The Long Road to Heaven - A Scion RP

...*ahem* We already have a Aesir Scion.

I'm not that partial to Heimdall. Just need a god that combines the Endurance virtue with the Protection domain.

edited 11th Mar '14 5:25:17 PM by StygianEmperor

Protection Domain? Pretty sure Moradin fits.

I think our Amatsukami Scion's one of the MIAs, and they have Endurance.

Hachiman then? Never actually heard of him before, but he seems to fit the bill. I like Lord Raiden, but a scion of his should have lightning bolts. Soulbreaker isn't elemental.

edited 11th Mar '14 5:04:42 PM by StygianEmperor

I'm not sure Hachiman would approve of someone who "breaks souls" for a living. Guy is big on honor, respect and the like. He's the patron god of the Samurai and other things.

Hachiman is also explicitly stated to ignore his aggressive and difficult children.

edited 11th Mar '14 5:08:19 PM by 3of4

"Soulbreaking" refers to intimidation; breaking the enemy's spirit. And it's not like Hachiman was in Soulbreaker's life to tell him what not to make of himself.

Yes, but if he does not approve of it why should he do a visitation?

And breaking an enemies spirit is not exactly bushido-approved.

Hachiman

edited 11th Mar '14 5:10:40 PM by 3of4

Like his bio mentions, he doesn't do that anymore, and he didn't like doing it. He has the skills, but his life is dedicated now to protection.

Still, the guy does not seem like Hachiman material. Hachiman wants leaders.

My char in another Scion game is a Hachiman kid so I may be biased.

edited 11th Mar '14 5:14:53 PM by 3of4

I understand if it's personal.
...Lord Raiden then? He's a pretty stand-up guy, but I've seen him get pretty brutal, too. I hate to disgrace him with a rather mundane combat style, but he seems to be my last option if there's actually a rule against duplicate pantheons.

edited 11th Mar '14 5:18:46 PM by StygianEmperor

Maybe wait for math's verdict.

I honestly don't see why it's a big deal at all to have more than one child per pantheon. If Heimdall fits the idea better, what's the harm in letting him have Heimdall?

I think 3's just being territorial.

Maybe :P but math originally said 1 per pantheon, unless he changed his mind and not told anyone...^^

I suggested one per pantheon because it makes the whole thing a bit more symmetrical with how the plot plays out in the book.

But considering I added the Tuatha de Danaan, that plan's sort of hopped off the window. Though I will say that it's easier for me to create plot hooks if more pantheons are involved, and I feel like my Aesir-fanboying has already gotten a bit too out of hand.

As for the character itself, it's maybe a bit too over the top. Scions - at least Scions who haven't yet crossed into demigod territory - are still fundamentally human. Using the examples from the core rulebook, the six pre-built characters are, respectively, a New Orleans undertaker, an ex-cop, a college football player, a photographer, a rich kid with issues, and a doctor. They sort of...fit into the world without being exaggerated heroes, and that's part of the appeal.

Also, I recommend digging into which god you want as a parent rather than which purviews. The parentage of a Scion has enormous effect on them as a person. Try and find a god and mold a character around that rather than making a character and then finding a fitting god.

So overall, maybe tone the character down a little bit. I guess the best analogy is from Spider-Man to Luke Cage.

edited 12th Mar '14 3:08:07 AM by math792d

I know I'm in the wrong here. I was definitely taking a character I've used before and forcing him into Scion, which is why I chose a god I don't care too much about - rather than starting with a cool one and building a character around him. With the way the gods are presented in the material though, I gotta say, even the ones that I really like and would otherwise capture my imagination are rendered pretty lame. (Odin is reduced to a telephone repairman, a CEO of AT&T at best, rather than an ass-kicking berserker-mage atop an eight-legged horse. Ra is just... an antiques dealer... rather than the awesome bird-headed judgmental jerkass-king of the sun doing battle with a serpent-devil every night.)

I think I may just be incompatible with the setting.

edited 12th Mar '14 2:15:14 PM by StygianEmperor

Yes, Odin is an ass-kicking berserker-mage atop an eight-legged horse. He's not going to be openly going out into the mortal world as an ass-kicking berserker-mage atop an eight-legged horse, though, because an ass-kicking berserker-mage riding an eight-legged horse down main street tends to attract the kind of attention that will very quickly break the masquerade and render the setting unrecognizable as our modern world. (The in-story reason is that displaying your full divine power in front of mortals "fatebinds" you to them, which makes it difficult-to-impossible to against their expectations depending on the strength of the binding. The gods do not want their choices determined by whoever happens to be watching.) So when they go into the world, they take mortal guises (like, you know, Odin and some others were wont to do in the myths) so they can actually get anything done. Odin is still Odin, with his full power and glory, he just sometimes finds it convenient to have people in the mortal world think he's V. A. K. Wednesday, telephone repairman.

...That's...sort of the point. Much like in American Gods (which provided some source explanations,) it's about how the gods would operate in modern life. They're still powerful, larger-than-life figures, but they don't interfere in the daily dealings with mortals directly (outside of fostering Scions) because of the interference of Fate and the very risk of binding the entire mortal world up to the uncertain fate of the gods. The gods, in that sense, come to represent the means by which their values are reflected in modern life.

And considering how much Odin had to do with communication, traveling, wisdom and knowledge in the sagas, it's actually quite plausible for him to be a telephone repair man

And being a corporate leader actually makes a lot of sense - in pre-Christian Norse society, the social hierarchy more closely resembled an oligarchy than a true monarchy - many positions of nobility were earned by merit, not by inheritance (what you could also call an elective monarchy.) If a leader was seen as weak, or ineffectual, they could be replaced.

Also, a lot of the power of Scion doesn't come from the gods invoking their traditional images, it comes from them still -being- gods; reflections of the virtues and vices of their respective cultures, larger-than-life, massively flawed figures with the power to shape the world at their fingertips. The image of Odin that's the most intimidating isn't the hammy berserker-warrior on his eight-legged horse; it's the man who knocks on your door at the dead of night and asks to come inside, has a pleasant conversation with you and then walks out, smiling all the way while a raven circles overhead. He is as much wanderer and sage as he is a god of war.

edited 12th Mar '14 1:10:46 PM by math792d

Yeah, I see the logic of it. It's just not as much fun for me as settings like Xena, AoM, Titan Quest (no gods actually appear, I realize, but they're accepted to exist.), even Mortal Kombat to some extent.

I'm just in the wrong place. I'll be out of your hair.

edited 12th Mar '14 2:29:45 PM by StygianEmperor

I'll have to withdrawal, due to schedule stuff happening and there already being about fifty times the OOC drama a decent RP needs before it's even started.

Name: Brandon Marshal

Pantheon: The Dodecahedron

Divine Parent: Ares

Calling: Investigator

Appearance: Brandon is tall, with very broad shoulders and a powerful build. He’s got short-cropped, black hair that’s nearly always uncombed, a near-perpetual scowl, dark, inquisitive eyes with a slow-burning anger behind them. His jaw is usually unshaven, covered with a perpetual two-day stubble. He wears a dirty, worn double-breasted overcoat over a white-collared shirt without a tie, leaving the top button undone, alongside slacks or blue-jeans and laced-up boots. He tends to appear worn and haggard, dark shadows under his eyes.

Personality: Brandon is taciturn, and generally serious, though he has a dry, understated sense of humor. He has a strong sense of justice-one that borders on almost single-minded, preferring to punish the wicked than save the innocent. He’s awkward around children and people he can’t bully, question, or share a beer with. When he moves, it’s with careful restraint, as though concerned he’ll accidentally hurt someone. He’s got a inflexive moral code, and tends to distrust authority or upper-classes, having an almost pathological need to help the downtrodden.

Nature: Gallant.

Background and Visitation:

Brandon grew up in a lower-middle class family in inner-city Boston, heir to a long legacy of policemen, the youngest of three children. His mother’s husband died before he was born, with two children, a lifetime of police service, and a death in a line of duty to his name. A year or so later, Brandon was born. Just a little too late to be his fathers. His mother never cared to give a name for his biological father, and Brandon never asked or blamed him. In his mind, her late husband-his sibling’s father-was his real father. He was never the most sociable of children-quiet, stoic, introspective and perceptive. The neighborhood he lived in growing up was a rough one. He didn’t have many friends for much of his youth. At first, he was teased and bullied, then, as he got older, stronger, prone to bouts of violent rage, feared. He made decent marks in high-school, never a stand-out, and used sports to channel his aggression into socially acceptable means. That still didn’t preclude the fights, but they tended to stop after someone got a broken bone. By the end of high-school, he was a pariah-never mocked or scorned, but feared. Through some miracle, he managed to avoid police attention, and when he graduated, he went directly to the academy.

He was a rising star in the force, when, during a domestic abuse case, lost his temper with a suspect and put the man in the hospital. This cost them the case, and sparked a downward spiral of stress and temper issues that resulted in his quiet “resignation.” The night after his resignation, he was drinking himself into a stupor in a dive bar, when a grizzled looking man in worn military khakis walked in, and pulled up a chair next to him, and they started knocking down shots together. He barely remembers much after that point-by then, he was near black-out drunk, but he remembers a few things clearly. The drinks turned into a crawl through the slums. Fights were had. Then, at the end, the man turned over, and casually said he was his father. The real one.

Brandon punched him in the face.

The man broke a bar stool over his head.

By the end of the fight, the bar was a wreck, the police had been called, Brandon had four broken bones, two missing teeth, a broken nose, and a blood-alcohol content five times over the legal limit for driving. He doesn’t remember the stranger getting all that banged up, but the man didn’t walk away clean. A black eye was definitely involved.

The man also turned out to have been a god. Ares, to be precise. When Brandon was lying outside the bar in the rain, his face a mass of bruises, knuckles broken and bloody, the man had knelt over him, grinning a grin full of bloody lips, and missing teeth. It looked...natural on him. Raw. Primal. Powerful. The man carried himself like a king, or a warlord of some Junta. Perhaps the despot of a military nation-state. Then, he started to explain things. Apparently, the god in question had disguised himself as his father two months after the man’s death, sneaking into his mother’s house late at night and...consoling the widow. She could have dismissed it as a dream if not for the child that had resulted nine-months later. Little surprise she had never spoken of the circumstances of his birth.

After that, he remembered two things. The man pressing a set of dog tags into his hand, stamped with a aegis and spear, and grinning a smile full of blood and laughter.

“Make me proud, son.”

Brandon spat blood into his face.

Then it all went black.

Now Brandon’s in Vegas, playing private detective, and occasionally vigilante. He hasn’t heard from Ares, and doesn’t want to. He’d dismiss the whole thing as a drunken hallucination if not for the fact that the tags let him do some pretty strange shit. His mother’s disappointed in him, and he hasn’t mustered the courage to bring any of it up with her, or anyone else, for that matter.

Life as the kid of a God’s grand, ain’t it?

Attributes: (In order of importance.) Strength, Stamina, Perception, Dexterity, Charisma.

Skills: Brawl, Athletics, Fortitude, Integrity, Investigation (All good). Presence, Empathy, Awareness, Stealth, Larceny. (Decent/Average.)

Birthright: A Set of Dog Tags that let him use his purviews.

Purviews: War, Arete.

Epic Attribute/s: Strength, Stamina, Wits.

Prominent Virtue: Vengeance.

Equipment: Khaki trench coat, Smartphone, 1987 Oldsmobile (which is held together with duct-tape and prayers), Detective Badge, Dogs Tags, Lighter, Pack of Cigarettes, Wallet with several credit cards and a bit of cash, aviator sunglasses. Lockpick set, crowbar, and “slim jim” (slightly less than legal). Camera with telescopic lense. Talcum powder/print-dusting set. Portable Blacklight.

edited 22nd Mar '14 9:59:14 AM by DrTentacles

Note, I'm not entirely happy with the Dog-Tags as his birthright, but I can't think of anything else suitable. Perhaps his detective badge. If you have any ideas, toss 'em my way. I can also move his new city to Vegas if that makes the plot easier.

edited 21st Mar '14 5:18:17 PM by DrTentacles

Well, a badge seems more like something someone with the Guardian purview would have. Servants of the public trust and all that.

Approved otherwise, but making him from Vegas would be slightly easier on me. I'll write you into the current post.

edited 22nd Mar '14 1:36:53 AM by math792d

I nominate this as his Theme Song.

Still got room for anymore latecomers? Or am I too late?

edited 10th May '14 8:21:09 PM by Sir.Orc