A Nice Compliment to Give Your Fighter

Question: How would you guys represent an Aristeia? A relic-altered version of Fury of War? A Virtue Extremity? Something else?

We're not totally convinced an aristeia needs to be anything, actually.

For those not up on their epic Greek poetry, an aristeia - meaning "excellent moment", from the root arete which we already know and love - is the moment in a literary or poetic story, usually a battle, when the hero demonstrates his or her finest skills and most impressive feats. The most common example of a hero having an aristeia is in the Iliad when Achilles routs the Greek army almost by himself and eventually kills Hector in the ensuing chaos, but while the Greeks use it extensively as a literary convention, heroes from other cultures could just as easily be said to have an aristeia, such as when Arjuna and Krishna rout practically all the asura in one go or Cu Chulainn clears the battlefield in the depths of his raging riastrad.

But, we don't know that you need a game mechanic to represent an aristeia in Scion. Aristeia are supposed to happen when your Scion is being at his or her shining best in combat, truly demonstrating their best abilities and worth to be a hero, and that's something they ought to be doing all the time. If your Scion's story was being written as an epic like the Iliad, their climactic battle-winning awesomeness at the end of the story would be an aristeia automatically. It's just a literary convention describing a certain part of a story, not a thing happening to the characters of the story themselves.

Most combat-oriented Scions will have an aristeia at some point in their careers - ideally, in their most awesomest battle each story. Think back over your combat characters' careers: were there times they were so awe-inspiring in combat that everyone's jaw dropped, or that they took out a seemingly impossible scene all by themselves? That was their aristeia. And if that hasn't happened yet, don't worry, because every battle might be that battle. It's a combination of good rolls, awesome stunting and just general amazing battlefield domination. We've certainly had them, from the time that Russel blew all his Deeds and Channels in one scene to take down the fire demon we had designed to fight the whole group with no one to back him up but an unconscious Skylar, or the time Eztli popped her Army of One and single-handedly wiped out an entire invading force of giants from Niflheim.

So no, we wouldn't make a relic or Extremity or anything else specifically to represent an aristeia. An aristeia might involve a relic weapon, or happen during a Virtue Extremity, or be kicked off by a Scion using a boon, but it's not any of those things itself. It's just a poetic way of saying, "Right now, this Scion is being fucking incredible at wiping the floor with her enemies," and that's what most combatters are doing in their most exciting and climactic moments.