She of the Papyrus Skin

Question: In my meager research on the Egyptian pantheon, I keep running into the goddess Wadjet, who is the protector of lower Egypt and later also upper Egypt. She seems like a big fish, yet she's not on the site. Do you have a reason for not choosing Wadjet? I mean, she even appeared on the pharaoh's crown!

Wadjet is indeed an awesome lady!

Along with her opposite number, the vulture goddess Nekhbet, she was one of the two major tutelary deities of the pharaonic rulers and the kingdoms of Egypt, and you'll see her in her form as the cobra all over Egyptian records and art. She does appear on the crown, along with Nekhbet, as well as on many temples and dedicated religious structures and wall paintings in tombs and living worship spaces alike. She is most definitely an active deity among the Netjer.

However, we don't think either she or Nekhbet are probably Legend 12. They have next to no myths of their exploits; the only stories in which Wadjet takes an active role are ones in which she bites some other deity and poisons them. These are limited to three major stories: the tale of the downfall of Ra, in which Isis convinces Wadjet to bite Ra and poison him so that he must depend upon her healing powers; the tale of the defection and subsequent recovery of Bastet, in which Wadjet bites and poisons her so that she must call upon her father Ra to heal her and bring her home; and the tale of Geb's attempted overthrow of Shu, in which Wadjet on the royal crown bites him for daring to attempt to take power without authorization. (And this third story is always pretty suspect, since it's one of Plutarch's and scholars are pretty sure he sort of made it up in an attempt to match Egyptian mythology up to the story of Cronus' overthrow of his father Ouranos.)

In each story, Wadjet is not really a character as much as a vehicle for poison, and she never has lines, motivations or actions other than a single bite. She could easily be any other snake (in fact, some translations just call her "a cobra" and omit her name), or any relic that reacts with offense when bothered by someone who doesn't own it. She doesn't have a personality or character as evidenced by any myths, and so we would probably consider her Legend 10 or 11 - important, especially in cult practice and symbolism, but not on an equal legendary playing field with people like Isis or Anubis.

But Wadjet's definitely out there, and you should totally use her in your games when the Netjer are in play. In some future when we get to add lower-Legend gods to the site, she will definitely be one of the ones we include!

Typhonian Hugs

Question: I was looking at Kettila's character sheet and noticed that she has Set as her ally. I'm really curious as to how that happened! Until you guys tell me, I'm gonna go ahead and pretend that she just walked up to him and gave him a big, warm hug!

Heh, I'm enjoying envisioning that scene. Alas, that isn't what it was, although I would have enjoyed it; Kettila has never met Set in person, and if she did she would likely be too scared of him for hugs (although if he's nice to her, she's equally likely to instead decide he's awesome and just scary in order to protect her from things).

Actually, the Skeins of Fate band, including Kettila found at one point that they needed to cross the Libyan Desert, known in Egyptian mythology as The Desert That Is Set and acknowledged as his sole domain. They were confronted in the heart of the desert by the Egyptian goddess Serket, who was acting on behalf of Set as his messenger; she informed them that they were trespassing in Set's territory without permission, but that he would allow them to pass unmolested if they pledged officially to perform one task or favor for him in the future. Vivian, Will and Kettila, not wanting to make waves and acknowledging that they were in his territory, agreed to the deal; Aurora, who was not okay with writing blank checks to foreign gods, refused, and Woody followed suit in solidarity with her. Set responded by causing the desert to rise up and entomb Aurora and Woody in impenetrable earthen coffins, but everyone else was allowed to sign a contract with Serket promising to come to Set's aid if he called, and then pick up their earth-swallowed friends and go on their way. Kettila, specifically, had had no idea she was on someone else's turf, but she was happy to promise to help her new "friend" and relieved and excited that she was rewarded with being allowed to travel through without being bothered, so she immediately decided Set was a good guy and she was going to like him, and that he was probably good "new dad" material.

After getting out of the desert and determining that nobody was strong enough to crack open the caskets Woody and Aurora were trapped in, Kettila then took it upon herself to solve the problem by flying the rocks into the air and throwing them at the ground, hoping that gravity would take care of it since she couldn't. She had to fly almost into space to get high enough, but eventually managed to drop them from a high enough altitude that they broke on impact, after which everyone hastily put Aurora back together again and continued on their merry way. Much later, Vivian made Kettila come back and fill in all the giant craters she created all over Ethiopia during her many attempts, because her Harmony wouldn't leave her alone about the ecological damage.

So Kettila thinks Set is a nice man who was tolerant and let her through with just a promise to be friends in the future, so she is totally down with him.

From the Heart of the Vortex!

Today, we're clearing out a bunch of quick and easy answers! Blog attack, go!

Question: Would you use Larceny or Art/Science: Computer/Hacking for hacking?

Art (Computer), or, if you happen to have the Polymath boon, it would fall under Art (Modern). It's too specialized a skill to be done with plain old Larceny.

Question: Do improvements to relics always have to come from a crafter god, or can certain relics gain power through mythical events like their Scion owners gaining legend? For example, if a Scion defeated a powerful monster and gained a Legend dot, would her magic axe gain new abilities?

Relic improvements always need to come from Artistry within the game itself; you won't spontaneously gain new relic points from things you do, because that would be overpowered and difficult for a Storyteller to adjudicate (not to mention making people with Artistry have a purview that was way less useful). However, you gain new Birthright points when you become a Demigod and when you become a God, so you could have relics spontaneously gain dots at those jumps if you wanted to.

Question: Why doesn't Ra have Animal (Scarab)?

Because it's really Khepri, the scarab god, who has that association. Ra was syncretized with Khepri sometimes, where the beetle god was seen as Ra's aspect as the rising sun, but if we gave Ra associations for everyone he was ever syncretized with, he'd be Voltron.

Question: According to your posts, Hecate is still a titan (or at least very, very titanic). Does this mean she can't sire scions, or is she goddess enough to do so? Do her hypothetical kids have any side effects (showing up when scenting the titanic, gaining dark virtues etc) or are they just normal scions who might have to put up with some prejudice due to their heritage?

Hecate is a goddess for purposes of our games, and creates Scions normally as part of the Theoi. She is of Titanic lineage and occasionally called such in Greek mythology, but she's the same generation as Zeus' children and had a strong cult worship that made her close enough to humanity to be considered a god.

Question: What do Pakiy, Emamu and Stvaranje mean?

Etymological roots for all the Titanrealms can be found in this old post.

Question: Aura of Dread doesn't specify that it's only for Scions with Negative Epic Appearance, yet it is clearly the starting point for the Negative Knacks. Since it doesn't say "Negative only" does that mean an attractive Scion can still take that Knack? If I wanted my good-looking warrior Scion to still project a terrifying image on the battlefield, would that work?

No. Aura of Dread, like all the other knacks in the terrorizing tree, us usable by negative Epic Appearance only. It should say that, so we'll fix it, but it should also be pretty obvious, y'all.

Question: Are the Avatars going to get worked over with the boon revamp? Or is that a separate project?

It's a separate project, but one that we hope to work on soon, and we're talking about basic ideas for it while we work on the APP project.

Question: I was looking for how Sanctums worked, and found that your post from April 1, 2012 that said you were working on definite rules. Is that something thats progressing without a bar? has the project been demolished? up for vote? finished but not released?

It isn't being worked on at this particular moment, but we could certainly add it to the voting block if it's something you guys would like to happen sooner rather than later!

Question: Creatures are always lower legend than the scion. Does this also apply to Nahualli? I mean, they're YOU?

No. Nahualli are not Creature Birthrights and are not bound by that rule. They are a unique kind of Birthright all their own.

Question: Hello! If a Scion has a child as a Hero or Demigod, I know that the ichor would still flow from the grandparent and the grandparent will be able to activate the child, but what happens if the Demigod becomes a god - could they THEN activate their own child?

Yep, sure can.

Question: I was looking at your Perceptive Capacity table. Does it mean that the furthest any mortal can see is 12 yards (5 on the table)? That seems a little harsh to me, am I misunderstanding the rules?

You are, but that's okay, we explain it in this old post back here.

Question: Do the Aztecs have a legendary smith like Vølund or Hephaestus?

They do not; most of their armor and weapons were made of non-metal materials like obsidian and stiffened paper or cloth. They had artisans that performed goldsmithing (mostly for jewelry and ritual objects) and occasionally traded with their neighbors for bronze, but it wasn't an important enough style of crafting to merit its own deity.

Question: Do Fatebonds get the XP discount if the player has the appropriate Me PSP associated with a purview?

Yes, both the player and their Fatebonds get to buy (or unbuy) that purview at the lower rate thanks to Me.

Question: Do Empath auto-successes apply to Manipulation + Empathy rolls for lying?

Yes, they apply to anything that you roll Empathy for.

And that'll be it for now! Don't worry, we won't be doing a lot of these (we prefer the big in-depth posts!), but since the questionado has grown to a current maelstrom of 203, we figured we'd get a few of the quick ones out of the way.

Back into the fray!

The Royal Cults

Question: How would you treat the various syncretised composite gods of the New Kingdom in Egypt in the Scion setting? The likes of Re-Horakhty and Amun-Ee are pretty major figures in writings from the time, not to mention the occasional cross-cultural Greek or Canaanite combo god. Do such beings exist in Scion or is it always a case of silly mortals getting their gods confused?

It's generally mortals being confused. Which is understandable when they're dealing with millennia of accumulated religious knowledge, influxes from other cultures over that entire time, and the inventional revisionism of various rulers and cult centers that wanted to make themselves the seat of religious power or associate themselves firmly with particular deities. When people like Re-Horakhty are discussed, in Scion's terms that means that you're probably talking about either Ra or Horus, and which it is depends on the Storyteller's ruling on which is more appropriate depending on the current situation and the godly attributes in play. There's an old post talking about the same issue back here.

Since Ra and Horus already exist, creating separate deities for each of the many composite forms of them would be a nightmare, and it wouldn't really do the game all that much good anyway. Instead, we just treat it as a case of human cults not always mirroring divine reality perfectly, especially when changed by human motivations like politics, and make calls on a case-by-case basis.

Ahead of the Game

Question: I have a Scion of Thoth who's recently undergone apotheosis, and I've been trying to decide what animal head to give him (what's the point of playing a Netjer to godhood if you're not gonna get a bitchin' animal head, after all?). My question is: do you think new gods of the Netjer would only get animal heads based on old Egyptian associations, or could they choose them from more modern ideas? (I wanted to get him a raven head because he's predominantly a justice god - Tower of London and all that.)

We think it can, and should, go either way!

Obviously, using traditional Egyptian animals is probably the easy route to go. The pantheon is already familiar with them and will accept them easily, Egyptian symbolism and iconography is already in place beneath them so it's easy to know what animals represent what in Egyptian religious shorthand, and any worshipers of the Netjer or lesser gods you know will easily be able to recognize and respect you for your new animal association.

But the easiest route isn't necessarily the best, for a lot of reasons. Maybe your character doesn't want to use an Egyptian animal, because none of them represent the concepts he's interested in. Maybe there is a good Egyptian creature that represents your character's concept, but he doesn't want to use it because there are already some older gods with the same animal totem and he doesn't want his Legend to be eclipsed by theirs. Maybe he wants to invent his own weird composite creature, like Set or Anubis, and doesn't want to be constrained by the things gods before him have done.

So yes, you could definitely choose a non-standard creature's cranium to wear about town, in spite of what your fellow Netjer are doing. Keep in mind, though, that if you do choose a surprising animal, you may have political or social repercussions to deal with, anything from the other Netjer being weirded out by your choice, disdainful of your strangeness, offended that you're spurning their traditions or even disgusted if you choose an animal that has a traditionally negative connotation for them. The Egyptian gods probably won't stop you from adopting an animal image that is unfamiliar to them, but nothing is forcing them to like (or respect, or put up with) whatever you choose, so there may still be consequences.

But hey, it might also work out totally fine! Give it a try, and be ready to weather whatever social obstacle courses your Storyteller deems appropriate.

Animalia

Question: Scion treats all myths as real, right? So then, how does it treat animism? In some cases it is obvious, like how the Aztec gods have the nahualli animal forms, or how certain gods occasionally take on the form or aspects of animal (Zeus as a cow, Ganesha and his elephant head). But what about before them, when people revered certain animals? Does every pantheon have a couple of animals among their number?

This question is a giant complicated ball of wax that is trying to ask about a bunch of different stuff at once. I'm going to try to untangle it - stay with me, folks!

To begin with, I'm not sure if animism means what you think it means; I might be wrong, but the question makes it sound like you're implying that animism refers to the reverence of animal spirits and/or the belief that animals themselves are religious figures. Those ideas are bound up in animism, but the term actually means much more than that. It comes from the Latin word animus, which means spirit or breath, and refers to the much broader religious concept espoused by some cultures that all things have religiously significant spirits. That includes not just animals but also plants, natural features of the landscape, inanimate objects such as rocks, or even the abandoned bodies of the dead. Native American religions are most often cited as the best examples of animist belief systems, since many of them believe in the spiritual essence of the animals and landscape around them, and the Shinto religion of Japan also has more than a touch of that idea of spirits-in-all. When Disney's Pocahontas sings "Colors of the Wind", she's trying to describe to John Smith the animist religion of her people.

So while animism includes the idea of animal spirits, it is actually a much larger concept. This question seems to be more about the animals only, though, so we'll skip all that spirits-of-trees-and-wind stuff for now.

As you note, most religions have some kind of concept of animals and their place in the general spiritual hierarchy of things. Some consider the animals themselves to be magical or spiritually powerful in a way that humans generally are not; American religions, in particular, often do this. Sometimes it's because they believe in a spirit world, as the Inuit do, into which animals are naturally more able to enter and understand than humans, or sometimes it's because animals are more beloved by the gods, such as in some Middle Eastern cultures, and were therefore created with more powers than humans. In a few cases, especially in Africa and North America, myths will outright say that animals were given such spiritual powers as compensation for the fact that people hunt and kill them for food.

However, as with all mythologies, the religions they came from are vastly different in character, so even when animals are important, that doesn't necessarily mean that the ways in which they are important are comparable. Most pantheons have at least a god or two who have animal totems in some way, but the Teotl, who acknowledge animals as the second half of themselves, are very different from the Netjer, who use animal imagery to represent abstract concepts about themselves, who are in turn very different again from the Aesir, who only command beasts but do not embody them themselves.

What's important to remember about the All Myths Are Real model - which we've talked about in depth before, if you missed it - is that all things are true, but that truth isn't necessarily universal, and it may be true in a variety of ways without cheapening the authenticity of the game's treatment. If the Japanese believe that there are little kami inhabiting many inanimate objects, well, that's true, then; but it might be true only in Japan, or only when interacting with certain Japanese elements, or correlate to some concept in another culture that is fundamentally similar but that they experience in a different way. Often this is done through PSPs, as is the case in our Japanese example here; theoretically, the game says that there are kami everywhere, but since nobody who doesn't have Tsukumo-gami can interact with them in any way, they might as well not exist except for the gods of the Shinto religion. It's a little bit like the way light doesn't "exist" for people who have been blind since birth; you can tell them about it, but since they can never experience it in any way, it's both true for you and not true for them.

I think the ultimate place this question is going (see? it's all over the map!) is toward the idea of animal totems as the original deities or spirits worshiped by ancient societies, and whether or not they count as "gods" in Scion's framework. It's a concept visited by both Joseph Campbell in his Primitive Mythologies and Neil Gaiman in his excellent novel American Gods, and definitely one that's food for thought, especially when we think about the commonly-held theory that the earliest religions of humanity probably involved worship of important animal totems rather than anthropomorphic figures. If, in the ancient pre-recorded times of man's history, we worshiped the bear or the deer or the eagle as themselves, then where are those gods now?

Part of the answer lies in the fact that religions, even ones with strong structure and hierarchy, are living and changing institutions and they have all evolved and adapted over time. Many of those ancient animal gods actually are still around, right under your nose, because they've evolved into the familiar forms of the gods of Scion's current pantheons. The Netjer are a great example of this; many of them were originally zoomorphic in form, and the Old Kingdom artwork of them shows them simply as animals, worshiped without any humanoid form whatsoever. Sobek was originally just a crocodile, Hathor just a cow, and Sekhmet just a lion, and they only became human-like and gained human-like stories later in the religion's evolution. Figures like the Coyote deities of North America are still animal in shape most of the time, but they have gained human-like myths of their exploits and may even take on human form sometimes, placing them perhaps a little earlier on this evolutionary continuum than the older Netjer.

So, for some pantheons, those gods didn't go anywhere; they just changed. Some of them still run around in their animal forms, like Tezcatlipoca rolling up as Tepeyollotl when he doesn't feel like being humanoid, while others, like Baal, have translated from embodying their totem animal to becoming its master instead. This process also works in reverse, by the way, with some animals that were once worshiped as deities being demoted to merely monsters or magical talking animals in half-forgotten folklore; and even more rarely the god and the animal may split entirely, as in the spectacular case of Ninurta in Mesopotamian mythology, who sheds his animalistic form which becomes the Anzu bird, and he the god who controls it.

Another option is indeed that those animal-level gods are still around, but are just lower Legend than most of the heavy hitters of the current pantheons. They don't have much in the way of surviving mythology or stories, after all, and long ago lost their worshipers; in some cases, even the people who used to worship them are gone, moved away, become part of new ethnic groups or even gone extinct. They may still linger on alone, pantheonless if they were not part of a larger group, or perhaps they died in the first Titanomachy, when they had no fellow gods to take care of them and not enough power to defend themselves. If they were part of a pantheon that still exists, they may roam the Overworld, Legend 9 and all but forgotten by humanity and even their fellow gods. Some of them might now be minions of the Titans, absorbed easily into the greater realms of the ideas they once represented.

But if such prehistoric animal totem gods do exist, we know nothing about them, and anything we tried to do with them for Scion would be invented; by definition, they predate recorded history and we therefore know only what we theorize about them. We can look at cave paintings or make guesses about what might have come before those animal beliefs we did have the opportunity to write down or preserve orally, but they're just guesses.

It would be over-simplistic to say that every pantheon has some of these animal gods; not every ancient culture assigned the same importance to animals or, if they did find them important, thought of that importance in the same way. Many cultures, for example, had a concept of a "master animal" - usually the most important animal in the local ecosystem, which was revered above the others and believed to be able to spiritually interact with humans, but was not actually deified and instead conceived of as a race comparable to humans that existed alongside them. And even the master animal concept wasn't always thought of the same way by every culture; some western African cultures thought of the antelope as the master animal because it was their most important food creature and they needed its permission to catch and eat it, but some of the Brazilian rainforest cultures thought of the jaguar as the master animal because it was the most powerful predator of the area and could therefore be considered its "ruling race".

But it's definitely possible for many pantheons to have such gods, and if you want to do something in a story with them, they certainly might be out there. The animal kingdom - everything living, in fact - has been thought of as a power in its own right by most peoples throughout history, and Scion has many, many ways of illustrating that power. As many as there are different treatments of animals across world myths, in fact.

One and Only Sun

Question: Would the Netjer be as pissed about the Amarna art period as mortals were? I imagine that portion of history as a whole bothers them. On that note, how do you run Akhenaten's worship of the Sun Disc Aten in your games? Is it a Titan as in the books or...?

Indeed, the Netjer were probably pretty annoyed about the Amarna period, which was when the cult of Aten was at its height and all other Egyptian gods were officially declared by the state to be subordinate to him or merely other expressions of his might. While the shenanigans of mortals don't normally annoy gods too much - people are going to make inaccurate graffiti, it's just something they do when their brains are too tiny to really comprehend the divine correctly - the Amarna period represents a time when the Netjer were not being given their due as deities thanks to the interference of Aten and the mortal dynasty that supported him, and even if they wouldn't normally care about what mortals are up to, they certainly care about that. This is a Piety pantheon, which means anything that tries to claim they aren't important and divine is going to severely rub them the wrong way.

There might be degrees within the pantheon, however. Ra's an interesting case, because on the one hand the early stages of Atenism heavily syncretized him with Aten, the better to get around the then-powerful priesthood of Ra to prevent them from shutting the whole thing down too early. Ra is therefore the only god, by virtue of also being a major sun-deity, who could really be said to have partaken in Aten's fame and fortune and to therefore possibly have benefited slightly from the whole messy affair. But, on the other hand, Ra was also unquestionably the preeminent power in Egyptian religion before Aten arose, so even if he was peripherally involved in the Aten cult, his own cult seriously suffered until it was restored by Smenkhkare a few decades later. In that sense, Atenism was more of a personal insult to him than to any of the other gods, so he might have been the most cranky of the entire lot. While Piety would make it pretty difficult for any of the Netjer to really like what was going on, it's also still possible that some of them - those who were already obscure, for example, or whose worship was already suffering under Ra's supremacy - might have taken a certain satisfaction in watching the most powerful of the Egyptian gods get knocked down a peg or two, even if it only lasted for a little while.

However, that was then and this is now, and the Netjer probably aren't upset about it anymore. The succeeding millennium of Egyptian worship struck Atenism from its rolls thoroughly and viewed the entire period as an unfortunate and bizarre incident that didn't deserve any real religious merit, and the gods were appropriately reinstated and venerated for centuries to come, so it's probably easy for them to feel the smug superiority of having crushed the upstart who dared threaten their power and reasserted their dominion as the most important deities of the region for a long, long time. The Netjer are not a particularly reactionary or grudge-holding pantheon, so they're more likely to sneer at the Amarna period's ridiculous antics than actually get upset over them so long after the fact - after all, the better deities clearly won that one, so there's nothing more that needs to be said.

We do indeed consider Aten a Titan; he has many obvious hallmarks of one, from his indistinct form and distant worship to the religious character of his cult that wanted to undermine all other gods in his region, but we don't use him quite the way the Scion books do. He's not the "main" antagonist for the Netjer, since that title undisputably goes to the terrible serpent Apep who must be battled by the gods each day to keep the world from plunging into darkness, but he is still an antagonist and danger to them and must be dealt with when he pokes his head onto the scene. We used the book's vehicle of Aten-as-sole-Avatar when we started out games way back in the mists of time, but now that we're a little oler and wiser we would probably avoid that; there's no reason to ignore other sun- or light-aligned Titans in favor of smashing them into Aten, since that's annoyingly syncretic and robs the game of neat bad guys it could be using, and the idea of Aten as a monotheistic entity isn't really accurate anyway. Even during the height of his power, the other gods of Egypt still existed and were still worshiped, and only the most radical fringes of his cult tried to actually claim they didn't. Atenism was definitely one of the earliest forms of religion that trended toward monotheism, but it wasn't true monotheism and we're not huge fans of pretending that it was. Breaking down the whole spectrum of monolatrism/henotheism that occurs in between polytheism and monotheism is pretty simplistic, and you guys know we don't do simplistic when we can help it.

If we were rewriting the Titanrealm of Light right now (someday soon, maybe!), Aten would certainly be in it, but he would not be the only Avatar. There are not as many obvious Titans of Light across world mythology as there are for other realms, since humanity tends to think of light as a friendly and benevolent force, but they are out there and should get their time to shine (ha!), too.

From the Victorian Era to Modern Hollywood: Egypt Never Gets a Break

Question: From one mythology nerd to another I felt the need to share my outrage over something. Have you heard of the upcoming movie "Gods of Egypt"? It's supposed to be a mythological epic starring the aforementioned gods, only they were all cast as white actors. Since I've seen a lot of your blog posts dedicated to correcting pop culture misconceptions about world mythology so I wanted to hear what you thought of this one.

Oh, Hollywood, what the hell are we going to do with you?

Yes, we're aware of Gods of Egypt, although it's still in pre-production and probably won't see the light of day for a while yet. And yes, although casting is only half-done, all the actors so far are as white as white can be.

This is not awesome, and the reason it is not awesome is that Egyptian gods would presumably look Egyptian, and the ancient Egyptians were emphatically not white. A lot of the perception of them as looking kind of Caucasian comes from the nineteenth century, when egyptology suddenly came into vogue as a sort of exotic, interesting pastime for the European elite. Egyptian artifacts were being dug up and taken to Europe by amateur archaeologists and private collectors, easily avoiding any trouble from an Egyptian government that didn't have much power to prevent them and was predominantly Muslim-controlled at the time anyway and consequently didn't much care; in fact, selling ancient Egyptian relics to European tourists was one of the most booming ways to make money in Egypt for a while. Europeans, especially in England and France, held theme parties where they dressed up as Egyptians (theoretically) and ate Egyptian food (supposedly) and discussed their latest finds. Some even actually procured mummies to display and even unwrap in their salons for such parties, and disposed of them after they were done impressing their friends.

Yes, that is some people posing proudly with the thousand-year-old mummy they just unwrapped and poked around in. Please have your Virtue Extremities in the designated areas.

This pop culture craze for ancient Egypt went hand in hand with the archaeological world really starting to seriously try to study and interpret the long-gone civilization. The Rosetta Stone had finally enabled translation of some hieroglyphs at the turn of the century, and the next several decades were rife with scholarly theory, investigation and intrepretation, some of it insanely wacky. There were the hysterics that mummification was a magical process meant to create the undead, the theories that the Egyptians must have been monotheists and that all their pantheon of gods were merely aspects of the same one deity... and the idea that the Egyptians were white, which has stuck around stubbornly for centuries now. The theory went that since the Egyptians had slaves from Nubia and other areas of Africa which were depicted as of darker skin than themselves, they must have been the white "master race" of the time period, using the lesser Africans as their servants while they concentrated on their great feats of art and culture - which, of course, could never have been achieved by anyone other than white people in the first place.

It's a pretty disgusting theory, but that's the early nineteenth century for you. Slavery was still common, people were still seriously and perniciously advancing the idea that Africans and other people of color were not actually humans or at the very least inherently inferior to Europeans, and science was still trying to prove things through phrenology. It was a weird time.

At any rate, what all this means to us today is that we've got this old, shitty idea of Egyptians-as-white-people still kicking around from the days of poor scholarship of yore, and apparently it's one of the harder ones to get rid of, in spite of how stupid it is. Egypt is, of course, in Africa, within spitting distance of the Canaanite- and Arab-dominated peninsulas to its east, and you know what ancient race lived there that was white? Nobody. The answer is nobody. This is pretty obvious when you look at Egyptian art; even thousands of years later after it's been through who knows how much weathering and fading, the people depicted in Egyptian painting and sculpture are clearly not in the neighborhood of Caucasian.

Pictured above: not white people.

Of course, exactly what color skin they had is sort of up for debate, since they've been gone for thousands of years and there have since been plenty of influxes of foreign blood, from the Greco-Roman arrivals from the north, African imports from the south and west and Arab influence from the east. The last is particularly prominent in modern Egypt, which was under Ottoman rule for a long time. But European, or European-looking, they definitely were not. (Except for parts of the Ptolemy dynasty who were actually Greek. But they're a late development.)

Which brings us back around to Hollywood and its total inability to not whitewash supposedly Egyptian characters. It's that same weird old misconception we have about Egyptians-as-Caucasians, only now it's also part of the Hollywood tendency toward making the vast majority of its characters white whenever possible unless directly marketing to an audience of a different race or ethnicity. Gods of Egypt isn't doing anything new, sad to say. Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra is one of our most famous images when it comes to Egypt, and have you guys seen The Mummy Returns? You know, the part where Rachel Weisz, one of the whitest people on the planet, is an Egyptian princess?

But, anyway: Gods of Egypt. Alas, it is full of white people. Very talented ones, mind you (guys, I would probably pay to watch Geoffrey Rush sit in a bus station for six hours humming to himself), but it's not hard to see why so many people are disappointed in Hollywood once again deciding to tell a story about a different culture and then cast nobody who bears even a passing resemblance to them. I'm sure Jamie Lannister will probably do a fine job as Horus, but how many actors of color could have done the same but never got the chance?

We have to say we don't have high hopes for the movie itself; mythology movies have been almost uniformly awful for the past few decades, and while we'd love to be proved wrong by this one, we're not holding our breaths. But only time will tell!

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.

Librarian Glee!

John tagged me in for today's vlog, where I will be way too excited and jump around waving my favorite things in front of the camera. Join me!

Question: Some myths say Nut is the granddaughter of Ra, while others say she was his wife. Some myths say he stopped her from having children because he didn't want his throne taken over, others say it was because Ra was jealous of her sleeping with Geb. What's up?

Question: I understand that in your games, all of the different mythological origin stories are true. That being said, how do you tie in the fact that fossils of animals from millions of years ago, and thus don't match up, have been found?

Question: I had someone ask me the other day if a nuclear winter would be anything like Fimbulwintr from Norse mythology. In your opinion, could a nuclear winter trigger Ragnarok?

Question: Do you guys use the Order of the Divine Glory in your games? If so, how prevalent are they?

Question: Do you think Aphrodite's lack of purview's can be accounted for by a butt load of Arete in abilities such as presence and empathy and command that gives her supernatural power over peoples emotions without a purview or misplaced epic attributes.

Question: At least under one interpretation, Christians, Jews and Muslims are (inadvertent) Titan-worshipers (somewhat similar to how C. S. Lewis depicts Muslims as inadvertent demon-worshippers). Would the gods care about this? Would it matter for the Titans in question that they're being worshipped?

Question: Just wondering - have you guys ever used Neith in your games, and how would you handle her if you did?

Question: Do the Aesir have a god of dawn? I'm asking this because I'm making a NPC for my games who represents not the dawn itself, but renovation and new life, and dawn just looks like the perfect role for me. Any ideas? What associations do you think I could use?

Question: How do powers like Control Water affect water-based liquids like most alcoholic beverages or sodas?

Question: You mentioned in a post earlier in the year that divine parents grant Birthrights for purviews that they are not associated with, but what about the Animal purview for animals that no god currently has (such as extinct ones)? Would the Scion simply have to purchase the boons without having a corresponding relic?

If you're interested in joining me on cloud nine, Lacambalam, the codex artist, has a website here where he shows comparisons of his art to the originals, and a Flickr gallery here with prices and much better images of the codices than my webcam could give you.

Lines in the Sand

Question: In the constant war for succession between Horus and Set, which Egyptian gods do you think are on Set's side in the conflict?

It's difficult to say, really! There are a lot of factors in play, plus political situations that might change at the drop of a hat, and on top of all that Isis and Horus are both in there with their Ultimate Manipulation chicanery. But we have a few suggestions.

The most obvious ones are Set's wife and sons; they're likely to be on his side simply through family loyalty, if nothing else. They have a vested interest in his triumph, which puts all of them in a better position, and of course they may be kind of pissed off at cousin Horus for taking the throne if they believe Set's claim is better. On the other hand, they're also all at least slightly on the fence; Sobek tends to help Horus out when asked and isn't particularly hostile to anyone (but then again, do you really expect the crocodile to be much of a politician?), Nephthys was in some variant traditions (which, depending on the interpretation you like, might be true facts or later retcons by priests attempting to make Osiris look better and Set and his family look worse) infatuated with Osiris, not to mention very close to her sister Isis, both of which might be factors that sway her more than Set might like. Certainly Nephthys aided Isis in her burial and mourning for Osiris after Set killed him, which might just be sisterly solidarity but might also indicate that she isn't taking a firm side in all this. Anubis is suspect for the same reasons, thanks to the fact that those same diverging myths disagree on whether he's actually Set's son or Osiris', and he doesn't involve himself in the doings of folks above ground very much anyway.

However, Set is the grand defender of the pantheon and indeed the whole world from the depredations of Apep, so those who are likewise involved in that endeavor with him might view him as a comrade in arms as well as knowing firsthand how much he cares about his people. Ra, who is personally guarded and rescued by Set every single night, is almost certainly firmly in his came, and it doesn't hurt that Isis screwed him over with her tricksy magic spells a while ago and probably ensured that he'll never like her again. Various warlike gods who ride the boat and fight with Set, which depending on the version might include Maahes, Monthu, Khonsu, Serket and others, may also be more inclined to support him as a powerful and capable leader, especially if they were there that day he didn't go on the boat in order to go attend Anubis' birth and the Horus-led defense team got their asses handed to them.

And where Ra goes, the Eye of Ra is likely to go, so those goddesses who are or have been the Eye - Hathor, Sekhmet, Bastet, Tefnut and so on - may also rally behind Set as a result of Ra's influence. How much influence Ra still has after Isis' meddling is up to individual Storytellers to decide, though.

Oddly enough, those paragraphs look backwards: unrelated people Set hangs out with at work are the most likely to be gung-ho about getting him into power, while his own immediate family is kind of unsure and possibly working for the other side. It's a great example of a different set of Virtues at work: when you have Order, Piety, Harmony and Conviction, you're likely to believe in someone you respect with a whole and unflagging heart, but that's more important than pesky things like filial loyalty that other pantheons might hold in higher esteem.

And, of course, there are at least as many gods arrayed on Horus' side in this very, very old argument. Gods probably can and do change sides all the time, based on who they think is winning, new information they learn about one or the other being a douchebag or the manipulative meddling of the social powerhouses among them. It's a Game-of-Thrones-esque labyrinth of byzantine intrigue, where everything might change at a moment's notice and the only surety is that you don't want to end up on the losing side at the wrong moment.

Dogpile

Question: I’m running a game that, rather than dealing with the Titans, involves a cold war between the Dodekatheon and everyone who hates them, and suddenly becomes violent due to the recent discovery of Metis’s son outside of the Dodekatheon’s sphere of influence. My problem is that I can only think of two pantheons that would be angry enough to go to war with them: the Nemetondevos and the Elohim. Are there any other pantheons that would be angry with them? Would they have any allies?

Oh, man, a Dodekatheon hate-fest? Invite us!

The biggest pantheon I can think of that should be involved here is the Pesedjet. The Egyptian gods are millennia-long frenemies with the Dodekatheon; sometimes they have positive commerce and even share myths, and sometimes they fight over territory and call each other racial slurs across the Mediterranean. There was a long history of argumentative interaction between the two even before Rome sailed across the water and imposed their own rulers in the Ptolemaic dynasties, and there're almost limitless possibilities for who wants to do what in this situation. Is Isis cool with the Greeks, who had temples to her in some of their own territories? What about Horus, who saw his rightful line of pharaohs replaced by invaders from the north? How does Bastet feel about Greco-Roman influence basically transforming her from a sun goddess into a lunar deity, and do the highly regimented death gods blame foreign burial practices for causing the erosion of their own process for the afterlife? Do Thoth and Hermes get together and laugh about the idea of Hermes Trismegistus, or is one or the other or both of them pissed off about the situation?

It's a total powderkeg of a pantheon when it comes to the Dodekatheon, and you can never tell if they'll be on their side as ancestral allies, undermining them as long-time enemies or split, with some of the gods going one way and others another (what a surprise, the Egyptian pantheon has disagreement among the ranks!). Any dogpile on the Dodekatheon has to include them in some way, and since they're also longtime allies of the Elohim, it's inevitable that they're going to get involved.

You might also want to investigate what the native Roman gods are doing and what side they come down on in this conflict. On the one hand, the Dodekatheon in their guise as the Dii Consentes brought massive glory to the empire and are some of the most recognizable members of Roman religion, but on the other hand, they seized control of the pantheon from the native Italian gods who might not have wanted their "generous" help in making their own way. Purely Roman gods like Janus might have an axe to grind, whether by openly siding against them or trying to sabotage them from within, but then again some might support Zeus and his rule and remain staunch defenders of their conglomerate pantheon. There's plenty of opportunity for internecine struggle, back-door dealings and zany avoidance comedy just within the Dodekatheon itself.

As for possible allies for the beleaguered Greeks, don't despair, they have a few. The Yazata might be a surprising source of help; the pantheons have traditionally cooperated fairly well, with Mithra even enjoying a robust Roman cult as Mithras, but they're also tricky thanks to some lingering bad feelings about invasion forces on both sides and the fact that the Dodekatheon have to be on their best behavior around their eastern allies or risk offending them into leaving (or worse, punishing them for their transgressions). They might also be able to call on the Bogovi for aid, who also had quite a bit of friendly overlap and fairly peaceful coexistence with them back in the day.

Double Vlog! Two Times Vlog!

Don't get too used to two vlogs in one week - as you can see from the bag under our eyes, we're some tired people. But not too tired for some awesome questions from the mailbag!

Question: I love the Axiom Intelligence knack, but I hardly ever see anyone else use it. It got me thinking: what are some of your favorite underused or underrated powers?

Question: Outside of your games - what with one killing the other and all - how would you describe the relationship between Ra and Horus?

Question: In regards to the Anunna PSP of Me, I noticed that the second-level boon, Direction of Me, lists all the abilities but Brawl is the only one not represented. Is this intentional?

Question: An Aztec Scion marries an Egyptian Scion. How would this affect both pantheons? This is based on my own Quetzalcoatl Scion and his marriage to a Scion of Bastet.

Question: What Aztec gods might have Virtues other than the plain old Aztec ones?

Question: Have you guys ever considered adding a third level of power above the Divine and the Titanic, like the Protogenoi of Greece? This would be a category for vast comic deities like Olodumare or Ophion. It seems dissonant to me that a being like Olodumare and one like Uke Mochi or Hestia are on the same power level.

Hopefully someday soon we'll be slightly caught up, and you guys won't have to wait a month to see your questions make it to the blog in some form.

Dead on Our Feet

Question: Working to create a new Titanrealm of Death and I was interested to see what 'Titans' would call it home and why. Japanese, Norse, Egyptian, and Aztec are of particular interest since its what we have in our game.

Well, good news - we actually wrote a Titanrealm of Death for our most recent pantheon supplement, The K'uh, which is available for free download and might give you some interesting starting places! It starts on page 27 of the PDF and contains Maya, Persian, Hindu and Greek Titan Avatars.

However, none of those Avatars are from the cultures you mentioned - bummer, right? It's actually very difficult to find true-blue Avatars of Death in many mythologies, which is at first glance surprising considering how much humanity tends to be afraid of and unhappy about death as a concept. It's that very fear and dislike that makes it less likely for there to be Titans of Death, however; because death is always the end of mortal life and therefore of supreme importance to humans, it's necessary for there to be gods to oversee it, lending humans the comfort of knowing that someone will take care of them after death, that there are rules, rewards and punishments that make the whole thing make sense. This is why there are tons of death gods, at least one or two per pantheon and in some cases many more, and why conversely there are few Death Titans; human societies don't like death-aligned figures, but they seldom invent ones that don't in some way help or reassure them about the great unknown of the afterlife.

That doesn't mean they don't exist, though! The easiest of your cultures to find one in is actually the Amatsukami, where the terrible figure of Izanami, murdering as many people as her husband creates each day and dragging them down into the miserable depths of Yomi, has many of the hallmarks of a Titan. She's a goddess in the original writeup, and we've gone back and forth on whether she should stay that way or move over to becoming Titanic, but if you want the death-aligned big bad of the Amatsukami, she's obviously it. Unlike most death gods, she doesn't really have any positive side, any things she does to help or safeguard humanity; she's a prison warden who is always looking to add to her prisoners so they can be miserable along with her, and that's a setup perfect for Titanhood. Plus, the tragic story of how she died and ended up as what she is now often lends a lot of emotional resonance to the dealings of gods and Scions with her, and might give you a lot of cool story options. There are other death figures in the Japanese pantheon, most notably Susanoo (who was cursed to become part of the Underworld when he sided with Izanami against his father) and Jigoku (lord of the Buddhist hell, most likely an import of Yama who later took on his own identity as a Japanese deity), but since they do have stories and functions as deities, interacting with the other gods or rehabilitating the dead according to their deeds in life, they're probably better left as gods instead of Titans.

The Norse are not so easy: they have three death people, and they're Odin, Freya and Hel, and none of them are straight-up easy choices for Titanhood. As leader of the pantheon, Odin's pretty clearly out of the question (although sometimes his behavior is downright Titanic, amirite, guys?), and as one of the Vanir prisoners and a major and generally benevolent goddess who features in many important stories, Freya's not a good choice, either. That leaves Hel, who, like Izanami, is not a very nice person thanks to her pantheon shitting on her, but she doesn't have the same Titanic flavor as her Japanese counterpart. Hel doesn't actively do anything to oppose the gods; nobody likes her, true enough, and people are generally afraid to go to her house, but she doesn't attack anyone, doesn't go around trying to kill more humans for her own ends, and doesn't cosmically try to screw anyone, spending most of her time sullenly watching over the kingdom they punted her into. She does try to prevent Baldur's resurrection, but you can hardly blame her for being A) not very inclined to be nice to the Aesir, and B) enforcing the rules of the domain they demanded she take over in the first place. If you don't use Hel, unfortunately there really aren't very many other options among the Norse gods and antagonists; the best other option I can think of is Modgrud, the giantess who guards the bridge to Hel and controls whether or not the dead (or living) are allowed across it, but since she's both fairly minor and also not very antagonistic, I really wouldn't recommend her.

The Egyptians have the opposite problem from the Norse - ten bazillion kajillion death-aligned gods, but almost all of them are benevolent friends to humanity and their pantheon, hardly Titans bent on opposing them. Because the ancient Egyptians were so strongly invested in the idea of the afterlife being a second chance for them if they observed all their death rituals and were judged worthy, there are veritable slews of gods helping take care of the place, from guiding lost souls to performing burial rites to defending them from demons to judging their worthiness to continue to a new life. That doesn't leave a lot of room for deathly gods who are trying to ruin all that, but you do have a few options you might be able to explore nevertheless. The first is Ammit, the terrible crocodile/hippopotamus/lion amalgam creature that is said to dwell in Duat; eternally hungry, she devours the souls of anyone who fails to measure up when weighed against feather of Ma'at, consigning their souls to awful oblivion instead of allowing them to move on. While we use Ammit as an Avatar of the Titanrealm of Destruction, emphasizing her role as the void that utterly destroys, we could also see her as an Avatar of Death representing final, irrevocable and afterlife-less death, something that surely gives most people extreme heebie-jeebies. Ammit is slightly problematic, however, in that she works for (or at least with) the gods, allowing Anubis and Thoth to decide who she gets to eat and doesn't, so you'd need to come up with a backstory reason why she's ditched that job and begun rampaging on her own. The only other suggestion I have for you is a minor god called Ba-Pef, who is believed to have represented the grief and suffering associated with death and who lives in the House of Woe in Duat. Ba-Pef was on our original list for possibilities for our own Titanrealm of Death; we ended up cutting him since he was such a minor god with very little information on him out there, but he does fill a neat death-related niche, so he's an outside option.

Finally, the Aztecs, with a similar lack of useful possibilities. Like most Mesoamerican cultures, the Aztecs had a pretty overwhelming fear and hatred of death and things associated with it, but as a result they set up several gods as goalies to keep dead people from getting out to frighten the living and called it a day. Huitzilopochtli, Tlaloc and other gods who technically control Underworlds are obviously not Titan material, and while Itzpapalotl does oversee the souls of dead infants and miscarriages, she's so strongly tied to the tzitzimime that it would be a pretty weird move to set her up in a Death realm instead of the Stars. The really major scary death figure for the Aztecs is Mictlantecuhtli (and his wife, Mictecacihuatl, who fucntions with him as a unit), but he has the same problems as Hel above - performs the useful function of keeping the dead away from the living, doesn't oppose or endanger humanity or his pantheon, has no particularly evil issues other than being very unpleasant to be around, and only clashes with the gods when they invade his home and try to break the rules of death. He's certainly scary and disliked, so you could decide that he's a Titan, but it's hard to extrapolate much misbehavior out of him when his favorite pastime is staying at home and refusing to not do his job. If you want to get creative, though, you could try going modern and using Santa Muerte ("Saint Death" or "Holy Death" in Spanish) as a new Titan Avatar horning in on the traditional Aztec territories. Santa Muerte is probably actually a figure synthesized from Mictlantecuhtli/Mictecacihuatl and the influence of Catholicism from the invading Spaniards, but wherever she came from she's become one of the most powerful (and frightening, depending on who you ask) cult figures in Mexico, with cults reaching all the way up into the US and down through Central America. If you want to use her as a being in her own right, she could be parlayed into an interesting Titanic figure opposing the old death gods of the Aztlanti, flourishing in worship where they did not.

That's about all I've got to suggest for you, I'm afraid. Death's a very hard one, and I salute you for giving it a good go. In addition to the suggestions above, we also had Iapetus, Greek Titan of mortality and the lifespan, as a possibility on our original list for our Death realm, as well as Mrtyu, Hindu personification of death.

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.

Social Climbing

Question: You had Eshu vs Loki the other day, how about Isis vs Tezcat? How would you handle conflicts between those kind of social powerhouses who always get what they want? How could PCs handle them when they reach godhood? I know Geoff's already told Isis where to get off, but surely she hasn't just left it at that?

Social powers have so many options and layers that this question is basically unanswerable (which is also why it's sat in the queue for so long - sorry, asker!). If you think about all the different things social characters can do to perpetrate shenanigans, encourage behavior and influence one another even as Heroes and Demigods, you already have an idea of how insane the scale must become when they get to the level of actual deities.

As we've talked about before, it's mostly fruitless to talk about "which god would win", because that's not only something that is nearly impossible to forecast thanks to all the variables and kinds of powers in play, it's also unlikely to come up because there are entire pantheons and relatives associated with them that know better than to let things get to that level. Actual outright conflict between gods is probably pretty rare, because it makes life miserable for everyone, not just the main members of the feud. As we said before, when Eshu and Loki get into a tiff, the world loses.

But social conflicts don't necessarily have to erupt into armed beatings - in fact, most of the time they probably don't, except in the rare cases of socially manipulative people who are not smart enough to realize what a bad idea that is. Instead, they look a lot more like terrible, terrible cold wars, where both sides play a game of vicious wizard's chess with all the people they know and can get their hands on as pieces. Social characters with Charisma will play Who's Your Daddy with everyone they know, always winning friends and allies away from others with sheer force of their awesomeness; whomever's actually in the room is probably winning, because Charisma requires that kind of up close and personal attention most of the time, but your friends can prevail on their friends and soon it's a chain of a bunch of people doing crazy things out of love for you just to stick it to the other guy. Characters with Manipulation, on the other hand, can weave their influence even more subtly, spreading evil rumors about you, convincing others that you want things you don't want, turning your friends and even relatives against you and laying curses and traps just waiting to trip you up.

One of the things about being Isis or Tezcatlipoca is that, yeah, you always get what you want - inside your own little pool, that is. Unless you're going up against someone with a truly heinous resistance score, your home pantheon-mates are probably mostly susceptible to your charms - you're the resident manipulator or major presence, after all. But when you branch out into the larger world of Scion and come up against other puppetmasters and leaders, it becomes an increasingly complex and insane web of possibilities, and there's no way to predict what would happen. Every new person, situation, alliance or enmity introduces new variables that could completely change what happens, and a feud between the same two gods could go off infinite different ways, like a multitude of parallel universes.

So the answer is really whatever your Storyteller can come up with. If Isis and Tezcatlipoca want to get into it, they're going to be in an insane, subtle, ongoing prank and influence war that might stretch anywhere from corrupting one anothers' cults to misdirecting one anothers' Scions to interfering in one anothers' family lives and everything else they think they can get away with. PCs trying to deal with it are going to find themselves embroiled, possibly even before they know it, and more often than not targeted. Hopefully they can play the game right back (or if not, survive its consequences).

As for Isis in our games... well, she and Geoff are not getting along. There's been kidnapping, violence, influencing other gods to attack one another, pantheon schisms and probably a whole lot more behind the scenes that the PCs aren't even aware she's up to. Recently, Jioni tried to pray at a temple to Isis to regain some Legend and everyone got attacked by members of the Centzonmimixcoa that Isis shanghai'd into striking against them, which led to a lot of heartbreak and screaming Aztec fury. That problem's probably not going to get fixed any time soon, but feuds between gods that last forever are one of the staples of mythology, so it only stands to reason that Scions pick some up as they go.

Horus of the Ages

Question: What is the difference between Horus the Elder and Horus the Younger? Is it another case of religious beliefs changing over time?

Indeed it is, but, as with most Egyptian religious evolutions, it's long and complicated and full of neat little developments.

Horus the Elder is so called because he's both an older god - one of the oldest in Egyptian mythology, in fact - and because he's of an older generation than his younger counterpart. While we're used to the neat symmetry of couples in Egyptian mythological genealogy, Horus the Elder was originally one of the youngest generation of the Ennead, a sibling of Isis, Osiris, Nephthys and Set. This Horus is the one who is the more primordial, powerfully cosmic deity; he is the representative of the sky and firmament, which are contained in his great wingspan and fill with air from the wind of his wingbeats, and the speckles of his feathers are stars while his eyes are the sun and the moon. His conflict with Set is one of warring brothers, representing opposing forces such as the day sky against the sky of the night, or the god of air against the god of storms. The two of them also represent upper and lower Egypt, and they are often shown eventually reconciling and uniting the kingdom between them. Because he's a cosmic and powerful figure, on par with his brothers Osiris and Set, he was often associated with the oldest gods of the pantheon, particularly Hathor (sometimes said to be either his mother or wife) or Ra, with whom he was syncretized as the sun in the sky.

So Horus the Elder is a really fucking big deal, and his cults were no joke. Horus the Younger is also a big deal, but for different reasons; he's the royal son of Isis and Osiris, the heir to the united halves of Egypt and a god of war, cleverness and rulership. This version of Horus, when not out doing king things, is actually often represented as an infant or child, linking him as the heir of Osiris and Isis and emphasizing his youth when compared to his parents' generation. He was the special patron of the pharaohs and the power that ensured their victory in war, and his conflicts with Set are not the symbolic and representative variety of the elder Horus but direct struggles with his uncle for the throne of the gods and the disposition of the kingdoms. He, too, represents the kingdom of Upper Egypt as opposed to Set as Lower Egypt, but their fight does not end in reconciliation and balance but in the triumph of Horus over his enemy and unification through conquest. It's likely that Horus the Younger was originally another god entirely, but that he was syncretized with Horus the Elder over time until that original god's name was forgotten.

Translating hieroglyphs is always a journey, even now, but there's some linguistic evidence that originally even their names were different. Horus the Elder was actually named something similar to "Harwer", while Horus the Younger might have been closer to "Harsiese". Over the many centuries of the Egyptian religion, Horus the Younger slowly absorbed the attributes and stories of Horus the Elder until they were no longer unentanglable in most cases, and Horus the Elder became a faded and outdated cult figure with little presence of his own. By the New Kingdom, there was effectively only one important Horus, and he's the one we all know about - Horus the Younger, son of Osiris and heir of the Ennead, wearing the moon and sun eyes of his older and largely forgotten forbear.

For Scion, this gives us the usual Egyptian god conundrum: is there one Horus or two, and how much of his syncretization should be used when deciding what these gods are like and what they do? Are there two Horuses, one older, more powerful and remote, and the other younger and wily, ruling the pantheon? Is there only one, and has he changed over time or are these merely two cults with differing opinions on what Horus is all about? You can see from our current page on him that we're running Horus the Younger as having some of the associations of his older iteration, but whether or not that means there was only one of him or that the younger one just happened to become Fatebound to some of the elder's qualities remains to be seen.

Personally, I really like the idea of an old, crusty Horus the Elder hanging out somewhere, grousing with his brothers about kids these days and their uppity ideas about the sky and the sun.

Sweet Little Angels

It's snowy, gross, cold and disheartening here. So, to list everyone's spirits who may be having a similar day - have you guys seen the Lil' Pesedjet?

All artwork by the fabulous Silverfox5213. Ahh. I feel better. Don't you guys feel better?

What the World Has to Offer

Question: Like the question about which pantheon is the biggest, this one is about the smallest-seeming pantheons: the Egyptian and Aztec gods. What do they offer to the world? I mean, they make some cool PC scions, but what do they offer aside from that if you are running a mostly Egypt/Mexico themed game? Like, the Greeks have all those monsters that a young band could go up against - minotaurs, centaurs, harpies, and so on. The Aztecs and Egyptians just have their gods.

You just made me blink, question-asker. I can kind of understand viewing the Aztlanti as one of the smaller pantheons in the game, because their lesser gods are comparatively few and not always well-understood, but what gives you the idea that the Pesedjet are small? There are tons of Egyptian gods, both minor and major; it was a really long-running religion with a very lively cast of deities. They're not even short on playable gods; even after we took Geb and Kebauet off the roster, there are thirteen of them, easily outstripping the smaller pantheons in the game.

If I were going to pinpoint the smallest pantheons in the game, it would probably be the Yazata - who are seriously tiny, as in the people you see on their family tree are pretty much the entire complement of gods - and the Tuatha, who have a decent number of minor members but a fairly small core group of Legend 12 gods. Even they aren't what I'd call "small" pantheons in a global sense, because there are a great many mythologies that have only two to five gods to their names, spread out across the world and its many cultures. Compared to the very small divine groups of the African Bushmen, southern Japanese Ryukyuan or various aboriginal Australian tribes, nine Yazata looks like a giant unified front.

But I think the second half of your question is more important, and very revealing of the strong European bias in Scion and a lot of its players. (Not that I'm picking on you at all - it's pretty normal for most of us!)

Scion is designed for a primarily western audience, mostly targeted at the United States and Canada with small forays into the more westerly of the European countries. It's therefore heavily based on the mythologies that those players are most likely to know well: the Greco-Roman ones, which most of us still learn in school at some point, and to a smaller extent the myths of the Norse gods, which have never gone out of style for most of the western world. They're by far the most well-known mythologies for the intended audience; the fact that Hindu myth is far larger, more complex and absolutely full of adventures and characters wasn't considered important enough to even get it into the game until Companion came out, because it just wasn't very familiar to western players and therefore not on the front lines when the developers were looking for material they thought players would want to use.

But most of us automatically know Greco-Roman and Norse myth, at least a little bit, which makes it seem more "real" and exciting to us. Everyone's heard of Pegasus, knows about Heracles and has at least a passing familiarity with the Greek gods. Everyone knows that Thor is the god of thunder, that he fights giants, and that Ragnarok means the end of the world. We see them all the time, whether in blockbuster movies like Clash of the Titans and Immortals, in popular book series like Percy Jackson orthe Thor comic books, or as the stars of computer games like Age of Mythology. They're a recognizable part of our pop culture, and as a result we tend to know them much, much better than any other pantheons.

Most players that come into Scion (obviously not you guys with anthropology degrees, so don't start getting offended) don't have that familiarity with other cultures' myths. There are no blockbuster movies about the Aztec gods, no popular western comic books that are all about the kami, and if you try to figure out the Pesedjet from Hollywood's infrequent forays into Egypt, you'll just come away with a vague notion that the only major god is some kind of werewolf-monster named Anubis and that maybe the Egyptian gods are all space aliens. As a generality, western culture occasionally borrows the trappings of other mythologies because they're cool and exotic, but it almost never looks into them deeper than that.

So your average player comes into this game with a pretty good foundation in Greco-Roman and maybe one other mythology, and they know all about cyclopes, pegasi, gorgons and other critters that might jump them. But since they have no real knowledge of the other pantheons, they don't have that background for them, and it looks like those mythologies have no important features but the gods themselves. And that, I think, is what's happening for you, my inquisitive friend - it's not that those mythologies don't have things to offer, but just that they aren't nearly as well-known. And that's okay, because not everyone has to come into this game with a background in ancient religions, and that's what this blog is here to help out with!

Egyptian mythology has plenty of mythical creatures of its own. While mummies really aren't one of them - the ancient Egyptians were not at all worried about mummified dead people, which is something that European explorers discovering them centuries later got all wigged out about - there are plenty of other creatures to call up from the annals of Egyptian folklore, from the immortal benu bird to the bizarre serpopard to the four-winged bait serpent to various different kinds of sphinxes, very distinct from the Greek versions. Thanks to the close proximity and overlap between the Greeks and the Egyptians, many creatures we tend to think of as Greek, like gryphons, were also probably originally borrowed from the Egyptians.

Aztec mythology is definitely not empty of folkloric creatures, either, but it's even more obscure to most players, because Egyptian mythology did get some historical attention in Europe and the United States while the Aztecs were much more poorly understood (thanks in part to the fact that they recorded things in pictorial and oral traditions instead of using a formal writing system). From Mexico come such antagonistic beasties as the hungry, man-drowning-and-eating ahuizotl, the lost spirits of the cihuateteo, those canine messengers of the underworld the itzcuintin, an entire race of malevolent, mostly-extinct giants called Quinametzin who may have survived the destruction of the earlier worlds, and of course the hideous, insect-like star-demons known as the tzitzimime. Modern Mexican folklore continues to believe in various other nasty little creatures as well - not just the cliched chupacabra, but also various kinds of malevolent or dangerous goblin-like creatures collectively called duende.

Seems like plenty enough antagonists to keep budding young Scions busy, right? But even more important are the other things each pantheon brings to the game world, far beyond just basic questions like what kinds of monsters Scions might fight. Each pantheon represents a unique culture and religion, which brings entirely new dimensions into the game with it. They bring in the fantastical other worlds of those religions, their underworlds and overworlds and Terrae Incognita and enchanted places and temples. They bring unique cosmic concepts like the necessity of sacrifice, the struggle of righteousness against disorder, the cyclical recreation of the world or the heavenly parts of the divine soul that the game would not otherwise benefit from. They bring personalities, powers and beliefs that exponentially increase the possibilites and options for practically anything Scions want to do in the world.

And that is why strong, fleshed-out pantheons, no matter what their size, are always awesome additions to the game. They aren't necessary for anyone who isn't interested or doesn't want to deal with them, but each added pantheon adds to the incredible, rich diversity and possibilities of the game world, just as each culture you learn about in real life adds to your understanding of how amazing the differences and similarities between human civilizations are. A new pantheon is much more than just a new set of divine parents and a few new Titanspawn to throw at players; it's another glorious and exciting piece of the entire game world.

No one should ever feel obligated to use all the pantheons we put out, or even all the pantheons in the original rules, if they aren't interested in or comfortable with them. No one should ever feel like they need to have a Masters degree or spend all their weekends researching to play this game; anyone who wants to should be able to walk in and create a rollicking adventure from whatever parts of whatever mythologies they most know and love. Every pantheon brings with it unique challenges, antagonists, concepts and deities, and Storytellers should use as many or few of them as they want to. If you feel like Greek mythology has more to offer you than Aztec, then there's no reason you can't run your game primarily based on Greek mythology.

But if you want to use things from those other mythologies, they're always there. All you have to do is go out and hunt them down.

Misplaced Nemontemi?

Question: Are the five days that Nut gave birth to Osiris and his siblings called "demon days"?

Honestly, we've seen that around the internet and heard that it's repeated in Rick Riordan's novels, but we've never heard of it in any reputable Egyptian mythology source, so we doubt it.

We'd be glad to hear of any source we're missing, of course, but Wikipedia's not doing it for us. As far as we know, Demon Days is a Gorillaz album.