Olympian pantheon

The Olympian pantheon was a tight pantheon of gods, residing chiefly in the divine realm of Olympus on the first layer of Arborea in the Outer Planes. They were sometimes called the Greek pantheon, including by its own members, as that was the name of a collection of city-states on another world where they were worshiped. The members of this pantheon were little known in the Realms, but had some degree of influence or power to grant spells in Realmspace.

"For all their vaunted talk of freedom, they sure make a lot of rules!"

- An Olympian petitioner about to descend to the Gray Waste

Description
The members of this pantheon largely resembled humans, albeit more beautiful, and displayed many of the same behavioral traits as humans,  in regards to emotions and reasoning. Some described this as them displaying all of humanity's flaws. They tended to be very proud, argumentative, lustful, frequent partiers, highly jealous, envious, petty, and had short tempers.

The Olympians were largely uninterested in innovation, with the exception of some members like Hephaestus, as they chose to focus on emotional and spiritual matters rather than the technological.

Though they were a tight pantheon, and not as chaotic as the Norse pantheon and Seldarine, they were still not very cohesive due to some of the more chaotic aspects of their personalities, which Zeus encouraged to a certain extent. It was not uncommon for them to cause mishaps for their fellow members' followers. They were also rather insular, being neither open nor welcoming of new deities, preferring to display their pantheon's might by crushing new deities under their heel before bringing them into the fold.

Base of Operations
The members of this pantheon chiefly resided upon Mount Olympus, the slopes of which were rooted in the first layer of Arborea. Some thought the Olympians all lived atop the mountain's snowy heights, but in actuality their homes were scattered across it and five of its members lived elsewhere entirely. It was only Zeus and Hera who lived atop the mountain, within a great citadel of polished gold and marble.

The deity Poseidon resided within Ossa, Arborea's second layer, though maintained a seaside shrine near Mount Olympus. Pan and Prometheus lived in the hinterlands of Olympus, rarely visiting the mountain proper. Both Hades and Hecate had divine realms in the plane of Hades, which was connected to Mount Olympus by the latter's twisting caverns. Hades lived in the third layer of the plane that shared his name, while Hecate had a divine realm in both the third layer of Hades and within the third layer of the Nine Hells.

Within a location on the mountain known as the Vast Temple, the Olympians kept a book of their pantheon's history. Bound in the bones of mythical creatures and fallen heroes, the Great Theogony recounted the emergence of the multiverse from their perspective.

Notable Members

 * Apollo: The Olympian god of healing, light, and music.
 * Athena: The Olympian goddess of war and wisdom, whom some speculated was also the goddess Sune or at least similar to her.
 * Demeter: The Olympian goddess of agriculture and the wife of Zeus prior to Hera.
 * Echidna: Also known as the "Mother of Monsters," was an Olympian goddess trapped within the 73 layer of the Abyss. Her lair was dominated by a massive, white marble statue that depicted her as a nymph with the lower body of a serpent.
 * Hera: The Olympian goddess of marriage and the wife of Zeus.
 * Hades: The Olympian god of the dead.
 * Hecate: The Olympian goddess of magic.
 * Hephaestus: The Olympian god of crafting and smithing and the sole child of Hera.
 * Hermes: The Olympian god of commerce, thievery, and travel.
 * Pan: The Olympian god of nature and passion.
 * Poseidon: The Olympian god of the ocean, who had a small following in Impiltur.
 * Priapus: An Olympian god of fertility that was worshiped by primitive human tribes on the Isle of Firando.
 * Prometheus: A Greater Titan who aided the Olympians in their battle of usurpation and was later granted a station of lesser godhood within the pantheon.
 * Tyche: The Olympian goddess of fortune.
 * Zeus: The Olympian god of the sky and the head of the pantheon.

Related Deities

 * Gaea: The grandmother and great-grandmother of the various Olympian powers.
 * Rhea: The mother of the first six Olympian powers.

Servants
Almost all members of the Olympian pantheon worked through proxies. Some allowed these to ascend, but others like Zeus were very reluctant to grant such power out of fear of being usurped. The extensive number of lesser proxies they entrusted with minor tasks included such creatures as ashiras, dryads, satyrs, and sirines. Apollo, Ares, and Athena favored the use of pers and solars. Zeus favored the use of his own mortal children. And the bacchae were known to serve the pantheon as a whole, though not as proxies.

Many of their most notable servants were legendary heroes. One such proxy was Circe the Black Sorceress, a long time servant of the goddess Hecate.

History
Many of the members of this pantheon descended from a group of beings known as the greater titans. They were born by a pair of gods known as Gaea and Uranus. Gaea went on to birth more monstrous children, most notably the hecatoncheires, and Uranus imprisoned them all in the bowels of Carceri. Over time Gaea grew sick of the state of things and convinced her son Cronus to overthrow her father, so long as he would then free his monstrous brethren. Cronus did so, then married the titan Rhea, but went back on his word. Furious, Gaea laid a curse upon Cronus, proclaiming that one day his own children would usurp him, just as he had his usurped his cruel father.

Fearful of the curse, Cronus would devour each of his first five children  as they were born to his wife. These first five children were Demeter, Hades, Hera, Hestia, and Poseidon. On their sixth child, a furious Rhea tricked Cronus into instead swallowing a stone in swaddling clothes, thus allowing Gaea to smuggle away the one who would later be known as Zeus and leave him in the care of nymphs on a remote island. When he reached adulthood Zeus disguised himself as one of Cronus's cupbearers and gave him a potion that induced him into vomiting up his five children.

In the history of this pantheon its squabbling members had gathered together on a common front primarily on two occasions. The first was to usurp the greater titans,  following the overthrow of their despotic leader Cronus. They cast the majority of the greater titans into Carceri (referred to in some recounts as Tarterus ),      an event that occurred sometime after the Seldarine took up residence in Arborea and took over a decade to accomplish. Those who were spared this fate included Gaea, Rhea, and the lesser titans. The latter were the children of the greater titans and had allied themselves with the Olympians. These included Prometheus and many others. The second time the Olympians came together on a common front was the construction of Mount Olympus.

The legitimacy of that second act was questionable though, as some claimed that the mountain had existed since before the titans had even ruled Olympus. Additionally, some recounts of the pantheon's overthrow of the greater titans told of its members having thrown the titans off of the mountain, into Carceri, and using their combined might to shatter the mountain's connection to that Lower Plane in order to trap the titans there. Others told of them taking credit simply for fashioning it into a continuous conduit through the Astral plane and into Hades, connecting along the way to all places on the Prime where they had followers, though some claimed this too had existed prior to them.

Over the course of a few thousands years following their founding, the Olympians grew to be among the most influential pantheons on the Outer Planes. To the point that many people on the Prime Material referred to their home plane as Olympus, though not the inhabitants of Realmspace. Though they also garnered many enemies, such as when they appropriated portfolios from what would later be known as the Mulhorandi pantheon, blatantly drawing from their rivals to gain ever more worshipers.

History on Toril
Over the course of the planet of Toril's history, there were waves of planar immigrants that came from the aforementioned collection of city-states and a land of empire and glory, both of whom worshiped the Olympian gods. One wave settled in the kingdom of Bakar, in the city of Medinat Muskawoon. There they constructed temples to the Olympian gods, such as Prometheus and Tyche, with several temples to Prometheus spanning the River Athis. Another wave settled around the time of the rise of Netheril and from them the goddess Tyche would go on to become worshiped in the Netherese people's pantheon until the Dawn Cataclysm.

During the Dawn Cataclysm, Tyche manifested herself into two separate forms, the goddesses Tymora and Beshaba, who would go on to become members of the Faerûnian pantheon. Though some believed her body and spirit had been split between them. What ultimately became of her would be unknown to the rest of the Olympian pantheon.

Some time after that, Hermes began a romance with the goddess Tymora, which was known to only a few on Olympus. Some claimed this was solely him trying to learn the fate of Tyche. Also around this time, both Hermes and Pan were sending their avatars out across the cosmos in search of the truth of Tyche's demise, but they were unable to send them to Realmspace proper. Eventually the two would resort to sending priests through portals to Toril to uncover the truth.

Relationships
The Olympians got along well with the Seldarine, as they never competed for land or followers, though they didn't associate much. And the celestial eladrin in general were on good terms with them.

The Celtic pantheon was considered their primary rival due to its opposing, open-minded and tolerant nature. And the pantheon as a whole embraced the deity Nebelun, who for a time camped within the workshop of Hephaestus.

Some individuals in this pantheon had relations with deities of other pantheons that were worshiped on Toril. For instance, Hephaestus was one of the closest allies of the dwarven deity Dumathoin and was supplied by him with adamantine ore. Hermes was often visited by the halfling deity Brandobaris and occasionally had conversations with Selûne. Throughout their time knowing each other, the goddess Demeter had always gotten on well with the Chauntea. And the goddesses of beauty Hanali Celanil and Sune shared their crystal fountain pool of Evergold with Aphrodite.

Worshipers
The original worshipers of this pantheon were largely humans. While some worshiped specific Olympians, because they were a tight pantheon a cleric could have all the Olympians as their patron, what was known as being a polygot. Those who did could be of any alignment and choose any of the following divine domains:
 * Air, Animal, Chaos, Charm, Community, Creation, Death, Destruction, Earth, Evil, Fire, Good, Healing, Knowledge, Law, Luck, Trickery, War, Water, or Weather.

Polygots were known to ask each of the Olympian pantheon's deities for intervention in matters that reflected their interests. Such as asking Athena for an oracular vision or asking Hades for the ability to repel undead.

Across multiple crystal spheres, this pantheon was venerated as part of the Planar Church of Olympus, which had a sect in Realmspace.

Within the Outlands city of Sigil, there stood temples to Apollo, Hermes, and Zeus. Some of the proxies of these deities could also be found within the city, specifically within The Lady's Ward. Also in the Outlands, the gate-town of Sylvania had a large temple to the pantheon as a whole.

In regards to the planar factions that resided in Sigil and elsewhere, Hades was revered by the Dustmen, Athena and Zeus by the Fraternity of Order, the Furies by the Mercykillers, Zeus by the Sign of One, Aphrodite by the Society of Sensation, and Tyche by the Xaositects.

In Greatspace, the good-aligned Olympians were worshiped and Zeus was believed to be the creator of the crystal sphere. Some people in Greatspace believed that the evil members of this pantheon, such as Hades and Hecate, didn't exist and were just rumors started centuries ago.

Hades was also worshiped by one group of humans within the Astromundi Cluster under the name of Yul.