It's been two hundred years since your Scion was Visited. They've battled Titanspawn, weathered the challenges of Heroism and Demigodhood, and finally climbed to the Heavens and earned their place among the Gods. Whew! Not only that, but they've established themselves among their Pantheon and become a true God, a divine being venerated and worshipped by thousands on Earth. They've worked their way into History and become a true Legend.
They can't possibly be the same person they were all those years ago, can they? You'd be surprised.
Gods don't grow up. Not ever, really. They stay basically the same, their personality and little personal twitches remaining static through their entire existence, for the most part. Their personality tends to be pretty fixed because it's part of who they are, which is what their worshippers venerate them for. When changes do occur it will probably be small ones, or only in specific stories, or they might develop new divine aspects as new cults form and merge. We'll talk more about that later, but it's important.
Ares is never going to mature out of being a rash, violent, chaotic dick. Zeus will never see the error of his ways and stop sleeping around on Hera. Nergal won't ever decide to settle down and stop blowing shit up when he gets bored. Thor isn't going to decide that book learning is awesome and study up on his philosophy. Thoth won't ever get tired of learning and decide to start kicking asses and taking names. That would break their Legend and totally shatter their entire identity.
In some ways, this is good and bad for Scions and their players. On the good side, it means that once you've established the personality of your PC, you aren't forced to change it just because time passes and life happens. Decades or centuries can pass in-game, but you don't need to totally re-evaluate how you play your PC based on the events they've endured. Their personality is written into Fate itself and it's may not be destined to change that much. Take the horny young buck who thoughtlessly sews his seed everywhere and spends his days slaughtering monsters; he's not going to learn to be responsible and settle down to be a mature, reasonable father. He's going to stay horny young buck with 200 kids and decades of experience, but no real maturity.
This can be a huge boon, since it allows you to play the same character for huge periods of in-game time without having life change them into something you're not interested in playing.
I can already hear the complaint: 'characters need to be able to grow and change, otherwise it's going to be a very boring story!' That's totally true!
Scions have an advantage over their Godly parents in this field because of their very nature: they're half human. Humans do change, they do learn from their experiences and they do adapt to new circumstances. During Hero and Demigod at least, such changes are natural and are all just setting up the role your character will eventually settle into. So what happens at God, when your role is established and change is becoming harder?
Well, I actually touched on this earlier. Divine aspects, shifting perceptions and syncretism come in really handy for explaining why a God who has spent years forming the Fated role of a Horny Young Buck is suddenly going to grow up and become a Wise Fatherly Figure. In response to major events in their divine career, your PC can change. Their Legend and Fatebindings may resist this change, but it can happen. There's still enough humanity in a Scion-become-God to allow these changes, it just takes a lot more work to reforge the story of a God than the story of a Hero.
After all, the Romans were able to take Ares who was feared and mocked for his chaotic violence and turn him into a beloved and well-regarded figure of discipline and order. Did Ares' personality totally change during that? Yes.. and no. They both exist, side-by-side, as roles that Ares can swap between whenever he wants. The same can happen for your PC. He can be a Wise Father or a Horny Kid at the drop of a hat, and both are seen as valid expressions of his Legend. The nice thing about Scion is that this isn't forced on you. No matter how logical it might seem that eventually an immature teenager is going to have to grow up, especially faced with the challenges and world-blasting insanity that any Scion on their way to Godhood is faced with, they don't have to. Fate can conspire to hold their personality in stasis, just as it held Zeus in the same role from birth to infinity.
Your PC isn't just an immature teenager hundreds of years old with no good excuse for never learning to take care of himself and clean up his own messes. He's got Fate on his side, telling him that growing up is for losers. That's kinda cool, right? Especially when Fate can change its mind if you, the player, think it should. All you have to do is shift some Fatebonds.
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