Hades

**Younger Siblings**

* Poseidon (Brother)
* Zeus (Brother)

**Adopted Siblings**

* Ambrosius (Brother)
* Chiron (Brother)
* Kurdalaegon (Brother)
* Vali Lucifer (Brother)
* Andromeda (Sister)

**Daughters**

* Bianca di Angelo
* Hazel Levesque
* Melinoë

**Adopted Children**

* Adonis (Son)
* Alecto (Daughter)
* Macaria (Daughter)
* Megaera (Daughter)
* Tisiphone (Daughter)

Demigod Children

**Aunts*** Titans
	+ Eurybia
	+ Clymene
	+ Mnemosyne
	+ Phoebe
	+ Tethys
	+ Theia
	+ Themis
* **Others**
	+ Alecto
	+ Ceto
	+ Echidna
	+ Megaera
	+ Tisiphone
	+ The Meliades
	+ The Nesoi

**Hades** is the God of the Underworld and the Dead from Greco-Roman mythology. He is the oldest son of Kronos and Rhea, an Elder Olympian, and is a founding member of Mount Olympus and the Twelve Olympians. He is the King of the Greco-Roman Underworld, also named **Haides** after him.

In Ancient Rome, he was known and worshipped as the god **Pluto**, or **Dis Pater**.

## Overview

**Hades**, also known as the **Unseen One** or **Haides**, is known as the king and supreme ruler of the underworld originating from the myths of ancient Greece. He is the Greek counterpart of the Roman God **Pluto**.

Born from the union of Kronos and Rhea, he later participated in the war against the Titans and successfully won along their siblings. While Zeus and Poseidon ruled the sky and the sea territory respectively, he claimed the darkest place, located inside the earth, where the light of the sun is not allowed to shine, which is the realm of the dead (although he's not the god of death himself, as the role would be taken by Thanatos).

His duty subsequently made him often unable to leave his own world and therefore, he is not considered to be one of the twelve Olympians, but is still referred as one of the principal gods. He has many assistants and servants, among others are the judges who judge the human soul (Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aiacos), Cerberus the guardian of the underworld, and the Moirae who control over fate.

One of the most famous myths mentioned in history is the abduction of Persephone, goddess of spring, where Hades kidnapped her. Demeter demanded her daughter to be released and he did, but not before giving the pomegranate fruit to Persephone, which made her the queen of the underworld, therefore every half year she must return to him. Hades also appears in the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.

## Appearance

Hades appears as a handsome young man in his early 20s, with pointed ears and a marble-like complexion. He has wavy dark-green hair reaching his shoulders, and heterochromia, with his right eye being gold while his left is blood-red with black sclera, which he often hides with his hair. When he is passionate about something, his eyes "flare with purple fire."

In his first appearance, he was wearing the typical male uniform that Apollo wanted everyone to wear, which consisted of a white blazer with gold embroidery, a short-sleeved white dress shirt and a blue tie. He wears a dark-gray vest underneath the blazer and gray-colored dress pants. He also wore black leather boots.

When he is first shown in his palace, his hair grows past his waist and becomes mist-like at the end, resembling wisps of black smoke, and on top of his head is a crown made out of black thorns. He wears an intricate black Grecian-styled robe with teal linings, the ends of his robe are threaded with the souls of cruel and sinful rulers of Ancient Greece and Rome, with notable faces such as Nero, Commodus, and Caligula, and resembling light-blue flames from afar.

## Personality

Hades is an extremely quiet, solitary, and independent god, choosing to rely on his resources as opposed to that of others. He is intensely bitter for the negative things that have happened throughout his life: The most prominent of these is the fact he was originally left to rule Haides by himself and was mostly unvisited by anyone unless they have no other choices, in addition to not having a throne for himself on Mount Olympus where he was feared and despised by most of his nieces and nephews.

He maintains a casually calm, reserved manner but is capable of a violent and terrifying temper, though it is quite tame in comparison with his wife, brothers, and sisters.

He is noted to be particularly honorable and just, though he can be a harsh god. He respects oaths and the laws of morality, particularly when tempted to revive his daughter Bianca after she was killed. He made it his goal to bring living sinners to justice as well, and would dispatch the Erinyes to drive them to madness until they were either killed or made amends for their misdeeds.

He is noted to be very hard-working and busy, rather unlike many of the gods who take their duties and responsibilities in a much lighter manner. He is also extremely intelligent, shown by his incredible ability to invent new and original, often the perfect definition of poetic justice, punishments for sinners in the Fields of Punishment on the spot. In spite of his intelligence, however, he is somewhat inept at the concept of romance, to the point where he was forced to rely on Zeus' advice to propose to Persephone, which the entire pantheon had agreed to be a stupid decision, Zeus included. That said, his intelligence makes him a brilliant strategist and tactical thinker, and is extremely difficult to outwit in a debate, argument, or battle of wits.

Despite his honorable habits, there is a cruel and darker side to him. He also carries grudges for an extremely long time, a trait he passes onto all of his children. His cruel traits mirror that of his father Kronos in terms of cunning, ruthlessness, and deviousness. He, however, is not evil like his father, but rather distant and bitter due to past tragedies which led him to behave the way he does, though he tries his best not to show it.

He has a secret softer side of his own. His wife, Persephone, stated that he was a kind and generous man, being quite a bashful dork when they started dating, and still after thousands of years married to each other. His darker side stemmed from the bitterness he feels at being hated and feared by his fellow gods, which led to his habit of holding grudges.

At first glance, he can appear as a strict and demanding father to his children, though he does genuinely love for his children. However, due to his own experiences, or rather lack of experiences, with his parents, he often struggles with parenthood in general.

It is hinted that he has a dark and twisted sense of humor, since Apollo mentioned that Hades sometimes shadow traveled behind him and said "Hi!" in order to startle Apollo so that he would shoot his plague arrows in the wrong direction, thus infecting the wrong city, because Hades would find that funny. He also has the habit of visiting the Fields of Punishment and laughed at the damned souls there, to the point where none of its inhabitants are surprised by his appearance anymore.

### Roman Form: Pluto

Hades can change into his Roman counterpart of **Pluto**. As Pluto, he has a more relaxed demeanor than his Greek aspect that tempers his more disciplined, militaristic, and warlike nature. While Hades was envisioned by the Greeks as a fearsome and powerful being, the Romans believed that Pluto was less associated with death and more associated with riches. Both associate him with the Underworld.

## History

### Punishing Sisyphus

King Sisyphus of Ephyra, not wanting to die, managed to cheat death by immobilizing Thanatos with powerful witchcraft rituals and enchanted chains and placing the latter under a chest and buried it deep underneath his castle. As a result of the god of death imprisoned, mortals of Ancient Greece were unable to die, much to the dismay of Ares, who relished in military carnage. As a result, the war god promptly found Thanatos and freed him, after which both gods incinerated Sisyphus.

The king's soul was deemed worthy of an audience with Hades himself. Before Sisyphus died, he told his wife, Merope, not to bury him, so when he was brought down to the Underworld, he defended his right to a proper funeral. Persephone, who considered this to be a disrespect toward her husband, let him go so that Sisyphus could scold Merope for not giving him a proper funeral. Thus, Sisyphus would become the only mortal man to have ever tricked the Lord and Lady of the Dead, since he, of course, had no intention of ever returning to the Underworld, and instead re-assembled the remains of his body back together, and lived on quietly for several years.

Eventually, however, Sisyphus had finally died again and was dragged by the Erinyes toward Hades’ throne room, where he met the fury of not only Hades and Persephone, but also of Persephone, the much feared Iron Queen..

Hence, in order to keep Sisyphus too occupied to scheme again, Hades ordered his servants to take him to the Fields of Punishment and ordered him to roll a huge boulder up a hill as his punishment, letting Sisyphus know that he would be set free as soon as the boulder reached the summit. Sisyphus tried, but it would imminently fall back when he got close to the top of the hill. He would try again, and again, and again forever, always in vain. Every time he stops for a break, one of the Erinyes - Alecto - would come and whip his back with her razor-sharp whip to make him move again.

### Asclepius' Death

Asclepius was the favorite demigod son of Apollo, who eventually became the greatest healer in the world, even more than his father who is the God of Healing. With the help of Gorgon Blood (given to him by Athena), Asclepius could cure any illness, heal any injury, and even make an elixir known as the Physician's Cure that could resurrect the dead.

However, before the elixir could become well-known, his aunt Artemis came and requested that Asclepius revive her new hunter Hippolytus from the dead with the cure, which he was more than happy to do, not knowing the dangers it would bring him.

Upon hearing about the missing soul of the dead son of Theseus, Hades began to investigate and discover the miraculous elixir. This infuriated him so he stormed up to Mount Olympus, demanding that Asclepius pay the price for transgressing and openly mocking the natural order of life and death. Because of his brother's sheer anger, as well as fearing the possibility that Asclepius would teach the art of resurrection to other humans, Zeus appeased him by personally striking down the demigod with a thunderbolt, which made Hades more confused than actually pleased.

Apollo, angered and devastated by his favorite son's death, killed the Elder Cyclopes who forged Zeus' thunderbolt in retaliation and this resulted in Zeus banishing him from Olympus and made him serve Admetus, king of Pherae for a year. To prevent more feuds, Hades suggested his brother placed Asclepius on the night sky as a constellation to both soothe Apollo's wrath and to honor a talented healer that died far too young, resulted in the birth of the constellation Ophiuchus ("the Serpent Holder").

Before leaving Olympus, he passed by his sister Hestia and asked her for some ambrosia and nectar, wanting to apologize to Apollo and Asclepius for accidentally making Zeus kill the latter. He then used his magic to return Asclepius' destroyed body back to its best state before using the given ambrosia and nectar to deified him, making him the god of medicine. In addition, he also forbid him from ever resurrecting the dead without his or the Moirai's permission again.

### Orpheus' Descent

The Thracian prince Orpheus was a talented musician, son of the swift-footed muse Calliope herself. Because of his musical talents, he was able to charm Eurydice, a nymph who acted as a priestess of Apollo, and the two quickly married with the blessing of the Sun God himself.

Their happiness, however, was short-lived, as only months after their marriage, Eurydice died because of a poisonous serpent. Distraught by her death, Orpheus awoke his Sacred Gear, which took the form of a silver lyre, and began to sing the most tragic of songs, so powerful and beautiful that the world around him warped to his melody, giving birth to one catastrophe to another. He soon realized the powers of his newly-found artifact and developed the wild idea of using it to bring his wife back to life and started to delve into the relatively-new art of necromancy.

During his research, he quickly realized that while his music would allow him to reanimate the dead to act and behave as if they were alive, they were dead as their soul was now located in the depths of the Underworld. However, driven by his love for Eurydice, he had decided that he would bring back his wife by any means, even if it meant bringing her soul back from Haides.

And through his music, he was able to be initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, an ancient cult associated with Persephone and her journey between the world of the living and the dead, and with that, he was able to discover a path leading him straight to the gates of Haides. There, he then used his Sacred Gear to play a song so tragically beautiful that all the guards lowered their weapons and even the fearsome Cerberus to whimper with unshed tears. On his path, with his songs, he charmed many great gods of the House of Hades and gained their support, from the Erinyes to Thanatos to even the Primordial Nyx.

Before he knew it, he was already standing before Hades and Persephone, the King and Queen of the Underworld, backing him up were some of their greatest servants. He then asked them for his wife's soul, to the two gods' dismay, his fingers playing on his silver lyre while his lips sang the most beautiful of all songs, the ineffable lachrymose and tragic music crept into the hearts of even the gods. Even Hades himself shed his tears, feeling as though Orpheus had distilled his life, with all its grief and melancholy, all its darkness and solitude, and turned it into music. However, a small part of his brain, unaffected by the Sacred Gear's manipulation, warned him about the danger he may bring, and so he and his wife quickly devised a plan to take care of him, for the sake of their kingdom and the Olympian reign as a whole.

He agreed that Orpheus may bring Eurydice's soul back to the world of the living, but only on one condition: He would have to walk in front of her and not look behind him as he led her back to the upper world along the borderland between the Mortal World and the Underworld. Before their departure, he ordered Apate and the Pseudologoi, Divine Spirits of Deception and Lies, to haunt Orpheus' mind, sowing seeds of doubts within him now that his only way of defense was gone.

And just as Hades planned, Orpheus couldn't resist the temptation the moment he crossed the border and looked back, just moments before his wife could pass, and thus losing her forever. He tried to open the gate, to return to the Realm of the Dead, but it all failed, as he already lost his key to Hades and was now forced to wander across the realm, never at peace because of his decision.

Eventually, after years of wandering, he walked into a Bacchic orgy between the Thracian Maenads and was torn apart by them for not honoring their patron Dionysus. Only upon his death was he able to summon back his lyre, which had fused with his body. The muses, led by his mother Calliope, and his patron god Apollo then gathered the fragments of his body and buried them at Leibethra, below Mount Olympus, where nightingales sang over his grave.

After his death, he and his wife were then welcomed into the Hades of Hades as the royal musician, responsible for taking care of the entertainment of the chthonic gods, with Orpheus himself being tasked with being the royal tutors for Hades' children.

### Pirithous' Punishment

Shortly after losing his wife Hippodamia in the Centauromachy, King Pirithous of the Lapiths and his friend, the legendary hero Theseus, both pledged to take a daughter of Zeus for their bride. With Theseus, he kidnapped the young princess Helen of Sparta, daughter of Queen Leda and younger sister of the Dioscuri, before leaving him with his mother Aethra at Aphidnae to journey down to the Underworld and helped Pirithous conquer his chosen bride: Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.

Through the research they found in Orpheus' abandoned palace, they were able to find an entrance to the Underworld, presumably the same place where Orpheus had lost Eurydice again, and from then, they went straight down to the House of Hades, where the first thing they saw was the smiling face of the King of the Dead. Upon being asked what their intentions were, they stammered out that they were lost travelers who discovered this place while finding a place to stay for the night, resulting in Hades giving them a chilling smile before inviting them into his house to stay the night, which the two arrogant heroes quickly accepted.

Led by Hades, they entered his personal dining hall, where he welcomed them to a banquet filled with nectar and ambrosia, and asked them to sit on the thrones he had prepared for them. Without any hesitation, they quickly sat down, only for giant serpents to erupt from the chairs, strangling them before biting on their necks and poisoned them with water straight from the river Lethe - A punishment for having the guts to try and take Hades' wife for their own.

Through an Oneiros, Hades guided the Dioscuri to Helen's rescue, in addition to kidnapping Aethra and Physadeia - Pirithous' sister - back to Sparta to be their slave as retribution for the two heroes' foolishness. Later on, Theseus was rescued by Heracles in his 12th labor, though this came at a cost, as Theseus' buttocks were attached tight to the seat and was left behind, resulting in him gaining the nickname *hypolispos*, meaning "with hinder parts rubbed smooth."

### Heracles' 12th Labor

For Heracles' last labor, he was ordered by King Eurystheus to bring back Cerberus - The Guard Dog of the Underworld - as proof of his strength and fearlessness. Heracles eventually found the entrance to the Underworld and entered, but rather than attack Cerberus on sight, Heracles decided to play with him as if it was an ordinary dog, which managed to gain its trust and allowed him to enter the Underworld.

Hera's plan is to pit Heracles against a furious Hades backfired, as the tired god accidentally mistook him for the new dog-sitter he hired recently, not remembering that Cerberus ate him the last time he visited due to the lack of sleep, allowed him to take his pet dog out of the Underworld before ordering a group of infernal guards to patrol the borders in the Hellhound's absence.

When Heracles brought a happy Cerberus back to King Eurystheus, he pretended to have to fight the terrifying beast with Hades’ permission. He said that taming the Hellhound was the most dangerous and risking quest he ever performed, which was a lie seeing that he spent the entire month playing with Cerberus and used the money he was given to buy food for both of them. The king was terrified when Heracles returned, as he had not expected the demigod to return from what he believed to be a suicide mission, and ordered the hero to get the beast out of his kingdom.

As he had promised his uncle, Heracles escorted Cerberus all the way back to the Underworld. Hades, now had actually slept, was shocked to see his nephew and his dog together and wanted to know why he was with it. Heracles then told him about his labor, which infuriated him because a mortal man dared to put his beloved pet in danger. As a result, Hades appeared before Eurystheus and demanded to know why the man had ordered someone to enter his realm to take his dog as a trophy.

Eurystheus collapsed in fear and begged Hades to spare him, revealing to him that he received orders for all of Heracles' labors from Hera herself who was trying to send Heracles to his death. As a result, he paid a visit to his sister, making it clear to her that there would be direct and dire consequences on both her and the living world if she ever sent any of her stepchildren or another random hero into his realm for such an errand again.

After Heracles died and was deified for his glorious deeds, Hades asked if he wanted to be Cerberus', as well as his other pet dogs', official dog-sitter, which the former demigod agreed.

### Menippe and Metioche

When King Creon of Thebes refused to allow the burial of the dead warriors of the army of the Seven Against Thebes, Persephone became angered by such show of clear disrespect against her husband and inflicted Boeotia with a deadly plague. Fear for the people, officers were sent to consult Apollo's oracle at Gortyne, who told them that the only way for the goddess to cease her anger was for two willing maidens were to be sacrificed to her and her husband.

However, when the answer was delivered back to Aonia, not one of the maidens in the city complied until a servant reported the answer to Menippe and Metioche, daughters of the famed Orion. When they heard the news, they were still working at their loom, though they quickly accepted death on the behalf of their fellow citizens before the plague epidemic had smitten them too. They cried out three times to the chthonic gods saying that they were willing sacrifices, before thrusting their bodkins into themselves at their shoulders and gashed open their throats, killing themselves instantly.

Pitied the two maidens, Hades and Persephone turned them into the comets, and since then they are known as the *Parthenoi Koronides* ("Maidens of the Curving Tail"). All the Aonians then set up a notable temple for these two maidens at Orchomenus in Boeotia, where, every year, young men and young women would bring propitiary offerings to them.

## Trivia

* Due to his role as king of the Underworld, he was referred to as *Zeus Katakhthonios* (“[the] Zeus beneath the earth”).
* His Roman name Pluto, a Latinized form of the Greek title *Ploútōn* (one of Hades' epithets), means “the Rich One”.
* His sacred symbols are the Bident, his Helm of Darkness, Cerberus, and the Drinking Horn.
	+ His sacred animal is the screech owl (since its cry is considered a bad omen).
	+ His sacred plants are the white poplar, the cypress, and the narcissus.
* The only day he is officially invited to Mount Olympus was during the Winter Solstice, which is the darkest day of the year, and when ancient and dark magic is at its strongest due to his lack of presence allowing the surpressed miasma of the Underworld to go loose.
* In the text of the *Suda*, Macaria appears as Hades's daughter only, no mother mentioned.
* He likes his family, work-free family vacations, and strawberry *daifuku*.
	+ He hates paperwork, egg-related dishes, and nagging mothers-in-law.
* Despite being portrayed as a villain, as well as countless other mythological inaccuracies, Disney's Hercules is his favorite movie, much to the horror and confusion of other Olympian gods.
* The dwarf planet Pluto was named after him.
	+ According to Persephone, he sulked for an entire decade after it lost its position as a planet.
* He frequently hires the greatest actors and musicians from Elysium for his entertainment.
* He is very well versed in constellations, though most of them are tragedies.