K is for Kronos – Mythic Mondays

Rubens saturn

Saturn, Jupiter’s father, devours one of his sons. – Painting by Peter Paul Rubens

Kronos is the King of the Titans. The Titans were not so much worshipped as feared. They are the primeval forces of nature. A few are benign – Metis, Thought, becomes the mother of Athene, and Themis is the personification of Justice – but most are terrifying and dangerous. The Sea, the Sky, The Sun and Moon, concepts like war and destruction, and assorted local fire-mountains (remember, the Eastern Mediterranean area is volcanic) They cannot be wholly tamed, merely overruled by the Olympian gods.

The Titans may well represent the lingering deities of the Phoenician culture that inhabited parts of what is now Greece before the Mycenaeans, which we think of as the Classical Greeks.

Kronos himself suffers from confusion with the Roman Chronos, who is Old Father Time. There’s no kind of clarity whether they’re the same deity or two different ones, because different Classical writers treat the matter in one of three basic forms.

He’s either Cronus or Kronus or Kronos (as with many periods of history, spelling in the alphabetical systems was inconsistent – most things weren’t written down so those who could write had to work out certain words for themselves) He is the husband of Gaia, or her son, or both. I’ve gone with the son version, because it fits with most of the common tales, and makes the following story make more sense.

Story of the Titan – Beginnings

In the beginning was Chaos, and Chaos brought forth Gaia, which is the Earth, and she brought forth Uranus, which is the sky.

And Gaia and Uranus married, and had many offspring – giants and monsters of all kinds. And the greatest of these was Kronos, and Rhea was his wife.

Uranus displeased his wife however, for he did not care for all of her children. The Hekatonkheires and the Cyclopes displeased him with their strange forms, and he threw them into Tartarus where he would never again have to look upon them.

Kronos was the only of Gaia’s children both strong enough and brave enough to fight against the tyrant Uranus, and so he freed his imprisoned brothers and sisters and marched against his father, striking him down and castrating him with a great stone sickle.

Kronos was not content however – he knew that the Cyclopes and Hekatonkheires were willing to fight against their lord, and he was now their lord. And so he repeated the actions of his father and imprisoned them in Tartarus.

It was this act that led his mother Gaia to prophecy that as he had repeated his father’s crimes he would repeat his father’s death – Kronos’ son was destined to overthrow him. So as his wife Rhea gave birth to each child he swallowed them whole.

When Zeus was born, Rhea could take it no longer and so she bundled a stone in swaddling clothes and handed it to Kronos, hiding the boy on Crete.

Zeus grew until Crete could no longer hold him, and Zeus went to rescue his brothers and sisters. He wrestled with Kronos until he could force an emetic on him. His disgorged brothers and sisters then launched a vast war to overthrow the Titans, armed and equipped by the Cyclopes. When the Titans were dead or subdued, the Olympians carved up the universe between them.

Zeus became King of the Sky, and his brother Poseidon became Lord of the Sea. The third brother Hades became Lord of the Underworld. Their sister Hera became queen of marriage and childbirth. Demeter took the growing of crops for her domain, and the last sister Hestia claimed sovereignty over the Hearth.

Kronos was imprisoned in Tartarus below the earth. There he waits, scheming revenge against his son, and the mortals who are ruled by him.

In your stories and games

Summoning the Big Bad Thing is a favourite of cultists and sorcerers everywhere. Whether a Titan, a Great Old One, or a more earthly monster, the Big Evil is usually a ritual to be interrupted. For an excellent example of this kind of titanic struggle (sorry) in gaming, take a look at the Age of Mythology: Titans expansion.

On the other hand, what if the party are trying to get rid of a god? It’s possible that summoning such Things might be necessary if the aim of the plot is deitycide. Of course, one you’ve summoned it, there’s no guarantee that Kronos will do what you ask – he is a force of nature. And how does one breach the walls of Tartarus anyway?

Some of the myths provide another reason one might wish to bring back the Titans – During their rule humanity was stronger, freer and more moral than the people of the modern world. The Titans, unlike the gods, felt no need to interfere in the lives of mere mortals and their power flowed more freely into the world.

The Titans don’t have clerics or paladins, but some settings might see them as the granters of elemental magics. Kronos is majestic, and so might indirectly grant spells of mastery or even metamagic. But he is unlikely to commune directly – more likely there is some quality of the power that binds him that allows his power to be siphoned.

If you’re looking for some new deities and primordials for your world, you may want to pick up this month’s Jigsaw Fantasy – The Royal Panoply of Annem Ka

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H is for Hades – Mythic Mondays

 

L'Enlèvement de Proserpine par Pluton, Sculpture by François Girardon; photograph by Evan Lawrence Bench

L’Enlèvement de Proserpine par Pluton, Sculpture by François Girardon; photograph by Evan Lawrence Bench, used under CC-SA

Hades is King of the Underworld, and brother to Zeus and Poseidon. Although in popular literature he’s been painted as a Bad Guy, the Greeks didn’t see him as evil – more as a part of Nature. He was worshipped as both the Lord of Death, and as giver of the wealth of the earth – miners and smelters revered him as Master of Metal.

We might imagine that sacrifices to him would be a dark act, but the Greeks – and Romans, worshipping him as Dis or Pluto – saw nothing wrong in feeding the god with the smoke of animals. In most myths, he is portrayed as vicious, but not really cruel – merely a product of his nature.

Cerberus -The Three-headed Hound at the Gates of Hell – translates as “spotted”. So, Hades named his dog “Spot” (a fact that has become much better known since Jim Butcher used the idea in Skin Game, one of his Dresden novels)

Story of the God – The Reluctant Bride

Persephone, the young daughter of Demeter, was picking flowers in a field with her friends and playmates, the Oceanids. From a nearby cave, up out of the earth, came the fearsome Hades, Lord of the Underworld, riding a chariot drawn by two giant dogs.

He was immediately smitten by her beauty, and attempted to carry her off to his realm to wed her. She screamed, but there was no-one who could hear and come to her aid. So Hades dragged her beneath the earth to his palace, and set guards about her, so that no-one else could come near her.

When her daughter did not come home, Demeter left her place on Mount Olympus and came to earth. She searched throughout the world, neglecting her work which was to make crops grow and cattle breed. Eventually, she found one of the Oceanids hiding and crying. When Demeter heard where her daughter was, she went to Persephone’s father, Zeus, and begged him to intercede with their brother Hades for Persephone’s freedom.

“I can only free her if she has taken no food. If she has eaten in the Land of the Dead, she has become a part of it, and even I cannot overcome the will of the Fates” said Zeus

They descended to Hades court, only to discover that Persephone had that day eaten six pomegranate seeds from the orchard outside Hades’s palace. As she had not eaten a true meal, but only part thereof, Zeus and Hades agreed that Persephone could split her time between the realms of the living and the dead, thus mollifying Demeter so that the earth would be made fruitful again, .

So, now Persephone spends six months of the year with her grim husband – one for each seed -, and six months in the light with her mother. In the Spring, she still plays and dances in the meadows, and where her footsteps fall, flowers grow.

The parallels between this story and Ereshkigal’s tale are interesting – both explain Summer and Winter through the kidnapping of a loved one by the god of the underworld. Whether the tale of Persephone is descended from that tale remains an open question.

In your Games and Stories

Hades is the Lord of the Underworld – the land from which riches come. His grandest temples will be filled with monstrous guardians – but might well be worth an adventurers time for the vast wealth such creatures might guard, or the possibility of recovering a loved one.

As the richest god, with a known love for music (as seen in the tale of Orpheus) Hades might be the patron of bards and entertainers. He is also a suitable deity for merchants and nobles, who keep his gold and trade his silver.

Hades has a debatable relationship with undead. On the one hand, the dead belong in his realm and he is loathe to let them go without recompense. On the other, some undead might be his subjects – even his agents – in the mortal realm. You’ll have to decide whether he loves or hates the vampires and liches of your world – and whether his wife agrees with him.

Persephone’s cycle of death and rebirth might also allow some kindred souls to travel with her, resulting in a form of resurrection that only allows the recipient to remain alive for the length of the summer – a temporary respite, but perhaps long enough for one last epic adventure.

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A is for Artemis – Mythic Mondays

Artemis relaxing with her animals

A 1687 sculpture by Jean-Baptiste Tuby I

So, the Boss has decided that we here at Artemis Games have to write something every week: Something at least tangentially related to fantasy. I have persuaded him that this would be an ideal space for me to geek out about mythology. So, I’m going to use this new spot, Mythic Mondays to work my way through an alphabet of gods.

My choices might not be yours – I’m going for a spread of different belief systems. For anyone who follows Norse or Greek paganism – or any of the other faiths I discuss – rest assured that when I say ‘myth’,  I mean ‘cool stories involving gods’

Reality is Complicated

Fantasy gods usually have one or two domains, because they are designed to be the power behind clerics and paladins. Real world gods are not nearly so neat. Often the deity we know is a composite of different cults. For the classics, this is exacerbated when the Romans imported the Greek gods – and added modifications of their own.

Artemis is a nice example of such a goddess – she claims dominion over forests and the chase, the moon, hunters and their prey, wilderness and woodsmen. Eternally virginal, but also goddess of protection in childbirth.

Childbirth? Well, Hera would likely be your patron in the eastern islands, especially around Samos. But if you were Spartan, you would likely pray to Artemis to help you birth fine warriors. If you burned charcoal, or were a hermit, you might ask her for protection from wild beasts. She is, however, best known as a huntress – we’ve chosen her as our patron as the protector of game.

Tale of the God – Rules are Rules

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