B.Y.O.B. (Bring Your Own Beasts)

Question: Hi, I have been looking at the Cronus page and at the questions section of Cronus, but I can't seem to figure out what type of creatures he would have in this army of his he is always marching up Olympus and constantly adding in reinforcements to. The only things mentioned by name are the dryads, but what else does this mighty fertility Titan have in his arsenal?

Cronus and his mighty legions - a danger to the universe and most especially those parts of it inhabited by the Theoi and their sympathizers!

The thing about Cronus, in his previous war against the gods, is that he didn't actually field much in the way of Titanspawn or lesser creatures that we know of. His shock troops were the other Titans themselves - his siblings, children and cousins, all rallying behind the banner of their king. Some of the Titans that fought with Cronus were also said to be Gigantes, so you can include them in the ranks of his minions; they're statted in Scion: God on page 331, although we would like to point out that not all the Gigantes of Greek mythology had serpents for legs, and that this is actually a feature rocked by few (Typhon, for example). But obviously, you can't have every Titan personally showing up to lay waste to Olympus because that would be a madhouse, but without Cronus calling in his family members to some ancient Greek vengeance, you have to be a little more creative about what things are actually assaulting the Theoi at his command.

To begin with, Cronus himself has plenty of tools to keep a never-ending tide of low-level creatures charging up the mountain, thanks to being a god of both fertility and conflict who can bust out his Surreal Draft to make Olympus itself get up and oppose the gods, as well as calling upon his powers over plants to come alive and attack at his whim. We assume there's a lot of slash-and-burn going on up there on Olympus, since any plant is a potential threat unless kept on lockdown by local fertility powers like Dionysus or Demeter. When the PCs last checked in on the war effort on Olympus, all the books in the library of Athena had turned into trees, and Aiona was mostly communicating via Intellect Extremity squawking.

You should also always feel free to use any and all of the creatures of Ourea, regardless of which Titan Avatar's page they appear on. The Titanspawn included there are placed with Avatars according to geography - that is, we put them on the page with the Avatar whose zone they're most likely to live in, often sharing some cultural space - but that doesn't mean they only work for that Avatar, nor that no other Avatar can co-opt any of them for their own ends. Cronus can certainly send some dryads out to do his bidding if he wants to, but he could also get some of the naiads from Heqet's muddy delta or the chalk giants of Iath Nannan to march up the hill for him as well. Unless one of the other Avatars takes exception to his borrowing "their" creatures, there's no problem, and in a place like Ourea where you can just grow new footsoldiers to replace old ones, it's likely that nobody is too bothered about the loss of a nymph here or a serpent there.

And, of course, the Titanspawn we provide on our Titanrealm pages aren't the only creatures that might be found in Ourea or possibly working for Cronus. They're just some basic suggestions, some of the things we think might fit best as denizens of the place, challenges for Scions or otherwise part of the world, but they're far from the be-all and end-all of folkloric creatures that might be just waiting to crawl up Olympus into the homes of the gods or ambush an unwary band of Scions when they least expect it. If you've got an idea for a creature that you think makes sense to work with Cronus, by all means, use it! Storytellers have plenty of creativity of their own, too, and if Cronus is being aided by any other Titans - likely, since many of them are his family members - he might have any number of borrowed monsters from his fellows as well.

Like every other pantheon, the Theoi are probably dealing with not just Cronus but also whatever other Greek Titans are rallying under his banner, so the possibilities for dangerous monsters ruining their day are as infinite as the imaginations of the people who hate them.