[Plot Idea] Incarnations of Immortality

[Elipsicus]

I suppose this counts as a plot idea...

This will probably be clearest to readers of the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony.
For those of you who have not read it, you should, but here's the general idea:
There are incarnations of Death, Time, War, Earth/Gaia, and Fate (3 of them).  They perform specific functions related to their "offices."  Death collects souls of the dying, Time makes sure no one messes with the flow of time, War makes sure that wars happen properly and when they need to (or stops those that don't need to), Earth/Gaia controls the seasons, the weather and all those pesky natural functions, and the three fates spin, measure,cut and weave the threads (read: lives) that make up the tapestry of humanity. 
It was my thinking that these are people who would fit in well in the mythic age.  Even better is if they were dragons (since dragons are cool like that and are better suited to handling these things.)

Now, imagine that you are a scion.  Imagine that you are having flashbacks where you are collecting the souls of the dying, or weaving fate, or presiding over wars...  what were you?  Now suddenly you  seem to be manifesting powers that you don't understand, your only clues being your visions, dreams and flashbacks.  What's going on?

I thought the Incarnations would make an interesting brood, and also that a whole world of plot opened up for a brood of scions who are rediscovering who they were- and what they did.  Toadd to the mix, anyone or anything that recognized the scions for what they were (and are now becoming again) would also recognize their power, and may be very interested in manipulating them. 

Just some food for thought.  Sorry it isn't the most coherent bit of writing, but hopefully its enough to give you the general idea, and perhaps some ideas of your own.

[Dmitri Scull]

Interesting idea; dragons are the embodiment of karma, creativity/imagination/endeavor given form, so it fits within the context.  And there is no need to limit yourself to Anthony's five (or seven, or nine) -- you could have a character who is the embodiment of chaos or hope (actually, the books themselves include "minor incarnations").

I wouldn't necessarily limit this to dragons, though.  Mythologically speaking, this also fits the titans very well -- or you could have rival groups, some titans, some dragons, some fae...  or a mixed group.

Chances are such an incarnation would be an elder/advanced character, however, such as the mythic dragons that managed to advance beyond Awakened Rank 5.  There are a couple of ways to handle that, tho'.  Yeah, the easy way is to make them NPCs.  After all, they'd have unique powers, too. 

*Or* you could devise rules for creating higher level dragons.  I'd imagine mythic dragons produce scions too... 

Or -- especially if you're doing this to an existing group of PCs -- you could say that the highest Awakened Rank (as a dragon) the PCs can *remember* is keyed to the karmic levels of the world, and as the world "wakes up," their dragons will effectively gain experience, as the PCs are able to remember those parts of their past where they were more powerful...

[Elipsicus]

All good points.  After some more brooding on the subject (heh...no pun intended) I also thought it would be interesting to do to beginning characters.  It would be interesting.  Since I'm planning on starting my next campaign with Fire Within, I realized that it wouldn't be difficult to tweak it to fit in with the oveall plot idea I have going here.  I thought it would be interesting to structure each flashback as centered around the theme of one Incarnation, but with all of the brood there to help.  The best example of this that I have is pointing out that the opening flaashback of FW would make an excellent introduction to the office of War. 
These are all still pretty rough ideas, but I'm working on it 

[Dmitri Scull]

...Or have them inherit the office of War from Lycurgin...  with the dragon that delivers the killing blow gaining the "war" powers.  I haven't read the adventure (only played in it; we rotate GMs) so I don't know if they explain why Lycurgin has two legacies, but you could award the "new War" with a second legacy with the following caveats:

1. Has to be one they have the power for.  Obvious.
2. The scion can only manifest one of the legacies - chosen when the scion gains the first power that would allow for a legacy.  Perhaps when the scion reaches Awakened Rank 5 (since its a special case), perhaps at AR 6, the scion might get to use both, but not before.

Either way, you don't prevent the potential for futher aspects of the office of War, for Lycurgin was fallen/tainted and presumeably it was the "Powers That Be" that manipulated the PCs into killing Lycurgin/taking over the office of War.  Lycurgin could easily have had other "War powers" before becoming tainted, and only retained the second legacy (if you want to use this as an explanation for his second legacy).