Mount Olympus

Relics & Rituals: Olympus© 2004 White Wolf Publishing, Inc.

Distributed for Sword and Sorcery Studios by White Wolf Publishing, Inc.

By W. Jason Peck, Aaron Rosenberg, Christina Stiles and Relics & Rituals: Olympus team

The home of the gods themselves, ‘Mount Olympus,’ the tallest mountain visible, the one upon which the gods dwell. It is possible that the ‘true’ Mount Olympus is reached by daring to climb any of the lesser mountains which bear its name. Or it may be that only one alleged home of the gods is the actual one. The gods have little to gain by clarifying the matter; they do not wish an endless stream of mortal visitors.

The peak of Mount Olympus is shrouded in clouds, which hide the great palace built for the gods by the cyclopes. No mortal can pass the clouds unless the gods wish it to be so; they become lost and confused in the unnatural mist, and wander dazedly until they starve or somehow find their way back down the mountain. Only if a god wills it can a mortal find his way through the clouds and onto Olympus itself.

The palace of the gods is, naturally, grand almost beyond description. It is a vast crystal structure, sprawling but not chaotic. Earthly temples and palaces are mere shadows of it, the greatest of them capturing only fragments of its majesty and glory. Zeus and most of the major deities of the Olympian pantheon dwell there; of the greater gods, only Hades makes his home elsewhere. It is also known that when Gaia (mother earth) gave birth to the Titans (the ancestors of the gods) they used the mountains in Greece as their thrones since they were so huge, and Cronus sat on Mount Olympus itself.

Beyond the great castle, Olympus is a pastoral land of rolling hills and orchards. Perhaps the only blight on the landscape is the workshop/forge of Hephaestus, which is a source of terrible din and belching smoke, staffed by the greatest cyclopes and the mechanical servants Hephaestus crafted to aid him.

Olympus is the home of any ‘celestial’ or benign beings that can be called via a summon spell, so, such beings ought to be limited to those likely to be found in such a place. Celestial versions of animals common to Greek mythology, such as stags, swans, black bear, brown bear, lion, boars and so on, are all common.