Anne Likes Grammar, Guys

Question: On the Sraosha page, the line "Sraosha is an enforcer for his pantheon, making sure that the laws are followed and that those who break them are subjected to their just deserts. " Has a typo. Deserts should be Desserts!

Actually, no, it shouldn't. The phrase "getting one's just deserts" refers to getting exactly what you deserve (usually because you've been bad). The word "deserts" means "what you're deserving of", so the phrase literally means "getting what you deserve." However, "deserts" is pronounced identically in English to the word "desserts", which refers to treats or sweet foods usually eaten after a meal, which has led to a lot of confusion and people who think maybe this is some kind of food metaphor for what you deserve.

It's not, though. "Deserts" is correct, even though you'll see "desserts" frequently in colloquial usage. :)

However, I love that you guys send in corrections to help us not have errors on the site, so don't let me discourage you! If this had been a real error, I would have leapt to correct it like a feline gladiator. Thank you guys for always eagle-eyeing the site for us!

Orisha Housekeeping

Question: So, love the site, and truly appreciate all the work you guys do in researching the mythologies and pantheons. What I wondered was this: is there any way I can get an easier to read version of the Oruba? The downloadable pantheons you have are great for ease of reasing, but the family tree format is a bit tougher when you just want to look the entire pantheon up at one time. Thanks!

Question: Which Ori boons can a Bogovi Scion use with Dva Dukhom and Dvoinobog?

A little Orisha housekeeping! As the only pantheon that we've done in quite that format - written directly for the site instead of for PDF - it has a few weird wrinkles that others don't.

To start with, there is indeed no PDF version of the Orisha. They weren't the same kind of pantheon project we normally do, like the K'uh or Elohim; instead of writing a new pantheon from scratch, we were in a sense updating one that already existed in the game line, much as we'd edited and updated the Aesir or Pesedjet. It was just on a much more ambitious scale than usual, being as it was an update from the modern Loa to the ancient Orisha and an addition and serious overhaul of the entire pantheon and PSP. But that does mean there's a lot of new stuff in all kinds of different places on the site and it's not centralized conveniently anywhere. Bummer.

We weren't planning on doing a full PDF for the Orisha, partly because it's a lot of extra work and partly because it would lack a lot of the things we normally include in PDFs, such as a Titanrealm, Birthrights and extra non-Legend-12 gods. But we can definitely see that having it all in one document would be helpful. Quick experiment: how many of you would find that useful? I'm happy to whip something up, but it'll be higher on the priority scale if more people would be using it.

As for the second question... holy crap, it's definitive proof that we're the worst RPG game tinkerers ever. Way back when we released the Orisha (which was in March, for god's sake), we said, "Oh, hey, we have to figure out how the Slavic PSP interacts with the Yoruba one, we'll have that done as soon as possible!" Then we didn't do it, because we're terrible. And then we forgot we were even supposed to be doing it, because we're awful. Way to fail, us.

So I'm putting it on the Do It Now, Dummy list to make sure we do it soon, and our profound apologies to everybody. Sorry for sucking.

Anybody got any other Orisha issues, while we're at it?

Endless Questions

Late-night vlogging! With both of us now, like a band reunion tour but with more crochety mythology!

Question: When I reread the Aztlanti pantheon, I noticed that Tlazolteotl has a loooong enemies list. How did that happen?

Question: I think by now we know your hatred of World at War Scion and the gods of the US and the Allied pantheons, but I still like the idea of being a Scion of Robin Hood or someone similar. Who would you say would be most thematically similar to him (not mechanically)?

Question: Been reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman and loving it. If you HAD to, hwo would you model the Endless in Scion?

Question: Love your version of Jotunblut, but two questions about it. Does the size increase also affect your shape in boons like Animal Form and Beast Shape (do you turn into unusually big animals)? What about Appearance knacks like Undeniable Resemblance - if you change your size with it, is the shit permanent or not (giantsblood is strong stuff, after all)?

Question: Is there any way to be able to reply on Dodge late in the game? I was looking to be more of a dodge-tank, but after reading a couple of blogs and doing some math, dodging is not a good path for a combat god. Do you have any suggestions for me that would help me build a character who fights like Jackie Chan - all over the place and rarely getting hit hard? If it comes to boons, would the more ethereal elements (air and fire) be a good place to start? Are there any untouchable combat gods?

Question: My character has ripped out his eyes. Does Epic Appearance still work against me? If it still works by smell or sound, what if I destroy my nose and ears?

Question: So Lionel Cuthbert, the plantation-owning raging demigod of death, sun and ice... is he also a racist who would own slaves if he could?

The freeze-frame on this video makes us both look like someone just asked us something that makes us tired and annoyed.

Revamping Itztli

If you were ever to revamp the Itztli how would you do that? It seems like many of the boons do the same thing, just better than the previous boon, and some of the boons don't seem to fit with the culture.

Yeah, Im not a big fan of how itztli is really. I tried to do some major changes early on, but got some pressback from anne about it. She was very happy with how it was. But I think shes come around to realizing that its a little too much of the same(especially in comparison with some of the other psps we've redone recently). I could also be totally wrong about that and she could think Itztli is fine.

I like the main theme of itztli. Sacrifice is huge for the aztecs people and their gods. Blood is the fuel the gods use to make their powers work and continue living. In game terms very literally blood is legend, so it makes a good fit. And its very nice to have a psp that is a very specific idea to its core. But at the same time, I dont think I can make 10 levels of "something to do with blood = something to do with legend". My first step in working on the psp would be to try though.

If I failed, which Im pretty sure we would. I would next try to incorporate nahualli. They are also an important part of the culture that isnt really covered by anything else. We've been doing it with relics before, but I think it can be expanded to be made both more fun and more interesting by incorporating it into the psp. Different levels, maybe rotating with levels of scarifice that see your connection to your nahualli slowly growing until at god you, maybe become two seperate entities that can work in tandem? Maybe that happens before god? Maybe it doesnt. Itd be a long process(one Im excited about doing), but thats probably where Id start.

So I hope that helps, any more then that, and Id be well on my way to spending hundreds of hours working on Itztli.

Thanks for the question, maybe itll bring the numbers up on a future poll to see what we do next.

In the Game of Gods

Question: How useful is the Politics ability after Hero? Since it's only limited to city politics, laws and government, I'm guessing not so much.

Oh, man. Each of our god-level players probably just cried out in a wave of why-don't-I-have-more-Politics despair. Politics is actually one of the most crucial abilities in the game for Scions at high Demigod and God levels, and those who don't have it regularly bemoan their fates!

Politics is used for a lot of things at Hero-level, it's true; our PCs use it to interact with city, government or religious officials and understand how to behave and get things done, to navigate their way through unfamiliar urban territory and to try to ingratiate themselves with the powers that be. But humans are not the only ones who have politics. The politics of the gods make the machinations of humanity look like the child's play that it is.

Interacting with your pantheon - with its leaders, its movers and shakers, its peculiar specific laws and customs - almost always requires at least a little facility with Politics. All the same things you dealt with on a human level are present among the gods, including laws, governments, cities and political deals, but that much larger, more complicated and more potentially dangerous if you put a foot wrong. You need Politics to be able to try to have any influence whatsoever within your pantheon over what it does, to whom and how, you need Politics to tell you not to do things like accidentally challenging Amaterasu's authority, and you need Politics to give you the basic tools to try to make smart marriage alliances, good friends or avoid treachery in the midst of the divine. Politics still does all the things it used to do, only now when you fail at it you're more likely to get thunderbolted out of existence than you were before.

There are gods without Politics, of course, and you can be one of them, but they are usually at the mercy of the laws, manipulations and orders of other gods. Gods like Ares or Thor are good examples of this; they're powerful, awesome and badass, but they have no political power and they can't make rules, set up negotiations or deals or influence what their pantheon decides to do. They end up subject to the decisions of the real political powerhouses, and they probably don't even notice most of the time thanks to that lack of Politics making it hard for them to even know how or why they're being directed or played.

No pantheon is immune to the need for Politics; even the less legally strict pantheons like the Orisha still need the skill in order for the kings to go about kinging, for justice to be served when someone does something wrong, and for people to know better than to accidentally bring up that time Shango killed himself within his earshot. Some of the pantheons live and die on Politics, with the first two that always spring to mind being the Amatsukami and the Anunna, who have spent millennia perfecting insanely complex and symbolically important etiquette and politics that directly affect the status, standing and treatment of any individual by the rest of the gods. A pantheon is very much a political entity, especially in Scion where the pantheons interact, ally and uneasily coexist in their fight against the Titans, and Scions who want to be able to swim in those shark-infested waters had better be prepared for that.

A few examples of Politics rolls in our recent god-level games:

Sowiljr needed to roll Intelligence + Politics to figure out what kind of incentives he might need to offer to convince a wayward member of his pantheon to re-ally and support him in his bid for power. He succeeded, and was able to promise the goddess to swear a blood oath with her and reinstall her in a new political position within the Aesir.
Eztli needed to roll Wits + Politics to avoid trashing the court etiquette of the Anunna all over the landscape when she busted in to talk to Marduk. She failed, which led to the Anunna as a whole finding her incredibly offensive and peasantish and ceasing to pay any serious attention to her, and her mentor Marduk to be quietly embarrassed and cancel his plans to present her as a favorable ally to his people.
Jioni needed to roll Perception + Politics to gauge the tenor of a crowd of courtiers, passing rumors and making backdoor deals regarding her. Her roll was mediocre, so she realized that there was a lot going on she didn't know about and that she should be wary, but didn't pick up enough to know exactly who might be plotting against her.
Sowiljr needed to roll Charisma + Politics to encourage a group of resistant gods to listen to his new proposal for who should fight whom in the Titan war and how it would benefit various parties. He succeeded only partially, and while he was able to convince people to try his plan, those it backlashed on are now severely upset with him and will probably try to politically undercut anything else he tries to do.
Jioni needed to roll Manipulation + Politics in an attempt to teach Eztli, her fellow god-queen, how to behave properly in a divine royal court. She succeeded and was able to train the otherwise complete political dunce how to introduce herself and compliment a ruler's palace.

As you can see, Politics covers a lot of ground when it comes to interactions between gods (I didn't even touch the recent successful marriage arranged by Sowiljr between two members of the Aztlanti, because it was Politics rolls all the livelong day and there was just too much), and there are plenty of other situations that might call for different ways the stat is used. Those are just naked rolls, too; there are several powers that use the Politics stats as well, including entire trees of knacks in the Charisma, Manipulation and Wits and scattered boons in several different purviews.

If you're playing a character that is very non-political - a naturalist, for example, or a bruiser, something along those lines - it's likely that your everyday life as a Scion won't require much in the way of Politics. Those kinds of characters seldom use it much except to avoid getting lost in the city or try to figure out what fork to use when their swanky bandmates make them have dinner with the Dodekatheon. But the Politics rolls will still be there and will still be meaningful and important, often with major consequences; not having Politics means that you'll more often than not end up in trouble, out of the loop or simply bewildered about what the hell everyone is talking about or doing.

(I just realized Folkwardr wasn't in any of those roll examples... probably because he hates people and more often bends his intellect to other pursuits. So there's our example of the no-need-for-Politics guy.)

Liar Liar

What do the Yazata think of Shapeshifting and Illusions? Do they count as 'Lies' in the metaphysical sense, or does Asha only care about straight up verbal lying?

Its up to each ST to really decide, but the guidelines should be, the "the heart/soul of the law, not the rule". I could go on a giant list of things that would be considered lies vs things that wouldnt be, but that list would be giant. Just use common sense and good judgement. If the illusion or shapeshift is attempting to mislead or decieve then it probably counts as a "lie." If its for other reasons, then it isnt.

If you change into a cow, and everyone knows "o, thats billy, hes in his cow form" then you have no problem. If you sneak into a herd of cows to purposefully(or accidentally really) mislead someone into thinking you're a generic cow(or a cow other then billy) then its a "lie".

Illusion has it a bit harder. The whole idea there is to trick and decieve, and there are few illusion boons that dont necessarily do that(and there will be more in the future). So not decieveing is more difficult.


However there is another metaphysical answer, and it leans towards the relationship between the devas and the yazatas. To the devas, all of existence on earth is an illusion. So are illusions actually real? For the time that they are in existence, are they just as real as the rest of the planet? Is a real sound any different from a fake sound? Or an imagined sound? These arent questions I can really answer for you, because I think it depends on the game that is being run and the particular aspects of the "world" within the game.

Id generally lean towards(unless you have a metaplot reason against it), all illusions are lies.

Point and Click

Question: You've mentioned Detachable Murder Vaginas and Prehensile Phalli and other such things being fairly frequent in mythology, especially among fertility gods. Do you feel these features warrant a boon or knack of some kind, or are they already covered under a knack or boon?

Hey, genitalia doing weird things in mythology! It must be Tuesday!

No, those probably don't need a specific knack or boon invented for them; they're definitely not really something that falls within the Fertility purview's scope despite the many fertility gods who have them (symbolism doesn't always translate directly to powers), and "do weird stuff to my junk" would be a pretty narrow and specific power anyway. But there are already several ways to get this kind of stuff going in the game now, so no need for extra fiddling!

Things like enormously distended or prehensile phalli or shark-toothed vulvas are easily covered by the Epic Appearance knack Unusual Alteration, which allows Scions to do basically anything they want with their appearance as long as the Storyteller is down with it. Most people use it to give themselves wings, crazy-shaped ears or extra arms, but there's no rule that says you can't use it to give your nether regions fangs or fingers or whatever other crazy thing you decide fits your divine image. Such things won't have extra powers - vaginal teeth, for example, probably won't get more than a couple of bonus dice to attacks made with them (yikes) and would just use your normal physical stats - but they're definitely a quick, cool and easy way to solve your hankering for a penis that can literally sit up and talk to you. If you're lower than Legend 9, Health gods with Human Clay can also reshape you into a new form if they're so inclined, though it'd probably be more fun for you to have control over that than to get stuck with whatever they happen to think is funny.

One of the firm Unusual Alteration/Human Clay rules we favor, however, is that you can't actually separate parts of your body (that'd just be taking damage!), so while you could easily have a Murder Vagina, a detachable model like Kapo's is a little more difficult. The easiest way to go about this would be to just make it a Birthright - stop laughing, you're the one who brought on the discussion of how to mythologize insane body parts! - and have a piece of relic genitalia, much as some other Scions might be wearing a relic eye in their foreheads. Relics can do and have all kinds of wacky powers, and you could probably stat up a roving mobile penis without too much trouble (other than getting your Storyteller to take you seriously, that is, but remind him or her that this is far from the weirdest thing out there in the wide world of myths). If it's actually truly your body part and you can detach it, leaving you body-part-less, you might even want to stat it as a maiming instead of a relic, or if it's an independent critter with a mind of its own, as a Creature or Follower; it's all about what kind of ideas you want to use.

Finally, you could just have something that "is your genitalia" that really isn't but looks and acts like it, doing your bidding with gleeful abandon. Those with power over the Industry, Health or elemental purviews could probably create little "creatures" or reshape mortals so that they appear to be roving genitals bent on unspeakable acts of procreation, and those with the Illusion purview can simply pretend to have those kinds of features without anyone low in Perception being any the wiser.

Incidentally, Goze had a relic penis (enlarged and eternally fertile) for a short while, thanks to being zapped by a Magic goddess who was trying to get Geoff into bed and ended up with him instead. She was disappointed, but made do with what she had.

God of War

Question: I wanted to add Kratos from the GOW series into the Greek Pantheon, but based on the games (and what he's obviously done to them) I'm not quite sure how to go about that. Any ideas for stats and relics?

Well... I suppose this question was going to happen sooner or later, anyway. Okay, it's time to talk about Kratos and what he is - and isn't! - in Greek mythology.

Kratos does in fact exist as a Greek deity; he's more properly referred to as a Titan, as he is the son of Pallas, who Athena famously killed during the Titanomachy, and Styx, Titanic personification of the river of the same name and usually listed as one of the children of Oceanus and Tethys. Like his more famous sister Nike, Kratos was in the awkward position during the Titanomachy of being one of few Titans to side with Zeus and the gods of Olympus, along with his mother, his siblings and Hecate. For his loyalty, he was allowed to stay on Olympus and serve Zeus as one of his enforcers.

Kratos in Greek mythology is the personification of strength, which is literally what his name means, and he enforces Zeus' judgments along with his brother Zelus ("enthusiasm" or "fanaticism", from whose name we get the word zeal) and his sisters Nike ("victory") and Bia ("force"). While he spends most of his time standing ready at Zeus' throne in case he needs to perpetrate mayhem on someone and doesn't appear in many myths, certainly not as actively as Nike does, he does have a particular moment of importance in the stories surrounding Prometheus. He and his siblings were guarding the sacred flame but Prometheus was so wily that he slipped past them and stole it anyway; after his crime had been revealed, Kratos and his siblings captured him and dragged him to Hephaestus, where they gave him Zeus' edict that the Titan be punished for his crime and held him down until the chains to bind him to the stone were forged. In Aeschylus' dramatization of the story, Kratos argues hotly with Hephaestus, who is feeling sorry for Prometheus' plight, and stresses several times that defying Zeus is the action of a fool while hounding the smith to make sure he doesn't try to let the captive free when no one is looking. Hephaestus is not very fond of him, but together they get the job done and both return to their respective homes.

It's pretty obvious by now that the Kratos of Greek mythology is not the same guy that is running around psychotically stabbing at the Dodekatheon in God of War, right? The two characters actually have nothing to do with one another; it's likely that the video game character was named Kratos because it means "strength", not because he has anything to do with Greek mythology, and the traditional Kratos is one of Zeus' most staunch and outspoken supporters, quite a contrast to a warmachine bent on destroying all the gods in a pixellated gorefest.

Since I am personally all thumbs at fighting games, I actually haven't played through more than a little of God of War; John has played through all of them, but he gets that thick, angry vein in the side of his neck when people ask him about Kratos in Scion, so I'm not sure if we really want to poke him and let loose a torrent of shouting about mythological inaccuracy. Might be better to let him lie. On the off chance that you're interested in statting the actual Ancient Greek Kratos, I would suggest that he has Epic Strength (obvs!) and Justice associated, with maybe a side order of War if you feel like he doesn't have enough going on. As far as I know, he has no famous relics, though some fragment of the chains of Prometheus or sacred fire certainly wouldn't go amiss.

While the Kratos of God of War doesn't bear any resemblance to any actual characters in Greek mythology, he's still a valid character archetype for those playing Scions who might be disenchanted with the behavior, morals or personality of their ancient pantheons. The hero who bears a grudge against the gods and tries to fight them does occur in various myths, and if you're willing to accept that there's a stratospheric chance that your character's going to die (see Cu Chulainn or Aqhat or Gilgamesh; gods do not fuck around) or go insane and become unplayable, it's totally a road you can travel. Vengeance makes it all the easier.

The Saga Continues

Question: Question about Undeniable Resemblance and Fatebonds, if one Scion willing to spend all the Legend needed to change his/her appearance to a perfect replica of another Scion without being seen by anyone, would any subsequent Fatebonding be attached to the copied Scion?

Man, is this that same person who keeps asking about getting out of Fatebonds by, like, mind-controlling other people or whatnot? You are persistent!

No. That doesn't work.

As we've mentioned in previous posts about trying to Fosse dance your way out of Fatebonds, this kind of thing simply doesn't work because fooling mortals doesn't fool Fate. It is totally possible for a Scion to use Appearance to turn himself into a perfect copy of another person or being, but he is still the one spending the Legend and getting the Fatebonds, which will be based on whatever he was doing or whatever image he was projecting at the time. If Loki goes out and turns himself into an exact copy of Baldur before spending a bunch of Legend, Baldur will be totally unaffected, since he's not the one actually affecting Fate by doing things. He will get no Fatebonds unless he spends some Legend himself. Loki, on the other hand, might be likely to suddenly pick up Fatebonds to Sun or Appearance as well as whatever else he was doing, since the people he's being Fatebound to are probably thoroughly confused into believing his disguise is real.

As always, remember: you can absolutely fool mortals into thinking white is black, and often that will affect what kinds of Fatebonds they generate, but Fate doesn't care what you look like. Fate always knows you're you, because it's freaking Fate and it knows and maps your entire destiny and couldn't care less what face you're wearing when you spend Legend and accrue Fatebonds. There is no kind of undercover shenanigan you can pull that will be able to confuse the all-powerful web of Fate unless you have powers that specifically do that - Magic spells, Shuck Fate in high-level Chaos, or the Nemetondevos PSP of Deuogdonio.

I think this is actually a common confusion, so here's the easy rule of thumb. Fatebonds are what happens when you spend Legend and therefore become part of the web of Fate. What those Fatebonds do depends on the beliefs of the mortals to whom you're Fatebound. Messing with those mortals' minds may change what the Fatebonds do, but you have to mess with Fate to change the fact that the Fatebonds are there in the first place.

Wyrd Gone Wild

Question: Why is The Wyrd in both Prophecy and Magic? If one of my players wanted to finish each purview, would they have to buy the same boon twice? And would Prophecy Wyrd look the same as Magic Wyrd, or would you be able to tell which one is being used in a given situation?

We hate to tell you this, but all the answers here are stupid. This is one of those legacy spots from the original books that we're intending to fix but haven't yet, and it's a very obvious sore thumb, even among the already messy soup of purview Avatars.

The Wyrd is in both Prophecy and Magic - and Mystery, in fact - because, in the original Scion books, all three purviews are considered expressions of Fate and therefore they all have the same ultimate power. The books handle what they refer to as the "Special Purviews" as sort of specialty tracks instead of true differentiated purviews, making all of them generalized powers over Fate that lead to the same eventual end. This works generally okay at low Legend levels, provided you ignore the other stupid things the original trinity's writeups are doing, but as you've noticed, it doesn't work very well as soon as you have to deal with Scions who have become gods.

So yes; in the original rules, if you want to have the Avatar of both Prophecy and Magic (and thus the ability to pass them on as associated powers to your childrend), you must purchase The Wyrd twice. And no; in the original rules, there is no differentiation whatsoever between The Wyrd of Magic, The Wyrd of Prophecy or The Wyrd of Mystery.

Obviously, that sucks. Nobody wants to have to buy the exact same power two or three times just to give their imaginary kids some XP breaks (a power that costs a whopping 44-55 XP to buy, yet, which in the original books' back-breakingly slow XP gain scale means nine to eleven games of doing nothing but saving your measly XP gains), and to further insult the Fate-oriented among the gods, The Wyrd is actually the only purview Avatar that doesn't allow you to do anything - instead of letting you run the show like every other Avatar, it runs the show completely without you in exchange for a promise that "something nice'll happen for you later". Again, we know why the writers did that, in this case because they wanted to illustrate that the powers of Fate are still the ultimate authority over even gods, but in mechanical practice it blows big-time.

So, yeah, the original books are offering you the delightful option to spend all of your XP on buying the same power over and over again, and all said power actually lets you do involves spending a giant bucket of resources in order to have no idea what's going to happen and hope that your Storyteller remembers to reward you for it later. There were better ideas in those books.

While we're still working on Industry (oh my god Industry never ENDS), overhauling the Purview Avatars and Ultimate Attributes is a project we want to embark on soon, and trust us, fixing The Wyrd is one of our top goals. If you're running a god-level game that needs to use it in the meantime, we suggest going with your gut and allowing Scions to do whatever makes the most sense - that is, someone popping Prophecy Wyrd should have access to all future events, someone popping Magic Wyrd should be able to effect massive changes to various beings' Fates if he's so inclined, and someone popping Mystery Wyrd should have all the knowledge of the universe at her fingertips. Give them similar privileges to those you'd give anyone else with an Avatar, and go from there. Obviously there are limits - if Odin could just pop Avatar of Magic and fix this Ragnarok problem, he'd have done it a long time ago - but you should be able to feel those out as they come up.

But seriously, The Wyrd in the books is just a punishment for Fate-aligned players. And aren't their lives hard enough already?

Great and Terrible

Question: I was wondering, in regards to the purview avatars, how would a god look when using one of them? Do they suffer any physical changes?

Hell, yes, they suffer physical changes!

Purview Avatars are the big ones: they are the final end of the road, the Ultimate Cosmic Powers of the gods over their chosen areas of influence, the things that set apart a god who dabbles in rain and wind occasionally from the Storm as personified by Zeus or Thor. When a goddess uses an Avatar, she's not just using a power that lets her win at whatever she's doing, but rather taking on the mantle of ultimate divine power and utter personification of the part of the universe to which she now belongs.

When you use a purview Avatar, you are the one in charge of the scene - not the Storyteller, who as Fate normally runs the show, but you, who has turned yourself into such a colossal and nigh-uncontrollable force that your powers within that sphere are limitless and can be used in any way you see fit. That includes what you look like; you can appear as literally anything you want to while you are using your purview Avatar, and nobody's going to say boo about it. Blow The Green and appear as a massive tree in motion, as a being whose every hair is a plant that roots into the world, as a god who pours sweet nectar and honey and wine from every pore. Pop The Sentinel and appear as a towering armored defender, as an invisible forcefield that prevents all attacks, as an impenetrable mountainside that surrounds the people you protect. Pop The Trickster and appear as literally anything in the universe you want, with no penalties and no mechanics. You are becoming the living embodiment of the idea that your purview represents. You get to look the part.

Obviously, you can't take on your Avatar by appearing as something totally inappropriate; if you try to become The Devourer and turn yourself into a cascading waterfall, we're going to tell you no because that's stupid, and you're supposed to be embodying the exact opposite element right now, you jerk (also, why? there are way cheaper ways to shapeshift, my friend!). But if you turn into a cascading waterfall of molten fiery lava, hell yes, do whatever you want. Avatars are not meant to be used as easy shapeshifting powers, and for the cost in Legend, Fatebonds and exhaustion they're definitely not worth it to be used that way. But they do show you literally becoming your purview, and whatever you think that should look like is the way to go.

As usual, just a friendly reminder that we haven't yet rewritten the Avatars and Ultimates system, so there may be more codified rules for this in the future (or not. I don't have Prophecy). But for now, the limit is almost literally your imagination.

Is This Thing On?

Solo vlog flight! Today, clearing out a bunch of older questions that have just been waiting for their turn in the sun! Talkin' 'bout associated powers, Appearance knacks, character concepts and the checkered history of African civilization.

Question: What do you think about people using Unusual Alteration to turn themselves into trees or animals? How would that function differently from Animal Form or other shapeshifting boons?

Question: Brahma seems so powerful, yet he has so few associated purviews and Epics. What's up with that? How do you reconcile what the gods can do and how important they are with how they are mechanically represented in Scion?

Question: What would you think of a character - a Japanese Scion or other - trying to model themselves off an anime character?

Question: What does The Sentinel going rampant look like? If a god with the Avatar of the Guardian purview gets killed, I somehow can't imagine the consequences.

Question: Code of Heaven says the Orisha are against slavery, and yet Shango has slaves. Can you explain?

Question: Do the social sciences belong in the Science ability?

Question: May I use the name Ian Jupiter (not the character, just the name) for my story? He's going to be the name of a reincarnated Zeus.

Back into the Industry/boons/Atua/Seamus mines with me!

I Am a Selfishness Beast

Question: If one of your plans for the future is an Atua supplement, have you taken a look at the existing one that some fans already made? Maybe you could get together with the writer and make a new and improved version together.

I assume you're talking about the Atua supplement written by Scion forumites Pashupatastra and Coachman, which was a big fan-supported project on the forums a while ago, released in PDF form and has even recently gotten an update in the form of a new alternative PSP. We're aware of it and really enjoyed watching the community pull together to do some cooperative suggesting, proofreading and enjoying during the time that it was being put together!

It's actually not the only fan Atua out there, though, which shouldn't be a surprise since the Atua are awesome and everyone should love them. The Scion forums feature another version of the Atua, and hunting through websites for various chronicles will get you a slew of other little house versions of the pantheon, invented for individual games to allow players more room to choose new divine patrons. Polynesia's one of the areas that Scion ignored almost totally but that a lot of players obviously really wanted to get involved in, and that translates naturally to a ton of fan-produced material to make up the difference.

Now, I'm going to level with you, question-asker: we're probably not going to go out and look up any of these previous fan writers to ask for input. That's not because we hate them or anything or think they're bad; on the contrary, they put a lot of work in and have a product they should be proud of. But there are several fundamental things about it that we strongly disagree with (the entire Titanrealm opposing the Atua, for starters), and more importantly we have a well-oiled and smoothly-running work plan that we're by now practiced pros at, and bringing more people into that would seriously slow the machine down. While we love to get as many expert opinions as possible while we're working, we don't know any of these other writers and have no idea if they have credentials we'd like to explore or are just enthusiastic fans like us, and if it's the latter, there may not be much they can offer us.

Also, and this is probably the strongest reason, I am super touchy about working with other people. I promise it's not you, other people; it is totally me. I love to hear input from others and I love to share information, but the second there's a real opinion clash and someone wants me to change/add/include/rework something that I think is already awesome/bad/horrible/sublime, I usually throw them out a window. It's a temperamental writer thing and I'm not entirely proud of it, but me saying, "Hey, you want to come work on this creative project with me?" to another writer is pretty similar to me saying, "Hey, you want to come let me plunder you for useful information and suggestions, listen to me ignore any ideas of yours I don't like and deal with me getting pissed off if you want to change something I do like?" Nobody wants to sign up for that. I sure wouldn't, if I were them.

Or, to put it in a much more polite way that doesn't make me sound quite as much like a cannibalistic ogre woman, I take great pride in my writing, am independent and intuitively-minded, and am very invested in creative control. I put up with John, but that's only because I'm married to him and he knows more about game balance than I do.

So... yes, basically I am a terrible person to work with, so currently we're not planning on subjecting any of the previous Polynesian fan-writers to the meat-grinding gauntlet that is my cooperative process. If they're out there reading this and wanted to talk shop, trade sources or discuss what they think worked and didn't in their version, however, we would totally love that! We are all about some fun and friendly talk about a subject we love, and suggestions and sources are always awesome bonuses.

And Polynesia will have its windswept, glittering oceanside day in the sun. Some folks will like our version, some will like the forum version, some may like both or neither or their own homebrew, and all of that is totally fine with us!

Life in the Library Lane

Question: Hi, guys, great work on everything! You guy really have inspired me to do my own revamp of the pantheons and I was wondering if you guys had any books and source material you could recommend.

Hey, thanks! We love doing this stuff and we think it's awesome when other people love doing it, too. Go out and make neat stuff!

Source material's hard, not because it's hard to give you recommendations but because it's such a huge question - there are literal tons of books and resources out there that are fun to read and informative for Scion!

To start with, if you're revamping pantheons, we recommend picking one and working on it first rather than trying to overhaul every pantheon all at once. It's hard enough to get all the crazy awesomeness of a single pantheon in your brain at the same time, let alone twelve of them. We usually look at somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty to thirty books, online articles or other resources when working on a pantheon, and there are plenty others we don't end up using, so it's kinda impossible to give you those lists for every pantheon you might want to hit up... but our advice is to start with one you're passionate about and go to your local libraries to get some goodness. Look up books on the pantheon, its individual gods or the religions that worshiped them; use the internet to find articles (with good sourcing!) on the same; ask a librarian what other resources might be available to you, in case your library has access to periodicals, online databases or other awesome stuff you might not be able to get at home. Go bananas. We certainly do.

As a close runner-up, you can never go wrong reading the original myths and stories of the gods (and as a bonus, they're usually more fun than some scholar expounding on the ritual use of bone fragments or whatever!). Luckily, most of these myths are ancient and in the free public domain, so you can get access to them with an internet connection almost instantly. Sacred Texts is a great starting source if you want to go read some free translations of the Eddas, Cattle Raids, Hindu epics or any other set of original myths, and a little Googling around will probably get you loads of other sources around the 'net. Be wary of accidents - you probably don't want to mistakenly pick up someone's original fiction thinking it's ancient myth - but there's plenty out there in the ether if you're diligent about looking.

Other than that, the best advice is just to have fun. Figure out what kind of images, ideas or feeling you want when working on your pantheon and find all the neat stuff out there that fits into it. Make art, write stories, build up your gameworld and have a blast.

Batrachian Forecasting

Question: I would like to know if it means anything if a frog comes into your home.

Umm... I dunno, your guess is as good as ours. Different cultures around the world have superstitions about frogs and their behaviors dating back millennia, but there's no single answer. Some cultures think a frog in the house or garden is good luck, others a sign of hedonism or sex, still others an invasion presaging that you've angered some god.

I wouldn't panic about it too much. All it usually means is that you need to mop.

Tea and Crumpets and So Forth

Question: Are there any Legend 12 gods that are exclusively English? I know Britannia doesn't count and isn't Legend 12, but I'm interested in what associations she has.

Alas and indeed, Britannia doesn't count. She's a neat lady, but while she's the goddess of Britain, she is not actually British herself, being a thoroughly Roman deity. You're also right that she's not Legend 12, since the Romans mostly personified her to represent the territory and to have something to show their own gods and emperors as superior to, and there are no surviving myths about her other than some images of her being conquered by Mars or Caesar. She probably would have vanished from everyone's consciousness almost completely if Elizabeth I, that sexily badass paragon of queenliness, hadn't spearheaded her resurrection in the sixteen century as a symbol of the power of England, and since then she's been on a lot of coinage, stamps and other official symbols of the country's government even unto the modern day. She's now basically the Uncle Sam of England, though of course more antiquitious and Britishly fancy, and her origins as an actual divinity have been lost far into the mists of time.

All that is interesting, but it doesn't give us much to go on in terms of associated powers for her. We would assume she's Legend 9 and has been for a long, long time, and that her most likely association is War, since she was usually shown as fighting the (losing, but give her props for trying) war against the Romans when she first appeared and later represented British military and naval might and colonization. She's a good example of a goddess who came up sort of out of the blue and might have been a Scion herself, most likely of Athena, to whom she's markedly visually similar.

As for exclusively English gods... I'm afraid I have to disappoint you, because there aren't any, or at least not in the way we tend to think of England right now. The British Isles were populated by an ever-shifting murk of Celts and Norsemen, their influence waning or waxing in different areas depending on the current wars and rulers, and thus the evidence in England's ancient times all points to worship of the gods of those people. The Saxons brought the Norse gods with them, leaving traces of Odin, Thor and Volund before Christianity swallowed most of the island whole, and the Celts who predated and coexisted with them worshiped the Tuatha and the gods of Wales, leaving evidence of Lugh and Nuada and the Dagda and the rip-roaring tales of the Cath Maige Tuired and Mabinogion as well as infrequent shrines to other Celtic divinities such as Cernunnos. England wasn't considered its own cultural or ethnic group for a long, long time, and during that time it was pretty much a neverending party of northern European gods meeting at the crossroads between their territories.

And, of course, there were Romans in southern Britain, so the Dodekatheon had their say as well. If you're looking to play a historical game set in the wayback times, you could probably throw a rock in any direction and hit a religious observance dedicated to at least one of these three sets of gods. If you're wanting to play the most English Scion possible, my personal recommendation would be one of the Aesir, since the Anglo-Saxons became the basic stock of Englishmen until the Norman invasions, but the Celtic gods are equally reasonable choices.

Agg Damage

If Aggravated damage "rends the target's soul", what happens when you're killed by it? Is your soul so thoroughly obliterated that there's nothing left for a psychopomp to pick up afterwards - do not pass "go", do not collect your eternal reward?

I wouldnt say there is nothing left, but it is probably pretty damaged looking. Im not sure if this is a houserule or not, but all of our deaths are, eventually, from agg damage. After they have full lethal(and have taken their first dying box) I allow additional damage to go either into dying boxes or to be made added as agg damage. So, a PC always ends up taking full agg damage before they actually die as they try to survive(npcs dont have this luxury,, usually, so the question is still there).

Souls still exist even when people die of horrible agg related tragedies(unless the story needs it not to). We still want there to be souls from when people are dropped in volcanoes. We want the survivors of hiroshima or pompeii to still have souls that exist, if for no other reason then as a painful reminder to those who might make the same mistakes again.

However, thats just how we play it. I could totally see a world where you werent allowed to upgrade damage from lethal to agg to avoid death, but that if you died from agg there was no way of bringing you back. Or maybe you could still upgrade lethal to agg, but that was a choice between a normal death and losing your soul forever. I think that is probably an even more brutal game then the scion we play(which is fucking deadly), but could be very interesting.

Odin Grudges

How long does Odin hold a grudge? Cause he seems like a pretty angry dude.

Are there people in the world that dont hold grudges? That seems impossible. Im from a big Italian family. Every single one of my aunts/uncles has been disowned. After a rather heated political debate(screaming match) two years ago, Ive been disowned as well. So, its hard for me to imagine people that dont hold grudges.

I'm pretty sure he holds grudges, however I dont think Odin holds a grudge much more then any other king-type in-charge god. And he can control himself much better then those with actual vengeance. Odin can easily ignore his grudge if his panties are in a bunch towards someone but hes gotta get his manipulate on. People with vengeance have a much harder time with controlling themselves.

On a mythological note though, we dont really have any evidence of odin holding a grudge, we just have conjecture(lots of evidence of odin being a liar and backstabber though....odin).

Zeus Was Here

Question: So I have a few questions about Zeus and his birthday. 1) When/how is his birthday celebrated? (i.e., is there a festival?) 2) The majority of the Greek writers say he was born in Psychro Cave in Crete - what info is available on the actual cave? & 3) (connected to #2) What other roles does the cave have in the myths?

Lots of Zeusing today. Zeus all around!

Well, to start with, there actually isn't a "birthday" festival for Zeus as far as we know. While a few of the Greek gods do have festivals that commemorate their births, most of them don't thanks to their cults being so widespread and the general Greek preference for action over existence. They preferred to celebrate particular acts Zeus performed, such as his marriage to Hera, his defeat of Typhon or his smiting of evildoers. Also, because a number of these myths stretch back into an area of antiquity where no one was bothering to date anything, most accounts of Zeus' birth don't include a particular day that he was born. There are tons of festivals to Zeus, however (and barrels more if you include the Roman festival calendar's many days honoring Jupiter), so there are plenty of sacred festivals to choose from when trying to find Zeus-centric times in the year.

There's no foolproof consensus on where Zeus was born, either, which shouldn't be surprising for a god who was incredibly popular and therefore said to have been born wherever the reteller of the myths thought would bring most glory to his people. The Cretans, naturally enough, said he was born in Crete; but Callimachus also mentions that the Arcadians (inventors of the zany werewolf cult of Zeus Lykaios) claim Zeus was born there, and furthermore characterizes the Cretans as liars. And then within Crete there are also arguments about where exactly Zeus was born, whether in the Diktaean Cave (popularly supposed to be a reference to the Psychro Cave in modern Crete) or on Mount Ida, a place sacred to his mother Rhea and her later form Cybele (and, in one trying-to-bridge-the-gaps account, born in the cave but then moved to Mount Ida to be raised there). Furthermore, there's another Mount Ida, this one in Anatolia, that has also been speculated as the place of Zeus' birth, usually by scholars who point out that it also has a strong tradition of an ancient Zeus-alter and that he uses it as a base of operations for other actions later in his stories. The Cretans are the loudest about their claim to Zeus' birthplace, which you can see even up to the modern day, when the supposed birthplace is regularly trumpeted as a major tourist attraction; over time, they've pretty much won the war, at least in the popular imagination.

As for the Diktaean Cave, its role in mythology is simple and doesn't stretch much beyond the nurturing of the king of the gods; in the relevant versions of the myth, he is born there and left in the care of a nurse - the goat Amalthea or the nymph Adrasteia, depending on the storyteller - while Rhea goes off to fool Cronus into believing he's devoured him. That's the only mythic event to really feature the cave, which thereafter vanishes from the Greek stories, having fulfilled its purpose. Modern archaeologists believe that the Psychro Cave in Crete might be the cavern of the story, based on evidence of an ancient Zeus-cult there, but that's not necessarily a sure thing; it could just as easily be that the shrine to Zeus was here to reenact his birth in a local area, and that the actual cave was elsewhere on Crete (or Arcadia, or in Turkey, or whatever) or even somewhere entirely inaccessible to mortals, perhaps a safe Terra Incognita Rhea set up to make sure no one accidentally stumbled across the boy before he was old enough to take matters into his own hands.

If you do want to use the Psychro Cave as the for-reals legitimate birthplace of Zeus, there's not really much to tell about it, unfortunately; it and its place of worship were ransacked and mostly destroyed by centuries of worshipers, looters and archaeologists making a hash of things, and most of the surviving relics from it are now in museums around the world. The cave itself is still there, now outfitted with walkways and tour guides for those who want to go see it.

A pretty great place for a Scion plot to have some juicy happenings, eh?

Ptah and Sekhmet: marrital bliss

So, Ptah and Sekmeht. Whats up with them? They a happy couple or is it merely a duty to him or...what?

They might be pretty happy. I mean, they both have positive aspects about themselves. Id say they're probably as happy as most ancient couples. Ptah gets a hot sexy lady who is probably a lion in the sack, and sekhmet gets...you know a dude that marries her and....ancient cultures suck, Im sorry. But ptah seems like a pretty cool dude, like she isnt married to set or worse....khepri.

Lunar Landing

Question: How would moon gods and goddesses feel about mankind colonizing the moon?

Well, humans aren't quite there yet... but with Scions in the mix, super-sciencing and super-magicing all over the place, anything could happen. We've had PCs jaunt off to the moon on a lark, and while no one's tried to move in yet, it's totally possible for settlement to happen in almost any Scion game.

I think this is a question with no clear-cut answer; a lot would depend on which god you're looking at and how exactly this moon-colonizing happened, as well as what its effects were. Moon gods have their Lunar Estates in what basically amounts to pocket Terrae Incognita, so they're not going to be feeling too crowded by mortals on the surface of the moon that orbits the Earth, but there are plenty of other considerations to take into account.

Some moon deities would probably actually really enjoy human colonization and inhabitation of the moon. For a set of gods who often wane (ha!) in importance when compared to the more perennially popular sun and storm gods, having a large portion of humanity literally move into their area of influence would probably give them a nice boost of importance and divine political badassness, giving them the opportunity to directly affect people much more closely than distantly directing the tides or causing full-moon madness. Depending on the god's temperament, some might see this as an opportunity to create brand-new, influential cults dedicated in their honor, because after all, aren't they the ones whose hands humanity is solely putting themselves into? Others, less benevolent or more afflicted by the lunacy that is their bailiwick, might savor the ability to directly meddle with and drive mad brand new sets of mortals, reshaping a population the way they never could with other competing gods on Earth. And just think about the awesome scope of the powers of the Moon purview when people are actually on the moon; sure, using Moonrise to cause a lunar eclipse on earth is intimidating, but how much more crazy badass is it when you can turn the entire planetoid that mortals are inhabiting and plunge them into darkness on your whim?

On the other hand, some moon gods probably wouldn't be huge fans of the idea of a lot of mortals cluttering up their space. Some might view it as a prideful intrusion of mankind into an arena they were never meant for, or even extend the blame to other gods who aren't providing them enough to do on Earth or preventing these sorts of shenanigans. Because mortals would be living day-to-day on the moon's surface, building and shaping its environment to suit them, it also might lose many of the qualities that moon deities would say make it the moon; for example, if too much terraforming and building happens and the surface of the moon becomes habitable and earthlike, what will happen to its famously shining silver light, now dimmed forever thanks to the new topography and buildings blotting it out? If mortals are actually living on the moon and treating it as generally subconsciously thoughtlessly as they tend to treat the Earth, moon gods might be mortally offended by upstarts littering, mining or otherwise defacing their heavenly body, not to mention the fact that much of the mystique and awe of the moon, which those gods depend upon, would undoubtedly be lost on mortals who were living on it all the time. Gods are slow to change, and the moon has been its coldly, symbolically beautiful self for a long time. Many of them are probably going to twig out if major changes occur without their approval.

An interesting side effect of moon colonization would be the probable rise of a new kind of moon god, thanks to the violently shifting symoblism and effects of having people living on the moon instead of looking up at it from the Earth. Most moon deities in ancient mythology are concerned with the moon's effects on distant earth, from its pull on the tides to its softly-glowing light in the darkness to its effects on a humanity who can't touch or experience it except as a subtle push toward madness or the relentless metronome that keeps the rhythm of the months. If the moon is instead colonized, Scions who become new moon gods will most likely need to take on new roles, finding ways to express themselves as gods of something that is tangible, solid and inhabited, a place instead of a faraway heavenly light. What that will mean exactly depends on those Scions, and whether or not the older moon gods adapt or become relics of a time before space travel will seriously impact the divine landscape.

Ancient Tongues

Question: You guys should do a pronunciation guide for god names!

Okay, after lots of work and teasers, we're finally done with the first draft of our god pronunciation guide! It includes IPA and phonetic pronunciation guidelines as well as recordings of someone (it's me) saying the names in a hopefully close approximation of correctness.

Lots of disclaimers for this one, because it's a very different kind of project than we usually do! First of all, this is the most non-judgmental pronunciation guide imaginable, so I want to remind everyone not to worry about it. The point of playing Scion is to have an awesome time and do badass heroic deeds, not to be absolutely correct about your ancient Sanskrit pronunciations and alveolar articulation. If you don't care about pronouncing god-names exactly the way a dead civilization might have, there's nothing wrong with that; keep doing what you're doing and having fun! If you do want to pronounce things close to authentically, or you're just curious about what they would have sounded like, check them out and don't feel pressured. We promise, we routinely pronounce things wrong because we automatically say what we're used to saying - you can hear us being wrong all over the vlog, in fact - so if we aren't worrying about the elided vowels in Gaelic, you probably don't have to, either.

Also, please keep in mind that we're not native speakers of any of these languages, and that even among natives there are many different pronunciations of some of these names. A Hindu god's name might be pronounced very different in Tamil than it is in Punjab, with both being valid pronunciations, and we obviously couldn't include every regional or dialectal variation here. Our goal was to give you the closest thing we could to what it might have sounded like when the ancient people who worshiped these gods talked about them, so there aren't many modern variations or foreign corruptions included.

But now that all that's out of the way, we hope you guys enjoy it. And if it's not up your alley, we're still working on other stuff that hopefully is!

And That's How You Get Tidal Waves

Question: Hello. I was curious. Your page on Olokun mentions that Obatala bound him to his palace at the beginning of the world. Are there any myths explaining how he escaped for his other antics amongst the Orisha?

There are not; no myth exists in which Olokun breaks his chains, escapes from the ocean or otherwise gets away from the consequences of his misbehavior at the creation of the world. However, that doesn't mean you can't use him for all kinds of fun stuff, or that his other stories don't make sense! "Bound" might mean a lot of different things, in the context of mythology and the context of a Scion game.

Theoretically, not only has Olokun never been released from his palace, but he actually must still be chained there, because if he were loose he would probably be spitefully flooding everything again, as he is prone to doing. Divine Vengeance lasts a long time and is best served cold and very, very salty. But being chained to his palace doesn't necessarily mean he can't go do other things as well; it's all about what "chained" really means.

To start with, it's easiest for Scion to assume that the chains are metaphorical, magical or in some other way not literal, specific chains. The myth might mean that Olokun is unable to leave the ocean for long periods of time thanks to being chained there by his Fate, or that he's still chained but that those chains are flexible (perhaps allowing him to do things if he behaves himself but snapping him back if he tries to go on a rampage) and extend far enough for him to go hang out on the shore (the site of most of his other myths), leaving you all kinds of cool room to mess with what those chains look like and whether or not he tries to hide them. Or, for Scion's purposes, maybe he's temporarily off the chain, able to gallivant around in support of the war against the Titans but on a sort of probation; anything goes, really, since there's no right answer.

There are a lot of gods in various mythologies who are technically confined to their usual haunts, including Hel, Tecciztecatl, Izanami, the Vanir and others. But since kicking them out of the game would suck, Scion has a little wiggle room to figure out what they can do and how they can still be involved in stories despite their special circumstances. We'd say that Olokun can probably do almost anything other gods can for purposes of the game, but that there's always that possibility, in the back of everyone's minds, that he could be leashed back to the ocean if things got out of hand.

Vlogged

Vlogging!

We are so dead tired.

Lazy post....but one that makes today a theme

Getting hit by sangria: If science worked in scion like it does in real life.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-fL8zopddI

Sucker Punch

Question: I am a bit afraid to ask... how do you survive being hit by Eztli? The first hit is skinshedded, but after that?

Alas for Eztli's foes, for she wields a great and totally uncontrolled power, and she's not picky about whose face it hits first. You're right that getting hit by Eztli is now An Experience; at this point, only gods with Strength associated with them are rocking a meaner left hook, and her job is almost exclusively to mow things down while the rest of the band does the things that require finesse or emotional response or brains.

But she doesn't automatically murder everything - far from it. Just like every other combat PC in the world, she tends to fight things tailored by the Storyteller to challenge her, because otherwise there would be no point. Eztli's enemies are usually other gods, Titan Avatars and Typhonian beasts that are far from pushovers, and she still has her share of major scenes in which she has to turn it up to eleven or twelve to triumph.

As for other PC-style enemies, though... well, survival is harder, not gonna lie. After the initial skin-shed, nobody else in her band could survive a direct shot to the face from her if she really meant it (luckily for them, however, she usually doesn't, and they only get the love taps that are a hazard of the business for hanging out with super-strong loose cannons). Most Scions and gods at her level couldn't unless they were expressly built for survivability; if you want to survive someone who's put most of their effort into breaking your face, put yours into keeping that face intact.

To start with, Stamina knacks are your best friends when trying to keep from being pulverized (by any majorly strong enemy, not just our favorite Aztec psychopath). Damage Conversion and Divine Damage Conversion are musts to ensure that you can apply your best soaks to the incoming damage, and Unbreakable allows you to blow as much Legend as necessary to deal with overflow that your normal soaks can't handle (of course, it's a lot of Legend at once sometimes, but it beats dying). Some of these will be rendered moot if she happens to get her Armor Crusher on, but Earth Body has the awesome side effect of letting you apply your armor even if she would normally ignore it. Dexterity knacks, while they won't always spare you actually taking the hit, can bring the pain down to a more manageable level as well, especially Roll With It to increase your soaking capacity and Untouchable Opponent to bring down the threshold successes that are about to be translated into broken bones.

Secondly, you can never have too much armor when you're trying to keep yourself in one piece. In addition to the good old Stamina standbys of Body Armor and Impenetrable, anyone invested in Earth should be rocking out their Earth Armor and Earth Body to get further tasty protective layers, while Greenskin in Fertility, Devil Body in Fire, Phase Body in Moon and Colossus Armor in War can all further boost your attempts to become teflon. There are also various powers that you can employ to try to stop her from hitting you quite as hard as she otherwise might, including Solar Shield in Sun, Battle Cry and Warrior Ideal in War and Do Not Want in Appearance.

Honestly, though, if you're not built to be a massive juggernaut of mountain-like indifference to damage, just don't get hit again (you might need Between the Ticks to get the chance, though). There's a lot to be said for using Guardian powers to cower behind shields while your friends deal with it (Woody's preferred method of handling Eztli on a rampage) or Psychopomp powers (or the infamous Out of the Frying Pan) to just peace out before things can get any uglier. Eztli, like every other dangerous god, has blind spots and areas in which she's not very skilled as well, so exploiting those can often give you a better than average chance at survival; she's something of a beast when it comes to resisting mental and social powers aimed at her, but her tragically low Perception rolls make it child's play for anyone with Illusion to misdirect or entrap her without her getting anywhere near them, not to mention making it extremely difficult for her to find anyone good at hiding until the storm blows over. Even mortals have been able to successfully evade her by hiding behind trees and telephone poles.

But yeah, your options are basically A) be awesome at taking damage like a champ, or B) get the fuck out of Dodge. It's not impossible for PCs to be at the same level of survival that Eztli herself is at for damage output; not only is she personally great at that stuff (she's got to survive things that are just as badass as herself, after all), but Sverrir is also a badass when it comes to soaking and surviving, and the two of them are probably the most evenly-matched opponents among the younger generation of gods. And, if you think you have time for it, you can always try to go with option C) get Sowiljr to call her off, although once in a while that results in Virtue Extremity and then things become very, very unpleasant for everybody involved.

Eztli has reached a level of physical danger that allows her to now outclass most gods, and it's definitely no joke to be on the receiving end of her anymore. In a recent game, Tezcatlipoca had been put to sleep by Hypnos and she tried to wake him up by slapping him, and she accidentally caved in his skull. It was quite an eye-opener for the PCs, who had until that point really not thought about the fact that she probably could decimate some of the gods they'd always thought of as eternal and all-powerful if the circumstances were right.

Will the Real French Gods Please Stand Up?

Question: I know that the French gods from the World War expansion are kind of universally reviled, but what would you recommend doing if people wanted to try playing born-and-raised French Scions? Would they just be Nemetondevos? What other mythology does France have to sire Scions with?

What a neat question! Well, to start off with, there's going to be a little dissonance about what, exactly, "France" is in terms of both history and mythology. We're all familiar with where France is, what its borders look like and what's nearby, but that's only the most recent iteration of France; in centuries past, its borders have been entirely different depending on what kingdoms controlled what when, and it has housed various different ethnic groups who may or may not have been entirely contained by those borders. Being in a bit of a crossroads position between different groups and sharing shoreline with both the Atlantic and Mediterranean, France has been lived in by a ton of different peoples, all of whom brought their gods with them.

The earliest and largest group of people to practice their religion across France were indeed the Gauls, which is why their pantheon, the Nemetondevos, is usually considered the "French" pantheon for Scion's purposes. Modern-day France was Celt Central from 400 B.C.E. onward, give or take a few years of expansion, and the Gauls were the dominating ethnic and social group there. Their large range and long-lasting hold is probably the entire reason we still have the scant information on the Nemetondevos that we do; shrines and devotional objects for the Gaulish gods have been found all over France, not to mention in neighboring Germany and Spain, and even the combination of Roman aggression and Gaulish disdain for making things out of more durable materials than wood couldn't stamp out every trace of such a widespread religion. The gods of Gaul are your easiest go-to deities for Scions who want to be as French as they can possibly be.

However, the Gauls were not the only people in France, which has a checkered history of conquest and settlement. The Dodekatheon were also a major force there; even early on, with small Greek settlements including what would later become Marseilles along France's Mediterranean coast, the ancient Greeks had established a presence there, and the later total domination of the Roman Empire over the area brought Roman religion and gods to be fused with the local beliefs, sometimes influencing them, other times supplanting them. If you happen to be playing with Roman gods who are separate from the Dodekatheon - Janus, Terminus, Summanus and the like - they would also have been major forces in France in their time, carried by the Roman forces who occupied it. As a side effect, Rome even brought a little bit of the nearer parts of Asia with it, in fact; Roman soldiers who adhered to the cult of the war-god Mithras brought a little influence even from the faraway Yazata to flourish in France for a time.

If you're not feeling the Romans - and many super-French Scions may not, because, after all, they did conquer and sort of muck the place up for a while, plus the Dodekatheon identity is pretty strongly located in the Greco-Roman lands - there are other, albeit smaller, incursions from various other cultures' gods. The Vandals and Franks, Germanic tribes to the core, conquered and settled much of France in the beginning of the fifth century, vying with the Gauls for territory, and they were most likely followers of the Aesir, who might themselves have been involved in all these tempting battles. The Phoenician Empire, especially Carthage, didn't quite make it to France proper but certainly had settlements on Corsica (and some famous Phoenicians, the most notable being Hannibal, worked and fought with French peoples during their military campaigns), and evidence of worship of the Elohim has survived there to be studied by archaeologists today. Even the Huns, in their madcap dash decimating European resistance, penetrated a fair ways into France; we don't know what their religion was, or very much about them, but if you enjoy the scholarly theories that they were probably offshoots of Mongolian or Chinese tribes, even those faraway deities might have been on French soil for a very long time.

If you want to go back to the oldest "native" population of France, the Gauls, mysterious and difficult to pin down though they are, are by far the most clear-cut option. We don't know of any ethnic group predating them in France or of any religion there older than theirs, and they were certainly the most widespread and entrenched people who lived there. But Scions who want to play French to the end still have a wide variety of options in those pantheons who have in the past had their fingers in the Gaulish pie, so many different character concepts are possible.

And, of course, it's always possible for a Scion to be born and raised in France but to have a divine parent who's not French and just happened to be there while on Scion-making duty. Whatever makes your players happy, they can probably get away with.

Uayward Son

Question: In your system, does the Maya idea of uay work similarly to how you worked the nagual?

Question: Love the nahualli of the Aztec, what about the wayob of the Maya?

Yes, as a matter of fact! While we don't have any active K'uh running around right now, we would be inclined to use a similar model for uayob as we do for nahualli, setting them up as customized special Birthrights tailored to the Scion who is attached to them. The concepts are similar enough that most of the nahualli Birthright effects make sense for a Maya Scion as well, so those who want to use the same template can go right on trucking.

There are some differences between the Aztec idea of the nahualli and the Maya idea of the uay, however, which may require that Storytellers and players investigate alternatives and get creative. Where nahualli are always animals with no exceptions, uayob are usually animals but can appear in other forms as well, such as the famous skeleton uayob of the Underworld deities. There's also an interesting concept among the Maya that doesn't appear for the Aztecs of animals having uay of their own, so where a Scion might have an animal as a uay, an animal might have a human twin, or another animal, that behaves similarly for it. You might be able to do some particularly neat things with a Scion who has a Birthright Creature and is its uay, providing it unusual bonuses or abilities (but remember to keep this all reasonably Birthright cost-appropriate!). Finally, the Aztec concept of a nahualli hits the idea of the other half of the soul very hard, but the Maya concept of the uay, while incorporating the same idea, tends more toward illustrating a figure's magical powers, so you may want to experiment with uayob being less about the Scion's personal attributes and self and more about things he can do.

Uayob aren't up to the totally crazy level of inclusion as, say, the Deva vahanas which can basically be any darn thing in the world; for most PCs, they'll probably be animals and the nahualli template will work perfectly well for them. But if you have a player who's really interested in the subject and willing to do some research to come up with a cool new idea, by all means, tinker away until it fits.

Crazy Gods

Which gods do you think are not batshit nuts by our standard? I mean, the gods that would probably get along with our modern morals and ethics?

There is a big difference between batshit nuts and getting along with modern morals and ethics.
I dont think ANY gods would really be able to agree with modern morals and ethics. Their cultures were so vastly different that across the board modern ethics would be confusing.

What do you mean I cant have slaves? I defeated their city in combat!
What do you mean I cant murder that guy? He killed my dad, I get to murder him.
That guy embarrassed someone in court? Jail forever!

I often see players making the mistake of thinking that the female gods could somehow get along with modern ethics, but its only the male gods who would have "less power" by todays standards who couldnt handle it. But female gods would be just as confused by todays standards. A lot of the advances women have had in modern countries, the goddesses have had forever. Not that goddesses were always treated awesome, or even well, but they were able to speak their mind(usually) and had a much greater effect on the world around them that human women didnt have until recently.

Batshit crazy though? Thats different. Very different. I think it actually ends up depending on your own personal values. Many people find vengeance to be batshit crazy, but to a mediterranean like me.....vengeance extremity seems like a normal course of action. If someone killed my cat, I have no doubt I would hunt them with an axe. And i dont really think Im batshit crazy.

Dionysus, Tezcatlipoca, probably loki(although not in a normal batshit crazy way)...i really Im just naming chaos gods. Maybe only chaos gods are what id consider actually crazy, becuase just having that level of chaoticness is what most people consider crazy....maybe thats just cause we have too much Order bred into us.

The Dead Walk

Question: I'm brainstorming ideas for reconciling a Titanic Izanami to the Amatsukami, ranging from getting her kids to visit more often to convincing Izanagi to pull a Belili. This is rather broad, but do you have any thoughts to share on attempting to resurrect big-name deities who have 'dead and not loving it' as a big part of their legend?

It is pretty broad, but hey, that doesn't mean we can't take a running tackle at it anyway.

Resurrecting a god, especially one that's been dead a long time, and especially one who's so strongly associated with the idea of death, is no small undertaking. You're looking at something that will need tons of magical mojo from multiple gods, the political sanction of important involved parties (or the political fallout if you don't talk to them first), and the inversion of the balance of the universe, replacing and rewriting who's in charge of life and death and how they interact with their pantheons. That shit is heavy all by itself, never mind that there will also be specific problems and obstacles for various different dead gods that differ and make your headache even worse.

Big-name dead gods fall into three basic categories: gods who died and are stuck being dead in the Underworld (your Baldur, Gugalanna and so forth), fertility gods who are on a revolving door in and out of the Underworld (Persephone, Tammuz, Baal and so on) and gods who died and ended up being in charge of running the place as a result (Yama, Izanami, Osiris, etc). They've all got different problems and challenges, so we'll hit some of the major highlights for each (although I know you're specifically looking at the last case).

Gods who have died and are sad denizens of a normal Underworld are probably the easiest case to handle, actually; they follow the usual Underworld rules for dead folks and can thusly potentially be "rescued" in the usual way ("usual" here meaning "fucking hard and rare", but that's Underworlds for you). Your main challenges are getting the ruler of whatever Underworld they're stuck in to allow them to leave, and, if that doesn't work, figuring out a way to jailbreak them if necessary. The most obvious way of approaching is the classic journey to the Underworld to beg the death god's indulgence to give you back your lost god, asking for them to allow the dead deity to go free. When you do so, you're looking at probably needing A) a really great reason that the death god will consider breaking the rules for you, and B) a really great bribe to make sure they get something out of it. If you're lacking either, most death gods will turn you down without blinking. Finally, you can also try to get some other god with power over death to come in and take control of the dead god's shade, but that's possibly the most explosively dangerous option - do you really want to see what happens when Osiris rolls into Hades' house and starts opposing his rule?

Dying fertility gods, which is the scholarly shorthand for "gods who die on a regular basis to illustrate the fertility of the earth in different seasons or periods of drought/abundance", are a much more difficult issue. The recurring cycle of their deaths is a major and important part of their Legend, and disrupting it might have serious consequences for both the World and the politics among the pantheon they belong to. If Persephone stops going to Hades every year, you're going to have a violently upset Hades on your hands, and if Tammuz stops going to Irkallu every year, that means Ereshkigal may rise up and try to reclaim Ishtar. There's also the problem of most of them dying for different reasons and because of different events in their past, so some may be easier to stop than others; Hades notwithstanding, it might not be hard to keep Persephone from going down to the Underworld if Demeter interferes or psychopomps refuse to take her, but Baal ends up down there because he's prone to getting in fights with his death-god rival Mot and dying, and stopping a thunder god on a rampage seldom goes well for anyone involved. Some of them may not want to be stopped from dying, which is a further layer of difficulty, and you may just not be able to convince Persephone she doesn't want to go be queen half the year or that Adonis should abandon his devotion to Aphrodite to avoid getting shivved this year. And, finally, if you do succeed in breaking that cycle, what happens to the World? Does winter never come again if Persephone never dies, and what does that do to the Greek lands and the people who live in them? Do Lebanon and Syria never experience drought again if Baal never goes to Nepesh, and if so, are their dry, sandy shores going to end up sliding into the sea because they were never meant to be constantly inundated with moisture? Even without the probable extreme ire of the death gods who aren't getting their perennial visitors, those myths have a direct effect on the World and Scions attempting to stop their normal course may need to figure out how to run some serious-scale damage control.

And, finally, there are the folks like Izanami, who died and ended up taking ownership of the deathrealms and the very concept of death itself. Some of these gods may be happy to be where they are (Yama, for example, would probably keep doing his job even if he was technically allowed to quit), but often they're stuck down there because of banishment or punishments levied on them. Hel, Izanami and Osiris are seriously not pleased about their lots in unlife, but thanks to the laws and barriers of their pantheons, they're unable to do anything about it but make the best of the situation by ruling where they can. The most major obstacle to getting them back is just convincing the rest of the pantheon to allow it, which is going to involve political shenanigans on a cosmic level; after that point, you also have the extremely difficult job of finding someone to replace them, because the last thing anyone wants is an Underworld with nobody at the wheel. And if you manage all that, what will the former death god be as a member of the pantheon proper, and what new roles and powers might they take on, and how will they be doing that, and what will it mean to the other gods who are now rubbing elbows with them?

This is a lot of stuff. And those are just the in-game, non-mechanical concerns, which are already more than enough to make most Scions go cross-eyed. There's also the extreme power required to mechanically pull this off.

In terms of what you actually do to resurrect a god, occasionally it can be as "easy" as journeying to the Underworld, finding them and giving them the power to escape themselves; gods with Ultimate Stamina, Samsara or Circle of Life may be able to resurrect under their own power if you can just give them the juice to do it, meaning that rituals or quests to help them out with that may eventually bear fruit. If they don't have a get-out-of-Hades-free card, then you're looking at needing, at bare minimum, a god who can blow The Reaper to resurrect them and a god who can bust off The Savior to help them form and inhabit a new body, and depending on who the god is and what circumstances surround their deaths, you may also need someone to blow The Wyrd to work on disentangling their Fate from its current dead-end path. It goes without saying that if you and your buddies aren't Legend 12, you're going to have to offer some serious incentives to get other gods in your corner here. There are also occasionally very powerful relics in various cultures' mythology that may be able to resurrect the dead, so you may end up going on quests to find and figure out how to use those if everything else is failing. And, finally, you may be able to perform an Underworld trade, letting one god return to life while another dies in his place, but finding willing victims for such things is probably not any easier than getting a cabal of gods willing to blow at least 30 Legend each on your problem.

This is a lot of work and it's very daunting, but don't despair; it's still possible, and in fact the PCs in our games have several times managed to resurrect dead gods through their efforts. Geoff's band managed to help Quetzalcoatl return to life by providing him enough rituals and sacrifices that he could resurrect himself after his ill-fated battle with Ryujin, and Aurora brokered an impressive trade-one-god-for-another deal that not only saved a dead goddess (sort of, after a lot of work) but had the interesting side effect of getting Hel to ban her from the Underworld permanently. It's totally doable, but, like most really important things in the Scion world, it's doable only through intense effort and acceptance of equally intense consequences.

Edit: Oh, hey, apparently your question was about Titans, not gods, and I totally ignored that because I'm competing with John for title of Worst Blogger Ever. In addition to all the jazz up there, you might want to check out this old post about converting Titans into gods.

Learning Curve

Question: When a Scion learns the Kriya Boon, do XP discount knacks stop working for ALL abilities, or only those that Kriya affects? For example, would a Scion with Natural Leader and Kriya get the XP discount for Presence and Animal Ken?

Ah, a savvy XP-spender. You're right, that's worded confusingly.

Kriya causes any XP-reducing knacks you might have to cease to apply to any of the abilities that Kriya covers, but does not disqualify you from gaining the benefits of knacks that apply to others. Therefore, Eyes in the Back of Your Head would still provide discounts to Awarness and Empathy (but not to Investigation or Stealth), Fast Learner would still provide discounts to Academics, Occult and Politics (but not to Medicine or Survival), Natural Juggernaut would still provide discounts to Empathy, Fortitude and Integrity (but not to Survival), and Natural Leader would still provide discounts to Animal Ken and Presence (but not to Art or Command). Star Pupil would have no effect at all, since it provides discounts only to abilities that Kriya already covers.

And, since I see them in the list above and feel it in my bones that someone's going to ask, I'll also point out that it is not possible for two XP-reducing knacks from that list above to stack. If you have both Natural Juggernaut and Fast Learner, your Survival is still 1/2 cost, not 1/4. That's not because we hate you, it's just because very few of the knacks overlap and they were never meant to be stacked. (However, other XP-reducing powers, such as Teaching Prodigy or Blood Mead, can reduce it down past 1/2 when stacked with your knack.)

Faces on Parade

Question: I get that a Scion of Bast does not get an XP break to Animal (Koala Bear) by your rules. Does a Scion of Aphrodite get an XP break to negative Epic Appearance? Also, is it possible for a Scion to be positively Fatebound to one side of Appearance and negatively Fatebound to the other?

This is an area where I think I've seen some confusion floating around in the comments, too, so I'm glad you asked! While Animal is specifically tied to a totem beast, it is the only power in the game that requires specialization that way. Epic Appearance, which is at its base the stat that determines how awesome, crazy and inhuman you look, can be messed around with by Scions but is a single stat that is affected singly by Fatebonds.

So yes, anyone whose parent has Epic Appearance associated gets an XP discount to buying Epic Appearance, regardless of which kind they pick up. Aphrodite's children can be uggo-monsters if they want to, while Kali's kids can be as gracefully beautiful as the morning dew. (There are, however, always those non-mechanical pitfalls to be aware of; Hephaestus getting thrown off Olympus at birth by his disgusted mother is a cautionary tale for those who play against their parent's favored Appearance.)

Because Epic Appearance isn't really two kinds of stats the way two separate Animal purviews would be, it's too much of a headache to try to track positive versus negative versus neutral for XP and Fatebonds, so we don't do it. We started out with it early on, but if mortals who believe a Scion has Appearance are normally counteracted by those who believe he doesn't, then you have a mess if you add a further layer of two different kinds of Appearance that are unfairly detracting from one another in a way that doesn't happen to other stats. If you're Fatebound to have Appearance, you get Appearance and Epic Appearance bought for you, period, regardless of whether the mortals believe in your hideousness or your flawlessness or different ones believe in both. What they really believe is that you Look Really Impressive, so they buy dots accordingly.

We do keep a couple of nods to the different Appearance specializations in the Fatebond system, mostly to reflect the power of the mortals involved. If you're currently rocking beautiful Epic Appearance and mortals who believe you're terrifying buy you a new dot of it, your Appearance immediately reverts to the scary side of the scale as their beliefs affect you; if you want to go back to being pretty, you'll need to have the appropriate knacks to exert your powers to overcome Fate's preference. This can lead to some wacky swapping if more than one mortal believes you have different specializations, and we have had characters who flipped from beautiful to ugly and back on the whim of Fate, much to the distress of their comrades and mortal onlookers. Also, if you have a Fatebond to a specific kind of Appearance and you have all the dots they can buy you at that time, they won't buy you knacks of the opposite speciality; if you have a positive Appearance Fatebond and they need to buy a knack, they'll never choose the Aura of Dread tree, while if you have a negative Appearance Fatebond they'll refuse to embark on the Doin' Fine set of powers.

We've lowered the number of knacks that are tied to one or the other - lots of them are able to be used regardless of your kind of impressiveness - but there are still a few out there. Appearance is a stat we think is absolutely necessary for Scion, in which so many gods have it as such an important and defining characteristic of their legends, but it is still a little bit weird when compared to the other Attributes that don't have a built-in revolving door. Our goal is usually to make it up to the character to decide what they look like and what powers they purchase to control that, and to let Fate's chips, as usual, fall where they will.

Just Want You Guys to Know: John is the worst blogger in the history of the world.

Telling Things What to Do

Question: Speak Hu seems a little one-sided. As PSPs are something that everyone is supposed to have access to (and I suppose technically everyone does when it comes to knacks), shouldn't it be a little more universal? With it being limited to only using the Manipulation/Overt Order tree, it doesn't feel like it's truly something the entire pantheon can utilize. Would it not be more appropriate to allow players to use Charisma/Manipulation + appropriate ability to influence stubborn items?

No, but I think I see where you're coming from. Here's what's up with Speak Hu.

Firstly, we definitely don't want to expand the knack to be just "use your social stats on objects", because that's both way too enormously vague and difficult for Storytellers and way too overpowered. Speak Hu is a boon that already causes some games difficulty with being overpowered in its current form (there's a bunch of discussion of it back here if you missed it!); removing the restriction of actually using powers would make it much too broad and all-encompassing, especially for a level one boon (PSP though it may be). We also really want to preserve the flavor of using your actual powers and commands on objects in the world around you; Speak Hu is about harnessing the Egyptian ability to speak the words of power and creation and command those things that remember them to respond, and we'd like some actual words of power and creation to be happening instead of just, you know, conversations. Also, Speak Hu is already kind of problematically close to getting into Tsukumo-gami's space, and allowing general social stat usage on items would pretty much make all the Japanese Scions give up and go home.

However, there's good news, and that's that Speak Hu is in no way limited to the Overt Order knack tree in Manipulation! I can see where you might have gotten that impression - after all, saying, "Door, open the hell up" with Overt Order is certainly an effective and straightforward way to get things done, plus the boon uses Overt Order as an example - but that's far from the only thing that a Scion with Speak Hu can do. Speak Hu can be applied to any social knack from any of the three social Attributes, and that means it has a great deal of flexibility and breadth for different Scions to use in different ways.

Persuasion, for example, has always been popular in our games; knacks like God's Honest or Benefit of the Doubt have been successfully used to convince a fuse that its lever was actually in the off position, causing it to kill all the lights in the building to correct the "mistake", or to cajole a security lock into believing that the incorrect code just entered was actually the right one. A Scion with lots of Charisma might be able to Filibuster so that objects that would normally leave the area - like a baby carriage hurtling down a hill - instead turn to stay near him and listen, or cause every recording device within his range to suddenly start recording his words with a quick use of Attention Please. A Scion who prefers the manipulative arts might be able to use Not the Face to avoid an inanimate object that was about to roll into her, Total Recall to ensure that a videotape can never have a critical moment recorded over, or Obliteration to make herself completely immune to being recorded by any device. Even the Appearance folks can do neat things with Speak Hu, from using Aura of Dread to plow through a normally movement-penalty-inducing junkyard with nary an issue to instantly blacking out cameras and recorders with Blinding Visage to using Inescapable Vision to cause some seriously hilarious results on any security footage.

Of course, not every knack from any of those Attributes is useful with Speak Hu; not much point in giving a rock bonus Willpower or spreading a rumor to a bicycle stand. But there's a wide variety of options nonetheless, and Scions only have to get creative to try to take advantage of them.

Speak Hu is a Storyteller-intensive boon where a lot depends on their rulings on what does and doesn't happen to an object, so it's also a factor in how well the boon works. If your Storyteller doesn't allow anything but Overt Order, well, yeah, that seriously sucks and wasn't our intention, and the boon probably is deeply limited compared to other PSPs. But it never hurts to try a cool move - especially if it's couched in an awesome stunt and saves the day - so keep trying to be creative, and if the ST isn't having it, maybe sit down with him or her so you can discuss how Speak Hu works and what kinds of things they think you should be doing with it, so you know in no uncertain terms what you can and can't get up to. If you're the Storyteller, it might be useful for you to go through the social knacks and make a list of which ones you think are reasonable powers to use with Speak Hu, which will allow you to be ready for them when they happen in a game and also help encourage or offer suggestions to your players if they're stumped. But also stay on your toes, because no matter how great your list is, a player is probably going to do something you didn't think of at some point; just keep a cool head, decide whether it works and what it does when it happens, and don't panic ahead of time.

So go out there and command creation and have fun, you guys.