The Theoi
The World was born of the great chasm, Chaos, from whence arose Gaia, who birthed her equal, Uranus, to enshroud her in the sky. To Uranus, Gaia bore 12 great Titans, the Cyclopes, and the Hundred-Handed — but Uranus, fearful of his children’s power and hateful of their appearance, confined the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handed in Tartarus, far beneath Gaia, which caused her great pain. She fashioned a knife of flint and bestowed it upon her son, Cronus, who castrated his father and flung his genitals into the sea. Now preeminent, he took his sister Rhea for a wife, and to Cronus she bore six children — three daughters, and three sons.
But Cronus, who had learned well the lesson of his father Uranus, had no desire to be overthrown himself. Though at first he freed them, in time he reimprisoned the Hundred-Handed and Cyclopes in Tartarus, fearful of their power. Told he was destined to be overthrown by his own issue, he swallowed each of his six children, three daughters and three sons, as they were born. But Rhea, with the aid of Uranus and Gaia, tricked Cronus — swaddling a great stone that Cronus unthinkingly devoured, she spirited her youngest son, Zeus, to safety. When he was grown, he returned and overcame Cronus, who was made to vomit up his five children and a single stone.
Cunning Zeus freed the Hundred-Handed and the Cyclopes from Tartarus, and they in turn gave him thunder and lightning, the greatest of weapons. The terrible decade-long war between the Titans and the Theoi that followed came to be known as the Titanomachy, and when it ended triumphant Zeus imprisoned the Titans in Tartarus, setting the Hundred-Handed to guard its gates that they might never escape. Zeus then drew lots with his brothers, Hades and Poseidon, to determine how to split the rule of the world between them: Zeus drew the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the dread realm of the dead — the earth itself was left in common between them.
From high on Olympus, Zeus still reigns over the Theoi, ever-watchful of his many, many children — for after all, he too bears a certain destiny.
Aphordite
Apollo
Ares
Artemis
Athena
Demeter
Dionysus
Hades
Hecate
Hephaestus
Hera
Hermes
Hestia
Persephone
Poseidon
Zeus
Virtues: Egotism and Kinship Bound by Legend-rich ichor, the Theoi are also a literal family. They may squabble and backstab and cheat and lie, all to fulfill some urge or vice or desire of their own, but the one thing they can never do is leave — for good and ill, they are stuck with each other. Being divine, of course, their squabbles can and have spelled the doom of great cities and even entire cultures, to say nothing of what happens to mortals caught up in the fray. Egotism drives them to terrible ends, but it also pushes them to be great. In mortals, hubris is never a safe thing, but for the Gods, it’s business as usual. The Theoi can be some of the pettiest and most self-interested beings in existence, meting out terrible punishments on the flimsiest of pretexts (or even, sometimes, if they just feel like doing so).
On the other hand, if they count you as family, may the ferryman come swiftly for whosoever wishes you ill. Storge, familial love, is not a word many would use to describe the Theoi, given their penchant for abusing each other, but what they may lack in stability they make up for in tenacity. They may alternately loathe and love each other, but to them, Kinship is sacred — if you are family, you will never be abandoned. The Theoi have been living with each other for thousands of years, and they’re still a solid, powerful pantheon, one of the best known in the western World.
As Zeus is the patriarch of the Theoi, so are the Gods and Goddesses the patriarchs and matriarchs of their own lines of descent, to say nothing of the myriad Gods and Goddesses beneath them. Scions of the Theoi who know their parentage are often forced to grow up very young indeed, while those who come to the pantheon a little older and a little wiser often recoil from the toxic behavior that seems pervasive in every relationship. A few do end up quitting the family, either by taking up with another pantheon or doing something so vile that even the family won’t forgive them for it (which, for the Theoi, is a very high bar to clear). Any who do this find that they have earned an entire divine family’s enmity — at best, the most they can expect from their blood relations after that is to be used as a pawn by one against another, and what they will probably receive is far, far worse.
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