Many, many years ago, there were twelve existences from beyond the stars. So great and terrible they were that they were thought to be gods by the insignificant beings of flesh and bone that looked upon their great Aletheia.
It is known to some what befell these Twelve Machine Gods. Destroyed by a being from as far beyond the stars as themselves, they would rebuild themselves from the debris of their past and take on more humanoid forms by incarnating their essences into the terminals they would use for interacting with these beings they ruled over. These forms by which they would be known and worshipped were dubbed the Olympians.
But these terminals were numerous once, and though the gods now bound themselves to a single body, infusing them with the mechanisms and Authorities of their once-mighty selves, these empty husks would remain as a resource the usefulness of which the gods could not overlook. And so it was decided that life would be breathed into these hollow shells to fill them with life of their own, assigned new designations and abilities that were, though little more than fleeting echoes of the power they were designed to hold, still beyond mortal scale in order to carry out the wills of their masters.
These animate terminals, offshoots of the gods they would serve, were the first nymphs.
The goddess Artemis took her armada of terminals and transformed them into her retinue of handmaidens, fair women who would attend to her hunts. She swore these maidens to a vow of chastity, that they would never lie with a man.
(Thousands of years later, the members of a certain foundation for preserving humanity would speculate, having knowledge of the goddess that was concealed from many at the time, that this was more out of a possessive sense of paranoid jealousy at seeing anyone wearing anything close to her face seduce anything. This could have been deemed a threat to the sanctity of her bond with a certain hunter.)
But a vow did not deny the feelings that Callisto held. She knew that it was wrong, but... she had been borne from the gift of Lady Artemis. She was flesh of the divine, and her gratitude and awe at the grace of her patron would blossom into something more the longer she remained in the hunting party.
One would take notice of this burgeoning crush: Zeus himself. The king of the gods was capricious about his kin, and though Artemis was beyond his reach herself, he would settle for her nymph. He appeared to Callisto in the form of Artemis, imploring her that the vow did not extend to her own mistress, and that she was duty-bound to serve all her needs. Of course, Callisto was more than happy to oblige. It was only after the deed was done that he would reveal himself, and impose on her that he was almighty and no vows held before his will.
And so Callisto was betrayed by the gods for the first time.
The terminal body she possessed was fully functional as a human’s might be, and so her dalliance with Zeus would soon show evidence that could not be denied. This was exposed one night when she bathed with her sisters-in-arms, and upon seeing her pregnant form Artemis would be overcome with rage. Despite Callisto’s pleas that she had not meant to forsake her vow, that she had not had a choice, Artemis would not hear her. In a rage, she banished Callisto from her band and called upon her Authority to transform Callisto into the form of a bear.
And so Callisto was betrayed by the gods for the second time.
(Thousands of years later, the members of a certain foundation for preserving humanity would find this rather ironic.)
But Callisto would still bear her son, a young boy who Zeus would spirit from her and place in the care of another nymph, one of the Pleiades known as Maia. This boy would be named Arcas, and he would have many adventures of his own. But only one remains relevant to Callisto’s story-- the day mother and son were reunited.
Wandering as a bear, Callisto had almost succumbed to the primal nature of the beast, wishing to end her suffering by giving up thinking as her old self. But one day, she would come across a hunter in the forest. Though it had been many years, Callisto would recognise her son instantly. He had lived, and prospered into a handsome young man. The last vestiges of her self were overjoyed to see Arcas so healthy and strong, and forgetting herself she would rush to him.
Of course, Arcas knew not the fate of his birth mother. Seeing only an animal charging, he would draw his bow and nock an arrow. Before he could let it fly, though, Zeus would intervene once more. Perhaps it was to save his own bloodline, lest the sins of letting Arcas die reflect on himself. Perhaps some guilt still clung to his kingly conscience. No matter what it was, he would take mother and son and set them among the stars as the constellations modern history would come to know as Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.
But jealous Hera had not sated her own wrath yet. Her husband had been unfaithful and it was her wont to enact vengeance on his many lovers. Imploring the Titaness Tethys, she would place a curse that forbid the constellations to set below the horizon and touch the clear waters beneath, so that they might never know the solace of being released from their astral forms.
And so Callisto was betrayed by the gods for the third time.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Kabalisto Koga
