Question: Why is Cradlesong a Health Boon? Singing people to sleep doesn't seem like something Health gods would do, mythically speaking. I understand that putting people to sleep is something that gods do, but wouldn't Moon, or perhaps Darkness, as traditional bringers of night and sleep, be better fits (preferably minus the singing)?
Cradlesong has a lot of different stuff going on, but at the moment, it's staying in Health for us because there really isn't anywhere better for it to go, and it definitely ought to be somewhere. There are a few basic reasons:
Being able to put someone to sleep is definitely something a god of Health should be able to do. They have complete command over the body; it'd be pretty silly to say that they could give it insane diseases, boost its healing factor out the window, simulate the effects of drugs or curse it with unending frailty, but that somehow they couldn't actually make it go unconscious without injuring it until it falls apart. Things that directly affect the body the way putting someone to sleep does are what Health is all about.
Now, the musical aspect of it is definitely frustrating for some characters; it could probably stand to be pared away to leave the boon stuntable however a Scion wishes, but it being there at all is an attempt by the book's original writers to be more mythically resonant, not less. Most cases of people being put mysteriously to sleep in myths and fairy tales involve music as the trigger; the writers were probably mostly looking at the story of Orpheus putting Cerberus to sleep with his lyre, the Irish tale of Aillen lulling all of Tara to sleep with music each year until he was slain by Finn MacCool, or the Welsh goddess Rhiannon whose songs were said to have the power to awaken the dead and put the living to sleep.
Not that there aren't times that people get magically put to sleep without music - in particular, I seem to recall Hypnos saying something along the lines of "I'm not here to play instruments, dudes, I'm here to make you nap" - but it does have mythic precedent. I'd probably say that it should be changed to a more general effect - just a boon that allows you to put someone else to sleep - and that musical Scions could stunt their lullabies however they needed to.
As for Moon and Darkness, while both are associated with nighttime and nighttime is in a general way associated with sleep, I'm not sure either is a good fit for this power. The only lunar deity that has anything whatsoever to do with sleepytimes that I can think of is Selene with her eternally-slumbering Endymion, and even that depends on whether you like the version of the story where she's the one with sleep powers or the one in which Zeus does it for her. I think you could do some creative things with Moon powers that are already out there; in particular, Cycle of Madness could inflict hypersomnia or narcolepsy on victims if you wanted it to. I'm not sure the purview needs a separate power to do with sleeping, since the Moon representationally has little to do with the idea.
I don't know if I like the idea of the put-to-sleep boon moving completely over to Darkness, where it also doesn't seem to fit very well, but I could definitely see creating some kind of gentle sleep-enhancing power for low-level Darkness users. The purview's loaded up pretty heavily on perceptive darkness and terror, but it could possibly stand another gentle night-style boon or two.
I'm putting both those ideas in the boon changelog for future consideration!
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