Leto - Goddess of Werewolves

Leto is a goddess born of the titans Coeus and Phoebe, on the Aegean Island of Kos. Details about her early life are nonexistent like many other gods. She grew up under the reign of Chronos, who ruled a perfect world of order and harmony, lacking free will and love. Later, when the Olympians rebelled and started the Titanomachy, Leto joined their side, helping them defeat Chronos and starting a new age.

During the war, she attracted the attention of Zeus. Little is said of how Leto and Zeus's relationship started, but it ended with Leto becoming pregnant with twins and being banished from Greece. Her banishment wasn't Zeus's doing, but Hera, another Olympian who hated Leto and other Titanesses (and pretty much anyone else Zeus had his eyes on), fearing they made her redundant. Leto fled to her sister Asteria's island and there gave birth to Artemis and Apollo.

They still were not welcome in Greece, so Leto took her children to Lycia, in southwest Anatolia. Many of the inhabitants, fearing Hera's retribution, forbade Leto from staying there. Leto responded by turning these people into animals. The rest of the people, now fearing Leto instead, allowed her to stay in Lycia, and started worshipping her as their goddess.

In Lycia, Leto mixed with the local population, giving birth to several demigods who she placed as the kings of various Lycian city-states, starting the Lukkan Kingdoms. While these kingdoms were never fully united under one banner, they all worshipped Leto, as well as Artemis, Apollo, and Zeus. Other gods that were worshipped included Poseidon and Hades from the Greek world, as well as some minor Hittite gods that occasionally wandered this far west.

The kingdoms were peaceful with Greece and traded with them. While Zeus used Lycia as a buffer between Greece and Near Eastern Kingdoms who worshipped different gods, the very existence of Lycia annoyed Hera greatly, who couldn't stand one of Zeus's consorts having lands of her own. She started to plan against Leto.

Leto's mortal descendants have a small amount of her power and aspects, but this power fades through their lives until they end up as normal men, as weak as any other. Leto would prick her finger with a bone needle, dripping her blood into a cup that, when drank by one of her descendants, would turn them into a demigod, giving them increased strength, agility, longer life, the ability to shapeshift and speak to nature, and other abilities. One drop of her blood is enough to cause this permanent alteration and drinking it is part of a ritual known as the Bloodright of Leto. Because Leto's descendants had a tendency to transform into Wolves over other animals, they eventually became the first Werewolves.

All gods have this ability to pass on aspects to their offspring, but the problem was that gods can't regenerate their own blood. Without their blood they would eventually fall dormant. They needed it restored in some way. The Descendants of Chronos, the Olympians, could initially do this by drinking a chalice of sacred nectar.

Leto however needed the blood of a mortal being. She did not have the golden ichor. While stories incorrectly say she demanded the sacrifice of a pure maiden every full moon, the blood of any earthly creature will do. A Lamb was usually sacrificed and in return she would elevate one of her offspring to that of a demigod.

It started when the Lycian island kingdom of Ukorthos was destroyed by Poseidon. Poseidon claimed the Ukorthans were ungrateful worms who wouldn't build a temple to worship him. This was thought to be a lie, spread around by Hera. She convinced her brother to destroy the island. Artemis dove into the depths of the Lycian sea and discovered that there was in fact a temple to Poseidon, one that rivaled the temple built in Athens. She traveled to Olympus to plead with Zeus to punish Poseidon.

After it was discovered that Hera's lies caused the island's destruction, Zeus had Poseidon raise the island from the sea and he ordered Hera to help rebuild the city. Hera did so begrudgingly. This was not the last time Hera tried unsuccessfully to destroy Lycia, but the first of dozens of attempts. With each failure, Hera's hatred for Leto and her lands grew to the point she would make deals with beings more terrifying than gods to see Leto's downfall.

Hera got her chance to see Leto's downfall with the arrival of the Aeothians (Vampire Gods) from beyond Earth. The Aeothians consisted of a dozen extremely powerful beings who individually were more powerful than Zeus. They were conquerors, who drained a world of its life force before moving on. The Aeothians ravaged the Near East, draining multiple pantheons of gods of their golden ichor, replacing it with blackened sludge, creating more vampire gods. These undead pantheons swept across the world to cause more chaos while the Aeothians moved to drain more gods of their power.

In Lycia, Leto was attacked by one such god. Her children Artemis and Apollo successfully defended their mother and managed to injure the nameless god, who fled north. Leto was uninjured, but Hera spread the rumor that Leto was bitten by this god and that she was now a vampire. This rumor quickly spread until a host of gods wanted to join Hera and destroy Lycia.

The vampire gods were eventually dealt with when Zeus and the Sky Fathers of Earth's remaining pantheons made a deal with Primordial Chaos to drain the Aeothians of their power. When the Aeothians lost their power, the undead vampire gods all faded to dust and disappeared.

Hera, being the manipulator she was, convinced multiple gods that Leto was a vampire and her kingdoms were overrun with monsters. This caused all of Greece to descend on Lycia. When Leto revealed herself to still be alive and not a vampire, the attack stopped, but not before numerous cities were destroyed. Leto demanded that Zeus punish Hera for her actions, but Zeus instead left back to Greece, taking the armies with him. He also took Artemis and Apollo with him back to Greece and forbade them from ever traveling to Lycia again. Hera had won.

Leto gathered all of the survivors of Lycia's destruction. She was tired of Hera's manipulations causing her trouble. Leto ordered that all the Lambs in Lycia be sacrificed to her. She cut her arms open, draining herself of most of her blood. She told her people to drink it and gain the powers of a god. It didn't take more than a few months before Leto had an army of many thousands of Werewolves, ready to overrun Greece and destroy it all.

There was one problem though, the Lamb blood was no longer restoring Leto's blood. The reason is that deals with Primordial Chaos is always a double edges sword. They did weaken the Aeothians, but they also weakened all the gods of the earth with each pantheon being slightly different. Primordial Chaos made it so no Greek God could heal themselves unless it was from a human sacrifice. Sacred nectar and animal sacrifces no longer worked.

The Olympians found this out after Ares and Athena battled each other, and drained of their blood after striking each other many times with their spears, went to sleep and didn't wake up. Hera attempted to blame Leto, as she does for everything, but when Zeus went to Lycia ready to obliterate it with his lighting bolts, he found Leto asleep, with her followers leaderless and the remaining Lycian kingdoms in ruins.

Because Leto was asleep, her followers didn't have any direction. They took vials of her blood and scattered across Europe. They were still powerful demigods, but they couldn't challenge Zeus, nor did they challenge any other pantheon they came across. They started new settlements and in time became dominant powers elsewhere.

As for Leto, she slumbered, laying dormant for many hundreds of years. While she slept, the world around her changed. The Greek Gods lost all of their power in a rebellion orchestrated by Athena, finally getting revenge on Zeus for swallowing her mother. Many gods were drained of their blood and laid dormant under the Earth. Others had escaped to the Celestial Realm, a world of endless light. Hera, then known in those times as Juno, had reestablished the pantheon in Rome. Most gods were long gone, but Hera had convinced the people that they were still around. She had a grip on Rome, controlling every aspect of the growing civilization. She also had complete control of the remaining Greek gods, and was as terrible of a tyrant as Zeus or Chronos could ever be.

It was here that Leto got her chance for vengeance. She was awoken by her daughter Artemis, who used her own blood to revive her mother. Artemis spent a night explaining the situation to her mother, explaining that Hera, now Juno, had control of Rome. Artemis explains that she gathered the aid of allies. Apollo was on their side. She also got a rival empire of Rome, Carthage, to invade the Empire. In order to take down Hera, they needed Leto's power.

Leto of course wanted nothing more than to see Hera's kingdom destroyed. She sent out a psychic order to all of her descendants across Europe, and it was the same as her previous order. Destroy Greece. This included not just Greece, but everywhere and everything the Greeks ever touched, including Rome, Carthage, Egypt, Anatolia, even India. On hearing the orders of their goddess, the werewolves were overcome with madness and their ancestor's desires, and started to carry out her will.

When Hannibal crossed the Alps in northern Italy and surprised the Romans, it sent a panic throughout the region. Combined with Werewolves rampaging across the countryside, there was chaos everywhere. Leto, Artemis, and Apollo used this to get into Hera's secret palace, in the Eastern Alps. Hera had no human allies to call on, and there were no gods that were friendly towards her.

It didn't take long for Hera to be overpowered by the other three gods. She was cut open and drained of her blood, which caused her to fall asleep and become dormant. Leto had a worse punishment in mind. she tore Hera's body apart and ordered her werewolves to scatter Hera's body across Europe so that she could never be revived.

When Leto was sure Hera was dealt with, she still wanted to destroy Greece and Rome. She learned the extent of Greece's influence and wanted all of it destroyed. Carthage, Egypt, Anatolia, India, and more. She wanted everything Greece built to be burned in retribution for destroying her kingdoms.

Artemis and Apollo had assumed their mother wanted to do this. There was a reason they were so reluctant to revive her earlier. Artemis shot her mother with a mistletoe arrow, draining her blood and severing her connection with her descendants.

The siblings then left their mother frozen on the mountaintop palace, with strict instructions to the werewolves to never revive her. They didn't much care if the werewolves drank her blood to gain power as without Leto, they wouldn't be able to truly challenge any of the gods. Apollo then left to the Celestial Realm and never returned. Artemis stayed on Earth and still wanders to this day.

Leto awoke again thousands of years later in the year 1942. At that time, there was a great war across Europe and the Germans revived Leto hoping to use her power to take control over all werewolves. Leto instead simply ordered her descendants to kill and cause chaos. She was tired and wished only to go back to sleep. She was once again defeated by her daughter Artemis. Leto's awakening this time had consequences that are still felt to the present day, causing many werewolves to Go Insane, following the last orders they were given by their goddess.

The Anagi Vampires and the Wolfhelm Werewolves gained control of Leto's body. They transported her out of Europe. Leto's body now sits under Castillo Nox in the Canary Islands. Her body is well guarded so hopefully she never awakens again. Artemis considered tearing Leto apart and scattering her remains across the world, similar to the fates of gods before her, but Artemis believes her mother can be useful again one day.