Name: Hades, Agesander, Aidonious, Zeus-Kthonios.
Titles: Custodian of the Underworld, The King of Those Below, The Cthonian God, Lord of the Dead. The Deathless King. Master of The Deathly Veil.
Character Type: Chthonian God.
Divine Domain: The Underworld, Wealth and Riches, The World Below, The Deep Earth.
Powers: Hades is one of the few beings who wields the power of both Olympus and Cthon, having been born of Chronos and Rhea in the realm above before being granted dominion over the world below. The intensity of his power is often deemed more subtle than his divine brothers, who revel openly in the worship of mortals and need not concern themselves with the practice of esoteric magics. Still, few would dare to say he is not their equal when the sum of all parts is considered. To invoke Hades’ name is to earn his attention, for his presence dwells in all dark places. He is not simply the ruler of the underworld, but he is the underworld, able to remake and shape the lands as he wills in a manner that even the masters of Earth and Sea cannot match with their domains. As with all Olympians, Hades is supernaturally resistant and capable of great mortal feats. Shared with some of the more powerful Olympians, Hades can perceive events beyond those he is present for, while not so complete as Helios’ omnipresence, it matches the other great Olympians.
More uniquely, Hades can hide his presence with magical invisibility entirely, and has almost complete control over the undead, be they shades of the Underworld or ghosts trapped on the mortal plane. He wields Cthonic magic, the art of witchcraft, with great ability, having been tutored by Hecate in ages past, and benefitting from his total connection to the Underworld.
Assets: Hades’ has one of the broadest, if thinly spread, influences on the mortal plane of the major Olympian Gods. As the God of Wealth and Riches much of the new financial sector, in the limited but ever-increasing return to globalisation, is tied by some means to the God of the Dead and his servants, be they god or mortal. Most do not directly work under the name of Hades, although most Gods and Demigods themselves, where wealth in the mortal realm is considered, have some dealings with Krypte, the personal bank of Hades. As much as finance is tied to Hades, so to are the riches of the Earth, and those who delve beneath to extract the wealth of Hades’ domain pay respect to him, even if it is a respect born of fear. The most well-renowned among mortals is Rhoa, a series of casinos and nightclubs found in many of the major cities of the divinely aligned human world, even in places which are otherwise beholden to other gods. Many consider this frivolous for such a severe god but it is through these dens of joy and loss that the Cthonic gods interact with mortals, and play their games of bargains and pacts that so fuel their own form of magic.
Lastly, far in the North of the world by the standards of habitability in the modern day, Hades’ maintains the City of Phelgithos, built up around the latest volcanic entrance through the Deathly Veil. While Iceland was not subject to direct attack during the waning wars in the world before, radioactive storms rage across the Atlantic, dust carried on winds from the ravaged continents of Europe and North America. To reach Phelgithos without the knowledge to chart a course through these storms is dangerous, even for the divine, and so Phelgithos is smaller by far than New Olympia or Aegeia, or perhaps even many other divinely focused settlements of humanity, but it is a grand place, administered well in the name of the Deathless God.
Primary Location: Pheligthos, New Olympia and any given representation of Rhoa.
Appearance:
As a greater Olympian, Hades can take many forms ranging from the animal to the colossal, although he rarely appears in such a grand way. When dealing with mortals in close confines the God of the Dead remains glamoured even when not concealing his identity, as most Olympian beings do to not overpower mortal senses. This mortal guise is usually a tall man with sharp features and dark hair, with cold eyes of ice blue. As befitting the God of wealth he is usually clad in whatever present company would see as well dressed, but in the stately manner of old money as opposed to the flashiest of fashions that more frivolous deities prefer.
In the divine form he favours most, the features of his mortal guise are pushed to extremes, towering above mortal men with a cold and austere beauty, carven with sharp edges. His skin seems carven from obsidian, with blue-green lines of corpse light instead of veins running across the surface, a pair of great dark antlers rising from his temples. In his wake is a chill that is not truly cold, but simply an absence of vitality. When Hades calls on his Cthonic magic Or the rare times he is brought to any great emotion, the light which plays across and under his skin grows in intensity, but never quite enough to fully counter the very absence of light his stone-like skin represents.
Biography:
Contrary to what many later presume, Hades is the oldest of his surviving brothers. While there may have been sons before who were consumed by the violent paranoia of Chronos, there are none who survived imprisonment within his form. Thus, even before he was made Lord of the Dead, Hades was the most touched and warped by darker powers, dwelling long in a prison of divine flesh. Later histories seemed to tell the tale of Zeus uprising as one simple event, the disgorgement of the Olympian family from the gullet of their sire and his overthrowal being one and the same, but this was not the case. While the Titan was humbled, he was not defeated and had many allies among his kin. Thus the war for creation began, the young Hades going from the torment of imprisonment to the horror of war with no reprieve.
Of course, as it is known, the Olympians were victorious. Chronos was slain, his remains entombed within Tartatus for his ilk can never truly be killed for good, his closest allies entombed or exiled with only those Titans who had remained apart from the conflict or even aided the Olympians being spared the wrath of the victors. Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, the brothers upon whom much of the war had being shouldered, drew lots to determine their domain. To the Gods there is no such thing as chance, and so Hades was always fated to draw the lot for the Underworld, and so the eldest brother became Lord of the Underworld, all that lies beneath the Earth and beyond the Dark Veil beholden to him.
Hades may now have been the God of the Death, but Death was not in his nature, as one of the Deathless Olympians, and so he kept many of the Cthonic beings who had always dwelled beyond the Veil in his court. He ate the fruit of the Underworld, thus ever binding himself to his domain, although in his case the transformation was more total. Hades is not simply Lord of the Underworld, he is the Underworld. The great rivers, the blazing fires and the endless meadows, often deities in their own right, are of his form and bend to his will as easily as a mortal can command their eyes to blink.
Many have taken Hades’ dour demeanour to suggest he was enraged by his share of the spoils of war, that he envied the lively realms of his brothers and the manner in which mortals and daimons would grow to love and worship them, but if this was true, it did not impact his capability. The Underworld was set in order by the King of the Dead, obeying and protecting its immutable laws while similarly changing to suit its austere but capable ruler. The roles of the Cthonic Gods were put to order where once there had been chaos and competition, the different realms of the shades were brought to order beneath the banner of the Deathless King.
Over the following aeons, with the rise of humanity, the work of the Underworld ever increased. The domain of Hades was not one to encourage love and worship from the mortal masses, yet all beings except Gods must inevitably pass on, and so few human societies did not in some way pay respect to the King of the Dead, ensuring, or at least attempting to, the place of themselves and their loved ones within the halls of the Underworld. The deathless gods of Olympus often remained aloof, with downcast gaze upon the one brother who ruled far beneath them, yet few gods are deemed as competent in their rule as Hades, binding together both Olympian and Cthonic Gods in his service with only rarely having to threaten his wrath. A similar approach Hades has held towards the mortal world across the ages, respectful of the duties and laws thrust upon him, yet unflinching in his authority when he needs to be. Few of his notable interactions with the mortal world did much to dispel the sense of dread that many hold for Hades, for many believe the invocation of his name alone is enough to cause misfortune, but the Lord of the Dead was once often among mortality in more subtle forms and it is during those times that his mercy was more often felt.
When the Gods of Olympus went into their long exile, Hades fully descended into his realm, although the work of the Underworld never ceased, the gods of Chton did not have the pleasure of their overworld counterparts in their hibernation. Hades administered his realm through the long years of isolation as well as he had the ages prior, noting only the ever increase as the ages of humanity went on.
The start of the great wars which brough about the end of the old age of humanity was a time of great chaos for the Underworld, a deluge of souls torn apart in the most violent of conflicts, while suffusing the Cthonic underworld with great power, was also disruptive in the extreme. Ever stoic in nature, the Lord of the Dead was initially against the intervention of the Gods into mortal affairs spearheaded by the awakened Zeus and Ares, he was inevitably drawn into the conflict at the calls of his siblings for aid. Notably, Hades has little known role in the eventually rebellion against Zeus. Few have ever called the bond between the three great brothers as warm, but perhaps it ran deeper than most knew.
Despite his original reluctance to become involved in mortal affairs, Hades influence is widespread across the world now. He seeks to build little in the way of a direct domain, outside the island that was once Iceland, but instead has subtle influence across the world in his compatriots courts. The worst of rumors even suggest that the sprawling subsidiaries connected to The King Of Those Below have begun operations in the territories outlawed by the Accords, among the humans who reject the rule of the Olympians.
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