Awesomeness in the Old West
If nineteenth-century America is something you know something about, this post is aimed at you.
For the second time in my life, I’m gearing up to run a game. The first one was Changeling (and resulted in the Onyx Court series); this one is Scion (and god help me if it tries to turn into a novel). For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Scion is a role-playing game where the characters are the half-mortal children of gods. Think Hercules, or Cú Chulainn, or the Pandavas, running around in the modern world. Except that my game will be set, not in the modern world, but in the nineteenth-century American frontier.
Larger-than-life personalities doing over-the-top deeds? Nah, there was nobody like that in the Old West. π
I’ve already got a nascent list of people I can reinterpret as half-divine, but I’d like more. This is where you, O internets, come in: who really seems like they might have been the child of a god? Who excelled in their chosen field? Whose deeds acquired legendary status?
The game will likely take place in the mid-1870s, so while people who predate that point are okay (they might fit into the backstory — or not be so dead after all), anybody born later is out. Mostly I’m looking at the frontier, but will also entertain suggestions from back east; the game may wander there at some point. I am especially interested in people from the groups more often overlooked by history: blacks, Mexicans, Native Americans, Chinese, etc. One of the things I want to look at in this game is the way in which a wide variety of cultures collided in the space of the frontier. (Adding a mythological layer should make that extra interesting.)
Bonus points if you can suggest a possible divine parent along with the Scion. Whose kid is Doc Holliday? How about Marie Laveau? Pretty much any god is up for grabs; the books provide rules for handling nine different pantheons, and I’ve found decent-looking player-created material for three more, so I can field most things.
Suggest away. The more names, the merrier.