Fiction: Assumed mythology line-up!

 It's the start of the weekend, and I still don't have the second post of a three-post week. That left me without anything in particular outside my fairly massive and ridiculously quickly written novel that I already posted a spoiler for. I considered one particular chapter to post, because I keep revising it, with more spoilers and a whole lot of stuff without the introduction or buildup. Then I decided to do something different that was actually fun to do. I like to work mythology and folklore (see Chelsea the (bad) Social Worker, which has some overlap) into my stories, and for this project, I had the idea of a whole culture based on ancient Greek mythology but with such a skewed perspective that their take would be equivalent to theistic Satanism. (Yes, I've encountered that in the wild...) With that in mind, I went as far as writing out a list of the characters these guys would choose as their heroes. So, here goes...

These are the names of the 12 Heroes of the Myrmidons, who defied the gods who are not gods and brought the wrath of gods and men, and the accounts of their deeds as told among them and the Misthioi.

 

Aeacus the Ruler: He was a demigod king of the island of Aegina and founder of the Myrmidons. Seeing that he was loved by his father Zeus and his people, jealous Hera destroyed his kingdom with a plague. Finding himself among the bodies of his subjects, he beheld the ants and the brotherhood and good order with which they marched. In grief, he called on Zeus to make him a new people and a great army from the ants. Zeus granted his wish, and the ants became the first Hoplites of the Myrmidons. He lived long and well, and when he came to the shores of Tartarus, Kind Hades appointed him as a judge of the souls of the dead.

 

Aesclepius the Healer: He was the greatest of physicians and kindest of men. It was said that his medicine could cure all disease, and some even told that he could return the dead to life. Kind Hades pled that his power be drawn back, lest the living fill the Earth until there was no food to eat or land to grow it. Instead, Zeus slew him, fearing that one with the power to restore the dead to life might also learn the secret ways to slay the immortal gods. But the people revered him in death, even as a god himself, and Just Hades honored him with the sign of the serpent in the heavens.

 

Amphion the Defender: He was the founder and builder of great Thebes, the impenetrable city, and husband of rash Niobe. When the gods slew his sons for their mother’s insult, his daughters prevailed on their mother to come to the temple of the Sun and Moon in penitence by the promise of a false oracle. Guessing the gods’ trap, he breached the temple to find his daughters slain beside the bodies of their brothers, save Meliboia. He fought the Assassins of Olympus, one against two, and it is said that he wounded the arm of mighty Apollo, or else moved him to mercy by his show of valor. But the cold Lady of the Moon cast a dart he could only slow with his shield and his body. Then, knowing himself mortally wounded, he cast himself down from the temple mount so that the gods could not claim to have extinguished his line by their hands alone. But where he fell, only persephones were found, to show that Kind Hades and his Queen had favored him.

 

Arachne the Challenger: She was the greatest and proudest weaver of all mortal men, so great that she challenged Athena to prove herself better. They held a great contest, which only Zeus would judge. Arachne showed the sins of the gods, where Athena showed the fates of those who had defied them. And the gathered peoples said that Arachne was the better, save that Athena wove with finer thread that no mortal had seen from the wealth of the heavens and the depths of the Earth. But Zeus judged his daughter victor, and in spite, the goddess smashed Arachne’s weaving along with her loom. Then humiliated Arachne prepared to hang herself with her last measure of pride, but the gods or mysterious Fate transformed her to a spider, the first of her kind on the Earth. To this day, Athena curses the sign of her kind.

 

Cassandra the Counsellor: She was the greatest and wisest of all prophets and seers, moved to warn the kings and their people of disaster. Mighty Apollo wooed her, for he knew his own oracles could not match her vision. But when he offered to make her the very Queen of Heaven if she would foretell to him alone the dooms that might yet fall on the gods themselves, she spurned him. So the god laid on her the curse of Moira, that ever after, she would foresee every doom, but no mortal from outcast to king would believe her or heed her until the Fates she foretold had come had already come to pass. Worse, it would be her lot to fall in the path of every great calamity, to warn in vain and then suffer, yet never find death. And so she wandered the Earth, from land to land and age to age until east became west and tomorrow became ancient legend, and some say she wanders still, warning of the doom that will yet smite the very stars from the sky.

 

Chloris the Accuser: She was the daughter of Amphion and last princess of Thebes, wounded by the gods themselves but not destroyed. It is said that she was first named Meliboia, meaning Honey And Milk, but when men beheld her risen from the tomb of her family, they called her Pale One. Ever after, it was appointed to her to testify to the evil deeds of gods and men, whether in the courts of Olympus or the halls of Kind Hades. From of old, the rescue of Chloris and the love and valor of her mother was portrayed in song and in stone. Yet, many of the ignorant and unknowing instead tell that the daughters of Niobe fell nameless beside their brothers.

 

Hephaestus the Armorer: He was an Olympian, the god of the forge and of arms and armor, and the only one besides Kind Hades to earn the veneration of the Mymidons. He was born to Zeus and Hera, so ugly and deformed that his mother cast him from the Heavens. Yet he returned, and proved himself by casting the most beautiful ornaments and most cunning weapons of the gods. A day came when he defended his mother after his father wronged her, and his father cast him down again. Then he taught his arts to mortal men, and the Myrmidons say it was he rather than Prometheus the First Benefactor who first revealed the secret of fire. At last, Zeus restored him in fear that he would arm the men of Earth as the gods themselves. And so he crafts his father’s mighty thunderbolts, yet it is said that he keeps the deadliest bolt of all for himself, in case a time should come when the gods plot to expel him again.

 

Idas the Redeemer: He was the faithful lover of Marpessa, whom Apollo sought as a trifle. He alone prevailed against the gods. His lady was not tempted, for she loved Idas and was wise enough to know that gods were rarely true or kind to mortal women, but they both feared that the god would not leave them in peace. So great was his love and bravery that Idas dared to challenge mighty Apollo to combat for honor, and Zeus feared the disgrace of all the gods if the mortal man prevailed or if the god resorted to treachery to best him. For the first and only time, the King of Heaven pledged to honor the choice of a mortal woman between god or man. The true mortal rightly received his bride, and Zeus was forced to swear that the gods would trouble them no more.

 

Mestra the Maiden: She was the daughter of Erysichthon the Hungry, whom even the Myrmidons count most justly accursed, yet the punishment of the gods caused more woe to her than the sinful King. Consumed from within by Limos, the Demon of Famine, her father became a deathless ghoul who devoured the harvest of his kingdom, and all the food his wealth would buy, and finally his own servants. He at last threatened to consume Mestra if she did not bring him food. To escape him, she agreed to be sold as bride to six master even crueler in exchange for a ship full of food. Her suitors thought to cheat the king with moldering bread, diseased livestock, putrid meat, poisonous fruit, bitter herbs and ancient bones. Each time, her father consumed the offering in a day, while she escaped with her power to change shape and returned to be sold again, and when her husbands pursued her, the ghoul devoured them as well. Her seventh suitor was Autolycos, master of thieves. To him, she revealed that her father could not look upon his own reflection. Mestra lured the ghoul into a chamber lined with mirrors, and the gallant thief sealed him in. Trapped, the wicked king consumed himself, and the Maiden became Autolycos’ lady and partner. She is held up as an example of the virtue of fulfilling all oaths and the bonds of family, even to the unworthy, but her marriage is a byword for a bargain made in desperation and bad faith, to no benefit.

 

Orestes the Avenger: He was the heir and avenger of Agamemnon, whom Aegisthus slew for his throne and the favor of his faithless queen Clytemenstra. Orestes slew the usurper, but for presuming to slay his king, the gods sent visions of the Furies to torment him to madness. Against the specters he alone could see, he raged and flailed, until he dealt a mortal wound to his sister Electra, believing her a Fury in a mortal guise. He then prepared to murder his mother, who confessed that his father was not Agamemnon but Aegisthus whom he had killed, and then slew herself instead. At the last, he swore that the gods were not gods if they would drive men to greater evil for a sin made in ignorance and madness. Only then did the Furies disappear from his sight, never to return.

 

Palamedes the Diviner: He was a wise king and commander in the war against Troy. Of the great heroes, he alone was wronged by men and not by the gods. Among his many deeds, he invented the dice, and in so doing learned much of the ways of Fortune and Fate, which are greater than the so-called gods. It is said those who rolled against him came to mistrust him and resent the debts they owed. It was perhaps for this reason that he came to be accused of treason and spying, and finally charged based on a letter many held to be forged by his chief enemy, the famed Odysseus. He submitted his doom, proclaiming that his own fortune had been cast, and some say it was this injustice that led to the disastrous voyage of Odysseus.

 

Sisyphus the Truth-Teller: He was the founder and king of Corinth, and judged the most cunning of all men. He brought riches to his city by his dealings, which some said were gained by murder and treachery against his guests. But others told that he could tell no lie nor break any promise, but could by omission and incomplete truths deceive more completely than the most brazen liar. It was even said that he escaped Death and Hades by his trickery. The greatest test came when an enemy of Zeus sought a hiding place where the god had taken a damsel, and Sisyphus gave witness against the King of Heaven, revealing what he knew of a secret place he had seen the god enter. Some say that for this, he was punished to an eternity of hard and futile labor, others that he defied the gods in the knowledge of the doom that already awaited him.