Megaera

* Erebus (Father)
* Nyx (Mother)

**Megaera** is the Goddess of Punishment from Greco-Roman mythology. She's one of the Erinyes and is tasked with tormenting those who break their oaths.

## Overview

**Megaera** ("the jealous one") is one of the Erinyes, Eumenides or "Furies" in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of Gaea fertilized by the blood spilled from Uranus when Cronus castrated him. She is the sister of Alecto and Megaera.

She causes envy and jealousy and is known to punish those who commit crimes, especially infidelity. She punishes crimes relating to the breaking of oaths and particularly marital infidelity.

## Appearance

Megaera is a tall and imposing woman with a muscular build. She has gray-tinted skin, pale-blue hair styled into a ponytail, and orange eyes. Like her sisters, she only has a single bat-like wing, which is located on the right side of her body and is a purplish-red color.

## Personality

Megaera appears as an arrogant and authoritarian figure, though she does have a much softer side reserved only for those she truly trusts. While she is mostly a cool-headed person, she has a terrifying ill-temper that many gods and monsters are afraid to trigger, to the point where there are rooms in the House of Hades that act as safe rooms in case she *really* becomes angry.

Luckily for everyone, however, she has an excellent control of her own emotions, which only increased in the last five centuries as she began to practice a combination of meditation and anger-management therapy sessions to help her control her own anger. However, due to the chaotic nature of the Greco-Roman gods, accidents do happen.

She is also considered to be the most brutal of the Erinyes, as she's been repeatedly described by many, gods and monsters alike, as someone that only knows "physical pain", as she would torture most, if not all of the prisoners for their entire duration in the Fields of Punishment.

Like most immortal beings, she doesn't care much for mortal lives, though she does show genuine respect for skilled warriors and soldiers capable of fighting on her level. According to Thanatos, she is a "battle-junkie" who is obsessed with fighting against stronger opponents and actually believes a battle is a good way to start a relationship, platonic or otherwise.

And like her name and title suggest, she could come off as a clingy and jealous girlfriend at times, though her feelings and her trust toward her partners is genuine, despite what the rumors said. However, this doesn't stop the gossip and her relationship with them have been on the chthonic tabloids many times, often for mostly wrong reasons.

## History

### Early Years

The Erinyes - Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera - were created by Ouranos millions of years ago to serve as guardians of honor and to enforce the authority of the Titans. However, when Ouranos was overthrown by Kronos and Rhea, they banished the Erinyes into the underworld where they were adopted by Erebus and Nyx and became tormentors of the shades who descended there.

### The Titanomachy

During the Titanomachy, Megaera and her sisters, much like other chthonic gods, swore an oath of servitude to Hades and the Olympian dynasty, and from then on, they became Hades' new bodyguards and personal torturers, in charge with collecting information from captured prisoners as well as hunting down defects and traitors among their followers.

After the Olympians achieved victory, she and her sisters returned to the underworld, having grown to love the underworldly realm as their new home. As part of their agreement with Hades, they got their positions as castigators back and are now in-charge of enforcing the rules settled down by the Olympians among humanity.

### Zagreus

Sometimes in the Greek Dark Ages, Megaera and Zagreus officially became a couple, though their relationship would soon fall apart due to differences in both sides. They would, however, reconcille and get back together in the late Archaic Greek period with Thanatos becoming their third missing piece, turning their relationship into a polyamorous one.

### The *Taming of the Shrew*

Sometimes in 1590s, on a date to the mortal world with Zagreus and Thanatos, Megaera got into a fight in a pub in Shoreditch, London after a mundane called her a *shrew* and stated that he pitied her lovers for having to put up with him.

While at first, none of them paid much attention to the event other than the fact they'd need to weave the Mist to hide away their presence from the mundanes at the pub, it wasn't until several decades after that, in a Winter Solstice party in Elysium, when they found out the "consequences" of the fight. It was revealed that among the people in the pub that fateful night was William Shakespeare, who wasn't affected by the Mist due to him being the demigod son of Apollo, and her actions gave him an inspiration for one of his most famous plays "The Taming of the Shrew".

At first, no one in the underworld dared to tell her of the fact, and it was only in late into the Victorian era did she find out about the play and her role in its creation.

## Equipment

**Scourge**: Megaera and the Erinyes all wield enchanted brass-studded scourges created by the Elder Cyclopes, which they use in physically torturing those damned to the Fields of Punishment in the underworld. It possesses similar properties to the death scythes wielded by reapers, which allow it to damage the target's body and soul simultaneously.

## Quotes

**Zagreus**: "*Well, this is awkward.*"
**Megaera**: "*Hmm. Halt, Zagreus. Not one step further.*"
**Zagreus**: "*Come on, Meg. Haven't we had more than enough of each other by now? Besides, don't you have someplace else to be?*"
**Megaera**: "*Your father sent me. All in all, I'd rather be on your bad side than his. Now you can turn back like a good little man, or I can send you home the painful way. What'll it be?*"
**Zagreus**: "*...I'll have to go with the painful way.*"
**Megaera**: "*A man after my own heart.*"
— Megaera to Zagreus

**Megaera**: "*Ever so stubborn, aren't you. Maybe my whip might make you reconsider whatever it is you're attempting here.*"
**Zagreus**: "*Your whip's not been all that persuasive in the past.*"
**Megaera**: "*Maybe persistence will pay off for both of us. Come, then.*"
— Megaera to Zagreus

## Trivia

* Her name "Megaera" means "grudging or jealous one".
	+ In modern French (*mégère*), Portuguese (*megera*), Modern Greek (μέγαιρα), Italian (*megera*), Russian (мегера) and Czech (*megera*), this name denotes a jealous or spiteful woman.
* 464 Megaira, a minor planet, is named after Megaera.
* Megaera is a sadist and often engages in bondage plays with her partners.
* Megaera owns two places in the mortal world: A penhouse in Los Angeles and a villa in Milan.
* Megaera considered Athens to be "overrated and desperately tried to overcompensating itself".
* Megaera considers Zeus to be the worst man in existence and have stated on multiple occasions that, had he not the God-King, she would have tormenting him as well.