He Who Roams Always

Question: I have been digging through Inuit stuff and stumbled upon Kiviuq. Apparently, he has an epic. Where would he fit in Scion?

Oh, man, Kiviuq is the coolest! (Ahaha, jokes about cold, because Canadian/Greenland/Alaskan myths.)

Kiviuq is, in my opinion, very obviously the star Scion of the Inuit pantheon (although of whom is up for debate!). He's a legendary hero who wanders all over Inuit territory performing various great deeds, meeting various gods and magical creatures, and generally being badass. He's characterized as an eternally wandering hero, which has the neat effect of causing him to have a wide range of different stories among different Inuit groups and areas, all of which can be organized together into a giant chain of events that characterize his life.

Kiviuq's doing a lot of cool stuff that really exemplifies a lot of recurring themes in Inuit myth. He participates in seal hunts and other adventures on the sea, and often encounters magical creatures therein or is afflicted (or sometimes helped) by supernatural storms and phenomena caused by various gods and magical beings he befriends. He loses his family, repeatedly in the cases of some groups, and therefore wanders in the wilderness as a representative of mankind versus nature. Sometimes he wins, sometimes nature wins, sometimes he works together with nature to make sure other people don't win.

Later, Kiviuq gains ongoing mythological functions that suggest he may even have reached apotheosis; for example, several different traditions hold that Kiviuq is akin to the soul of mankind or even the world itself, and that as long as he is alive, so too can humanity survive. If he were ever to die - a process that various areas suggest he might be doing very slowly even now - the world will end with him.

Basically, he is cool bananas and everyone should check him out if you have any interest in playing anything Inue-related. The Epic of Qayaq is a great source to read about some of the Greenland versions of his myths, and Henry Isluanik's Kiviuq's Journey is a good one for faithfully-preserved oral retellings from Canadian Inuit groups.

Fair and Just

Question: Is there a place for a Justice god in the Inue, or are they too far away from humanity?

It depends on how far you're willing to stretch your definition of "justice god", really. For our part, we would definitely say yes.

The Inuit religion is primarily based on the idea of the Inue as the embodiments - in fact, the very souls - of natural phenomena. They represent things like the wind, the water, the plants that grow from the earth or the animals that are hunted by humanity, and they generally do not represent abstract humanity-based concepts like Justice or Guardian, as those are not the same kind of nature-based elements. The function of the gods in most Inuit myths is to govern and empower the natural world, so most of the time there's little reason for them to have powers that aren't associated with nature in some way. In that particular religion, gods are about nature, and humanity interacts with them but is not championed by them, at least not primarily.

However, many among the Inue do occasionally interact with humanity in ways that might qualify as being justice-related, so you may still be able to peg a few of them as having some powers in that area. The most major is actually the Titan Sila; traditional Inuit practices include a wide range of important rituals, ceremonies and taboos that must be observed in order to make sure they don't offend the Inue, and when weather-related disaster strikes it is often assumed that Sila is punishing the community as a result of someone failing to correctly observe those practices. This makes him a sort of enforcer of law, or at least religious custom, which is one thing that Justice traditionally does. The other option is probably Tornarssuk, the bear god; he doesn't do too much with human laws or customs in a broad sense, but he's the special patron and tester of Inuit shaman, and decides whether or not they're worthy for the post or deserve to be eaten by bears. (Literally, eaten by bears, that's what you get if you're bad. Also if you're good. Bears are hungry creatures.)

So there are a couple of examples, but they don't look a whole lot like the Sraoshas and Proves of other pantheons. Different cultures, different conceptions of what gods do and how society interacts with them.

However, that doesn't mean that if you're an Inue Scion, you can't be all about Justice. Areas that are not already being covered by the old gods are perfect for new Scions to pick up as their own specialties - no matter how you think of the general idea of Justice, if it's not being handled already, you can make it your own without having to compete with anyone else. Maybe you think the Inue should get more involved with helping humanity out and you want to be the first to start doing so, or maybe you think the gods themselves need policing that you might be able to provide. Maybe you want to be a god associated with some other interpretation of Justice! Go wild! They might be a little resistant to it since it's not something they're used to, but every new Scion has to struggle to find their new place in the world. Choose what you want and go for it, my friend.

Souls that Walk

Question: In your Inue supplement, which Shua purview to does each legend 12 god have? And what happens if any of them have the same one?

We addressed this somewhere in the bucket of comments, but here's a post so people can find it in the future. :) All the lower-Legend gods should have their Shua already detailed in their writeups, but the big fish should go as follows:

Pinga, Nakturiak, Tornarssuk and Tulungersak all probably have Shua for their specific animal totems (so Caribou, Eagles, Polar Bears and Ravens, respectively). They're the rulers of those specific animals and in charge of protecting them from wilderness and disasters as well as making sure that they're available to hunters when needed and thriving as part of the local ecosystem.

Aningat and Seqineq, as the deities of the moon and sun, almost certainly have Shua for their celestial bodies. Aningat controls and embodies the moon, its influence over the human body and the tides, while Seqineq embodies and administers the warmth and light of the northern sun.

Likewise, Sedna and Nunam are the gods of the ocean and the land, and probably have Shua for Water and Earth respectively. Sedna is in charge of many sea animals, but it's really the sea, with all its cold, frightening depths, that she is most associated with and that she can whip into a killing frenzy when angered, and Nunam personifies the earth itself, from which all life is grown and to which it returns. You could make a case for Nunam having Shua (Fertility) instead, considering that she is also the inventor of most plants, but we like the earth connection a little bit more.

And finally, there's Anguta, the hideous psychopomp that nobody likes. He doesn't exactly have a strong connection to any natural phenomena and is definitely the hardest to peg, but we would probably give him Shua (Darkness), based on the purview's connections to fear and misery and Anguta's own practices of terrifying, punishing and hiding souls in the oblivion of his dark house.

In general, two gods having the same Shua shouldn't make a whole lot of difference. Just like you might have more than one god with the same associated purviews in a pantheon, the same Shua doesn't mean there will be conflict; one person with Shua (Water) might have it because they're associated with freshwater lakes, and that doesn't interfere with Sedna as the mistress of the ocean at all. The only way there might be a conflict is if two Inue try to use their level 10 power, Tlam-Shua, to inhabit the same area of their concept, and in that case, we would probably say that both gods roll their total number of boons in the associated purview, and the winner is the one who embodies the area. But since the Inue are fighting a continual battle against the Titans in their homeland, most of the time we don't imagine that issue comes up much; it's much better for two gods to spread out and be able to inhabit (and thus protect) two different areas, rather than stacking up on the same one. We could see it being a problem if both gods were trying to dive into their element to escape something that was about to kill them, and only one could succeed... but hopefully that isn't happening much. That sounds like the worst situation ever.

Shua is about embodying a single element or concept as its very soul; the Inua who does so gives it its power and drive, and can control how strong and effective it is by supporting it or withdrawing her support from it. More than one god can do so without conflicting; after all, the more gods support an element, the more powerful it becomes, so as long as they don't step on one anothers' toes politically, they're probably perfectly happy to have the help.

Not Exactly Santa's Workshop

It's not the fastest we've ever finished a pantheon - the Bogovi still hold that honor - but we're still feeling pretty proud of ourselves. Finished in almost exactly three months, the gods of the Inuit of the far frozen north are ready to join your games. Be careful when you call upon the Inue, because when they answer, they answer with mighty force.

It's been a while since we've been so jazzed about working on a pantheon, but these guys made it easy. For one thing, we finally have an official pantheon representing North America! It's not nearly the justice that continent deserves, but it's a start. For another, their unique worldview and status as gods of an area that few enter and even fewer understand made for some fascinating research and incredibly interesting deities (not to mention terrifying, in many cases). Like the Polynesians before them, the Inuit have a spread of different languages and regional variations in their pre-Christian religion, but we hope we've done a good job of being faithful to their shared concepts and presenting their most important mythological ideas.

Also, there are more gods in this supplement that will kill you for breathing near them than ever before. So that's a nice bonus for all you sadistic Storytellers out there.

As always, feel free to ask anything you like in the comments, and we'll be resetting the voting poll for new pantheon goodness momentarily. The Hittites won this round because all of you are awesome people who know a quality dead-cuneiform-preserved pantheon when you see one, so they will be next. (And I can't wait!)

If you're one of the lucky players in our games who have previously run into Sedna, Sila or Tornarssuk, now you can go read up on them and realize how very much worse things could have been. That's because we love you guys.

Edit: Now with 100% more Virtues and 100% less embarrassing cover typo. Sorry to those who already downloaded the first version of the PDF, but it's otherwise identical!

Bird is the Word

Question: I love your post on Central and South American jaguar gods. Could we have one on Native American raven gods?

Sure! Untangling different Ravens is a little more difficult than differentiating between the jaguar gods down south; many of the North American cultures were partly migratory, allowing them to share their gods and religion via diffusion over larger areas than the more static urban cultures of Central America, and the waters were further muddied when European settlement in the Americas forced entire ethnic groups to uproot and move to different territories, introducing their culture in entirely foreign areas. Then, when English-speaking historians and ethnologists recorded the stories of various North American peoples, they tended to ignore the native words for various deities and figures and just record every story as "about Raven", regardless of whether or not those were the same raven gods from the same cultures or whether they were deity stories or folkloric stories, sometimes out of linguistic confusion, sometimes because they didn't think the animistic and polytheistic natives had a formal religion because it didn't look like Christianity, and sometimes out of plan old imperialist inability to tell one group of people from another.

But untangling is what we're here for, right?

So, starting up at the top of the world, we've got Tulungersak, known to the Inuit of Alaska and Canada as Father Raven. He's probably the most dour of the raven gods; he still retains a little of the familiar character of raven as a trickster, especially in stories such as his squabble with Kaglulik over feather designs or his accidental drowning of himself while trying to imitate migratory birds, but overall he's a more somber and fatherly creator figure, in keeping with the general lack of humor among the arctic gods. Depending on the Inuit community you ask, he created the earth, the sky, the sun and stars or humanity; to some, he's the bringer of thunderstorms when angered (often because someone has harmed a raven without cause), and to others he's the being who turns the inhabitable glaciers into solid, livable land. He invented death - by accident, of course, as tricksters do - and can now be called upon by shamans to enrich their trances and harass their spirit companions. If anybody can be said to be a fun time among the Inuit gods, it's Tulungersak: black-feathered party in a reactionary can.

Father Raven, harassing Sedna because he doesn't have very good decision-making capacity

A little bit south the the Pacific Northwest coast from Canada to Oregon, Washington and northern California, and we run into the most famous of raven gods, those that form the major gods of their respective cultures. Nankil'slas, the raven god of the Haida and Tlingit, is widespread in this area and is also a creator god, but he does so through selfish trickster-style shenanigans, as in the story where he grants light to the world because he coveted the beautiful treasures of sun and moon and performed a ridiculous shapechanging caper in order to steal them, and now runs around the sky with them in case anyone might be coveting his shinies.

He will come for your shinies, too.

It's usually a bad idea to fuck around with Nankil'slas, especially since he tends to have very little conscience and react on impulse when he wants something. There was that one time he got an entire community of people killed in an intentional avalanche because he was hungry and wanted to eat some eyeballs. He's not out to get you, he just is really more about his own instant gratification than anything else.

I know you asked about North American, but I gotta bring up Kutkh in this discussion, too, even though he's technically more of an Asian phenomenon. Kutkh is the raven god of the Chukchi, who inhabit northeastern Siberia, but he also appears across the vast Pacific in some strikingly similar myths among Alaskan peoples. Like most raven deities, he's full of ridiculousness and high spirits, which his people believe explains why the landscapes he created are sometimes full of bizarre formations and weird glacial carvings, and often gets into fights with other local gods, usually because they don't properly respect him or have something he wants. (Those raven gods, no respect for personal property.)

Making Kamchatka look crazy, one feather at a time.

There are several other small raven deities, scattered everywhere from California to Ohio to Oklahoma, but those above are the most major and well-known.

Interestingly, while European legends tend to make all corvids sort of interchangeable, not distinguishing too clearly between ravens and crows, Native American religions more often view the two kinds of birds very differently. Raven gods, like the ones above, tend to be the fly-by-night shenanigans-heavy tricksters who blow things up out of greed or confusion and do some great things while also suffering the consequences of their actions. Crow gods, on the other hand - like Angwusnasomtaka, the mother goddess of the Hopi pantheon way south of crazy Raventown - are usually figures more associated with order and stability, bringing evildoers to justice and maintaining the status quo.

We'll be seeing one of these guys in the Inuit pantheon someday not too far off, hopefully!

Affairs of the Soul

Our marathon vlog series continues, this week with a two-for-one subject deal! Look at us go. We're not tired at all.

Question: I was just reading the Fatebinding rules on your site and something confused me. The way that the rules are written makes it seem like Scions have to be Legend 3 before they can get Fatebonds. Am I understanding that correctly?

Question: I remember John saying a while ago (in comments) that Fatebonds in general don't buy Attributes below 3 dots, but is there a theoretical maximum? Could one measly Fatebond and enough time buy a character up from zero Epic to ultimate attribute?

Question: What happens when the total amount of XP Siphoned by Fatebonds exceeds 100%? For example, if you pick up seven Level 10 Fatebonds - you'd end up with 105% of your XP being siphoned to meet your Fatebonds' expectations. Do you end up with more XP, but no discretionary spending?

Question: What would happen to the entire universe of Scion if Fate was either destroyed or could no longer influence the Gods?

Question: Neith is said to be a goddess that "made" Fate. how does that work in Scion?

Question: What's the difference between a Valor pantheon and a Courage pantheon? What makes you decide to give the Theoi Valor instead of Courage, or give the Tuatha Courage and not Valor?

Question: Have you ever considered having the Virtue Benevolence? Helping others, even sometimes at great cost to oneself?

Question: Is Malice going to be one of the core Virtues of the Inuit? It might be a little strange to have a Dark Virtue, but from your description the Inuit people were constantly scared shitless of their gods.

This is our fiftieth vlog - how the time flies. We should do something special, right?

Hey, guys. We're aware that our video is being a massive pain in the ass right now and refusing to load, and since we're stuck on a hotel connection this weekend, it's not being polite about our attempts to fix it. Please be patient - we promise it'll be up some time tonight.

We decided to celebrate our fiftieth vlog with technical difficulties.

We Fear

Crawling in at the last minute with a quick and dirty vlog. This is the face of a woman who has been working on character sheets and layout all day and is tired. Oh, so tired. But not too tired for Inuit mythology.

Question: With the Inuit on the poll now, could you tell us a little bit about their mythologies, themes, and some of their gods?