| Hephaestus | |
|---|---|
| Aliases | Heph
Heph the Huge |
Hephaestus, is the god of Fire and the Forge.
Overview[]
Hephaestus was once as ugly as one of the Seven Sins released into the world by Pandora, poorly treated by his father, neglected by his mother, despised and even reviled by those who depended on his craftsmanship in forging useful things, besides weapons. Then Aphrodite happened, Zeus set set her up in marriage to him a short time after she migrated here from the Island of Cyprus, where Dione had her. Even then she was an unsurpassable beauty, and everybody came on to her including Zeus.
Thing is…Aphrodite may look like a piece of fluff, and sometimes she even acts like a Bubblehead, but she’s a lot smarter than she often lets on, and it didn’t take her long to figure out how things worked. She knew if she did the Incest thing, Hera would make things even more unpleasant for her than she had done with her mother, Dione. So Zeus got mad when she refused him, and in retaliation he forced her to marry her half-brother, Hephaestus. He meant it as a kind of cruel joke, and Aphrodite made no secret about how she felt about the matter. Zeus insisted, she gave in, and for the next few hundred years she was the dutiful wife of the homeliest god in Olympus that is until that thing between her and Ares happened.
Back then brother Ares was quite the charmer, and Aphrodite went in for a real Jock like him, caught him when he was just off the battlefield, hot and sweaty, next thing you know she’ll peeling off his armor and going at it like there’s no tomorrow. Of course Hephaestus didn’t know about this for the first few decades…but after a while they got so outrageous about it that the rumors got to him, and then he knew that there was something fishy in the state of Olympus.
So, being the inventive type that he is, he heads back to the forge, crafts a net made of really fine mesh, then leaves it dangling right over his own bed before heading out to the mines to check on production. Of course the Dwarves are having a coffee break when he sneaks back and finds the net has done its job, catching the pair in the act. Hephaestus made a big show about it, paraded the ‘Lovers’ in front of everybody, forced Aphrodite to own up to the fact that she’d mothered a child out of wedlock and had to admit that Hippolyta was her child by Ares.
The weird thing is, the one who came out the winner in all that was Hephaestus. He’d had a few years of sex, which got him over his earlier shyness, and when his wife’s infidelity became public he got a huge sympathy vote, and before you knew it he was everybody’s buddy…especially the ladies. Turns out he’s a real sensitive guy underneath it all, more brains even than brawn, and quite a lot of brawn at that…and a real genius in the sack, as Aphrodite worked a few spells to improve his equipment, and taught him a heck of a lot about foreplay.
Before you knew it he was getting visited by every Nymph and Goddess who heard the rumors about his nocturnal prowess, and before too long he was spending as much time outside his shop as in it, and delegating a lot more responsibility to his staff of Gnomes and Salamanders. Then he gets inspired to create something he calls Plastic Surgery, starts dressing like an Executive type, begins patenting inventions that Humans wouldn’t think up for hundreds of years yet to come.