Gentle Nox, Bringer of Terror

Question: What can you tell me about Nyx, both in your games and in Greek myth? The only mention of her I find in mythology are the catalogues of her children and the story of how she scared the living daylights out of Zeus. And the only reference I can find to her in your game is a footnote on your Erebus page. Is she a powerful Titanspawn? A Titan Avatar? Something else even more powerful?

Let's talk about some Protogenoi, everybody!

In Greek mythology, Nyx is a Titan, one of the first in existence at the beginning of the universe; she's the wife of Erebus, the mother of various other important Titans including the ferryman Charon, the brothers Hypnos and Thanatos, and (if you believe them crazy Orphic mysteries, anyway) possibly the ancient ancestress of the gods themselves. You're right that a lot of Nyx's lore has to do with her children; she's clearly a figure representing great age and potence, and some of that is demonstrated in the fact that practically all the great ancient powers of the world are attributed to her as children somewhere - Ouranos, the Fates, the Furies, Eros - despite the fact that most have much more popular and well-known origin myths of their own. She is the dark charioteer that draws night over the world, blotting out the light of the heavens and plunging the world into slumber, a creature so terrible to look at and dangerous to anger that the other Titans avoid disturbing her and a figure so powerful and ancient that Zeus himself sits down and shuts up when she's around. Ovid calls Nyx the Mother of Mysteries and associates her with magic and witchcraft, and in some sources this connection is so strong that Hecate is said to be her daughter. And if, again, you want to foray off into the weird annals of Orphic myth, she is also granted royal sovereignty over the universe by her father Phanes, which might explain why everyone is so impressed with her (though she does not seem to take an active role in ruling anything and the post may be merely symbolic).

However, beyond that, you're right; like most of the truly ancient Titans of the Greek panthoeon, Nyx doesn't actually do much. Her job is to exist, being awesome and overwhelming, and by doing so to constantly keep the veil of night descending to mark the end of the day. Some ancient writers call her benevolent and friendly, shrouding the world in sleep and peace; others call her evil and malicious, stealing sense from humanity and blotting out the world's light.

Her most major myth is that in which Hera, having upset her husband into a thunderbolting level of rage, flees to Nyx for sanctuary, and Zeus is forced to forgo punishing his wife lest he risk her displeasure; even in that story, Nyx is not a direct actor but rather just someone who exists, and whose presence is so powerful that everybody knocks it off without violence rather than accidentally piss her off. Similarly, her other mythic appearance involves Zeus attempting to murder Hypnos for colluding in the plot to drive Dionysus mad, but again he reaches his mother's protection and Zeus has to back off and let the matter go. According to Aratus, she has a special soft spot for sailors in distress and created the constellation Ara to warn them of impending storms at sea. There's also an oblique suggestion by Aeschylus that she might have aided the Greeks in conquering Troy, though this might also just be a poetic device to say that the conquest occurred under cover of darkness; and, contrastingly, she is said to have grieved with Eos, the dawn-goddess, when that goddess' son Memnon was killed at Troy, and to have brought night down early that day to allow Eos to retrieve his body.

Nyx's major attributes are being ancient, being powerful and being a creature that either dispenses justice (as in her protection of those targeted by Zeus or the occasional practice of crying out to Nyx for vengeance) or is considered entirely above it. She is a force of the universe but largely a passive one; she exists but does not do, is terrifying but does not set out to terrify.

All of this makes it pretty obvious that she's a scary lady. A very, very scary lady.

As far as our games go, in our currently-running chronicle Nyx was a Titan Avatar of Soku-no-Kumi who has since been imprisoned (though the PCs didn't witness where or how, they assume she's been put back into Tartarus). She attempted to jump ship to the new Titanrealm of Fate, causing various forces to mobilize and stop her, and she was one of the earliest casualties on the Titans' side. Her removal is also the reason that Erebus is swinging single enough to make puppy-dog eyes at Jioni.

In our rewrite of the Titanrealms, however, Nyx is listed as a minion of Erebus (albeit an exceptionally powerful one). We did this primarily because we didn't want to overload the realm; it already had two other female night Titans (Nott and Nut) and we didn't want to overgild the lily, and at any rate she and Erebus tend to function as a unit, so we put her under his heading instead of giving her one of her own. Erebus is one of the (extremely few) beings to actually be older than Nyx, so we felt it wasn't unreasonable to present him as the top dog in the relationship, though it's certainly a close race. It's up to an individual Storyteller to decide whether she's a Titan Avatar herself and merely works together with her husband so well that she has no need of a separate realm, or whether she's an incredibly powerful Titanic being but falls just short of true Avatar status.

I lean toward the first, personally. The lady looks like a Titan to me.