Grave Digger

The Grave Digger was a mysterious aged man who busied himself digging graves outside the Temple of the Oracle in Athens during the siege of the city. He claimed the grave he dug was meant for Kratos, yet he became an unexpected ally to the Spartan in his darkest hours. In truth the Grave Digger was the mortal guise of Zeus, the King of the Gods, who watched over Kratos in secret.

The grave in Athens#

The Grave Digger first appeared digging a grave in front of the Oracle's Temple during the siege of Athens, recognizing Kratos at once. When Kratos asked who the grave was for, the old man answered that it was for him before sending the Spartan on his way. The words proved true. After Kratos was slain by Ares at the Temple of Pandora and fell into the Underworld, a stone with a rope tied to it dropped down through a hole, and Kratos climbed it back to the Oracle's Temple. There the Grave Digger met him again, having just finished digging the very hole that served as his portal out of death. When Kratos asked who he was, the man would only say that Athena was not the only god keeping watch over him, then vanished, his voice urging Kratos to defeat Ares so that his sins might be forgiven.

Heraklion and the burials#

The Grave Digger appeared again as Kratos passed through the city of Heraklion in search of his brother. He counseled the Spartan to turn back and abandon his quest, but Kratos, set on finding Deimos, ignored the warning. After Kratos defeated Thanatos at the cost of Deimos' life, he carried his brother's body to the peak of the Suicide Bluffs, where the Grave Digger waited beside a freshly dug grave. Kratos laid Deimos to rest, and as he stood at the edge of the bluffs asking what he had become, the Grave Digger answered that he had become death, the destroyer of worlds, before disappearing. Later the old man appeared once more carrying the body of Callisto, Kratos' mother, and laid her in a grave of her own. Between the two graves lay a third, still empty, of which the Grave Digger said only that now one remained.

The King in disguise#

The Grave Digger was the mortal guise of Zeus, who had taken on the worn form of an old man to watch over Kratos without revealing himself among the gods. His role in helping Kratos reach Pandora's Box and destroy Ares allowed Olympus to be rid of the rampaging War God without an open war between the gods, which Zeus feared above all. His habit of calling Kratos "son" foreshadowed the later revelation that Zeus was indeed his father.