ECHIDNA
Aliases: Dracaena, She-Viper
Sing, O Muses, of the mother of monsters! The mother of the unloved, her wretched babes wagered liked pawns! Sing of murdered children! Of their matron’s venom-rage, of the end of man, and the end of Heroes! Loathsome worm and squirming dragon, the lover of inimical Typhon, the enemy of beloved Apollo! She whose birth-pangs will end the World — Monster! Mother! Echidna!
Gaea and Tartarus have long commingled in various inscrutable ways. As such, it is well known that when Mother Earth and Hell decide to love each other very much, nothing useful or tolerant of humanity can come of it: Echidna being the prime example. The Gods abhorred Echidna, an unmanageable monster, even before she took a mate and began to breed. While the Theoi claim she chose Typhon out of a perverse need to spawn the most horrifying creatures possible, Aphrodite is first to admit (with a shudder) that she seems to genuinely love him.
Certainly, they are a match made in — well, somewhere. Typhon couldn’t have successfully stolen Zeus’s tendons without Echidna’s low, twisted cunning. When Apollo took vengeance by filling Echidna with arrows, she would have putrefied in Pythia’s sunlight if Typhon hadn’t stolen away with her to Tartarus. No, Echidna and Typhon truly love each other, just as they truly love the abominations their union creates.
From the waist up, Echidna is a beautiful maiden, albeit with cold doll-eyes and a poisonous expression. From the waist down, however, Hell takes over: Her legs fuse into one abominable appendage, long and serpentine, frilled and bristling with venomous spikes. You are likely to find her coils miles before you catch sight of her unapproachable maiden-half. More infamous than her terrible visage are her numerous depraved children: Hydra, Scylla, Chimaera... you may have heard of a few. Agonizingly to Echidna, her children’s only worth to the World is in how much fame they bring the Hero who kills them.
Echidna is begrudgingly aligned with proponents for Titanomachy only because she hates the Theoi and their Scions with a venom that suffuses her horrifying body. She will always put her family first. Echidna’s Scions are those of the same mind: mothers, survivors of violence, and creators joyfully cultivating the ill-advised things they make. She births or adopts Scions as caretakers for her children, or as wardens for their spawning grounds and cults.
Provinces: Creator, Guardian, Monster
Dominions: BEASTS (Serpents), CHAOS, DARKNESS, ENDURANCE, FERTILITY, FIRE, PASSION (Maternal Love), WILD
RELATIONSHIPS AND AGENDAS
Above all else, Echidna loves Typhon and her children. Every action and alliance serve to protect these loves; a Titanomachy with no place for her twisted family leaves her cold. She wouldn’t have aligned with the Titanomachy at all if Gaea, whom Echidna venerates, hadn’t entreated her. That said, Echidna exults in undermining the hunter twins Apollo and Artemis, as well as Rhea, whom she considers her rival for the Purview of motherhood. Interactions with her Scions are curt, similar to a haughty aristocrat treating the nanny. If left alone, Echidna’s only plan would be to outbreed the Gods — with the rise in “Bestia Incognita” advocacy, this plan may be crazy enough to work.
OTHER PANTHEONS
Monster-mothers lead solitary lives, but Echidna gets along famously with Misiginebig, much to everyone’s horror and dismay. Her gamekeeper cults have spread attitudes of radical monster acceptance across national boundaries, causing the Shén no amount of grief when a titanspawn finally roped into gainful employment no-call-no-shows and goes back to terrorizing the locals. Other pantheons keep their distance from Echidna’s clan, and she likes this just fine.
CURRENT PRIORITIES
Echidna is gravid again. This is far from uncommon, but her gamekeeper cults are unusually restless, and her activist Scions are squeezing global legislatures to increase protection of “Bestia Incognita.” Something really special is on the way. Echidna’s primary concerns are pre- and post-natal care for the baby (or babies); namely, she needs an enormous subterranean nursery, and a lot of food, because she’s eating for A Dreadful Number Larger Than One now.
Echidna is also concerned with silencing oracles — she wasn’t born yesterday, and she knows prophecies lead Heroes to her children’s lairs. She will stop at nothing to achieve a World that exists only for her and her spawn: ev- erything a fetid bog and everyone in terrified quiescence.
