CRONUS

TITANS

Aliases: Khronos, King of the Titans, Saturnus

Sing to me, O Muses, of the second King of Heaven, ruler of a Golden Age, the un- disputed commander of Gods and causality. He plots the ambush of his royal father, craving butchery. He awaits the birth of another radi- ant babe, his stomach howling. He is the tomb of his own chil- dren, he is the heat-death of the cosmos, he is the adversary of the divine, and he is hungry.

While his four elder brothers seized their father Uranus and held him fast at the corners of the earth, Cronus lifted his adamant sickle and hacked the King of Heaven to pieces. So it was that Cronus the Wily became the second King, of crooked wit and fearful drive. Though some claim he ruled over a blissful Golden Age, his ruthlessness earned the bitter enmity of many — including his mother Gaea. Upon the unjust imprisonment of his brothers the Gigantes, Gaea delivered to him that familiar refrain of Theoi prophecy: However great, the father will be defeated by an even greater son.

For Cronus, there was a simple solution to this riddle of Fate: He devoured his children as soon as they were born, imprisoning them within his empty, frozen body. Confident in the merits of this plan, he overlooked the unusual weight of the last child he snatched and swallowed whole. Unbeknownst to him, his desperate wife Rhea had switched the newborn with a stone. So it was that Cronus the Cunning was outmaneuvered by a boulder, the infant Zeus survived in hiding, and Fate was proved ever ineffable.

Zeus’s quest to release the Gigantes, his war for Olympus, his wife Metis’s scheme to free the Gods from Cronus’s gullet — these myths have found their places. Zeus found his at the head of the Theoi. And Cronus his, leashed by unbreakable chains beneath Tartarus.

The King of Titans commands a body enormous beyond conceiving. Within is concealed a freezing vacuum and monstrous appetite, particularly for his kin. While Cronus originally reigned over the concept of ruler-ship, he now encompasses time as well, especially entropy, and literal and figurative reaping. This and his infamous sickle syncretized him with an Italian harvest God, now his fairer Mantle Saturnus.

Selfish and paranoid, Cronus is not known to patronize Scions. He does, however, beget many Titanic omens, even when the World’s stage is otherwise q u i e t . His heaving under Tartarus knocks souls off-course, triggers horrific earthquakes and sparks win- ter storms. Gates swing open, conveying the expectant and unwary alike to his cell within Tartarus. To what end these omens appear, no Olympians are sure, but they do know this: Even in prison, Cronus has not admitted defeat. He will rule again whatever the cost — not out of lofty ideals but simply because he must.

Previews: Adversary, Destroyer, Tyrant

Dominions: DEATH, DECEPTION, EARTH, ENDURANCE, FERTILITY, FROST, MIGHT, ORDER, PASSION (Hunger), SKY, & TIME

Virtues: Rapacity, Dominance.

RELATIONSHIPS & AGENDA

Though he’s not above granting clemency to "free" Titans who return to his court, Cronus hates the Theoi and their allies beyond measure — Rhea especially, for her ruse with the stone, and were he to learn of Metis and her little emetic she’d earn his wrath as well. As unyielding as ever, Cronus plans to rule the World in the same manner as before, this time with every God decaying within his frost-rimed belly.

OTHER PANTHEONS

As King of the Titans and paterfamilias of the xenophobic Theoi, Cronus is contemptuous of literally everyone. He already waged Titanomachy without barbarian help and intends to do it again. That said, Cronus now sends cryptic communications to Apep in the South, and his emissaries have been intercepted en route to Giants of the First Sun — sticky topics the Theoi have not yet divulged to the Netjer or Teōtl.

PRIORITIES

Cronus longs to be reunited with his adamant sickle, once used to sever Heaven from Earth, supposedly on an un- known island in the Ionian Sea guarded by Theoi watchdogs. His four brothers, the Pillars of Heaven, have already slipped their less-artisanal bonds and now maneuver titanspawn to search for the only thing that can break Cronus’s chains.

He also seeks a new wife (as Rhea is dead to him, perhaps soon literally), one that will breach Tartarus to guide him back into the World. After millennia of chauvinism, he’s begun considering “barbarian” Titans.

Then he will unroll his maw to feed on the flesh of his degenerate children and resume his reign from the frozen peak of Olympus, likely after clearing the World of this age of humanity in your traditional deluge. Why change a perfect plan?

---

---