The Hills of Sunny Tuscany

Question: Will you guys ever think of doing an Etruscan pantheon, or is it to much influenced by the Greeks?

Question: Do you ever just want to take a break from exploring distant frontiers of exotic ancient civilizations and write an Etruscan pantheon?

Pfft, like the Etruscans aren't exotic? Please. We live in North Carolina. Any religion that isn't Southern baptist is considered "exotic" around here.

Actually, I have to admit that I am totally a fan of Etruscan mythology. It is heavily Greek-influenced, but its unique aspects are incredibly interesting; there's a lot of crazy stuff, including rampant haruspexy, surprising incest themes, and fantastic new relations between different gods that make it a joy to read about. Any pantheon with a secret shadow council of unknowable gods in charge of whether or not the thunder-god is allowed to use the Super Nuke Death Lightning can't help but be interesting. If you're interested in the details of Etruscan myth, we'd totally suggest getting your hands on Etruscan Myth, Sacred History and Legend by Nancy Thomson de Grummond; it's a great resource with a ton of interesting information, comparison to Greco-Roman myth and excellent reproductions of Etruscan mythological art.

However, we're not sure whether or not an entire Etruscan pantheon supplement is a feasible option. The Etruscans certainly have unique deities and ideas, but they are a poorly-preserved religion before the beginning of Greek influence, and once that Greek influence began to be felt in the religion, things got massively syncretized. The same problems inherent in trying to write a separate Roman pantheon are present for the Etruscans; the majority of their major gods are obvious imports of the major gods of the Theoi, or at best native gods who were assigned all the stories and attributes of Theoi gods until their own individuality has been severely compromised and difficult to identify under all the layers of Greekness. Tinia, for example, almost certainly began as a purely Italiante thunder god with his own myths and local significance, but once Greek influence arrived on the scene, he became so strongly identified with Zeus that we have almost no remaining myths of him or images of him in art that are not obviously borrowed. We would have a few interesting tidbits to say about Tinia, like the aforementioned council control of his most powerful thunderbolts, but for the most part all his myths are just myths of Zeus.

There are purely Etruscan gods in the pantheon; Tiv, for example, is clearly the native moon-god and was more important in that role that Aritimi, the much later imported version of Artemis, and Thufltha (owner of the most fun name to say among his pantheon) is a purely Etruscan deity of fortune and good will. But while we could certainly scrape several of them together and talk about their neat attributes and whatnot, we have the same problem that we have trying to write a Roman pantheon: we'd have to ignore the most important major deities because they're basically identical to the Theoi, and that leaves us with a pantheon that doesn't really represent Etruscan religion at all. But we also can't just throw all the Theoi-analogues in there, because then we have two weirdly pseudo-identical pantheons.

So it's not on our short list; it has problems that we aren't sure how to address yet. We do think there are definitely Etruscan gods in Scion's world, just like there are Roman gods, and that they are not necessarily best handled as part of the Theoi, but for the moment it's something that various Storytellers will probably have to handle. Some will probably say that they want to consider all three pantheons under the Theoi umbrella, and that they represent Theoi influence in a few different cultures that worshiped the same gods in slightly different, culture-appropriate ways. Some will probably say that all three are different, and have to figure out how to split up the major Olympians among them. Some will do the sub-pantheon thing, and others will probably go for a mixture somewhere in between all these options. But until we figure out exactly what we want to do with this perennial issue, we probably wouldn't try to write up the Etruscans separately.