Ariadne

**Ariadne**, also called **Libera**, is the Goddess of Clarity, Certainty, and Labyrinths from Greco-Roman mythology, though she may be originated from ancient Minoan religion. She is the immortal wife of Dionysus and manages his cults, priests, and followers.

## Overview

**Ariadne** was the daughter of King Minos of Crete, the owner of the Minotaur. When Theseus came to Crete to end Minos's annual demands that Athens send 7 men and 7 women to sacrifice to the Minotaur, Ariadne fell in love with Theseus. She gave him a sword to fight the Minotaur and a ball of string so he would be able to find his way out of the labyrinth.

After Theseus achieved his goal, Ariadne eloped with him. On the way back to Athens, they stop at the island of Naxos. Due to a false alarm of the Cretan fleet pursuing them, Theseus' crew fled the island the next morning, unwittingly leaving Ariadne behind. A short while later, Dionysus saw the abandoned Ariadne and took her in order to be his wife.

Since then she remained faithful to him, but she was killed by Perseus at Argos. Dionysus, however, descended into Hades and brought her and his mother Semele back. They then joined the gods in Olympus.

## Appearance

Ariadne appears as a mysteriously alluring woman in her early 20s, with tanned skin, blue eyes, and dark-green hair styled into a high-ponytail. She wears a light-pink floral crop top, beige-colored long skirt with faded designs of a labyrinth, and high-heeled leather sandals.

## Personality

Ariadne is described as a kind and caring person who doesn't let one's appearance or reputation affect her opinion of them. She is talented at reading someone's true nature and can easily figure out one's true motives after exchanging a couple of words, which helps her with navigating through the politics of Mount Olympus to support Dionysus with his divine duties.

She is a very faithful person who would stick by Dionysus' side through thick and thin, evident by the fact she was among the only gods to speak up against Dionysus' temporary exile to Camp Half-Blood. In addition, while their marriage is an open one and they both have extramarital relationships, they still only have romantic feelings for each other and will always come to the other's aid when needed.

## History

### Early Life

Ariadne was born the second princess of Crete, daughter of King Minos and Pasiphaë, and the sister of Acacallis, Androgeus, Deucalion, Phaedra, Glaucus, Xenodice, and Catreus. When she was young, her mother gave birth to her half-brother Asterios, a deformed half-human and half-bull monster, as punishment from Poseidon for failing to appease him with offerings.

Despite this, however, she didn't shun him like other members of her family and became the only one to treat him not as a terrifying monster or an inhuman beast but as a person. She would make regular visits to the cage where he was kept as a child, sneaking him fruits and wine, and singing to him to sooth his anger.

On one occasion, due to her own carelessness, she accidentally angered him and caused him to bite her on her shoulders, though Pasiphaë was able to heal her with sorcery immediately after. This led to the labyrinth to be built, as King Minos saw it as evidence that Asterios couldn't be tamed and had to be sealed away for the sake of others, much to her protests.

### Meeting Theseus

As she grew up, Ariadne was chosen to become the high priestess of the Earth Mother Goddess due to her divine lineage, and eventually became known across Crete and even in other cities such as Athens or Mycenae as a goddess in her own rights, though only through the epithet "Mistress of the Labyrinth".

One year, when the Athenian fleets came with the 14 *pharmakoi* to be used as sacrifices for Asterios, known infamously went by the title **Minotauros**, she met and fell in love with the Athenian prince Theseus. Because of his seductions, she was tricked into lending him an enchanted ball of strings that helped him navigate through the labyrinth, thus allowing him to slain her half-brother and freed the remaining Athenians.

### Abandon on Naxos

Ashamed and guilt-stricken, Ariadne fled with Theseus out of Crete in fear of her father's wrath. On the journey, Theseus swore to marry her when they returned to Athens to honor her for having saved him from certain death. However, as time went on, due to their differences in culture and belief, Theseus grew bored of Ariadne and began to resent her for making him take her away as his wife.

When they stopped at the island Naxos to gather supply, Theseus decided that he would simply leave her and go home to Athens without her. The night when they were sleeping, Theseus woke up the crew but didn't wake Ariadne and he let her sleep on the beach while he and the others set sail without her.

As she woke up alone, she became angry and heart broken, and cursed Theseus and pleaded to the gods to make him forget to change the sails from black to white, thus leading to Theseus' mortal father Aegeus to believe that his son was dead and threw himself into the sea and drowned.

### Meeting Dionysus

After being abandoned, Ariadne began to wander through the island in search of help, and after a time, she found it in the form of Dionysus and his group of maenads. As he comforted her and soothed her sorrows with divine wine, the two began to trade stories of their life, and over time, the two fell in love and got married. Since then, Ariadne would follow Dionysus and his cult as his wife and as queen of the maenads, and they would have many children together, all of which were demigods by their father and scions by her.

After Ariadne died, Dionysus descended into the Underworld and brought her and his mother Semele back to life. Dionysus then brought Ariadne up to Mount Olympus, where Zeus made her a goddess at his son's request. Her wedding diadem was set in the heavens as the constellation Corona Borealis.

## Abilities

**Divine Power**: As a minor goddess, Ariadne possesses all the standard abilities of a god, including the ability to perform magic without the need of a magical foci or a magic circle. Due to Dionysus' wish, she shares all domains with her husband, as well as a portion of sacrifices and offerings sent toward him, thus making her among the more powerful minor gods.

* **Alcohol Manipulation**: Ariadne can create and manipulate alcohol and alcoholic beverages of all kinds, though her power is most effective when using wine as it is the symbol of her and her husband. With her power, she can create divine wines of a multitude of potion-like effects, from hallucination-inducing or medicinal wine capable of healing the user of all wounds, though this required her to do the entire wine-making process by hands, in addition to only requiring an immense amount of energy.
	+ **Intoxication Inducement**: She can intoxicate others, putting them in a state where they lose control of their faculties or behavior. In addition, all those who are intoxicated by her will become her willing servants for the entire duration and will not escape her control or their intoxicated state until she wills it.
		- **Mental Hallucination**: She can create, shape and manipulate hallucinations/delusions. These mental illusions can be used as distractions, cause the target to go insane from the wild sensation or even cause the target’s mind to collapse permanently.
* **Fertility Manipulation**: Ariadne can create, shape and manipulate fertility, the natural capability for living beings to reproduce (in terms of animals) or grow (in terms of plants). She can make land, living beings or plants fertile, allowing them to reproduce or grow, or make things infertile, making them unable to reproduce or grow.
	+ **Vine Manipulation**: She can create, shape and manipulate vines, tendrils, stems or runners of vines, especially grapevines. She can cause them to grow, develop thorns, move/attack or even rise from the soil and "walk", mutate vines by rearranging DNA structure and revive withered or dead ones.
	+ **Fruit/Vegetable Manipulation**: She can create, shape and manipulate fruits and vegetables. She can cause them to grow, move or attack, mutate them by rearranging their DNA structure, and refresh fruits and vegetables back to the moment they become harvestable.
	+ **Plant Growth**: She can influence and accelerate the growth of plants causing flowers and other plants to bloom instantaneously, causing them to mature with supernatural speed, grow to unusual size, and produce in abundance. She can cause plants to grow from seeds to mature plants in moments, cause them to flower and produce fruits, seeds, etc. outside season, cause a cut plant to grow roots and other similar feats.
* **Path Manipulation**: Ariadne can create, shape and manipulate different kinds of pathways, and can alter the path's direction, change its destination, or make surface changes to them.
* **Labyrinth Manipulation**: Ariadne is able to create, shape, and manipulate mazes and labyrinths of all shapes and forms. She is able to create labyrinth dimensions that cannot be escaped from by normal means by creating rules that will and must be followed or deadly traps and monsters to use against her targets.
	+ **Illusion Manipulation**: She can create, shape and manipulate illusions/hallucinations, causing targets to see, hear, touch, smell and/or taste things which do not actually exist or cause them to perceive things differently from what they truly are. If the target is inside a maze or a labyrinth, she can create illusions so powerful and realistic that they become tangible and can physically interact with the target and their environment or, in rare and extreme cases, affect reality itself.

## Equipment

**Ariadne's Threads** (アリアドネの弦, *Ariadone no Gen*): An enchanted ball of strings created by Ariadne to navigate the Minoan Labyrinth. Upon absorbing a drop of the user's blood, it will create a white, wisp-like thread that leads the user to the place where they need to be rather than the place they want to go.

## Trivia

* Her name means "most high" or "utterly pure".
* Her attributes include strings, threads, serpents, and bulls.
* She is believed to be the same snake goddess the Minoan bronze figures were based on.
* It is unknown what made Theseus "dump" her, or if it was just a misunderstanding or an accident as there are many different versions of the myth. Considering the way Dionysus tells the story, however, it is most likely that Theseus simply abandoned her on the island, though a deity's word can be misleading.
	+ Some say that Theseus was told by Dionysus himself that Ariadne was to be left on Naxos and be his wife. In this version, Theseus was so grief-stricken at losing Ariadne that he forgot to raise the white sails.
	+ Others state that Theseus abandoned her because she was already wedded to Dionysus.
* Due to her associations with thread spinning and winding, she is considered a weaving goddess much like Athena or Arachne.
	+ In one of the myths about her death, she was said to have hanged herself from a tree, like Erigone and Artemis Apanchomene, a Mesopotamian theme.
* As a Cretan goddess, she was regarded as one of the most important deities within their pantheon before being absorbed into the Greek pantheon.
* "Ariadne's thread", a problem solving method by multiple means - such as a physical maze, a logic puzzle, or an ethical dilemma - through an exhaustive application of logic to all available routes, is named after her legend.
* The word "clue" was originally a form of *clew*, meaning "skein of thread," with the sense evolution being a reference to Ariadne's thread.
* Her Roman counterpart is Arianna or even Libera, a minor goddess of wine and chthonic attributes.