Cyclops

The Cyclopes were a species of burly, one-eyed giants seen throughout the Greek world. Once peaceful herders and craftsmen banished beneath the earth, they were freed by Zeus to fight the Titans, and in the ages that followed they became mighty beasts of war in the armies of the gods, a frequent foe of Kratos whose near-divine strength was great enough to slay even demigods.

From herders to war beasts#

According to the journal of Kratos, the Cyclopes had not always been monsters. In ancient times they were peaceful sheep-herders who lived solitary lives across the lands of Greece, capable of great craftsmanship and skilled as stonemasons. Yet neither the Sky-father Ouranos nor, in his turn, the Titan Lord Cronos thought it fit for such a species to walk the Earth, and the Cyclopes were banished to the Underworld for many ages of the world.

During the first Titanomachy, the great war between the gods and the Titans, Zeus freed the Cyclopes and set them to fight for the gods in exchange for their freedom. From then on the practice of using the powerful brutes in battle became all too common. After the gods' victory, the Cyclopes raised the large and mighty palaces upon Mount Olympus in honor of their liberators, and were at last free to walk the Earth.

The bloodline of Poseidon#

In the Age of Olympus a new generation of Cyclopes was bred, sprung from the bloodline of Poseidon, the Sea God, who fathered many of these giants. The most prominent of his offspring was Polyphemus, whose strength and might may have rivaled the ancient Cyclopes born of Heaven and Earth themselves. With the passing ages the Cyclopes lost their old peaceful ways and became wholly creatures of war. Their great strength came from their near-divine nature and ancestry, surpassing that of most monsters and proving enough to kill even demigods.

Servants of the gods#

The Cyclopes appeared in the armies and strongholds of Greece wherever the gods loosed them. When Ares besieged Athens, Cyclopes served as shock infantry in his ranks and stood guard over parts of Pandora's Temple, where Kratos faced the armored, siege-equipped Cyclops Enforcers and the feral Cyclops Desert Kings. Even there they were not invincible, for during the same siege Artemis turned the beasts of the wild against Ares, and her venomous vipers made easy prey of the mighty Cyclopes among his legions.

In the wars of Attica, Cyclopes were enslaved by the Persian king and driven against the city alongside a great Basilisk, and Kratos fought many more of them in the Underworld, including some clad in golden armor that resisted all but his fiercest blows. The brutes also rose again in the final fall of Olympus, serving as powerful minions of the gods in the last days of the Greek world.