The Long Road to Heaven - A Scion RP

• Name: Anamaria Rodrigues

• Pantheon: Atzlanti

• Divine Parent: Tlaloc

• Calling: Adventurer

• Appearance: Twenty-five years old, Anamaria is a fit and athletic woman, with the slender build of a runner. She has fairly light skin and dark black hair and eyes, and is almost always covered with scrapes, bruises and rubbed dirt and mud from her aggressive and literal approach to the ‘off the beaten trail’ mindset. With sharp cheekbones and slightly crooked nose from a badly set break in the middle of the jungle several years ago, she’s not conventionally beautiful. She wears durable trail gear that’s easy to move around in, mostly khaki shorts with lots of pockets and a well-scuffed olive button-up shirt over a dark tank top. Her hair is tied with a simple leather thong that has a bright blue heron feather attached to it, and she wears an old, greenish rope tied around her left wrist.

• Personality: Anamaria is inquisitive above all else, and she maintains an energy and passion for exploration and discovery that’s almost childish at times. She’s the sort to explore every twist and turn of a natural path through a copse of trees, check every overhang for evidence of hidden caves, and crest hills just to see what’s on the other side. She doesn’t get run down easily, and tries to stay positive in even the direst situations. The negative side of her drive and energy is that she can leave people behind figuratively or literally, too focused on the next discovery to make sure that her comrades are up to speed, and her optimism can sometimes take precedence over what’s realistic. Sometimes things work out, but not always, and she usually finds herself at a loss when things resolve for the definitive worse.

• Nature: Explorer

• Background and Visitation: Anamaria was born in Houston to {}, a professor of Archaeology at the University of Houston. Raised by her mother and her mother’s husband, an American linguist she believed to be her father, Anamaria was exposed to tales of ancient civilizations, travel, and exploration from a very young age. Despite her parents’ gentle disapproval, her favorite movies growing up were the Indiana Jones series, and when she was older, she got to spend time going out to Aztec and Maya sites in Central America, especially Tenochtitlan. She found a lot to enjoy exploring, even in sites that had already been well-documented, and often dreamed of making her own big find.

After getting her degree in archaeology from the National School of Anthropology and History in Mexico City, Anamaria found a job giving tours to the Aztec sites she’d visited as a child, though her free time was usually spent exploring in the jungle. It was during one such exploration, deep within an uncharted cave, that she finally learned her destiny. When the cave began to collapse around her, she found herself miraculously unharmed… and standing nearby, a fellow explorer lit up a lantern. He introduced himself as Tlaloc – not only a god, but her real father. Giving her very little information except that she was to go to Las Vegas and find a certain diner, and to go armed, Tlaloc showed her the way out of the cave, and when she turned to thank him, he was gone.

• Attributes: Anamaria favors Stamina, Dexterity and Perception, with secondary focus on Wits and Strength.

• Skills: Anamaria is a skilled outdoorswoman and survivalist, especially in jungle climates similar to those of central Mexico, and she has a strong predilection for spelunking and exploring ruins, as she doesn’t get claustrophobic or lost easily. She can read Aztec and Mayan script and is fluent in Mexican Spanish and English, and passably conversant in Nahuatl. She’s also a strong climber and swimmer, and carries a pistol and telescope baton to protect herself while out on expeditions.

• Birthright: Tlaloc granted his daughter two birthrights after their meeting – he blessed the large heron feather in her hair tie to protect her with the power of the Earth, and granted her a rope used to bind a sacrificial drowning victim, allowing her to channel Water.

• Purviews: Earth (hair tie), Water (rope bracelet)

• Epic Attributes: Epic Stamina, Epic Perception

• Prominent Virtue: Courage

• Equipment: Anamaria wears fairly simple, light clothing – khaki shorts, an olive-green button-down shirt she wears to protect from the sun, and a dark tank top, as well as comfortable socks and sturdy hiking boots. Upon arriving in Houston, she borrowed a number of camping and survival items from her parents – mostly a sleeping bag, a small propane camp stove, and a tent – and bought a small, used truck and a 9mm pistol in preparation for her trip to Las Vegas. She keeps several changes of clothes, some bottled water and dry food in the truck. She owns a sturdy, high-quality backpack full of necessities for the outdoors, including a shatterproof plastic bottle, water filter, utility knife, twenty feet of rope, matches, and survival flares, and keeps two extra clips for her pistol in a side pocket as well.

Ooh, I like that idea. Approved.

Sorry, but I think we might have an oversaturation of combat characters at present, so I'd rather broaden the spectrum a little.

Incidentally, I realise that I forgot an optional rule: Fatebound characters. If any of you want to have a Fatebound character following you at the beginning, just type in a name, a real-world occupation, Fatebound role, and how the two of you met.

edited 28th Nov '13 11:24:37 PM by math792d

So we've got our players. Running over some basic stuff:

If any of you are unaware of what powers your purviews give you access to, I can give you a general hint in a PM. If enough people have this problem I'll just throw up a list here in the thread. Choosing a Purview gives you access to every power in that purview, however, please be mindful.

This is the final thing we have to do before the game proper can get started. That, and the above 'fatebound character' thing, but that's optional.

edited 29th Nov '13 8:56:37 AM by math792d

Awesome, thanks. Glad to be here.

^Clearly, I must become The Flood in my first post.

When I say 'all powers' I mean 'all Hero-level powers.'

In all seriousness, I'm not sure where the cutoff for Hero-level begins (though I'm not seriously suggesting the Avatar powers); I don't have any experience with Scion, so guidelines would be helpful.

edited 29th Nov '13 9:28:29 AM by RedSavant

Ah, alright. Well, I'll just walk you through the powers available to someone with your purviews:

Earth:

SAFELY INTERRED Whether the character is caught up in a landslide, buried in a shallow grave by the roadside or trapped in the rubble of a collapsing building, he need not fear the earth’s embrace as long as he has his Earth Birthright. No amount of collapsing rubble can break the Scion’s bones (or the Birthright itself), and he won’t suffocate no matter how much dirt piles onto him. If he lacks the strength to free himself, however, he does run the risk of either starving to death or dying of thirst if no one digs him out. Yet, it would not be the earth that kills him, but his own lack of fortitude.

ECHO SOUNDING By stomping or otherwise knocking on the earth, the Scion gets a sense of its general composition and density, as well as finding holes or caves beneath the surface. If he’s looking for something specific in the earth—such as gold, oil or a human body—this Boon reveals its distance from him and depth from the epicenter at the expense of the other information. The Boon works only at ground level or on the up-thrust surface of a mountainside, but it works through floors and pavement.

SHAPING The Scion can sculpt stone, concrete, fired clay or metal with his bare hands. When he spends the point of Legend, the substance becomes malleable like wet clay for as long as he touches it. The Scion can shape it into any form his nimble fingers can produce. The Scion can affect up to one cubic foot of material at a time. Once he breaks contact with the substance he is shaping, it loses all malleability and sets in its new form.

Water:

WATER BREATHING: Self-explanatory.

WATER CONTROL:

Again, fairly self-explanatory, though the amount of water you can control with this is fairly limited. Any water that directly touches your character or an object can be manipulated. I might extend this to just control over water in general and leave the 'amount' up to you though, because some of these powers are a little weak otherwise.

CHANGING STATES:

The ability to change water from one state to another, basically telling the laws of thermodynamics to go cry in a corner. This can also be used to make water into steam or ice projectiles.

Aww no moon apartment :P

Do know what my powers would be. Though perhaps may I add a waterskin with the Health purview? Or some other? It did strike me as a bit odd that Artemis is described in the books as the Goddess most comfortable in changing her form or shape and yet she has no purview linked to that.

Not so much her form or shape as her nature and approach to meeting different people. Reinventing her image, not necessarily her physical form, if that makes sense.

And if you can find a suitable justification for having a purview not associated with your parent deity, I'm all ears.

A few of the Gods seem to be lacking domains that would make sense, actually. Like I said, I'd have expected a God of travel and exploration to have Psychopomp, but it seems he doesn't.

I think the reason was to keep the gods from having too broad a selection of purviews and thus make some gods redundant.

Yeah, that makes sense too.

It's also why some pantheons lack a purview. For example, no Aesir has the Earth purview.

Aww, is there still time for me to make a signup? Family stuff with Thanksgiving has been horribly hectic.

Six players was what I was originally aiming for. What kind of Scion did you have in mind?

A daughter of Serqet, I think.

A Picture of Nellig, Addie's Raven Guide.◊

;P

We're about full on that particular character permutation, sorry

Well, darn. Any permutations you aren't full of, bychance?

The only thing I can think of that's really missing is some kind of party 'face.' A social character of some kind.

Mm, well, I don't really like playing that sort of character, so I guess I won't be playing. Ah well.

Fair enough. Sorry there wasn't really a place. Maybe next time?

edited 29th Nov '13 11:55:58 AM by math792d

Darn. I was hoping to use the Flood and the Storm at the same time to destroy Western Imperialism.

Hmmm then I may be adding the Healing Purview and an artifact for it to Samantha's sheet. Is that alright?

Again, give me an in-story justification for her having a 'foreign' purview, and I'm all ears