Tartarus

**Tartarus** is the Primordial God of the Abyss from Greco-Roman mythology and personification of the Depths of Tartarus. He is the warden of the Kokytus Prison, located in the heart of the Realm of the Dead.

## Overview

In the Greek poet Hesiod's *Theogony*, **Tartarus** was the third of the primordial deities, following after Chaos and Gaia (Earth), and preceding Eros, and was the father, by Gaia, of the monster Typhon. According to Hyginus, Tartarus was the offspring of Aether and Gaia.

## Appearance

Tartarus has the appearance of a short young man in his late teens - early 20s, with turquoise eyes and short and spiky white hair. Because of his short height, many see him as more adorable than handsome or attractive.

He typically wears the Kokytus Prison's guard uniform, which consists of a white double-chested trench coat with black lapels that is fastened by four buttons on either side and has a badge with a six-pointed cross on his left chest. In addition, he has a black belt with a large buckle around his waist, slightly baggy white pants and white boots with furry black liners. He has a sheathed sword hanging around his upper torso by a thin chain.

His casual clothes consist of black T-shirt with a black-and-white striped long sleeve shirt underneath, black jeans, and black-and-white converse. He also wears multiple silver chains around his neck and has his ears pierced with cross-shaped piercings. According to Nyx, his outfit looks like a blatant copy of an e-boy fashion Pinterest post.

His true form is described as purely monstrous, standing at immense height and has purple glistening flesh rippling with muscle. In place of where his face should be is a swirling whirlpool and inward spiral of darkness, his booming voice sounds like it is being drawn back inward rather than projecting outward, and his laugh is like a mountain "cracked in half". Countless tendrils of darkness radiate from his body like a mass of coiling serpents, wrapping around his arms and legs and waist, and everything around Tartarus seemed to be drawn to him.

## Personality

Despite his fearsome reputation, Tartarus is considered to be one of the House of Hades' most calm and collected gods, who spends the most of his free time indulging in his own private hobbies or with Erebus and Nyx's children, who he has long come to see as his own.

It is because of his carefree lifestyle that influenced much of Nyx's broods, resulting in gods such as Sophrosyne and Eleos amid gods such as Eris or Dolos.

Even back in ancient times when the gods were still widely feared and worshiped by the ancient Greeks, he was still considered an extremely laid-back god even by the divine standards, often spending time inter-mingle with humans and ordinary monsters instead of staying within the Depths of Tartarus, his divine domain and personal abode, like most gods of his archetype.

In the modern times, he himself is obsessed with the "abyss" that is the internet, especially social media, to the point where several gods have jokingly referred to him as the "Wannabe E-Boy God" because of his strange obsession. Despite his insistence that this is part of his domain as God of the Abyss and this is an experiment to see if social media platforms can be potential sources of worship and reverence, not many gods seem to show genuine belief in his experiments.

Even though he is one of the most infamous Evil Gods in mythology, he doesn't seem to believe in many things these gods believe in, such as spreading chaos or being evil for the sake of evil. According to him, his status as a God of Evil is less of a "god who embodies evilness" and more of a "god who protects the world from evil", as he himself embodies the primordial abyss that all terrors from Greco-Roman myths are sealed and imprisoned into.

Because of this, he takes his duties as the warden of the Kokytus Prison very seriously and will gladly deal out harsh punishment to those who try to break the rules settled down by the Heavenly Council when it comes to the frozen prison. To him, his duties as the warden comes first before all else, even if it means setting his duties as a son, a brother, and a father aside.

Like the majority of primordial gods, he has proven to be a generally impartial figure within his pantheon and always remains a neutral among all the events happening within his pantheon, and wouldn't intervene unless he is directly provoked by one of the sides or if he feels like the natural order of good and evil is being threatened.

According to him, his impartiality isn't something born of his own desires but instead of duties, as the last time he interfered in his pantheon's business was in the Gigantomachy, when he helped Gaia created the race of half-divine giants called Gigantes from Ouranos' corpse. After the immense destruction the war had caused, he had then swore an oath of neutrality and will never meddle in the pantheon's affairs unless it's the most dire of circumstances.

## History

### Early Years

Tartarus is one of the Greco-Roman Pantheon's primordial gods, known in Greek mythology as the *Protogenoi*, being created by Khaos himself from the divine power of Hylemorphes. Shortly after he was created, he then created the Depths of Tartarus, a great palace deep within the Realm of the Dead as his abode and ruled over it for thousands of years.

He later expanded his territory and created the Greco-Roman Underworld, the first Underworld unaffiliated with the Abrahamic Underworld, which he named **Erebus** after his lover and older brother. He and his two lovers, Erebus and Nyx, continued to rule over it for hundreds of years before the Titanomachy began.

The realm was then be claimed by Hades after he defeated him in one-to-one combat in the heart of the Depths of Tartarus, which impressed him so much that he not only gave Hades the title of king but also offered to be his mentor and guidance when it came to matters of the chthonic court, which the young god accepted. He and the other chthonic gods then pledged themselves to Hades and his siblings and became some of their great supporters during the war.

### The Gigantomachy

Several thousand years after the Titanomachy, Gaia came down to the Depths of Tartarus and asked him to help her get revenge against the Olympian gods for overthrowing the Titans' reign, promptly ignoring his own remarks about how they were only capable of doing so because of her original supports. Regardless, he still helped her with her plans and created a race of giant half-god creatures called the Gigantes, who could neither be killed by a god or a mortal, from the corpse of Ouranos which Gaia preserved within her womb.

After the Gigantomachy had ended, horrified at the immense destruction left behind in the war between the Olympians and their armies against the Gigantes, Tartarus vowed an oath of impartiality and swore to never interfere in his pantheon's matters unless it is the most dire of circumstances.

### Kokytus Prison

After the Third Holy War, the Heavenly Council gathered the remaining pagan pantheons together to sign an official peace treaty - Later came to know as the Angelos Concordat - in the Garden of Eden, guarded by the progenitor gods of each pantheon.

It was there when the idea of the Kokytus Prison, an inter-pantheon prison located in the deepest depths of the Realm of the Dead for the worst criminals of the supernatural world, was proposed and accepted, with the Greco-Roman Pantheon being assigned its construction. Afterward, Tartarus was personally assigned the duty of the prison's warden by the Elder Seraph Raguel himself.

## Equipment

**Infernal Sword** (地獄の剣, *Jigoku no Ken*): Tartarus wields a *katana* with a turquoise-colored hilt and the guard in the shape of a four-pointed bronze star. The blade is forged from a combination of adamantine and Stygian Iron and cooled down in the River Styx, making it an immensely powerful ice-elemental sword imbued with ancient curses which can instantly freeze whoever cut by the blade into an ice statue in matter of seconds.

## Trivia

* He personally believes monogamy to be the death of romance.
* He hates having to work during his vacation and can be annoyed, if not outright violent.
* Because of his unique circumstances, he can only work the night shifts at Kokytus.
* He is considered the weakest among the children of Khaos, as his powers are limited to the abyss that he creates and rules over.
* He, like the location that shares his name and that he is, is able to hold monsters within himself. He was even able to hold Titans within the abyss inside his body, though it is unknown for how long.
* He is the oldest God of the Underworld and have ruled over the Greco-Roman Underworld for thousands of years before Hades' ascension to the throne, even helping and tutoring him and many other chthonic god-kings in their respective realms.
* He is currently petitioning the Heavenly Council for the role of "God of Social Media".
	+ According to him, since social media is an "abyss of eternal sorrow and wastefulness", it'd be more fitting if a god like him to govern over it.
	+ In the mortal world, he has four Youtube channels with a total of 14.5 millions subscribers, an instagram account with over 263 millions followers, and two twitter accounts with more than 95 millions followers.
		- He is currently working on his TikTok account which already has over 72 millions followers and 6.35 millions likes
* According to Hyginus, Tartarus is the offspring of Aether and Gaia.
	+ In some myths, however, he is the offspring of Aether and Hemera.
* Despite the myths between them, Tartarus and Gaia's relationship is entirely platonic.