Shoptalk: Stairways to Heaven

The Overworlds are the homes of the Gods, where the Pantheons dwell and where the Titans were born. They're the largest, most dangerous battlefield for the Titan War and where the strongest warriors of both sides clash. Ascending to the Overworld marks the transition between mortality and immortality, the rise to Godhood itself.

Well, kinda. In the books, that part is rather fuzzy. It is specifically mentioned that anyone using an Axis Mundi to travel from the World to the Overworld has to be Legend 9 or higher. Can lower-Legend beings survive in Overworlds? Do Sanctums count as part of the Overworld, or can Demigods visit their parents by using Axes Mundi that connect directly to their Sanctums?

There's another issue, which is Underworlds and their connection to Overworlds. In Scion, the Underworlds seem very specifically to be 'hellish' and dark. None of the 'happy' afterlives seem to be present. It's true that some cultures (Sumerians...) didn't have much of a happy ending for the dead, but many did. The Aztecs had multiple afterlives, depending on how you died, and some were pretty nice. The Norse had Valhalla and Folkvangar for their glorious dead. They're listed as part of the Overworld.

The Overworld is where Gods live, no where the dead live. The dead live in the Underworld, no matter if they were the "good" or the "bad" dead. The problem Scion runs into is that the writers were trying to match things up with the modern (primarily Judeo-Christian) idea that the "good" dead get to live "up" in "Heaven" with their deities. Historically, that isn't a popular idea and doesn't apply to any of Scion's existing Pantheons. The only overlap comes from specific God-Realms like Tlalocan and Folkvangar, but in Scion terms those are much more like Underworlds than Overworlds. Those specific Gods (Tlaloc and Freya) just happen to live with the dead.

Now that we've established the weirdness that is RAW Scion's stance on Overworlds and Underworlds, lets get down to resolving it in a fashion that makes a bit more sense given the source material and history. So, lets start at the bottom and work our way up!

Underworlds
The abodes of the dead are pretty well defined in RAW Scion. The methods of reaching them are set out clearly and make sense, so no real changes needed there. The only thing that needs to be adjusted is the location of a few things. Mag Mell is complicated, since it was originally supposed to be an Underworld and the Fomorians broke it free using ritual magic, turning it into a Terra Incognita. The other strange places we have are Folkvangar, Valhalla and Tlalocan (there may be more, but I can't recall any others). These places should be part of the Underworld, especially Tlalocan. They're where dead people live and that's pretty much the definition of the Underworld.

Tlalocan is the best example of a wrongly categorized Afterlife. It is very specifically an Underworld reserved for certain classes of people. In Aztec mythology it is described as both one of the 13 Heavens and one of the 9 Underworlds, so I can see why the writers decided to list it as part of the Aztec Overworld instead of the Aztec Underworld. They may also have wanted to avoid confusion by having two distinctly different Aztec Underworlds. In the interest of simplification, I can see why they did that.  It also saves them from having to explain why Tlaloc (who isn't a 'death God' in the way the Lord of Mictlan is) has his own Underworld.

While I can understand the reasoning, the simple fact is that not all the Pantheons have a single, unified Underworld where all their dead pass to. Among the Irish, there are some traces that suggest Mag Mell was may have been reserved for heroes and warriors and the other dead went to Tech nDuinn, the realm of Donn. Tech nDuinn would be another Irish Underworld. Even in a place like Hades, which is the singular Underworld of Greece, there are multiple sections. The Egyptian afterlife is like this, too, containing not only the dreary and dark realms of Duat, but also the cheerful afterlife of Aaru for those who passed the Test of Ma'at. The Scion writers tended to downplay these different aspects of the Underworlds. Again, I'm pretty sure this was just for brevity and simplicity. Trying to get across the entire nature of a foreign religion's cosmology is a daunting challenge, especially when most of them don't work the same way and they're all very different from the Heaven-Hell duality of the Abrahamic religions.

I left two special cases for last: Folkvangar and Valhalla are left out of the Underworld because they are specifically located in Asgard, which is the Norse Overworld. Makes sense, you put things where myth tells you, right? Happily, the Sanctum Birthright (as modified by me) allows a little leeway here and I'll be explaining that in the next section.

Sanctums
The domains of individual Gods, Sanctums in the RAW are considered to be part of the Overworld. They don't have to be, though. Even in the very, very sparse rules provided in Scion:God options are given to have a Sanctum in the Underworld or in a Terra Incognita. For those Gods like Freya and Odin who house souls of the dead in their private dwellings, you can treat this as simply a function of their Sanctums.

In my rewriting of Sanctum, I include a specific trait that permits this. Some Sanctums naturally function as havens of the dead, attracting to themselves a specific type of dead soul that the owner of that Sanctum is associated with. For Freya and Odin, it's the souls of the glorious dead, each of them getting half of the dead. If you wanted to treat Tlalocan as a Sanctum instead of an Underworld, you could do so, saying that it attracts the souls of the deformed and those who died from lightning and water. If a God attracts a specific sort of dead to his personal domain, or has control of a single region of an Underworld that is differentiated from the domain of the primary Death God or differentiated from the general population of dead souls in that Underworld, you are probably dealing with a Sanctum.

A Sanctum that contains the dead doesn't have to be within the Underworld, which provides a way to express places like Valhalla and Folkvangar pretty easily. If you want to get fancy, you could say that while the entrance to that type of Sanctum is in the Overworld, the main body of the Sanctum is in the Underworld, since it has all those dead people hanging around. Under such a rule, the Sanctums would function as 'bubbles' of the Underworld. The primary purpose of such distinctions would be for various Death and Psychopomp Boons, but it could be an interesting way to present such a thing.

In Scion RAW, the easiest way to reach a God's Sanctum is to use an Axis Mundi to travel from the World to the Overworld that the Sanctum's entrance is located inside. To get to Thor's hall, Bilskirnir, all you need to do is travel to Asgard and walk over to where Bilskirnir sits and knock on the door. Some Gods have more direct methods to access their Sanctums, using a private Axis Mundi located inside the Sanctum to move directly from their personal realm to the World and back. Scion RAW gives the example of Tezcatlipoca and his Smoking Mirror Axis Mundi.

Sanctums located in Terra Incognita follow the normal rules for accessing Terras, each one having unique ways to reach it. They would depend totally upon the God who owns the Terra-Sanctum and the characteristics of that Sanctum. While they're not located in the Overworld, there's no need to define a whole new mechanism for accessing your own Sanctum from afar, so lets say that Terra-bound Sanctums can still have an Axis Mundi that allows the God to travel from his Sanctum to specific locations and back.

Overworlds
This will be the shortest of the three sections, since Overworlds are pretty well defined by Scion. There are mythological inaccuracies and quibbles (like Tlalocan) but for the most part, Scion does pretty well with the Overworlds. My biggest issue here is the lack of clearly laid out conditions for who can reach them and how. This segways nicely into the next and last section.

Axes Mundi
Lets take a second and redefine Axis Mundi. Instead of just a portal to the Overworld, the term Axis Mundi should apply to any object or location that allows travel between two different realms without use of external magic such as Boons or Knacks. Even Underworld Portals can be considered a type of Axis Mundi.

If all otherworldly portals are the same, then what makes them different? Well, obviously what's on the other side. Here's the fun part, where we break down who can enter, survive inside and then leave each kind of alternate World that Scion has.

Underworld: Entering the Underworld is easy, you just have to die. That's exactly what happens to any creature that enters the Underworld with more mortal than immortal blood. In Scion terms, that means only Scions who have reached Demigodhood (Legend 5+) are able to remain alive after stepping into the Underworld. Mortals and Heroes who cross over are trapped in the Underworld, killed by the experience and transformed into ghosts. To leave an Underworld, there are rituals or passages that can be used, essentially just exit-only Axes Mundi or reverse Funereal Rites.

Terra Incognita: In theory, anyone can enter a Terra Incognita. It's just a matter of finding them and puzzling out the specific method each one requires to enter. Surviving inside a Terra isn't a matter of pure Legend, but rather just being able to avoid, weather or confront the various environments and denizens inside. Leaving a Terra Incognita is as simple as reaching one and follows the same basic procedure: locate the exit and find the proper way to activate it. Sometimes that is as simple as walking out of the border of the Terra.

Overworld: Only Scions of Legend 9 or higher, that is actual Gods, can enter Overworlds. There are lower-Legend creatures that exist inside Overworlds, servants and minor spirits that provide living scenery for the Pantheons. Lesser Immortals are often able to enter Overworlds, but most of them are bound to the World in one way or another and don't end up travelling to Overworlds very often. Mortals can't enter Overworlds at all, and neither can Demigods or Heroes. At best, low-Legend beings can be granted temporary protections to allow them to enter for a short time, but that generally doesn't happen.

Sanctums: A Sanctum's accessibility depends on its nature. Generally, they function like whatever type of World they're naturally part of. The same rules apply in the Sanctum of Hades as in the rest of his Underworld. Trying to visit the Sanctum of Hera is essentially the same as trying to visit Olympus itself. If a God claims a Terra Incognita as his Sanctum, it won't change how people enter or leave, or what challenges they face to survive inside.
There are some exceptions. Some Gods have a reputation for being visited by mortals, Heroes and Demigods. To allow this, Gods can shift the rules a bit and alter their Sanctums to support and sustain mortal life. This is also covered in my Sanctum rules, but even without using them, it's not a big stretch to allow this under the RAW version. Essentially, if a God wants a visitor in their Sanctum, they're allowed to be there.