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Message: <blockquote data-quote="seasong" data-source="post: 975194" data-attributes="member: 5137">Warning: Theralese Gods aren't always nice, and some of the stuff they do is downright rotten. This covers one of those rotten things. I mean it - this is a Grecian story, skip it if you think that might make you queasy.Academia: GorgonaeYou've probably forgotten <a href="http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=760371&#post760371" target="_blank">Ogalos</a>. He's a somewhat obscure god of deep currents, and father of monsters (based at least partly on Phorkys of Grecian myth). Anyway, he fathered the Hydras on Ophalas, a shoreside fawn that he ensorcelled into bearing his child and then later into believing the child was beautiful.Nasty customer, and Ophalas (who died a year after Hydras' birth) was neither the first nor the last poor girl he fathered a child on. One of the more famous ones was Kethas... his twin sister.Born to the living sea itself when the world was young and primal, and before the Old Gods were cast down, Ogalos and Kethas were powerful gods of the deeps. Ogalos was the currents and the power they carried, and Kethas was the great sea serpent that thrashed among them.Kethas was the terrifying force of the sea before Peladas (the goddess of elemental water in the modern age) fought her and choked her with a net of seaweed, and buried her in the deepest trenches. It is said that earthquakes are caused by the tortures Peladas visits upon Kethas even today.But before even that happened, and indeed, before Peladas was even born to the protogenoi, Kethas bore triplet sisters to her twin brother. As the story is said to go, Kethas (in a murderous rage) sought out her brother while he slept, to bite him and slay him with her venom, that she might steal his power. But he woke at the last second, and they struggled mightily for a year and a day, as he sought to choke the life from her, and she sought to envenom his spirit.Finally, he overpowered the deadly serpent-goddess, and as she slipped into unconsciousness, raped her. From that terrible union, three sisters burst from her flesh, combining the worst aspects of their father's ugliness and their mother's venom.Euryale. Medusas. Sthenno. Known collectively as the Gorgones, each had the face of a crone, with a pair of tusks drawing the mouth down and splitting their lips, a ridge of viper-like horns jutting from their brow and cheekbones, a nest of vipers instead of hair, and eyes that were glazed white and seemed rotted and split like an ancient grape.When they were born, they attempted to kill Kethas, and she named* them each for the pain they caused her. Euryale (matricide) was named such because she shot an arrow into Kethas' stomach, and so attempted to kill motherhood. Medusas (hatred) was named such because she shot an arrow into Kethas breast, and attempted to kill the heart. And Sthenno (woe) was so named because she did not shoot her arrow at all, but instead approached her mother as if in love and then stabbed her in the eye with the arrow, and so brought tears from the Lidless Goddess.For her nature, Euryale became a demigod of barren woman. Unable to bear children of her own, she became the force that inflicted wasting illnesses and impotence and wilting crops. Her face caused all before her to wither and become infertile.For her nature, Medusas became coldest hatred. Her heart turned to stone, and her gaze turned all who saw her into matching marble.And Sthenno became the demigod of betrayed trust, the worst venom of the heart. Her gaze did nothing... immediately. But she possessed the power to apear as other than she was, and she killed without remorse.* Note: these are not the actual Greek translations. Those are also cool, but these gorgones are different from the Greek ones.So where is this going...?Belosphendonê, daughter of Sthenno and HethasBefore the Old Gods had been cast down, and when Hethas was a young and beautiful goddess, Medusas directed her hate at the pretty thing. To her surprise, Hethas merely laughed lightly as she turned to stone, saying, "Look at me! I am beautiful marble! I am a caryatid among columns, and yet unbound!"For Hethas loved the earth and stone, and found no fault in joining it. Nor could her spirit be bound, for even as stone she lived with passion.Medusas approached her sister, Euryale, and said to her, "My sister, have you seen the new goddess?""I have.""Is she not beautiful? And lively?""She is.""Do you suppose... do you suppose her children will be beautiful as well?"And so Euryale approached Hethas, saying, "It is said that you will bear a beautiful child."And Hethas laughed, replying, "I shall! Her face shall be like the moon, and her aura as radiant as the sun!"And Euryale glared at her, "Your child will be twisted and ugly, a mishapen thing deserving only a pitiless death. I say it and it must be so, that any child you bear will be withered with age before it leaves your womb!"Buth Hethas only laughed lightly, saying, "Your curses can not touch me, Euryale, for my child shall be born of your blood, but be beautiful anyway!"And Euryale and Medusas slunk off to consider this. And finally they resolved to speak to Sthenno, though they loathed to ask her anything, lest she exact too high a price. But in this, Sthenno had already known, and intended to act anyway. "Dearest sisters," she purred with honeyed tongue, "I shall provide her with our blood. I shall give her a child to bear. And the child will be beautiful, and fair, and lovely. Her face will be like the moon, and her aura as radiant as the sun. And then, as Hethas basks in the child's beauty, I will kill it, and stab it deep. It will bleed in her arms, and still be so beautiful as it dies."Sthenno smiled, "I shall do this. You shall see."And so Sthenno put on beautiful clothes, and covered her face in glamours, and wore a hood to conceal her serpents, and she approached Hethas as one who did not know her."Oh! You are as beautiful as any I have ever seen! Pray, tell me your name, that I might taste it upon my own lips for my remaining days!"Hethas, as vain as any young goddess, laughed and impetuously kissed the gorgone on the lips for the compliment. "I thank you, for my day is brighter for that, but why do you conceal yourself so? You seem very nearly as pretty as I!""No, fair goddess, I am as hideous as the worst monsters of the deep. None could love me if I showed myself.""Then I shall love you, whatever you look like!"And Sthenno showed herself, and Hethas smiled, surprising the gorgone... for she had thought to trick Hethas, and force her to keep her word, but here Hethas smiled at her, delicate lips parted in open affection."See? You are not so hideous. You combine the beauty of a woman with the beauty of a serpent - both sinuous grace and slender-limbed power. If you seem aged, you also seem wise.""I am considered ugly among all the gods. How can you say that?""My father raped a goat. Am I to think you less attractive than that? No, you are beautiful, though it is not the common beauty of the garden, nor the simpering prettiness of most goddesses."Sthenno looked Hethas in the eyes, "Even if my form is pleasing, I can not be trusted. I am venomous."And at that, Hethas smiled and kissed her crone-like visage, "Then one day you shall give me a daughter who will watch over the souls of the dead, and then you shall kill me instead of her, so that your venom may be sated."And thus it was, and when Hethas was slain, her daughter, named Belosphendonê, went into the depths of the earth to restore her, and Sthenno, heart-broken, wept into the earth and hid away in the depths of the sea. And Hethas came to rule the underworld, and Belosphendonê came to guard it and built her home at the seat of Akeros, the river of pain.</blockquote>

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