The Romverse (On Divinity and Worship)

[Libra]

What do you mean 'Imagine'? Just look at the Maenads - he's there already!

Thank you for your kind words in any case - I must admit though that when I think of Hera my mind is shaped by two particular performances (Honour Blackman in Jason and the Argonauts and Siân Phillips as Livia from I,Claudius).

Mix the two and you effectively have my mental image of Hera.

[RomLoneWolf23]

Well, time to finish my round-up of the Olympians, then.

Simply put, while the inhabitants of Mount Olympus respect the Ban's rules to the letter, they're notorious for skirting around it and exploiting every loophole possible to visit Earth again. They just love mortals too much (in every sense of the word, for some) to just go away. Athena, Ares and Hades are only the most well-known Olympians actively operating on Earth. At one point or another, it seems every Olympian is going to take a turn visiting Earth.

Zeus: the King of the Olympians, father to Athena, Ares, Heracles and many, many others, Zeus hasn't really changed much over the past few centuries. When he's not lusting after goddesses, nymphs, mortals, animals and pretty much anything that's going to stay still long enough, he rules over Mt. Olympus and its inhabitants. Which mostly involves playing ringmaster to the soap opera that is the Olympian Pantheon. Considering some of the Olympians, one can almost understand Zeus' constant ducking out to dally with a mortal instead.

Another concern of his is holding on to his power, and making sure none of his progeny actually tries doing to him what he did to his father. He mostly accomplishes this by playing them against one another. Such as he's done with Ares and Athena. While he loves them both in his own way, he does nothing to stop the war between the two godly siblings because it gives them something to do beside plotting to overthrow him. He's actually proud of both of them, for different reasons. He's pleased to see Ares has stopped being a petulant bully and matured a bit, and is happy that Athena has found some fulfillment doing something she likes, protecting the mortals he likes so much.

Hera: Queen of Olympus, and goddess of marriage, which is ironic considering she's unhappily married to the most unfaithful deity in all existence. Which explains why she's routinely in an angry mood, though she thankfully keeps her anger focused on Zeus' lovers, and has mellowed out a bit over the centuries. She hasn't cursed anyone with a baleful transformation since the Renaissance, after all. She's actually on friendly terms with Athena, having long ago gotten over that Golden Apple incident.

Hephaestus: for starters, the Lame Blacksmith God is lame no longer. Around the 1800s he finally got tired of his bum leg, chopped it off and replace it with a bronze clockwork replacement, and limped no longer. Then, because he liked symmetry, he did again with his other leg. And while he was on a roll.. ...By the time he'd finished "upgrading" himself, most of his body had been replaced with magical bronze cybernetics. Fully functional ones, if Aphrodite is to be believed.

Aphrodite: speaking of the goddess of love, she's still as much of a slut as she ever was, although she comes back to Hephaestus' bed a bit more often these days. He's actually adjusted to it by now. The make-up sex is fantastic. She still trifles with other lovers, of course, and has been known to flirt with superheroes and supervillains from time to time.

Hermes: Messenger of the Gods, and also the God of Merchants and Commerce, Athletics and Travel, Public Speaking, Shepherds and Thieves. He's since expanded his already vast portfolio to include Fast Food Delivery, Mass Transit, Automobiles, Lawyers, Telecommunications and the Internet. Between his incredibly eclectic interests, it's amazing he still finds time to visit the mortal world for some trickery and thievery. He especially loves challenging speedsters like Johnny Rocket to test their quickness against his, and has had more then a few rematches against the human missile. In fact, Johnny was rather surprised during their last encounter, as the speedster god actually flirted with him. He's still unsure if he should feel flattered or worried.

Apollo: The only Olympian who's portfolio is more expansive then Hermes. Sun God. Music God. Archery God. Poetry God. Painting God. Prophecy God. Plagues and Healing God. Animal Welfare God. God of Radiance. God of Ploughing. A veritable Renaissance god, he's spent the past few centuries mastering modern forms of media and scientific fields ranging from biochemistry to astrophysics, and can be found secretly sponsoring various scientific research projects on Earth, working under a variety of guises. Unfortunately, while he's not malevolent, he does have a problem grasping that whole "Ethical Research" concept, and Athena has frequently found herself having to deal with the "unforseen consequences" of his experiments. And yet every time, he just writes down what went wrong, turns around and goes right back to another potentially dangerous experiment.

Dionysos: Think Dionysos is just a happy go-lucky god of drunkards? Think again. To begin with, He isn't a "proper" Eternal. He's the end result of a confusing encounter Zeus had with an Entropic Master he managed to re-imprison. When the little hybrid ripped his way out of Zeus' thigh, Hera wisely fed the creature to some Titans. Unfortunately he somehow survived, regenerated from this and grew to adulthood in the Greek wilderness, whereupon he discovered how to make wine, and the pleasures of wanton debauchery. He built his own cult of devoted, drunken, lustful, insane followers, known as the Maenads. Even after being "legitimately" recognized as an Olympian, he remains a very chaotic and dangerous deity, and his followers are extreme hedonists with little morals or restraints.

Artemis: Wild Goddess of Hunting, Animal Liberation, Feistiness and Feminism. She's become less of a huntress and more of an animal rights activist in recent decades, and has become the unofficial patron deity of PETA.

Nike: Goddess of Victory, and Athena's closest friend. She actually took on a mortal identity to fight alongside Athena as her sidekick during the 70s, before being called back to Olympus.

Cerberus: Not technically a god, though he still serves Hades faithfully. But he's recently started manifesting in a new form combining traits of both his known forms, that of an anthropomorphic, three-headed dog. It appears this decision was inspired by a talk with Anubis and Bast, who have both become quite enamoured with this nifty human thing called "Furry Fandom."

[Voltron64]

Cerberus: Not technically a god, though he still serves Hades faithfully. But he's recently started manifesting in a new form combining traits of both his known forms, that of an anthropomorphic, three-headed dog. It appears this decision was inspired by a talk with Anubis and Bast, who have both become quite enamoured with this nifty human thing called "Furry Fandom."

Oh Lonewolf, you and the Furry Fandom.

[RomLoneWolf23]

Oh Lonewolf, you and the Furry Fandom.

I make no apologies for it.

[Libra]

Well the man has a furry beasties at the root of his very username, so why should we be surprised?

(On the other hand I'll remind you that this is supposed to be an all-ages forum and leve things there, Lone Wolf).

Excellent work on the Olympians, by the way - I particularly like your treatment of Apollo, Hephaestus and Dionysus. I'll post more on the subject, sooner rather than later (I hope).

[RomLoneWolf23]

(On the other hand I'll remind you that this is supposed to be an all-ages forum and leve things there, Lone Wolf).

No worries, I'm keeping this thread PG, at worst.

edit: although I'm surprised my comment about furry fandom drew more attention then explicitly stating Aphrodite "got around", and that Hermes was openly flirting with Johnny Rocket.

[Crinos]

(On the other hand I'll remind you that this is supposed to be an all-ages forum and leve things there, Lone Wolf).

No worries, I'm keeping this thread PG, at worst.

edit: although I'm surprised my comment about furry fandom drew more attention then explicitly stating Aphrodite "got around", and that Hermes was openly flirting with Johnny Rocket.

Well come on, they're Greek Gods. Those guys screwed anything that walked upright and a few things that didn't.

[Libra]

Well, most of them did. Some of them just screwed Mortals over . . .

(Besides, you didn't go into detail on the former remark and as to the latter, well, it's the 21st Century - you don't have to approve of that sort of thing but you should tolerate it).

[Libra]

Comments on the Olympians

Zeus

When he's not lusting after goddesses, nymphs, mortals, animals and pretty much anything that's going to stay still long enough

Not to mention chasinging, seducing, ambushing after polymorphing, raining down in showers of gold upon and occasionally even romancing them . . .

He rules over Mt. Olympus and its inhabitants. Which mostly involves playing ringmaster to the soap opera that is the Olympian Pantheon.

He mostly accomplishes this by playing them against one another.

I suspect that Zeus appreciates the soap opera, even if it occasionally bores him - if everyone else is trying to kill, balefully polymorph, seduce or just sex each other then, they're not only not trying to usurp him but keeping eternity interesting!

Zeus only starts worrying when Olympus is at it's quietest, since that means deities are actually thinking.

Hera

Which explains why she's routinely in an angry mood, though she thankfully keeps her anger focused on Zeus' lovers, and has mellowed out a bit over the centuries.

Either that or she's just become even better at not getting caught!

She's actually on friendly terms with Athena, having long ago gotten over that Golden Apple incident.

I'll bet she still nurses a grudge against Venus for that one, though - her pawns may have destroyed Troy, but Venus just had to make sure that her whelp Aeneas would survive and become the forefather of the mightiest Empire on Earth.

Hephaestus

As noted before I really like the idea of Hephaestus becoming a clockwork deity - it's just so brilliantly comic book-ish!

Aphrodite

Well, I wouldn't call her a 'slut' myself - Olympians have NASTY tempers - but she's definately the Goddess of Free Love rather than True Love.

Hermes

There's no reason John shouldn't feel both - this is Hermes after all. Everyone likes him, but absolutely no-one should trust him, except with their correspondence.

Apollo

A very interesting twist on the Archer God, making him a decidely eccentric Scientist - I would suggest that he does hunt down those of his creations that Athena doesn't (Part of the reason he whips up these chimerae in the first place would be to have new monsters to hunt, I think).

Artemis

I suspect that while Artemis may have mostly given up hunting animals, she has by no means put a stop to her manhunting (Given that she's known as a virgin goddess for a very good reason, this isn't a good thing).

Dionysos

I rather like this portrayal, but I would add that Dionysus is even worse when he's sober . . .

Nike

So Nike was briefly a sidekick to Athena during the neo-Silver Age in the 1980s, eh?

I wonder if they'll resume this relationship, given the recent revelation of the true nature of the young superheroine who took her name?

Cerberus

Bast I can understand, but Anubis?

(I confess that I always picture the jackal-headed undertaker as a bit of a killyjoy - or at least highly formal and devoted to hierarchy - like most of pesedjet).

[RomLoneWolf23]

Well, the Egyptians weren't very prudish, remember. They had one creation myth involving Atum creating the universe through an act of self-pleasure, and just check out Min's (nsfw) entry at Godchecker for something even weirder.

Besides, as they would say, "Hey, worship is worship." I'll get into more detail when I cover the gods of Heliopolis.

[ultra8]

You learn something new everyday.

Nice take on the Olympians, the original dysfunctinal family.

[Charles Phipps]

I should have gotten to this awhile ago RomLoneWolf but here is my commentary.

Athena, Goddess of Law

Athena's career as a heroine has been a relatively short blip in her existence as an Eternal, but she considers it more fulfilling then anything else she's done before. She managed to get around the restrictions of the Ban by reducing herself and her power. While in her full Eternal form she was nearly as powerful as Hades himself, much of this might is refused to her in her current semi-mortal form. Though she's still nearly as powerful as the likes of Divinos and Protonik in her current state.

I really enjoy your write-up of Athena, it's quite impressive and inspired my own.

Given Divinos routinely does things like wrestles Hercules and Samson (I consider the All Star Superman series pretty close to Divinos' life), that's saying something right there. Of course, the prospect of killing Athena is something that lures plenty of evil monsters and gods out of the woodwork.

She currently leads the Patriots, who defer to her courage, wisdom and experience, though Steel Commando and Black Wing II occasionally questions her plans and offer alternatives. She actually encourages this, because sometimes they're right, but mostly because she wants to keep her own ego in check.

Besides, debate is something she actively and healthily encourages. Admittedly, there's those few times they're right and she's WRONG that really irritate her.

Her arch-nemesis remains her own brother Ares, who bargained with Hades to regain his life (though Hades mostly agreed to get his freeloading nephew away from his wife), and is back in Olympus, once again plotting to cause another big conflict on Earth to empower himself and revel in bloodshed. She's also battled against Hades himself, as well as Taurus and Talos on occasion.

Athena's rogues gallery in HED! is pretty much filled with a lot of terrible creatures from Olympian myth. These includes the Titans, Ares, Ares' sons, Hera, the Gorgons, Arachne (still bitter after all these years), Typhon, the Maenads, and even her half-sister Artemis. Hercules, Hermes, Nike, and Apollo serve as beneficial members of her supporting cast.

Apollo has attempted to woo Athena on a few occasions, believing they could easily overthrow Zeus together (and he's correct), but she has no interest in her brother "that way."

Hmmm . . . I'm unsurprised that Taurus carries a grudge against the patroness of his nemesis' hometown, but I'm curious about your vision of Athena and Hades' personal relationship.

Do they bear particular enmity against each other or is their opposition a matter of principle?

In the merged HED! and Freedomverse, Athena is the greatest danger to the Labyrinth that the Man-Bull faces due to the fact that as the Goddess of Weaving and the Goddess of Wisdom; she sees ALL of Taurus' movements. It was the most terrifying and horrific moment of Taurus' life since being slain by Theusus when after targetting one of her battered women's shelters, Athena promptly flew off and landed in Taurus' backdoor.

She then explained EXACTLY how everything he did was as transparent as glass to her. How he wasn't nearly as sneaky or intelligent as he thought he was and how he was nothing more than a manipulator and a crime lord like thousands of other humans. That, furthermore, should she ever want then she could ALWAYS find him and kill him.

The event left the man bull deeply shaken. Daedalus, of course, can also find Taurus' machinations but that's due to thousands of years of studying the man. Whether or not Athena really can do this or "may" have called in a favor by seeking the Fates out and passing the trials necessary to discover who was responsible is anyone's guess.

After all, lying to psyche out an enemy is just good strategy and she IS goddess of that...

Ironically, she's wrong about that last bit. Hades is no fool; while the rules of the Ban allow him to walk the Earth if summoned by mortal-kind, they forbid Eternals from messing with human destiny except under some specific circumstances. Hades has simply figured out a way around this restriction, through his authority over Thanatos the Olympian Eternal of Death, and with his contacts amongst the Fates. Everyone who has ever died as a result of Hades' villainous schemes had his Fated Death "rescheduled", to occur at the hands of Hades and his minions. So in Hades' eyes, he committed no wrong in killing humans who were doomed to die in any case.

Nicely done, I like your take on Hades as simply relieving the boredom of eternity as a supervillain.

The Fates aren't kind, despite their names. Simply put, the arrival of Hades on Earth created the Freedom League's revival and helped prepare the world for the attack of Omega. Hades' belief that everything he does is predestined allows him to skirt the Ban much closer than most. It also helps that he has a very large number of cultists on Earth.

Pluto was the Roman Goddess of Wealth and few gods can compete with what he has to offer.

Athena came to Earth herself to put an end to those plans, and after numerous battles alongside the Liberty League, she herself slew her half-brother Ares, casting him down into the Underworld of Tartarus. Ares has since returned to life, after bargaining with his uncle Hades, and has resumed his games of shadowy plotting and warmongering.

Ares is a fairly dangerous man either way. In the one time Kenneth Kane actually ended up in Foundation custody and looked like he was doomed, he managed to take over PHANTOM for a short period and run it even more effectively than DMIII. Of course, he was going for genuine world domination but he likes the countless brushfire wars that humanity is capable of generating.

His vision of the future is like Metal Gear Solid IV. A future of countless wars fought between mercenaries on a permanent war based economy with resources being happily traded and no end or beginning.

Unsurprisingly, the Olympians are actually the gods of the Thran. Ares is their Chief one (under a different name of course)

*Goes through it* Nice. Making the Aesir more antagonistic is a nice twist, though I do like the option of making both the Aesir and their Jotun enemies both morally ambiguous.

As for the Olympians, I like what you did with Zeus and Hera (although I did flirt with the idea of Hera finally divorcing Zeus, becoming goddess of ex-wives), but I had some different ideas for some of the other Olympians.

Loge is a friend to Ymir and desires to thwart his destiny of Ragnarok while Odin has more or less embraced it as something to be endured. It's not so much that either side is good or evil than Ymir pretty much accidentally made humanity's choice over which to side with for them since he's a beloved hero.

The Wotan in the Book of Villains is more a "stern Old Testament" god than genuinely evil.

I'll get to the rest of your write-ups soon.

[Charles Phipps]

Zeus: the King of the Olympians, father to Athena, Ares, Heracles and many, many others, Zeus hasn't really changed much over the past few centuries. When he's not lusting after goddesses, nymphs, mortals, animals and pretty much anything that's going to stay still long enough, he rules over Mt. Olympus and its inhabitants. Which mostly involves playing ringmaster to the soap opera that is the Olympian Pantheon. Considering some of the Olympians, one can almost understand Zeus' constant ducking out to dally with a mortal instead.

Zeus has his benefits as he's one of the chief Cosmic Eternals who actually bothers to enforce the Ban. He finds the fact that Odin and his followers routinely violate it (due to Ragnarok beginning) most troubling and frequently is the one who leads the Council of divinities to punish various errant deities.

(Athena vs. Mikaboshi and other epic stories often end with the foreign deities dragged off to deities know where)

Hera: Queen of Olympus, and goddess of marriage, which is ironic considering she's unhappily married to the most unfaithful deity in all existence. Which explains why she's routinely in an angry mood, though she thankfully keeps her anger focused on Zeus' lovers, and has mellowed out a bit over the centuries. She hasn't cursed anyone with a baleful transformation since the Renaissance, after all. She's actually on friendly terms with Athena, having long ago gotten over that Golden Apple incident.

HED's Athena is a bit colder to her stepmother and vice versa. Not just because of Athena being one of her husband's bastard progeny but also because she desires to place her own son on the throne of Olympus if/when it actually happens.

In the end, Hera usually turns agaisnt Ares when his madness resurfaces. Privately, she does think Olympus could use a little more respect in the modern world.

Hephaestus: for starters, the Lame Blacksmith God is lame no longer. Around the 1800s he finally got tired of his bum leg, chopped it off and replace it with a bronze clockwork replacement, and limped no longer. Then, because he liked symmetry, he did again with his other leg. And while he was on a roll.. ...By the time he'd finished "upgrading" himself, most of his body had been replaced with magical bronze cybernetics. Fully functional ones, if Aphrodite is to be believed.

Hehe, I love the clockwork King. I can just imagine him and Daedalus going to blows with Hephaestus having his own suit of Armor.

(There's a version of the Thor villain "The Destroyer" called the Collossus in HED!. Basically, the ultimate suit of armor that Hephaestus made for Ares)

Aphrodite: speaking of the goddess of love, she's still as much of a slut as she ever was, although she comes back to Hephaestus' bed a bit more often these days. He's actually adjusted to it by now. The make-up sex is fantastic. She still trifles with other lovers, of course, and has been known to flirt with superheroes and supervillains from time to time.

Aphrodite can occasionally be known to visit with Freya and Ishtar as the three of them share the same Golden Spring in Valleywood. They're known to patronize the actresses there and poor Ymir has been known to win their attention for a short time, which is pretty much prone to Hal Jordan/Star Saphire levels of "I have to get out of here!"

The gods would tolerate a supoer-mortal dallying with ONE of their goddesses but to win the attention of all three for a time?

Ugh. Boy did he have to run quickly.

Which, of course, is why they do it. To see who gets jealous of batting their eyelashes that way.

In fact, Johnny was rather surprised during their last encounter, as the speedster god actually flirted with him. He's still unsure if he should feel flattered or worried.

Johnny is smart enough to know how these things usually work out, I'm sure.

Apollo: The only Olympian who's portfolio is more expansive then Hermes. Sun God. Music God. Archery God. Poetry God. Painting God. Prophecy God. Plagues and Healing God. Animal Welfare God. God of Radiance. God of Ploughing. A veritable Renaissance god, he's spent the past few centuries mastering modern forms of media and scientific fields ranging from biochemistry to astrophysics, and can be found secretly sponsoring various scientific research projects on Earth, working under a variety of guises.

Hehe, Bravo. I love Apollo as the god of science.

Your version of Dionyssus is also well done.

Nike: Goddess of Victory, and Athena's closest friend. She actually took on a mortal identity to fight alongside Athena as her sidekick during the 70s, before being called back to Olympus.

She's currently back in her new incarnation, basically having assumed a teen identity and a little confused since she can't really turn back into her original form (nor does the young girl want to). Hecate dislikes being "replaced."

The reason for this is Nike actually merged with a young human girl this time rather than transforming herself ala Don Blake and Thor.

[Libra]

Lone Wolf, might I ask what subject you plan to tackle after completing your Olympian sequence of articles?

[RomLoneWolf23]

Lone Wolf, might I ask what subject you plan to tackle after completing your Olympian sequence of articles?

Talos will be my last Olympian entry. Afterwards, I'll be tackling ideas concerning SHADOW. I did have an interesting thought about connecting Wilhelm Kantor (Overshadow) to Otto Skorzeny (a variant thereof being ISWAT's director).

Basically, they're more or less the same person. Only in Kantor's case, the person who would've been his Paternal grandfather was in fact born a woman, and became his Paternal Grandfather.