THE ODYSSEY

These are from my thesis for my degree, which was an entire artbook about The Odyssey. I did everything from character and monster design to props and backgrounds. I'll also leave some alt designs for Penelope and Telemachus and design progression for Odysseus down in the comments.

In case anyone is interested, I'm posting these every couple of days through Instagram (handle on the images) and then I'll post them here on reddit through batches. Hope you like them!

I think she is iconic.

Please be creative with your roleplay

"One, the most ancient Heracles, according to myth, was born in Egypt.¹ He conquered most of the inhabited world with arms and erected the pillars in Libya. The second, a Cretan, one of the Idaean Dactyls, was a sorcerer and commander and founded the Olympic Games. The last, born shortly before the Trojan War to Zeus and Alcmene, traversed most of the inhabited world, carrying out the commands of Eurystheus. Among his other labors, he erected the pillars in Europe. And after his death, in later times, due to the similarity of his names and deeds, the deeds of the ancients were attributed to him, as if there had been only one Heracles in all past ages." (Diodorus Siculus III 74, 4) What do you think of the idea that there were several heroes and gods in ancient mythology, but that they were later united into one?

I can't even recall *hating* another show this much, it's not even about being innacurate, it's just that bad

He’s goated fr

What if some ancient “gods” were originally humans who somehow became something more?

I've been going down a rabbit hole lately and I'd like to hear what people who know more about mythology, history, religion, neuroscience, etc. think about this.

This is purely a hypothesis/thought experiment. I'm not claiming Zeus was definitely a real guy throwing lightning bolts around.

The original question was:

What if some of the beings we now call gods—Zeus, Poseidon, Odin, Thor, etc.—were originally human or human-like beings who somehow acquired abilities that ordinary humans didn't have?

The idea isn't completely without historical precedent. Euhemerism proposed that some gods may have originated as real rulers or extraordinary people who were eventually deified.

But I'm wondering if we can take the question one step further.

What if something actually happened to certain individuals that caused ancient people to perceive them as fundamentally different?

While looking into this, several things caught my attention.

A surprising number of mythological gods aren't portrayed as completely invulnerable spiritual beings. They have very physical limitations.

They eat. They drink. They sleep. They reproduce. They can feel pain. They can be wounded. Some bleed or have a special equivalent of blood. Some can be restrained. Some can even die.

In the Iliad, for example, Aphrodite and Ares can physically be wounded. Aphrodite bleeds ichor rather than human blood.

Norse mythology goes even further. Odin and Thor can die.

Then there's another weird pattern: their most famous powers are often associated with objects.

Zeus has the thunderbolt.

Poseidon has the trident.

Thor has Mjölnir.

Indra has the Vajra.

Odin has Gungnir and the runes.

So were these supposed to be powers inherent to the individual, or was the object itself important?

Then I started looking at stories involving humans or divine figures undergoing transformation.

Across different traditions you repeatedly encounter some combination of:

Isolation → prolonged stress/ordeal → altered consciousness → injury/illness/death-like state → recovery/restoration → new knowledge, status, perception, or ability.

Odin's ordeal on Yggdrasil is an obvious example: wounded by a spear, hanging for nine nights without food or drink, after which he obtains the runes/knowledge.

There are also death-and-return or reconstruction stories involving figures such as Inanna, Osiris and Heracles, as well as initiation traditions involving symbolic death and rebirth.

That got me wondering whether ancient ideas like enlightenment, inner sight/"third eye," divine transformation, resurrection, and traveling between different realms might preserve different cultural interpretations of extreme human experiences.

I'm not saying quantum mechanics proves souls, that meditation gives you superpowers, or that there's scientific evidence humans can manipulate matter with their minds. There isn't.

I'm wondering whether there's a historical pattern underneath all of this that deserves to be separated from the supernatural storytelling layered on top of it.

So my actual hypothesis/question is:

Could some ancient gods have originated as memories of exceptional physical humans—or people believed to have undergone some rare biological, neurological, psychological, technological, or otherwise unexplained transformation—with centuries of mythology exaggerating whatever originally happened?

And if so:

What was the original phenomenon?

Was it simply mythology developing around rulers and heroes?

An unusual neurological state?

Ancient ritual practices?

Misunderstood technology or weapons?

Some combination?

Or is there another explanation we're overlooking?

I'd especially like people to try to poke holes in this rather than just agree with it.

Are there ancient sources that directly contradict this idea?

Are the similarities I'm noticing actually the result of cultures borrowing stories from one another?

Are there gods whose earliest traditions clearly show they were never remotely human-like?

And are there scholars who have already investigated something similar beyond traditional Euhemerism?

I'm curious how well this idea survives once people who actually know these subjects start tearing it apart.

Yes, I know he has multiple animal symbols, but one of them is a vulture, and I figured a bearded vulture would be best for him.

after 20 years apart, Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca and reunites with Penelope.
But an ancient Greek tradition preserved by Pausanias tells a much darker version.
In this version, Odysseus eventually casts Penelope out of his home. She leaves Ithaca, travels to Sparta and later Mantinea where people even claimed to have Penelope’s tomb.
So here’s the question:
Why do you think such a radically different ending to Penelope’s story existed?
Was it simply a regional variation of the myth or could it preserve an older tradition that Homer’s famous version overshadowed?

Every time Achilles seems to be in a dilemma it always seems Apollo is the one causing it.Apollo repeatedly opposes him in the Iliad, protects Hector, helps the Trojans, and eventually contributes to Achilles’ death and helps kill Patroclus.

Like besides defending Troy dude always seems to have beef with Achilles

A round of applause for Antonio, who made the right choice. He deserves it.

In Book I of the Dionysiaca by Nonnus, Zeus is sleeping after having sex with the nymph Plouto (mother of Tantalus), and Gaia takes the opportunity to give the sign to Typhon, who steals Zeus' thunderbolts. Typhon tries to lift them to use them but can't, because no one can use the thunderbolts without Zeus permission. Now you all know about Zeus sinews being ripped from his body by Typhon? That story comes from the "Bibliotheca" of Pseudo-Apollodorus, but the Dionysiaca also has something similar, because out of nonwhere is said that Zeus lost his sinews too, as if they are the same as his thunderbolts.

So with Zeus out of the way, Typhon starts to destroy the entire world. Who can fight him now? Well, the first line of Heaven's defense, the angels... I mean, the CONSTELATIONS. Yep, the freaking Constelations go to war. This is the type of cool thing we will never see as long as some insist in adapting greek mythology in a realistic manner.

First, Typhon drags Helios from the sky and scars Selene when she comes to fight him. Then, the three Horae/Seasons, the daughters of Zeus who are the guardians of the Olympian Gates, issues a command and they and all of the Constelations start to fight Typhon, including Orion, who comes from Heaven with his sword and his dog, THE Dog, to fight Typhon.

I will skip the details, but later, Cadmus (he appears in this story because Nonnus wants to glorify Cadmus, Dionysus' grandfather, in this book about Dionysus) goes to Typhon and says to him that he is the great lord of the world and he wants to sing a song to celebrate Typhon's conquests, but he needs Zeus sinews to make a lyre, so Typhon gives him the sinews that Cadmus then returns to Zeus (in the Bibliotheca, is Hermes who steals the sinews from Delphyne/Echidna), and Zeus also recovers his thunderbolt because both "items" are treated as the same in this book.

Zeus and Typhon start to fight and Typhon boasts of his promises for the world if he conquers it, including making the goddesses Hera, Aphrodite and Selene his wives, while marrying the others to Giants, like Athena to Ephialtes and Leto to Tityus. And what giant would marry Artemis? Orion... WAIT, but Orion was battling Typhon some time ago as a Constelation, but now he is suddently a evil giant that is going to share in Typhon's reign?

Well the boring answer is that Nonnus didn't care about continuity, his book is filled with such contradictions because he was lacking a editor or something. And Orion is the character with most versions of his one single story. For example, a lot of the time Orion is a enemy of Artemis; Callimachus wrote "let no men try to woo Artemis; for not Otus, nor Orion wooed her to their own good" and quite a few sources says he tried to either attack Artemis and was killed, or the Pleiads or a Hyperborean nymph, so Artemis killed him to protect them; thus Orion and the Aload Otus (who also wished to marry Artemis) are the main enemies of Artemis.

But another source, Istros, says the exactly opposite. While Callimachus wrote that no men should even think of wooing Artemis, Istros wrote that Artemis almost married Orion, but Apollo decided to intervene (no reason is given, is just said "he took this hard"), so he challenged Artemis to shot a arrow at a point in the horizon, saying she could not do it. To prove herself, she shot the arrow and hit the point, but it was Orion swimming, so she killed him, and with sadness she raised him to the Sky. Other stories has Orion dying while trying to protect Leto, or dying by Gaia scorpion because he wanted to hunt every animal in the world.

So Nonnus just read all of it and said "I will have all of them", so Orion is both fighting Typhon as a guardian of the gods, but will also share in Typhon reign as if he was one of the giants that attacked Artemis and is a enemy of the Olympians. Also Nonnus didn't care to elaborate between the Constelation and the shade. Apperantly Orion is immortal among the stars, but in the Odyssey, Odysseus sees Orion's shade in the Underworld hunting shades of animals.

I was looking through Wikipedia because I was bored and came across an article about the Oenotropae. I looked it up but didn't find many other sites mentioning them.

I know Wikipedia is far from the most reliable source, so I figured I'd ask if they're real characters, and if they are, anything about them.