Avatar: The Godhead
Contents
In The Beginning
The Primordials
From Pantheon to Pantheon the story of creation varies greatly. Yet all share a common belief that at the beginning, Something stirred the universe into motion. What that something was remains a topic of hot debate between divine entities within each Pantheon. Wars have even started between the Pantheons over this subject and all now generally agree to disagree with the goal of avoiding pointless violence.
One thing all the Pantheons can agree on is the existence of primordial deities, like: Chaos, Darkness, Day, Earth, Light, Night, Sea, Sky, and the Underworld. Other potential primordial deities include: Fate (one or more), Life and Death, Time (or Eternity) and Love (or Misery). A few of the Pantheons include negative aspects of the previously mentioned primordial deities and can include personifications, animals or stranger things.
Creation: The First Age
At some point, after the the awakening of the Primordials, they procreated with one another and gave birth to the Elder Gods and the world as we know it. These amazing beings had few if any limitations and many represented unrestrained elemental forces. Some were intelligent after a fashion, but many were thoughtless entities who were ruled by their passions. During the first age, the Primordials and their children shaped creation to suit themselves, giving birth to the stars, separating landmasses from the sea, creating mountain ranges and giving birth to the origins of all life. Their battles and lovemaking created the world and universe as we know it now.
The Second Age
After unrecorded ages, the Elder Gods rebelled against their Primordial parents. From Pantheon to Pantheon the reasons for this the first War of the Gods vary and likely the true story may never be told, if indeed those who were present during the conflict and survived it, still remember. From the remnants that have come down to us through ages uncounted, the Elder Gods felt mistreated and or grew jealous of their progenitor's power and authority. The war was long and epic, but the Elder Gods ultimately won with the aid of a few turncoat Primordials. The fate of every Primordial remains a mystery, but the greater host were banished to a distant realm of suffering and imprisonment. This first true war did have casualties, and revealed to the Gods for the first time that they too could die at each other's hands or to divinely forged weapons. This sad truth led to a complete end to the hostilities and all the divine weapons were destroyed or hidden away leading to a golden age of peace and prosperity.
The Third (Silver) Age
The Elder Gods took dominion of the universe for themselves and partitioned the governance of the varying layers of reality between the strongest of them. Those original Dominions went to the leaders of the newly established Pantheons and lesser Dominions were handed out to each of the surviving deities as spoils of war. Of course the leaders of each Pantheon had their favorites and cronyism and nepotism were rampant, but the Elder Gods knew no better and in the celebratory mood which followed their victory they cared little. The leaders among the gods did not notice the disparity as they received the lion's share of the spoils and for an age all the gods were agreeable.
After the First War the various Pantheons drifted apart and most lost contact with each other. The third age was a silver age in that the Elder Gods perfected their parent's crude Dominions into lesser Powers that could be taught and traded. It was during this time that each Pantheon established for itself earthly abodes in places of of power that were often remote and difficult to reach. These Sanctuaries served as both communal gathering places and refuges against those few threats the early Pantheons would acknowledge.
With the fate of the universe settled and the First War over, the Elder Gods found room for love and relationships and in time to the birth of a third generation of Golden Gods. It was also during this age that humanity rose above the animal kingdom, but this event largely went unnoticed by the Elder Gods as they drew the fuel for their Dominions directly from the cosmic ether. During this time, mankind and the deities interacted infrequently, but mankind's need to imitate the divine and to worship the gods created a foundation for a later relationship.
The Second War of the Gods
The twilight of the Third Age began with the birth of a third generation of gods, the Golden Gods. These callow youths knew nothing of want or suffering and the world was their playground. Learning at the knees of the Elder Gods their parents, they were born to the Dominions and Powers and possessed a skill with them that surpassed their progenitors. Initially this created delight in the Elder Gods, but as time passed fear and resentment began to manifest.
Indeed the Golden Gods were not only virtuoso with the Dominions and their Powers, but they also found Humanity fascinating in a way the Elder Gods could not. Initially, the youthful gods just watched mankind, but in their playfulness and curiosity they began to interact directly with humanity who idolized them and offered them Worship and Sacrifice. During this time the Elder Gods began to bicker among themselves as families are wont to do. Their grievances ranged from genuine to the imagined and long festering resentments over the apportionment following the First War created deep divisions among them that could not easily be resolved.
What specifically began the Second War remains a mystery, some say it was triggered by a murder carried out with ancient divine weapons or that the hubris of the Elder Gods created Strife between the generations, or that someone within the Pantheons betrayed the Elder Gods by teaching the golden generation secrets that should have remained secret. In all likelihood, all of these things created an explosive situation that the gods failed to resolve in time. One theory above all others reappears in motifs across the bounds of all pantheons, that towards the end of the Third Age the Golden Gods were cut off from the quintessential divine fuel or Aether used by the Elder Gods and in their weakness they turned to the Worship and Sacrfice of mankind to fuel their divine Dominions.
What we know for certain is that one or more of the Golden Gods turned to the imprisoned Primordials for aid and released them in a bid to usurp their parent's place within the pantheons. Once released, the Primordials unleashed havoc on this this and all other worlds. A few of the more thoughtful Primordials sided with each of the younger generations of gods creating a three way struggle for the universe. The earth was laid waste and mankind in their hour of need prayed and offered up massive sacrifices to the Golden Gods granting them the fuel the youngest generation needed to battle their elders, but it also revealed to that their relationship with mankind was a symbiotic one. If the ravages of the Primordials were to extinguish humanity, it would also doom the younger deities to irrelevance or possibly oblivion.
Imperiled by this unwanted knowledge, the Golden Gods husbanded their followers, selected able leaders, struck alliances with key Primordials, unearthed ancient Divine Weapons, and banded together for an age to bring the cataclysmic Second War to a conclusive end. Once the war was over, the majority of the Primordials and the Elder Gods were again imprisoned, this time together and a handful of the loyal Primordials were made their jailers or allowed to wander free with the caveat that the Golden Gods were now the rulers of the universe. This situation did not suit everyone, but all those who dissented were likewise banished to the realm of imprisonment.
The new regime likewise partitioned control of the universe in similar fashion to their progenitors and reorganized their respective pantheons as they saw fit. With the advent of peace, the Golden Gods returned to their games and contests, entertaining themselves with their mortal followers and for the first time, begetting upon their mortal lovers semi-divine children, half human and half deity, the demigods were born.
The Fourth (Golden) Age
Like the gods that gave birth to it, the fourth age was a golden one. The gods and mankind freely intermingled and it was a time of great and terrible deeds. As a result of the Second War, the golden generation created new Dominions and Powers that they perfected in the fourth age. The fourth age saw the birth of organized religion and with the growth of mankind, its spread across the world. The Golden Gods looked upon this and were pleased.
During this time, the gods initiated many relationships with their mortal followers spawning a new kind of deity, the demigods. The demigods represented the golden generation's love for humanity and these half-breeds often acted as intermediaries between the divine pantheons and their mortal followers. Sadly the demigods were a symptom of a time when mortals were the playthings of the gods, who often took them as lovers willingly or no. Rape and incest were quite common among the golden generation in the fourth age and this unbridled passion often mirrored the Primordials in its destructiveness.
The fourth age also saw the gods moving among mankind and teaching them mundane versions of the Dominions and their Powers. Some of the gods did this more directly, like the gods of magic, while others helped mankind perfect their own arts and crafts. Mortals became surrogate children to the gods, loved, but not dangerous enough to be feared, humanity became pets to the golden generation. Likewise the the demigods became a safe alternative to more divine children, loyal and loving, but not powerful enough to threaten the established order, the demigods became the preference for gods who wanted progeny.
The presence of gods on earth, made the fourth age one of miracles, but also one of divine atrocities. Humanity's need to worship the divine would inevitably lead to mortal competitiveness and human hubris, pride would come before the fall. Great mortals and sometimes demigods would struggle and brag of their prowess in all the arts and crafts, quickly followed by divine retribution. It was an age of wonders and great terrors as the gods sought to ever increase their follower's numbers, first through miracles and then by intrigue, and followed by war. The proxy wars of mankind allowed the golden generation to compete with each other without the need for divine conflict, allowing mankind to pay the bloodly price instead.
It was also an age of divine justice when the gods acted upon the prayers of mortals who sought everything from justice, love, vengeance or wealth. And the gods found common cause with humanity against one another as well which often lead to more strife, suffering and warfare. Still, mankind perfected the science of religion and gave back to their gods a thousand fold, allowing the golden generation to create miracles that would inspire Legends.
The Heroic Age
The Age of Heroes was one of magnificent deeds, it saw the god's slow withdrawal from the world to replace direct divine intervention with influence peddling and indirect manipulations through dreams, omens, prophecies and revelations. Epic quests led demigods and heroic mortals to seek out unimaginable danger in the hope of fame, power or wealth, but what they created for themselves and those who would come after were legends. The birth of Legend created something new in the world or perhaps something just previously unseen by the gods, demigods who could ascend to true godhood and mortal heroes whose legendary spawned cults of their own and elevated them to the position of demigod.
Lengthy recitations, mostly genealogical poetry, created cycles of stories which followed the deeds of heroes and their relationships to one another and then extending to the relationships of heroic families. Epic sagas created a chain of divinity from the golden generation through demigods to the heroes of the age. The birth of hero cults both weakened and strengthened the gods by turns as they found themselves bound hand in hand with heroes in daily prays, oaths and during sacrifices. This revolution happened quite slowly at first and went unnoticed initially and once discovered, it could not be undone.
As the trend in gods creating demigods to be their progeny or to act as divine emissaries increased, the number of true new gods being born declined to nothing, seemingly overnight mortals began to deify their heroes and new heroes had a way of being raised up from the endless army of the dead. The fourth age gave birth to something else as well, monsters, the results of divine atrocities committed by the gods on individual mortals or entire races spawned obscene or profane creatures whose existence was curse to both themselves and the human settlements closest to their lairs. Demigods and heroes could gain legendary status if they could rid the people of these horrors and sometimes in the process they managed to offend one deity while amusing or pleasing another god. Each deed created a new legend which fed the cycle of myths which were no longer specifically about the gods and sometimes occurred despite their preferences.
The greatest demigods or heroes created powerful family lines which came to dominate the next age, blending legends with and inspiring new deeds both great and terrible to become history.
The Age of Empires
The current age of is one of empires.
So You Want to be a God?
"Being a god is being able to recognize within one’s self these things that are important, and then to strike the single note that brings them into alignment with everything else that exists. Then, beyond morals or logic or esthetics, one is wind or fire, the sea, the mountains, rain, the sun or the stars, the flight of an arrow, the end of a day, the clasp of love. One rules through one’s ruling passions. Those who look upon gods then say, without even knowing their names, ‘He is Fire. She is Dance. He is Destruction. She is Love.’ [...] they do not call themselves gods. Everyone else does, though, everyone who beholds them." — Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
Lexicon
- ATTRIBUTES: Attributes are a group of permanent traits that govern mental, physical and social interactions or challenges.
- DIVINE ATTRIBUTES: Divine attributes are a group of nine permanent traits that mirror standard attributes, but they are supernatural in character and are considered Dominions.
- DOMINIONS:
- PROVINCES:
- REVERIE: The sleep of the gods is not like that of man. In Reverie, gods commune with their disciples and receive prayers and sacrifices.
Character Creation
Innate Powers of Divinity
- Beatific Reward: The bestowal of divine powers upon mortal followers as a gift or in return for faithful service.
- Benefit of Xenoglossy: Is the divine phenomenon in which a person is able to speak or write a language he or she could not have acquired by natural means.
- Celestial Awareness: A sixth sense and divine ability to detect supernatural beings and forces at work in the nearby area.
- Divine Immortality: All Avatars are immortal and un-aging, while their physical form can be destroyed, they cannot truly die unless slain by another divine being.
- Imbue Divine Progeny: All Avatars can create divine progeny by mating with a mortal or another Avatar.
- Immunity to Possession: As divine beings, Avatars are immune to acts of possession and mind control, which is not to say their minds cannot be influenced.
- Orison Ken: All Avatars can hear pleas or prays offered to them, they can even detect when their names are spoken even in casual conversation regardless of distance.
- Otherworldly Communication: Avatars can answer prayers or pleas directly with spoken words or visions, or indirectly with portents and signs.
- Resistance to Lethal Damage: Avatars can soak lethal damage with Stamina alone, but need ENDURANCE to resist aggravated damage and even this divine attribute offers no protection against each divine entities' anathema.
- Superior Healing: While Avatars do not have regeneration per se, they do heal far faster than mere mortals.
Backgrounds
- Allies --
- Boons --
- Birthrights --
- Companions --
- Contacts --
- Cult --
- Influence --
- Legendry --
- Military --
- Progenitor --
- Provinces --
- Resources --
- Retainers --
- Status --
- [[]] --
- [[]] --
Divine Virtues
- Divine Conviction
- Courage
- Endurance
- Duty
- Divine Expression
- Harmony
- Intellect
- Loyalty
- Order
- Piety
- Valor
- Vengeance
DOMINIONS
Introduction
The term dominion means the power or right of governing and controlling; sovereign authority. But with respect to deities, the term dominion comes to mean something similar, but different. Here dominion refers to sovereign authority over a given aspect of reality, such aspects cover a wide variety of material phenomena such as: animals, plants, rocks, geographic features such as mountains or rivers or other entities of the natural environment, including thunder, wind and shadows. The deity's divine authority allows him or her to command these diverse phenomena through their spiritual element and each deity's dominion over their chosen phenomena grants them nearly uncontested control of those phenomena.
Classifications
There are three classifications of dominions: common, pantheon, and sacerdotal. Common dominions are available to all deities regardless of their pantheon, sacred band or parentage, provided they are not anathema to the deity or violate that deity's taboo. Pantheon specific dominions are only available to deities who belong to a specific pantheon and cannot be taught to another deity outside the pantheon. Sacerdotal dominions are very specialized dominions that govern the more mysterious powers of the universe like: fate, magic, prophesy and sacrifice. Most deities with sacerdotal dominions are perceived as having a greater power over their progeny, sacred band or pantheon and as such, they are usually loath to teach these secret dominions to other deities regardless of their relationship.
Character Creation
At the point of character creation, players may take up to three Dominions, one gained from their Divine Progenitor, one gained from their Pantheon and one jointly learned in tandem with their Sacred Band. Those Dominions taken by the Sacred Band must be agreed upon by the group of players before hand.
Powers
Each dominion is further broken down into classifications of potency known as the lesser dominions and the greater dominions. Lesser dominions are available to demi-gods and lesser deities, while the greater dominions are only available to full-fledged gods. Within each delineation of the lesser or greater dominions, individual acts of dominion are called powers. For example, the first power within the Lesser Dominion of Beasts is Beast Speech which allows the deity in question to converse with most animals. Both lesser and greater dominions are broken down into five powers ascending from weakest to strongest, so the fifth and strongest power of a given lesser dominion would be slightly weaker than the first and weakest power of the greater dominion. Despite this arrangement, there is a considerable jump in potency between the lesser and greater dominions.
COMMON DOMINIONS
| Common Dominions |
| ALLURE |
| APPREHENSION |
| ARTISTRY |
| BEASTS |
| CHANCE |
| CHAOS |
| CORUSCATION |
| DARKNESS * |
| DEATH * |
| DECEPTION |
| EARTH |
| ENDURANCE |
| FERTILITY |
| FINESSE |
| FIRE * |
| FORGE * |
| FROST |
| GENIUS |
| GRACE |
| GUARDIANSHIP |
| HEALING * |
| JOURNEYS |
| JUSTICE |
| MIGHT |
| MOON |
| ORDER |
| PASSION |
| PROSPERITY * |
| REVELATION |
| SKY * |
| SLEEP * |
| STARS |
| SUPREMACY |
| SUN |
| WAR * |
| WATER |
| WILD |
UNCOMMON DOMINIONS
| Uncommon Dominions |
| LONGEVITY |
| WINE |
Dominions by Pantheon
| Dominions of the Aesir -- The Norse Gods |
| BLOD AF JOTUNNUM -- Secrets of the Aesir * |
| Dominions of the Dodekatheon -- The Olympian Gods |
| EPIKRATISI -- Mysteries of the Dodekatheon * |
Dominions Sacerdotal
| FATE -- The powers of the Dominion of Fate, read and or alter the destiny of the individual upon which they are targeted. |
| MAGIC -- The Dominion of Magic is something of a catchall for a wide variety of powers that take the form of spell which aid their caster or injure their caster's target. |
| PROPHESY -- The powers of the Dominion of Prophesy are similar to the Dominion of Fate, but differ in that they predict what will happen, not what could happen. |
| SACRIFICE -- The Dominion of Sacrifice is a particularly unpleasant collection of powers that require the user to give up something or someone he cares about in return for power. |
Errata
EXPERIENCE
| Trait Increase | Cost |
|---|---|
| ABILITY | rating x 2 |
| ABILITY favored by divine Progenitor | (rating x 2) – 1 |
| ATTRIBUTE | rating x 4 |
| DIVINE ATTRIBUTE (associated with divine Progenitor) | rating x 5 |
| DIVINE ATTRIBUTE (not associated with divine Progenitor) | rating x 7 |
| DIVINITY | rating x 10 |
| DOMINION (General) | rating x 7 |
| DOMINIONS (Pantheon Specific) | rating x 6 |
| DOMINIONS (Pantheon Specific & Associated with divine Progenitor) | rating x 5 |
| DOMINIONS SACERDOTAL (associated with divine Progenitor) | rating x 8 |
| DOMINIONS SACERDOTAL (not associated with divine Progenitor) | rating x 9 |
| MOMENTUM (Momentum can never be rated higher than Divinity) | rating X 10 |
| New Trait | Cost |
| Ability | 3 |
| -- | -- |
| -- | -- |
| -- | -- |
| -- | -- |
| -- | -- |
| -- | -- |
| -- | -- |
| -- | -- |
| -- | -- |
| -- | -- |
TABLES & CHARTS
COMBAT
ACTIONS
TAKING AIM
When she really needs to hit Achilles’ heel, or when she just has the leisure, your character can try to take aim. The player declares a target, which his character must be able to see. For each round spent aiming, the player adds one die to the attack his character unleashes upon that target, to a maximum of three. This bonus applies to only the next attack on the declared target, not on more than one roll or on any other target.
SITUATIONS
BEING PRONE
Characters can be knocked prone after an attack, fall prone in slippery circumstances or intentionally hit the deck. Being prone does the following: A prone character cannot take Move or Dash actions until she spends an action to rise . Prone characters gain a one die bonus (+1) against ranged attacks and explosives, this being the key reason for a character to throw herself prone. (This bonus does not apply to stupidity. Throwing oneself to the ground in the middle of the street doesn’t protect one from the sniper on the rooftop. Throwing oneself on a grenade offers no protection from it.)
Prone characters suffer a one die penalty (-1) to close-combat attacks and a two-die penalty (-2) to attacks and most other actions.
FATE
Even the Gods must bow to Fate.
Whether it is called Destiny, Kismet, Karma, Judgment or the Way of Heaven, nothing in the universe can escape it. Fate is the loom that weaves all elements of Creation into a unified whole. Even chaos has a place in its pattern, and it often seems to some that destruction—Armageddon, Ragnarök, Apocalypse, the End of the Kali Yuga—is its ultimate end point.
Or is it? Legends from around the World tell that Creation does not end, it only changes. The End of All leads to the birth of the new, even if Gods such as Baldur are the only ones who live to see the new World. The Age of the Titans gave way to the Age of the Gods, which gave way to the Age of Man. Is this current era, with the release of the Titans, the beginning of yet another Age—the Age of Heroes—or it the last days of the old Age, leading to an epic doom for Gods, men and heroes alike? Only the servants of Fate—the Moirae, the Norns the Morrigan and others—might know. ''Might'' know, for they do not answer when asked these questions. They do not smile, but neither do they frown. Perhaps the truth is to be determined not by their weaving, but by the deeds of heroes.
THE LOOM OF FATE
The most common metaphor for Fate is that of a loom from which the pattern of history—including mortals’ lives—is woven. The Greek Moirae, the three Fates, were called the “apportioners,” for they spun, measured and cut the threads that make up mortal lives. But this brings us no closer to understanding just what Fate is and how and why it operates as it does. Grasping the whole of Fate—or even many of its parts—is like trying to understand a higher-dimensional object. Imagine if a two-dimensional line were conscious. It could not reasonably understand a higher-dimensional object, such as a three-dimensional sphere. Trying to understand Fate is similar, for it is intimately tied to time, the fourth dimension.
Some thinkers have posited what a three-dimensional being might look like from a fourth-dimensional perspective: a single object, perhaps like a tube, with the being’s “birth” at one end and its “death” at the other, with all the moments of its life in linear sequence down its middle. The tube curls back and forth throughout space, weaving complex knots on top of places to which the being often returns.
In fact, it’d be much like a thread in a woven pattern, with the whole pattern only visible to those with fourth- dimensional consciousness.
Or this thread might instead be envisioned as a serpent, such as the Titan known to the Greeks as Ananke, or “Necessity,” who was birthed at the beginning of Time. In this view, history is not an inert thread that is set in place once it has been woven, but a nest of wriggling, writhing snakes ever changing their positions—and continually changing both the past and future as they do so. But such thinking leads to madness, so perhaps the loom analogy is easier to grasp for mortal minds.
Fate influences all, from Gods to mortals to even Titans. Understanding its manipulations is vital to predicting its ordained results. Where does one begin? With the measure of all things: Man. While the Gods do not fully understand Fate, they know that it is somehow<br> tied to mortals. Before they began interfering in the lives of these beings of clay, the Gods were relatively free of Fate’s invisible hand, but now, their very essences are entwined with mortal expectations. Their forms rely on mortal beliefs to keep them coherent and free from merger with their Titan parents. What is this amazing power that mortals have, of which they are entirely unaware?
In short, it’s Story. The human mind craves stories.It makes stories out of the chaos of events, carving order from randomness. Not simply order characterized by reason and efficiency, but the loose, metaphorical, poetic order of the imagination, the unfettered free association of the mortal mind. “This happened, then that, and it ended like this...”
Mortal egos are tragically fragile, as paper boats bobbing on a huge sea of greater human consciousness — of unconsciousness, a vast realm of imagination unknown to the waking mind. As Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and other 20th-century psychologists discovered, the human mind is often a puppet to its own hidden influences, deeply buried instincts and repressed desires. Both Freud and Jung linked this vast region with divine legendry, for it seemed that here the Gods still spoke to mortals, in dreams and visions welling up from within. Jung went further and posited that not only did each individual have his own unconscious region of the mind, but there was a collective unconscious shared by all members of the human race. This repository of ancient instincts was the source of the recurring motifs of classical legend, so similar the World over.
Jung did not realize how right he was, and not in the way he suspected. The Gods certainly still spoke to mortals now and then through dreams, or in actual encounters that were only remembered later, uncovered through hypnosis or meditation. But deeper still, the collective unconscious itself guided the Gods, ensnaring them in its story-making net. They had become interwoven with Fate, the vast, hidden collective psyche of all mortals.
In a universe born under the rule of Titans, mortals need to make the cosmos their own. They do so with their imagination, the collective expression of which is Fate, and once someone gets caught in Fate’s story, she is no longer in full control of her destiny. The story of which she is now a part works to determine what happens to her, even to the point of turning her decisions against her own desires and showing how actions that at first seemed to be expressions of free will were, in the end, secret agents for Fate.
Fate is not a conscious agenda on the part of human beings, directed by them to make the World into what they want it to be. Indeed, what Fate demands and what mortals want is often at odds, just as an individual’s unconscious instincts and emotions can war with his conscious reason. The question arises: Is Fate directed by anybody? Nobody knows. Not Gods, not Titans, not the servants of Fate itself. Its ultimate reasons are beyond the scope of what any single mind can grasp, and even the collective musings of the Gods has yet to yield any tangible clues. Fate transcends the known cosmos, as the third dimension transcends the second dimension.
FATE BINDING
An Avatar’s ''Divinity'' exerts a sort of gravity around which people, places and things might be drawn into orbit, turning them into a supporting cast or props for his exploits and deeds. This doesn’t just happen by accident; the Avatar himself initiates it, though not directly. Whenever he draws upon his Divinity to bend Fate for his benefit or to energize a Power, those affected by or witness to his action might be caught up in the strands of his epic life, for good or ill. They become ''Fatebound'' to him, even if he doesn’t like it. He can’t control who or what is Fatebound to him—that’s up to the whim of Fate.
Fate is forging a story about the Avatar’s exploits, and probabilities (and people’s behavior) will be altered to fit the story. The Avatar still has free will, but those affected by his Divinity don’t. Fate moves them like chess pieces. They might consciously realize this and resent it, and even try to resist it, but Fate gets its way in the end.
While a mortal might occasionally exert such an effect on others, it’s rare. A Avatar’s divine lineage and connection to the Overworld provides the metaphysical force needed for him to stand out in the skein of destiny and draw others to him. As he treads the World, he inadvertently bends and tears the threads of others’ lives, sometimes getting tangled in them and pulling them with him on his forceful march through history.
The following conditions might cause a ''Fatebinding'' to occur:
●
''When a Avatar spends his Divinity points to alter the outcome of an action.'' <pre>The target of the action (or possibly a bystander who is affected by the outcome, such as someone the Avatar saves by attacking the bystander’s oppressor) might become Fatebound.
The Storyteller—not the Avatar character’s player—secretly rolls the Avatar’s Divinity as a dice pool. The difficulty for any given scene begins at 5. If any character present in the scene spends Divinity points and the resulting Fatebinding roll yields at least one threshold success (that is, five or more dice showing a 7 or higher, with 10s counting twice), the difficulty for everyone on the scene drops to 4. The same thing happens again the next time a Fatebinding roll achieves a threshold success, this time reducing the difficulty to 3. The difficulty can go no lower than 3.
The Storyteller—not the Scion character’s player—secretly rolls the Scion’s Legend as a dice pool. The difficulty for any given scene begins at 5. If any character present in the scene spends Legend points and the resulting Fatebinding roll yields at least one threshold success (that is, five or more dice showing a 7 or higher, with 10s counting twice), the difficulty for everyone on the scene drops to 4. The same thing happens again the next time a Fatebinding roll achieves a threshold success, this time reducing the difficulty to 3. The difficulty can go no lower than 3.
If no Fatebinding roll equals or exceeds the difficulty, no Fatebinding occurs. If any rolls do succeed, however, one or more people (or things, or even the place in which the action occurred) become Fatebound to the Scion. The Storyteller allocates the number of successful rolls between the Fatebinding’s strength and the number of people it affects. The Fatebound individual is called the Fated.
The Storyteller might deem that a given scene is already weighted with the gravity of Fate. Perhaps the Scion’s rival has lured him to the scene of his mother’s murder or the place where he first discovered his heritage. In such places, pregnant with classic story motifs, the Storyteller might begin the scene with a lower difficulty for Fatebinding rolls.
"Example: Carla, a daughter of Hermes, spies an unconscious child lying on the train tracks at an intersection with a train is barreling right toward him. She launches forward, hoping to beat the train and snatch the child out of the way. The odds are against her, but she spends Legend points to more than even them, giving her automatic successes. She saves the child and rolls to safety as the train rockets past, horn blaring."
"Since Carla spent Divinity points to alter the odds of an action, she has effectively challenged Fate. The Storyteller rolls her Legend score of 3 as a dice pool and gets 7, 10, 10—matching the difficulty of 5, since 10s count twice. Since there’s only one reasonable target here (the child she saved), the Storyteller assigns one point (for the number of successful rolls) to the strength of the Fatebinding. Doing so ensures the child’s connection to Carla for the rest of the day. (See the “The Pull of Destiny” sidebar.)"
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OTHERWORLDS
THE NINE REALMS
- :ASGARD -- Protected Realm and Home of the Norse Gods
OTHER WORLDS OF THE THEOI
PANTHEONS
Celtic Pantheon
Greco-Roman Pantheon
- ~
Germanic Pantheon
Titans
ANTAGONISTS
- Banshee -- A Wailing Woman (Originally known as Ban Sidhe...sounds the same.)
- Baobhan Sith -- A female vampire, not of Caine's brood.
- Berserkers -- Warriors who bind themselves to animal remains in order to fight with bestial fury. (Cults = Bear, Wolf & Wild Boar)
- Dracolich -- The Undead dragon {Sárkány}.
- Draugr -- Norse Undead
- Ljósálfar --
- Panes -- Creatures of the forest with the heads and torsos of men, the legs and tails of goats, goatish faces and goat-horns.
- Pitys -- A pine Nymph {Eirene}
- Laestrygonians -- Man-eating giants
- Spartae -- Malevolent spirit born from violence. Spartae are normally depicted as a skeletal being with some form of a weapon and military attire.
- Valkyrie -- A host of female figures who choose those who may die in battle and those who may live. {Hrund}
- Vanargand -- Monstrous wolves
DIVINE STORIES
- :Kindernacht (Out of Game: 10/19/19 -) {In Game: 10/30 - 11/1/0009}
- :The Wolf and the Dove (Out of Game: 10/19/19 -) {In Game: 10/22 - 10/19/0009}
