Enemies of the Far East

Question: A bit off-topic but nonetheless related to the Titans release, who do you have in mind for the over-arching Titanic adversary of the Japanese pantheon? Apep seems like a natural fit for the Egyptians, as is Cronus for the Olympians and Surtr for the Aesir, but is there anyone who takes on that role for the Japanese? The only candidates that came to mind for me were either not mentioned much or seems too much of a border-case (Izanami).

Unfortunately, the Japanese gods are really up in the air at the moment in all dimensions; we haven't even done the full overhaul on their playable gods and PSP, let alone done a full cosmological research trek, so while we have some ideas and possibilities we don't have a good, solid final decision yet. Izanami at the helm of a Titanrealm of Death is certainly a possibility, as would be Raijin and Fujin at the helm of a Titanrealm of the Sky; the Kotoamatsukami, particularly Takamimusubi, are also major contenders, being ancient, primordial Titans with a vested interest in meddling in the affairs of their much younger offspring.

We're not making any firm choices at the moment. We prefer to have a Titanrealm really embody a concept that the pantheon and its culture oppose, so that takes a lot of theological reading and consideration. But we'd love to hear suggestions if you have them, and don't worry - they'll get their big bad one day. The Land of the Rising Sun isn't exactly free of all problems and cosmological interference.

Anne's Fiction Corner

Oh, snap, guys - it's fiction time again!

Today's story is Things Already Seen, starring Aurora Dahl with appearances by Woody Anderson, Vivian Landry and Kettila Blomgren. It is a tale of bad decisions made worse, the inevitable progress of Fate and the ill-advisedness of making magical bargains.

When Aurora decides she's going to go for something, she freaking goes for it.

Chlanna nan con thigibh a so's gheibh sibh feoil!

Question: Is it just me or does Warrior Ideal (War 3) do the same thing as Battle Cry (War 2), only worse?

It's just you. But I'll explain and then we can all be in this together.

When you use Battle Cry, you are unleashing a terrifying roar that targets those that oppose you and strikes them with crippling fear. It affects a limited number of people and inflicts a dice penalty, but affects all those people regardless of where they are, what actions they're taking or who they're targeting.

When you use Warrior Ideal, on the other hand, you are targeting only yourself, drawing on your inherent facility with battle to allow you to become an embodiment of a certain kind of warrior. Those who attack you are disoriented and frightened by your new badassery. It affects unlimited people (as many as choose to attack you) and inflicts a penalty of successes, but it does not affect anyone who isn't attacking you or who chooses to take actions other than fighting.

Battle Cry affects the whole field of battle, and it not only makes enemies bad at fighting, it makes them bad at everything else, too. They are so shaken by your bloodthirsty shout that they find it harder to concentrate, harder to plan, harder to call on their magical powers, and so forth. They become overall worse at everything they do, which not only helps you fight them but also helps your comrades fight them and prevents them from succeeding at any other, non-punches-related shenanigans they might try to get up to. Warrior Ideal, on the other hand, is specifically a bonus power that is placed on yourself, making you so impressive and battle-worthy that enemies have difficulty standing up to you; it levies a harsher penalty and can affect anyone and everyone who tries to touch you, but it's completely useless for helping your friends or stopping enemies from using powers or taking other actions. The first power is weaker in effect but has a much larger range and scope of utility, while the second power is more powerful in effect but much more limited in what it can do and affect.

So there you have it. :) Battle Cry and Warrior Ideal both inflict negatives on enemies, but the way they do so and the balancing levels of power versus utility make them quite different in result. And if you want to be super badass you can always pop both to really put the fear of your own personal God into enemies, whether they come at you or not.

Highway to Hell

Question: Spirit Lamp: Does it really fit in Psychopomp instead of Death? Underworld Portal is in Death, and really Spirit Lamp is the only power in Psychopomp that relates to the meaning of the word. It seems like more of a "Travel" Purview than Psychopomp.

Spirit Lamp is a total necessity for Psychopomp, but let's start with the rest of your question first!

We've actually talked about Psychopomp and its usage on this blog before. It's a strange purview, because while it fills a very, very necessary mythological role and is totally integral to the gods and their pantheons, it also tends to be used for other things by PCs more often than for its intended purpose.

Basically, Psychopomp is a purview that needs to exist. Psychopomps are an extremely important part of almost every culture's cosmology and pantheons, and they fulfill a function - that is, making sure the dead get where they need to go - that is paramount to keeping the world running correctly. Ancient cultures very much needed to know that A) dead people weren't going to be running around haunting the living, and B) when they died themselves someone would make sure they weren't lost and roaming, and psychopomps were thusly invented in almost every major mythology to take care of these big issues.

So the Psychopomp purview pretty much has to exist, the same way the Justice and Death and Fire purviews need to exist; it's a part of the mythic landscape that can't be ignored and permeates all cultures. It's true that many (in fact, most!) of its boons are just as easily suited to traveling around in non-psychopomping capacities as they are to actually doing the job of a psychopomp, but that's really more of a fringe benefit to being a psychopomp rather than the fundamental purpose of the purview. You will find very few Gods of Travel out there in the world; it's not a universal idea that an APP needs to represent, but psychopomping is. And we wouldn't want characters who became psychopomps to have no utility other than ferrying dead people around, because that would be very limited and usually take them out of the story with their band, and that would be lame. Psychopomp doesn't fit the mold of the other purviews, it's true, but it does exactly what it needs to do, both for the overarching mythic theme it represents and for players who want to pursue it in a game.

Which brings us back around to Spirit Lamp. It's an absolute necessity for psychopomps to do their jobs; Spirit Lamp, Come Along and whatever other boon they use to actually get their charges to the Underworld (usually Rainbow Bridge, but it really depends on the psychopomp and the situation) are the powers they cannot do without and still do their cosmically-ordained jobs. Spirit Lamp does at first look seem like it belongs in Death because it affects dead people and that's usually Death's entire thing, but a closer look debunks that idea pretty quickly; if there's one thing death-gods don't actually do, it's go around rounding up ghosts to put in their Underworld. And they don't do that because it's the psychopomp's mythic job, not theirs.

The disposition of the dead in a nutshell, mirrored perfectly by purviews.

The Jaguar Who Delivers

Several people have asked to see a character sheet for Jay Ortiz, that world-famous breaker of hearts and causer of strife. He's an NPC, meaning that he doesn't currently have his own page on the website; we're considering overhauling out NPC section soon to make it more relevant for the game and more interesting to read through, but in the meantime, here's a character sheet for Jay - now Maquicelotl, the God of Freedom.

In all his magical, ruining-your-life glory.

Our players can feel free to look if they want, too, but knowing his current stats won't make him any less likely to ruin everything.

Time After Time

Question: (K/Ch)ronos vs. Cronus: who's who? A lot of sources pin "Chronos" as the father of the titans and the master of time. I thought it was Cronus. Are these the same person, and if so, does Cronus truly have some myth about lording over time?

I think there may be some confusion with spelling already here: Kronos and Cronus are the same person (the K version is just the more proper Greek spelling, while the C version is the more often used one), the Titan father of the gods. Khronos or Chronos with a Kh/Ch is the Titan having to do with time. The names themselves are etymological clues to the difference between them; chronos literally means time, while cronos is thought to mean he who cuts or he who creates.

These are in fact two completely different Titans, but the confusion is understandable; people have been getting confused about which was which and accidentally syncretizing them together here and there for centuries thanks to the similar names, which folks who weren't ancient Greeks couldn't always differentiate very well. Many sources, especially modern books on popular mythology, do claim them as the same person, or describe one with the attributes of the other, but this is generally the result of those sources using other sources who were using other sources who were just confused about the whole thing.

Cronus is the Titan that everyone knows about; he is the son of Ouranos who castrated his father and in turn the father of all the gods, who ate them until forced by his son Zeus to disgorge them. It was he who led the first Titanomachy against the gods and he who was said to rule the Elysian Fields or to dwell in Tartarus with the rest of those that were eventually defeated by the Olympians. His Roman equivalent is Saturn, and both versions of him were gods of plenty and fertility (symbolized by the sickle, which is both the implement he used to castrate his father and the tool used to reap bountiful harvests). He ruled over the Golden Age of humanity, in which there was no sadness, no hunger and no law because there was also no crime. The Greeks viewed him as more of a story figure, an intermediary step between Ouranos and Zeus and an important footnote but not a major figure after the end of the Titanomachy, whereas the Romans were much more invested in Saturn (being more of a farming people than the Greeks) and built more temples and held more celebrations in his honor. When people talk about any variant of C/K-ronos, nine times out of ten they're talking about this guy.

Chronos, on the other hand, is a much more obscure and bizarre figure, one who seldom appears in mainstream Greek myth and was more popular as a philosophical idea than an actor in any stories. He is the Titan of eternity, and with his wife Ananke, the Titaness of inevitability, was said in alternate cosmologies to have created the word and given birth to the first other beings in it. He is the ultimate creator in the Orphic cosmology, though whether or not you use Orphic material in Scion is totally up to the individual Storyteller (Orphic myths tend to be kind of batshit insane and often contradictory to the main body of Greek mythology, but they're definitely interesting). Chronos doesn't actually do anything in mythology other than be a creator/progenitor figure in those alternate histories; his Roman counterpart is Aion/Aeon, who as the Titan of Endless Time was considered the protector of the Roman Empire (ensuring that it should survive forever), and the Romans envisioned him as married to Aeternitas, a Titaness of Eternity who is basically just his clone and resembles Ananke only in passing.

So, as you can see, the two are not the same person at all, nor do they really have anything to do with one another; they don't even inhabit the same cosmology, most of the time. But there has been confusion between them for a long time, starting with the fact that Cronus does actually have some small time connotations of his own; as a fertility and farming god, he has control over the seasons and the cycle of growth. This control over the cycle of time, specifically as it regards the seasons, is not at all the same as Chronos' personification of eternal time, but the later you get in history and the further you go from the early Greek myths, the more common it becomes for someone to confuse them - either intentionally, as some philosophers occasionally do to make a point, or accidentally, as many interpreters from Rome or other cultures do when confused by the similar names.

By this point in history, your average joe on the street, provided that he is not secretly a scholar of Classical mythology, probably doesn't know the difference. "Chrono" is a Greek root we use for lots of time-related words - chronological, chronographical, chronometrical, etc. - so when someone says "Cronus" and we don't hear that there's no H there, we automatically assume that guy must have something to do with time. Modern conceptions of time, thanks in large part to science fiction and developments in measuring and relativity in the past several centuries, don't really make a distinction between seasonal, cyclical time and time as represented by eternity, so, we reason, if there are two guys with the same name who are both associated in some way with time, they must be the same guy.

The most obvious final product of this centuries-long process of confusion and misidentification is the popular folkloric figure of Father Time, who is the personification of time and eternity, much like Chronos, but who carries the scythe or sickle that is quintessentially Cronus'. This is a very recent development in world mythology, occurring in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it makes a good illustration of the pernicious confusion between the two Titans. (Theoretically, the connection between time leading to inevitable death and the transformation from sickle to scythe may also point to some Slavic influence from Smert, the scythe-wielding dead goddess, but considering the extremely low influence of the Slavs on Renaissance Italy, where the idea of Father Time originated, that's likely to be an even later addition to the imagery.)

For Scion's purposes, Cronus is pretty much always the guy that matters. He's the one leading the other Titans against Olympus, he's the one who fathered the gods, he's the one who has active myths of doing active things, he's the one who used to rule the world and he's the one that has the chip on his shoulder. Chronos, on the other hand, is basically a non-entity, one of those Titans who exists on a vast, primordial scale but doesn't really do anything, and as a result there are few times that he needs to be at the forefront unless you're running a story that either deals heavily with Orphic and mystery cult alternate theories or is strongly invested in the idea of messing around with eternity.

But, theoretically, they're both out there; playing with what they're doing, who they're supporting in the war and why, and what irritation being syncretized with one another might be inflicting on them could all be interesting avenues for exploration. It's unlikely that they're actively strongly Fatebound to one anothers' roles, considering that both of them would have been locked in Tartarus most if not all of the time that this confusion was occurring, but either of them might be surprised by the modern confusion, and either of them might be interested in correcting it, taking advantage of it or letting humanity (and thus many up-and-coming Scions who don't know any better) continue in their ignorance.

Suit Up

Question: How do you propose a Scion that comes from a culture that doesn’t use much armor (or any at all) use the War 7 Boon Colossus Armor?

This is really a question of stunting and flavor, but those things are at the heart of the game, so it's a good one anyway. Colossus Armor is indeed much easier to envision for cultures that have easily recognizable armor fashions, like the Japanese samurai or the Roman centurions, than it is for folks like the Gauls, who generally ran into battle screaming and mostly naked.

Let's ignore, for a moment, what Colossus Armor's mechanics actually do; it makes you very large, very strong and very sturdy, but that's going to happen no matter what form it takes, so it's not really relevant to trying to figure out what the armor itself looks like for individual Scions. To begin with, there are very few cultures that had no armor whatsoever, so start with a little research; since the mechanics don't really depend on the kind of armor here (because this is a War boon and you are a War god, so people saying "but your armor doesn't cover your knees!" are not really making a valid point), armor that doesn't fit the Giant Suit of Armor idea is still perfectly acceptable. A Scion of the Aztlanti might suddenly appear in a massive ichcahuipilli regardless of the fact that it only covers the chest without taking any penalties from what is clearly a culture-appropriate stunting of a power.

If you've got absolutely no armor options (Gauls and African warriors have a particularly hard time with this), then consider stunting more creative ways of armoring yourself. A Gaulish warrior, for example, might appear covered in giant swaths of woad war-paint, which would not in the regular world confer any armored protection but which should work just fine for a Gaulish war-god activating his Colossus Armor. If there's nothing cultural to go on, some Scions may have to fall back on imagery that's more tailored to their personality or other powers - an African death god might become covered in the bones of her deceased ancestors, for example, or an Australian earth-god might appear with the dust and stone of his native land forming impenetrable armor to fit him.

While it's easy to get bogged down in the idea that this has to be a full, enormous suit of armor (particularly with that picture in the Scion book of the giant centurion suit), there's really no reason that should be so, any more than every Scion should have to stunt their Warrior Ideal or Dreadful Mien or Mystery exactly the same based on their culture of origin. It's absolutely a great idea for those players who love that culture's war-gear aesthetics and want to be part of them, but if a Scion doesn't have an appropriate source in their home culture, or even just wants to reinterpret themselves a little differently, there's no reason that they can't if they're not infringing on another culture's imagery. Colossus Armor's effects don't vary with the armor's appearance, so players should feel free to stunt whatever's most mythically badass and makes the most sense for their character.

Star of Morning

Question: Can you talk a bit about Quetzalcoatl's relationship with the other Aztlanti? If their great nemeses are the Stars, and he is the son of the Star God and a Star himself, how does he get along with Huitzilopochtli? What is he like in your games?

Quetzalcoatl is somewhat long-suffering in our games. As one of the four Tezcatlipocas and a major mover and shaker in his pantheon, he's certainly well-liked and respected, but he has to constantly deal with Huitzilopochtli, who is something of a condescending jock to the other, less-important-because-have-you-seen-how-he-is-currently-totally-carrying-the-sun-around gods, and with Tezcatlipoca, who is as much of a pain in his ass as ever. He's more of a straight shooter with the Scions of the pantheon than some, but he's not involved in their stories as much since none of them are his children (and his own Scions, Kettila's friends Julio and Cesar, kind of got flattened in a major pantheon disaster that left him without much to do in that arena). The pantheon tends to call on him mostly to be the resigned psychopomp shuttling all the gods around, which he does with world-weary patience. He's definitely Up To Stuff, but it's mostly high-level metaplot that the PCs rarely, if ever, figure out.

As for getting along with the stars, he is in an awkward position; clearly Huitzilopochtli is tolerating him, but how much animosity there is between them is something for each Storyteller to decide for their game. In our stories, he tends to not use Stars powers around Huitzilopochtli to avoid getting punched in the teeth if his buddy isn't looking really hard at which stars he's aiming for, and Huitzilopochtli only mentions it when there are Stars powers like Red Star active that he needs him to shut off. It's an uneasy truce where nobody talks about the point of contention, sort of like an awkward family dinner at which everyone in the Whitebread family tries to pretend that Jimmy doesn't have a giant barbell piercing through his Adam's apple since he came home from college.

Exotic Toys

Question: How do you feel about Scions wielding relics from cultures other than their own?

We feel just fine about it, provided there's a reason they have those foreign relics. There's nothing in the rules that says you can't have a relic that came from Ireland if you're Norse or vice versa; it's all a matter of roleplaying and setting flavor.

If you have a good reason for your Indian Scion to have a Japanese relic - his father is besties with a Japanese god in this game's setting, for example, or he spent a long tour of duty working in Japan before he was visited, or his parent didn't have a relic for him but they got together with a foreign god to provide one, thus setting things up for that debt to need to be paid in the future, or he has a Japanese item of particular sentimental value that he wants turned into his relic - then there's no reason at all not to run with it. As long as he's been properly bound to the item with Birthright Bond, it'll work for him as well as any other relic would.

If, however, the player in question has no idea why they would have this foreign relic, you might want to work with them. By far the most common reason for that is that they really wanted to be playing a Scion of Pantheon A, but decided to play a Scion of Pantheon B because they wanted a specific set of associateds or a different PSP; in that case, you may want to gently talk to them about the aspects of the culture they're going to be representing and suggest alternatives (either for them to start loving Pantheon B for itself or to go back to Pantheon A where they wanted to be in the first place). It's a bit of a powergaming cop-out for a Scion to play in every way as if Japanese except for getting to have Itztli, so I would discourage that strongly; and if they go for it anyway, as the Storyteller I'd make sure that the Aztlanti are all up in their cheerios at every turn, and that the pressures of being a pantheon's divine child are strongly present to make that choice by the player matter.

But if you have a good, fun reason and the player's being creative rather than trying to fudge for mechanical benefit, then there's no reason at all to prevent Scions from having cross-cultural Birthrights. Our PCs often have them themselves (though they more often get them through actual play and contact with other pantheons rather than starting with them).

No Means No

Question: There were multiple articles about sexual culture among humans influenced by the gods, but what about the gods themselves? In many pantheons, rape culture is prevalent, but do the goddesses who aren't already protected virgins have to lie down and take it (no pun intended) whenever their man wants it, or are they powerful enough to refuse? Because I can see goddesses like Ishtar ripping someone's nuts off if they tried to force her.

This is actually a lot of questions all hiding in a single wrapper. It's addressing the power levels of gods versus goddesses, sexual culture among the gods, marital obligations in ancient societies and Storyteller roleplaying. That's a lot going on!

The reason we always talk about human sexual culture when questions come up about the gods is that the gods are creations of that human culture; they mirror, embody and exaggerate its practices, customs and virtues. The gods of ancient Egypt are expressions of the thoughts and beliefs of the people of ancient Egypt, and therefore their behavior and morals are similar to those of their people. Godly sexual culture is human sexual culture, just on a larger scale, whether the gods obey the rules or occasionally break them to illustrate why they're so important.

So sexual behavior and relations among the gods and goddesses of the pantheon are going to depend on their culture and its thoughts on the subject, just as we've talked about in previous posts. In most cases, ancient cultures viewed sex as an obligation that the wife had to her husband; if he was interested, it was her job to be up for it, and if he wasn't, she was probably doing something wrong and should get better at making him interested. The same cultural expectation is probably in place for most goddesses; it's not that they don't have options, but they themselves are part of that cultural expectation, so if Sif has a headache when Thor's raring to go, she's probably going to just deal with it rather than risk being what her culture would see as a bad wife. Because ancient cultures, as a generalized whole, believed that being married to a guy included the job of having sex with him when he wanted to, the question of rape wouldn't even occur to them; like taking care of the children or doing the sewing, it's something that the wife was supposed to be doing and that the husband would be fully within his rights to reprimand her for if she tried to shirk her duties. The goddesses themselves come from those cultures and are just as likely to believe that as their husbands.

Which brings us to your question about how "powerful" goddesses are, which is an odd one; what makes you think a Legend 12 goddess is somehow less "powerful" than a Legend 12 god? They have just as much cosmic control over the universe as their male counterparts, so it's not as if they're defenseless against the depredations of these sex-hungry dudes. If Ishtar doesn't feel like having sex with Tammuz (though I suspect that doesn't happen a lot), all she has to do is say no; Ultimate Manipulation makes that a pretty solid no, and the guy who tried to initiate it in the first place probably thinks it was his own idea to suddenly change his mind. If Kali doesn't feel like having sex, she's quite capable of throwing a dude into space to get him to leave her alone. Just as gods can use their powers to try to cajole, trick or force goddesses into sex, so they can use theirs to prevent it (or try to force sex themselves - remember, ladies like the Morrigan, Aphrodite or Ishtar can be just as rape-prone as some of these guys when they decide to take a fancy to a curiously intractible young man).

Which brings us down to the final point, which is how the Storyteller decides to play different gods. Just because a god might be married to a goddess and therefore technically always eligible for sex doesn't mean he's going to be constantly bothering her about it; I doubt either Shiva or Ptah is about to nag the temperamental Kali or Sekhmet when she might put very large holes in them, and of course those gods who genuinely love their spouses probably want their wives to be interested as much as they are. These are gods with personalities and motivations of their own, after all; some of them are probably totally willing to just jump their spouses regardless of what they want, but many of them are compassionate enough to romance them instead or smart enough to pick their battles. Just as your average human husband might bring a wife presents, watch a romantic movie to get her in the mood or notice that she's had a really rough day at work and decide that now is not the best time, so a divine husband may be able to judge the best moments for these kinds of things. Not all gods are soulless rapists who view their wives as objects (though some are, so be prepared for them), so how a god and goddess relate sexually really depends on who they are and what their culture suggests for them.

Ishtar certainly could castrate a dude who was getting too fresh with her, but then again, she might castrate a dude for a lot of reasons. She's scary that way.

Island-God Shenanigans

Question: Do you think that the Maori god Tu, through his creation of nets, snares and other tools, should have the Industry purview associated? Or is this not a good enough reason? Also, I saw how you stated out Tangaroa a while back. How would you stat out Tu?

Hmm, that's actually a bit of a stumper. While we usually ignore gods who perform a single one-time action of invention, Tu actually goes on something of an invention rampage at one point, coming up with a bunch of new tools that humanity then uses to survive and prosper. He is sort of the creator of technology in the sense that the Polynesian islanders used it, which certainly seems Industry-like in some senses.

On the other hand, though it's not really part of Tu's character to make things; he does it once, with the express aim of capturing his fleeing siblings. He's not a god associated with making things as far as his personality and character go - quite the opposite, in fact, considering his very heavy connections to war and destruction. This looks a bit more to me like a situation similar to Sobek's, who created fishing nets in order to fish for and find Horus' hands, but who is obviously not a major crafting god himself. In Sobek's case, we gave him Craft as an associated ability but did not give him Industry, as he really wasn't an embodiment of The Creator; I think the same is probably true of Tu.

It's definitely a place where it could go either way, though; we'd probably rule that Tu has several Industry boons and certainly plenty of Craft, but that he isn't a crafting god on the same level with people like Hephaestus or Kothar. Your mileage may vary, especially depending on which version of Polynesian myth you prefer (because lord knows there are plenty of them).

If you were going to stat him as a god, I'd say that he definitely needs War associated, and probably either Intelligence or Wits for his ability to outmaneuver and capture his brothers (I'd lean toward Wits for the descriptions of him as cunning, as he probably doesn't have Manipulation considering that Tane got him outvoted on what to do about Rangi and Papa). You might also consider giving him Water, as some islands consider him the lord of fresh water in the form of springs and rivers (as opposed to salt water, which falls under Tangaroa's area). His strong role in protecting warriors in battle might also give him Guardian associated, though it's not as strong as some of his other connotations.

Man, we need more Polynesians up in here. There are just not enough island-god shenanigans going on.

Reading Rainbow

Question: It's been a long time since I read any books about mythology. Could you suggest a combo of pantheon/book/author to read?

Hmm. I'm actually not sure what you're looking for, so it's hard to make recommendations. Were you after some fiction options set in a Scion-like world? Nonfiction, scholarly books on mythological subjects? Or retellings of the myths themselves?

It's hard to recommend since we don't know where your interests lie, but for retellings of myths, I'm a big fan of the blood-and-guts pantheons like the Elohim. Michael Coogan's Stories from Ancient Canaan is a great read for both looking at the original text and getting good summaries and theories in readable format. The Canaanite gods have some great, vivid stories and it's a shame more people haven't heard of them.

If you're more interested in a nonfiction book discussing a mythology and its gods, try Matthew Restall's Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, which is a great look at the popular misconceptions surrounding how the conquest of the Aztecs went down and what it meant for their religion, especially when it comes to interaction with Cortes and his men and syncretization with Catholicism.

As far as fiction goes, there's a huge world of it out there; if you haven't already read Neil Gaiman's American Gods (about ancient gods in the modern world, spanning many different cultures) and/or Anansi Boys (primarily concerned with African myths in the modern age), they're the stories that Scion itself was actually based on. One of our players is currently reading M. D. Lachlan's Wolfsangel series about the Norse gods and enjoying it, and Roger Zelazny has two different books - Lord of Light, based on Hindu mythology, and Children of Light and Darkness, based on the Egyptian gods - that do a spectacular job of updating ancient myths and fusing them with science fiction.

For what it's worth, John's currently reading The God of Ecstasy: Sex-Roles and the Madness of Dionysos by Arthur Evans, and I'm currently reading Muhammad and the Golden Bough: Reconstructing Arab Myth by Jaroslav Stetkevych in our scraps of free time. We pretty much go to university libraries and pick up the first book in the religion and mythology section that interests us whenever we run out of reading material.

Obligations

Question: Why are you answering this question? Shouldn't you be hard at work with Arabs/Mayans/Loa/Amatsukami/Hittites/Titans/Washing my car?

NOW LOOK HERE YOU

...we couldn't find the waxer because we buried it under books about the Arabs/Maya/Loa/Amatsukami/Hittites. :( Sorry.

You'll have to wait for John's sexy carwash performance some other time.

Gods of Sun and Sacrifice

Question: Could you please go over the Aztec associated powers overhaul? Some of them make sense (Quetzalcoatl gaining Stars or Tezcatlipoca gaining Chaos), but others really, really don't (Tezcatlipoca gaining Health... and Xipe Totec losing it).

Oh, my friends, you know I'm always ready to talk about Aztecs. Let's do this!

...and because I love to talk about Aztecs, I now realize after finishing this post that it's way too long for common consumption. Follow me behind the jump if you dare.

Tick Tock

It's the beginning of the week, and that means video blogging! This week, John and Anne talk about combat, the tick system, and how Anne is always right.

Question: Why do some boons require 10-tick actions? Doesn't that seem a bit counterintuitive, since the wheel has 8 ticks?

Question: How do you handle combat in your games (at Hero, Demigod and God level)? While I like the tick and battle wheel system in Scion, I find that combat can become a huge time sink in the session. How do you balance combat for characters who aren't that combat savvy, or whose actions might require them to spend a significant amount of time performing secondary objectives? I'm reaching a point where I'd prefer to cinematize my combats to save time while still illustrating the main points of the encounter while also allowing for my players to shine. How does combat work for you and your group? Perhaps understanding how another Storyteller handles it may shed some light on my own problems.

It's longer than usual, but that's because of a combination of excitement and fights, so we figure it's at least entertaining!

Yorubaland

Question: Do you know what kind of things you want to do with the Super Loa Rewrite? Any idea which gods you want to take out of the current roster? I'm really looking forward to seeing it (while I know it's a while off yet).

Oh my god, Super Loa Rewrite! I am so excited about this project, seriously, I'm ready to have babies with it. African mythology is so delightfully different from many other cultures' that I can't wait to really get into how to express and explore it through its gods, and the Loa have always been something of a sore thumb in Scion for us, so it's one of my favorite things to look forward to.

I can't give you solid specifics, obviously, because we're still in the process of planning it and haven't gotten to work on it yet (though I think soon we will be starting some new things - cross your fingers!). Major things we want to do are:

• Reintroduce major Yoruba gods who were unfairly excluded because they didn't carry over into the derivative New World religions. I've occasionally seen them in sub-pantheons for the Yoruba, and I applaud the effort to include them in the game somehow, but the idea that the indigenous African gods are somehow a sub-pantheon of the much later New World interpretations of them has always seemed somewhat ludicrous to us.
  
• Remove entirely New World concepts and ideas from the pantheon's overarching theme in order to allow Scions to work as children of the Yoruba pantheon, just as Scions in every other pantheon work as children of the original gods rather than much later versions of them. Those ideas are still available to players who want to pursue them, just as you could play a Scion of Tlazolteotl who thinks of her as the Virgin Mary, but it always seemed bizarrely backward to us that the core books treat the later derivation as the main mythology instead of the ancient religion it was based on. (They probably did so because vaudun is a lot more recognizable to the average North American gamer than Yoruba myth, and because the World of Darkness games used a lot of vaudun imagery and figures, but we're not having it.)
  
• Rework the ever-living shit out of Cheval. Right now it's easily one of the weakest PSPs in the game; even after we worked on it some, it's not coincidence that our Loa have never really bothered with it, because it's deeply underwhelming compared to the likes of Heku, Itztli or Samsara. It's also very narrowly focused on New World vaudun and Santeria ideas, excluding the African roots of the religion again. The new PSP will probably retain some elements of "riding" mortal worshipers, as the Yoruba religion also has a strong basis in doing so, but it will also probably lean much more heavily on African ideas of destiny and the three specialized paths of interacting with divinity (priest, prophet and diviner).
  
• Reassign them a Titan antagonist that makes more sense. Mami Wata is certainly an antagonistic figure, but she can't play with the big boys like Cronus or Tiamat, and she - and the entire Drowned Road, really - was shoehorned into a role that she couldn't really fill in an attempt to fit the Loa into the same format as the rest of the pantheons'. We're not sure yet what their Titan antagonist will be, but it's likely that it will no longer be Water, and we're considering Titans of more traditionally feared African concepts like Disease or Pestilence.
  
• And seriously, these associated powers need fixing, because they're an insane mish-mash smash-up of various different versions of these gods and misconceptions from popular culture. What a mess!
  

As for what gods we're considering removing and adding, those are still up in the air pending our ability to get heavily into research and start making calls, but there are a few that we have clear ideas on. Oshun, Orunmila, Obatala and Eshu, major Yoruba deities, will probably be joining the roster; Damballa, Erzulie, Agwe and Kalfu, who are purely New World figures, will probably be leaving it. We're still up in the air over the Baron and discussing what to do with his bizarre, rootlessly American-only self. Shango and Ogoun will remain, with heavier emphasis on their royal Yoruba roots. As for those Loa who leave the playable roster, they won't be banished from the world entirely, but we haven't yet decided what direction we'll be going with them.

If anybody out there has any questions, issues with the Loa they'd like to bring up, or suggestions or specialty ways of handling them, we'd love to hear about them before we head off to Yorubaland!

Lady of the Mountain

Question: Rhea, mother of Zeus and the other Olympians - how do you treat her in your games? She is often represented as a kind figure, with a lot of lion imagery. Do you consider her a god or a Titan?

Rhea is very definitely a Titan - she's referred to repeatedly as a Titaness and is part of that most important generation of Titans, along with her siblings Cronus, Hyperion and Coeus, who led the Titanomachy against the gods before being bound in Tartarus. This doesn't mean she has to be antagonistic, of course; she's certainly benevolent toward her children at least a little bit, to the point that she wanted to save them from being eaten by Cronus, and she is never mentioned as being part of the war against the gods herself.

We've actually talked about Rhea in-depth before in this post, which was back in the dark ages of the archives. In a nutshell, while we have no "official" stance at the moment because Rhea has not been involved in our current game plotlines (or has she, players?), I prefer the later Greek mythology that claims that Rhea became Cybele after the shock of her husband and children warring against one another, and that she currently plays out the role of that insane but interesting divine figure. She's tolerated by the gods, partly because she's their mother and partly because they're probably pretty afraid of her, but she isn't really one of them. She might be benevolent sometimes, but at other times her madness might win out.

...and that's a wrap!

And, as promised, a day late but never lessened, we present the Titans. They've been a blast to work on despite being difficult and time-consuming, and we're simultaneously excited to play with them, excited to share and excited to plan ahead for what future Titanrealms will make their appearances next.

In the meantime, all of you who have been asking to discuss since you found the easter egg page for Danu (and also those of you who cheated like the cheating cheaters you are and saw some of the other pages while they were still under construction) last night, discuss away. We'd love to hear feedback, answer questions and talk about what's going to come next.

And now, on to Birthrights!

Son of the Slavs

Question: Do you know of any examples of Slavic Scions? I can’t seem to find any (my copy of Dr. Hudec’s book has yet to arrive).

Thanks to our slow and backed up question log, you may have already received that book by now, but in case you haven't (or in case someone else is interested):

There is only one true-blue for-reals Scion in Slavic mythology that I know of, the first and last Scion of the entire pantheon (until, of course, the escape of the Titans and the current uncomfortable new crop of young ones). His name is Mokosits, a Scion of Mokosh, and his myth is a tale of sadness and the importance of cosmic rules.

Jealous of Perun's popularity among mortals, who worshiped him for his life-giving rains, Mokosh took on human form and seduced a mortal man named Mitran, by whom she became pregnant with a son. Seeking to avoid being caught, she went to her father Rod and convinced him to speed up her pregnancy, allowing her to give birth to Mokosits before dawn and thus hide the baby from Svarozhich. He grew to adulthood the same day, and she installed him as the first priest of the Slavs, dedicated to her alone. He made frequent blood sacrifices to her, prayed to her and told other humans about her, thus increasing her popularity and worship significantly, and in return she visited him in his dreams to reward him for his loyalty.

Stribog, however, noticed what was happening, and having already been jealous of Perun's popularity was now equally irritated about Mokosh's. He outed the Scion's existence to Svarozhich, informing him of Mokosh's rule-breaking and asking for Mokosits to be killed, both to punish her and remove her unfair advantage. Mokosh's pleas to Svarozhich and Prove went mostly unheeded, but Svarozhich decided that since Mokosits had not caused any harm, he would not be killed but instead banished to the underworld, doomed to be the keeper to the gates of Peklo and the guardian of Veles' sacred domain. Mokosh, as the first to commit this particular crime, was banned from ever again receiving blood sacrifice, and was henceforth worshiped with offerings of food and drink only.

Because of the general ban on Scions, Mokosits is the only "official" one that I know of in Slavic mythology, and things did not work out particularly well for him, unfortunately. However, gods will misbehave, so if your game needs some other historical Scions of the Bogovi, there are easy options out there. Russian folk heroes like Vasilisa the Beautiful or Ivan Tsarevitch and semi-historical Slavic heroes like Prince Marko or the bogatyrs (especially Ilya Murmotes) might be considered to have been Scions, though how long they survived, whether they were discovered and what punishments might have rained down on themselves and their parents for their existence is up to the Storyteller.

Holy Shit Are They Really Done?

We are putting the finishing touches on our Titan project.  It was a SERIOUS endeavor that took ~200 man hours between us working on it and I'm pretty sure you'll be pleased.

We finished 4 titan realms(they are massive and amazing) and really put a lot of time into getting it "right."  We hope you're pleased and there will be an announcement probably early tomorrow or monday when they go up officially(we'd love to hear your comments/ideas)(although its probably too late to change much).

Until then we have an easter egg on the site.  There is a character whose page has a link somewhere to one of the titan pages.  If you find it you have to enjoy it on your own though and promise not to tell anyone.  It'll be on their webpage not on their character sheet.

ONWARD!

So birthright/armory compendium won the latest poll.  So we'll get working on that asap(and it be done MUCH sooner).  Are there anything you'd like in the birthright compendium?  Let us know if you have any ideas.  We'll probably do some variation of the following.

A few relics at each "dot" level
A couple relics for each purview
A couple relics for each pantheon
MAYBE <big maybe  A relic for each god that they might give their kid
Some of the more famous relics from our games.


ONWARD!

There should be a new poll to the right.  I know some people are able to trick the system and vote more then once(and when it takes 6 months to finish thats easy to feel the need, but we promise we'll be much faster this time), but please try to abstain from that.  Pretend  you have 5 dots of intellect and expression, and your intellect demands you get true data for the poll but your expression demands that your voice be heard.  Save "cheating" at the poll for those rare days when you're super low on willpower and only have enough to pay for ignoring 1 virtue.

But seriously please dont cheat.  But feel free to ask questions about what the different poll choices might entail. 

By the Sword

Question: Although they're not gods in any sense, what Legend level would King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table sit at? They do some pretty epic stuff, but I don't know if they ever get up to Demigod levels. Presumably, as they are from folklore, it is possible to connect some dots and say that some of them were Scions.

Arthurian lore is a secret passion of mine, so forgive me if I ramble a bit in here. It sometimes feels like we get questions about the legends of the Knights of the Round Table practically every other day around here, so I know they're a not-so-secret passion for a lot of you as well.

The legends of King Arthur and his associated knights don't quite fit into Scion's mold all the way, which makes handling them largely a matter of Storyteller and game preference. They are certainly one of the most powerfully enduring sets of myths in northern Europe; it would be totally inaccurate to say that they are not mythology and do not have a place in it, but at the same time they are not made of the same stuff as the stories of demigods and heroes in many other parts of the world. Some games ignore them, relegating them to mere human fantasies popularized by French writers; some consider them to have been Scions, though of whom is always a vague and hazy kind of idea, and others have even set them up as gods themselves.

There's no question in our minds that Arthur and his knights shouldn't be a pantheon of their own; they are not and never were gods, nor were they worshiped or treated as such as far as we know, and their literary origins barely go back to the ninth century, when the gods of the Celtic and British lands had already been sunk into the mass of Christianity themselves. There have occasionally been scholarly theories that one or another of them might have roots in pre-Christian deities, but either they're completely without source or they're links to other deities that are already present elsewhere in myth (the theory that Arthur and Lancelot are faraway Welsh echos of Nuada and Lugh, for example). Their stories are certainly enduring, exciting and the stuff of epic heroic legend, there's no doubt about that, but compared to the tales of deities aroud the world, they are on a small scale - the stories of heroes, not gods.

But they might be the stories of Scions! Like many cultures' beloved heroes, the Knights of the Round Table are a great place to decide on historical Scions. Their exploits are great examples of Hero and early Demigod adventures, and while how Legendary they are varies from knight to knight - Arthur and Galahad might be Legend 5 or 6, but dudes like Gaheris are probably still rocking Legend 3 or so. When deciding what Legend rating to place a given knight at, look at their stories and behavior, just as you would with any other mythological figure; most of them, I would say, are around Legend 4, but they might run anywhere from 3 to 5 depending on the specific knight. Incidentally, Merlin, who while not a knight is explicitly said in some of the romances to be half "demon", was almost certainly a perfect example of a Scion, and he could definitely be a Demigod, considering his higher range of powers and insight. Then, too, some Arthurian characters are demonstrably human - Guinevere is unlikely to have been a Scion, but she makes perfect sense as a Fatebound mortal (Lancelot's Lover, perhaps, or Arthur's Traitor, or both).

More interesting to me than what Legend rating the Scions of the Round Table would be are the questions that go along with the idea. Were all the Knights Scions? If not, how did humans fare trying to compete with those who were something more - which knights were their Fatebound mortal companions rather than Scions in their own right, and how did that change their stories? Who were the parents of these Scions? Some are easier to peg than others - as noted, scholars have drawn parallels between Arthur and Nuada, Lancelot and Lugh and even Gawain and Ogma, but these are sketchy at best, so how do you decide who parented whom? What about the Dodekatheon, who as the powers behind Rome might have more than a little influence over the possibly Roman figure of Arthur - might he be a Scion of Mars instead of Celtic, or should he be a representative of the Welsh pantheon (woefully underrepresented in Scion, which just lumps them together with the Tuatha)? Or perhaps, based on the linguistic connections between his name and that of Artio, the bear-goddess and a form of Andarta, he might be an example of a continental Gaulish Scion involved in the affairs of Britain (which would certainly explain his wildly enduring popularity among the French). And is Sir Kay, well-known to be a Saxon, therefore a Scion of the Aesir, a son of Odin walking among the British knights?

And then, too, as Scions, what parts of the landscape of Arthurian myth are still active and powerful now? Is Caerleon still somewhere, preserved and hidden from mortal eyes by whatever gods were the Knights' patrons, as some legends suggest? Is Avalon then a Terra Incognita Scions of the modern world might be able to find? And what gods created and maintain these things, and why? What was their purpose in the creation of the Knights, and how much of the politics of those stories - the bickering between kingdoms, the clash of French against British against Saxon - represent the clashing of divine forces, Gauls against Tuatha against Aesir? What is the Holy Grail - cauldron of the Dagda, cup of Bran, or purely Christian symbol?

And that's not even discussing the pervasive theme of Christianity that saturates much of Arthurian lore; if you consider them to have had pagan roots, then perhaps some of it can be ignored, but what does it represent and what ancient ideas did it overwrite? Depending on how you handle Christianity in your games, Aten may be involved somehow, or any number of other possibilities.

Even more interesting, these are just the possibilities in play if Arthur and his Knights are Scions - so what if they're not? If they're mere humans, they're clearly involved with magical powers beyond them, and they're clearly playing out Fatebound roles, so the question becomes who is involving them, why, and to whom their Fates are so inextricably tied. You could turn the tables entirely and set only one figure in the Arthurian universe as the Scion - Merlin or Morgana or even Uther, perhaps - and spin the web of Fate out from there.

And what if they are Legendary, but not Scions? Another avenue of exploration would be to set the Knights as lesser immortals themselves; the ties of the Arthurian tales to the fairy realm are already very strong, so it wouldn't be much of a leap to consider them fairies or related creatures rather than humans or demigods, the last vestiges of the British Isles' fae populations, maintaining the last crumbling fae kingdom on earth.

Arthurian legend is an entire minigame within Scion if you decide to really dive in and untangle it; for those interested in running games in which the Knights are major players, the resurrection of Arthur is a major plot point or even the entire game is set at Camelot in days of yore, these are all considerations that have to be taken into account. For everyone else, it's a very, very large amount of work for a Storyteller to take on, so while I would never discourage anyone from exploring it, because I certainly love to in my scraps of free time, it's an area that games that don't deal directly with it may not need to really plan for. If your story involves the Knights, you have a lot of decisions to make and world-building to do; if your PCs start asking about them, you may have the same. But if your game isn't going anywhere near the British Isles or isn't involving Arthur if it is, don't feel pressured to have an entire metaplot take on the situation. If it's not necessary for your game, leave it alone and focus on things that are.

But for those who go forth in search of the Questing Beast, I salute you; Arthurian legend, modernized, bowdlerized and Christianized as it is, is still one of the most vibrant and recognizable canons of myth in the western world, and Scion is more than up to the task of playing with it wholeheartedly. For those in search of a little inspiration when it comes to alternative ways of envisioning the Arthurian legends, there are almost unlimited resources out there - Godwin's Invitation to Camelot is one of my favorites, but there is boundless creativity to be found around these myths in myriad places. And for those who don't really have much luck or interest in meshing Arthurian romance with Scion but who do have an interest in the stories, there are entire roleplaying games, some critically acclaimed and also secretly published by White Wolf, that open up its entire universe separately.

And for those who already know how Arthur and his knights will feature in their games, be good knights and true, and may your arms never weary and your eyes never be clouded from glory.

Visiting Hours

Question: How does a Scion 'awaken' her children? Does she simply spend a Legend point and make the ichor boil in the youngster, or does it involve a ritual or protocol filled with symbolism? I couldn't find in the book the answer to this, but maybe I misstepped over it.

Don't worry - it's not you! The books don't really discuss how Visitation of new Scions works in-depth, and they definitely don't really talk about how PCs, as new young gods, go about creating their own Scions other than saying that they now can. The only guidelines given by the book are that the god must reveal the new Scion's parentage to him, and that he must bestow the new Scion's first Birthright on him.

This actually isn't really much of a problem, though, because Visitation is something that every god should get to tailor to their personality, circumstances and the child in question, so the fewer rules, the better. You don't actually have to spend any Legend to activate a Scion, although you certainly can if you want to and it's probably going to happen if you're using any godly powers to impress them; all you have to do, pretty much, is decide that you're activating them and give them a Birthright, thus setting them on the path to great deeds. The books stress revealing the Scion's divine parentage, but I'm not sure that's entirely necessary, actually; a god might not explain who he was or what the connection between himself and his Scion was, but still be reasonably said to have awoken the divine connection between the two of them.

In fact, a god doesn't have to go in person at all; he could easily activate his Scion any number of ways from afar, whether by appearing to her in dreams, using long-distance powers like Fateful Connection or Fire's Eye to communicate with her, or even sending an emissary - some other god, lesser immortal or other creature - to get her started on her way. Every god's style is different, and Scions who have become gods should feel free to perform Visitations however they deem most appropriate as long as they get that starting Birthright to their child.

Birthright, incidentally, are much more complicated to design, acquire and bestow than the actual Visitation itself is, so new gods may find that to be a more major part of the process. We allow any PC with at least a level 8 boon in a purview to create a relic that channels that purview by paying ten points of Legend and bleeding on an item - essentially infusing it with their own ichor, which carries that power strongly - so it is always possible for a god to create relics for their kids that will at least allow them to use their most favored purviews. If they want any more complicated or fancy items, however, they'll most likely need the help of a crafting god if they aren't able to build them themselves, and furthermore they'll need the help of a god skilled in Magic in order to use the Birthright Bond spell to make the relic actually belong to the new Scion they're granting it to. This is not necessarily difficult - after all, the pantheons can always use new Scions to help in the war effort, so they probably won't refuse - but it may be costly and time-consuming, depending on how readily available those things are.

But once you've got the Birthright to hand off, the hard part's over. It's up to you to decide how you want to tell your new Scion about their divine heritage, in what way you choose to appear to them and what instructions you decide to give them. Just as you were once the tool of your divine parent, so they are totally yours to mold with your powers; enjoy your ascension to the role of divine parent, and bask in the excitement of granting your children Scionhood while you can (before they start ruining everything, getting killed or accidentally getting you in hock to other gods to help them).

Fame!

Question: How do you deal with Scions who are already famous (for whatever reason) before their Visitation? Does it simply make Fatebinding that much more of an ever-present concern, or are there other things to take into consideration?

We treat them pretty normally, actually. Fame is something that, like wealth, education and mortal family members, is up to the player to decide at character creation. Some characters are moderately famous, some are international superstars, and others are anonymous and unremarkable; it really depends on what the players wants to do and who the character is.

Having a character who was famous as a mortal has the usual challenges of any game with famous characters in it; the Storyteller should have an idea what kinds of circles he's famous in, what sorts of paparazzi or inquiries he might have to deal with and where his money and obligations lie, the better to make sure that he's being treated as realistically as everyone else. Being famous makes it harder to move around without people noticing, harder to get away with doing things out of the ordinary and harder to avoid the pursuits and jobs that made you famous in the first place. Make sure you keep up with the effects his fame has on him as he moves through the mortal world; whether it's screaming fans, tabloid smears or irate personal assistants, different kinds of fame will present challenges within the mortal world, especially for Hero-level Scions.

As far as Fatebonds go, though, there's no real difference. Being famous as a mortal won't make you more susceptible to Fatebonds, nor will it make you come into the game with Fatebound expectations or anything. Remember, you need to spend Legend to get Fatebound to someone, and their vision of you will most of the time be based on what you were doing when you spent that Legend. It's possible that famous PCs might have a little more chance of being Fatebound to the ideals of their famous persona before they were visited as Scions, but only if the things they're doing now aren't strong enough to override those old perceptions. If a famous politician spends a bunch of Legend on things that the mortals don't really see, then sure, most of them will probably default to believing he has Charisma and Politics; but if he's lifting trucks or setting enemies on fire, they're going to notice that a lot more than that rousing speech on environmental relations he made last year.

Third Eye Blind

Question: As if you haven't heard enough about Hindu Mythology for the rest of this blog - what do you think Shiva's terrible third eye would be in Scion terms? A very powerful relic he wields? Just some cool aspect of him he has as an Unusual Alteration, but uses knacks such as Divine Splendor and his Death boons to stunt with it?

Well, normally we'd just go ahead and tell you what we do with it, but in this case we can't. Shiva is heavily involved in certain things happening in some of our games, and we can't go ruining his many mysteries for our players. Instead, we'll talk about all the things it could be, and you can run wild from there!

Shiva's third eye has to be a decision for each Storyteller to make, because, as you note, it's ambiguous in its mythology and could be expressed in a lot of different ways.

The easiest way to treat it is as a relic; the eye of Shiva could itself be an extraordinarily powerful magical item that he just happens to wear on his head. Of course, third eyes aren't entirely uncommon in Hindu mythology, but third eyes that can vaporize other gods and cause spontaneous genitive creation when they hit the wrong ingredients are in considerably shorter supply, so Shiva might be rocking a relic even if everyone else is not. It would certainly be at the top end of the scale in terms of dots and powers, probably either augmenting the shit out of his boons or allowing infrequent but mortally dangerous attacks to be made (probably at great cost). It's an especially good option because Shiva's third eye is spoken of in the kind of reverent tones that are often reserved for particularly badass weapons; if it weren't a body part, I doubt anyone would be thinking of doing anything but relic-izing it so that it could rain down righteous ascetic death lasers on everyone. (Don't irritate Shiva. Or surprise him. Or bother him. Really, just staying away from Shiva is everyone's best bet.)

On the other hand, as you note, it's very easy for anyone to give themselves a third eye with Unusual Alteration, meaning that Shiva could easily have one - a very impressive-looking one, at that - without it being a relic on its own. There are plenty of powers out there that, with creative stunting, other relics or combination effects, can simulate death lasers perfectly easily; if Shiva wants to pop Strike Dead, Divine Splendor or any other massively injurious power, it could be done through the eye without having to give the organ any special properties other than badass imagery. We've got PCs in our games that always involve specific tattoos, bodily fluids or items when they do things; there's no reason gods can't, too.

A third option is to treat the eye as a living thing of its own, living symbiotically in Shiva's head and answering or responding to his commands and behavior. It might be a Birthright Creature or Follower, a minor Hindu god riding his coattails to success, or even a captured Titanic creature, only able to unleash its devastatingly destructive potential when he allows it. It's easily the creepiest option, but if there's anybody among the Devas batshit enough to carry some flavor of Titanic monster around in their brainpan, it's Shiva.

Past that point, things get into the real of So Weird It's Only a Good Idea if Your Plot Demands it (it's one of the many eyes that cursed Indra, given malevolent life! It's the Eye of Balor! It's just an illusion!), but even those three basic options give Storytellers a wide range to choose from when deciding what's up with the Destroyer and his ocular trifecta. As always, choose what best suits your game's vision of the god, and keep him away from heavy machinery and living things.

Mexica Inspiration

For those trying searching for hard to find badass females of mexican descent. This one woman is a female police officer in mexico city.

Birds of a Feather

Question: Do you have any information on the role of owls in Slavic folklore and myth? The only thing that I know is that the body of the Sirin is supposed to be that of an owl. While we’re on the subject, do you know anything about the Sirin and the Alkonost? The information that I have been able to dig up has been scarce.

Slavic party around here lately! Man, you'd think we had an interest or something.

Owls are not major players for most of Slavic myth, but they are present, and they're usually symbolic of the otherworldly and superhuman, often in a frightening capacity - pretty standard across non-Greek Europe, where owls usually have scary connotations thanks to their status as creatures of the night. Baba Yaga often appears with an owl roosting on her house, or owls living in the forest around the place, illustrating the imminent danger and her connection to the magical otherworld. The sirin is indeed often referred to as having the body of an owl, though sometimes the bird is unidentified; and though she's not specifically an owl, per se, the Simargl has dominion over all birdkind to a certain extent, so she could certainly have owls around if she wanted to. Polish folklore also features a nastily unsettling creature called the strzyga, a shape-changing owl-creature with vampiric tendencies, most likely borrowed from the Roman idea of the strix (witch) and transformed with typical Slavic aplomb.

The Sirin, a woman-headed singing bird monster, is one of those creatures borrowed from elsewhere to become part of the Slavic mythological landscape; as is probably pretty obvious, it's a direct import of the Greek siren, probably through Croatia and Macedonia and then on up into the more northerly Slavic lands. It shares its mythic space with the Alkonost (also a Greek import, this time from the story of Alcyone, turned into a bird for her hubris), often referred to as its "sister", and the two of them tend to appear as either a unit or as opposing but linked forces. As with many Slavic creatures, their connotations change over time and with your location; the Alkonost is usually the more dour of the two figures, singing sorrowful or dolefully prophetic songs and tormenting the souls doomed to Nav with her ear-piercing wails, while the Sirin is most often associated with joy, hope and just rewards (to the point that some medieval art in the Russian Orthodox Church actually features the Sirin as a symbol of God's divine will, or sets it as a creature of the Garden of Eden, now forbidden to mankind but occasionally venturing forth to bless saints and the deserving with its song).

But these roles actually reverse occasionally - in the more southern Slavic lands, the Sirin is more often the dangerously connoted creature (not surprising, as it's closer to the birthplace of the myth of the decidedly dangerous sirens) and is said to be a harbinger of death, while the Alkonost's song does not only torment souls in Nav but also brings joy and serenity to those blessed souls in Raj, where it lives. Occasionally one or the other of them is said to live on the Isle of Buyan instead of in the Underworld. Sometimes it's the Alkonost who brings joyous tidings and comfort to wanderers; sometimes the Alkonost is associated with the day and the Sirin with the night, or sometimes the association is reversed. The Alkonost's song, specifically, is also sometimes said to calm waters, probably another memory of the Greek Alcyone, whose father Aeolus calmed the weather to allow her to nest every year.

They're a lovely pair of ladies, and definitely perfect for appearances in Scion, whether as antagonists, helpers or characters in their own right. Exactly how much they're really related to the Greek siren and Alcyone is up to an individual Storyteller's discretion, but I like to think they're probably separate creatures, perhaps with good relations with their Greek cousins but so thoroughly Slavic that they can't just be mashed together and called the same, just as the Simargl and Simurgh aren't the same. (Or perhaps it's one and the other - maybe the Slavic Alkonost and Greek Siren hang out together, or vice versa!) The Bogovi supplement on our site presents only the Alkonost, and sets her as a composite creature, beautiful and benevolent to the deserving and terrifying and tormenting to the unworthy; really, all we're doing there is combining the two birds in one in order to let the siren remain a Greek creature, but Scion is more than able to accommodate all of them if you want it to.

For a gorgeous depiction of the two birds in action, check out Viktor Vasnetsov's Sirin and Alkonost - Birds of Joy and Sorrow:

Of course, which is which? Vasnetsov doesn't say. You'll have to draw your own conclusions. (And look up more of his work, if you liked what you saw - he's one of the best artists around for Slavic mythology.)

By the way, if you're a fan of Slavic bird-creatures, you might want to give the Gamayun, the third of the Slavic bird trio, a try as well. She, too, is a "sister" to the Alkonost and Sirin, though folklorists are not really sure where she came from since she doesn't seem to share their Greek origin and appears later in the body of Slavic folklore than they do. She is renowned for speaking prophecies and is also said to dwell on Buyan, where even the gods tend to leave her alone lest they hear something they didn't want to know.

Blinding Us with Science

Question: Where do you draw the line between science and myth as far as purview powers are concerned? E.g., one of my players wants to expand his lightning-based Sky boons to electromagnetism. I understand why you took the time powers out of Stars (they made no sense), and I understand your reasoning for why Time as a purview doesn't work, because it's too modern-science based. But what about boons like Fusion and Solar Prominence, in Sun? They seem to me to be equally non-mythic. Ditto Starfire's cosmic radiation.

Groannn, Fusion... we meet again, my nemesis.

As I'm sure you've gotten an impression of by now, we don't particularly like science-based boons, because they're very un-mythic, which runs counter to the flavor of the game, and in many cases they don't make any sense, either (what've Thor or Marduk been doing with those electromagnetism boons all these centuries - just sitting around wondering what they were for until the nineteenth century?). Science and Scion are not incompatible, of course; Scion's a game about modern children of the gods, and modern children means they'll bring their modern ideas with them, and that's good. They can invent, innovate, combine and challenge the old order with the new in any way they can conceive of; they're the new generation of gods, and if a Scion wants scientific concepts to be a big part of their role as a god of this new age, then he should pursue that.

But purviews are almost never the way to do so. Purviews represent the massive, cosmic forces of the universe; the sky, thunder, lightning and all, is one of these cosmic forces, but the tiny scientific applications of minute amounts of its power (i.e., human electricial pursuits) is just the way that humanity manages to understand and use a tiny fraction of it. Electromagnetism is not one of the underlying mythic forces of the world but rather a modern scientific way of looking at a very small part of one of them. Purviews have been in existence since the dawn of time; they are the underlying forces of the Titans and the great powers that fuel the gods, which means that the powers they grant are equally ancient and universal. Indra, Zeus and Susanoo don't have powers the have to do with electromagnetism; they have powers that have to do with thunder and lightning, because thunder and lightning are part of the collective mythic consciousness of humanity, and specialty sciences of the past two measly centuries are not. If a boon is doing or representing a concept, principle or way of looking at the world that didn't exist in the ancient times that the stories of Titans and gods come from, odds are it's not really appropriate for a boon.

Does this mean your Scion can't be a god of electromagnetism? Of course it doesn't. If that's what he wants to be god of, that's what he should be god of; it just means that he'll have to be a little more creative about how to go about it than just trying to stat up some ill-fitting, obviously modern boons. He's already halfway there, with the power of lightning at his command as a Sky god - remind him that it can be used as a tool as well as a weapon, and try to be sensitive to times when he stunts his lightning powers in such a way that he could legitimately be getting scientific applications out of them (using Storm Augmentation to scramble a computer's brains, for example). Find other powers that might enhance the ideas of magnetism, gravity and electricity he's leaning toward; for example, picking up Axis of the Heavens from to use along with his Sky powers will help him subtly simulate magnetic effects, or getting Unusual Alteration will allow him to give his own body electrical impulses and receptors (like an eel, but more divine). Industry is practically made for gods who want to be scientifically inclined - or, if he isn't interested in making a bunch of awesome electrical toys and relics, encourage him to find someone else who is and find a way to threaten, steal, cajole or quest to gain them. Have him use science in his stunts, his speech, his behavior; being a god of something is about embodying and representing it, so even when he isn't using powers, his badass connection to the forces of electricity can still be expressed.

Really, this is the case for everyone who wants to be god of something off the beaten path, not just those who are science-inclined. Life's easy for the schmoes who just want to be God of Fire or Goddess of Water, but for those who want to be God of Fickle Fortune or Goddess of Inevitable Decay or Goddess of Comforting Humanity, there's always an element of finding the right combination of powers, relics and personal exploits to get that idea across. A god who's strongly about electromagnetism is certainly more esoteric and thus harder to plan for than a god who is merely associated with thunder, but it'll be all the more awesome a payoff for that guy when he becomes a unique young god with his own unique modus operandi. Encourage him to be creative; really, just writing custom boons is about the most boring way I can think of to go about becoming a god of something new or complex.

As for other scientific boons, we've been slowly paring them off the game for years now, leaving only a few small brown spots on our otherwise deliciously mythic apple. Starfire doesn't pose a problem for us, as our rewrite of it has nothing to do with radiation and everything to do with searing, overpowering starlight, but Fusion is possibly my most-hated boon still in the game at the moment. The only reason we haven't removed it is that we genuinely haven't been able to come up with anything better to replace it yet; Sun is very difficult to write for at the high levels, as sun gods tend to spend all their time either moving the sun or being the sun, both of which the purview has already been doing for ages. We're actually not fans of Solar Crown, either, because it's intensely boring for its supposed power level, but if we took both of them out there'd be no level ten Sun boon, so we're keeping the two bad options and working diligently on finding something to replace them before Sowiljr gets to Legend 11 and starts complaining about buying his tenth level of "oh, look, guys, I'm really bright".

Personally, I could see moving Fusion over to Industry, where the gods do have a definite feeling of destroying/devouring/repurposing things into something new. But that's for another day and another great industrious writing project!

Let It Shine

Question: Can you use Disorienting Countenance when you cannot be seen thanks to Phase Cloak, Absorb Light, or mundane stealth?

You can, but you'll become immediately visible; Disorienting Countenance depends upon your impressive appearance, which means that for it to work you have to actually appear. Using it to resist a power immediately breaks any stealth cover you might have been hiding in, whether mundane or supernatural.

It won't prevent you from ducking back into the foliage for your Natural Camouflage or diving back into a Shadow Shroud as soon as it happens, however; since your resist will be happening on the same tick as your antagonist's use of a power on you, you may be able to just hide again before he can react (assuming you don't have abysmally bad Wits; if you do, your Storyteller may rule that your reaction time isn't good enough for that, depending on the situation).

Luckily, this shouldn't come up too much, since being successfully stealthed in the first place is basically three quarters of being immune to social and mental powers anyway; they can't target you if they don't know where you are, so the only things that can affect you are wide-range, non-targeting powers like Loathsome Presence or Bacchanalia. If you can avoid your opponent being able to find you, you've already won half the battle.

But in general, Appearance-heavy Scions don't have the luxury of those who have the mental resist knacks to sit back and refute powers without having to be part of the situation. Scions with Disorienting Countenance are built to be seen and get much of their power from being seen; if they want to access it, they won't be able to do so from behind a comforting veil of invisibility.

The Boss' Wife

Question: So Zeus and Hera tend to be constantly at each others throats, and their (meaning of course Zeus', since Hera, at least in myth, tends to be quite faithful as far as I know) kids often get to be the pawns of their marital arguments, much like Hercules and the Labors. I would say it is safe to imagine that Hera would torment almost any and all Scions of Zeus. Is there any hope for the children of the Olympian king? Or are there always going to be snakes in all their cribs and madness-induced murder?

Hera is, indeed, completely and totally faithful only to Zeus; even the wacky mystery religions, which come up with truly insane side genealogies and affairs for many of the Greek gods, never touch her. As the goddess of marriage and the family who has never had any lover before her husband, she couldn't have any flesh-and-blood Scions of her own without not only breaking the rules but actually flouting her own central representation as a goddess. She has no children that are not also Zeus' children with the possible exception of Hephaestus, who in some alternate versions is her parthenogenic son and does not have a father.

On the other hand, Zeus probably has, like, all the Scions, and you're right, Hera is unlikely to be happy about any of them. While the Titan war has certainly put the gods in dire straits and Scions are certainly necessary for them to eventually triumph, it's unlikely that Hera would be able to ignore her own nature or her husband's infidelity even in the name of cooperation and the war effort (after all, she adopts her Scions, so why can't he?). Scions of Zeus are probably always going to have to deal with her anger and dislike, which could range from infanticide attempts to making their missions hellish to sabotaging their every move when they get to Olympus and are on her home turf. I would say that, in the name of Scion's setting, Hera will probably not actively try to murder Zeus' Scions most of the time as much as make them the most miserable people in creation (murdering their families, for example, totally not off-limits); she's a savvy lady and she understands the need for shock troops, but if calm and logical reason was enough to override five dots of Vengeance, none of the Greek gods would have half the problems they do.

If you're worried about Scions of Zeus feeling too picked on, feel free to spread the anti-love around to other Scions who spring from Zeus' misbehavior; after all, Greek gods are all about punishing several generations of those who offend them, so Scions of Hermes, Apollo, Artemis or Persephone might also find her wrath turned upon them for being the grandchildren of Zeus' affairs. (Scions of Dionysus may be exempt, since he's the only illegitimate child of her husband who ever managed to convince Hera that he was a great guy and she should love him. Beleagured targets of her wrath may want to go beg him for advice on how he did it.)

Or if you're looking for a way to have a Scion of Zeus who doesn't have a giant bullseye painted on his forehead, consider having him be the son of both Zeus and Hera instead of born out of wedlock; as long as Hera was willing to take on a low-Legend Avatar form for the conception and birth, we rule that goddesses can give birth to Scions who aren't full gods from the outset (this is what Vishnu and Lakshmi, and other famously monogamous couples, usually do in our games). Of course, that depends on whether your Storyteller is down with it - I know of some games that require both parents to be in low-Legend Avatar form to have non-god children, and some that don't allow it at all - but it might be a good workaround for that rare, shining Scion of Hera who is her blood child, or of Zeus who isn't marked for extraordinarily angry goddess reprisal.

By the way, an interesting theory was suggested to me via email by a fellow Scion enthusiast the other day; the idea was that since the prophecy that Zeus' son will overthrow him is still in effect, Hera is actually killing off all his bastards in an effort to protect him from it coming to pass, rather than just because she hates them (though, again, Vengeance, so she probably hates them at least a little). They don't know who the mother of this prophesied son might be, so Hera may actually be acting to save her husband from himself and preserve their rule of Olympus by murdering children who might threaten him when they grow up. Considering that Scions are exactly the sort of children who have mighty prophecies spring up around them, she wouldn't be off-base to fear that any new son might be the chosen one. So for those looking for a version of Hera that is more sympathetic and supports the legendary solidity of their marriage more, that might be an interesting plot point all on its own.

Alas, Scions of Zeus will always have a hard row to hoe, even if they're trying their very best to impress their cranky stepmother. But that's how it goes when you're the destined sons of the ruler of the Greek universe; nobody said being at the top was going to be easy.

The Craft God Experience

A day late but better than no day at all, it's time for the vlog!

Question: What does your homebrew crafting system look like? What can a hero-level crafter do vs. a demigod crafter vs. a God-level crafter? And how do you use this system in your games?

Question: If you are feeling particularly generous, maybe you could also answer who can create/forge relics and how. Obviously dwarves can, and so can senior smith/crafter gods with high levels of industry. Even Industry 6: User Unnecessary seems to imply that by the time Scions hit mid demigod, some can create relics (minor ones at least). Can you confirm? Is industry needed to create relics? What kind of a system do you use?

Question: Why isn't Industry finished yet? We need to build stuff! Oh, and will it have a crafting system, too?

And seriously like five more, you guys know who you are.

John apologizes in advance for being rambly, but promises that he got around to the important points by the end. Also, he claims he was distracted by passing cars.

Hey, Look, Another Reason

Question: For the Code of Heaven Justice boon, what are the offenses for the pantheons you have created like the Anunna?

We've actually posted those up here before, but I don't blame you for not finding them in the primordial soup of our archives. For you, and anybody else that might have missed it, check out this post for not just the Code of Heaven offenses, but also Scent the Divine/Scent the Titanic sensations and Vestiges of a Distant Past abilities.

A Huge Drag

Question: I’ve noticed that you have links to the stories that you use to make your justifications on the pantheon pages. Could you perhaps do so on the blog for the pantheons you have in PDF? Specifically the Bogovi, to which I can find no reference in which Veles isn’t described as a dragon/snake fighting Perun.

Actually, we provide the stories on gods' individual pages to give our players a chance to read a little bit about the gods they're considering playing Scions of without having to wander around lost in their local libraries or internet searches; it's nice to know what god-parents do in their myths and to read about their exploits prior to a game's campaign. But they do also sometimes serve the double purpose of illustrating the associated powers and abilities of the gods through their actions, which never hurts.

At the moment, while the Anunna are active in our games, the Bogovi, Apu and Elohim are not, so we've been bending the sweat of our brows to working on other projects instead (additionally, John doesn't want to muddy the waters too much for our players by introducing a bunch of pantheons that may not be open for play yet). Considering that you're definitely not the first person to ask about them recently, though, the idea's still on the table. (Look, John, all I'm saying is that the people clearly want it.)

I'm totally all about discussing Veles, though, in the meantime! The characterization of Veles as a dragon that battles Perun is the result of comparative mythological reconstructionism, which is a long, complex-looking phrase that basically means it's made up based on other nearby cultures' myths. The theory was popularized by a pair of linguist-folklorists named Ivanov and Toporov; their reasoning basically boils down as follows.

1) Perun is clearly the storm god.
2) In most nearby cultures' myths, the storm god battles a dragon. (Indra versus Vritra, Teshub versus Illuyanka, Thor versus Jormungandr, Zeus versus Typhon, and so on and so forth.)
3) Therefore, Perun must fight a dragon.
4) Fragmentary sources indicate that Perun and Veles have an antagonistic relationship.
5) Therefore, Veles must be a dragon.

There's more to it, mostly linguistic connections from folktales, but that's the gist of the idea. However, we really didn't like it very much at all and chose not to include it in our Scion treatment because its basis is so very sketchy. There's no epigraphical, artistic or story evidence anywhere of Veles as a dragon; the closest you can get are some images of snakes, but snakes are a classic underworld symbol in many cultures and may not indicate that Veles himself is one as much as they're just indicating the presence of death. Other scholars, equally (or, in my ever-humble opinion, more) as reputable as Ivanov and Toporov, have reconstructed very different tales for Veles, including the root of his quarrel with Perun being the fact that he is occasionally lovers with Perun's wife and kidnapped one of his sons to raise as his own, all of which is understandably irritating but again none of which involves any hint of dragonhood. In fact, many of the widely-accepted bits of lore about Veles - the fact that oaths were sworn on him as well as on Perun, for example, or his syncretization after Christianization with the benevolent and protective Saint Nicholas - don't really seem to match up to the theory at all.

And in case you've run across the also-popular idea of Perun as the eagle atop the Slavic world tree, opposed to Veles as the dragon at its roots, that's yet another separate layer of theory that didn't come from Ivanov and Toporov, and which we haven't been able to find any reliable sourcing for at all. I suspect it's someone making a connection based on the idea of the opposed eagle and dragon Nidhoggr in Norse mythology, but there's no reason to suppose that Slavic mythology is going to be the same without proof.

Veles and Perun definitely don't get along all the time, but it's our pretty firm opinion that there's no reason to assume that the underworld god is a dragon, nor to assume that he represents a cosmic evil kept at bay by Perun. There's no evidence of these things in what little we still have of Slavic mythology, and we're not about to go assuming that all cultures must have the same myths, even when they may have similar roots at one point or another; there are similar facets and tales across Indo-European mythology, certainly, but there are also a startling array of diversions.

Sources on Veles that aren't based on the Ivanov/Toporov theory can be hard to find, and most of them aren't available in English (why is it that English-speaking academia isn't interested in this subject? Come on, guys!). The best English source for non-dragonish Slavic lore is Hudec's Tales from Slavic Myth, which contains narrative stories of his connections to the underworld and fertility rites. (And if you're fluent in Croatian or have a really good translator, the works of Radoslav Katicic and Vitomir Belaj are very interesting indeed.)

It would be a pretty large undertaking to post up stories here for every god of every one of our custom pantheons, so forgive me for not doing so in this post. I hope we can get the Bogovi some web space of their own soon, but until then, we're always happy to share if you have specific questions or want to know about a specific deity, either here (preferably as single posts, the way we've recently discussed Stribog and Baal) or if you email us.

Late video! BAH

So, we filmed the Vlog for this week.  But we attempted to film it on IPad for easier editing.  Editing went well, but rendering it is taking FOREVER.  After rendering have to figure out how to get it to the PC....its gonna be an adventure.  But it'll be up as soon as possible, no later then tomorrow afternoon.  Here is an awesome picture of Jormongondr to tide you over.

The Word of the Day is Theme

Question: What do you think the themes of each pantheon are (Dodekatheon pursuing excellence, the Aesir fighting courageously against Fate, the Aztlanti being completely devovoted to continuity, etc.)?

That's actually a pretty massive question, ambitiously anonymous person! There are indeed slews of themes, motifs and common ideas connecting each pantheon's members with each other, the world and their worshipers. There are so many, in fact, that it's difficult to try to give a general overview of them all - and that's just the big ones, not the themes of individual gods and their interactions within them.

Basically, you have asked us for a philosophical dissertation, which we don't quite have the time to write right now. But don't worry, we still have time for some quick and dirty generalizations for Scion - after all, these are the big ideas that are hiding behind every game's curtain, and the more of them you know, the more you can take advantage of them in your epic tales.

The Aesir: The theme of the doomed struggle against Fate is definitely the core of the Norse gods, and it's important to remember that it's not just the struggle, it's the fact that they will eventually lose. The inevitable doom, the idea that no matter what they do, even the wisest and strongest among them can't overcome Fate, is the major core idea these gods have going on; they are a pantheon-sized object lesson in Fate as the highest power in the divine universe. Other major themes of the Aesir include the destruction of the old to make way for the new (most strongly in the rebirth of the world after Ragnarok), the idea that violence always begets more violence (strongly present in chains of events wherein one person's violent or evil act causes a chain reaction that repeats it through several more parties), and the idea that civilization and mankind (represented by the Aesir) must always conquer the natural world (represented by the Vanir) to survive.

The Amatsukami: The most major theme of the Japanese pantheon is that the natural order must be adhered to, and that breaking its laws inevitably causes heartbreak and trouble. You see this all over their stories, from Izanagi's and Izanami's botched first marriage when she flouted the rules of decorum leading to the creation of abominable monstrosities to Tsuki-Yomi's destruction of the food-bearing Uke Mochi and subsequent banishment to Susanoo's wildly chaotic behavior resulting in plunging the entire world into darkness. The rules - of the ruler, the world and the universe itself - are paramount in Japanese mythology, and its gods demonstrate time and time again that those who break them always pay the price. Other major themes of the Amatsukami include the triumph of reason over emotion (usually involving the myths of Susanoo) and the inviolable sovereignty of the Japanese people, typified in myths where they go off to conquer Korea or are protected from invaders by the breath of the gods.

The Anunna: The most major core idea of the Mesopotamian gods is the ability of order to conquer chaos, no matter how mighty it might otherwise be. The best example of this is Marduk's battle with Tiamat, in which he is able to conquer the most ancient and powerful primordial creature in existence thanks to his divine right to rule and lay down law, but it appears all over, repeated again with the invention of humanity to quell the Igigi uprising, the restoration of the world after the floods (and the spurring of the floods based on the chaotic noise of humanity), and so on and so forth. Other major themes of the Anunna include the finally sovereign power of death (most notably in the myths of Ishtar's death and Gilgamesh's quest for immortality) as a part of the natural order, the importance of following appropriate political and social rules (such as when Enki and Sin are excoriated for not courting and marrying their wives properly, or Ereshkigal responds angrily to the implied insult of the gods' messenger) and civilization as a divine gift from the gods to humanity (which basically all the Anunna do at some time or another).

The Aztlanti: You mentioned the major one - the core theme of the Aztec gods is that the world needs constant nourishment and caretaking or it may die, making each and every deity a steward and servant of the greater communal good. Anyone who refuses to take on their cosmic responsibilities, from gods who refuse to become part of the workings of the world to humans who refuse to offer up a little blood to fuel them, is actively aiding the entropy of the universe, leaving its gods and maintainers weaker and less effective than they might otherwise have been. Aztec society is notoriously harsh to even its own members, and this is the reason why; if you're not contributing to the cosmic support system, you're a drain on it. Other major Aztlanti themes include the idea that privation and trials make you stronger and more fit (most typified by the Mexica themselves and their long nomadic piligrimage before founding Tenochtitlan), the concept of eternal cycles that repeat themselves endlessly (in the various worlds created by the suns, each destroyed to become a new one, and in their circular calendrical and religious systems) and the idea that no person is complete alone (because they must always be completed by some other part of the universe, be it a nahualli, familial relations or the civic community).

The Celestial Bureaucracy: The gods of China are a fractured and fractious bunch, but they share a common overarching theme, and that is that the chaotic many together form a unified, ordered whole. Sometimes this manifests through rulers who unite the warring factions with long battle campaigns, sometimes through gods who unite them with wisdom and magical power, but no matter how crazy shit gets, it always gets pulled together and put in a reasonable order in the end. Even the Nezhas and Sun Wukongs of the pantheon become part of its overarching order by the end of their stories; balance and counterbalance, check and order, dominate the zany world of Chinese myth. Other major themes of the Shen include the importance of insult (which often prompts gods to do insane things to avenge a perceived slight), the idea that true enlightened bliss is almost always out of reach thanks to the flaws of the person seeking it (most often present when people fail to pass Xiwangmu's tests, but also strong in the myth of Houyi's and Chang'e's separation), and the strong notion that the universe isn't fair and sometimes your life has to suck for the greater good of the many.

The Devas: The Devas are a playful bunch with a lot going on, but their most major theme is probably the idea that appearances are deceiving, and no matter how convincing or important it appears, the material and illusory is never as important as the spiritual and religious foundation of the universe. This is illustrated strongly in the concept of maya itself, but also appears in various myths across their landscape, including the destruction of Kubera's home by Ganesha, the continual disguised pranking of asuras by Vishnu, and the attempts of Vishnu and Brahma to find the end of Shiva's lingua. Other important themes for the Devas include privation as the path to wisdom (most strongly illustrated by Shiva and Parvati, but often seen in other characters who perform ascetic penance to gain religious power), that spirituality is an ongoing process rather than a goal (usually shown by asuras or other figures who gain boons for their religious devotion, immediately stop being devoted and end up getting punked for it), and that the truly holy and enlightened are always worthy of respect, even from the gods (easily noted in the punishment of Indra for slaying Vritra or the curse levied on Vishnu for accidentally striking a rishi).

The Dodekatheon: While the pursuit of excellence is indeed a major idea among the Greek gods (and the ancient Greek people, too), I'd say that the major theme of the pantheon's myths is and always has been the punishment of hubris. It's everywhere, from the endless stories of gods punishing mortals who dare compare themselves to divinity on up to a massive scale with the imprisonment of Prometheus; those who challenge divine authority out of their own pride are always heinously punished for presuming to place themselves on its same level, whether it's humans aspiring to godhood or gods aspiring to usurp the powers of the universe. There are a lot of other major themes for the Greek gods, but some of the most notable are the inescapable sins of the fathers (from, again, mortals who get ruined because one of their ancestors insulted someone on up to Zeus himself, who is doomed to suffer the same fate as his father and grandfather), the overwhelming power of emotion and love (usually presented by Aphrodite or Eros forcing some god to flout the laws of the universe for love, but often seen without their direct intervention, too) and the equation of excellence, skill and beauty with virtue, rightness and justice (Apollo is basically the personification of this, but it's true for the entire pantheon).

The Loa: As usual, it's hard to talk about the Loa because the ideals of New World religions featuring them differ widely from the religious themes of the African religions they came from; some ideas even directly oppose each other, such as the African mythic idea that defiance of the natural order is always a bad and punishable idea versus the Loa mythic idea that chaos and disruption are simply part of the natural order to begin with and thus just as valid to support. The strongest theme of African (and specifically Yoruba) mythology is probably the idea of life being a journey toward one's destiny; unlike the set-in-stone idea of destiny favored in Europe, Yoruba culture tends to view an individual's destiny as the goal of their life and encourages everyone to work toward achieving theirs. It might be good, it might not, but if you fail to achieve your destiny through inaction, ignorance or poor choices, your life was only a wasted attempt to arrive at it. While this idea doesn't really carry over into Candomble/Vaudun/Santeria too much, it is an active underpinning of some of those religions - particularly, the idea that the New World African populations bounced back so strongly from their enslavement and disenfranchisement precisely because they saw it as part of the great journey of their lives and sought to make something good come of it.

The Nemetondevos: The Gaulish gods are each perfect embodiments of their major theme, that of a culture's gods sharing the fate of its people. From their close association with the ancient Gauls to their near-destruction when they failed to save them from Roman invasion, they represent the idea that every religion is dependent on its people and believers to flourish, and that without them even gods die. Other major themes of the obscure mainland Celtic gods include the futile struggle against a Fate which can't really be altered (very similar to the Aesir) and the idea of necessary sacrifice to placate dangerous or hungry powers in the universe.

The Pesedjet: The Pesedjet represent the eternal struggle of order against chaos, constantly battling the primordial powers of the universe to make room for the fragile lives of the order-loving gods and humanity. Ra's struggle with Apep every night is the most obvious example of this, but Egyptian mythology is rife with it, and we also see it when the creator deities (Ra, Ptah, the Ogdoad) create the universe from the primordial sludge in order to populate it, when the Eye of Ra must be brought back from its rampages and made a productive member of society, and when the dynasty of Osiris, representative of order, triumphs over his chaotic brother Set. Other major themes of the pantheon include the value of intelligence and guile over mere physical might (as in the tales of Horus winning the throne through trickery) and the almighty importance of the afterlife (which is protected, overseen and worked on by more gods than some pantheons even have), an incredibly necessary part of the universe to prevent the oblivion of a poor death and guide the righteous to their second, paradisaical life.

The Tuatha de Danann: It's sometimes hard to find a unifying thread in the spastic soup of the Irish gods, all hacking and shouting away at their enemies and each other, but the most major theme that emerges is a surprisingly simple and hearty one: the choices you make matter, and there is nothing more important than being a good person (by ancient Irish standards, anyway). The idea of geasa is the single strongest expression of this; breaking a geas - which is your sworn word and a sacred covenant with the world - usually results in immediate death, because you've made a choice that broke your word and are therefore forfeit. Various myths continually hammer the idea that your personal honor and behavior are your most important possessions; examples of those who fail include Bres, whose tyranny results in his humiliation, expulsion and defeat, or the sons of Tuireann, whom Lugh allows to die in spite of their attempts to make restitution. Among the Tuatha, there isn't much restitution to go around. Other major themes of the Irish gods include the idea of a faraway paradise across the sea accessible even to mortals (Mag Mell, the fairy realms or even Tir na Nog), the right of the conqueror to anything he is able to conquer (typified in the waves of invasions of Ireland and the implicit divine right of Nuada to rule despite the fact that he took the island from people already living there) and the idea of the dangerously powerful female who can affect and change the outcome of her male counterparts' efforts (the Morrigan is the most obvious, but other figures, from the obviously powerful like Scathach and Aoife to the active and dynamic figures like Emer or Medb to the pitiful but undoubtedly polarizing Dierdre).

The Yazata: The Yazata so strongly embody their major ideas that it's hard to choose one, but the largest one upon which the rest of their cosmology hangs is the idea of dualism; black and white, good and evil, two opposing forces that do not permit shades of grey between them. They are personified as Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, and there are no semi-good or only kind-of evil figures in Persian mythology; you either serve one or the other, and doing so immediately makes you the dire enemy of the opposition. Other important themes for the Yazata include the idea of the absolute perfection and purity of truth (to a degree that any lie, no matter how small or well-intentioned, is considered a weapon of Ahriman), the cleansing purity of flame as the most holy of elements (notable when Atar manages to back down Azhi Dahaka and save Mithra with little more than the threat of that purifying heat, and extremely evident in fire's central place in Zoroastrian worship) and the concept that every living thing, no matter how small, insignificant or apparently uninvolved, is a soldier and contributer to the great war of good against evil.

So there's a quick snapshot of some of the major ideas, concepts and themes of each of the published pantheons; they're our personal picks, so if you feel a different idea is more of the "main" one for a pantheon, or you love another concept that wasn't mentioned, that's awesome and you should pursue it. (Actually, you should also tell us all about it in the comments, because the more ideas for heroic chronicles, the better for everyone, right?)