Kings of the Cenote

Question: I was rereading your K'uh supplement, and I was wondering why you decided to make Yum Cimil/Cizin a god rather than a titan of Xibalba. After all, he is, well, from Xibalba. Is it because you had to fill the RAW Scion ideas of having an Overworld, Underworld, and Titanrealm for your pdfs, and you needed to put someone in charge of Metnal? Or is there some other reason that he fits more as a god than as a Titan?

Yum Cimil is a very interesting (and weird) dude when it comes to researching Maya mythology, so I'm glad you asked about him! Let's talk about all his unsightly, rotting problems.

Yum Cimil/Yum Cimih, depending on the era of your scholar's translations, is generally better known by letter as are many of the Maya gods; his codical designation is God A, as he's the first identifiable deity appearing in the Yucatec codices, where he often hangs out with God A', his equally skeletal buddy. When the two of them appear together, they are extremely similar in iconography and doubled symbolism to the Lords of Xibalba mentioned in the Popol Vuh, which would lead to the natural conclusion that they're probably the same guys. This is all pretty legit, so you're not wrong about wondering why he's appearing separately from them in the supplement.

The problem with Maya mythology is that it's very fragmented. We have mythology from various different time periods and various different smaller groups within the Maya, not all of which agree with one another; the Classical Maya civilization was very different from the much later K'iche civilization from which we got the PV, and even yet more different were various semi-isolated Maya kingdoms in the jungles of the Yucatana, Belize and Guatemala. Some were so isolated that they even survived relatively late into the modern era, such as the Tzotzil or Lacandon people, who also had their own evolved myths from the same base. And, of course, some of these places and times have more, better, or simply different mythological information than others; for example, the Classical Yucatec Maya mythology we have is largely culled from reliefs, paintings and codices, but lacks any storytelling to interpret the gods and scenes we are seeing, while much farther south you have the PV with its Guatemala-specific flavor and elsewhere you have modern Maya beliefs that have begun to absorb influence from Christianity and/or other Mesoamerican cultures.

So whenever we try to figure out what the "Maya pantheon" looked like, we're facing a pretty giant challenge rating in attempting to not only untangle all of those sources but also to make them make coherent sense with one another. All of the gods in the supplement, and in Maya studies in general, suffer from scholars sometimes just having to make a call and run with it, at least until better evidence surfaces.

But anyway, back to Yum Cimil. Calendrical God A is an ugly son of a bitch, in keeping with the general Maya dislike of death, but nobody can say he doesn't look like he enjoys his job.

His buddy, A', is no more of a joy to look at, and generally even more violent in his death imagery - he's usually committing suicide whenever he appears, which is weird, but that's death gods for you. The dual gods of the underworld seem like shoo-ins to be identical to the twin Lords of Xibalba in the K'iche tradition, but because Yucatec Maya myth is so much harder to interpret, there are also enough differences to cause us to pause when writing. A and A', to begin with, are far more important and active in ritual and life than the Lords of Xibalba; they appear as hunters chasing various uay and mortals, and are present in scenes depicting the Jaguar God of the Underworld (probably K'inich Ahau in his nighttime form), suggesting that they are involved in some way in his carrying of the sun through the netherworld. Some scholars also believe that A at least may be a lunar god, based on his appearance in various sacred calendar texts and the prevalence of a crescent-moon symbol associated with him.

By contrast, the Lords of Xibalba from the PV are purely creatures of death. They do not leave the underworld, have no connection to any celestial or divine powers outside their own realm, and are purely antagonistic toward gods and heroes that are not under their power, which is pretty obviously illustrated by their massive superiority complex and attempts to utterly crush the Hero Twins for basically not a whole lot of concrete reasons. As far as we can tell - which isn't super far, because apart from the PV, which is no doubt not in even its original K'iche form much less the form it might have appeared in earlier Maya civilizations - they have no connection to other deities, locations or powers. They are the dead, and they are pleased to wield their terrible power over the living without any need for further functions.

These aren't necessarily enough differences to definitively decide that A and A' are different people from Hun Came and Vucub Came, but they are still real details and suggest that alternative interpretations might be very possible. In particular, the fact that A and A' don't always appear together and aren't as identical as the Lords (A' in fact seems to be less important than his supposed twin) suggests that they may be more their own bags of bones, and the K'iche story of the Lords' defeat and permanent barring from the affairs of the world seems heavily at odds with A and A', who clearly nobody likes but who also seem to be effective and influential divine figures.

At this point, we could have tipped either way, honestly. We think it's almost beyond question that even if the Lords are basically different figures from A and A' at this point, that they came from the same original root, so deciding when or if to separate them is as tricky as it ever is when considering continual evolution within a religion. We might well have decided to just conflate them and assume that their differences were cosmetic interpretations of different areas of the same religion...

...if it weren't for the Lacandon and others of their ilk. The Lacandon Maya people were possibly the longest-surviving Maya civilization that avoided contact with Europeans and Christianity until the beginning of the twentieth century, thanks to living in generally impenetrable jungle and having little interest in what white people were up to in their general vicinity. The Lacandon had (and still have) the latest and most long-running version of Maya religion still being practiced widely among them, and their death god, Kisin/Cizin, was absolutely not identical to the Lords of Death (although it's still likely they had common roots). As a sole ruler of the underworld, he was the sometime-antagonist to Hachakyum, the lord of the heavens, and both feared as a terrible representative of death but also understood to be the ultimate final authority over most of those who had died. Kisin has a whole slew of myths that are purely unique to him, including the story of his banishment to rule the underworld and subsequent tantrums in which he shakes the world with earthquakes, his treatment of the dead in which the worthy are purified by his horrific torture and the unworthy utterly destroyed, and his creation of animals (and possibly even uay) to parallel Hachakyum's creation of mankind. He doesn't fit with the Lords of Xibalba at all, especially because he performs a duty (however unpleasant) for the souls of mankind, but he does have a few things in common with God A, most especially the belief that he hunts the underworld for the spirit twins of humans who are meant to die, which might be the very scene that our unexplained artwork of A on the hunt is depicting.

So, we've got these Lords of Xibalba, and they are definitely A Thing. And we've got Kisin, and he's definitely A Thing. And then we've got A and A', and while they are Things, they are probably Things that belong aligned with one or the other, and whose information just isn't as easy to interpret as it is for some other gods. Trying to align Lacandon mythology, which had a couple of extra centuries to evolve past other Maya beliefs, with any other religion is tricky anyway, but in this case we're looking at a bunch of deities who are probably very firmly related but not necessarily all exactly the same.

So, based on all of that, we saw no option but to let Kisin, in all his gross-smelling, bad-attitude glory, be the main man of the underworld as he obviously is in Lacandon myth, while the Lords of Xibalba, clearly Titans defeated by the Hero Twins in Guatemalan myths that had no parallel with Kisin, were separate beings. And while we could have aligned A and A' with the Lords instead of Kisin, we found their differences too intriguing and the possibilities for connecting them with Kisin (and possibly his brother Sucuncyum, even) too compelling. Since we wanted to keep the pantheon using their Yucatec names wherever possible, we refer to him as Yum Cimil, the calendrical god A's name, but retained for the vast majority of his characterization the stories of Kisin and his fractious relations with the rest of the cosmology of death in the Maya universe.

The difference between Metnal and Xibalba, by the way, is a whole ball of wax all its own - both are clearly places of the dead, but depending on the material and the scholar, different people consider them the same place, separate places that are linked, that one is inside the other, or even that one is not an underworld at all but merely a place where terrible deathly things reside. Metnal being the Yucatec death-realm (with a name that most likely has a linguistic connection to the Aztec Mictlan as well) and Xibalba the K'iche, we decided to associate the first with Yum Cimil as the representative of Yucatec interests, and the second with the Lords of Death, whose realm to control it clearly is.

I could probably give a pretty massive dissertation on all the gymnastics we did to try to align as much material from various different Maya peoples together to make it both gel into a usable worldview but also still preserve its unique character and mythology wherever applicable, but that would be a whole lotta words. Suffice it to say that, after intense research, consultation with others and thorough consideration, we as writers made a call that Yum Cimil was more likely his own man than merely a manifestation of the Lords, and went from there.

The one thing we weren't doing here, though, was worrying about making sure to have a playable death god in charge of the underworld because that's what Scion always does for every pantheon. As I'm sure you might have noticed, we tend to wave our middle fingers cheerfully at Scion's arbitrary cosmology rules whenever they get in the way of representing a culture's myths in a more fun or accurate way - hell, the supplement for the Alihah didn't even have an underworld. We obey the RAW in areas where we have to in order for people to be able to use our supplements in a compatible way with their current games, but that's pretty much the only way we feel obligated to do so.

Nordic News

It's another vlog day, and this week, it's all about the Norse. Let's hit it!

Question: How much bigger, physically, are the Aesir Gods than the non-Aesir Gods? How much bigger physically are non-Aesir Gods than normal humans? How much bigger physically CAN the non-Aesir gods get than normal humans?

Question: Is Odin as colossal of a jerk to his brothers as he is to... everyone who does not meet the criteria 'NOT being a dick to this person will help prevent Ragnarok'?

Question: Is it ever explained what happened to Vili and Ve? After the creation myth, they seem to disappear.

Question: Why will Baldur go to Hel when he dies? Shouldn't he end up in Valhalla (or at least in Folkvangr)? Isn't he everyone's favorite person ever?

Question: After looking up seidr & learning men were considered effeminate if they used it, I'm curious about how the Aesir view the three fate purviews and male scions who use them. I'd imagine Magic has a bit of a stigma but what about Mystery & Prophecy?

Question: What is the difference between Helheim and Niflheim. I have seen both being used as Hel's house.

Question: What happens when a Titan with Ultimate Stamina dies and comes back? Does the concept they represent return to normal?

Question: How do you handle the Norse goddess Idun? She's technically not either Aesir, Vanir or giant but as the daughter of Ivaldi, a dwarf or svartalfar. My personal take on it is that she short and childlike looking. Half because she's a dwarf and half because she's the goddess of youth.

Next time, we're going to talk about characters and PCs and fun stuff related to playing and running them. See you then!

Far Beyond the Sea

Question: Hey, I know Asia is a distant memory right now, but how would you deal with Susanoo being assigned to Yomi, especially with Izanami's dubious Titan-ness?

Ooh, Susanoo and his underworld connections is one of my favorite things to speculate about in Japanese mythology!

So, for those who aren't up on their Japanese shenanigans: in the Kojiki, when Izanagi assigns Susanoo as the divine ruler of the seas, he begins weeping and wailing with great sadness, so strongly that the rivers and lakes dry up and all the greenery on the mountains withers. When Izanagi asks him what's wrong, he cries that he wants to be with his mother, which makes Izanagi so furious (because remember, he just escaped from Izanami and walled her up in the underworld, and probably his conscience doesn't appreciate this kid bringing it up again) that he says the courtly Japanese equivalent of "Fine, fuck you, then," and banishes his son to the Underworld.

There are a lot of very interesting things going on in this myth. For one thing, it's an interesting issue that Susanoo knows about and misses Izanami at all; while she is said to be his mother in the Nihon Shoki, the Kojiki where this myth is related claims that he was born from Izanagi alone as he purified himself after escaping Yomi. It seems odd that Susanoo, who was born only of his father and has never even met or seen his mother, should even know about her, let alone be so devastated by her absence; most likely this is because of various older traditions being mashed together during the historical period when Shinto was being institutionalized as the state religion, but in mythological terms it leaves a lot of room for Storytellers to play with Susanoo's exact origin and relationships. It's also interestingly touching; when the entire pantheon has rejected Izanami for being a representative of death, decay and impurity, it seems that Susanoo alone finds this unfair in some way, or at least feels for her situation. Since he's the representative of chaos and breakdown himself, his siding with her may be an example of him going against the normal order, symbolized by Izanagi, and aligning himself with powers that are ultimately detrimental to the universe.

But, anyway, Susanoo does in fact get exiled, and he thereafter retains a lot of death and Underworld imagery, despite not being said explicitly to rule a death realm or actually spend any time with his mother. He is often said to have centipedes, symbols of death and decay, in his hair and clothes in other myths, and to occasionally be said to dwell beneath the ground or to have a home in the Underworld (although not often explicitly Yomi). He's clearly related to death in some way, but he's also clearly not considered to be ruling Yomi, which continues to belong to Izanami; so what's he doing?

One of our favorite theories has to do with the mythic land of Tokoyo. Tokoyo (which means literally "the otherworld") is a mysterious magical location where the spirits of blessed ancestors and the dead live in eternal peace and plenty, along with various kami and magical creatures. It is generally considered a land of the dead, but also a place of happiness and mystical powers, with a lot in common with the faraway Irish concept of Mag Mell. Tokoyo is never explicitly said to have a ruler, but one theory is that this is the Underworld that Susanoo administers; not only does it contain the dead, but it is also usually conceived of as a mysterious island floating somewhere in the primordial sea, which is also Susanoo's traditional domain. Under this interpretation, Susanoo and Yomi would both be rulers of Underworlds but not of the exact same realm, with Izanami receiving the vast majority of the dead but Susanoo administering the disposition of particularly worthy, heroic or otherwise special souls after their deaths. And since there's already potential for multiple Underworlds in Japan if you bring in the imported but still influential Buddhist realm of Jigoku, ruled over by Emma-O, multiple destinations for the dead might fit together well in the greater world of Japanese cosmology.

If you don't want to bring another Underworld into it, or just don't like that theory or want to use Tokoyo for something else like a Terra Incognita, you could also consider Susanoo to live in Yomi somewhere, and simply not to be its ruler. He might be one of Izanami's few allies, which could make for some intense political issues, especially if you consider her to be a Titan, and might also be a motivation for his occasional outbursts and attacks on the gods in the Overworld who abandoned her so long ago. After the debacle with Amaterasu and the cave, he's probably not particularly welcome in Takamagahara anymore, and while he descended to earth at Izumo, it's not particularly practical for a god to actually live among mortals for any period of time so he's probably not there. Alternatively, he might not be friends with Izanami; she has a very bad attitude toward the living, and the fact that he stood up to his father might not be enough to overcome her ingrained resentment and misery, so he may be just as careful about going into Yomi as anyone else (albeit probably better at it since he probably has a good deal of Death boons).

Izanagi's banishment of Susanoo does not explicitly say that he is sending him to rule Yomi; in fact, all it says is that he's banished from the abode of the gods, although the implication is that he probably wanted to go see Izanami as a result. His immediate response is to go bother Amaterasu first, though, so where he eventually ends up living when he isn't in the Overworld is sort of up for interpretation.

Young But Determined

Question: How would you go about breaking the ghost of a Scion out from Dubnolissos? (For the purposes of the question, it got there through Fate dickery and you and your band are Hero-level and lacking in any Death Boons.)

Um... well, you probably need some higher-level friends.

Honestly, at Hero-level, we would probably never send you to Dubnolissos, or any other Underworld. Things there are too powerful and dangerous for people who are barely more powerful than humans to handle, which is one of the main reasons that all the powers that relate to going to Underworlds and dealing with dead people - Death and Psychopomp boons, mostly - are level 4 or higher. Just getting into Underworlds is hard enough, surviving there is extremely difficult even for Demigods, and trying to get a ghost out when you have no powers that can affect ghosts and no Psychopomp - especially Spirit Lamp or Mother's Touch, which are your main powers for moving ghosts that can't move themselves - is next to impossible. Remember that even gods don't like to go to Underworlds when they can help it, and that often there are dire consequences for them when they do; so imagine how difficult anything involving them would be for a mere Hero.

Basically, you will have a hell of a time getting in there, have very slim odds of survival, and have no tools whatsoever to actually get the ghost back out with you again. And besides, once you did get the ghost out, what is your plan? That ghost is still dead. They won't spontaneously become alive and gain a body again even if you do manage to spring them. Actually returning someone to life is the province of high-level Death or purview Avatars. And if they stay dead, then you'll need to constantly hold onto them somehow - again, impossible without Death or Psychopomp - or get someone to bind them as a Birthright Follower or Guide or something, which requires much higher-level Magic than you have access to. And, anyone with Harmony is just going to go bananas all the time because there's a ghost in the World where it doesn't belong, and if you run into anyone with Harmony who does have Psychopomp or Death powers, odds are they'll just put the poor ghost right back where it started.

So: this is something that you, as a group of Hero-level Scions, will probably crash and burn if you attempt. The Underworld is not designed for baby Scions, nor is dealing with ghosts. You're kind of up shit creek. However, it's possible that you still need to do it - maybe one of your band died and needs rescuing or something! - so here is our suggestion.

Suck up. Suck up until you can't see straight. Suck up like your suction is the only thing keeping you alive. Suck up so hard you become a black hole.

There are two ways you have a good chance of success here: you can get someone else to go in for you who actually can do these things, or you can beg the death god in charge of the Underworld - in this case, Sukellos - to give you back the dead person. If you don't have the skills to handle dead people or stage a strike run on Dubnolissos, then you'll need to go to someone who does, or else just give up on the jailbreak idea and ask the boss for a little well-timed mercy. If you're not sure who to ask or where to start, Mystery is a great option to use when you need to start asking questions.

If you want someone else to go in for you, you'll need to give them a good reason to. This person is almost definitely higher Legend than you, which means they probably have other things to do, and going into an Underworld is no laughing matter, especially with theft in mind. You'll need to have a good reason they want to do this dangerous, tiring and completely altruistic thing for you, which might be difficult since as Heroes you don't have access to things like high-level relics or political favors to call in. We would suggest finding people who might be already connected to the dead person; if they're family, friends or otherwise have a vested interest in them, they'll probably be more likely to consider going after them. If there's nobody like that around, see if you can call on people who are related to the dead person and get them to help you out with this idea; explain what you want to do and see if they can provide any incentives you could offer to someone to get them to help out. If at all possible, you're looking for someone around Demigod level, because very few gods are going to have the time or inclination to do this for you and you may end up just pissing them off by wasting their time asking. Demigods are also easier to buy, since they are more likely to get use out of lower-level items or more mundane riches, so you have a better chance of successfully bribing them into doing this for you.

If there's nobody around like that, though, or you simply want to be above board about all this, then it's time to see if you can talk to Sukellos. Sukellos is a god, and he's pretty busy with all the divine responsibilities of his life, but you still might be able to get an audience with him. If you have any Gaulish Scions, they might have better luck calling on him; if not, you'll want to let your most socially adept person be the spokesman. Sukellos is pretty friendly, as death gods go, so that's lucky, at least; he is the kind of guy who might be willing to have a drink with you if you can find him. He's not likely to want to spend the energy to come up out of Dubnolissos to the World to talk to you, though, so you may need to see if you can catch him while he's already in the World - not as unlikely as with other pantheons, since the Nemetondevos do like hanging out with humans. You could also pray to him, although that's more like sending someone unwanted telepathy without warning, so it's not always a great way to ask for favors. If you can get into Dubnolissos and visit his home, that would be your best move politically, but it's also very dangerous, so only you can determine if that's a feasible choice.

Now, you mentioned that the dead person in question here wasn't supposed to be in Dubnolissos in the first place, so that's a good way to lead off. Explaining to Sukellos that there's been a cosmic mistake may incline him to correct it, although it's unlikely that he'll do so for free if the result isn't causing him any problems. He'll probably want to know who did that and why, so he can deal with it if it comes up again, and he might not appreciate his realm being used as a depository for other peoples' shenanigans. But, he's also the caretaker of an Underworld, so he may have no problem with that person being here now - dead's dead, after all, and as long as that particular soul isn't causing problems, there's no reason he needs to spend a lot of resources and time moving it. So you're again looking at needing some kind of gift, bribe or really great reason to convince him to let you take this dead person out of here, and it's probably going to need to be truly amazing if you want him to return the dead person to life (and if not, you're still going to end up with the problem of how to do anything with the ghost once you get it above ground again). If you're just trying to get the ghost to the Underworld it's supposed to be in, you might be able to get his permission for a different pantheon's psychopomp to come get it without too much difficulty, but convincing him to use expensive Death powers on your behalf will be considerably more difficult.

But stranger things have happened. Orpheus did manage to convince Hades and Persephone to let Eurydice live again, although he flubbed it before he got to the end, and other heroes have managed to get into and out of Underworlds with their skins intact. It's rare, but it's possible.

The Moon and Beyond

Today, we answer questions about cosmology, setting and crazy goddamn alien lifeforms. Hooray!

Question: Can Avatars create Legendary creatures? Such as the Shaper creating a living golem, or the Glory creating light entities?

Question: You statted up Tiamat and Apsu for your Anunna supplement, but what about their son Kingu? Would he be an Avatar of a greater Titan, or just a disenfranchised god?

Question: The books and PDFs have a lot of details about different ways that a living Scion can get INTO the Underworlds. I imagine if they had clearly-marked exist, the dead would just use them all the time - but how is a living Scion whose time has not yet come supposed to get back OUT? Do they have to ask the local death god for a way our? Can they just retrace their steps and spent a point of Legend to emerge into the World?

Question: How would you do a Chaos Titanrealm? Not asking for which Titans you'd pick, just asking what you think it would look like. (And batshit crazy isn't a real answer.)

Question: How would you kind folks at GBN do a Chaos Titanrealm? Hundun always seemed to be a cop-out, to be frank. I've already seen your awesome Inca Destruction realm, and wonder if that would basically be it.

Question: So, aliens! Where do aliens fit into Scion? Have you ever included them in your games? By "alien", I mean both the common perception of aliens (greys, reptilians, etc.) and mortal races not originating on earth or in an Overworld. Second, what are "Lyrans" and what connection do they have to the Anunna?

I don't think a vlog has been this saturated with pop culture since... ever.

Play It Again, Sam

Question: Is reincarnation a thing in your games, or do all dead souls end up in an Underworld permanently?

It is indeed a thing, but like all things in Scion, it depends on the myths of the culture in question!

Reincarnation was an integral part of the afterlife beliefs of many ancient religions; Hinduism and Buddhism (up to the present day!) are the most obvious examples, but it applies to several others, including the Gaulish celts (who believed that the greatest heroes could be reincarnated to fight their battles anew), the Norse (who believed that particularly deserving dead people could be reborn as new creatures like the valkyries), and even the Aztecs (who believed that certain classes of people might be briefly reborn in new forms, like warriors that returned to the earth as hummingbirds). Of course, the majority of Scion's religions didn't believe in reincarnation and do prefer the model where the dead are locked away in the Underworld forever; this has to do with ancient fears of the dead interfering with the lives of the living and is also a perfectly valid way of approaching the afterlife, but the two can coexist with a little in-game creativity.

Like most things that surround death and the souls consigned to it, the best place to handle questions of reincarnation and eternity is almost always in the Underworld or the god who rules it. The Scion books (with the exception of a side mention in the Shen underworld of Di Yu) tend to shoehorn everyone into the underworld-forever model for conformity's sake, but the Underworlds of pantheons who espouse reincarnation are the perfect place to provide mechanics and possibilities for riding the wheel of incarnation again. Di Yu should house the great wheel of reincarnation, accessible only to those who have come through their purifying punishments intact and ready to attempt life again; the souls of Naraka should be brought up before Yama for judgment whenever he deems it appropriate and then sent back to the World in whatever form he considers them worthy of; the warriors of the House on the Left should return to earth when their formidable master commands them to and not before.

The best way to handle this is probably with some sort of Underworld feature that accomplishes reincarnation; the wheel of Di Yu is a great example, since it's a permanent feature of the Underworld that exists specifically to accomplish reincarnation and keep the cycle of lives going. We'd consider it either a massive multi-star relic or a part of the Underworld itself, usable in whatever ways and by whatever people the Storyteller considers best for the tale at hand. For religions that don't have easy features like that to mechanically explain how reincarnation works, you may want to invent some - after all, just because Gaulish myth doesn't actually say there's a tree/well/wheel/river/whatever of reincarnation doesn't mean you can't invent one to explain how the process of getting heroes back into the World actually happens. The Underworld is the implied place where all disposition of dead people occurs, so extending that to include their return to the world only makes sense.

The other option is that, in religions where there is clearly a form of reincarnation but also clearly no mechanism in the Underworld to explain it, it's simply the death god him- or herself that is accomplishing the task. Resurrection of the dead is difficult and not to be taken lightly - in most cases, it would require The Reaper - but it's still part of the job for gods whose afterlife duties include overseeing reincarnation. Some may use their Avatar once in a blue moon to reincarnate the particularly worthy; others, who operate in mythologies where many souls are reincarnated, may do it regularly in a large cattle-call and then rest up for a month before going at it again. Just as the death gods who manage Underworlds where no one is allowed to escape to trouble the living have a serious responsibility to ensure that that never happens, so the death gods of the reincarnation pantheons have an equally serious duty to ensure that those who are meant to walk the earth again do so. Being a god of death, especially one who administers the Underworld, is one of the heavier responsibilities in any pantheon, after all.

So yes, reincarnation can and should happen in Scion, where it's appropriate. It will seldom be a get-out-of-Di Yu-free card for Scions, since few religions believe in instant reincarnation and instead require the dead to undergo a waiting period or trials of purification and judgment first, but it's still out there for all your Storytelling plot needs. Scions angling to become gods of death themselves might be particularly interested in it, since they'll need to decide if they're going to be reincarnators or jailers, and what each different kind of Underworld control might mean for them as deities.

Otherworlds On Parade

Question: I've asked this question a hundred times before but I get the feeling my phone eats it: With Enech Overhaul drastically in the lead, could we maybe get a blog post on the REAL Tuatha Overworld and Underworld (and possibly general cosmology) instead of what's in Companion?

You sure can. Irish cosmology, coming up!

First of all, the cosmological landscape of ancient Ireland is one of those that really doesn't conform to the Underworld-Overworld-World setup of the Scion books, which used more obliging cultures like the Norse and Greek to base it. It's probably because of its general weirdness that the Scion books do such a hackjob on it, but that's no excuse for making up the shoddily-conceived likes of Tir na Marbh, no matter how much the idea of the Tuatha cooperating with the Welsh gods might otherwise appeal.

Other than the earth where humanity dwells, there are three to four major worlds in the Irish cosmology: the Overworld (Tir na nOgh), two Underworlds (Mag Mell and Tech nDuinn), and Faerie. Collectively, these are called the Otherworld by many scholars, since Irish mythology embraces a concept of all the worlds being apart from the world of humanity but also ephemerally close to it in some way.

Tir na nOgh ("Land of Youth") is one of the most misunderstood, which is weird because it's perfectly clear in the Irish sagas and most of its problems come from later people interpreting it through the lens of Christianity. It is not, contrary to confused popular opinion, an Underworld; the dead do not dwell here, nor is the disposition of souls part of its function. It is the home of the gods, and here all is beauty and contentment and art and peace, with no misfortune or danger, no old age or hunger, and definitely no bad guys to plague the gods who are busy enjoying it. It's to Tir na nOgh that the Tuatha retired when they left the World, and because it is conceived of as a beautiful land far across the western sea, there are occasional stories in Irish mythology of heroes attempting to reach it by sailing off into the sunset. A few mortals do live here once in a while, always because they were brought there by some god or quest, and they remain indefinitely since they can't age or die (in mechanical terms, they probably become Legendary Mortals the second they set foot in the place).

Mag Mell ("Joyful Plain"), on the other hand, is an Underworld, but is similarly pleasant and wonderful. It's owned and ruled by Manannan mac Lir, who dwells here with his seemingly neverending horde of fancy relics, and is the eventual destination for Irish heroes who die after glorious and honorable lives (like Valhalla or the Elysian Fields, it admits only the awesomest mortals to spend eternity in its sweet fields). Like Tir na nOgh, it's full of nothing but beauty, joy and eternal youth, and nothing bad ever touches its inhabitants. The same idea of a place far across the sea is preserved here - which makes especial sense thanks to Manannan mac Lir's involvement - and it is also sought after by sailing heroes once in a while, though it's not found as often as Tir na nOgh. An interesting variant tradition has been interpreted as saying that this Underworld is ruled over by the Fomorian king Tethra, who is mostly unattested in other Irish mythology; it's hard to say if perhaps he was considered its lord before the victory of the Tuatha saw him supplanted by Manannan, or if maybe in reverse he became an important personage in the Underworld after dying in glorious battle against the gods. He's also said to be married to Badb, a sister or alternative name for the Morrigan, which gives him another connection to the idea of death.

Tech nDuinn ("House of Donn") is the other Underworld, and the destination of everyone who isn't badass enough to be granted a golden ticket to Mag Mell. It's also an island, but unlike the first two was usually assumed to be much closer, in the neighborhood of what is now North Bull Island off Ireland's northeast coast. It was believed that below that island lay the isle of the dead, where all the souls of the departed traveled and were stored under Donn as the king. This particular myth is Donn's own fault, since he insulted Eriu - the personified goddess of Ireland, most likely Danu under another name - and was drowned by Manannan mac Lir for it, and therefore now holds court under the sea where he himself died. Not a lot is actually written about what Tech nDuinn is like, other than that it's underground, ruled by Donn, and not as happy a place to end up as Mag Mell, more likely a closer equivalent to the difference between Valhalla and Hel.

Faerie, finally, is a much younger but very entrenched world, the dwelling place of Ireland's vast hosts of sprites, elves, brownies and kobolds. It's generally believed to be inside or beneath the hills of Ireland - thus the word Underhill often being used as an equivalent name for it - which are often accorded respect as fairy places, but beyond that there are as many different ideas of what Faerie is and who's in it as there are counties and villages in Ireland. Some split it into two courts, one good and one evil; others split it into courts revolving around the seasons or the Virtues; still others believe it's a single unified realm ruled by a fairy king or queen, and of course the identity of that king or queen also differs from place to place. Much later English writers, taken with the charm of the legends of Faerie, have also muddied the waters a great deal - Shakespeare, for example, who invented the fairy queen Mab in his play Romeo and Juliet (probably basing her on some form of the Morrigan), or the invention of the fairy king Auberon in the thirteenth-century French epic poem Huon de Bordeaux. There are also several traditions that claim that the fairies are in fact the Tuatha de Danann themselves, who went Underhill to escape Christianity after the coming of the Milesians, and therefore there's also some muddying of the waters between Faerie and Tir na nOgh, depending on who's telling the story. It's an epic mess, and we couldn't even try to tell you which way is "right"; that's a call for every game's Storyteller to make.

A thing that does not exist, however, is Tir na Marbh ("Land of Death"), which was invented by Scion purely in an attempt to plug something in where the usual Hades or Hel or Mictlan would go. We have no idea why they did this when there were two perfectly good Irish Underworlds already hanging around - maybe they thought Mag Mell was too nice/the same as Tir na nOgh, and Tech nDuinn too obscure? - but it's a pretty terrible conglomeration of random things and should probably be ignored, like most of the Tuatha chapter of Companion's attempts at worldbuilding.

The idea of the Tuatha collaborating closely with the Welsh gods, however, is a great one, since they clearly know one another well and appear in each others' epic stories, so keep that. Just throw away all the Underworld junk surrounding it.

Upstairs, Downstairs

Question: Do the Orisha have the same Overworld/Underworld as the Loa?

Question: What is the Overworld for the Orisha?

The short answer is no, and the long answer is in this previous post about the Orisha cosmos and how it doesn't want to conform to any of our silly European notions of Overworld and Underworld.

The modern ideas of the Loa Underworld and Overworld are heavily based on Christianity, but you can certainly use them for Scion's purposes if you want to; the Orisha are the Loa as well, so that new cosmology can be used to replace the haziness of the old if you need a neat solution. Syncretic religions are kind of pick and choose menu of things to include as necessary, so there's no reason to ignore them unless you're planning to play more purely African.

The Dead Walk

Question: I'm brainstorming ideas for reconciling a Titanic Izanami to the Amatsukami, ranging from getting her kids to visit more often to convincing Izanagi to pull a Belili. This is rather broad, but do you have any thoughts to share on attempting to resurrect big-name deities who have 'dead and not loving it' as a big part of their legend?

It is pretty broad, but hey, that doesn't mean we can't take a running tackle at it anyway.

Resurrecting a god, especially one that's been dead a long time, and especially one who's so strongly associated with the idea of death, is no small undertaking. You're looking at something that will need tons of magical mojo from multiple gods, the political sanction of important involved parties (or the political fallout if you don't talk to them first), and the inversion of the balance of the universe, replacing and rewriting who's in charge of life and death and how they interact with their pantheons. That shit is heavy all by itself, never mind that there will also be specific problems and obstacles for various different dead gods that differ and make your headache even worse.

Big-name dead gods fall into three basic categories: gods who died and are stuck being dead in the Underworld (your Baldur, Gugalanna and so forth), fertility gods who are on a revolving door in and out of the Underworld (Persephone, Tammuz, Baal and so on) and gods who died and ended up being in charge of running the place as a result (Yama, Izanami, Osiris, etc). They've all got different problems and challenges, so we'll hit some of the major highlights for each (although I know you're specifically looking at the last case).

Gods who have died and are sad denizens of a normal Underworld are probably the easiest case to handle, actually; they follow the usual Underworld rules for dead folks and can thusly potentially be "rescued" in the usual way ("usual" here meaning "fucking hard and rare", but that's Underworlds for you). Your main challenges are getting the ruler of whatever Underworld they're stuck in to allow them to leave, and, if that doesn't work, figuring out a way to jailbreak them if necessary. The most obvious way of approaching is the classic journey to the Underworld to beg the death god's indulgence to give you back your lost god, asking for them to allow the dead deity to go free. When you do so, you're looking at probably needing A) a really great reason that the death god will consider breaking the rules for you, and B) a really great bribe to make sure they get something out of it. If you're lacking either, most death gods will turn you down without blinking. Finally, you can also try to get some other god with power over death to come in and take control of the dead god's shade, but that's possibly the most explosively dangerous option - do you really want to see what happens when Osiris rolls into Hades' house and starts opposing his rule?

Dying fertility gods, which is the scholarly shorthand for "gods who die on a regular basis to illustrate the fertility of the earth in different seasons or periods of drought/abundance", are a much more difficult issue. The recurring cycle of their deaths is a major and important part of their Legend, and disrupting it might have serious consequences for both the World and the politics among the pantheon they belong to. If Persephone stops going to Hades every year, you're going to have a violently upset Hades on your hands, and if Tammuz stops going to Irkallu every year, that means Ereshkigal may rise up and try to reclaim Ishtar. There's also the problem of most of them dying for different reasons and because of different events in their past, so some may be easier to stop than others; Hades notwithstanding, it might not be hard to keep Persephone from going down to the Underworld if Demeter interferes or psychopomps refuse to take her, but Baal ends up down there because he's prone to getting in fights with his death-god rival Mot and dying, and stopping a thunder god on a rampage seldom goes well for anyone involved. Some of them may not want to be stopped from dying, which is a further layer of difficulty, and you may just not be able to convince Persephone she doesn't want to go be queen half the year or that Adonis should abandon his devotion to Aphrodite to avoid getting shivved this year. And, finally, if you do succeed in breaking that cycle, what happens to the World? Does winter never come again if Persephone never dies, and what does that do to the Greek lands and the people who live in them? Do Lebanon and Syria never experience drought again if Baal never goes to Nepesh, and if so, are their dry, sandy shores going to end up sliding into the sea because they were never meant to be constantly inundated with moisture? Even without the probable extreme ire of the death gods who aren't getting their perennial visitors, those myths have a direct effect on the World and Scions attempting to stop their normal course may need to figure out how to run some serious-scale damage control.

And, finally, there are the folks like Izanami, who died and ended up taking ownership of the deathrealms and the very concept of death itself. Some of these gods may be happy to be where they are (Yama, for example, would probably keep doing his job even if he was technically allowed to quit), but often they're stuck down there because of banishment or punishments levied on them. Hel, Izanami and Osiris are seriously not pleased about their lots in unlife, but thanks to the laws and barriers of their pantheons, they're unable to do anything about it but make the best of the situation by ruling where they can. The most major obstacle to getting them back is just convincing the rest of the pantheon to allow it, which is going to involve political shenanigans on a cosmic level; after that point, you also have the extremely difficult job of finding someone to replace them, because the last thing anyone wants is an Underworld with nobody at the wheel. And if you manage all that, what will the former death god be as a member of the pantheon proper, and what new roles and powers might they take on, and how will they be doing that, and what will it mean to the other gods who are now rubbing elbows with them?

This is a lot of stuff. And those are just the in-game, non-mechanical concerns, which are already more than enough to make most Scions go cross-eyed. There's also the extreme power required to mechanically pull this off.

In terms of what you actually do to resurrect a god, occasionally it can be as "easy" as journeying to the Underworld, finding them and giving them the power to escape themselves; gods with Ultimate Stamina, Samsara or Circle of Life may be able to resurrect under their own power if you can just give them the juice to do it, meaning that rituals or quests to help them out with that may eventually bear fruit. If they don't have a get-out-of-Hades-free card, then you're looking at needing, at bare minimum, a god who can blow The Reaper to resurrect them and a god who can bust off The Savior to help them form and inhabit a new body, and depending on who the god is and what circumstances surround their deaths, you may also need someone to blow The Wyrd to work on disentangling their Fate from its current dead-end path. It goes without saying that if you and your buddies aren't Legend 12, you're going to have to offer some serious incentives to get other gods in your corner here. There are also occasionally very powerful relics in various cultures' mythology that may be able to resurrect the dead, so you may end up going on quests to find and figure out how to use those if everything else is failing. And, finally, you may be able to perform an Underworld trade, letting one god return to life while another dies in his place, but finding willing victims for such things is probably not any easier than getting a cabal of gods willing to blow at least 30 Legend each on your problem.

This is a lot of work and it's very daunting, but don't despair; it's still possible, and in fact the PCs in our games have several times managed to resurrect dead gods through their efforts. Geoff's band managed to help Quetzalcoatl return to life by providing him enough rituals and sacrifices that he could resurrect himself after his ill-fated battle with Ryujin, and Aurora brokered an impressive trade-one-god-for-another deal that not only saved a dead goddess (sort of, after a lot of work) but had the interesting side effect of getting Hel to ban her from the Underworld permanently. It's totally doable, but, like most really important things in the Scion world, it's doable only through intense effort and acceptance of equally intense consequences.

Edit: Oh, hey, apparently your question was about Titans, not gods, and I totally ignored that because I'm competing with John for title of Worst Blogger Ever. In addition to all the jazz up there, you might want to check out this old post about converting Titans into gods.

The Final Destination

Question: What happens to the souls of mortals who are atheist or believe in the Abrahamic God? Do they go to their background culture's Underworld, or what?

This is one of the biggest elephants in the room when it comes to Scion's modern setting as opposed to the ancient pantheons that inhabit it. Modern ideas of death and what happens after are wideflung and varied, drawing from tons of philosophical and religious and scientific traditions from every age of humanity, and they aren't all totally compatible with the easy old Underworld solution system. The books don't offer a direct answer, probably because trying to do so is kind of bananas, so individual Storytellers are left to make decisions as best they can.

What the books do say is that the shades of the dead are attracted automatically to the Underworlds, as if they all had tiny magnets in them, homing in on them inevitably after death. Psychopomps make sure they get to the appropriate Underworld through obstacles and without losing their way, and death gods take charge of their disposition and welfare from that point forward.

Under those terms, there are several possibilities for what happens to the dead when they finish shuffling off their mortal coils. Ideally, they'll die nearest the Underworld of their religion or people and be automatically attracted there, possibly with help from a local psychopomp, but what happens if they're far from home? If a Hindu man dies while on a business trip to Germany, is he going to automatically end up in Hel because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, even though he's been preparing for Naraka and eventual reincarnation his entire life? Theoretically, this is one of the major things we have psychopomps for; if a Mexican of Nahuatl descent dies in Japan, it's Xolotl's job to make sure he gets his dog and gets on his way to the proper place instead of accidentally getting stuck in Yomi. The Romans who died trying to establish footholds in Ireland were probably picked up by Mercury and ferried off to Hades rather than getting sucked into nTech Duinn, and so on. This is one of the reasons that psychopomps are so infernally (heh) important in various cultures' myths, because without them people can't be sure that anything is going to go appropriately after death. That reassurance that someone will make sure that everything goes the way it's supposed to was necessary for most ancient peoples' peace of mind.

However, things get more problematic for those who aren't directly affiliated with a specific pantheon and its Underworld, or who have equal connections to more than one. There are no guidelines in Scion for what happens to someone who is an atheist, is a cultural mutt with equal strands of various different ancestries in them, or who believes in a religion that doesn't have an underworld that we know of. Different Storytellers will have to wing it, and we suggest the following possibilities.

Firstly, you could decide that any atheist or adherent of a modern religion will simply end up being shunted to the Underworld that is the traditional destination for their ancient ancestors. Under this theory, a modern Mexican man who is a devout Catholic would still end up in Mictlan (or Tlalocan or the House on the Left, depending on how he died), regardless of what he believed in life. Discovering that he's subject to ancient Aztec theology rather than jaunting off to Heaven as planned will doubtless be confusing and distressing for him, but then again, learning anything about the greater divine world of Scions usually confuses and distresses mortals.

Of course, in the modern world, where billions of people have checkered ancestries based on centuries of melting-pot combination, the "strongest" ethnic connection might be as little as 1% more of one bloodline than another. While there are ways in the game to figure out exactly what proportions of ancestry a mortal might have, even with dozens of different ancestral cultures in the mix, not all psychopomps have them or would care to blow Legend on them if they did. You might rule that a person's strongest ancestry automatically marks her for a psychopomp to come grab when she dies, some automatic beacon associated with her ghost, or you might want to simply decide that said psychopomps are winging it, making their best guess at someone's best fit for Underworld.

As an aside, that might lead to more than one psychopomp showing up to take the same soul, which raises interesting questions about what to do with a mortal who more than one Underworld might have a legitimate claim on. In most cases, we'd say it's probably a case of first-come, first-serve; there's no real reason for any psychopomp or death god to dicker over a mortal's disposition, since they don't really get anything out of having more dead people around. The Underworlds are more like public services, keeping the living and the dead separated and organized, than for-profit organizations, so despite the modern image of the Devil going around bargaining for souls, it's unlikely that Hades or Osiris gives much of a damn about whether or not they get a given ghost as long as said ghost isn't left to wander around the World where he shouldn't be. Of course, if a dead person is particularly important - a legendary king or hero, perhaps - then death gods might have an interest in making sure they induct such a personage into the ranks of their charges, but it's probably a pretty rare occurrence. Some death gods may also want to get into it over a ghost not for its own sake but on moral or philosophical grounds; if one death god disapproves strongly of another's way of doing things, such as the Underworld-as-prison-minded Ereshkigal being morally offended by the reincarnation-obsessed Yama and what she might view as his irresponsible habit of letting dead people live again, they might try to make sure they take that soul just to make sure it doesn't end up being improperly disposed of in someone else's Underworld. Gods with Harmony or Order might be particularly susceptible to this, fighting against other Underworlds that don't adhere to their idea of the natural processes of the world or the laws that they live by.

Another option for those mortals who die without a strong religious or ethnic connection to a pantheon is simply to assume that, thanks to the magnetic attraction between ghosts and the Underworld, they'll end up in whatever Underworld is closest when they die. Using this model, a modern atheist with no strong cultural affiliation who lived in Beijing would end up in Di Yu, regardless of his background or any other concerns. This is a neat and simple solution, allowing psychopomps to more often stay close to home and avoiding any of the messy questions of who's where when and doing what, but it does make for some odd cultural dissonance now and then; jeez, the Native American Underworlds must be overflowing with white dudes by now, mustn't they?

When it comes to mortals who believe in Abrahamic religions, if your game actually uses those religions and their big-G Gods as active forces, it'd be natural to also declare those destinations for the dead to be active and as real as any other Underworld. If you're playing with Yahweh, Allah, Jehovah or any other variations thereof as living gods within Scion's setting, Heaven and Hell might then be just as real, providing you an easy place for souls who believe in them to end up after death (not to mention exciting vistas for Scions to explore). If you play the monotheistic gods as outgrowths of ancient polytheistic religions - considering Yahweh a member of the Elohim, for example, or Allah as a member of the Alihah - then you might want to default all believers in those religions to the Underworlds handled by their predecessors, sending the Jewish dead to Nepesh or having Manat come by to tie Muslim ghosts to their graves as she did for all the ancient Arabs. The same goes for "godless" religions and philosophies like Zen Buddhism; if you're not sure where to put those who adhered to such religions in life, you could always trace them back to their starting point (Shinto philosophy? Yomi! Buddha = Vishnu? Naraka!) and go from there.

Finally, you might also decide that those ghosts who are effectively "homeless" don't go to any Underworld, but that thanks to their automatic pull toward the lands below end up in some indeterminate, unclaimed Underworld sort of a place. Tartarus, which was not only the prison of the Titans but also the place that all Underworlds are located in Scion, would be a logical place for this, a sort of catch-all Underworld where all the unclaimed dead find themselves drawn at the end of their lives. What they do there is anybody's guess; maybe they just mill around sadly, maybe they get eaten by nasty Titanspawn things, maybe they try to find their way into other Underworlds, or maybe they even degrade and disappear, slowly worn away over time thanks to the lack of an Underworld to take care of them.

As always, if this isn't something that comes up in your games, it may not be necessary to kill yourself trying to figure it out; if it doesn't matter to your plot or characters, you can safely leave it in the bin marked Stuff I Don't Have to Care About (don't you guys have a bin like that? we sure as hell do). But if it is a theme you need to address, every Storyteller will end up having to make their own calls on this one. The original books don't give us a lot of guidance, and a lot depends on an individual game's handling of monotheism and human belief. For our part, we'd probably assume that psychopomps pick up mortals based on a combination of the geographical location of their deaths and their religious and ethnic backgrounds, but you'll probably get different answers from every different Storyteller you ask.

Sea of Trees

Question: How would you mythically run Japan's suicide forest, Aokigahara? I think It could be used as a portal to Yomi.

What a neat question! For those who haven't run into this bit of Japanese folklore, Aokigahara is a forest around the base of Mount Fuji that is deep, old, unnaturally silent, filled with the remains of ancient volcanic activity and heavily associated with death and suicide. It's one of the most popular places in the world for people to attempt suicide, with an estimated fifty to two hundred people killing themselves in it per year and double that making the attempt (at our best guess, anyway - the government of Japan doesn't like to give concrete numbers anymore because it just encourages more potential suicides to beeline for the place). And while the traditional association of the place with suicide has only really been tracked in the past several decades, the forest's been connected to the idea of death for centuries, and is believed to be one of the places that ancient Japanese people abandoned their elderly community members in times of hardship to die alone instead of taxing the rest of the peoples' resources.

There's actually a story seed regarding Aokigahara in Scion: Demigod on page 113, but there are plenty of options out there for other things to do with it as well. If you'd like to connect the mortal forest with the supernatural very directly, it's a perfect location in the World to connect to a Terra Incognita, most likely some kind of dangerous forest of death and suicide, even one connected to other mythic forests such as the Norse Mirkwood or the Wood of Suicides from Dante's Inferno.

While we think you could use it as a portal to Yomi if you really wanted to, we'd probably avoid it, simply because Yomi is traditionally hard to get into or out of (out of necessity, because we don't want Izanami rolling up in the land of the living), so more doors into the place are not necessarily better. But it is reputed to be haunted to the gills by the souls of all the mortals who have killed themselves there, so even if you don't use it as a direct door to the Underworld, it may still be full of the dead who for some reason find themselves trapped there (due to Titanic interference? some death god's influence? something even weirder?) or even be on its way to turning into an Underworld itself if some enterprising Scion with a penchant for Death happens to come along and lay claim to it.

It's also a good site for breakthroughs from Titanrealms, if that's something you're interested in seeing. If you're using a Titanrealm of Death (like Xibalba in our Maya supplement or Mrtyu in the French supplements from Biblioteque Interdite), Aokigahara is a natural place for such a realm to break through into the World; and while the death connections are strong, so is the place's ancient forest setting, making Terra or Ourea another possibility.

And even if you don't make the wood itself anything special, it looks like a perfect home base for Titanspawn who would likely be drawn to the nasty vibrations and free buffet of a bunch of mortals losing their lives. There are tons of possibilities to suit all kinds of games, so go to town with your favorites!

Life After Life

Question: What is the Underworld for the Orisha?

It looks like an easy question to answer, but this is actually a subject fraught with confusion and lack of information. Opinions range from the assertion that the traditional Yoruba religion believes in a dual heaven and hell to the idea that it doesn't have an underworld at all. Neither is entirely correct, but the Yoruba conception of an underworld is very different from the way Scion usually uses the idea.

We don't have a lot of information on the ancient beliefs of the Yoruba; they were pre-literate and preserved their beliefs through oral retellings and ceremonial ritual reenactments. This means we don't have a lot of convenient records telling us what their vision of the cosmos looked like, and thus most of our information comes after the introduction of Christianity and Islam from various conquerors, missionaries and visitors, which naturally colored it. If they had a formal Underworld, as in a known place that dead people were thought to go after their lives ended, we don't know what it was, which is one of the reasons there are very few death gods among the Orisha (and none that could truly be termed a ruler of an underworld).

That doesn't mean they didn't have an afterlife, however. The spirits of ancestors are an important force in the Yoruba religion, so much so that the egungun festivals, elaborate religious celebrations involving dancing, performance and offerings, are dedicated solely in their honor to provide them with continuing attention and power. The spirits of ancestors are honored and respected powers who may still affect their descendants' lives, and it's believed that particularly strong and accomplished ancestors may even contribute some of their spirit to their children, becoming part of their ori. But where the ancestors dwell, exactly, isn't really explained other than some vague assertions that the dead go "beneath the ground".

A poorly-understood concept called orun occupies the underworld "slot" for the Orisha; some scholars have posited that it might be an underworld in the classical sense as a destination for the spirits of the departed. However, the word is ambiguous and represents a lot of different ideas and concepts. It's often translated as "heaven", but sometimes in a sense as in an afterlife (like the Heaven of Christianity) and sometimes in a sense as in an overworld abode of the gods. It's also sometimes translated as "otherworld", a general term for the parallel world alongside humanity's in which all spirits and magical things are intertwined with reality. And even further, sometimes the word is used to refer to Olodumare, the great creator god who began the world and the Orisha themselves.

Add to that the fact that there's no real description of what orun might be like even if it is an underworld - not so much as even the slightest idea of what it looks like or contains - and you can see why people are hesitant to try to stuff it into the same box with Hades and Yomi. It obviously isn't the same kind of underworld, if it's even an "underworld" at all, and it would be outright inaccurate to try to make it one.

Scion, of course, likes to use that good old classical model - an Overworld, an Underworld, and the World sandwiched in the middle. The Orisha, lacking the same kind of structure, are one of those pantheons that flummox that easy system. If you're looking for an Underworld in the same tradition as the other pantheons of Scion, you'll have to get creative. You could try to build Orun into an underworld proper, though doing so would involve inventing a lot from whole cloth thanks to the total dearth of details. Since the Orisha are also the gods of their diaspora religions in the Americas, you also have your pick of the underworlds of those faiths, which have developed them thanks to the need for a more concrete afterlife and influence from other religions (especially monotheistic ones). Guinee, the vodun concept of the watery realm of the ancestors where the dead return to their African roots, or modern Santeria's and Candomble's adoption and syncretization of similar realms to the Christian Heaven and Hell. Whatever you choose, embrace it; the Orisha are gods who have spawned many syncretic religions and serve many disparate peoples, and their cosmology might be more fluid than that of other pantheons.

The Orisha are far from the only pantheon in the world that doesn't follow the simple Scion world setup, but they're the first one to make it to the website (for those of you using the extra pantheon supplements on the Downloads page, the Alihah are similarly mold-breaking) as part of the regular cast. Every game will have to decide how it wants to handle their attitudes toward death and the spirits of the departed.

The Orisha dead, they never do lie quiet.

Inferno!

Question: Have you ever thought about tinkering around with the Underworld described in Dante's Inferno?

As much as our Italian literature-reading hearts love Dante, no, not really. There are a lot of reasons, but the most major are that

A) Dante's description of the cosmology of the universe, while it certainly does occasionally coopt characters from classical mythology, is overwhelmingly and overarchingly Christian and we generally avoid too much monotheism in Scion, and

B) most of it is fiction. Dante wrote the Divine Comedy as an allegory and commentary on the state of his society and religion at the time; he invents new things, puts elements into various places in order to further his point, and basically comes at it from the perspective of a writer with something to say, not someone who was trying to give an accurate portrait of the Christian cosmology. Thanks to his postmortem success, his work's become considered a masterpiece and many of his inventions have been adopted into popular culture and even the religion itself, which is super duper awesome, but it's no more a mythological text than the Percy Jackson books are.

We usually don't do fiction that the Scions themselves don't invent or bring in within the game itself, and we're not about to try to build a Christian Heaven and Hell for use in the game right now anyway, but if your game flavor leans more toward those things than ours, we certainly won't stop you from working on your own writeup. Play with all nine circles and the antechamber, too - knock yourself out.

The Deathly Hallowed

Question: Most mythologies have stories of underworld rulers being basically invincible in their realms. In light of this, do you think it would be acceptable to design a Death boon that gives a God bonuses while he is inside an underworld he rules?

Hmm. Not quite that way, but maybe!

Death gods definitely have a leg up when they're on their home turf. Almost no story of anyone, mortal or Titan or god, marching into a death god's underworld with mayhem on their mind ends without said death god owning them so hard they don't remember their names anymore. Mighty Ishtar is laid low when she dares challenge Ereshkigal in Irkallu; Pirithous is imprisoned so firmly for daring to try to invade Hades to steal Persephone that even Heracles can't free him; Baal gets devoured by Mot when he tries to march into Nepesh to cow him; when Hel won't release Baldur, the other Aesir don't even try to go in there. Even those who do successfully bother death gods in their lairs almost always have to survive the encounter by fleeing, not fighting, like Quetzalcoatl desperately racing out of Mictlan or Izanagi making frantic haste out of Yomi. There are your occasional exceptions - Anat defeating Mot while he was still recovering from fighting Baal, or the Hero Twins of the Maya winning out over the lords of death through disguise and shenanigans - but for the most part, it's almost always a very, very bad idea to attack, inconvenience or even annoy a death god while he's in his realm. Death deities have the ultimate power over the realm of death itself, and their iron control over their underworlds is a direct representation of that.

So yes, death gods should definitely have more power in their underworld than out of it. But I'm not sure a boon is actually the best way to go about that. For our games, we assume that most of that power comes from the underworld itself.

In Scion's mechanical framework, an Underworld that belongs to a death god, the way Yomi belongs to Izanami or the House on the Left belongs to Huitzilopochtli, is best modeled as a special kind of Sanctum. It's a Birthright that belongs to that god, inextricably tied to him and sensitive to his needs; it just happens to be an Underworld instead of the Overworld pockets that most non-death gods have as Sanctums. Underworlds vary in their power levels and tie to the gods that own them - for example, Hades is probably a three-star super Birthright, while Teich nDuinn, being less well-known and pivotal in myth, is probably only (only) one.

The general awesomeness of a death goddess while within her Underworld is most likely tied to this Birthright, and thus the underworld itself, directly. That Birthright gives her any one of a slew of bonuses - she has fifty extra soak here, or she can teleport anywhere within its borders for a Legend, or her Strike Dead boon can affect anyone of any Legend, or her Perception is quadrupled the better to keep watch over the place, or every time she creates a shambling zombie she actually creates three. Whatever is most appropriate for that individual death goddess and deathrealm, just like any other Birthright's special powers, should be part of that underworld's innate powers that are conferred upon her as its ruler. While she stands within its borders, she is a force to be reckoned with.

A boon is more flexible, but in this case I think that's actually more of a hindrance than a help. Death gods are the badass masters of their realms, but that refers to their realms, not the realms of others, so a Death boon that just made death gods more badass while in an underworld wouldn't necessarily make sense. If Osiris tried to invade Hel, he should not be on an even footing with her, because this is her underworld and invaders risk attacking her on her own hallowed ground at their peril, mummified or not. A boon that only applied to your own underworld, on the other hand, is curiously limited; it would have to be high-level because only gods can own Underworlds anyway, but it only applies when you're at home, making it functionally useless for Scions most of the time (alas, they probably don't get to do the majority of their divine missions from the cushy comfort of their thrones). And what about those death gods who don't own Underworlds at all, like the Morrigan or Anubis? They'd end up with a boon that was literally, totally and inescapably useless to them forever. There are always boons that are not as useful for some gods as others, but a boon that you literally cannot ever use, no matter how awesome you are or how many resources you blow, would not be great design.

However, if you do really want to add a boon to Death that concerns an affinity for underworlds in general, we could see that as a possible addition. It would probably work better as a Demigod-level power, something budding young Scions with Death can pick up when they start to have to go to underworlds, that provides modest bonuses but doesn't allow death gods to override the true masters of the domain they're visiting. The most major point for that is making sure it doesn't step on Spirit Lamp's toes too much; its powers should focus on adapting and drawing from the underworld itself, rather than avoiding or escaping it the way Psychopomp does.

Life After Death

Question: What happens when a god dies? Do they just get sent down to their native Underworld, or do they suffer the cessation of their existence altogether? What happens when the Aesir finally kick the bucket during Ragnorak - do they just not exist anymore?

Nobody ever just winks out of existence in Scion, so everyone can rest a little bit easy on that one. The idea of death simply being the end of existence with no continuation of the soul is a pretty modern one, mostly based on the scientific understanding that consciousness arises from brain function, and would have been confusing and terrifying for most ancient people. Where the idea does exist, it's always an exception and usually as a punishment - for example, souls eaten by Ammit are consigned to the abyss of non-existence, the ultimate punishment for failure to be a righteous person.

The whole point of the underworlds across various mythologies is to explain where people - even gods! - go when they die and what happens to them thereafter. You'll see gods that die and go to the Underworld all the time in ancient mythology; Izanami, who becomes queen of Yomi after her death, or Baldur, who goes immediately to Hel from whence the other Aesir can try to bargain him back home again, or Adonis, who at his death goes home to Hades and his foster-mother Persephone, and so on and so forth. From the prevalence of myths like these, we can probably pretty safely assume that gods who die go to their respective underworlds, where they're officially under the power of the local death god and subject to the usual rules of death unless said death god chooses to make an exception for them. Depending on what was going on when the god died, you could also rule that they might end up in a different underworld than their own; if Baal kills Susanoo in glorious thunder-combat on his home turf in Lebanon, there's a good chance Mot might rise up to claim the Japanese storm god and drag him down to Nepesh, rather than Izanami being able to exert her influence so quickly into foreign territory. Psychopomps make a big difference to where a god goes, as well, so if Hermes is on deck, most people will end up in Hades where they belong, but cultures that don't have a dedicated psychopomp might find that their afterlife disposition is less sure.

Past that point, it's a matter of what other people - death gods, Scions, the pantheons themselves - do that determines if anything else happens. If everybody accepts that that death happened and isn't getting reversed, then that's the way it'll stay, and like Gugalanna in Irkallu that god will probably never leave. If people are severely upset about the situation and manage to get enough of the other gods involved, forays into the underworld to bargain with its gods and try to get the dead deity resurrected might occur, with success varying from none (Baldur) to partial (Adonis) to almost total (Baal). Most gods are subject to the rules of death and probably can't resurrect themselves, though there are a few who do and Scion tends to model them as having Ultimate Stamina (or Circle of Life, for those Fertility gods in the home audience).

All of this is the general way we handle dead gods in Scion, but the Aesir, as usual, are a special case. They're not going to simply blip out of existence when they die at Ragnarok - nothing in the Ragnarok prophecies or the rest of Norse myth suggests that, and it would be a very foreign idea to the ancient Norse people who believed in them - but they're also definitely going to be permanently removed from play to make way for the rise of a new world with a new generation of gods ruling it (led by Baldur - hey, he got resurrected! - and Vidar). Some of this is easily explained away by pointing to Hel, who as the reigning death-goddess would have final say on everything that happened to these people and is unlikely to be favorably inclined toward letting her jailers go free again. Freya might technically also have a say, but since she goes totally unmentioned in the stories of Ragnarok, what she's doing at this time is a mystery and she may have gone home to Vanaheim with her father Njord, and furthermore she probably has no interest in rescuing the Aesir that have held her family hostage for centuries. But even if you decide that recalcitrant death goddesses are the major block preventing the Norse gods from hitting the streets again, what about people like Thor and Odin, who have Ultimate Stamina and should be able to just get right back up on their own?

We've talked about this a bit before, and it remains true: they can't do that, and the reason is because Fate wants them dead. This isn't a random death that they can shrug off; it's the prophesied doom that has been foretold to destroy them forever and ever, amen. Fate will simply ensure that they do not and cannot live again, which Storytellers can interpret any number of ways - their Ultimate Stamina just doesn't work, or Fate throws so much stuff at them that it ensures they spend too much Legend and can't afford it anyway, or their souls are immediately bound by the strands of Fate so that they can't live again, whatever floats your boat. Unlike gods who die on their own terms, the Aesir are fated to be destroyed, which is what makes them so desperate and terrified about the whole ordeal. Fate is the only thing more powerful than they are; they know they're not coming back from this.

That doesn't mean that there's no chance your PCs might be able to change some of that with their actions, of course. Scion's all about children of the gods fighting or aiding Fate and helping their parents in their greatest struggles, and in addition the Ragnarok prophecies are sometimes vague and could mean a lot of different things, not all of which include "death" in the strictest classical sense. But that's all up to an individual game's players and Storyteller to determine, and I doubt anyone's Ragnarok is ever going to be identical to anyone else's.

Incidentally, when we ran Ragnarok, those who were killed in the great battle actually did not go to any underworld and were instead directly absorbed by Muspelheim, which was at the time rampaging and consuming everything in its path. This made them pretty much permanently and irretrievably gone in most cases, not only beyond the reach of normal gods but that of death gods, too. A god dying within a Titanrealm might have nasty effects on his or her soul, and without a psychopomp to get them out of there they might find that they never make it to an underworld at all.

It is technically possible in Scion, by the way, for a death god or Death-aligned Scion to actually destroy a dead soul completely by means of tearing it apart with Mother's Touch, but the system fails to give exact mechanics for things like how much "damage" an incorporeal soul can take and what happens to it when it "dies", so Storytellers will need to wing that one when it comes up. We suggest using the W+I+L resistance roll the creature would have had in life to determine its hardiness as a spirit, since its physical stamina no longer has any bearing on things, and would like to remind everyone that those with Harmony (or, depending on the situation, Conviction, Order or Valor) are probably going to go batshit insane if you start doing something as counter to the natural order of the universe as permanently eradicating souls.

At Death's Door

Question: What's the best and worst Underworld to spend all eternity in?

Well, if you gotta go, you might as well go in style.

There are actually quite a few really, really nice Underworlds that anyone can enjoy spending eternity in; there are cultures in Scion that dump everybody into the Pit of Despair upon expiration, but there are more that have at least one pleasant option in among the eternities of torture, enforced reincarnation or dismal boredom. Death is pretty scary, though, so even so the nasty places far outweigh the nice ones.

Let's break it down into three categories!

Awesome Underworlds!:

1) Mag Mell. "Mag Mell" means "Plain of Joy", and it's serious about it. Everyone here is eternally young, immune to disease, surrounded by music, food, alcohol and happiness, and they never have to leave to do anything unpleasant. In short, it's an eternal Irish party.
2) Valhalla. The coveted Underworld overseen by Odin for slain warriors, this one may not be for everyone, but for those who love it, they'll love it forever. The mead, wenches and heroic poetry never stop except when you get to go out and spend the day in glorious battle before coming back to get drunk again. If you're a fan of hititng people with swords and then all going out for a drink together, it's your dream come true.
3) Folkvangr. Freya's half of the spirits of the courageous dead go instead to Folkvangr and the feasting hall Sessrumnir, said to be enormous, beautiful and never without room for more dead dudes to come a-feasting. We know less about what dead people do here, but it's one of the places Viking warriors aspired to end up after death, and considering that Freya's in charge of her own eternal combat, it's probably pretty similar to Valhalla (except bonus: you get to look at Freya for eternity instead of Odin).
4) The House on the Left. The awesome, resplendent paradise of Huitzilopochtli, where things are so bright and amazing that everyone has to carry shields and just peek out the arrow-slits. One of the most coveted destination for warrior souls - plus, the big man sometimes lets you take field trips to the world as hummingbirds.
5) Tlalocan. A lush, eternally springtime paradise full of growing things and unending sources of food. No one works here or has to do anything but relax and enjoy the place, surrounded by fresh, clean water and abundant gardens. Of course, Tlaloc lives here, too, but he probably doesn't eat dead people.
6) Raj. The pleasant paradise of the Slavic afterlife is pretty similar to Tlalocan, actually - lush, beautiful waterways and growing gardens, abundant fruit and restful song, rivers of honey, paradise and relaxation. Sometimes the Alkonost rolls through and sings sweet, sweet love to your dead ears. It's the best.
7) Annwn. The Welsh Underworld of awesomeness and fun, where again there's no pain, sickness or old age, everyone always has as much to eat as they want and everything is awesome. Contradictorily, the creatures that live in Annwn tend to be hideous and horrifying... but I guess everybody needs a good border guard, especially if, like the Welsh death-god Arawn, they insist on declaring war on the living now and then.
8) Garothman. The heavenly eternal paradise of the righteous in Zoroastrian myth is peaceful, pleasant, and free of all wickedness, evil or worry. Ahhh.

Terrible Underworlds!:

1) Irkallu. The ancient Mesopotamians were having none of this "nice underworld for nice people" business; everyone dies, and when they do, everyone goes to Irkallu, the dreary, impregnable citadel of the dead. No one here remembers who they were or has any joy; they live in the dark, locked behind impenetrable walls, forever. There's no outright torture, but it's pretty unpleasant nonetheless.
2) Nepesh. Being literally swallowed into a death-god's mucus-slimed maw, then spending eternity sort of slogging around down there. Delightful.
3) Hel. Hel is deeply unpleasant, both the place and its dour ruler. It's cold, it's final, and it's riddled with disease and prevents the most depressed of souls from resting or finding any relief. Its lady does not care about your problems.
4) Naraka. Naraka has a good eventual intent, which is to rehabilitate souls so that they become fit for reincarnation, but that intent takes the form of brutal torture and punishment that can last for centuries before you're ready to head back into the world again. They're setting you on fire, they're boiling you in oil, they're pulling your fingers off one by one, but it's okay, guys; they're doing it for you.
5) Yomi. The Japanese underworld is a hideous place, a deep hell filled with unyielding darkness, permeating rot and all the nasty death-monsters Japanese imagination can come up with (which is a lot). Nobody is happy here, and nobody ever gets to leave. Jigoku, the Japanese Buddhist version of the place, is even worse, a depressing fusion of Yomi and Naraka.
6) Mictlan. The major Aztec underworld is a giant, miserable cattle-call of a place, a hall with no rest, joy or sustenance in eternal blackness, where the only object in your universe are the terrible lord and lady of the dead, Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacihuatl. Enjoy spending eternity in silent terror, staring at their bony faces.
7) Uku Pacha. Uku Pacha has the sad distinction of actually having gotten worse over the centuries. Originally much like the world above, with every soul gaining a plot of land on which to grow food to slake their eternal hunger, it wasn't a really fun place since everyone basically worked nonstop to feed themselves, but it wasn't too terrible. Post-conquest, however, Inca myth now holds that so many of their people have been killed that each soul has no more than a fingernail-width of land to call their own. There goes the neighborhood.
8) Nav. Morena balances pleasant Raj out with depressing, hideous Nav. A dark, depressing world where the dead remain forever, cold and wretched, the only things you can hope for here are someone bringing light in occasionally (which you will hate, because it'll hurt your dead eyes) or perhaps being selected by the goddess to go back to the World for a day as a crow, croaking doom at passersby. You never get more than a day, though, and it's done expressly to remind you of what you can't have anymore.
9) Di Yu. Do you want to spend eternity in a place that has sections like the Division of Dismemberment and the Hall of Endless Bees? I don't.
10) Metnal/Xibalba. All the rotting hideousness of Yomi, married to all the blind, screaming terror of Mictlan. The death god will burn the living shit out of you upon arrival before throwing you into an icy lake of sadness, and things will not get better from there.
11) Duzakh. A dark, stinking, claustrophibically narrow hole into which the evil dead are dropped, where you can enjoy wondering whether you're going to be tortured for the next five hundred years or whether one of the resident horrible demons will run across you and devour your soul first.

Even Chance Underworlds!:

1) Hades. Hades has awesome places within it, like the Isles of the Blessed or the Elysian Fields, where dead souls live blessed, fulfilled lives of pleasure, accomplishment and happiness. But it also has awful places, like Tartarus, where inventive eternal punishments (like those suffered by Ixion, Sisyphus or Tantalus) await miscreants. And it also has a whole lot of basically neutral territory, like the Asphodel Fields, where everyone basically wanders around aimlessly thinking that at least it could be worse.
2) Hamistagan. Did you know Catholicism didn't invent Purgatory? The Persians did, and the Zoroastrian realm is pretty much identical: a grey, formless, empty void where souls who are exactly balanced between good and evil go to hang around for an undisclosed period of time before getting to go to Duzakh or Garothman.
3) Duat. At the end of Duat, you go to the incredible eternal paradise of Osiris, where everyone is granted a second life, more glorious than the first, to be lived in his lush and fertile underworld. But you also have to get through the nine million miles of sad, dark, confusing privation to get there and then make it through the heart-weighing ceremony, so it sort of evens out.

Of course, most of the really nice Underworlds have stringent admission requirements; Folkvangr, Valhalla and the House on the Left are available only to those who die in glorious battle, Mag Mell and the Elysian Fields are reserved only for those who live heroic and epic lives, Tlalocan requires you to die in one of a number of unpleasant ways to be considered, Gathoman and Raj are open only to those who have been judged righteous, good people and Duat requires meticulous completion of complex and ceremonial burial practices. Most ancient cultures, when they believed you got to go somewhere nice after death at all, believed that you had to do something good with your life first to achieve that. Joe the Shoemaker isn't destined for the eternal awesomeness of Mag Mell - unless he decides to be Joe the Shoemaking Crusader for Justice and kills a bunch of enemy soldiers, and then more power to him. It's a common ancient idea that your afterlife is a sort of continuation of your first life, so what you are and do make a difference when it comes to where you go.

Or, there are cultures like the Mesopotamians. Welcome to Irkallu, here's your cell, have a nice eternity.

Elseworlds

Question: How do you guys feel about the Otherworld (Overworld, Underworld and Terra Incognita) write-ups that appear in the books? Are they good enough to use by your standards?

This reminds me a lot of a similar question a while back about the writeups on Titanrealms in the Scion books. Our answer is very similar in both cases: there are good things and bad things about them, and while they have a lot of neat stuff that shouldn't be thrown away, they also make a lot of weird choices and bewildering mistakes that should be avoided. We wouldn't use them as written in most cases, but that doesn't mean that they're bad, just that they're inconsistent.

Cosmologically, Scion is extremely solid in some areas and just a hot mess in others. Some Overworlds are perfectly mythically accurate and resonant, like Asgard and Olympus; others, like Acopa and Ville au Camp, seem to have no idea what they're doing and to have collected a lot of random folkloric detritus that may or may not have anything to do with them. (Man, there's that white European mythology focus again - Scion really loves European myth. A lot. Which is understandable because it's what's most familiar to the potential players, I guess.) The Underworlds are usually better researched and do a lot of cool things, especially in mechanics for getting in and out and dealing with the effects of being there, but there's a lot of (unavoidable) writer bias in how they're presented and which ones are more difficult to navigate and manage than others, so I'd suggest that Storytellers use the parts of them that they like and make their own mythology-based judgment calls on what being there is really like. And then there are the Terrae Incognita; some excellent, like Circe's Island or Jotunheim, which stick close to their origin myths and provide excellent setting, flavor and mechanics for adventures there, and some giving me hives, like Radegast and "Tomoanchan", which have little to nothing in common with the stories of the cultures they come from.

Look, the purpose of all this setting stuff in the books is to help Storytellers out who may not be experts in all this stuff; while mythology may be something that's out there and available for Storytellers to study, it's still not necessarily familiar to everyone, and it's a great idea to provide material on it in an easy, formatted-for-Scion way just like other RPGs that use fantastic settings would. Storytellers don't all have degrees in Anthropology or Classics before they start their games, and they shouldn't have to. They can supplement by going out and learning more about whatever myths they're using in a game, but if they can't, don't want to or would rather focus their time elsewhere, the book should be providing that basic stuff for them instead. We recognize that not everyone thinks research is a fun hobby, or wants to spend eight hours reading before starting to run an adventure - and for those (vast majority of) people, the books' descriptions of the Otherworlds are an excellent jumping-off point. They give you the basics, they give you mechanics, and they give you a world in which to set your adventure. Those worlds may not all be very accurate or in some cases even comprehensible, but they're fleshed out enough for the most fly-by-night of Storytellers to be able to use them, and that's what really counts the most.

As for us... well, no, we pretty much don't use most of them as written. We use parts of them, such as the Underworld Virtue mechanics played with in Scion: Demigod, when they're good ideas; we throw the rest, like the deeply unsatisfying Paititi, away into the aether of Discarded RPG Ideas in favor of using things that are more accurate or resonant with their original myths. We love world mythology (which is why we love Scion so much, by extension), so we never find something that's half-researched or unrelated to a culture's myths nearly as satisfying as things that carry the culture's symbolism and religious values; more often than not, when a setting in the book wanders off into unsourced or modern territory, it loses a lot of the unique mythic flavor that its culture would have been imparting, and that usually leads to us dumping it in a corner somewhere to cry itself to sleep. We don't play Scion to play with ideas that are vaguely related to mythology when convenient; we play it to play with mythology in all its rich and complex glory.

So no, the Otherworlds, as a whole, are not up to our standards in the books; some of them are excellent, while others are messy or confusing and still others are frankly terrible. They don't always keep the myths at their heart, and that's the biggest sin in the game line for us. But that doesn't mean that Storytellers who aren't into research or who are just starting out can't or shouldn't use them; it just means that they aren't compatible with the way we play the game. They belong to the realm of more fantasy than history and mythography, and every Storyteller's balance between the two is different.