Siren

The Sirens were powerful female monsters of the Greek world, beings whose enchanting song lured sailors to crash their ships upon the rocks. They appeared as beautiful, youthful women with long flowing hair, yet beneath that guise their faces were decomposing flesh, and they fought with a host of magical powers. Kratos first hunted them across the Desert of Lost Souls.

Song and curse#

According to the journal of Kratos, the Sirens were monsters whose song lured sailors to crash their boats against the rocks. From a distance they seemed beautiful, youthful women crowned with long, flowing dark hair, but seen close their faces were revealed as decomposing flesh, eyeless and noseless, a sharp-toothed mouth amid disheveled hair.

In the older tales they were the daughters of Phorkys and Keto, which made them sisters of Scylla, of Charybdis, and of the Gorgons. Once they had been handmaids of Persephone, but when Hades carried her off and they did not come to her aid, the grieving Demeter cursed them into ugly birds with the heads of women. The heroes of Greece learned to pass them by: Jason and the Argonauts, sailing for the Golden Fleece, were saved when the divine singer Orpheus drowned out the Sirens' song with his lyre, and Odysseus survived their call bound fast to the mast of his ship. It was said that a Siren was compelled to die if a man heard her song and was not lured, and so when Odysseus passed unharmed, many of them threw themselves into the sea, their corpses becoming the very rocks and reefs that wreck ships. Those that survived shed their bird-forms, grew scaly tails, and became known as mermaids.

The Sirens of the desert and the temples#

The Sirens were not often met in the age of the gods, but where they appeared they were deadly, usually coming in pairs and fighting with a variety of magical powers. Kratos first hunted them in the Desert of Lost Souls, where Athena charged him to find and destroy three Desert Sirens by following their song, so that the way to Cronos might be opened. These three floated gracefully across the sands in flowing dresses, singing their lethal, enchanting song until the warrior drew near, then turning swift and savage, hurling blue energy and shrieking to stun. Other Sirens were found afterward throughout Pandora's Temple and, in later years, across the Island of Creation and the heights and labyrinths of Olympus.

Long after, while sailing in distant northern seas, Kratos told his son the tale of the Sirens. His ship's stores had run dry, he said, and some of the sailors had drunk seawater in their desperation, until the sea-madness made them believe the Sirens singing nearby were their own wives and daughters waiting at home. The maddened men tried to steer the ship onto the rocks, and Kratos and the others were forced to throw them overboard, where the Sirens fell upon them and devoured them.

The breeds of Siren#

Many kinds of Siren were known across Greece. The Siren Sibyls, the first that Kratos ever fought, wielded lightning, hurling bolts and electric wails and vanishing across short distances. The Siren Widows of the Island of Creation drifted like dead women in ragged blue, loosing paralyzing cries and a shockwave scream so powerful that Kratos turned it against Zeus himself upon the Summit of Sacrifice. The Siren Seductresses, minions of Olympus veiled in red, could levitate, turn nearly invisible, and unleash a shriek that drained a warrior's very magic. Even in death their power lingered, for their souls could be summoned to scream again upon their enemies.