Wife Swap

Question: If Metis comes back, what happens to Hera? Metis is the rightful wife of Zeus, so does Hera respect the sanctity of that union and back off, or fight for the sanctity of her own union?

Well, there are a few issues at work here.

The first is whether or not Metis actually ever was Zeus' wife. Hesiod does in fact refer to her as the first wife of Zeus in one passage. Apollodorus, on the other hand, claims that Metis tried to escape Zeus by shapechanging and that her conception of Athena was via rape, and nowhere mentions any permanent bond between them. Whether or not you consider them to have been married in the first place is really a matter of which source of the myth you prefer. It's not out of the question for Zeus to have married an ancient Titaness, especially one as useful to his newfound need to hold the throne as Metis, but then again the seek-and-seize attacks on women who then bear his children is one of Zeus' most traditional methods of relating to females.

If you do consider them married based on Hesiod, however, he also gives you the answer to the second part of the question: he, like everyone else, also calls Hera Zeus' wife, which he would not have done if she had been in any way considered not his legitimate spouse. Most of ancient Greece was monogamous, so it would not be likely for any of these ancient writers to consider Zeus married to more than one goddess at once. That means that if they consider Hera his legitimate wife, Metis must perforce no longer be considered so. That's most likely because Metis is effectively dead in Greek myth, because Zeus went ahead and ate her and that shit's pretty final; or, since most Greek deities weren't considered capable of dying, it might just be that the act of devouring your wife is a pretty clear declaration of divorce. Greek dudes could divorce their wives pretty easily, especially if there were problems with fidelity or children, and it's pretty clear that the ancient Greeks considered there to be an official break between Zeus and Metis at some point. Because, again... he ate her.

So no, Metis returning would not suddenly mean that Hera's position was necessarily threatened. She is Zeus' current, legitimate, by-law and by-bond wife, and the presence of Zeus' ex-wife (if you so assign her) won't suddenly change that. That union was broken before she ever married Zeus, or else she wouldn't have been able to marry him at all. It was totally possible for Greek men to have concubines while married, provided they didn't live with them and potentially disrupt the family unit, but there's a massive avalanche of evidence in Greek myth that Hera is definitely a wife and not a concubine, starting with the fact that no one ever fails to list her as his wife and ending with the fact that as the goddess of marriage and domesticity it would be massively counter to her very nature to fill that role. Zeus was once married to Metis, perhaps, but is not anymore.

That doesn't mean there couldn't be dramatic problems, of course, especially if Zeus decides he's interested in Metis again or vice versa. Zeus has the same problem he originally had with Metis - sleeping with her might lead to his downfall - so he may be able to control himself, and even if he does go for it he probably wouldn't divorce Hera since he's stuck with her through massive gymnastic numbers of affairs, but that won't make his potential interest in her less likely to piss Hera off (and maybe Metis, too, if Apollodorus is right and Zeus assaulted her). If Metis decides she wants Zeus again, we might be looking at an epic battle of Manipulation between her and Hera, as she tries to sway him to return to her and Hera tries to defend her marriage. Other gods might get involved, too, with those hoping to see Zeus go down trying to help get him together with Metis and those trying to protect him from himself doing their best to keep the two apart.

But as far as Hera goes, her marriage with Zeus is completely legal and current, and it's in her character and nature as a goddess to fight tooth and nail to keep it that way. Metis can't supplant her by just showing up, and is in for a rip-roaring fight if she wants to try to change the status quo.

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.

Might Makes Right

Question: What's the difference in the wrongness between Cronos eating his children and Zeus eating Metis, considering that cannibalism was taboo and Zeus once flooded the earth because people started eating people?

There's only one difference, and it's that Zeus is in charge now instead of Cronus.

I know this may blow some minds out there in the reading audience, but Zeus is not actually a good person, at least not by modern standards. In fact, he's an enormous bastard, prone to serial rape and execution of people he doesn't like. And one of his greatest sins, which not even the ancient Greeks tried to excuse him for most of the time, was the devouring of Metis, the Titan goddess of cunning and quick thinking. After learning that a prophecy claimed that Metis would bear him a son who would become greater than him and take power in the heavens, he swallowed her rather than allow her to carry her pregnancy to term; she gave birth inside his body, and Athena was born from his brow as a result.

And the only reason that shit is okay is because Zeus did it and Zeus is currently the king, so nobody's going to touch that one. His motivation and method are exactly the same as those of Cronus, who ate his children because he feared they would overthrow him, and having narrowly escaped being a victim of that crime, he can hardly claim to not understand how terrible it is. You're right that cannibalism was not at all okay with the ancient Greeks - the myth of Tantalus, who ended up in Tartarus for eternity for trying to feed the gods people, is another example of how it's a big no deal - and that includes cannibalism that is also murder of your own family members, which only compounds the sin.

Zeus knows this. After all, he's the guy who made the law about not eating people in the first place, and who punishes others when they break it. But Zeus wants to hang onto his power and his throne (and, perhaps, his life - this prophecy's not very specific about what exactly is going to happen to him), so, like any other power-hungry king in any other set of stories, he is willing to go to the extreme of murder and even cannibalism to ensure that he keeps what is currently his.

Now, a few caveats. To start with, when Cronus and Zeus swallow people, it's ambigous whether or not they actually kill them or just sort of imprison them in their ironclad god-bellies. Metis was still structurally sound enough to give birth after being eaten (although there are a lot of gross ways that could have happened even if she were dead), and Zeus' siblings were still alive after Cronus vomited them back up. Considering that the ancient Greeks conceived of their gods as thoroughly immortal and unkillable, that may not mean anything; these poor people could have been torn to shreds, chewed up and simmering in digestive juices for centuries and still be alive, and just pulled themselves together after being saved from the stomach. We're not dealing with mortals, which makes cannibalism both less finally dangerous because they'll survive, but also more potentially horrific, also because they'll survive.

What's really going on here is the cycle of kings, a recurring motif in mythology around the Mediterranean (not just in Greece but in the neighboring Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Hittite mythologies as well). The first king, Ouranos, is violently overthrown by his son Cronus; Cronus is in turn violently overthrown by his son Zeus. Zeus is in turn prophesied to be violently overthrown by his son, and, like all his ancestor-kings before him, is desperately trying to avoid that fate, all the while knowing that his father and grandfather couldn't stop the cycle from continuing so his own odds aren't looking great. And if and when that happens, the younger generation of gods will look upon him with the same disgust and judgment that his own does against Cronus, because once he is no longer king, he loses the protection of power and his crimes, no matter what their motivation, are laid bare for all to see. Should this prophesied son of Zeus succeed in overthrowing him and claiming the throne of Olympus, it's almost certain that he would in turn one day have to face his own children rising up against him.

It's an old story: the ones who make the rules are also the ones who can get away with breaking them, so while it is totally not in any way more morally right for Zeus to eat Metis than it was for Cronus to eat his children, no one will ever bring it up if they want to remain unfried. Zeus probably justifies it to himself by saying that his power and sense of justice are needed to rule the universe, fight off the Titans and keep law and order, so Metis' sacrifice was necessary for the greater good.

But, of course, Cronus, who ruled over the golden age of humanity when there was no want, hunger, crime or sadness, probably said the same thing.

Mother of Disaster

Question: Whatever happened to Metis? Is she still in Zeus’ stomach? How would you go about causing Zeus and Metis to copulate and conceive without Zeus being any the wiser as to the identity of his partner (most likely with the intervention of other pantheons and heavy use of Darkness, Illusion and/or Magic)? What do you think would happen in such a situation (assuming that Zeus did not find out about the child’s existence until it was safely out of his reach)?

Well, Metis got eaten, that is what happened to her. But past that point, there are a couple of interesting options.

The easiest is probably to assume that she escaped when the rest of the Titans did; sure, she was in Zeus' stomach and not Tartarus, but with all the shenanigans going on, it's not far-fetched to think that she might have escaped in the confusion or with the help of other Avatars (or gods!) with an interest in seeing Zeus deposed. We already know from the case of Cronus and his devoured children that in Greek myth being eaten doesn't necessarily mean being digested or killed, so events might have transpired to make Zeus vomit her back up. He might be desperately trying to marshal the Dodekatheon to find her before it's too late, or he might be hiding the fact that he's lost her while he tries to manage it on his own, loath to let the rest of the pantheon know that his grip might be slipping. Metis on the loose is a very dangerous prospect for Zeus; he's not known for being overly perceptive or brainy, and Metis is the very embodiment of craftiness. I don't think you need all that much extra help from other gods for her to seduce him again; Metis' Manipulation score can probably already overcome Zeus' Perception without her breaking a sweat, and her ability to plan amazing plans is way out of his league.

However, we're also pretty fond of the idea that Metis is still in Zeus' stomach, chilling out. She's a zillion times smarter than he is, after all, so it makes sense to us that she might have allowed herself to be eaten as part of some larger plan; maybe she wanted to prove a point, maybe she's trying to avoid ruining Zeus, or maybe she's just playing a much more complex, long-range game. She could have all kinds of crazy goals that being inside Zeus helps her achieve - already she didn't have to go to Tartarus with the other Titans, right?

Furthermore, I doubt she needs to actually have sex with Zeus again to create this foretold son; she's actually in him, and if she has basic Health boons or other powers to help her could easily get pregnant without having to come back out and do things the old-fashioned way (she already gave birth to a baby while inside him once, after all!). Even more interesting, she might be able to meddle with Zeus' reproduction from within - since Metis is now contained within Zeus and therefore kind of part of Zeus, any children he sires while she's in there could also be considered her children if she does some behind-the-scenes wizardry, making any son Zeus has now potentially the fulfiller of the Prophecy.

We always like to leave the door open for any Scion of Zeus to possibly be the foretold harbinger of doom. They don't have to be - especially PCs, who can make their own choices about what their relationship with Zeus is like - but it's always a neat possibility to have out there. Zeus would probably get warnings that things were about to happen - he is, after all, a powerful oracular god - but, just as in the past, he isn't really well-equipped to find out about or handle situations that aren't specifically brought to his attention, so it probably wouldn't be difficult at all for the foretold son of Zeus to survive long enough to be a threat. It'd be very interesting for Zeus to shepherd his own Scion along without realizing that he was helping the very person destined to defeat him, or for the boy to grow up under the wing of Athena, the only other living child of Metis and Zeus.