Medusa

**Medusa** was a Monster-King and a legendary monster from Greco-Roman Mythology. She was the Alpha Gorgon, progenitor of all gorgons and of the Medusae Clan in particular. She was killed by Percy Jackson in 2006 and is currently reforming in Tartarus.

## Overview

In Greek mythology, **Medusa** (Ancient Greek: Μέδουσα), also called **Gorgo**, was one of the three monstrous Gorgons, generally described as winged human females with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Those who gazed into her eyes would turn to stone. Most sources describe her as the daughter of Phorcys and Ceto, although the author Hyginus makes her the daughter of Gorgon and Ceto.

Medusa was beheaded by the Greek hero Perseus, who then used her head, which retained its ability to turn onlookers to stone, as a weapon until he gave it to the goddess Athena to place on her shield. In classical antiquity, the image of the head of Medusa appeared in the evil-averting device known as the *Gorgoneion*.

According to Hesiod and Aeschylus, she lived and died on Sarpedon, somewhere near Cisthene. The 2nd century BC novelist Dionysios Skytobrachion puts her somewhere in Libya, where Herodotus had said the Berbers originated her myth as part of their religion.

## Appearance

Despite popular beliefs, Medusa wasn't a hideous monster but rather a woman in her late 20s or early 30s. She was tall, voluptuous, and fair skinned. She had light-blue eyes, with a mass of coiling venomous snakes replacing her original reddish-gold long and wavy hair.

She had patches of bluish-black scales scattered across her body and covered parts of her body such as her breasts, her shoulders, her waist and hips, and right down her thighs. Her hands were made of crude bronze with razor-sharp claws and her legs resembled that of a reptile.

## Personality

Medusa was a cruel, sadistic, and inhuman monster. Even before being corrupted by the Eyes of Kybele, she was already a vengeful and heartless person. She saw senseless slaughter as entertainment and was somewhat obsessed with fighting stronger opponents.

Although she was the Alpha Gorgon, she didn't care much about the gorgons and was ready to perform a genocide in order to push her own plans forward.

At her core, she was a master manipulator and had great control over people. She didn't care for anyone but herself or anything that didn't benefit her in the long run. A huge reason behind her manipulative tendencies was due to her lack of power, for she was the weakest among the Alpha Monsters in Greco-Roman Mythology.

She despised all Olympian gods, especially Athena, though she still had some lingering feelings toward Poseidon. Because of these remaining feelings, she wanted to petrify Percy since he resembles his father the most out of all of Poseidon's children. However, after he refused and started to fight back, she switched back to her true character and decided to slaughter the whole group.

## History

### Early Years

Medusa was born in 7500 BC and was the youngest of the Three Gorgons, consisting of her and two older sisters, Stheno and Euryale. The three of them were nymphs, daughters of Phorcys and Ceto, and were the sisters of the majority of sea monsters in Greco-Roman myths such as Scylla, Cetus, or Polyphemus.

Ever since she was a child, she had already been heralded as the most beautiful among her sisters, with the people on the island of Lesbos where the three lived revered her as a goddess. As time went on, tales of her beauty spreaded across the Aegean Sea and many flocked to their temple to ask for her hands in marriage, from humans to monsters to even minor divinities.

### Phorcys' Rebellion

In 6700 BC, Phorcys led an army of sea monsters and oceanic gods in rebellion against Atlantica, feeling frustrated under the reign of Poseidon and wanting to place the Mediterranean Sea back under Oceanus' rulership. However, this rebellion was quickly quelled by the Atlantean army, led by Triton and Athena. As punishment, both Phorcys and Ceto were stripped of their divinity and turned into sea monsters, and many of their children killed to prevent them from seeking revenge. The Gorgon Sisters, however, were spared for their beauty and were only forced to become Athena's priestesses.

### Affair with Poseidon

Because of what had happened to her family, Medusa became vengeful and grew a hatred toward all Olympian gods, much to her sisters' dismay. She planned out her own plan of revenge and began to charm many Atlantean gods in order to get closer to Triton, intending to seduce and eventually kill him. What she didn't intend to happen, however, was accidentally seducing Poseidon himself.

Despite her vendetta against the Olympians, as well as the fact she was a Virgin Priestess of Athena, she and Poseidon became lovers and regularly had their affairs in Athena's temples - A suggestion from Poseidon due to his own rivalry toward the Gray-Eyed Goddess. In 3000 BC, they two were caught *in flagrante* by Athena while having their affair in one of the goddess' temples in Aeolis. Angered and humiliated, although she couldn't do anything to punish them, for Poseidon's her superior and Medusa was a politcal hostage, she decided to strip the latter of her rank as High Priestess and demoted her to the position of a slave.

### Eyes of Kybele

After being demoted to the rank of a slave, Medusa's hatred toward Athena reached its peak and she decided revege was the only option against her sisters' pleads. She begged Poseidon for help and he, equally enraged by Athena's actions, showed her a way to humiliate the Gray-Eyed Goddess. He gave Medusa a dagger made of Celestial Bronze and a strong sleeping potion. He told her to drug Athena and use the dagger to pluck the goddess' eyes out as she passed out, and then used the dagger to pluck her own eyes out and implanted Athena's in.

Although she was horrified by Poseidon's words, her hatred toward Athena overwhelmed her fear and she decided to follow Poseidon's plan. What Medusa didn't know, however, was that the dagger was enchanted with powerful magic that allowed her to steal and implant Athena's Mystic Eyes onto herself. After the theft was done, she woke up her sisters and the three of them fled Aeolis with the help of Sarpedon, a demigod sent by Poseidon to help the sisters' escape.

With Sarpedon's help, the three fled to an island in the Aethiopian Sea, where Poseidon was waiting for them before revealing the true nature of his plans. The eyes that Medusa had stolen from Athena were not just any eyes but a special pair of Mystic Eyes created by Metis, making it among the last things the goddess had of her mother. What he didn't tell them, however, was that the Eyes of Kybele could only be used by Metis or those of her blood, and that by implanted into herself, she had unknowingly sacrificed her own immortality.

### The Gorgon Sisters

Through the usage of the Eyes of Kybele, the three sisters began to invade other islands and built themselves an ancient island-nation known as Gorgades, with its capital located on the island of Cerna. Medusa used her blood, which was tainted by the Mystic Eyes, and transformed her sisters into snake-haired monsters and further used it onto the Libyan slave women they stole to turn them into a serpentine race known as the gorgons.

In 2750 BC, she gave birth to her two sons with Poseidon, both of them were Greater Spirits whose divinity on-par with the Divine Spirits. Her eldest Chrysaor was a giant while her second son Pegasus had the form of a winged horse.

### Original Death

For centuries, Gorgades' navy had pillaged and destroyed numerous islands or defeated and turned many into their vassal states. Despite the prayers of the people, the Olympians could do nothing as Gorgades were protected by Poseidon and their islands were safely hidden under a Bounded Field that could only be destroyed if Medusa was killed.

In 1800 BC, the demigod Perseus was given a quest by King Polydectes of Seriphos to take back the head of Medusa in exchange for his mother Danaë's protection. Seeing an opportunity, the gods decided to use Perseus as an excuse to destroy Gorgades. Athena, in particular, wanted to take back her Mystic Eyes from Medusa, so she gave Perseus divine weapons that would help him in his quest, in addition to vowing to be by his side throughout his quest.

With Athena's help, Perseus was able to extract the location of Cerna from the Graiai who were Medusa's younger sisters and were able to infiltrate into the royal palace and decapitate Medusa in her sleep. With Medusa's death, Poseidon's protection on the ten islands of Gorgades were destroyed and Zeus used his lightning to wipe nine of the ten islands off the map, only letting the main island of Cerna remain as his son had yet to leave. In the wake of Gorgades' destruction, both Stheno and Euryale rushed in to kill their sisters' murderer, only to be petrified by Medusa's head and were thrown into the sea where they remained for thousands of years, unable to die due to their immortality.

### Mythologized

Due to the popularity of the myth of "Perseus and Medusa", known as one of the oldest dragon-slaying myths, Medusa became half-immortalized for her soul would always return to Tartarus and be reborn in the Mortal World after a certain amount of time. In the 21st century, after the Greco-Roman gods moved their seat of power to the United States, she took up the human alias of "Emily D. Stone", who ran a gnome emporium in Leeds Point, New Jersey, specialized in stone statues.

## Trivia

* Her name "Medusa" means "guardian, protectress".
* She's the weakest among the Greco-Roman Monster-Kings and Alpha Monsters.
* In some myths, women were said to be immune to Medusa's curse.
* Blind people, as well as immortals, are immune to Medusa's petrifying powers.
* In popular media, Medusa is often portrayed as having the lower half of a snake, akin to Lamia's.
* The Berbers once revered Medusa, her sisters, and the gorgons, as goddesses in order to protect them from Gorgades' attacks.
* According to Hesiod and Aeschylus, Medusa lived and died on Sarpedon, somewhere near Cisthene.
* In mythology, venomous vipers in the Sahara were said to spawn from spilt drops of Medusa's blood.
	+ In a similar manner, the corals of the Red Sea were said to once be the seaweed that was touched by her blood.
* In Ovid's "Metamorphoses", Medusa's snake-like appearance was the result of Athena's curse after she was assaulted by Poseidon in Athena's temple.
	+ Because of this myth, she's often portrayed as a symbol of feminism.
	+ This version of her myth was the one she despised the most.
* A group of living organisms belonging to the Cnidarian family are named "Medusae", since they have tentacles hanging like the snakes in Medusa's hair.