Moirae's Mirror - February

Hey all!

This month for the Mirror, I've written up a (vague and short, but hopefully interesting) history of the Underworld itself. There's quite a bit of lore in here, so for those of you who like that stuff, enjoy! :)

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The Underworld has always been, for as long as there has been death in the universe. Considering that the very first beings in it once warred amongst themselves, one can imagine that this is a very long time indeed. Certainly, Hades the place is older than Hades the person, and it is not a close match.

However, few would recognize the Underworld of old, if all they knew was the Underworld of today. At first, Hades was a realm not only of death, but of primordial chaos, a maelstrom into which the dead would travel almost as if magnetized, to spend some amount of time churning about in its waters or flung against its unmerciful shores, and to die, as to live, was an enterprise of unique brutality and senselessness. Eventually, such a soul would be spat once more into the life of a living vessel, quite possibly traumatized by its experience in the ‘afterlife.’

This contributed to, though did not singlehandedly determine, something of a dark age of humankind. Not all areas of the Underworld were equally tumultuous, and in some sense it isn’t clear where the surface-level strife influenced the world below and where it was influenced by it, but in any case the system was only barely functional, led about by small tugs here and there from Fate but mostly subjected entirely to the whims and randomness of Chaos.

The first generation of truly deific beings, the Titans, were broadly aware of this, and though a few were concerned to do something about it, most didn’t trouble themselves much in human affairs, and despite all the evidence to the contrary, death was seen as an exclusively ‘human’ problem. During this time, the Underworld did have nonhuman residents, and already the tradition of Hades as refuge for eccentrics and outcasts was quite in effect. Not all of these eccentrics were of the benevolent sort, but some certainly were. The kinds of Titans who preferred to mind their own business away from Olympus freely mixed with political exiles and dangerous ‘heretics,’ beings who exercised the power of creation in novel—and very dangerous—ways. This was the era of propagation and mysticism and stretching the boundaries of what it meant to rule the oldest forces in the world, and humans were largely overlooked, an uninteresting byproduct of creation that came and went periodically in the same way the weather does.

The Titanomachy changed the Underworld in the same way it changed everything else: irrevocably.

For the first time, a singular ‘ruler’ was appointed for the realm. Aidoneus, the eldest and unluckiest son of the titan Kronos, drew the job in a lot with his two younger brothers, and so descended into Hades, taking on the name of the realm as his own, even as he took its burdens onto his shoulders. He was not alone, then; no few of the Underworld’s former residents protested the idea of outside influence, but with the help of the witch Hekate, he swiftly grew to understand the nuances and needs of his realm. And his tremendous power became a stabilizing force for a realm built on pure chaos.

It is commonly said that the laws of the Underworld betray a certain softness of touch, perhaps a certain unforgivable sentimentality of character, but they have nevertheless done what they were meant to do. On the foundation of Hades’s magic, the realm was brought into line, the formerly traumatic and difficult processes of mortal afterlife streamlined and re-imagined to cause as little pain as possible. It is said that the two of them tried to eliminate the need for death entirely, and then the need for the loss of memory, but the first failed outright and the second proved on average more terrible in result than its opposite, and so the present-day procedures of death and rebirth were enshrined into institutions.

In time, the Underworld became a place that one could live with a reasonable expectation of care and comfort, and so unsurprisingly, Zeus began to send his exiles there. People no longer ‘fit’ for the glories of Olympus, but still deific enough that the mortal world would make a poor choice. The first of these was the being now known as Charon, who took that name shortly after arrival in the Underworld. Having expected a pitiless, perhaps even violent reception, he was surprised to note that no such thing was true, and in time he took up the role of Ferryman, a humble but crucial post in the course of the afterlife.

Next arrived the Furies, cast down from the realm of the sun and transformed in their descent. These, too, Hades accepted with open arms, inviting them to find such places and lives as they could in his realm, and so, too, did they settle.

It was not only deities that would come to reside in the Underworld alongside the spirits and original residents. When his name is invoked in a plea, Hades answers, taking up those at the end of their rope and bringing them away from their troubles in other realms into his own. This seems strange to outsiders, and no doubt results in the twisting of the tales into those sorts where he kidnaps young nymphs and the like and forces them Underground, but he makes no attempt to correct such rumors, and the Underworld’s fearsome reputation is allowed to stand without comment.

In time, even the other gods have come to fear Hades and what he represents, for it is well-known that even before he had his name, he had the power to bring death to immortals. And so the Underworld is, for the most part, spoken of in hushed whispers, or not at all.