Villains - Gods and Alt-Right

[wyrdhamster]

Notice: We talk here about sensitive topics. Think three times before posting here anything.

Scion universe is ‘our Earth with gods’. On our Earth we have Alt-Right, or fascists, groups and factions. I’m interested how would Gods and Titans look on the worshipers from those groups. I emphasize: I mean here to look at possible villains for play. Like Nazis in 1930s were almost worshipers of Aesir. Modern groups like Greek Golden Dawn party, supporting modern version of Spartan society, is promoting worship of Theoi.

[Kyman201]

I don't like putting in Nazis in any way associated with the Aesir. Not even as deluded idiots who exist only to eat the fist of an ACTUAL Aesir champion.

Fuck them. Fuck Nazis, and even putting them in adjacent to this game just to get thrashed feels like I'm being too nice to them. And I'm definitely not putting them in with any occultic powers, because they don't deserve the validation.

Edit: And adjacent advice: If you DO want to use Nazis in your game? Make them pathetic. Make them weak cowards who exist only to be humiliated.

Make their prayers to the Aesir unanswered. Make them undone by the actions of your PCs, or by the direct smiting of the Gods they dare dishonor.

Because, and this cannot be overstated: FUCK NAZIS. They really don't deserve anything that can be potentially viewed as vindication or validation.

[Aristarkos]

I would not think it would be impossible for gods to mistakenly grant a request once in a while to hateful, horrible people. It would not exactly be the first time such things happened.

I would think that many the gods themselves often don't have a good enough grasp of human political ideologies to know what a nazi is compared to a normal person, but on the other hand many of them should have a good ability to read a person's character and motivations for the prayers they are making and therefore know that the prayers and requests that the nazis make are not about the glory of the god or the religion but for the advancement of a hateful and pathetic agenda.

Many gods are terrible, spiteful characters themselves and so it would not be beneath them to exploit such easy-to-manipulate groups for their own benefit, maybe not through answering prayers but by infiltrating them and tricking them. Especially trickster gods revel in manipulating weak and pathetic humans and many nazis are probably prime targets.

As for Scions; well, they are still mostly human with a human upbringing so they can of course choose to espouse any and all human ideologies. I shudder at the thought of a neo-nazi Scion. And even if they don't actually hold such beliefs or ideologies I think a manipulative Scion can easily ingratiate themselves as leaders of such hateful groups, just like there exist many leaders today of niche groups such as hate groups or flat-earthers who don't actually believe in the ideology or world-view of the group they are leading but enjoy the power and money that they gain from it.

[Magicjohnny]

Beating up Nazis can be fun, and I definitely wouldn’t have the Æsir be in any way supporting of them, “Odin’s the Allfather not the somefather” as the saying goes. Also most gods are not anywhere near as spiteful as you might think, most pantheons consist of rather decent folk, it’s mostly the Theoi or Annunua who are spiteful and even then their spite usually has a reason. I could see some Trickster gods sabotaging those groups although I’d mostly imagine them just mocking them publicly and harshly with their guile. A neo-Nazi Scion would be something I’d be very careful with since that can go really uncomfortable for the player group real fast

[wyrdhamster]

Great, Aristokrotas, now you got me idea - Scion of Loki that is using Thule Society remnants for his own goals, impersonating 'Allfather' ( Odin ) as their patron. Thule's are working as alt-right party think tank in public. Thanks for this idea. ( I use 'Gods in Hiding' setting hack, so even cults are not sure if particular being is really the god itself. )

[Charbonne]

I'm currently running a 1E version of Scion where the main bad group is a bunch of neo-Nazis led by a renegade Scion of Odin and a Titanspawn who used to be Hitler. In it, the gods want them GONE because by their actions, they're hastening Ragnarok and NO ONE wants that.

Needless to say, it's not impossible to run a game where you can punch Nazis and kill Hitler, and considering that the player group is enjoying it a lot, I think it's quite successful.

[nalak42]

I feel like the first and most important detail is making sure the players are fine with this. You know seeing how in some areas these might not have the same disconnect from the player group that fighting the Nazis in WW2 would and you know rule one and all that.

As for the actual groups I would honestly check and see how they fit any sort of veneration for a pantheon into things. If they actually follow principles, rules, and traditions of the religion then maybe the Pantheon might be willing to work with them, especially if in setting they're more like actual followers than just people claiming a pantheon. IE My limited knowledge of the Golden Dawn it feels like any veneration for the Theoi is less genuine belief, appreciation for teachings, comfort with the guidelines, and more just that they view the Theoi as Greek Gods and therefore should be the only allowed religion instead of condoning the presence of one's that aren't Greek.

Like nothing in my knowledge of the Nazi's suggest the Aesir would have any fondness for them since the stuff I've seen puts more that they used the symbols to insist the vikings* were part of their Aryan race and thus why they were superior to all others.Then of course there was the book of "secret runes" which was used to alter meaning of various runes and symbols associated with the Aesir into things more appropriate the nazis.

I mean if they came up in game and associated themselves with things that's a possibility, but I just don't see them getting a lot of support from the Aesir existing in modern time frames without hoops being jumped through. Hoops that I'm also just not interested in jumping through because well I lack the respect or interest in groups like the Nazis to put those hoops in game. Especially when I can do something more interesting things like the cult trying to get Jormgundr to go after the sun because one of them wants to pull a kill and replace on Thor and Thor is famously to die seven steps after his fight with the world serpent. Or Nemetondevos Scions and their followers going after Roman incarnations of the Theoi (why they might be willing to draw the line at hunting Mars and his followers but not Ares and Ares followers despite them being acknowledged as the same entity is a mystery for the game) in retribution for the whole Ceasar trying to wipe them out thing.

*A fun note I've seen in a few places is that the word viking was closer to an occupation, though one listed as a verb, than a the culture/nationality identifier it tends to be used as.

[Sacerdos]

I agree that Nazi villains can totally work, but I would personally be one of those players who'd vehemently veto that for my own group. I hear too much of Nazis in my day-to-day life, I'd like to at least keep them out of my hobbies. I also think that giving Nazis magical powers or magical origins can have seriously bad implications (I already discussed this on another thread a while ago, the post is here if anyone's interested: http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/m...859#post964859 ). One has to be very careful not to imply that Nazism, racism, White Supremacy etc. are problems of non-human, supernatural origin that can simply be solved with a quick spell. There are certainly ways to productively include Nazis in a Fantasy setting, but it's a task I don't feel up for either as a storyteller or player.

[Penelope]

Be careful. Some players may not be comfortable with this.

[wyrdhamster]

Be careful. Some players may not be comfortable with this.

I run game on Discord - and made special channel on our server for consent and game health issues. #Game-OSH
I already mentioned the planed issue before to all my player - half of them already said in favour of it. We will see.

But I started topic even to make general talk about Alt-Right idea in Scion universe, either way…

[Geoffrey]

Note: vast generalizations ahead that will not stand up to academic scrutiny

I'm going to start with some basic premises:

1. People are drawn to these movements because they feel powerless politically, socially, or economically.
2. They look at an idealized, imaginary version of history to prove to themselves that they were once strong.
3. They blame outside influences for "corrupting" their society and causing it to lose that past strength.
4. They believe that if they remove those influences, they will become strong again.

Because their explanation for their current situation is flawed — based on a history that was never as perfect as they pretend, and blaming cultural changes on an easily identifiable group of malicious outsiders rather than complex historical forces — they are always doomed to fail. Even if they make some progress toward "purifying" their society, the fact that it doesn't solve all of their problems forces them to look for more sources of corruption to blame. Eventually, they have to start purging their own ranks based on increasingly strict definitions of who truly belongs there, leading to infighting and eventual collapse.

In the real world, groups that attach themselves to pagan identities may do so because they place the beginning of their decline at the point of their society's conversion to Christianity, which they identify as a foreign element that's incompatible with their natural character. (It's a lot more complicated than that, but bear with me.) In The World, they may still do that, but the continued worship of other Gods makes it a more difficult case to make. You can't say "Everything was better when we had temples to Zeus" when there are still temples to Zeus around.

So what do they do? Go back a step further and treat the established pantheons as the foreign element that overturned the "real" original culture: worship of the Titans. (This only works for pantheons that have a mythology of the current generation of Gods overthrowing a previous one, of course.) In the Titanomachy book, there's a mention under the Followers section of Birthrights that Titans and their Scions often encourage revisionist groups who try to paint the Titans in a more positive light. These are exactly the sort of groups that would be part of the sort of far-right movements that you're talking about here.

They'd still act more or less the same as real-world movements do, but the target of their hostility would change. These Gods, they would say, have failed us over and over again, because they're not the ones we're supposed to worship. They've lied to us, made us weak, and been responsible for our losses. It's time to recognize that they are as foreign to us as any religion that came later, and drive them out.

And just like in the real world, there would be people who make this argument under the guise of scholarship. They would look at the clash of Titans and Gods and interpret it (very convincingly to their audience) as a battle between the native pantheon of a culture and invading outsiders. They would look at archaeological evidence to show that some religious practices fell out of favour as worship of the Gods arose, and try to revivify those practices under the guise of being more authentic to their people.

This would be the more reputable face of the movement, the one that would probably be ignored outside of academic circles. The one that would completely deny that it had any influence on the mobs who went around burning temples of the Gods. The one whose books would find their way into the homes of leaders of those mobs, whose podcasts they'd listen to, and whose web forums they'd visit.

Anyhow. That should be enough to get you started. My own opinion on the matter is, honestly, the same as the one that Kyman201 offered.

[Penelope]

I run game on Discord - and made special channel on our server for consent and game health issues. #Game-OSH
I already mentioned the planed issue before to all my player - half of them already said in favour of it. We will see.

But I started topic even to make general talk about Alt-Right idea in Scion universe, either way…

If all (not just half) of your players are into it then go for it. It’s your table dude.

Also Geoffrey I Liked your post.

[Darksol-aeternium]

I agree with Kyman mostly. If nazis appear in my game then it'll be because they're lesser mooks and the gods would respond to their entreaties by thinking "Y'know, I saw that old Indiana Jones movie them mortals made a while back, I'll bet I can do better than simple melty-face!" I can just see Odin saying that thoughtfully with a horn of mead in his hand...

[Kyman201]

I would not think it would be impossible for gods to mistakenly grant a request once in a while to hateful, horrible people. It would not exactly be the first time such things happened.

While not impossible, my counter-argument still boils down to "Fuck Nazis, I'm not giving them any vindication". I'll admit that it's not impossible that in history, there were people who learned secrets from the Aesir that went on to join the Nazis. But I'm under no obligation to acknowledge this for the sake of my games.

This is how I deal with things. I'm not going to make any member of the Alt-Right or any Actual Literal Nazis feel like they're legitimate. I'm not going to make them feel like a threat. I'm not going to give any modern Nazi or Nazi sympathizer any kind of vindication by implying that they have ANY claim at all to the Aesir. They're Nazis. They don't get to have any claim on the Aesir or Runes or the All-Father. I'm not going to give them an inch, not going to give them any satisfaction of "Yes I am a powerful threat that is a menace, I'm dangerous". I'm not going to acknowledge any kind of claim of legitimacy.

That's why I recommended making them pathetic. Because most Alt-Right groups are made up of pathetic hateful people who thrive on a self-projected martyr complex. Making them a legitimate threat would be vindicating to them. Implying that they have the favor of ANY god is vindicating to them.

They ain't getting that from me.

[bluishpurple]

I feel like Nazis are a lot easier to do in a origins tier game because if you go hero then well you've got to figure out some excuse for there to be a nazi with power that makes them worth being a threat and then that requires a lot of caution.