She's Crafty

Question: Hello, Anne and John. On the off chance that Metis somehow escapes Zeus, what actions would she take? Do you believe that Athena would join in her whatever she would do?

Interesting questions, and all totally hypothetical, of course. Depending on your Storyteller's preference, Metis might be dead, might be alive but unable to escape Zeus, might be alive and intentionally remaining within Zeus, or any other weird thing you can think of. But let's pretend she's flown the coop - so what next?

Well, first of all, she might be pregnant, which is a very big deal since she's destined to bear the son that will overthrow Zeus' reign. She was pregnant when Zeus ate her and that pregnancy resulted in Athena; she might be pregnant yet again, having been stewing in a bunch of Zeusly DNA for millennia, or she might instead embark on a campaign to get pregnant in fulfillment of the prophecy. If she has it in for Zeus, or just wants to be mother of the universe's baddest thunder god, she might spend all her crafty cunning on disguising herself so that Zeus sleeps with her again or trying other, weirder methods of getting knocked up, including tricking him out of his semen or finding a magical ritual she can use with some other portion of him as her catalyst.

A lot depends on how cranky Metis is with Zeus, actually: does she want to see him go down or is she still cool with him thanks to memories of old times? She probably has Vengeance, not to mention occupying the same mother-of-downfall role as her grandmother Gaia, so we would assume she wants him to take the entire prophecy to the face, but if you have some kind of background plot that involves her not being angry with the god of thunder, she might also be actively avoiding him. If she doesn't want him to die/be kicked out of Olympus/cry a lot, she'll probably be trying not to get knocked up, which of course probably leads to many hilarious hijinks by Fate as it tries to get her pregnant in spite of what she wants. She might be in hiding, she might be pretending to be someone else, she might be trying crazy Health wizardry to keep herself barren, or whatever else you can think of.

Metis is one of the Oceanids, the innumerable children of ancient Oceanus and Tethys, and she therefore might go to them first for asylum or aid in her plans; both are presumably loose now that the Titans have escaped Tartarus, and they would certainly be sympathetic to her cause. She also might exert her influence on her siblings, the other Oceanids, which include Clymene, Perse and Amphitrite, who in turn have some very powerful gods and Titans as their spouses and children. As the Titan in charge of smarts and resourceful shenanigans, she could - and probably would, if she thought it would help her - mobilize most of the Titans (and even gods or Scions!) to do things for her, possibly without them ever realizing they had been manipulated into it. She'll probably want to avoid Cronus, though - she was the one who tricked him into vomiting up the Dodekatheon back in the day (at Zeus' suggestion, of course), and he's probably not very fond of her as a result.

As for her children (I'll get to that plural in a second!), they're in a weird position now thanks to conflicting loyalties and questions of political authority. Athena has always been Zeus' staunchest supporter, enforcing his laws, fighting his wars, destroying those enemies of his who might question his divine rule. She's far from stupid so she certainly knows who Metis is and what events occurred that led to her own strange birth, but what does that mean for her now? Metis has a legitimate grievance against the king of the gods, and it's totally reasonable for her to take him to court for it, which Athena would probably support; but would that really be a fair trial, when it's the judge and lawmaker himself who's being accused? Certainly it wouldn't be right to help her mother try to destroy Zeus, but Metis is just as smart as her daughter, if not more so, and almost definitely wouldn't let on that that was what she was up to. If Zeus was trying to come after Metis - to reswallow her, kill her or otherwise do something to her for no other sin than just existing - Athena would probably be inclined to help her escape and hide, because that shit ain't fair, but she also probably won't take up arms against Zeus in the process.

But Metis is a crafty lady, and she knows exactly how to go about getting someone on her side. She could simply go to Athena, renew the bonds of motherhood and familial loyalty, beg for help escaping/hiding, constantly reinforce Zeus' evil misbehavior in her mind, and then, when she inevitably managed to get pregnant, bemoan her fate and be off the hook, since it's the prophesied kid that's going to do the bad things, not herself. She could even claim that Zeus raped her (not entirely unlikely to be true, depending on what she's up to) to put her in this situation, something that Athena, who has had to fend off overly horny men who couldn't take no for an answer, is likely to be pretty fired up about.

Really, she just has to turn Athena's Vengeance on Zeus, and it's game over. It'll be one of those social-stat wars that no one sees happening but that is very real; Athena would be staunchly loyal to Zeus while near him and under the influence of his Charisma, but slowly seeded with doubt and resentment by Metis' Manipulation when separated from him. With all that in place, it's entirely up to Athena - incredible intellect, blazing Vengeance Virtue and all - to decide who she sides with.

By the way, there's also a small possibility that the prophesied son of Zeus already exists, and that Metis would immediately go after him and start grooming him to take his father's place. That would be the obscure little god Porus, who survives only in the writings of Plato as a son of Metis and "a guest" at a feast that she attended. Porus is the god of resourcefulness and expediency, and he is mostly a footnote in Greek mythology thanks to his only myth being his seduction by the goddess Penia and subsequent fathering of Eros. Obviously, this is all pretty suspect; not only is this like the fifth geneaology for Eros out there, and not only is Porus also in another obscure variant said to be an ancient Protogenoi god with no parents, but his appearance as Metis' son is also being related by Plato, who was prone to making up "mythology" in order to illustrate his philosophical points and may or may not actually be discussing something that was actually believed by ancient Greeks.

But if you do want Porus to exist in your games, he is the only known child of Metis besides Athena, and the fact that nobody knows who his father is is mightily suspect in view of the prophecy of Zeus' downfall. Zeus might have accidentally knocked Metis up long before knowing about the prophecy, and she might have been hiding him, an unremarkable lesser god, ever since; this could be her perfect moment to go get him, arm him and set him up to inevitably achieve his destiny.

Or, if you want Scions (possibly your PCs?) to get involved, Metis might go out and have a single Scion, who, together with DNA she has stolen from Zeus, would be somehow (fudge it with purview Avatars or crazy relics or something) the child of both of them. That kid, marked for eventual tragic greatness, might or might not know who he is, and Metis would be free to try to steer and grow him from day one, implanting her own agendas and encouraging him to rebel, until the moment that he inevitably strikes down the father he doesn't even know he has and takes the throne of Olympus.