The Great Theogony

The Great Theogony recounts the official history of the Olympian powers. The story is well known to the faithful of the pantheon, but the text itself is hidden away and under guard. Chant is, it's accessible to canny mortals, but that just might be a lure the powers use to scrag and punish sods guilty of hubris.

According to the Theogony, before time began the cosmos knew only the indescribable rollings of Chaos - that was the underlying principle of creation. From Chaos came Eros (the force of desire), Gaea (the earth), and Tartarus (the underworld). Gaea's first-born was Uranus (the sky), but she spewed forth many more creatures, including the Mountains, the Sea, and the nymphs.

Then Gaea and Uranus produced children together, mixing their power and their attributes. Their first offspring were the 12 Greater Titans, who became, in essence, the law of the new world. For example, Mnemosyne was the Titan of memory, and it was because of her memory that time could progress. But Gaea gave birth to more children, some of them as fair as the Titans, others much more monstrous - like the fifty-headed, hundred-armed Hecatoncheires. Uranus locked the horrible things up in the prison of Carceri, keeping them from mortal knowledge.

Gaea, sick at seeing her children confined, approached the titan Cronus and convinced him to dispatch his father. He did so, assumed his father's mantle, and married the Titan Rhea. But then Cronus went back on his word to Gaea and refused to free his monstrous brothers from their imprisonment.

Thus, Gaea laid a curse on Cronus that his children would rise up as he had risen. Cronus figured he'd put that curse off by devouring his offspring as they were born, so that none could stand against him. He'd swallowed his first five children (Hestia, Hera, Demeter, Hades, and Poseidon), but Rhea smuggled the sixth, Zeus, to grow amongst the nymphs.

When Zeus grew to manhood (or rather, godhood), he returned, disguised as his father's cupbearer, and have Cronus a potion that made him vomit up the other five children. The Olympians then battled the Greater Titans and cast them into Carceri, where they remain imprisoned to this day.