Apollo

Apollo is one of the most famed Olympian deities, in the Greek Halls of Godhood. He is the son of Zeus and Leto, who was also known as Latona. Half Latina and half Minecraft. He was raised by Mermaids, Unicorns, and a couple of weird fairies. He learned the basics of godhood and how to fly around without getting too close to the sun, but would send others to test how warm the sun was in case he ever needed to challenge the solar beast in the sky.
It wasn't just that he was one of Zeus' favorite offspring, there were conflicts with Chaos and Discord, Aphrodite and Bob, that compelled Zeus to bestow an elaborate array of gifts and talents to Apollo just to spite some of the troublemakers in the heavens. Although Zeus loved Apollo very much, he knew he could really piss off a lot of other gods and goddesses with extravagant abilities lavished onto Apollo. And this would have worked wonderfully if Apollo wasn't just as flattering and well spoken that endeared him to everyone else. Except for a few women who were apparently a little on the deranged side. One instance involved a female named Bolina who jumped into the sea to avoid him. Luckily she had her scuba gear on. She was fine until Poseidon saw her and wanted to play the shark-and-unsuspecting-victim game.
Apollo is known as the god of archery, because of course he is. He was also into music, dance and poetry, truth and prophecy, the healing arts, the art of plagues, the art of war, the god of the sun and the light, and pretty good at bowling. He lead a fairly good life. He was really into building a lot of things. An architect of renown, he was the ancient version of Donald Trump. But Apollo struggled with the conflicts in his own family. There always seemed to be a failure to communicate. Especially with everyone able to turn anyone into whatever came across their minds. There was the usual go-to transformations like cows and goats. But nobody could play nice. This affected mortals, too.
However Apollo was of the temperament to be kind and treat everyone fairly. He wasn't much into turning anybody into anything. There was this one time when he turned Cyparissus into a tree because he was such a lousy shot and couldn't hit the side of a barn, and because of his lack of skill he accidentally killed his poor pet Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. The animal was actually high at the time after doing a line or two which dusted his shiny nose over and was therefore hard to see. But everyone was saddened, disgusted, in shock, and could not deal. This was a tragedy of Greek proportions. It wasn't something that one just got over. This was a really fucked up situation. Cyparissus being so distraught, begged the gods to bring the deer back to life. Apollo is said to have considered it until Cyparissus also asked if he could borrow a crossbow, a spear launcher, and a Smith & Wesson so he could target practice at the range. So, Apollo turned him into a tree. In Apollo's defense, the gods didn't really want to hand over any modern day weapons to a mortal who may or may not have been contributing to drug addiction.
== The Ceremonial Lighting of the Mountain ==
Sometime in the year of the Jellyfish, roughly around 2305 B.C., the gods of Mount Olympus wanted to have a party. It had snowed on top of the mountain and they thought it could use some colorful lighting. But Zeus needed to know that everyone else knew what they were doing. Something sparked his thought that indicated disaster might ensue. Nobody really understood the concept of lights on a string, but this was a new trend and the gods were always into trends. But Zeus insisted that everyone must impress him enough to calm his nerves, so he gave them all a task to prove their ability to hang lights without killing themselves or burning the palace down. After they decorated shrines and temples in Greece, Zeus was satisfied and allowed them to hang lights all over Olympus.
Apollo had been given a chariot pulled by swans, and he often headed south for the Winter. But in this particular year, for the season, he chose to stay awhile longer and hooked his chariot up to a team of horses. At night he would fly around and sing joyous songs, sometimes just yodeling. Ha Ha Ha Hee Hee Hee Ho Ho Ho was his best attempt at it.
After about two weeks, all the lights had been installed and strung all over the palace and the mountain. Everyone gathered, immortals and mortals alike to see the lighting of the Mount Olympus. It was a ceremony where everyone got into the spirit of feasting and drinking and giving presents. When the switch was thrown it lit up the place like a nuclear meltdown. Everyone was impressed. Everyone was also drunk.
It was such a celebration that it brought peace to the land and nobody seemed to mind the glaring spectacle that was blinding and caused minor visual damage. After about a week of it, everyone was kind of bored and went back to their usual day to day life. They applauded Apollo's commitment to being such a colorful sight against the full moon flying his chariot and throwing gifts out to everyone. But the mortals really didn't know what to do with Apollo's gifts of ugly sweaters and socks. But they smiled and said thank you to the skies anyway. Eventually they stopped coming outside lest an ugly sweater landed on them.
After the ceremony had faded, everyone was cursing the cold, wanting the Spring to return. Zeus requested that the lights needed to come down and stored away. It was starting to annoy him. The Greeks had their Winter sports and Winter Olympic Games and eventually it started to warm up. Winter turned to Spring, and by the time Summer approached, Zeus took down all the lights, mumbling to himself.
== Clash of the Titans & The Deep Ones ==
It's said that perhaps the most vivid recollection of the ancient past, as Homer had written it in a hyperbolic state of mind, was the ordeal between the gods, the mortals, the titans and the deep ones. There was a contest for the sacred land of Milkos and Honus. A place so rich with forests and ponds. Rivers and enchanted caves. Fairies, and the oft sighted variety garden gnome. The land had never been put up for sale, but there were some who wanted to place it on the market and reign over all the little kingdoms in its borders. The gods were naturally more accustomed to the landscape than the Titans or the Deep Ones, but nonetheless these other beings sought to have some say over the land as there were good pickins.
Naturally Zeus had thought of everything and sent Poseidon and Apollo to build the walls of Troy as a barrier between their stronghold of Greece and the land of Milkos and Honus. Apollo and Poseidon set about building the colossal walls that would one day be the unpleasant scene of the Trojan Horse episode. They asked the king of Troy to help them secure a contract to work for wages and the king agreed.
Apollo and Poseidon brought in some mortal dude named Aeacus, who wasn't good at building. He wasn't even good at Lego, but they left him to his own devices to help put the walls of Troy up. When it came time to lay the groundwork for construction to begin, Apollo moved one stone and then told Poseidon and Aeacus that he felt the cattle needed guarding. That there were far too many sheep herders in the area that couldn't be trusted with the cows. The sheep in the area looked nervous and the cows were, still just acting like cows. But Apollo convinced the others that the cows certainly needed his help.
Poseidon and Aeacus had built as much of the wall as they could before Apollo showed back up, playing his lyre. When he strolled past, the rest of the wall magically finished itself. Poseidon and Aeacus were understandably livid. At that time one of the Deep Ones, some say it was Cthulhu himself, came along and started some shit. With the walls being completed, a beast from the sea emerged with a head that turned into three snakes, kind of like the Hydra, but not really. Sort of a trio of snakes that came from the head of a sea monster. Like a male version of Medusa but with only three snakes, instead of a full head of snakes.
The snakes rushed up against the wall of Troy that was facing the ocean and two of the snakes managed to smash themselves to death. But the third snake did break through the part of the wall that Aeacus had built. Then slithered off into Troy, finding a bar and started singing Hello, My Baby while Apollo and Poseidon looked at Aeacus with disgust. Then Apollo made a prophecy that Aeacus' descendants would one day bring about the downfall of Troy. The Trojan king Laomedon saw this spectacle and told Poseidon and Apollo that they could forget about getting paid, and then had Aeacus arrested for vandalism.
Apollo then placed a plague upon the city and required that the king sacrifice his own daughter to deliver the city from it. Poseidon sent a better sea monster just to make things more interesting. But what the king did was an insult to the gods, even when he didn't know they were gods since both Poseidon and Apollo used aliases to sign the contract. Scholars have long held the belief that the aliases they used were Jesus Fucking Christ and God Damn It.
The king caved in and was about to sacrifice his daughter for payment to the gods for building the walls of Troy, but as usual, the gods saw fit to involve Hercules. He had to drop everything he was doing to come and rescue the king's daughter. The city of Troy was delivered from the plague, but Hercules required that the king give him some of his horses in return for saving his daughter. The king agreed and Hercules saved his daughter from being devoured by the sea monster, and killed it dead. The king, still being a dick, refused to give Hercules what he promised. So Hercules slew the dumbass bitch king. Apollo and Poseidon high five'd each other.
== The Unfortunate Incident Regarding The Trojan War ==
Apollo had very little to do with the events leading up to the war, but he had enjoyed staying at the Trojan city whenever there was trouble brewing. He had lovers there every time. When he was building the walls of Troy and by that I mean, when he was watching cows by day while others built the walls, he fell in love with a nymph named Ourea, who was a bit of a maniac on the floor. When Alexandros Prince of Troy returned from Paris, he wanted to be called Paris in tribute to the famous French city. So far this was going well for him. No one else seemed to know what the hell he was talking about when he would regale them with stories of visiting museums and having meals at little street cafes. Including the fact that he was speaking in a very thick French accent.
It was when Paris had met Helen of Troy that he unknowingly set into motion of what would become the Trojan War. Apollo came back to inspect the wall situation and everything was pretty much the way he left it. There was still a snake running amok and doing two shows a night. It was here that he met Cassandra. He was taking a break from constructing a New World Order for Zeus, being exhausted at the weird and bizarre demands that made no sense. Apollo was having lunch at one of the city's little Trojan cafes, with an accordion player and an artist nearby painting his portrait when he saw Cassandra. He fell in love with her, and he invited her to dine with him. She explained that it's the gourmet food that made him feel love toward her, the wine, and the atmosphere that only Paris could bring.
But Apollo put this aside for the time being because he was watching the development of the Paris/Helen situation and taking notes on how Aphrodite, Athena, and his stepmother were manipulating the young and naive Paris. Of course Apollo had seen that Aphrodite had offered Paris the Queen of Sparta, if he chose her in the most awkward beauty contest there had ever been. Apollo knew that Paris would fall for the old most-beautiful-woman-in-the-world trick, because the other two goddesses were only offering stupid prizes if he chose anyone other than Aphrodite. With Helen he would have something to work with. With the other offers on the table it just wasn't as satisfying. Athena and Hera were just so fucking stupid and had no concept of how a guy's mind worked. Apollo then decided that he would allow the three goddesses to finish their contest and go away, before he caught up with Paris. Disguised as a sheepherder, he told Paris that he would most likely have to kidnap Helen in order to actually get Helen. Telling the young man in a roundabout way that it wouldn't matter what goddess he chose, they were up to no good and that he would be in a lot of trouble. That he could die. Or any number of things. Paris didn't listen. It was a sheepherder that was telling him this, after all. Apollo regretted not coming to Paris as himself or as a Rockette to sway Paris away from what he knew would be disastrous.
When Paris did meet up with Helen, he said Ooh la la, mademoiselle. Enchanté. Sacred bleu! to which she responded with Do I know you? and it played out as usual and when she let her guard down, he kidnapped her and put her in his boat. He sailed to Troy singing at her serenade style and pinching his thin mustache. Apollo occupied himself with Cassandra and for a while things seemed to be nominal. But Apollo took a little trip to Mycenae and told Agamemnon about the whole ordeal about some French guy kidnapping the Queen of Sparta. At first it was a weird tiding coming from a sheepherder in high heels, a gold swimming suit and a top hat doing all these kicks, but then Agamemnon got all enraged and started to call for a thousand ships, a lot of armor, a lot of warriors that had nothing better to do, and a bunch of bronze, iron, wood, and a lot of olive oil.
When Athena found out that Apollo got Agamemnon involved by opening his trap, Apollo responded back that Athena was using a mortal to bring about a war just for vanity's sake. And then he mentioned the other two goddesses that were involved and let them know that he did not approve. That's when things went from bad to worse. Agamemnon was basically a psychopath and willing to kill to do more killing, that's when Artemis came out of nowhere and wanted a blood sacrifice. At about that same time Menelaus had already psyched himself into confronting the king of Troy to demand the return of Helen. To make things more complicated, Helen never mentioned she was married to Menelaus and nobody in Troy saw that one coming until all these fucking ships showed up.
Per usual, there was a full scale war and that escalated quickly. And as usual no one had any idea what the fuck anyone was after. Everyone had an idea that it was mainly over Helen, but there were so many other people involved, gods involved, goddesses involved, and to make it even more confounding, horses were involved too. Apollo didn't help matters when he kept trying to get Cassandra to tell fellow Trojans about all the bad shit that was going to happen and whenever she did, no one believed her. Apollo was then cast in a bad light for cursing her and attributed that to her refusing him sexually. Yet no one seemed to remember Ourea. In light of everything, nobody was really in the mood. Except for Helen and Paris, of course.
When the Trojans lost the war, and the Greeks had their victory, it wasn't smooth sailing for the returning Greek forces. For one, Odysseus got sidetracked. Way sidetracked. So much sidetracked here that even Homer had to fill in gaps of his odyssey with abstract concepts like going around the world in eighty days without realizing he was going in circles so he kept doing that until many years later when it finally dawned on him to stop that shit.
And the big menace himself Agamemnon got his ass killed by his wife when he got back. When his sons killed their mother years afterward, Apollo just had to step in again and defend the sons in Agamemnon's favor. The immortals really must have had this weird ass kissing contest of who could out-kiss Agamemnon's ass. Apollo argued that although killing one's own mother is bad, the spouse should have never considered killing their mate. This was rich coming from Apollo who allegedly killed one of his other lovers, Coronis, who was actually pregnant at the time. When the other gods chimed in, Apollo pointed at Artemis and told them it was her that was trying to avenge him for the insult that Coronis inflicted on him by sleeping with Brad Pitt. Then he brought up Artemis' bloodlust and blasted her for making Agamemnon sacrifice a kid.
Apollo then started accusing his parents of every bad thing that happened, to which they brought up his embarrassing affair with Admetus also known as Bob Marley and how that didn't go over well with them. Apollo defended his relationship by saying he was only the butler for a while. And so it was that the Trojan War lead to a lot of suffering and angst, paranoia, death camps, the Nazi Party, plagues, and lung cancer. But they had a lot of fun.
== The Twins, The Beast, & The Hydra ==
A pair of twins, a beast, and a hydra walk into a bar. They sat down. This was an average event in Athens around the time of the Crusades so it was generally regarded as a non-event, however, in this instance of history it lead to the downfall of Rome. It also lead to the burning of Atlanta, the sinking of the Titanic, and possibly the root cause of all Spam.
The twins were allegedly a single entity that had been ballooned up, filled with helium and then chopped in two and sewn individually at the sides and given bellybuttons. They were always floating around as balloons and proclaiming that they were merely weather balloons whenever someone would see them and run away screaming about UFOs. They enjoyed this activity a lot before Apollo (following Zeus' orders) popped them and gave them bellybuttons. As a result Zeus was mocked to no end by the Beast. Apollo kind of mocked him, too. The Beast was usually found lumbering around with a giant 666 on its forehead. And a smaller tattoo of it on his left hand with finger tattoo letters spelling out Haters. The Beast had six digits on each hand. His right hand showed finger tattoos as well, spelling out Lovers. This was a way the Beast had mocked Romeo and Juliet.
Then there was the Hydra. Who was originally a science experiment went all wrong. The alchemist Plato was still angry about losing his gig as top philosopher and demoted to the Arts & Sciences of the small island Antipaxos, so he created the Hydra in an attempt to outdo the Hades creation of the three headed hound from hell. Or from Hades in this case. In many ways the Hydra was a much more fearful abomination than the three headed hound, it was certainly more deadly. Plato was extremely happy about his creation and henceforth the gods decreed that he would be known as a great philosopher rather than the mad Greek who unleashed one of the deadliest monsters the world had ever known. By the time Plato was restored to his former status of a wise one, he was even more pissed off that he would not be able to take credit for the Hydra. This man's luck was really and truly fucked up.
With the twins being subjected to human conditions, basically stripped of being a big balloon of mischievous deeds, and the beast preoccupied with Romeo and Juliet, and the Hydra being taken over by the gods for whatever reason - it was at this point that Ares challenged Apollo for the ownership of these beings and beasts. Apollo wasn't giving up any of that stuff and that's when a fight brought out in the very bar where they were all having a couple of drinks.
The Hydra got uppity and told the gods that their precious Roman Empire would fall due to being burned to the ground. All the Hydra had to do was stand in front of Nero and snap any of its several jaws at him while he tried to kill it with fire. That's when the Beast laughed and grabbed a fiddle and went out to where Nero was and told him to play it while Rome burned. Ares and Apollo were scratching their heads and wondered why the Hydra was claiming that the Roman city had anything to do with them. That's when the twins stepped in and reminded them that the Romans used their power and built temples in their honor. To which Ares answered that the Romans had stopped building temples for him when the Druids cursed them all and defiled statues of him by placing plaid skirts around his sculptures showing his well-endowed manliness.
Apollo had managed to get Ares into a headlock and started kicking at the twins with his left foot. The twins were more than insulted at this time and prophesied that Atlanta would burn too. Just for good measure. Ares broke free from Apollo's grip but lost control of the Beast who then bought tickets to sail on the Titanic. Subsequently causing enough of Hell to freeze over which created some ice in the ocean. That's where that went. The Twins helped Ares up off the floor, then ganged up on Apollo. But it was too late as he disappeared back to Mount Olympus. That's when they decided that somehow they would eventually have the last word. Ares gave them amnesty in Nigeria. Then Ares confronted Hercules for no apparent reason. The bar owner renamed his establishment from the Prancing Prometheus naming it after Plato, calling it Plato's Pub & Potluck. But no one seemed to get it.
===Other Multi-headed Beasts===
According to the myths, there were several multi-headed beasts. The Hydra was one. Medusa could be considered as a multi-headed beast for the many snakes on her head, but the snakes were small and she had only one of her own heads. She was classed as a Kali sort of monster, but Kali's multiple heads were usually worn around her waist. Neither Medusa or Kali could get into the Hall of Multi-Headed Monsters & Beasts and therefore never nominated. While Medusa was content to turn the Hall into stone, Kali collected more heads in protest while the Hydra laughed its ass off. Another such beast was the three-headed hound kept by Hades as a pet. And yet another famed creature that gave the typical Greek monsters a run for their money was the Beast from Revelations that had seven heads and ten horns and the body of several other animals. It would have been added to the list had it not been accidentally classified as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
===Apollo's Relation to the Twins===
The weird twins who were once balloons were turned into humanoid freaks by Zeus, who then asked Apollo to fix the twins that they could walk and talk and not float around creeping people out. Apollo did his best, but he only had so much to work with. The final result wasn't exactly what Zeus had in mind, and Apollo was multitasking when he shaped the twins into their new image. It would be years later when Zeus got around to asking Apollo what he was so damned busy with that he made the twins look like Alice in Wonderland characters. Apollo remembered that he was preoccupied with building a yellow brick road, an emerald shrine for himself, and trying to get Troy renamed to something even shorter than Troy. Like Oz or something. That he was brainstorming and came up with other ideas to go with the Oz concept, like a tea party that never ends, a cat that appears out of nowhere with a big smile, and a Jabberwocky that knows how to dance.
== See Also ==
*Iron Age
*What was God thinking!?
*Philosophy
*Some dude that did some stuff