Question: Is it possible in the Scion setting for gods to turn mortals into gods? There are many stories of gods taking lovers and raising them to godhood themselves - could Folkwardr do this for his wife? Another example would be Dionysus and bringing his mother to become a god, or at least an immortal. Thoughts?
The quick and easy answer is no. Within Scion, there is no way for a mortal to become a god; that's the sole province of Scions, who by virtue of their divine blood are able to climb the ranks of great heroes and become divinities themselves. That's what makes them so special and awesome, and makes them the stars of the setting. Mortals have no such power; the most they can hope for is becoming a Legendary Mortal who can be awesome and badass by human reckoning but who can never rise above Legend 1.
However, there are lots of ways to play with the concept in Scion (and we've actually talked about it before a few times!). For one thing, Scions are basically mortals before they receive their Visitation; they have no Legend rating and, unless a god has already interfered, no idea they aren't normal mortals, albeit probably unusually talented ones. Most tales of mortals ascending to godhood are probably just tales of Scions, people who started as humans, gained in Legend after coming into their divine heritage and eventually took their place among the pantheons. Dionysus' mother Semele is a perfect example; she's the daughter of Harmonia, Greek goddess of harmony and peace, and granddaughter of Aphrodite and Ares, so she's most likely a Scion of one of the three of them (or even of Dionysus himself, via the magic of the Scion Adoption Rite).
There are also plenty of other things you can do to safeguard true mortals that aren't candidates for Scionhood. Folkwardr long ago had Jioni use Control Aging on Ahouva to make her practically immortal, and other Health boons to cleanse her of all human illnesses and physical frailties she might have had. As long as no one kills her, she'll live for at least centuries longer. Famous magical relics and substances might also make mortals undying, including the Peaches of Immortality, Ambrosia of Olympus or Mead of Eternal Youth. Various boons, mostly in PSPs (Deuogdonio, Heku, Jotunblut), allow Scions to make mortals into Legendary beings - not gods, but still immortal and more than human. And then there are plenty of basic buffs you can bestow on humans, including granting immunities and Stamina knacks with the Guardian purview, that make them a cut above the average mortal.
Of course, they'll still be mortals at heart - they won't be able to gain Legend and will never be gods. But then again, I think Folkwardr prefers it that way; he's pretty glad, most of the time, that his wife doesn't have crazy magical agendas of her own.
So what does that mean if you have mortal followers? John's system makes it so that your followers go up in Legend alongside you, so what if, for example, you're playing a Cop and your follower is your (mortal) partner? Does being your Follower effectively make them a Legendary Being, not a God but like an Elf or something?
ReplyDeleteFollowers are a different kettle of fish; they aren't separate, individual creatures but rather Birthrights that a Scion owns, so they don't follow the same rules as everything else. They are in effect just as much a magical tool you own as your relic sword is, so them going up in Legend is a function of their Birthright dots. They're part of you, not individual creatures, so they can go up in Legend with you where normal creatures of their kind wouldn't.
DeleteSo no, they won't turn into elves or anything (unless you want to make that happen and find a way or something!). They'll just be escalatingly magical Followers. Being Followers is what makes them legendary - they're part of your Legend and don't have their own.
I think what Jacob is getting at is that completely mortal followers can be turned into legendary followers by adding birthright dots.
DeleteIf the mortal followers don't turn legendary (somehow), then it creates all kinds of screwy math problems.
Once they are linked to a birthright they stop being people. Itd be like if you took a human and use animal to make him into a Minotaur. He suddenly becomes legendary.
DeleteOh, I know. That's exactly what I'm saying: they'll go up in Legend, but it's because they're Birthrights. They go up in Legend because you go up in Legend, because they're part of you. They don't count as normal mortals; they're by definition a magical tool that you own. They get to do things mortals don't because they're not really mortals, just magical Followers of yours (after all, death isn't permanent for them, either, is it?).
DeleteIf it's simpler, think of them as not going up in "Legend", but rather just going up in Birthright points and therefore becoming more powerful, just like a birthright sword would. Legend is just a useful shorthand way of representing their power as magical dudes you happen to own.
I find this really weird to imagine because my current Scion has five Followers who are his former police buddies, one of whom has a wife and kids, and the rest are all fully stated people with personalities. I get that Scions are awesome, but are mortals really that, completely, utterly, pointless? I find it almost insulting, considering we are all mortal ourselves...
DeleteYes? Its just factual in the game right? Numbers wise its pretty easy to see that after a bit, mortals are pointless.
DeleteDo you find it insulting? Dont most of us wish we were more then normal mortals? Werent you waiting around age 13 for your mutant power to kick in?
Not at all! Followers can still have personalities, drives, goals and relationships; they still matter in every way any other character matters. Your Scion - or anyone else - can still be friends, lovers or whatever else with them. (The same goes for mortals who aren't Followers.)
DeleteThe thing is that when you make someone a Follower, you are directly taking away their free will and self-determination; you're making them a Birthright, bound to you, forever and always. They can't disobey you and will never leave you again unless you want them to. That doesn't mean they stop being people, but it does mean that the days when they were in charge of their lives are over. You're in charge of their lives now. In a very real sense, you own them. When you make them your Followers, you make them part of your Legend; they no longer have the option to write a story of their own.
It really depends on what you mean by "pointless" - if you mean, can they ever go toe to toe with magical stuff in the setting, then yeah, they're pointless. They don't have that kind of power and they can't attain it. But if you mean pointless as in not mattering to the setting, then no; mortals are very important. They're the favored agents of Fate. There's a reason that it's only mortals whose Fatebonds matter; they become part of your story and you part of theirs, and they can shape the very fabric of your being with their beliefs about you. That's incredible power - so much power that the gods actively refuse to go down to the world for fear of it. In that arena, they're not only not pointless, they're the highest power available.
Mortals can always be full character with stats and personalities - it's just that you, as a Scion and later a god, will always be more than they are. Even if you don't make them your Birthrights, you'll warp them just from being around them - your social Epics will overwhelm them, your divine abilities will awe them, and above all your spending of Legend will Fatebind them to you and they will begin to play a role in your Legend.
But they will also warp you in return, because that's how Fatebonds work. They'll never be able to truly challenge, fight or disagree with you - but just as you have the power to do things to them with your divine powers that they're helpless to stop, they have the power to rewrite the very fabric of your being with Fatebonds.
Mortals are awesome. They're just awesome in a very, very different way from Scions.
To be clear: Followers who start as mortal won't get Fatebound to you, because they're no longer normal mortals but Birthrights. Once they become Followers, the normal rules for mortals stop applying to them.
DeleteNow what about Yama or Sedna (Inuit)? I have heard a few legends of Mortals dying very early in their world's creation and ending up becoming the cultures death gods. Is it safe to assume that at least in the Scion setting they are the odd ones out? Or that with enough digging they have some divine blood in them?
ReplyDeleteProbably neither truly mortal to begin with. Sedna's never actually said to be mortal in her stories - she just happens to be operating in an environment that looks a lot like where mortals live, but that doesn't necessarily mean we should assume she was mortal, and her father is often considered a deity as well (and considering her serious hate-on with said father, I'd say deciding she was a Scion is also a viable route to go). Yama's weirder because he is explicitly said to be mortal, but then again there are also other old sources that refer to him as always having been a Deva, so it's probably easiest to assume he was a Scion as well. (Which begs the question of which sadistic god engendered him specifically to dump him in Naraka for eternity, eh?)
DeleteA sadistic god who's big on harmony, I'd imagine. Someone has got to take charge down there
DeleteIf Svarozhich managed it for Pizamar, it seems a little unfair to put it off-limits for Scions. Not, of course, that it was simple. It should be an epic quest of multiple steps, but I don't think that it's productive to give players a flat 'no, sorry'.
ReplyDeleteI agree, but Pizamar is literally the only cut-and-dried example of a mortal becoming a god I have ever seen in any mythology. Ever. Everyone else is either ambiguous (i.e., is also said to just have been a god to start with) or fits into the Scion paradigm (i.e., had parents or grandparents who were gods). Pizamar's the only example ever where someone goes straight from 100% mortal with no divine lineage to full-on deity.
DeleteI think you could do it the way Svarozhich did it (if you can get past all the obstacles), but until I see another example of that happening in some other myth, I don't want to add a bunch of other random ways to do it. I've got one example out of all the world myth I know. That's not a lot to go basing an extra system on (though of course if there's more out there, I'd be happy to hear about it!).
The only other thing I can think is that The Savior might be able to make a mortal divine by blending divine blood with theirs even though they weren't born that way. I could get down with that (though I might also want to require that they still Legend up like Scions do). So there's another possibility - but a ridiculously unlikely one, considering the power involved and the general lack of gods with extra power to burn on mortals right now.
I had a player get married to a mortal and decide to follow in Svarozhich's steps. His wife is now a Legend 7 Goddess, very minor and not really *treated* as a Goddess by anyone. She's much closer to being his Follower than an independent divine figure. As a Mortal she was very heavily Fatebound to him and while that no longer affects her as fully, it certainly shaped her personality and outlook.
DeleteHe's Russian MurderBatman and she's his Lois Lane. He became the God of Just Punishment and she became the Goddess of True Stories.
Legend 7 goddess?
DeleteNot to complain but Lois Lane was Superman's girlfriend...Sorry.
DeleteVicki Vail.
DeleteAlthough its not really a lois lane situation. Batman doesnt give a fuck
Batman is a boss.
DeleteWould the origin story of Tlazolteotl as a sacrificed woman turned deity qualify? Or is she said to have some divine lineage prior to her apotheosis?
DeleteOh, hey, that's a good one! We were just proceeding on the assumption that she was a Scion, but no, the mortal princess in question has no explicit divine heritage. Blow me down, we have two examples of a god directly granting a mortal immortality (although one involved murdering them and the other was a lot more pleasant).
DeleteHmmmm.
Aaaand by immortality I obviously meant godhood. End of the workday brain is foggy.
DeleteYeah, Batman doesn't have a Lois Lane, but this NPC is to Russian-Murder-Batman what Lois Lane is to Superman. She's a nosy investigative reporter that follows him around, gets into trouble, requires saving and is in love with him.
DeleteShe is a Legend 7 Goddess because she was made into a Goddess (he did the whole Goddess-making-stuff) but she's not a very strong one at all. She has very little Legend of her own, so she isn't Legend 9. She has no Associated Powers at all aside from Prav. I like the idea that there can be "lesser" Gods. There are tons of minor Kami and Gods of springs and rivers that aren't nearly important enough to be Legend 9 but are still worshiped and revered are "Gods"
Thought - could that excuse, The Savior being used to make a mortal's blood mixed with the divine, be an excuse for someone like Hera to create a Scion of herself without outright adopting somebody else's kid? It'd certainly make an interesting plotline for a character and allow you to play a Scion of Hera without the question of 'whose kid did she adopt' and the all-time question of why Hera adopted you to begin with and didn't kill you for being illegitimate spawn?
DeleteIf your ST ruled that it was possible, probably, but I would say it'd have to be exceptionally rare and you'd need some super important reason she sank that much of an insane resource investment when she didn't have to. Hera don't have the time to be blowing all her Legend on an Avatar (especially since she'd probably be doing it in the Fatebond-rife world if she was working with a true mortal baby) to get a Scion when she can do an adoption rite for a third that cost (or better yet, get someone else to do it). She's not just sitting around Olympus doing nothing; she's a major part of this scary Titan war, too.
DeleteHera doesn't randomly kill children for being born out of wedlock; she just kills her husband's children for being born out of wedlock, so as long as the adoptee isn't Zeus-spawn, he's probably not going to be put down. As goddess of marriage she'd definitely frown on any children born to cheatery, but she could just as easily adopt a Scion of one of the many unmarried gods (Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Hecate and Ares are all single just within the Dodekatheon), which probably wouldn't be nearly as big a deal.
Hera looks like a psychopathic nutcase of a mom in the Scion books and other modern media like the Percy Jackson books which for some reason paint her as hating all Scions everyone, but she has plenty of maternal instinct and care (a lot, in fact, being partially goddess of mothering!) and isn't always malevolent. If you asked Jason, he'd say she was awesome.
I think her adopting a child of Ares might actually have a lot of neat potential for a good relationship, actually - she'd be the kid's real grandmother, and he'd therefore be one of the few Scions sprung from her legitimate marriage with Zeus.
DeleteSame goes for any of her other children, too (although most of them are married).
well, if you asked Jason THEN...probably not so much now, as I imagine Hera gives the ghost of Jason a living hell for what he did to Medea.
DeleteDon't get me wrong, I LOVE Hera. I know she's a wonderful mother, and a great goddess. As far as mortals go, they have plenty of reasons to love Hera. She's a protector of women and children and faithful men and I find her, rather paradoxically, to be the most benevolent of the Dodekatheon, after MAYBE Athena (though Athena is more 'Good Is Not Nice.')
The problem I see is that EVERY Scion is born out of wedlock. Sure, Ares isn't married, but that's the point - he isn't married. He isn't married to a Goddess, and he isn't married to your Scion character's Mom, either. He probably just slept with her one day and left her surprisingly intact. You are just a bastard. Why should you have the right of being adopted by the Queen of Olympus, regardless of your parentage?
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of being a child of Ares adopted by Hera. I think it's awesome...and I REALLY, REALLY, want to be a Scion of Hera someday. The problem is that no matter how I look at it, it's just so unjustifiable to me and it drives me nuts.
This brings up a really huge metaphysical question. Are all things Legend 9+ gods in their own right? If not, does that mean gods are a metaphysical 'species' like human or dolphin?
ReplyDeleteIf you have a legend 10 giant, is that giant now a god? Or is he still a giant? Or both? Or something entirely different? If this is too huge of a question for a comment, then please pop it into the queue. :D
Oh, man... that is a huge question. And a neat one.
DeleteI'd say no, if you're 9+ Legend you're not necessarily a god by default? Titans aren't, and neither are 9+ Typhonian beasts. You could also probably have a lesser immortal hit Legend 9 if he or she was sufficiently excellent for some reason - but most lesser immortals that do that do cross the line to godhood, like Idun. Hmm.
Scion sets the world up very clearly to say that you can't be a god unless you're Legend 9+; that's the cutoff point. But it's not clear about saying that you have to be a god if you're 9+, so I'd say there's room to fudge there. Most beings that get that important and powerful probably do become either gods or Titans, joining one of the major groups of powers, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to have the occasional free agent.
Certainly Legend 9+ horror-beasts are easily created by gods with the Animal purview, so it'd be very weird if they were creating new gods all the time that way. I'd say if you have something non-Scion crest Legend 9, it can go try to become a god by getting a pantheon to adopt it, but won't necessarily automatically become a deity.
You know, I have never thought of titan avatars as anything but gods.
DeleteReally ancient gods that are generally so jaded they have become incredibly distant from humanity. Really ancient gods that are tremendously powerful with most of their epics and relevant purviews maxed, or nearly maxed. Really ancient gods that now have more in common with the universal forces that are Greater Titans.
But still gods.
I mostly agree, actually. There are no Titans that you couldn't also say were either gods or Typhonian beasts of immense power. But the system does treat them as a different class of beings, at least mechanically (they have weaknesses against their opposing elements, they can't have Ultimates which is pretty dumb but whatever, they can create Titanspawn but not true Scions, and so on). The system's weird about it - but I would think that the only difference is that they trade away some of their free agency in order to pull from the primordial power of the Titanrealms, right?
DeleteI actually think I submitted a very similar question to Anne yesterday! That'll be fun when/if it comes up!
DeleteThere's Anna Perenna, a minor goddess of the Roman new year whose festival was on the Ides of March.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Ovid, she's either: Dido's sister Anna, who became a goddess after she drowned in a river; or an old woman who showed kindness to Rome's plebeians way back in the city's early years and was rewarded with worship.
Mars asked her to set him up with Minerva. but instead she dressed herself up as Minerva and almost tricked Mars into marrying her - she only revealed herself on the day of the wedding, just as he went in for a kiss.
I doubt that Mars is the sharpest sword in the armory, but still, a former mortal tricking an undisputed Legend 12 is a pretty impressive achievement!
It's a different situation, though - that's a "mortal" who becomes a goddess through her own actions, which is almost always going to mean she was a Scion (incidentally, Ovid fails to give her any parentage, but she's Dido's sister and Dido is Pygmalion's sister, and Pygmalion is in turn said by Hyginus to be a son of Poseidon, which would make sense with Anna's water associations. Virgil calls her father "Belus", but since that's probably a corruption of some Phoenician name that nobody really corrected, it's not certain who he was talking about). It's not a case of a god snap turning a mortal into a deity, which is a very different case and the one that almost never happens. "Mortals" becoming gods by virtue of running around doing cool stuff is a worldwide phenomenon (hell, that's half the Chinese pantheon), and the major basis for the idea of Scions.
DeleteI agree, punking Ares is totally an awesome feat for anyone, mortal or Scion. Oh, Ares... will you never stop going home humiliated because mortals have punked you? Stay home.
Pygmalion of Cyprus, who fell in love with his statue, was the son of Poseidon. Dido's brother was Pygmalion of Tyre. I get what you mean though, there's no divine intervention in Anna's story, it's just a bunch of crazy stuff that happened some poor woman.
DeleteAnd I love Ares, I really do. The god of bloodlust and furious battle, turned into the total buttmonkey of the Med - I just want to give him a big hug
True, but "Pygmalion" is itself just a Greek corruption of a Phoenician name, so there's debate about whether they might be the same figure. They don't need to be in anyone's game, of course, though. :)
DeleteI think we all love Ares. Like you love any big dumb puppy who can't handle his life.