Takes One to Know One

Question: Hi, there was a story of Thor losing his hammer and having to ask Loki for help. Is this possible? Because a.) Thor is still a powerful God in his own right and B. There are other Gods.

Um... well, yes? Not only is it possible, it's totally what happened in actual Norse mythology, so you can't get a much better authority on it than that.

In a nutshell, the story goes that Thrym, a powerful and sneaky giant, stole Thor's hammer Mjolnir while he was sleeping. Upon waking, Thor went to Loki for help; Loki took him to Freya's hall, where they borrowed her cloak of feathers and Loki used it to fly off to Jotunheim to look for the hammer. When he finds Thrym, Loki learns that the giant has hidden it and will only give it back if he's given Freya for a wife. Loki and Thor try to pressure Freya into marrying him to get the hammer back, but she's having none of their shit and kicks them out of her house.

At this point, all of the Aesir have a pantheon-wide meeting to discuss the problem and figure out what to do about it; nobody's willing to try to force Freya to give herself up to a giant, but they're all concerned that the giants might use Mjolnir to invade Asgard if they don't get it back. Heimdall jokingly suggests that they could just dress Thor up as Freya and send him to Jotunheim, but Loki is immediately like, "Bro, I can totally do that," convinces Thor to go along with it, and the two of them get their drag on and go to Thrym's castle. Hilarious hijinks ensue as Thor does a terrible job of impersonating Freya and Loki uses all his manipulation chops to convince Thrym that he's the real deal, and in the end when the wedding is about to take place and Mjolnir is brought out to sanctify it, Thor seizes the hammer, goes on a giant-killing rampage, and everyone gets to return home happy. (Except Thrym, obviously.)

So, yes, Thor definitely asked Loki for help. In fact, he also asked Freya for help, and then everybody else for help when solutions were not forthcoming from his first line of advisors. Your question seems to imply, when you say "there are other gods", that Thor would not want to go to Loki for some reason, but that's just not the case; Loki is the go-to guy for solving problems, especially shenanigans-style problems, and is also usually Odin's first choice when the Aesir have an issue. There are loads of stories of Loki and Thor hanging out and going on adventures together as bosom companions, and plenty of Loki helping the Aesir out with their problems (although, of course, sometimes Loki himself causes the problems. Such is the life of a trickster god). Loki and Thor are good buddies, and even if they weren't, he's great at this stuff and a no-brainer for advice when the problem is "help, somebody just pulled some trickster bullshit on me". Loki is the authority on trickster bullshit.

Thor is indeed a powerful god in his own right, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't need help from his fellow gods sometimes, or that it's unbelievable that he might go to them instead of striking out on a solo mission. Thor is massively mighty in combat, but without Loki's help he would never have had any idea where the hammer even was, much less who to go after to get it back, and Jotunheim is not a good place for a god to march off to alone even if he is a badass. He needed Loki to figure out what had happened, figure out where to go to deal with it, and then he absolutely needed Loki's expertise at disguise, persuasion and outright lying to get him into Thrym's hall so he would have a shot at getting the giant to reveal the hammer to him. Without Loki (and a little help from Freya), none of that would have been possible for him.

One of the running themes of Norse mythology is that it takes a trickster to handle a trickster, which is why Loki is both one of his pantheon's biggest irritants and also their chief problem-solver and wrangler of foreign tricksters who are trying to ruin the Aesir's day. It's not until he masterminds the killing of Baldur and is punished for it (eventually leading to Ragnarok) that Loki ever does anything to make himself an enemy to the Aesir; on the contrary, he's one of their closest allies, especially to Odin and Thor, who are his blood-brother and best friend, respectively. It would honestly be pretty weird if Thor woke up one day with a trickster problem and didn't ask Loki. Like... does he just not want to call his buddy who is specifically good at this exact thing to solve his problems, or what?

In Scion's landscape, where everybody is on the Ragnarok Progress Meter is of course up to an individual game and Storyteller, but for most, Baldur is perfectly alive and kicking, which means Loki hasn't ever actually done anything particularly bad to his fellow gods aside from a prank or two. He might be a pain in the ass sometimes, but so are Tezcatlipoca and Hermes, and just like their pantheons put up with them because they do an important job and are super useful when shenanigans arise, so do the Aesir mostly just sigh at Loki and hope he doesn't do anything that personally inconveniences them. It is definitely possible that there might be a shadow hanging over him - at least Odin knows that he's foretold to attack the pantheon at Ragnarok, which I'm sure is causing people some concern - but overall, there's no real reason the Aesir would shun him, and plenty of reasons they could use his expertise.

I'm not sure if you might have been having some Marvel's Thor-related confusion, or were just thinking that the evil deeds of Ragnarok had already happened rather than being foretold, or maybe something else that made Loki seem like a bad choice to you. But trust us, the story of Thor and Loki going on a sweet cross-dressing crusade to Jotunheim happened long before any Ragnarok-related unpleasantness, and the two gods are pretty much best pals until all that bad stuff begins to go down.

Bad Seeds

Question: Loki: So polarizing. So tragic. So evil. Love 'im. Anyway, all his kids are borderline eldritch horrors. What if you wanted to play this up in a game where you had a kid of Loki? How would YOU handle it? More prophecy stuff, or some weird, unique power that's kinda useful in game, but a MAJOR plot point in Ragnarok? Also, you guys should TOTALLY design your own game. In the future. After you make Scion as awesome as it can be. (I'd pre-order it!)

Indeed, most of Loki's children are not fun to be around at all. Jormungandr, the monstrous world serpent, and Fenrir, the great wolf, are some of the showstopping end-of-the-world monster powers of Norse mythology, and their sister Hel is clearly no picnic to be around, either, even though she's mostly humanoid. His children with his wife Sigyn (as opposed to with the giantess Angrboda, who brought us the exciting trio above, or the stallion Svadilfari, by whom Loki gave birth to eight-legged spider-horse Sleipnir) are generally normal in contrast and are never said to have any abnormal traits or frightening attributes, but even Vali and Narvi end up with similar problems when Odin turns the former into a monster wolf and has him eat the latter, after which Narvi's guts end up being used as chains to bind Loki to his prison. It's not your normal happy family landscape.

Honestly, however, we wouldn't handle that with unique powers or plot devices most of the time; Scions of Loki are, like all Scions, free to make their own Fates and may or may not choose to become monsters as their characters progress. Don't get us wrong - we love it when Scions end up embodying something from their parents' myths or bringing some cosmic story cycle around full circle with their actions, but while we're happy to lay some groundwork for that as Storytellers, the choices are always ultimately theirs. After all, it would be pretty shitty to tell people who wanted to play Scions of Loki that they were going to turn into monsters whether they wanted to or not. They might be predisposed that way, it might be something they worry about, they might do it or they might not, but PCs are always in charge of themselves. We might make a point of offering plot decisions or possibilities that could lead to monsterfication, but we'd still want pursuing them to be something the player decided to do independently.

NPC Scions of Loki are mostly the same deal, but a little more flexible; as Scions they still have free will and are perfectly capable of not being monster people if they don't want to be, but we'll be working them into the story wherever they're most important and relevant based on the metaplot and the actions of the PCs that might affect them. We still wouldn't have them born with any special power or random features just because Loki's their dad, any more than we'd say all Netjer Scions were born with animal heads or all Scions of Agni had to have Fire, even though those are things that always happen to those peoples' children in mythology. But as agents of the story instead of independent player-driven characters, it's totally possible we'd move them toward filling mythologically resonant roles as children of Loki. It all depends on the story.

As for children of Loki who aren't Scions, that's a lot easier; if they were children with Titans, like his kids with Angrboda, then the little monsters will be titanspawn and of course prone to coming out weird, twisted and ready to rumble from day one. Children with lesser immortals, such as alfar, could go either way, and would again depend on the plot of the game, what the players were doing in the story and what our overall goal for the cycle is. Children with other gods are likely to be gods themselves, like Vali and Narvi, but whether or not they have some monstrous features would again depend on what's going on in the story and would be a natural part of their divine powers, whether due to Birthrights or purviews. Gods often have weird stuff going on, after all, and far be it from Loki's family tree to be the exception.

We've had a few Scions of Loki in our games, and wouldn't you know it, they actually did not go the monster route at all (or at least not overtly). Two of them were pretty regular joes, albeit sneaky and underhanded; they both died in demigodhood, so whether or not that would have ever changed is a question that may never be answered. The other one did end up repeating the roles of some of Loki's children, but unfortunately for him, it was not any of the tales of powerful monsters but rather the doom of poor Narvi that most affected his life with its echo. Ironically, the fenrir pup one of these Scions owned, a titanspawn descendent of Loki several generations renewed, actually managed to rebel against his monstrous nature, become more humanoid, and join the Netjer as a wolf-headed god working under Anubis in the Duat.

But we did actually have this exact situation come up, only in regards to Hermes instead of Loki. Hermes, who has similar issues with children his pantheon considers weird and abnormal (Pan and Hermaphroditus, in particular), got progressively more and more pissed off with Goze as the Scion started collecting animal parts and failing to be socially acceptable to the rest of the Theoi, and finally just started sending him to various gods to be "fixed" in the hopes of avoiding being embarrassed by his progeny yet another time. Goze being Goze, it was a rocky road, but that same concept - of there being patterns in the cycles of the gods and even of the gods being aware of them - was very present in their intra-familial struggle.

But anyway, have fun with your Scions of Loki. They don't have to be monsters, but then again they don't have to avoid embracing monsterhood if that's what they want to do. The world is their oyster (at least until the Aesir decide to use them as devices to punish their wayward father).

Loki Liesmith

Question: I love your new Loki picture.

Thanks! We love it, too. The original artist is the fantastic anndr, who created it as cover art for the release of the album "Bog Obmana" (in English, "Liar God" or "God of Deception") by the Russian metal band Magistr. There are a few other pieces of Loki from the same project in the gallery, as well as a lot of other art that will make your eyeballs cry with joy.

Incidentally, for those wondering, the old Loki picture was by talented fantasy artist Mauricio Herrera, and was also fabulous. We swapped out because we felt the new one captured the idea of a highly manipulative and mercurial god a little better, but the old one also deserves some love!

Fucking Crazy: The Story of Eshu

Question: A few things. One, Eshu is awesome. Two, he's also a total sociopath. Three, why is he connected to the god of divination? Four, why have the others not DONE something about him? Five, are any of the OTHER first gods who are his siblings as bad as him? Six, Loki vs Eshu, who loses, Loki, Eshu, or the world?

ONE: We know, right?

TWO: Some gods just want to watch the world burn.

THREE: Eshu and Orunmila are inextricably linked in Yoruba mythology; they need each other and form an inseparable pair (well, inseparable except when Eshu is pranking the poor dude). Orunmila, as one of the sons closest to the great Olodumare and the undisputed holder of all the universe's wisdom from him, has all the divination, foresight and intelligence of the gods, but without Eshu, the master of the ways and keeper of communication, he can't share it with anyone. Because Eshu is the conduit between the gods and humanity, he's fundamentally necessary to any attempt for the two to communicate without gods actually showing up in person, which is why every Yoruba divination ceremony begins with an invocation of Eshu and ends with him offered due sacrifice along with whatever else the diviner required. Mythology paints the symbiotic relationship between the two in the story where Orunmila, at the beginning of time, knows everything but cannot share it with humanity, which as as a result is bumbling and failing hardcore in their attempts to fulfill their destinies. In return for Orunmila allowing him some of the glory and sacrifice of the rituals, Eshu strikes a deal with him that he will open the way between worlds for Orunmila's wisdom to flow down to the mortals who so sorely need it; he teaches him how to perform a divination ceremony so that mortals can understand what he's trying to tell them, and in return the first portion of all sacrifices now goes to Eshu. In places where Eshu's cult is particularly strong, sometimes the story even implies that Eshu was the first diviner himself and taught Orunmila how to see into the mysteries of Fate. Another myth explaining their co-dependence says that Eshu once tried to kill Orunmila in a fit of anger, but found that he was unable to do so because the two of them were so strongly bound together that they could never be parted, and nothing could kill one of them without killing the other.

Of course, Eshu's Eshu, so their partnership is one fraught with peril. If Eshu doesn't like what Orunmila wants to say in a divination, or is just feeling ornery that day, it's understood that he may sometimes garble or forge the message, causing mortals to believe that the god of divination gave them instructions that he distinctly did not. If Eshu doesn't feel like he's getting his fair share of the sacrifices and honors due Orunmila, he's prone to murder and brutal practical jokery, which even extends to Orunmila himself sometimes if the offense was particularly grave. And if Eshu is just being a dick that day, there's nothing much Orunmila can do; he's dependent on him to send his all-important divinations through to the people (and even other gods) who need them. On the other side of the coin, Eshu is fractious but never abandons his role entirely, because he can't stand losing that sweet, sweet sacrificial wine and meat.

FOUR: Unfortunately, nobody can really do anything about Eshu. Olodumare decreed that, despite his penchant for fucking everything up for everyone, Eshu is a necessary part of the universe, because someone has to be in charge of random chance, cruel whim and chaotic disagreement and they might as well all get used to it. He's one of the direct sons of the old creator god and has been around as long as there's been a pantheon, giving him precedence over basically everyone else except for Orunmila and Obatala. Because he's the keeper of the boundaries and paths between worlds, pissing Eshu off is a great way to get blockaded in your house or find that your travels always go wrong when you can least afford them to, and the gods themselves need the divinations that Eshu has so thoroughly made himself a part of, too. And, possibly most importantly, they're afraid of him - not necessarily in the "oh noes he might kill me" sort of way, but in the "he will fucking destroy everything I love and I'll never see it coming" way. It's similar to the way the old World of Darkness Ravnos vampires could get away with shit by threatening to start crime-waving over a city en masse if they were threatened; nobody wants to be the guy who takes Eshu's nuclear-grade "fun pranks" to the face and ends up destitute and miserable forever. It's illustrated best in a story wherein Shango is strutting around, preening like the big old peacock he is and crowing about how he could destroy any of the gods he chose and none of them could possibly challenge his might. Eshu looked up long enough to say, "Oh, yeah?", and Shango immediately said the most dignified and kingly version of "Well, of course not you, that would be ridiculous, we're best friends," and then hastily went home and probably took it out on his wives.

FIVE: It depends on what you mean by "as bad as". As far as pure psychotic tendency to just destroy things and people for no reason, no, Eshu really doesn't have any equal. Aganju's cranky and reclusive and will kill you if you go to his house, but he doesn't do things like going out of his way to kill a dude's wife because he accidentally sacrificed the wrong color of goat, and while Obatala has an unfortunate tendency toward being a lush, he's a model of compassionate goodwill compared to the trickster god. Oshumare, Orunmila and Oduduwa are similarly mostly benevolent, with only the last one showing any real signs of characteristic African god-insanity (mostly by making bad decisions about wars).

If you branch out to the gods of the next generation, Eshu isn't quite equalled, but there are some pretty acid-tripping bonkers other members of the pantheon there. Ogun is a textbook case of Guy Who Uses Riastrad Too Much and Kills All His Friends, Shango is a batshit insane despot who routinely conquers and pillages the countryside, kills himself and attempts to murder his family members, and Olokun has to be chained to the ocean floor to keep him from flooding the entire continent when he's in a bad mood. Really, the Yoruba were pretty worried about their gods, which is reflected in a lot of praise songs and prayers to them that tend to repeat lines like "Please don't kill me in my sleep" or "Please understand I respect you and don't need to be smited" a lot. Some of them are out of control.

SIX: The world loses. Loki and Eshu probably both win.

Party Time! Excellent!

Question: Veles, the Baron and Loki force the mortal world to entertain them with a festival devoted to them. What kind of crazy consequences do you think this would have? Also, would you think a pantheon tied to honoring deceased gods though songs and festivals would be valid concept for a new pantheon and PSP?

Wait, Veles started a giant mortal festival party and didn't invite Radegast? That's about to get awkward.

I'd imagine such a festival would be the usual; for the gods, the only real danger would be Fatebonds incurred while setting it up, or possibly during it if they happened to show up in person. For mortals, it would probably involve a lot of shenanigans and carnival-esque games and pranks, as well as a lot of alcohol and food. One of those hungover, I-regret-my-religion moments for everyone the next day.

It'd actually be interesting as an experiment, because, like many things in Scion, it would be something that's never happened before. Veles, Loki and the Baron are all parts of very different religions, so by setting up a festival in their joint honor, they'd be merging themselves weirdly and probably confusing a lot of mortals. The festival's flavor would probably vary wildly depending on where they did it, who the mortals were and how many of them were already members of one god or another's religion, and whose personality emerged more strongly. Mortals would likely interpret the two gods they didn't recognize as some heretofore unknown god of their own religion - ah, of course, the mighty Loa Loke! - or perhaps invent an entirely new religion around the three, believing them to be their own pantheon. It would depend a lot on what the gods caused those mortals to believe; left to their own devices, they'd have to try to figure out what was happening on their own.

As for creating an ancestor festival PSP, I think that could definitely work; ancestor worship has a strong presence across the world but is mostly unrepresented in Scion at the moment, which relies on the Death purview for anything having to do with the spirits of the honored dead. However, the important part about designing a PSP is that is needs to be the core concept of a pantheon's religion or theme; it can't just be something they kind of do but that everyone else does, too. You need it to be iconic for the pantheon the same way blood sacrifice is for the Aztlanti or geasa for the Tuatha, so your PSP should really only be about ancestor festivals if your pantheon's most central and important concept is the worship of the dead through festivals. This pantheon should be presiding over a religion with regular ancestor sacrifice, communication and celebration as the most important thing it does; if that's the case, then this PSP makes perfect sense, but if that's really only a kind of fringe thing they do occasionally, it might not be strong enough to be the foundation of a PSP.

A pantheon that is all about drawing power or giving thanks to previous generations - to a degree even stronger than the many religions that already include ancestor worship - would definitely be a very cool concept to build on. It's especially appropriate for Scion, since any new gods who were once Scions have a whole universe of other gods and ancestors who have gone before them that it couldn't hurt to make friends with.

Black Sheep of the Family

Question: Do you think Loki is as dependant on Idun's apples as the rest of the Aesir? He was quick to give them up and also tasked with getting them back on his own (unless he was also just as aged as the rest of the Aesir).

I wouldn't read too much into Loki being "quick to give up" the apples. Loki's always quick to do things that prevent him from getting dead, and at the time he was being carried around by a giant eagle that was banging him into things and threatening him. It also wasn't Loki's idea to give Thjazi Idun and her apples; those were Thjazi's terms for letting him down without killing him. This is actually not one of Loki's occasional sourceless prankings but a case of him being blackmailed into these shenanigans (not that that's any better as far as the Norse are concerned, of course).

The question of whether or not Loki needs the apples is an interesting one; the answer really depends on whether or not you consider Loki to actually be Aesir. Scion certainly makes him as much a part of the pantheon as everyone else, sharing their Virtues, PSPs and problems, so if you decide he isn't Aesir enough to be part of the apple ritual, why is he Aesir enough to be part of the pantheon with the same PSP and Virtues as everyone else? Loki certainly often plays the role of outsider among the Aesir and is known to be half giant, but the Prose Edda specifically says that he is considered one of them, and certainly the Aesir are not generally averse to marrying and hanging out with giants on a pretty regular basis (not to mention that they descend from a dude created by Ymir in the first place). Add to that the fact that he's Odin's blood-brother and therefore has some of the highest status in Asgard despite the general dislike of his personality, and we can't see how you could accurately claim that Loki isn't Aesir. He may be the pain in the ass of the pantheon, but being a pain in the ass doesn't disqualify you from membership, or else all the trickster gods of the world would be homeless hobos (well, more than they are now, anyway).

So yes, we would assume that Loki is indeed one of the Aesir and that he needs the apples as much as everyone else; he probably would have preferred not to have to give them up and then go retrieve them, but sometimes it's better to survive and have to get a little old than to get killed by a giant to avoid giving up your eternal youth. Living tricksters can fix whatever mess they've created that everyone's pissed off at them for, but dead tricksters are just dead.