After a few centuries it’s easy to forget details, like the mischievous nature of some gods. It’s easy to picture Eros, or Cupid if you will, as a portly little boy with wings just a little too small to keep him in the air, firing arrows that inspire love and devotion. Few people even know he had a brother, Eros gets all the press. The problem? Eros isn’t in it for the long haul. Eros is more of a desire guy, actual love, that’s for the other guy.
Deciding it’s time to have a little fun, Eros is out on the town, and looking to have a little fun. And, as always, his younger brother, Anteros has to pick up the pieces. So, where do our heroes come in, caught in the maelstrom of chaos left in their wake, as is always the way.
The Set up
It’s Valentine’s Day and love is in the air, in the strangest of ways. Criminals and cops are walking down the street arm in arm, dogs and cats living together. If there is a pair of heroes with a particularly contentious relationship they will find themselves with the temporary Drive: Love-Hate, Hate-Love with a value of 2 to 10, use other Drives as a Guide, or any Drive concerning their Rival. In addition to any inner party conflicts, feel free to add Drives for recurring villains as well. For any Drive, make sure to introduce the characters before revealing the new Drives. This in itself can lead to a number of fun scenes.
Escalation
Villains are quick to take advantage of this situation using police officer’s affections to get away with crimes, and generally running amok. If there is a recurring villain sharing a Love-Hate, Hate-Love Drive with a hero check with the player to see if they will join in the role reversal play time.
Introducing Anteros
As things continue to get out of hand, feel free to freeze time, or half everyone other than the heroes falls asleep. For those not familiar with Hellenism Anteros will introduce himself as the embodiment of Requited Love, a cosmic being as old as emotions had words. He will tell the heroes that his brother Eros, the embodiment of Desire has snuck away from Olympus for some Valentine’s shenanigans. Normally, Anteros does his best to keep his older brother Eros in line, but sometimes he does this. Unfortunately, Eros has “borrowed” Baccus’ decanter and used it to hide himself from the other gods. (Gods for lack of a better term.) Anteros needs to find his brother before Astraea and Dice catch on and come looking.
Finding Love
The fastest way to locate Eros is to stop his fun. Find the biggest mess he’s made and fix the damage. This gives GMs a lot of freedom from an inner party trist, to a hero running off with their archenemy or any number of other problems. Once this conflict is resolved, a petulant Eros will arrive to scole the heroes, feel free to knock some heads around. This lecture will be short lived however as Anteros will arrive moments later.
As the brothers are reconciling, justice will arrive. Neither Astraea and Dice were fooled by Eros’ disappearing act, but needed to see if Anteros was involved in the caper. Their judgement will condemn Eros to a decade in Tartarus for each mortal affected by his actions (feel free to make up an absurd number, then add a 0 to the end of it). Anteros will beg for leniency for his brother. Heroes hoping to keep the brothers together can present a case as well.
Have the player make their argument, then roll Expression + Law against a Target of Advanced (25). The heroes need 4 Degrees of Success on top of this, total roll 25 + four 6s on the dice, total roll of 65 with no 6s or some point in between. GMs can grant a free Degree of Success for any particularly compelling arguments.
A Successful roll with fewer than the total Degrees of Success will reduce the sentencing by a quarter for each degree, so a roll of 55 would reduce a 40,000 year sentence to a mear 10,000 years.
Rewards
On a Successful roll heroes can take the Drive: Friends with Love and Desire.
No matter what the heroes can take the Drive: Litigated with the Justices.
