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.
Showing posts with label Cronus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cronus. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Thursday, August 15, 2013
The Golden Age
Question: Wait, Cronus ruled over a golden age of humanity with no want, hunger, crime or sadness? Wut? Does that mean that if Cronus DID reclaim his rule, he would be nice(ish) to humanity? Assuming other factors (i.e., other Titans) permitted it?
Oh, definitely. Check out Hesiod's description of the golden age:
First of all the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a Golden Race of mortal men who lived in the time of Kronos when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods.
Or, here's Plato's follow-up on the subject:
Long ages before even cities existed... there existed in the time of Kronos, it is said, a most prosperous government and settlement... Well, then, tradition tells us how blissful was the life of men in that age, furnished with everything in abundance, and of spontaneous growth. And the cause thereof is said to have been this: Kronos was aware of the fact that no human being is capable of having irresponsible control of all human affairs without becoming filled with pride and injustice; so, pondering this fact, he then appointed as kings and rulers for our cities, not men, but beings of a race that was nobler and more divine, namely, Daimones. He acted just as we now do in the case of sheep and herds of tame animals: we do not set oxen as rulers over oxen, or goats over goats, but we, who are of a nobler race, ourselves rule over them. In like manner the god, in his love for humanity, set over us at that time the nobler race of Daimones who, with much comfort to themselves and much to us, took charge of us and furnished peace and modesty and orderliness and justice without stint, and thus made the tribes of men free from feud and happy. And even today this tale has a truth to tell, namely, that wherever a State has a mortal, and no god, for ruler, there the people have no rest from ills and toils; and it deems that we ought by every means to imitate the life of the age of Kronos, as tradition paints it.
Callimachus also points out that Cronus' rule was also an awesome time for animals, and even castigates Zeus for being a jerk by ending the awesomeness:
It was the time when birds and creatures of the sea and four-footed animals could talk in the same way as the Promethean clay... in the time of Kronos, and even before. Just is Zeus, yet unjust was his ruling when he deprived the animals of their speech, and - as though we were in a position to give part of our voice to others - diverted it to the race of men.
Ovid's even more excited about it, and more detailed:
The Golden Age was that first age which unconstrained, with heart and soul, obedient to no law, gave honour to good faith and righteousness. No punishment they knew, no fear; they read no penalties engraved on plates of bronze; no suppliant throng with dread beheld their judge; no judges had they then, but lived secure. No pine had yet, on its high mountain felled, descended to the sea to find strange lands afar; men knew no shores except their own. No battlements their cities yet embraced, no trumpets straight, no horns of sinuous brass, no sword, no helmet then - no need of arms; the world untroubled lived in leisured ease. Tellus willingly, untouched, not wounded yet by hoe or plough, gave all her bounteous store; men were content with nature’s food unforced, and gathered strawberries on the mountainside and cherries and the clutching bramble’s fruit, and acorns fallen from Jove’s spreading tree. Springtime it was, always, for ever spring; the gentle zephyrs with their breathing balm caressed the flowers that sprang without a seed; anon the earth untilled brought forth her fruits, the unhallowed fields lay gold with heavy grain, and streams of milk and springs of nectar flowed and yellow honey dripped from boughs of green.
So here we've got a whole bunch of accounts of Cronus' rule as a time that was totally awesome - no war, no lawbreaking, no pain, no fear, no damage to the environment, no hunger, no thirst, no sorrow, no poverty, no responsibility, and all the animals could hang out and talk to whomever they pleased. It was basically total partytime 24/7, in a world with no crime or unhappiness ruled over by a king - Cronus himself - who loved his people to death. Not generally what people think of when they think of a world owned by a Titan, eh?
Depending on how you want to play it, however, it's possible that it wasn't really all roses and awesomeness. Cronus didn't allow much in the way of responsibility for his people, which was both liberating and allowed them to live happily, but also didn't give them much in the way of self-determination or free choice - both Hesiod and Plato specifically note that the Daimones ruled over mankind rather than letting them make their own rules. Callimachus' assertion that Zeus took speech from the animals to give it to mankind also implies that humanity might have been basically animals themselves, without the power of speech or communication and therefore no true ability to form civilized culture. Cronus' rule might have been totally trouble-free and joyful for everyone, but it could also be seen as a kind of tyranny, with the Titan preventing humanity from ever reaching their true potential due to a misguided desire to protect them from themselves.
Or it was great, and Zeus is a giant bag of cheese-flavored dicks. It's really your call.
In either case, it's unlikely that Cronus would return to a new Golden Age if he were to triumph over the gods. The race of humanity that exists now are not Cronus' people; the people of the golden age were destroyed by the evils from Pandora's box when Zeus took power, replaced by the inferior people of the Silver Age, then the even more inferior people of the Bronze Age, and finally the most inferior people of the Iron Age - in other words, us. It's because the current race of humanity is so far removed from the original and so inferior that we have shitty things like poverty, cruelty, betrayal and suffering, and - at least if you believe Hesiod - the reason the gods left humanity to fend for themselves.
Cronus probably wouldn't even recognize current humanity; they'd disgust him. It's up to individual Storyteller call whether he would attempt to take the sorry mess of the Iron Age mortals and force them back into the wilderness, demanding that they give up all free will and personal power to live as the beasts of his fields again, or destroy them completely in order to clear the field for a new and better race to be born. Considering that Cronus certainly has a very active Vengeance Virtue and that Zeus irrevocably removed his people by lashing back at Prometheus, the odds of him not returning the favor seem very slim indeed.
As usual, the Titans have different priorities and values from the gods, even when they theoretically mean well, and whether or not a given group of Scions agree with them depends on their own personalities and backgrounds. Do they believe that Cronus is the good guy, who presided over a world in which no human was ever hurt or frightened or lost to tragedy, and who was overthrown by his own son who decided to take power for himself? Or do they believe that Zeus is the good guy, who gave humanity pain but also their own choices and the ability to shape their destinies, and who overthrew a corrupt king who killed his own children?
That's a question only the Scions themselves will be able to answer.
Oh, definitely. Check out Hesiod's description of the golden age:
First of all the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a Golden Race of mortal men who lived in the time of Kronos when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods.
Or, here's Plato's follow-up on the subject:
Long ages before even cities existed... there existed in the time of Kronos, it is said, a most prosperous government and settlement... Well, then, tradition tells us how blissful was the life of men in that age, furnished with everything in abundance, and of spontaneous growth. And the cause thereof is said to have been this: Kronos was aware of the fact that no human being is capable of having irresponsible control of all human affairs without becoming filled with pride and injustice; so, pondering this fact, he then appointed as kings and rulers for our cities, not men, but beings of a race that was nobler and more divine, namely, Daimones. He acted just as we now do in the case of sheep and herds of tame animals: we do not set oxen as rulers over oxen, or goats over goats, but we, who are of a nobler race, ourselves rule over them. In like manner the god, in his love for humanity, set over us at that time the nobler race of Daimones who, with much comfort to themselves and much to us, took charge of us and furnished peace and modesty and orderliness and justice without stint, and thus made the tribes of men free from feud and happy. And even today this tale has a truth to tell, namely, that wherever a State has a mortal, and no god, for ruler, there the people have no rest from ills and toils; and it deems that we ought by every means to imitate the life of the age of Kronos, as tradition paints it.
Callimachus also points out that Cronus' rule was also an awesome time for animals, and even castigates Zeus for being a jerk by ending the awesomeness:
It was the time when birds and creatures of the sea and four-footed animals could talk in the same way as the Promethean clay... in the time of Kronos, and even before. Just is Zeus, yet unjust was his ruling when he deprived the animals of their speech, and - as though we were in a position to give part of our voice to others - diverted it to the race of men.
Ovid's even more excited about it, and more detailed:
The Golden Age was that first age which unconstrained, with heart and soul, obedient to no law, gave honour to good faith and righteousness. No punishment they knew, no fear; they read no penalties engraved on plates of bronze; no suppliant throng with dread beheld their judge; no judges had they then, but lived secure. No pine had yet, on its high mountain felled, descended to the sea to find strange lands afar; men knew no shores except their own. No battlements their cities yet embraced, no trumpets straight, no horns of sinuous brass, no sword, no helmet then - no need of arms; the world untroubled lived in leisured ease. Tellus willingly, untouched, not wounded yet by hoe or plough, gave all her bounteous store; men were content with nature’s food unforced, and gathered strawberries on the mountainside and cherries and the clutching bramble’s fruit, and acorns fallen from Jove’s spreading tree. Springtime it was, always, for ever spring; the gentle zephyrs with their breathing balm caressed the flowers that sprang without a seed; anon the earth untilled brought forth her fruits, the unhallowed fields lay gold with heavy grain, and streams of milk and springs of nectar flowed and yellow honey dripped from boughs of green.
So here we've got a whole bunch of accounts of Cronus' rule as a time that was totally awesome - no war, no lawbreaking, no pain, no fear, no damage to the environment, no hunger, no thirst, no sorrow, no poverty, no responsibility, and all the animals could hang out and talk to whomever they pleased. It was basically total partytime 24/7, in a world with no crime or unhappiness ruled over by a king - Cronus himself - who loved his people to death. Not generally what people think of when they think of a world owned by a Titan, eh?
Depending on how you want to play it, however, it's possible that it wasn't really all roses and awesomeness. Cronus didn't allow much in the way of responsibility for his people, which was both liberating and allowed them to live happily, but also didn't give them much in the way of self-determination or free choice - both Hesiod and Plato specifically note that the Daimones ruled over mankind rather than letting them make their own rules. Callimachus' assertion that Zeus took speech from the animals to give it to mankind also implies that humanity might have been basically animals themselves, without the power of speech or communication and therefore no true ability to form civilized culture. Cronus' rule might have been totally trouble-free and joyful for everyone, but it could also be seen as a kind of tyranny, with the Titan preventing humanity from ever reaching their true potential due to a misguided desire to protect them from themselves.
Or it was great, and Zeus is a giant bag of cheese-flavored dicks. It's really your call.
In either case, it's unlikely that Cronus would return to a new Golden Age if he were to triumph over the gods. The race of humanity that exists now are not Cronus' people; the people of the golden age were destroyed by the evils from Pandora's box when Zeus took power, replaced by the inferior people of the Silver Age, then the even more inferior people of the Bronze Age, and finally the most inferior people of the Iron Age - in other words, us. It's because the current race of humanity is so far removed from the original and so inferior that we have shitty things like poverty, cruelty, betrayal and suffering, and - at least if you believe Hesiod - the reason the gods left humanity to fend for themselves.
Cronus probably wouldn't even recognize current humanity; they'd disgust him. It's up to individual Storyteller call whether he would attempt to take the sorry mess of the Iron Age mortals and force them back into the wilderness, demanding that they give up all free will and personal power to live as the beasts of his fields again, or destroy them completely in order to clear the field for a new and better race to be born. Considering that Cronus certainly has a very active Vengeance Virtue and that Zeus irrevocably removed his people by lashing back at Prometheus, the odds of him not returning the favor seem very slim indeed.
As usual, the Titans have different priorities and values from the gods, even when they theoretically mean well, and whether or not a given group of Scions agree with them depends on their own personalities and backgrounds. Do they believe that Cronus is the good guy, who presided over a world in which no human was ever hurt or frightened or lost to tragedy, and who was overthrown by his own son who decided to take power for himself? Or do they believe that Zeus is the good guy, who gave humanity pain but also their own choices and the ability to shape their destinies, and who overthrew a corrupt king who killed his own children?
That's a question only the Scions themselves will be able to answer.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
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.
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.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Time After Time
Question: (K/Ch)ronos vs. Cronus: who's who? A lot of sources pin "Chronos" as the father of the titans and the master of time. I thought it was Cronus. Are these the same person, and if so, does Cronus truly have some myth about lording over time?
I think there may be some confusion with spelling already here: Kronos and Cronus are the same person (the K version is just the more proper Greek spelling, while the C version is the more often used one), the Titan father of the gods. Khronos or Chronos with a Kh/Ch is the Titan having to do with time. The names themselves are etymological clues to the difference between them; chronos literally means time, while cronos is thought to mean he who cuts or he who creates.
These are in fact two completely different Titans, but the confusion is understandable; people have been getting confused about which was which and accidentally syncretizing them together here and there for centuries thanks to the similar names, which folks who weren't ancient Greeks couldn't always differentiate very well. Many sources, especially modern books on popular mythology, do claim them as the same person, or describe one with the attributes of the other, but this is generally the result of those sources using other sources who were using other sources who were just confused about the whole thing.
Cronus is the Titan that everyone knows about; he is the son of Ouranos who castrated his father and in turn the father of all the gods, who ate them until forced by his son Zeus to disgorge them. It was he who led the first Titanomachy against the gods and he who was said to rule the Elysian Fields or to dwell in Tartarus with the rest of those that were eventually defeated by the Olympians. His Roman equivalent is Saturn, and both versions of him were gods of plenty and fertility (symbolized by the sickle, which is both the implement he used to castrate his father and the tool used to reap bountiful harvests). He ruled over the Golden Age of humanity, in which there was no sadness, no hunger and no law because there was also no crime. The Greeks viewed him as more of a story figure, an intermediary step between Ouranos and Zeus and an important footnote but not a major figure after the end of the Titanomachy, whereas the Romans were much more invested in Saturn (being more of a farming people than the Greeks) and built more temples and held more celebrations in his honor. When people talk about any variant of C/K-ronos, nine times out of ten they're talking about this guy.
Chronos, on the other hand, is a much more obscure and bizarre figure, one who seldom appears in mainstream Greek myth and was more popular as a philosophical idea than an actor in any stories. He is the Titan of eternity, and with his wife Ananke, the Titaness of inevitability, was said in alternate cosmologies to have created the word and given birth to the first other beings in it. He is the ultimate creator in the Orphic cosmology, though whether or not you use Orphic material in Scion is totally up to the individual Storyteller (Orphic myths tend to be kind of batshit insane and often contradictory to the main body of Greek mythology, but they're definitely interesting). Chronos doesn't actually do anything in mythology other than be a creator/progenitor figure in those alternate histories; his Roman counterpart is Aion/Aeon, who as the Titan of Endless Time was considered the protector of the Roman Empire (ensuring that it should survive forever), and the Romans envisioned him as married to Aeternitas, a Titaness of Eternity who is basically just his clone and resembles Ananke only in passing.
So, as you can see, the two are not the same person at all, nor do they really have anything to do with one another; they don't even inhabit the same cosmology, most of the time. But there has been confusion between them for a long time, starting with the fact that Cronus does actually have some small time connotations of his own; as a fertility and farming god, he has control over the seasons and the cycle of growth. This control over the cycle of time, specifically as it regards the seasons, is not at all the same as Chronos' personification of eternal time, but the later you get in history and the further you go from the early Greek myths, the more common it becomes for someone to confuse them - either intentionally, as some philosophers occasionally do to make a point, or accidentally, as many interpreters from Rome or other cultures do when confused by the similar names.
By this point in history, your average joe on the street, provided that he is not secretly a scholar of Classical mythology, probably doesn't know the difference. "Chrono" is a Greek root we use for lots of time-related words - chronological, chronographical, chronometrical, etc. - so when someone says "Cronus" and we don't hear that there's no H there, we automatically assume that guy must have something to do with time. Modern conceptions of time, thanks in large part to science fiction and developments in measuring and relativity in the past several centuries, don't really make a distinction between seasonal, cyclical time and time as represented by eternity, so, we reason, if there are two guys with the same name who are both associated in some way with time, they must be the same guy.
The most obvious final product of this centuries-long process of confusion and misidentification is the popular folkloric figure of Father Time, who is the personification of time and eternity, much like Chronos, but who carries the scythe or sickle that is quintessentially Cronus'. This is a very recent development in world mythology, occurring in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it makes a good illustration of the pernicious confusion between the two Titans. (Theoretically, the connection between time leading to inevitable death and the transformation from sickle to scythe may also point to some Slavic influence from Smert, the scythe-wielding dead goddess, but considering the extremely low influence of the Slavs on Renaissance Italy, where the idea of Father Time originated, that's likely to be an even later addition to the imagery.)
For Scion's purposes, Cronus is pretty much always the guy that matters. He's the one leading the other Titans against Olympus, he's the one who fathered the gods, he's the one who has active myths of doing active things, he's the one who used to rule the world and he's the one that has the chip on his shoulder. Chronos, on the other hand, is basically a non-entity, one of those Titans who exists on a vast, primordial scale but doesn't really do anything, and as a result there are few times that he needs to be at the forefront unless you're running a story that either deals heavily with Orphic and mystery cult alternate theories or is strongly invested in the idea of messing around with eternity.
But, theoretically, they're both out there; playing with what they're doing, who they're supporting in the war and why, and what irritation being syncretized with one another might be inflicting on them could all be interesting avenues for exploration. It's unlikely that they're actively strongly Fatebound to one anothers' roles, considering that both of them would have been locked in Tartarus most if not all of the time that this confusion was occurring, but either of them might be surprised by the modern confusion, and either of them might be interested in correcting it, taking advantage of it or letting humanity (and thus many up-and-coming Scions who don't know any better) continue in their ignorance.
I think there may be some confusion with spelling already here: Kronos and Cronus are the same person (the K version is just the more proper Greek spelling, while the C version is the more often used one), the Titan father of the gods. Khronos or Chronos with a Kh/Ch is the Titan having to do with time. The names themselves are etymological clues to the difference between them; chronos literally means time, while cronos is thought to mean he who cuts or he who creates.
These are in fact two completely different Titans, but the confusion is understandable; people have been getting confused about which was which and accidentally syncretizing them together here and there for centuries thanks to the similar names, which folks who weren't ancient Greeks couldn't always differentiate very well. Many sources, especially modern books on popular mythology, do claim them as the same person, or describe one with the attributes of the other, but this is generally the result of those sources using other sources who were using other sources who were just confused about the whole thing.
Cronus is the Titan that everyone knows about; he is the son of Ouranos who castrated his father and in turn the father of all the gods, who ate them until forced by his son Zeus to disgorge them. It was he who led the first Titanomachy against the gods and he who was said to rule the Elysian Fields or to dwell in Tartarus with the rest of those that were eventually defeated by the Olympians. His Roman equivalent is Saturn, and both versions of him were gods of plenty and fertility (symbolized by the sickle, which is both the implement he used to castrate his father and the tool used to reap bountiful harvests). He ruled over the Golden Age of humanity, in which there was no sadness, no hunger and no law because there was also no crime. The Greeks viewed him as more of a story figure, an intermediary step between Ouranos and Zeus and an important footnote but not a major figure after the end of the Titanomachy, whereas the Romans were much more invested in Saturn (being more of a farming people than the Greeks) and built more temples and held more celebrations in his honor. When people talk about any variant of C/K-ronos, nine times out of ten they're talking about this guy.
Chronos, on the other hand, is a much more obscure and bizarre figure, one who seldom appears in mainstream Greek myth and was more popular as a philosophical idea than an actor in any stories. He is the Titan of eternity, and with his wife Ananke, the Titaness of inevitability, was said in alternate cosmologies to have created the word and given birth to the first other beings in it. He is the ultimate creator in the Orphic cosmology, though whether or not you use Orphic material in Scion is totally up to the individual Storyteller (Orphic myths tend to be kind of batshit insane and often contradictory to the main body of Greek mythology, but they're definitely interesting). Chronos doesn't actually do anything in mythology other than be a creator/progenitor figure in those alternate histories; his Roman counterpart is Aion/Aeon, who as the Titan of Endless Time was considered the protector of the Roman Empire (ensuring that it should survive forever), and the Romans envisioned him as married to Aeternitas, a Titaness of Eternity who is basically just his clone and resembles Ananke only in passing.
So, as you can see, the two are not the same person at all, nor do they really have anything to do with one another; they don't even inhabit the same cosmology, most of the time. But there has been confusion between them for a long time, starting with the fact that Cronus does actually have some small time connotations of his own; as a fertility and farming god, he has control over the seasons and the cycle of growth. This control over the cycle of time, specifically as it regards the seasons, is not at all the same as Chronos' personification of eternal time, but the later you get in history and the further you go from the early Greek myths, the more common it becomes for someone to confuse them - either intentionally, as some philosophers occasionally do to make a point, or accidentally, as many interpreters from Rome or other cultures do when confused by the similar names.
By this point in history, your average joe on the street, provided that he is not secretly a scholar of Classical mythology, probably doesn't know the difference. "Chrono" is a Greek root we use for lots of time-related words - chronological, chronographical, chronometrical, etc. - so when someone says "Cronus" and we don't hear that there's no H there, we automatically assume that guy must have something to do with time. Modern conceptions of time, thanks in large part to science fiction and developments in measuring and relativity in the past several centuries, don't really make a distinction between seasonal, cyclical time and time as represented by eternity, so, we reason, if there are two guys with the same name who are both associated in some way with time, they must be the same guy.
The most obvious final product of this centuries-long process of confusion and misidentification is the popular folkloric figure of Father Time, who is the personification of time and eternity, much like Chronos, but who carries the scythe or sickle that is quintessentially Cronus'. This is a very recent development in world mythology, occurring in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it makes a good illustration of the pernicious confusion between the two Titans. (Theoretically, the connection between time leading to inevitable death and the transformation from sickle to scythe may also point to some Slavic influence from Smert, the scythe-wielding dead goddess, but considering the extremely low influence of the Slavs on Renaissance Italy, where the idea of Father Time originated, that's likely to be an even later addition to the imagery.)
For Scion's purposes, Cronus is pretty much always the guy that matters. He's the one leading the other Titans against Olympus, he's the one who fathered the gods, he's the one who has active myths of doing active things, he's the one who used to rule the world and he's the one that has the chip on his shoulder. Chronos, on the other hand, is basically a non-entity, one of those Titans who exists on a vast, primordial scale but doesn't really do anything, and as a result there are few times that he needs to be at the forefront unless you're running a story that either deals heavily with Orphic and mystery cult alternate theories or is strongly invested in the idea of messing around with eternity.
But, theoretically, they're both out there; playing with what they're doing, who they're supporting in the war and why, and what irritation being syncretized with one another might be inflicting on them could all be interesting avenues for exploration. It's unlikely that they're actively strongly Fatebound to one anothers' roles, considering that both of them would have been locked in Tartarus most if not all of the time that this confusion was occurring, but either of them might be surprised by the modern confusion, and either of them might be interested in correcting it, taking advantage of it or letting humanity (and thus many up-and-coming Scions who don't know any better) continue in their ignorance.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Big Bad Dad
Question: I always thought it's odd that the main guy in starting the Titan war is strangely missing from the official books. So in your opinion, what Titan is Kronus an Avatar of, and what is his role in the Overworld war?
I have always figured that the official Scion line must have had some plan for Cronus that just didn't get put into effect yet - either they were saving him for a later expansion, or he had been "called" by some writer so the others weren't doing anything with him, or something else along those lines. Because you're right, it's super weird that neither he nor any of the other original twelve Titans (except for poor, mishandled Tethys in Scion: God) are involved in the war according to the official books. It's a hole that practically screams to me that someone had a plan and that plan ended up not happening when the line was declared finished. It's sad times.
As far as we're concerned, we're still in the throes of rewriting the Titans, so I don't want to tell you a specific placement for him only to change it in a couple of weeks. However, I will note that in our current games Cronus has frequently been seen fighting with Gaia and her allies in Terra, attempting to wrest control of the wildlands away so he can recreate them as fertile farmlands, and that the Dodekatheon are in a serious panic over his recent re-emergence from Tartarus with his siblings. Zeus could not be reached for comment, but anyone who goes into the storm-god's palace these days runs serious risk of being electrocuted due to the constantly-raging thunderstorm in there.
Others of Cronus' siblings, including Crius, Hyperion and Oceanus, have been more of an immediate issue right now, but it seems clear that he's the real power behind them, and that Zeus' increasing desperation when it comes to trying to control his own Fate probably owes at least a little to his infamous father's return.
I have always figured that the official Scion line must have had some plan for Cronus that just didn't get put into effect yet - either they were saving him for a later expansion, or he had been "called" by some writer so the others weren't doing anything with him, or something else along those lines. Because you're right, it's super weird that neither he nor any of the other original twelve Titans (except for poor, mishandled Tethys in Scion: God) are involved in the war according to the official books. It's a hole that practically screams to me that someone had a plan and that plan ended up not happening when the line was declared finished. It's sad times.
As far as we're concerned, we're still in the throes of rewriting the Titans, so I don't want to tell you a specific placement for him only to change it in a couple of weeks. However, I will note that in our current games Cronus has frequently been seen fighting with Gaia and her allies in Terra, attempting to wrest control of the wildlands away so he can recreate them as fertile farmlands, and that the Dodekatheon are in a serious panic over his recent re-emergence from Tartarus with his siblings. Zeus could not be reached for comment, but anyone who goes into the storm-god's palace these days runs serious risk of being electrocuted due to the constantly-raging thunderstorm in there.
Others of Cronus' siblings, including Crius, Hyperion and Oceanus, have been more of an immediate issue right now, but it seems clear that he's the real power behind them, and that Zeus' increasing desperation when it comes to trying to control his own Fate probably owes at least a little to his infamous father's return.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)