Pantheons [Scion Second Edition Open Development]

Open Development, Scion

If you need to sum up Scion in a single sentence, it’s this: “Who you are is very much tied to who you are to other people”.

Even more than politicians, the Gods know the power of a good narrative – and good public relations. No God is an island, no Hero exists without someone setting her story in motion. You are bound and defined by your relationships. It’s in the name of the game: being a scion of something means you’re from a greater parent, which right there defines your identity by someone or something else. Or, to use a convenient phrase, it serves to start defining your Legend.

Most of the Gods in Scion belong to the pantheons, Gods who have a shared narrative – a shared Fate. By extension, Heroes and Demigods belong to their ranks as well (and no few Legendary associates and, yes, even a select few Titans, like Helios). In the prior edition, the pantheons were largely bloodlines, which tied into the children of the Gods being literal blood relations. They were all family to some degree or another, and descendants of those pantheons kept within the family. Problems arose, though, when we tried to address gods existing within different pantheons (like Yama, who’s got a foothold in China, Japan, and India) or the process of interpretatio. So we’re moving away from that slightly in Scion 2e – pantheons are no longer purely divine bloodlines, but socio-magical constructs within Fate, bound to cultures across the World. This means they can be bigger, more metaphorical, and more importantly it means Gods may belong to one (or more) pantheons, manifesting Incarnations in a variety of different cultural aspects. Pantheons bind the Gods together and to the World, and they provide mighty coalitions against the Titans, many of whom seek the World’s subjugation or destruction.

Pantheons are truly massive Paths that serve to define your character’s tie into the mythology of the World, where all myths are true, and where all myths have some truth to them. It means your character is tied into living myth, some of which is half-remembered and ill-defined by the smoothing down of Fatebinding and Legend. It means the curious cognate between Aesir and asura is something more, a sign of ancient enmity between the pantheons, partially forgotten by both. It means that while Tinia, Zeus, and Jupiter are worshiped by three very different cultures over thousands of years, they can be said to be one God, in a myriad of Incarnations and changes in Legend over the centuries. There are a few diehard Etruscan Gods and many Greek Gods and a few purely Roman ones (like Janus and Quirinus and Divus Iulius), and some Gods who can be all three at once – but there is only one Olympus.

As Scions grow in power, they give up more and more of themselves in the bargain, tying their power into their deeds and their followers, until they potentially become Gods in their own right. And if they’re dissatisfied…well, we’ve got some thoughts on making your own pantheons in-character.

The pantheons we’re writing up for Hero are:

Aesir – The Norse Gods

Deva – The Hindu Gods

Kami – The Japanese Gods

Manitouk – The Algonquian Gods

Netjer – The Egyptian Gods

Orisha – The Yoruban Gods

Shen – The Chinese Gods

Teotl – The Aztec Gods

Theoi – The Greek and Roman Gods

Tuatha de Dannan – The Irish Gods

Each pantheon will cover about seven to thirteen Gods apiece, along with a description of common Birthrights. There’s other Gods I’d love to cover before Demigod, mind you, like expanding the Orisha to fully cover the Loa, or covering the Nemetondevos, the fallen Gods of Gaul, destroyed by Divus Julius prior to his apotheosis. Or even talking about Gods without a pantheon, such as tutelary Gods (though no few tutelary Gods joined a pantheon later on). And when we do get to Demigod, I really want to sink my teeth into Mesopotamian, Polynesian, Slavic…lots of myth to choose from.

But that’s in the future. For the present, Hero and Origins are in first drafts, and I hope I can show you some finished product next week. So, we talked about both this week, and you get to vote on which you’d rather see expanded on next week: The Callings, the Archetypes that help to define a Scion’s powers; or Fate, the web of relationships that binds the Gods to the World?

Vote in the comments!

Music: If only your actions matter, then nobody knows what it’s like to be the bad man, do they?