave that away as less than useful - our PCs use that all the darn time. Even once the Scions themselves have progressed past the point of needing to eat very often (though those who don't invest in much Epic Stamina actually do need to eat every month or so - Vala is always quite grateful when Yoloxochitl grows her some fruit after a couple months of fasting), that doesn't mean that producing food is a useless skill - mortals still need that food, and mortals are important. Scions have mortal friends and families who could almost always use free, fresh, perfect food at their fingertips, and even those humans that aren't personally acquainted with the Scion are often very grateful. The epic dancing, drinking and storytelling party that an African tribe threw for Yoloxochitl after she showed up and grew them a few acres of yams with a wave was not only a lot of fun, but also turned up important clues to help the band find the god they were looking for at the time. If you want to get draconian, you can also threaten the local populace's crops to get information or assistance - nothing motivates people like the realization that they're all going to starve to death this year if they don't help you. And growing plants isn't always just about food - PCs have grown trees for wood to use in making rafts, fires or seige engines, and Sverrir never has to worry about heading off to Asgard or Vanaheim on a moment's notice, because even if he's in the middle of a trackless desert with no idea how to get home, he can always just grow himself an ash tree and be on his way.

It's important to remember that Fertility isn't just about growing plants (though it does that a lot, and does it well). It has a lot of side applications that can give Scions plenty of wiggle room to get things done - for example, Pheromones is a huge boost to any fertility god's social rolls, and you'd better believe our PCs have it on every time they have to be charming and might benefit from a little sweet pollen dusting. Gaia's Touch is perennially popular, not only because it's very useful to find out what the local landscape knows when you're trying to track down clues or find allies or enemies, but also because it's often hilarious (plants don't think like people, and mastering talking to them is usually a pretty fun encounter). Then there's Natural Camouflage, which, if you're sufficiently badass at Fertility, can give even the most Epic Perception-stacked enemies a run for their money when trying to find you. In recent games, Yoloxochitl has also been prone to using Tainted Oasis to give her bandmates bonuses to their stats.

The biggest complaint I usually hear about Fertility (on the forums and the web; other than Sowiljr's player bearing a grudge because a bush sassed him that one time, none of our players have ever complained about Fertility) is that it doesn't have any combat utility. It's true that it's not the most combat-oriented purview; most of it is about making things live, not die, but our PCs have still gotten quite a bit of mileage out of it in crunch situations. Greenskin's saved Yoloxochitl's life countless times, when she was knocked out and would have been dying too far away for anyone to stabilize her in time if it hadn't been for the boon preventing her from bleeding out, and Toxic Thorn is very handy when push comes to shove, especially at Hero levels. More reliably, high levels of Fertility can almost always be turned to combat applications with a little creativity, and we've seen PCs use Twist Plants to cause trees to grab and restrain foes or grow together to cover an escape, Dryad Link to gain extra soak and be able to report on enemy movements miles away, and pity the poor opponent wielding or carrying anything with wood or plant parts that ever tries to jump a Scion with Dormant Memory. (For Dormant Memory especially, in fact, it's always useful to remember that there are a lot of plant parts around us in everyday life, often in places we don't think about - clothes made with cotton are fair game for that boon, for example, and nothing says dramatic impact like nuts or berries exploding out of someone's dessert and turning into trees that then grab them.)

But, most importantly, Fertility can just do things that no other purview can do, things that are every bit as amazing and legendary as any other purview. In one of our most recent games, Yoloxochitl and Sverrir, on their way to Vanaheim, held a conversation with Yggdrasil and learned that it was mortally afraid of its own impending doom. They now plan to climb down to its base, camouflaging to sneak right under Nidhoggr's nose, to try to use their Fertility boons on enough roots that it'll be able to grow back after Ragnarok. That's not just a cool idea - that's badass, and it's something that someone who turns their nose up at "that useless purview about plants" would never have been able to do.