Zagreus

A strange and influential deity who manages to simultaneously be both an Olympian *and* a Chthonic God, Zagreus, also known as the Twice-Born, the Twice-Crowned, and by the titles The Adventurer, and less-favorably the Spurious, is most easily recognized as the divine patron of Adventurers within the Church of the Twelve and One. A dying and rising deity, he is sometimes referred to as the First Dionysus, Dionysus Zagreus, and the Dark Hunter.

## History

Zagreus was born the illegitimate son of Zeus and Persephone, herself an illegitimate daughter Zeus through Demeter, during the Titanomachy and Zeus's marriage to his first wife, Metis. Given the name Dionysus, he was the first to carry it. Given to Rhea and Gaia to raise in secret as he had been, Zeus saw in the young Godling's Soul a worthy successor to his future reign, and so citing the child's dual claim to Zeus's future dominion as both son and grandson, he secretly declared the future Zagreus the title of Crown Prince.

Metis, aware of the infidelity, but also of the inevitability of it due to her husband's nature, turned a blind eye to the child. However, Hera, Zeus's sister, who held designs for the future position of Queen at Zeus's side, was unwilling to let the potential complication to her plans persist. By allowing information about what she "believed to be a future warrior God Zeus was raising to turn the tide of the war," to fall into the hands of the Titans. The Titans, seeing an opportunity to deal a blow to Zeus's forces and future problems, to say nothing of stealing the Godling's Authorities and Mana, tricked and trapped the child, dismembered him, and devoured him. However, his heart, stolen away by a Nymph loyal to the Gods, eluded them.

Unfortunately, it fell into Hera's possession. The Goddess hid the heart, still alive and beating with Dionysus's divine power. Hidden away in a cache of plunder stolen from the Titans, it remained undiscovered until after the war's conclusion. Zeus and Persephone mourned the death of their child, but there was little they could do, and in time both were forced to move on. Zeus's forces would go on to victory over those of Cronus. The new King of Heaven would go on to punish the Titans harshly, in no small part due to the butchering and consumption of Dionysus. This would in turn invoke the wrath of his mother and grandmother, Rhea and Gaia, and their curse to meet the same fate he'd visited upon *his* father, which he sought to avoid by devouring his then-pregnant wife Metis. In time, Zeus himself would be forced to birth their child, but rather than marry Persephone, who had become the wife of his brother Hades, he ultimately married his sister Hera, who alone knew the secret of his lost son's fate and hidden heart.

It was not until the heart was discovered by a young Athena that it resurfaced at all. The young Goddess, who understood precisely what it was, if not how it had survived the war or how it came to be in a trove of lost treasures, feared giving it to her father. After all, he had devoured her mother to retain his throne. What would he do to her half-brother, then?

The young Athena instead gave the heart of Dionysus to his mother Persephone, who used it to give birth to her son once more, this time with Hades as his father and bearing the name Zagreus. For this service, Athena was given the title "Pallas" in honor of the still-beating heart she delivered.

Raised by Hades and Persephone, and aided by Nyx during his mother's seasonal visits to the mortal world, Zagreus grew to become an earnest, somber, but somewhat rebellious deity. A skilled hunter and warrior who was tutored by his many aunts, uncles, half-siblings, and cousins, to say nothing of the other Gods of the House of Hades and the Shades of the Dead, he is known for his skill at hunting, trapping, and exploration. Having long delved the mysteries of Tartarus, dying and rising again and again, he honed his abilities through great personal effort and real-life experience. This experience led him to sympathize with the lives of early Adventurers, who did much as he in order to survive, pursue a better life, or make the world better for others, culminating in his ascent as the profession's patron deity.