CoD monsters in Scion

[nalak42]

I did have a player ask in my game if vampires and werewolves were a thing, and I mentioned yeah though part of the question is what version since different versions of the myths.

Of course the other part was that since the version we're doing has the dials set so open mythic entities is a rare and rather recent thing we also agreed that if stuff like kindred were a thing before hand then there may have been a few problems and panic when the various psychopomps and divinities of death started showing up and possibly walking around.

[Storyteller323]

I imagine that higher level scions would have one hell of a rep amongst monsters and such, given how powerful scions can get. In a world where you can take out a werewolf with sufficient stubbornness and a baseball bat, something that can pick up a truck and use it as a weapon would be pretty damn scary when pissed off.

[wyrdhamster]

Saints & Monsters Preview - Prophets from the Myths ! ❤️ As an old CoD fan, I have positive associations, especially with a Mage - The Prophets look quite a bit weaker Acanthi! 😮 Or the Fate manipulators of the Changeling!

http://theonyxpath.com/scion-saints-monsters-preview-2/

[wyrdhamster]

New Sorceres preview for Saints & Monsters still let run Mage Orders with them?

By preview, Sorcerers are mortals who stole Purviews magic from Gods and Fate. They have a Legend stat! 😮
There are 4 ways to become them:
• Invocation - They pretend to be a deity, but must be VERY convincing to Fate,
• Patronage - Patronage of a god or spirit come with more and more demanding sacrifices,
• Prohibition - By taking various vows, sorcerers take advantage of Fate itself, but must atone as they break it,
• Talisman - The Sorcerer binds his Legend to a Relic and draws power from it.

For now, I can only see difference that Order Mages have their own 'Pantheon' of Orcales and Exarchs they 'worship' - and other Sorcerers simply adhere to their other Pantheons gods. The only dichotomy in World of Scion is that MtAw Orders rose in CoD world where literalt gods were not a fact - only face for Oracles or Exarchs - but in Scion we will have things like literal Exarch of General fighting literal Zeus...

How to solve this setting conflicts to let Mage Orders work more or less like in MtAw?

[Dataweaver]

CoD mages live in a world where the gods were deposed.

Scion Sorcerers didn't necessarily steal their power; but they're treated by the gods as if they had.

The Legend trait that they have is best thought of as “borrowed Legend”; they don't actually have any Legend of their own.

The way I'd incorporate CoD-style mages into Scion would be to borrow a page from Masks of the Mythos, and give the Awakened a powerstat that functions more or less like Awareness. Gnosis is as good a name for it as any.

[Raz_Fox]

Okay, I’ll bite.

For Vampires and their covenants, you actually have it pretty tight in your second post. The Lancea Sanctum is rather explicitly a parasite-faith, one that frames vampires as being necessary evils using evocative imagery they’re culturally familiar with so that they don’t go walk into the sun. You can keep it as it is, or you can twist it for a pulpier Scion experience into being a fervent church of Zalmoxis, the Geto-Dacian patron god of vampires who is mentioned at the end of Scion: Demigod.

If you build on that, you can easily have the Invictus represent the secular side of secretive vampire society, while the Lancea reminds vampires who first sired them; the Ordo remains relatively unchanged, though their experiments may grow wilder, the Carthian Movement might take on Theoi trappings to tweak their noses at the establishment (after all, Zalmoxis hates the foreign gods of Rome even now) and the Circle of the Crone might serve Echidna or Gaea as a wild, Titanic alternative to the establishment. (They might even make good antagonists in that… vein.)

For Werewolves, I think the most interesting thing to do with them is to tie them strongly to Artemis. Cursed descendants of Lycaon, they accepted service to Artemis as a secret society of hunters and shamans to overcome that ancient shame. Each clan might then be no larger than a WtF lodge in and of themselves: the Blood Talons hunters of titanspawn, the Bone Shadows a tight-knit covenant of shamans, the Hunters in Darkness keepers of sacred places (whether of Artemis herself or gods she loans them out to), the Iron Masters assigned to watch over Artemis’s cults, and the Storm Lords— perhaps a tithe to her father’s service?

That would then make the Pure descendants of Lycaon who decide to embrace their monstrous ancestor to spite the Theoi: the Ivory Claws swearing loyalty to Kronos (first and purest of kings, ignore Ouranos), the Fire-Touched a particularly destructive (and uncontrolled?) cult of Prometheus, and the Predator Kings swearing to Typhon, father of monsters.

(While the hunting lodges started as strictly Theoi institutions, of course, the amount of support Artemis and her Scions have offered the lodges means that by the present day, they’re one of the best support groups for anyone who ends up with a touch of the wolf about them, no matter where you’re from— as long as you’re not using those damned belts to shapechange. That’s sorcery, not a curse.)

I would then cannibalize the concepts of the Atlantean orders as more generalized organizations of sorcerers. The Arrow is a loose coalition of sorcerers who believe that magic is best used as a tool to serve and protect others, with a reputation as wannabe Scions (or, if you’re more positive, as an example of people who don’t need divine endorsement to go out and do good). The Guardians of the Veil might be sponsored by the Òrìshà as witch-hunters, keeping dangerous magical secrets away from those who would abuse them— perhaps even from Scions. The Mysterium, perhaps, is connected to a grand library Terra Incognita, with a sacred oath to chronicle all magical practices and relics, maybe even with support from the likes of Athena and Thoth. And the Silver Ladder? Well, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if we achieved better living through magic. Would we even need Scions in a world where anyone could reach out and use magic?

The Seers are trickier, given that their hook is “screw Enlightenment, everybody stays in the Cave.” I’d play them up as foils to the Silver Ladder, perhaps even a splinter group: instead of a world where humanity no longer needs gods because everyone can use magic, they want to bring about a world where enlightened Mage-Kings rule, the gods are shut out, and power is taken from those insufferable Scions and given to the deserving (i.e. them, naturally).

And if that’s not enough radical reimagining, I’d gut Changeling entirely and lift its concepts for the Four Seasons Webring. Go to 4season.fae and you’ll see four familiar wreaths, each one a link. Click on the right one, and you’ll be given an email address and instructions for what to send. And then—

Well, in an asset version, you’ll be connected with a like-minded community of people who have dealt with the Fair Folk and have tips and tricks (and maybe contact info for Scions who might be able to help you with any issue you might be having with the Gentry). You don’t have to have been locked in a Durance to have had really uncomfortable/dangerous encounters with the Fair Folk, after all. Especially if you got put to sleep for ten years, or they tried to kidnap you to take their place in the Tithe, or your creative writing workshop partner was drinking your soul to make your work better.

In an antagonist version, Mab’s wrapped spells into the very source code of the pages. You can get whatever you ask for (indulgence from the spring, death from the summer, secrets from the autumn and something hidden from the winter), but you’re entering into a deal. An open-ended deal. You will not like the consequences when it comes due, but if you reaaaaally want something…

“Hey, Raz_Fox, you’re radically reinterpreting these games!” Scion’s a radically different game from anything in the CoD, and I think the optimal use of the latter’s building blocks in the former is as a springboard and touchstone for concepts. “I want a manipulative political vampire -> Invictus” is very good mental shorthand, but “There is a worldwide society of animist werewolves who worship Mother Moon, Lycaon who?” misses one of the major pillars of Scion, namely that it’s an opportunity to work with and follow through on real-world mythology.

(Now, my hottest take is that the God-Machine would be an invasive metaphysic that threatens the stability of the World by supplanting divine narratives with its own relentless, inscrutable logic, and that Demons would be caught between hunter-angels on one side and suspicious Scions on the other, having been burned repeatedly by infiltrating angels and unwilling to accept further entreaties from the servants of a story that threatens to devour every other. But I’m a sucker for that set-up; it’s how I’m tempted to frame the Mythos, too, at least at the Pantheon political level. Catch me hammering a button labeled Outside Context Problems, Pantheon-Sized.)

[wyrdhamster]

I generally like to leave CoD monsters and their plats intact, more or less. So I want only to add Pantheons influence here and there. So Raz_Fox I like your ideas on classical societies of vampires, werewolves and mages. Surely would used most of your take - or even whole - of Atlantean Orders, vampires sounds spot on!

Only werewolves I would disagree slightly - I would left Tribes and Firstborn as they are in WtF lore, more or less as 'Uratha Pantheon' - but your whole 'Artemis hunters' and other recreation would make great local Lodges material! Remember, even in WtF 2E corebook we have Lodge of Lycon-Ur being de facto shaper of local Protectorate, and local chapters of Tribes of Moon reflect Lycon-Ur mythos in those. By this Mother Luna would be Super Moon goddess, in Uratha myth overgod of Moon, Mother to all Moon deities - like Artemis - that are her half-avatars, I think.

Same 'Awakened Pantheon' of Oracle and Exarchs I would make as basis for mage Orders, like Dataweaver proposed.

[Raz_Fox]

Rather than telling you that you’re having BadWrongFun, I think I’ll spin off your post a bit to talk about primacy when it comes to integrating two separate pieces of media together. Or right-of-way, if you prefer the driving analogy. Primacy, in short, is which of the two (or more) things that you’re melding together have priority when you’re trying to solve inconsistencies or figure out how both can be true.

One of the things that the Chronicles of Darkness lines have put a lot of effort into recently is massaging out primacy problems when two gamelines have a crossover. One example of a solved primacy problem, in my opinion, is the two Arcadias in Mage and Changeling: if they were the same place, then whenever you had Mages in a game with Changelings, you’d end up with an issue where Mages knew the secret truth and could do more about Arcadia than the gameline which is all about Arcadia, which favored Mage players over Changeling players. Emphasizing that they’re entirely separate places with the same name smoothes over that problem and lets you play a game where Mages don’t have casual supremacy over Changeling problems, just extra tools to work with those problems.

The reason I emphasized radical changes to CoD splats, particularly defanging the Uratha, was because I very much want Scion to have high priority in crossovers, particularly when it comes to real mythology as opposed to recently created mythology. Importing the Uratha whole-cloth runs the risk of having their narrative primacy come at the expense of already-extant aspects of Scion, particularly werewolves and moon deities (not to mention the Manitou; WtF as a line draws a lot from Native American mythologies and concepts, though that may be standing out to me more because of a recent reread of The Rockies).

However, if what you really want is an update to WtF using Storypath, then that’s a feature rather than a bug. You can play up the Uratha recruiting unfortunate werewolves from other mythologies, assert that Luna is the ur-moon-goddess (at least in her pantheon’s reality) and that Luna and the wolf spirits might have Chosen Uratha Scions who can play at the same narrative level as children of Artemis or Tsukuyomi.

And Scion, for all that I’ve groused about primacy through this post, is uniquely open to being tinkered with in this way due to its metaphysics: that every single pantheon’s story is true. So when dealing with Luna, it can be true that all other moon goddesses are facets and memories of her, while when dealing with Artemis, it can similarly be true that Luna is just a memory that werewolves have of her blessing. It’s just that committing to that can be surprisingly tricky, particularly when you frame the Uratha as recruiting werewolves from other pantheons, thus why my suggestions focus on ways to integrate the ideas of the CoD splats into the already extant pantheons.

(That’s also the only way to have Mages work like they do in Awakening without undercutting the entirety of Scion as a line: emphasizing that they’re discovering a hidden world that one pantheon says lies behind and above our fallen world. It’s true for them because they follow the paths of the Watchtowers, whereas it’s not true when you’re dealing with any other pantheon— except for the Deva, of course, or the Palas, but that’s a surface similarity.)

[wyrdhamster]

Okay, so we got Saints & Monsters, seems to be fitting for something more concrete on subject. Remember, it’s my own fan take proposition only…

URATHA ( werewolves )

Example Calling Keywords: Hunter, predator, Moon
Path Asset Skills: Close Combat, Survival
Path Contacts: Spirits, tribes, and local packs

PERSISTENT CONDITION: SHAPESHIFTER
You are part human body, part wolf spirit – and you can assume 5 Forms almost instantly. You can go for Human, Near Human, Half Human Half Wolf Monster, Near Wolf and Wolf forms – called Hishu, Dalu, Gauru, Urshul, Urhan, respectively.

You gain +1 Enhancement for rolls where you use senses. In Gauru Form you get +1 Scale in Combat rolls, but you can only assume it for number of you Legend turns in scene – unless you risk Death Rage. In Urshul Form you get +1 Scale related to hunting (including running to reach the target), but can use this scale in combat only when ambushing.

KNACKS
• Partial Change: You can change your body between Forms – for example Gauru full claws arm in general Hishu form. You also can change at will your body between physical characteristic of male and female version of it.

How do you see this Uratha Denizen Path, in Scion 2E terms?

EDIT: I put Mateus and Second Chances fixes ( below ) in to text. 😉

[Mateus Luz]

My suggestion is the Gauru form gaining scale in combat rolls instead of size and might (strength is not an attribute), limited to Legend turns.
Urshul would also gain scale related to hunting (includding running to reach the target), but can use this scale in combat only when ambushing.

This way you have a function to all forms, Human to hide among sheep, Dalu human with claws, Gauru fighting machine, Urshul hunting machine, Urhan interact with nature (I dont remember the function of lutine form in WtF).

[Second Chances]

Spirits, tribes, and local packs seem on par for Path Contacts.

[wyrdhamster]

KNACKS
• Partial Change: You can change your body between Forms – for example Gauru full claws arm in general Hishu form. You also can change at will your body between physical characteristic of male and female version of it.

Uratha are Non-Binary 😉
( Knack based on WtF 2E Luna's Embrace and Partial Change Gifts - only a bit more loose )

[wyrdhamster]

This way you have a function to all forms, Human to hide among sheep, Dalu human with claws, Gauru fighting machine, Urshul hunting machine, Urhan interact with nature (I dont remember the function of lutine form in WtF).

Uratha - Expanded Forms

Hishu - Normal looking, +1 Enh to senses - Sheep's Clothing - Any efforts to pinpoint the werewolf in a crowd or pursue her through populated areas suffer her Legend as Difficulty.

Dalu – Savage looking, +2 Enh to senses and +1 Enh Natural Claws ( Combat )

Gauru – Man-Wolf monster, get +1 Scale in Combat rolls, but you can only assume it for number of you Legend turns in scene – unless you risk Death Rage. +1 Enh to senses

Urshul – Wolf of size of horse, get +1 Scale to Size and related to hunting (including running to reach the target), but can use this scale in combat only when ambushing. +1 Enh to senses

Urhan – Normal wolf, get +1 Scale to racing. +2 Enh to senses

EDIT: Added +1 Size Scale for Urshul, as Scion Demigod literally points Horse is Size 1 beings.

Scale 0 – Baseline
Durability – Basic clothing
Leadership – Your neighbor
Mental – Normal person
Power – Amateur athlete
Might – Knife or handgun
Size – Person-sized
Speed – Decent sprinter

Scale 1 – Elite
Durability – Kevlar armor
Leadership – Upper management
Mental – Chess grandmaster
Power – Gorilla
Might – Anti-personnel riffle
Size – Horse or Deer
Speed – Cheetah, car

[Mizu]

Wouldn't the gods pretty quickly off vampires for screwing with the humans whose worship they need for power? They tried to do it to dragons, and dragons don't fold like a lawn chair to a scion loaned a sun purview relic to go vampire hunting while constantly emitting an aura of genuine sunlight as an innate hero level non-boon power of the purview (let alone if someone like Apollo wanted to step in a and smite someone with magically magnified sunlight). I can't imagine there would be many surviving vampires, and definitely not many of notable power since those would be priority targets if they slip up and reveal themselves.

[wyrdhamster]

Sum up of CoD Monsters ‘Pantheons’ in Scion World ( for now )…

Vampires – They have two lone god entities – Longinus, somewhat (anti)messiah of vampire kind. Maybe Mantel of Lucifer ( if He exist ). And Crone, Dark Mother of their kind. There is rumour she is Mantle of Echidna or other ‘Dark Mothers’.

Werewolves ( Uratha ) – They follow Luna, Wolf and First Pack of Firstborns. Spirits are existing beings in Scion World, as primordial myth beings.

Mages – Awakened are ALL the Pantheon of their own. They follow Oracles and Exarchs, but in realiy, each mage is capable of attaining godhood – it’s called Archmastery in their terms. 😎 Most mages are Sorcerers, but in a bit more powerful variant. ( See Saints & Monsters book. ) Mages are sometimes pointed as Chosen Scions of Oracles, sort of. They have friendly relations with Dragons, somehow stretching from Awakaned origin myths.

Prometheans – They follow and are Created by enigmatic Primordial – the Principle.

Changelings – Where mages CHOSE their path to godhood, changelings were FORCED on it, by Pantheon of Gentry. Technically, they are still Chosen kind, but all changelings know it’s at least abusive relation from Fairy Folk.

Sin-Eaters – Each Krewe is creating their own small Pantheon of Death Gods.

Mummies – Mummies have Judges of Duat as Pantheon that are somehow related, but also distinctive from modern Netjer. They say their gods changed when Nameless Empire fallen.

Unchained Demons – They are effects of workings of God-Machine Primordial – and rebellions against him.

Beasts – Beasts follow lone Dark Mother, similar but maybe distinctive Primordial to the Crone of vampires.

Mechanically – they all work on Legend stat and have Callings and Purviews of particular kind/role that is supported by their Patron ‘God’ from their ‘Pantheons’ ( for ease of running in Scion ).