Titans

The Titans were the second generation of Greek deities, who ruled the cosmos before the Olympians and after the Primordials. Born on the Island of Creation to Gaia the Earth and Ouranos the Sky, they reigned through the Golden Age under their king Cronos until Zeus and his siblings overthrew them and banished them to Tartarus. Ages later, guided by Gaia, they answered the call of Kratos and marched against Olympus one final time.

Birth on the Island of Creation#

The first twelve elder Titans were born on the Island of Creation, an island fashioned by the Primordials before their birth and home to the Sisters of Fate. Their father Ouranos ruled the universe with increasing tyranny, and their mother Gaia loved all her children equally. The Titans were powerful deities who shaped the still developing cosmos, adding new domains and concepts to it: the Sun and Moon, divine law and order, mortality, and finally Time itself, brought forth by the youngest, Cronos.

The Titans were tolerated by their father on the face of the Earth, unlike their elder brothers the Elder Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires, whom Ouranos banished into the primordial abyss for their hideousness. They lived in cautious fear of the Sisters of Fate, who dwelt on the Island and held near-absolute authority over the destiny of all deities, and so the Titans moved out into the wider world to take root in it.

The Golden Age#

Under the rule of the Titans came the Golden Age, when the first race of mortals lived in harmony with nature and the deities. It was Prometheus, son of Iapetus, who created mankind, and the humans of that age lived long lives and welcomed death as minor nature spirits rather than passing into the dark Underworld. The Titans ruled over the cosmos and its domains, the vast Oceanus reigning over the seas and the beaming Hyperion presiding over the Sun. Many second and third generation Titans, among them Perses, Atlas, and Helios, were born and took their place in the divine order.

But it was prophesied that Cronos, like his own father before him, would be overthrown by his children. He gifted the Sisters of Fate the Steeds of Time, yet they refused to alter his destiny, and so he devoured each child his wife Rhea bore him. Unable to bear a sixth loss, Rhea hid the infant Zeus away and gave Cronos a stone wrapped in cloth in his place. Raised in secret by Gaia, Zeus came of age, freed his swallowed siblings, and the Great War began.

The Great War and the downfall#

The war for supremacy of the cosmos lasted for centuries of brutal combat that forged the very landscape of the mortal world. The Titans loyal to Cronos were led by the general Atlas, with the five elder brothers of Cronos and many of their children standing beside their king. Several Titans, however, betrayed their kin and joined the Olympians, among them Prometheus, Helios, Hekate, and Iris. The Olympians grew stronger as they fought, and Zeus freed the Elder Cyclopes and Hecatonchires from Tartarus to aid him.

In the final battle the Titans made a last desperate assault but could not break the Olympian lines. As Hades moved to consume the soul of Cronos, Atlas saved his king by hurling rocks and was captured in his place. Zeus then channeled the Heavens, the Earth, the Seas, and the Afterlife with his own blood and lightning to forge the Blade of Olympus, and with its power he cast the Titans into the foulest pit of the Underworld, Tartarus. The Golden Age had ended.

Imprisonment in Tartarus#

In Tartarus the Titans were stripped of their domains and divine power so that they could never escape, the Gauntlet of Zeus forged to chain and bind them. Cronos was condemned to wander the Desert of Lost Souls with Pandora's Temple chained to his back until the wind and sand tore at his flesh. The storm Titan Typhon was sealed within a mountain, and on that same mountain the defector Prometheus was bound to have his liver devoured each day by an eagle for the crime of giving fire to mankind. Atlas was made to hold the sky upon his shoulders. Those who had sided with Zeus, such as Helios and Hekate, were instead accepted into the new Olympian pantheon. In refusing to slay his own father and the surviving Titans, Zeus hoped to break the Cycle of Patricide, though he knew the curse of those who spill their kin's blood lay upon him.

Alliance with Kratos#

Long after, when Kratos was being dragged to the Underworld, Gaia saved him and set him on the path to destroy Zeus. The Spartan gathered power from the imprisoned Titans: he blinded Typhon and took his bow, burned Prometheus into the Fires of Olympus to claim the Rage of the Titans, received Cronos' Rage from the wandering king, and gained the Atlas Quake and knowledge of the Great War from Atlas. Within the volcano outside Atlantis he also freed the Titaness Thera. After defeating the Sisters of Fate, Kratos severed the threads of the Titans with the Spear of Destiny and traveled back to the final minutes of the Great War. He saved the Titans from banishment and carried them into his own time, where together they climbed Mount Olympus to bring down the Olympians.

The end of the Titans#

The assault on Olympus turned to ruin for both sides. The Olympians met the Titans on the mountain: Hades dislodged Oceanus, and Poseidon leapt down to blast through Epimetheus and pull other Titans into the sea before Kratos and Gaia slew him. When Zeus blasted Kratos and Gaia from the mountain, Gaia abandoned the Spartan, revealing that he had only ever been her pawn, and the Titans became his enemies as much as the Gods. In the war that followed, Helios was crushed by Perses, Perses himself was hurled from the mountain by Kratos, and the wandering Cronos was slain in Tartarus when Kratos cut his way out of the Titan's belly. At the last, Gaia returned to interrupt the final duel between father and son, and Kratos killed her by driving the Blade of Olympus through Zeus and into her heart. With Gaia's destruction the Titans were all but ended, only Atlas certainly left alive, still holding the world upon his shoulders.

Nature and powers#

The Titans were as large as mountains and mostly elemental in form, ancient and primal where the Olympians appeared more human, though a few such as Rhea, Prometheus, Eos, and Helios looked more godlike in stature. All of them possessed superhuman strength, stamina, durability, immortality, and the power to heal. Many embodied and manipulated the element of their domain, Oceanus wreathed in water and Perses covered in lava, and they held awareness over the events occurring within their element, as Gaia watched over the deeds of Kratos from afar. After their defeat in the Great War they were dispossessed of these divine powers and domains so that they could never break free of their prisons.