The Return of the Titans
A modern day mythic PBEM.
Inspirations:
Books:
Greek and Norse Mythology
Ilium and Olympos, Dan Simmons
Prospero Lost and Prospero in Hell, L Jagi Lamplighter
Mortal Coils and All that Lives Must Die, Eric Nylund
Roleplaying Games:
Scion
FATE, in the Dresden Files Role Playing Game
Exalted
GURPS Technomancer
Nobilis
Trail of Cthulhu
Amber Diceless RPG
Movies:
Clash of the Titans
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
—
Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds
With those words spoken at the Trinity bomb test on July 16, 1945, Julius Robert Oppenheimer spoke more truthfully than he knew. The power of the Trinity bomb, combined with the ritual words that Oppenheimer spoke, drastically accelerated a process that had been slowly occurring over the last thousand years:
The freedom of the Titans.
Untold Eons ago, before time itself existed, the chthonic, inhuman, ancient forces known as the Titans created the multiverse, or, perhaps, merely emerged from it. In either case, they and theirs were the original rulers of the Earth and worlds beyond, and ruled for an uncounted period of years, until they were overthrown and imprisoned by their children and creations, the Gods and Goddesses of the Mythologies of the World. The Titans and their spawn fought against the Gods and their children, heroes and demigods sired upon the mortals of Earth. Many of the stories of their struggles survive as myths we know today. In the end, the Gods and their children won, and the Titans were imprisoned.
Their victory complete, the Gods and Goddesses for the most part retired to explore and rule the Otherworlds that they won in addition to the Earth. The Titans were safely in their prison of Malfeas, or so the Gods believed. The Age of Gods and Heroes was over.
In Europe and the Middle East, the absence of the deities of the Celtic and Greek pantheons from widespread activity in the world lead to the decline of their faiths, and the rise of the Abrahamic creeds. In other parts of the world, the inattention of the Hindu, Japanese and Chinese pantheons led to the development of faiths such as Buddhism. In the Americas, the pantheons of the Native Americans still received worship until European colonization forcibly ended the practices on any significant scale.
The Gods relative inattention to Earth finally stopped in the twentieth century, as they learned that the Titans were trying to find ways to escape Malfeas. They had been twisted, crippled and neutered, yes, but they were still potent, and worked with force and craftiness against their fate.
They had not escaped in body, yet, but had, for some time, perhaps as long as several hundred years, managed to send out their creations and spawn to Earth, and beyond.
All of these monsters, demons and beings were set toward the task of freeing their masters from their long imprisonment, and so help the Titans revenge themselves on their children and their children’s children.
While the Gods had paid only sometimes fleeting attention to Earth, on their visits to Earth, they had, as in the myths of old, found liaisons with mortals. Their children, the Scions, often found that by their half-divine nature, trouble would find them, whether they wished it or not. This trouble often came from the machinations of the Titans and their spawn, or from rival Gods and their children. With the Trinity test, the seals on Malfeas have weakened to a fatal point, and now the Titans threaten to escape their bondage entirely. Perhaps some of them already have.
In this modern age, with the Titans breaking free of Malfeas, Gods and Goddesses have sought liaisons in a more deliberate manner, to sire or birth children upon the world.
Further, they have sought ties to their children, to both arm them against the Titans spawn and agents, and against their rivals both within and beyond their pantheons
Finally, the Scions are intended to help swell the numbers on the Gods’ side for the long prophesied battle between the Gods and their twisted Titanic parents:
Ragnarok
In the PBEM Return of the Titans you will play a child of one of the Gods and Goddesses of mythology in the modern world. Thrust from an ordinary existence into a greater world, what will you do with the power given to you? How will it change you? How will it change those you care about? How will it change the world?
Can you stop the Titans from overthrowing your parents and remaking the world in their own twisted image? Can you become a Goddess yourself?