Name: Britomartis
Titles:Lady of the Nets, Diktynna
Appearance:While Brit may be beautiful by mortal standards, she lacks the grace and nobility of the higher goddesses. She's sturdy and broad-shouldered, taking the form of a muscular fisherwoman. Her skin is tan, decorated with an array of freckles and scars, her hands are calloused, and her face is home to imperfections uncommon for a goddess - laugh lines, forehead creases, crow's feet. In ancient times, Britomartis' form looked to be around twenty, matching her mischievous and youthful nature. Since she's been pushed by circumstance into having to accept more responsibility, her form has aged; these days, she looks to be in her mid to late twenties.
Character Type:Goddess
Divine Domain:Nets, Rope, and Wire
Powers:Britomartis has the ability to manifest and manipulate nets, rope, and wire. While not the most impressive of powers, Brit makes up for it with wit and skill, having honed her capabilities to a fine edge. She possesses divine strength as well - not enough to match the strength of some of the greater gods, but enough to outclass most demigods. The exception to this rule is when she's pulling something caught in a net or tied by rope. In such cases, she's capable of truly profound feats of strength.
Assets:Britomartis' assets are a lot more centralized than those of some gods. Her primary asset is Caenopolis, the City of Rope. Caenopolis sits upon Mount Dikte, a place of power for Britomartis. Built into the mountain are four towers that mark the perimeter of Caenopolis, in between which lies the city itself. To an outsider, it might look slapdash; it's quite literally a city held together by rope, built from ruins dredged from the old world suspended in the air by nets and cables. It's still in development, building upwards rather than outwards, the four Towers of Dikte stretching higher and higher into the sky, with more and more being strung up between them as they rise. The city would fall apart were it not for one simple cosmic rule: ropes never fail on Mount Dikte. The people of Caenopolis take pride in their city's design, though - rope architects work tirelessly to make the city accessible, and dredgermen compete to find interesting and refurbishable old ruins to be hoisted up into the city.
Caenopolis is a city of misfits. While not widely worshipped, Britomartis is known to be much more likely to answer if called upon than some other gods, given her constant campaigning. As such, she has become the patron goddess of underdogs, those who have faced misfortune and have few others to turn to. Criminals on the run, borderline blasphemers, and refugees of all types are likely to make the trek to Caenopolis hoping for a new start.
Stationed all around the island of Crete is Caenopolis' primary defense - the Cretian Navy, which Britomartis commands. It's not large, but it's enough to protect the island of Crete and then some. Its biggest ships are former industrial fishing vessels tricked out with weaponry, with similarly makeshift armaments. While not particularly well-equipped, the Navy is skilled at incorporating nets and fishing techniques into battle.
Britomartis' mind is also worth bringing up. Her puckish wit once used to pull off all manners of pranks has been sharpened into a deadly weapon, a tool of strategy to be used to her and her people's benefit. This capacity for outside-the-box thinking trickles downward into her closest mortal cohorts and the highest commanders in her Navy.
In terms of raw divine power, Britomartis' greatest asset is the Diktaion Antron. A cave at Mount Dikte's base, the Diktaion Antron is, according to legend, the birthplace of Zeus. It thrums with power, power Britomartis has yet to figure out how to harness. Still, it sits under Caenopolis, a well of untapped divine potential.
Primary Location/Areas of Influence:Caenopolis, Crete
Biography:Before Britomartis was Britomartis, she was Mount Dikte. She watched over the island of Crete a silent sentinel, high and mighty at its heart. She saw a time before gods, before mortals, when titans reigned]. It all seems like a hazy dream, snippets of half-remembered feelings. She had no senses, other than the sense for power, for life, for all the things that concern a thing of earth and stone. She remembers a titaness, Rhea, coming to her island. She was already in labor; the nymphs of Mount Dikte brought her to what would come to be known as the Diktaion Antron, but at the time was just a cave.
She remembers the sense of power she felt when Zeus was born, the significance of him. She had little knowledge at the time of context, but she could feel in her veins that he was fated to change the world. He stayed with her for years, nursed by Amalthaea, one of her nymphs, growing into the god that would one day destroy Cronos. After he left, it was centuries before she'd feel him again. When he returned, he returned the King of Gods, his destiny fulfilled. Visiting Caeno, a town in Crete, he met Karme, daughter of Amalthaea. The two became close, and in the end, he couldn't help but once again betray his marital vows.
Britomartis was born of this union. She grew up around her nymph sisters, never knowing her father, only knowing of him. She'd always been told that it was some great plan on his part - that he had given the mountain that had sheltered him for so long a physical form as a way of giving back. She always figured he just couldn't keep it in his pants. She didn't much care, though. Even if her past as Mount Dikte lingered in the form of phantom memories, and even if her connection to it remained strong, she never felt like a continuation of it. She felt separate, but not detached. A new chapter to an old story.
When she grew into a young woman she caught the attention of Minos, king of Crete. He was relentless in his pursuit of her. First, he simply asked for her hand, which she'd always reject with a laugh and a dismissive flit of her wrist. She was young! She wanted to spend her days frolicking on her mountain, entangled in the arms of the other nymphs. Why would she want to be tied down by a pompous old king? Soon, though, saying no ceased to be enough. Proposals turned to demands turned to soldiers seeking to take her by force. She spent nine months evading Minos' forces, culminating in the king himself cornering her on a cliff.
She could either jump or she could marry him.
To this day, Britomartis maintains that it was the easiest choice she's ever made. After throwing herself from the cliff, she plunged into the sea, quickly finding herself entangled in a fishing net. She was pulled onto a ship to find an irritated Artemis, on a hunt with her huntresses. When Britomartis explained the situation to Artemis, annoyance gave way to amusement - the virgin goddess was appreciative of the lengths Britomartis went to to keep her dignity, keep her freedom. She offered her a place with her huntresses. Later, when she learned of their shared heritage, Artemis offered her true divinity, minor as it may be; and thus, she was the Lady of the Nets.
Britomartis traveled with Artemis on and off after that. She enjoyed hunting, but she also had to attend to those who worshipped her separate from her relationship to Artemis. Fishermen, mostly. This ended with her and Poseidon having a...somewhat tense relationship. She'd often get in the way of his great duties with her puckishness, pranking those who'd devoted themselves to Poseidon and forgotten to pay homage to her, and helping those who earned Poseidon's ire. She shouldn't have; he was much greater than she was, much more powerful, but she'd mastered the art of not being worth the trouble.
Until the gods died, that is. The time between death and rebirth is a blind spot for Brit. If she once again became one with Mount Dikte, she doesn't remember any of it. All she knows is that she awoke to a world destroyed - and a world at war. By the time she was reborn, the gods were already at war with one another. She tried to find Artemis when she woke, but unfortunately for her, she found Poseidon instead. It was him who told her what had happened while they slept. The mortals had decimated themselves, and the sea with them.
Diktynna's nets had played a part in that decimation. A small part, perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, but a part well beyond the station of the petty Goddess of Nets. And it wasn't as though there was a god of plastic, of pollution, of nuclear energy and waste for him to take his rage out on. So, the Lady of the Nets would have to do - perhaps he could squeeze what little power she had from her in the process as a trophy.
Brit only managed to escape thanks to a dash of wit and a massive amount of luck - as Poseidon's waters thrashed her to near death, she hitched herself to a strange relic of the old world floating in the sea. A buoy, Brit later learned. She went into hiding after that, putting on the guise of a mortal as the Olympian Strife waged around her. She found herself traveling from refugee camp to refugee camp amidst the mortals. In such time, she gained sympathy for them. More than that, though, she gained some amount of respect for them. They were like cockroaches in their unwillingness to die, even as beings so much greater than them fought battles of which they were the primary casualties. Enough humans at the ends of their rope could do great and terrible things in the name of desperation.
By the time the Accords were put into place, Brit had gathered herself a large group of refugee followers. Once murder among Olympians was outlawed, she revealed herself, and she led her people back to Crete, where she began to build Caenopolis. What began as a safe haven for her band of refugees became something more - an attempt to claim the domain of Sky for herself. It's an attempt rooted in fear, of course. She doesn't believe the Accords will hold forever, and she's afraid of what Poseidon might do once her protection is gone. She became something of a celebrity politician for the people of Caenopolis and even those outside, constantly vying for their faith. She and her people began to build upwards, climbing towards the sky in what's known as Britomartis' "Catch the Clouds," campaign. It's a rather blunt strategy, supposedly trying to climb high enough to throw a literal net over the sky. Behind this brutish explanation, though, is a subtler hidden agenda; if enough people believe it is Britomartis' destiny to claim the sky, then perhaps it shall become her destiny to do so.
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