Right of Blood

Question: I've been looking at Scion Visitations for grandchildren. What would happen if a potential Scion is the grandchild of one god and the child of another? Would both gods have a chance at claiming him, or would the grandparent have to ask for an adoption to claim the grandchild?

An excellent question! Both gods have an equal chance to claim the child.

Before a Scion is given a Visitation, she's just a mortal - probably a pretty awesome mortal as mortals go, but human nonetheless. If she were just a human, she could never aspire to Scionhood, but it's the divine blood in her veins that makes it possible for her to start on the long road to Legend and glory. That blood came from her divine parent and/or grandparent, and is only activateable by them, preventing just any old god from swooping in and nabbing her for their own purposes, but if she carries blood from both, whomever gets there and activates their ichor with a Visitation first is the one who lays claim to her as an official Scion.

Multiple gods messing around in the same genetic line isn't common (it might be kinda weird going after the one mortal on the planet you're already related to, not to mention the fact that Lugh deciding to sleep with Nuada's daughter might cause some sudden and spectacular political problems if Nuada doesn't appreciate it), but this issue actually does come up frequently for Scions, who may have children before becoming gods themselves, in which case those children can be claimed as Scions by their grandparents. In our main storytline, Geoff and Sangria had several children as Scions; although they are now gods themselves, their oldest daughter, Ahuiliztli, was claimed as a Scion by Huitzilopochtli while they were still Legend 9. Technically either of them could have adopted her, but he got there first, so she's a hummingbird warrior forevermore (which is fine with her mother, although I'm sure daddy would have preferred she go join the valkyrie corps).

That does in fact mean that there are some gods who, thanks to already having a lot of divine children who can make Scions, probably never have to go out and make new Scions of their own if they don't want to. Any son of Ganesha or Skanda could be claimed as a Scion by Shiva or Parvati, if they decided to exert their grandparental rights over the kid, and any daughter of Ares or Hephaestus could be activated by Hera if she wanted to, thus neatly solving the issue of where she gets her Scions without even requiring a Scion Adoption Rite to take place. Just think - any Scion of Heimdall or Thor or Bragi could have been a Scion of Odin if he'd felt like taking them over, and how different would their destinies have been then?

Despite the fact that grandparents can take children as Scions, if there's another god involved it's entirely possible that they shouldn't and will regret it if they do. As in all divine interactions, there's a price for everything; custody battles are ugly even among mortals, never mind among the gods, and a grandparent and parent fighting over their offspring will probably end up having to bribe one another with important gifts or favors, argue about who's the best choice or even have it out in an actual fight if there's a conflict over who gets to take on a particular child. This is also the only situation in the game where one god can actually steal another god's Scion - and while it's possible, heaven help you if you do so and the other god decides to make an issue of it. If Enki just takes off with one of Marduk's kids without telling him, the likelihood of livid court hearings, Justice boons flying every which way and massive political fallout is pretty darn high, no matter how well they normally get along.

Now, I know of a few Storytellers who only allow the grandparent rule if both gods actually went forth and participated in the Scion-making process - that is, they're fine with Nuada adopting his granddaughter who also happens to be Aengus' daughter, but only if Nuada had a child with a mortal and that child then slept with Aengus to create the granddaughter. Under that rule, Nuada would be disqualified from tapping any children of Aengus that were only related to him through Aengus himself. I don't know that this is really necessary; it doesn't hurt anything in the game to leave players room to play with their exact parentage versus their Scion patronage, and it allows Storytellers to do some neat plot things with the political interplay between gods and their children and servants. I can only see it being a problem if you're afraid of rampaging elder gods stealing all the Scions en masse, and if that's happening, I would assume your Storyteller has a reason for it.

At any rate, having and maintaining and gifting and directing Scions is a pain in the ass, so most of the older gods are probably only too happy to let their kids deal with that headache and only take on Scions of their own when they absolutely need something done without anyone else's interference, anyway.

Making Babies

Question: Besides normal human-god procreation and adoption, what other ways can a god create a Scion?

Scions are rare and special creatures; gods can't just pop them up all the time by doing random stuff, or their lives would be much easier and they wouldn't have to spend so much time messing around in the dangerous and Fatebond-plagued World. Scions are the fusion of the mortal with the divine, enabling them to reach for the awesome greatness of divinity while retaining the spark and soul of humanity, and that's not something that's easy to come by.

Gods can make progeny all kinds of ways, of course. They can create living creatures with various purviews, including Industry and Health, but those aren't Scions. They can have children with all kinds of Legendary creatures and inhabitants of magical worlds, but those aren't Scions. They can even make copies and illusions of themselves, but those aren't Scions, either, just mirror images or pale imitations.

There are technically a few ways a god might be able to manage it. We've talked before about the fact that gods might be able to create Scions by spreading their seed to animals instead of humans; the resulting children would probably be very bestial and have a lot of challenges that normal Scions don't, but it's technically possible, depending on your Storyteller's inclinations. It's also technically possible for a god with Human Hybrid to crossbreed a Scion with a normal human, resulting in a mortal who could be tapped as a Scion by the original Scion's parent. That only works for one generation, and since you're spending a bucket of Legend around a mortal to do it it doesn't seem like there's much point, but it's possible as long as you're of the creator-god set. Finally, as with most things, a purview Avatar used appropriately could probably create a Scion, particularly The Savior or The Wyrd; Avatars are able to do bananas things that normally can't be done, so they get around the usual restrictions.

Short of those, however, Scions are created by the fusion of ichor and blood from a mortal having a child with a god, and that's where the vast majority of them should be coming from. The other methods are possible but in most cases not useful unless there are extreme extenuating circumstances or obstacles to getting it done the normal way, and most gods won't go to the extra effort and expense unless they have a seriously important reason to do so.

Generations of Godliness

Question: Don't expect this one to get answered for a while, but have you ever had a character in one of your games whose grandparent was the god instead of their parent?

Aha, but it was quick to answer, so it gets to come out early anyway! Boom!

We've only had one Scion who had their grandparent as a patron instead of their direct patron, and it was Ahuiliztli Matheson, daughter of Geoff Matheson and Sangria Tecuhtli. Her parents were not high enough Legend to make her a Scion at the time, but her grandfather Huitzilopochtli invested her with power and sent her out to continue furthering the Aztec cause. She was played for a short period of time during the side game Children of the Revolution, along with other PC children Charlie Gozer, Chuklark Jr. and Magnus Magnusson. Those PCs were never on the website because their game was shortlived, although they remain NPCs now.

Maximus Giovanni VII comes from a family line that claims he is the seventh generation removed from Hades, the pater familius of their line. While the family firmly believes this, it's obvious that it's not actually true and that his divine blood must run in a closer generation. Since most of the Giovanni men are nearly identical looking and Hades is a master of stealth, it's anyone's guess whether he's Max's father or grandfather. Certainly no one has ever asked him.

It's always an option to play a character is the grandchild of a god, but it hasn't been very popular with our players to date. I'm not sure if that's because it's just more interesting to be more closely connected to the god in question, or it just doesn't often occur to players during character creation.

(It's also possible that there're some kind of generational shenanigans going on in Dierdre's background. But nobody knows if that's actually true.)

Not Quite Homegrown

Question: What do you think of Susano-o siring (or adopting) a Caucasian or Caucasian-looking scion to piss off his sister and pantheon?

We think it's as valid a beginning for a PC as any! Scions are always embroiled in divine politics just thanks to existing, and unfortunately a lot of them have a lot of ancient prejudice - against their race, sex, habits and morals - to manage as they try to make their mark on a pantheon as a new young god. We had a mixed Caucasian Amatsukami Scion in one of our games, in fact - the ill-fated Sora Sato - who spent a lot of his time trying to overcome his halfbreed heritage to serve his people.

Susano-o is certainly a pain in the ass, and he has a long and glorious history of irritating Amaterasu whenever the opportunity arises; this is a lot lower-scale than his previous pranks, but he may be "behaving himself" thanks to the pressures of the war against the Titans. It's no stretch that he might sire a Scion with mixed blood to annoy her, knowing she wouldn't be able to turn down the help but would look down her nose at the kid, or that he might just not care about her rules and have children with anyone he feels like, making it even more likely that he has a lot of biracial children running around. Remember that it's not "racism against white people" the Japanese have going on, but an attitude of "superiority over all non-Japanese people", so they're just as likely to snub a child who's half black, half Native American, or even half Chinese (because believe you me, no Japanese god is going to think that the Chinese are remotely the same as their own chosen people). Anyone who isn't Japanese is fair game for discrimination here, though of course it will vary from god to god, with some less likely to care about a Scion's mortal parentage than others.

The PC, of course, will have a lot to handle growing up in such a hotbed of hierarchy, rules, expectations and politics... but then again, that's the life of every Scion of the Amatsukami.

Underworld Orgy

Question: How do you justify death gods having biological kids?

...the same way you justify any god having biological kids?

Death gods may wield power over life and death and hang out in dreary, glum underworlds a lot of the time, but they still have reproductive organs and they very obviously use them in many of their myths. In fact, most of them have children of their own in mythology already, so they're clearly not hampered by infertility. Here's a quick list of the death gods we currently have in play in Scion, for comparison:

Gods with Death who have children: Anubis, Ereshkigal, Freya, Hades, Huitzilopochtli, Indra, Manannan mac Lir, Morena, The Morrigan, Nephthys, Nergal, Odin, Persephone, Shiva, Tlaloc, Veles

Gods with Death who don't have children: Hecate, Hel, Kali, Mictlantecuhtli, Yama, Yanluo

Gods with Death who are incapable of children: Izanami, Osiris

So you can see that there are almost three times as many death gods with children as those who don't have them, and only two we know for certain can't have any (Scion addresses the case of Osiris, in particular, noting that he can only adopt Scions, not create new ones himself; they don't really talk about Izanami, but since her vow is to destroy life while her ex-husband creates it, I would assume she probably refuses even if she's capable). Like gods of all other things, death gods were considered by their cultures to be powerful, important beings who ruled over a facet of the universe, and that usually translates to them having families and children, either as gods of related concepts who help them or as general shorthand to remind you that they're important, since most ancient cultures would have considered a childless couple less than badass since they'd be incapable of carrying on their awesomeness through subsequent generations.

Of course, there are more symbolic concerns when it comes to death gods having children, as well as logistical ones. Some death gods are ambiguous when it comes to whether or not they're "alive"; people like Osiris, Izanami and Yama all died at some point in their myths, which would make it hard to reproduce, but at the same time they're obviously still "alive" enough to be important powers in their own right, making it clear that they're not just ghosts drifting around in the underworld. Individual STs will have to decide what their deaths really meant - whether they didn't really die and the phrase is just symbolic of their descent to the underworld, whether they did die but have since been resurrected in some form (indeed, in the case of Yama he's at least alive enough that he can get killed again when he annoys Shiva), or whether they died but thanks to The Reaper still get to reign over their domains (works for some, but for many death gods, they wouldn't gain that association until after death anyway - I doubt Izanami had The Reaper when she was busy being a creator goddess).

There's also the question of death gods that are confined to their realms; it's not all of them and it's not all the time, but in particular, Hel, Izanami and Osiris seem to be stuck down there, and there are others, like Mictlantecuhtli, who we don't see directly constrained to stay there but who also never seem to leave. At that point, it's a question of why those gods are prevented from leaving the underworld and whether there's a way they could get around it; for example, it's implied that Hel can't leave the underworld because Odin won't let her, not because she'd be otherwise incapable, and the Scion books imply that to help the war effort he allows her out on sort of parole in order to make Scions. If the god just doesn't seem to ever leave but there's nothing that tells us they can't, I'd assume that they can throw up an Avatar and go to the World if they want to just like every other god, though with the heavy focus on responsibility that a lot of death gods have, they probably don't do it all that often.

There are your occasional death gods that very directly represent infertility and inability to reproduce; these would include Izanami, Nephthys (who, despite being Anubis' mother in early versions of the myth of his birth, is still cursed with the depressing epithet she who has no vagina) or the Canaanite Mot, who are so directly representative of death that it is impossible for them to create life. There are very few of them, and I'd suggest treating them just like virgin goddesses or strictly monogamous gods: they probably adopt their Scions.

Everybody's pitching in to deal with this Titan problem, and death gods aren't the only ones who usually don't go out into the world and have sex with random mortals; them getting up to do so in an effort to save the world is no weirder than folks like Amaterasu or Ogma or Ra randomly nipping down to the world of humanity for a quick shag. Children of death gods are not only possible but actually crop up all over mythology anyway; there's no reason to assume that being the lord of an underworld suddenly makes your divine balls shrivel off, which is amply demonstrated by the many minor gods and heroes who call a death god father or mother.

Like most questions of parentage in Scion, look at a specific case and see if there are any circumstances that require special handling (i.e., sworn virgin, castrated, locked in the basement); if there aren't, there's no reason not to let a Scion come into being the old-fashioned way.

Elves and Changelings

Question: What are your views on children of nymphs/alfar/other lesser immortals? Do they count as having divine blood? Could they be adopted by the more powerful gods? I'm thinking specifically of Achilles - his mother was nymph, but he certainly seems like full-blooded Scion material.

Children of lesser immortals certainly count as having magical blood, but they don't have divine blood; by definition, that only comes from the line of a god. We would not consider lesser immortals capable of creating children who could become Scions - not because we hate creativity, but because the entire concept of Scions is the children of the gods who become gods themselves. Children of random lower-Legend creatures in the setting don't have the same mythic resonance or possibilities; the child of a lesser immortal will generally just be another lesser immortal.

Oddly enough, despite the fact that the majority of Scion's setting is based on Greek myths, it's in Greek mythology that we have the two characters that are most like Scions but not set up in the classic Scion manner: Achilles and Odysseus. Achilles has divine blood in his ancestry; he is a great-grandson of Zeus through his father Peleus, and though Thetis is described as a nereid, she is also the daughter of a god, the river deity Nereus, and the Oceanid Doris, a daughter of Tethys. Thetis has also been theorized as a goddess herself, and she certainly shows plenty of divine oomph on her own, from being referred to as the personified sea to calling successfully on other gods for help after sheltering them in the ocean to being the only person to release Zeus during the episode when the other Olympians attempted to bind him.

So there are actually already possibilities for Achilles to be a normal, traditional Scion. If you consider Thetis a goddess in her own right, he can be her Scion; if you don't, he can be a Scion of her father Nereus, the river-god. It's unlikely that Achilles ever got above Legend 2-3 or so, so him being a son of a lesser-Legend water god really wouldn't make much of a difference one way or the other; he barely had time for any powers at all to manifest. Achilles' importance in the annals of Greek mythology comes largely from his status as a man who was prophesied to be great, not because he's directly son of someone crazy important other than Thetis.

If you're looking for alternative solutions, you might find some useful stuff in this old post where we talk about the same problems with Odysseus (although I think Achilles is much less of a sticky wicket than he is). For the most part, though, Achilles doesn't have any problem being set up as a Scion, and in any case lesser immortals, though magical and interesting as allies, antagonists or setting participants, just don't have the legendary awesomeness to be the parents of Scions.

Polygynous Monogamy

Question: In your genealogy of the Devas, Kali is the wife of Shiva as well as Parvati. Is this a mistake, and if not, care to elaborate? Also: can a Scion be born of two gods,? Parvati and Shiva come to mind...

A mistake? All our Hindu research cred is offended!

Actually, it's not; Shiva has a reputation for being faithful and monogamously in love with his wife, from the time that she was the ill-fated Sati through her death and reincarnation as wily Parvati. It is therefore a little confusing why he's attached to two ladies on our family tree, and why Hindu myth talks about both of them as his wives without batting an eyelash at the apparent contradiction. This is because Hindu mythology is big on the concept of divinity as a single thing with many moving parts, and Parvati and Kali are a prime example of that idea in action.

In an essentially boiled-down form, the myth goes that Parvati went into battle with several other Devas against the asura Raktabija, a horrible monster that was murdering gods and despoiling the landscape right and left. Every time the demon was wounded, a new copy of him sprang up from every drop of blood that touched the ground, and the gods soon realized that they were in serious danger of being overrun by Raktabija's endless army of himself. Parvati, who had already become the warrior goddess Durga and was still having no luck with the situation, called upon her powers to create yet another aspect of herself, the even more fearsome warrior Kali. Kali thoroughly trashed the asura, and used her terrible long tongue to lick up and drink every drop of shed blood so that he could not regenerate new copies of himself. She then went batshit and rampaged around murdering stuff for a while until Shiva calmed her down, because that's what Kali does.

Basically, Parvati and Kali are the same person; Kali is an aspect of Durga, who is in turn an aspect of Parvati, who in very large Hindu cosmological terms is merely an aspect of Devi, the great feminine divinity that all goddesses are just little pieces of. Shiva is Kali's husband just as much as he's Parvati's husband; Kali came out of Parvati and is part of Parvati, despite the fact that they have become separate for the purposes of demon-thrashing, and indeed Kali obviously recognizes this since Shiva is the only person who can prevent her from being insane for even small periods of time. Shiva has two wives and is still managing to be entirely monogamous, because that's how Hinduism rolls.

But, at the same time, Parvati and Kali need to be separate goddesses for Scion's purposes, because while Hindu philosophy says they're the same, in practice they have pretty much nothing in common except for Shiva. The two goddesses share no roles, perform no similar functions, and definitely don't do the same things; in fact, they're obviously aware of one another as separate people, as in the myth where Parvati gets all ticked off at Shiva teasing her by saying that her skin is as dark as Kali's. Kali goes off on her own separate adventures, usually involving rampages and cosmic property damage, while Parvati has her own stories as well, most often centered around her husband and children.

They're the same person - but they're also clearly not the same person, and Scion has to make distinctions between Hindu deities in order to use them in the game. In all technicality, there's only one "goddess" in the Hindu religion - Devi, the all-encompassing female divinity and keeper of the power of Shakti - but that's not only boring, it's also highly philosophical, rather than being part of the vibrant myths and legends of the Hindu epics. We don't want the Hindu pantheon to just be Deva, the dude god, and Devi, the lady goddess, so we have to break the different personalities off to be their own gods, which is how they're practically treated anyway (especially in ancient times), with their own temples, offerings, literature and stories. This is one of the many places where the concepts of modern Hinduism - in this case, the idea that all of the Devas are merely aspects of a single figure rather than deities in their own right - don't match up to those of ancient mythological India, in which nobody was suggesting that Indra and Vishnu must be the same guy because that would have seemed insane. Hinduism is the largest long-running polytheistic religion in existence, which means that it's changed vastly over time; its newer stories and myths have evolved from the ancient ones, and as it continues on toward ever more modern permutations, Scion has to make a cutoff point somewhere before running into the practical monotheism of things like Vaishnavism.

In Scion terms, figuring out where Kali came from is a little bit weird, since she's not conforming to the normal interpretations of a goddess. We find it most useful to assume that she's either A) a goddess who Parvati called down and unleashed and who her co-wife just refers to as an aspect of herself because she knows nobody's going to correct her, or B) a renegade Avatar of Parvati that somehow became its own individual being, something that isn't possible in most of the rules but that might have been accomplished with the Wyrd or similar kinds of meddling. Either way, she's as legitimately Shiva's wife as Parvati is; their myths are very clear about the relationship.

As for Scions being the children of two gods, yes, actually, that is possible, though unusual. Scion: Companion actually presents an entire sidebar on it (on page 167) specifically because of the famously monogamous couples of Hindu mythology. While two gods in their full forms will always give birth to another god, if one or both of them have used the Avatar Birthright to drop below Legend 9, the resulting child would be a possible Scion. Of course, this isn't going to happen a lot - having sex with mortals is a lot quicker and easier - but it's a possibility for gods who absolutely don't want to cheat on their spouses. Keep in mind, however, that while a Scion might be the biological child of two gods, he can only be the Scion of one of them; whichever parent performs his Visitation is the one that he'll be getting his associated powers from, not both.

Geneaology Day Continues!

Question: Was Odysseus a biological grandson of Zeus adopted as a Scion of Athena, a Scion of Zeus, or just a really clever mortal who lived a particularly legendary life surrounded by gods, demigods, and monsters?

Odysseus, in addition to being the Greek hero most disagreed about by scholars in terms of his purpose and philosophical representation, is also one of the messiest to try to pin down geneaologically. In all technicality, by Scion's rules, he couldn't have been a Scion as he's too far removed from his divine forbears, but he certainly has more divine heritage than most mortals could claim.

He's not Zeus' grandson, but depending on the mythic version could be considered either his great-grandson or great-great-grandson. According to Homer, he is the son of Laertes, who was himself the son of Arcesius, himself a son of Zeus, making him three generations removed; at the same time, his mother is Anticlea, who was the daughter of Autolycus, who was the son of Hermes (who is of course the son of Zeus), making him simultaneously Zeus' great-grandson, great-great-grandson and Hermes' great-grandson. And if that wasn't confusing enough, there's a variant myth in which his father is actually Sisyphus, which would again make him a great-grandson of Zeus through Sisyphus' father Aeolus, one of Zeus' many sons.

This is all a bit head-spinning, but what it basically boils down to is that, by Scion's rules, Odysseus could not be a Scion. He would need to be at least the grandson of a god, and he's one step too far away in all cases. This is also supported by the fact that, despite his excellent adventures and exploits, he eventually died of old age in Ithaca, a distinctly mortal kind of deceasement.

But Odysseus also does many great deeds, succeeds on many great quests and sometimes even out-performs dudes who definitely are Legendary; it's hard to believe that a mere mortal could have done all that, or that the gods should have bothered to take that much of an interest in him (or, come to that, that he could have survived Poseidon's snittiness for so long). So what to do with the most famous mind in ancient Greece?

The easiest option is probably just to declare that he was a Scion and insert some plot to explain whose and why his genealogy isn't preserved. Perhaps he was a closer relation of Zeus' or Hermes', hidden from the other gods as a secret weapon, or the son or grandson of some minor god taken under Athena's wing. There are pretty much unlimited ways to do this; the one that's closest to existing mythology would be to consider him the son of Sisyphus, and further to consider that his grandfather Aeolus was in fact identical to the weather-god Aeolus rather than a separate mortal king, allowing Odysseus to be the Scion of a minor god of the Dodekatheon who also happens to be related to Zeus and Hermes. If your plot requires Odysseus to be a Scion, though, you can pretty much assign him any secret parent you want, from a Zeus avoiding Hera's attention to a shocking child of virginal Athena herself. Of course, he will go off to die in peace at the end of his story, but consider that Odysseus, out of all Greek heroes, is the one guy who never wanted to be involved in epic things and just wanted to stay at home with his family. He might be the only example I know of in mythology of a Scion who chooses to allow himself to lose his Legend through inactivity, a possibility the books include but which I've never heard of anyone using in a game.

Of course, that's deciding to make up a new geneaology where normally we take the ancient Greeks and their myths at face value, and that's not our favorite idea. Another simple solution that might appeal is to set Odysseus as a Legendary Mortal; it would give him a little bit of a Legendary boost, certainly enough to remind us who he is and keep his legends and exploits strong, but would accept that his geneaology indicates he wouldn't be a full-blown Scion without fudging. Of course, how he came to be a Legendary mortal is really up to the Storyteller and the needs of the story; the Scion books are somewhat vague on this point. One of the most important themes of the stories of Odysseus is that he is a mortal; he's the example of mortal perfection and mortal excellence that the ancient Greeks so loved, and the fact that he can succeed alongside demigods is important partly because he isn't one of them. Setting him as a Legendary Mortal allows for brief flashes of his legendary awesomeness, but still retains that idea of him as a representative of the greatness of humanity.

Finally, you could look at the possibility that he was entirely mortal, but Fatebound to the major Legendary players in the Trojan war - probably at least Achilles, initially, but maybe even Athena and Poseidon themselves later. It's not very likely that he could hold his own as a mortal in such company, but if he had just the right Fatebound roles - a Boon Companion for Athena, perhaps, or a Rival against Poseidon - Fate itself might have helped him go far above and beyond what he normally could have done as a result. I'm actually not a big fan of this option only because it would suggest that Odysseus is famous because of being a character in the stories of others, and while he certainly isn't spotlighted for most of the Iliad, the following Odyssey is all him, and suggests to me that he was making a legend of his own, not merely acting as an adjunct to someone else's.

But, as you can see, there are plenty of options available. I think I might personally be fondest of the idea of Odysseus as a Legendary Mortal, myself, because I think it strikes a neat balance between staying true to mythology but allowing him to be awesome in his own right, but I think any of them might work in the right story.

Custody Battles of the Divine

Question: When Geoff and Sangria's kids come of age, will they be Scions of Sowiljr, or of Eztli? Or will it simply be a matter of who gets to them first?

Per Scion's rules, they could be either; it only depends on which parent taps them as a Scion. There's a mutual understanding between the players that Sowiljr will probably take the more obviously Norse-flavored children (Aren, Dyre and Gisli) and Eztli will take the ones in which the Aztec blood flows more strongly (Yolotli and Cuahuitl). Chicahua is permanently glued to his mother, since he was parthenogenic and doesn't have any actual blood relation to Sowiljr (but then again the little monster's Titanspawn, so he couldn't have been a Scion anyway).

But that's all planning, and who knows what might happen in the meantime? They're still just kids, so the only one who's actually been tapped as a Scion is Aren, who Sowiljr had to prematurely activate to make sure he escaped some Titanic forces that were trying to corrupt him. Pressure situations, spats or parents dying might very well change those childrens' parentage options overnight - not to mention the fact that either Huitzilopochtli or Baldur, as their grandparents, are both fully capable of coming in and taking one of them as a Scion (which Huitzilopochtli actually already did once by tapping their daughter Ahuiliztli for his own purposes).

There are many dangerous waters to navigate as new young gods, and trying to keep your progeny in one piece and aligned with you is definitely one of the big ones, especially when more than one pantheon is involved.

International Adoption Agency

Question: I understand the basics of Scion Adoptions, but I was hoping you could clear something up. All the examples I've found have been one god's child being adopted by another god from the same pantheon, but what about cross pantheon adoptions (such as a Scion of Hermes being adopted by Loki)? Would such an adoption be possible, and if so how?

Such an adoption is totally possible by the rules; all you need to adopt somebody else's kid is their consent and someone who can cast the Scion Adoption Rite spell. There's no restriction on whose child you can adopt; any parent or pantheon is fair game as long as all the rules of handing a Scion over are observed. Those rules can be tricky; both the original parent and the new parent have to be present (so if the old parent has gone Titan or is dead and stuck in an Underworld or something, that might be problematic), the Scion can't have been visited yet (because once a Scion has received a Visitation, his or her ichor is attuned permanently to the divine parent), and, most importantly, the original parent has to give consent for the new parent to take over the child. Loki could certainly adopt Hermes' child, but Hermes would have to okay the switch; there's no way to steal someone else's Scion short of busting out The Wyrd and hoping for the best.

Flavor and setting, however, play a big role in who's adopting whom and are probably a major reason you don't see too many cross-pantheon adoptions. Scions are the most effective soldiers and weapons of a pantheon; there needs to be a compelling reason (like an old debt or favor, for example) for one pantheon to want to give up that potential power to another. Why give away your supersoldier to the Aesir when you need more help right here on the Dodekatheon front lines? Gods are also probably wary of giving their kids to someone who might one day use them against them (and that goes for adoptions within a pantheon as well as outside of it).

These might be the reasons you don't see very many examples of cross-pantheon adoption, but that doesn't mean you can't do it for a PC! If you've got a great idea for why it happened, it can be a good way to make that character unique and give them ties to more than one set of gods, paving the way for stories to come. I wouldn't overuse the idea in a bunch of characters, but I'd say go for it otherwise.