"Being a goddess carries a terrible responsibility."
— Summary of Theogony
Theogony
is a Fusion Fic between God of War and Worm and is written by Darth Marrs.
The story takes place long after the events of the games and follows the story of Taylor Hebert and her father, Daniel Hebert, also known as Kratos.
The story is complete as of 22/05/21 with 55 chapters. The story is part of a quadrilogy "The Infinite and Divine". Has a completed sequel - Titanomachy, where Taylor ends up in the MCU. And one sequel in progress - Voluspa, where Taylor ends up in the world of Game of Thrones.
Theogony provides examples of:
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Inverted. Taylor's life was less crappy due to her father getting her into Arcadia for better education and her never suffering from Emma and Sophia's bullying.
- Adaptational Badass: Canonically, Daniel was just a human. Here, he's Kratos.
- Adaptation Name Change: Taylor never gets her identity as Skitter here. Instead, she gets her goddess identity, Telos.
- Adaptation Species Change:
- Taylor was a parahuman in Worm, but here she's a goddess due to being the daughter of Kratos and Freya (who are also a case of this).
- Lung is a god, while Narwhal is a demi-god (as are Moord Nag, Glaistig Uaine and Flechette).
- Scion/The Warrior and Eden/The Thinker are a pair of C'tan. Overlaps with Adaptation Backstory Change.
- All Myths Are True: Every god of every religion that has ever been exists or did exist at one point. This upsets many Christian characters as they cannot accept the existence of other gods.
- All Your Powers Combined: Freya spent years gathering up the power of whatever deceased gods she could that she could give to Taylor on her birth. Within Taylor are the powers and domains of multiple other gods.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Most who hear Taylor refer to her powers as magic and herself as a goddess believe she is under the same delusion as Myrriden. When confronted with greater evidence the closest thing those who don't believe will accept as the truth is that these 'gods' are some form of ancient parahuman that predated Scion.
- Alien Blood: When Taylor is shot and wounded by Shadow Stalker's phasing bolt, she notices that her blood is black when she touches her wound and sees "black ichor" on her fingers.
- Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: Taylor 'dies' in the final battle against Scion, but instead of actual death, she just loses her physical form and becomes one with her domain/afterlife. Her followers can all still tangibly feel her.
- Bald Head of Toughness: Kratos, as usual. Even in his form as Daniel Hebert, he's still bald and extremely intimidating.
- Big Damn Heroes: Taylor saves Tattletale from being killed by Coil's minions in the nick of time.
- Brought Down to Normal: Freya deliberately gave up her divine powers to strengthen her daughter. As a result, she was mortal when Taylor was born and susceptible to anything that could kill a human, such as the car crash that led to her death.
- Cast from Lifespan: Taylor's healing takes away from her own life and causes her incredible pain if she doesn't channel her power through something else like an apple.
- The Chain of Harm: Marie Herren doesn't hate but is afraid of black people after the cape Baron Kriminel attacked an E88 barbeque and killed a child there, as payback for them sheltering Hookwolf after he killed Kriminel's family.
- Crime of Self-Defense: Averted. During Taylor's fight with Lung, Shadow Stalker tries to murder her and Taylor (who doesn't know who she is) kills her in self-defense, which becomes troubling when Armsmaster arrives and thinks Taylor killed her in cold blood. When Uber and Leet publish a video where Stalker's blatant murder attempt is shown, the authorities are willing to accept Taylor was acting to defend herself.
- Composite Character: Kratos is Daniel Hebert and Freya is Annette Hebert.
- Cult: Talosianism is frequently called a cult by those who see it as worshipping a cape. In a little over a hundred years after its inception, Talosianism becomes the biggest practicing religion in the world.
- Death by Adaptation:
- Taylor ends up killing Shadow Stalker, who is still alive by the end of Worm canon.
- Regent and Bitch both end up dying when Coil decides to leave after Brockton Bay becomes too risky to stay in and needs any loose ends tied up, and attempted to have Tattletale killed for skimming from him. He doesn't try to have Grue killed due to the man's loyalty being guaranteed as long as he's got Aisha.
- Deus ex Machina: In-Universe, when Tattletale is captured by Coil and about to be killed, she makes a desperate prayer to Telos to save her... and she does.
- Distant Finale: The last section of the last chapter has Sarah die at 128 having survived a husband and three children. Talosianism has become the largest religion in the world, and they've started outerspace mining.
- Domain Holder: Taylor turns her house and yard into her personal godly domain that contains its own forests and mountains. Not only is it her home, but it's also her growing religion's own personal Heaven. Any of her faithful who die will end up going to her yard after death.
- The Dreaded:
- The Endbringers, as per usual, but here even gods fear them. The Endbringers systematically hunt down the gods one-by-one, which gets mortals caught in the crossfire. It turns out that Leviathan specifically targeted Newfoundland in order to destroy a place sacred to Freya, and a god travelling by plane was attacked by the Simurgh.
- According to Taylor, Danny is this to the women of the Dockworker's Union. It's implied to be due to his godly nature making him seem very threatening, as he never touched or intimidated them deliberately.
- Emotion Bomb: Victoria's aura causes awe that either makes people love or fear her. However, when it tried effecting Taylor she instinctively saw it as an attack.
- End of an Age: Kratos and the other gods find Eden's corpse and move it off world. Once they do that it makes it impossible for anybody else to trigger. Once the current parahumans die, the age of the cape dies with them.
- Everyone Has Standards: Kratos in the past was The Pornomancer who got around quite a bit, not being very picky about the women he bedded. Medea was such an insane lunatic that he outright states that he would never sleep with her.
- Eye Scream: As part of her preparations for the Final Battle, Taylor has to have her eyes ripped out and replaced with Mimir's.
- Face–Heel Turn: Eidolon attempts to kill Telos when she fights off the Simurgh, first because he thinks she's stealing his kill and then when the Simurgh fully subverts him.
- Fling a Light into the Future: One of Taylor's visions of Freya implies that Freya did this with Taylor, without Kratos knowing. She implies that she knows she will die while mortal, and that she and Kratos know that Taylor is the one who will destroy Zion and save the world.
- Foil: Taylor and Atreus/Loki, despite Loki never appearing. Both are the children of Kratos with their own destinies laid out for them. However, Loki was fated to bring about Ragnarok while Taylor is destined to fight and kill the Destroyer of Worlds. In essence, Atreus' intended purpose was destruction. Taylor's is protection.
- Full-Frontal Assault: Happens to Taylor in her fight with Lung. The only reason she has any modesty is that melted tar and asphalt ended up covering her body as a result of their clash.
- Go Mad from the Isolation:
- Mimir brings up in a conversation with Taylor that isolation tends to drive others mad, and it's worse with gods due to their immortality. Her parents were able to avert this by always finding people to care for and care for them in kind.
- Averted with Mimir, who has been locked in a box for years before Taylor found him. Mimir says it's because he's undead and no longer has a perception of time like the living.
- Gods Need Prayer Badly: Downplayed. Taylor does not actually need being prayed to, but this, as well as the souls of those who worship her that live in her domain, makes her more powerful.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Eidolon believes himself to be the savior of humanity, and doesn't like it when anyone else shows to be better at the whole "saving" thing than him. This lets the Simurgh subvert him to make him Face–Heel Turn when Telos manages to cause more damage to the Simurgh than anyone else before.
- Heel–Face Turn: Marie Herren abandons the Empire 88 and her identity as Othala to become Didomi, a priestess of Telos.
- Hold the Line: What Danny does while Taylor rushes to get what she needs to stop Scion.
- Hot God: Oya, the Yoruba goddess of death and rebirth is described very favorably.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: The Endbringers aren't the only ones sandbagging. Lung doesn't need time to build up to go build his power and can just go full dragon instantly.
- In Spite of a Nail: Taylor still ends up being picked on at Winslow after the PRT place her there when she returns without her father.
- It's Personal: During lunch Taylor is able to tell someone is glaring at her back, and using his emotion detection powers Dean (Gallant) is able to tell she not only hates her but that she hates her 'personally'. As the girl's last name is Herren it's all but stated that this is the 'actual' villain Rune.
- Kill the God: The Endbringers have been killing off various gods for a while now, to the point where by the present day, there aren't many gods left.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: After he watched her kill dozens of men like they were marching into a meatgrinder, and take out Kaiser and Stormtiger with the ease of batting a fly. Krieg is smart enough to surrender to Telos without a fight.
- Mistaken for Racist: Taylor turning back up in Brockton Bay covered in Nordic runes, including a symbol of Thor that looks like a swastika on her neck at the same time the E88 debuts a member called Rune could not have been worse timing. Though the whole thing was engineered by Coil. It's sadly a Truth in Television thing, as the Nazis did coopt a lot of Nordic ideology and symbolism, and thus a lot of it (including the Swastika) are now associated with Those Wacky Nazis.
- Mythology Gag: One of the children Taylor saves while crossing the Strait of Gibraltar triggers with the ability to Master insects, which was Taylor's canonical power.
- Never Mess with Granny: Sunny is a barely four foot one old Inuit woman with a face like a bad of wrinkles who dresses like she's going to a rock concert, who just so happens to be Narwhal's grandmother and Ataksak, the Inuit Goddess of the sky who can turn the sun on and off at her will.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Taylor has the same sort of protection on her that her half-brother Baldur did that made him impossible to kill, only perfected so she can still feel, and unlike Baldur whose lone weakness was mistletoe Taylor is vulnerable to attacks that can bypass her skin. When Shadow Stalker shoots her with a phased arrow, it goes past her skin and solidifies inside her again.
- Nominal Hero: Kratos, like the 2018 game, fits this. His first and foremost concern is the safety of his daughter. He's not looking to go around saving lives and only confronts threats to the wellbeing of his family. Otherwise, he's content to ignore the ongoing threats of Eldritch Abominations and other villains.
- Non-Answer: When Doctor Mother asks the god that has broken into Cauldron who they are, the god responds with "I am that I am." Which heavily implies that they're the God from Christianity/Judaism.
- No-Sell: When Eidolon does his Face–Heel Turn and attempts to use an attack that makes the target grow a thousand years older in an instant, Telos (being a bona-fide Goddess) does not even notice it.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Pythia (formerly known as Tattletale) points out to Marie Herren that she and Shaquelle are both victims of racial violence who have been given a second chance to make the best of their lives thanks to Telos.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: What's Kratos doing while the story focuses on Taylor? Fighting the Endbringers in Africa to buy her the time she needs to get strong enough to face the Destroyer of Worlds. When we say "fighting the Endbringers", we mean all of them.
- And, in the meantime, he's running the resistance against Moord Nag and her warlords - and is so effective that all of North Africa has banded together into the Saharan Confederation and named him as their joint army's general.
- He was also the one who singlehandedly ran the Slaughterhouse Nine and the Teeth out of Brockton Bay.
- Omniglot: Taylor learns that she has the ability to speak and understand any language as long as it's not played over a digital format. This contrasts with her father, who only knows all other languages because he had to manually learn them over the decades.
- Only a Flesh Wound: It's noted that Taylor takes having arrows suddenly phased into her back much better than she really should, showing that even without her mother's protections, she's not easy to kill.
- Outside-Context Problem: Taylor is unique even among other gods. She's not a mortal who gained divinity or a spirit shaped by human belief. She is a divine spirit whose form was created by magic. Normal gods need some form of medium in order to cross between the spirit and physical worlds depending on whether the god was flesh or spirit in origin. Taylor is both and thus doesn't need any medium to cross between the worlds.
- Only the Worthy May Pass: Or rather, only those that truly believe Taylor is a god may pass into her domain. Atheists, those that refuse to believe she's not parahuman or those with a strong belief in another religion can't pass through, and in the case of the latter will feel uneasy around her.
- Person of Mass Destruction: Taylor is the daughter of the God who slew his entire pantheon and the Norse Goddess of magic with all the power such a heritage implies along with the power and domains of as many deceased gods as her mother could graft onto her. One particularly bad emotional freak-out caused a good chunk of the country to be buried under several feet of snow and reduced a national park to splinters.
- Physical God: Pretty much a given considering this is God of War. Kratos and Taylor are both literal gods and are powerful enough to qualify, Narwhal is a demi-god, and Lung is also a god that can go toe-to-toe with Taylor.
- Poke in the Third Eye: Taylor has this. People using Thinker powers on her tend to suffer problems. Tattletale required a multi-day rest period and Tinker-made pain medication to deal with it, and that still made her vomit uncontrollably. Coil got off lightly the first time he tried his timeline-splitting schtick on her and wound up with a terrible nosebleed.
- It's implied that her presence also causes Coil's power to malfunction - at least twice people talking to Coil about Taylor suddenly find themselves in a situation where they have not spoken with him, leaving them disoriented.
- Power Gives You Wings: During her fight with Lung, Taylor sustains injuries that unlock her wings, granting her flight.
- Razor Wings: Like with the Valkyries, Taylor's wings can effectively act like swords that can launch Feather Flechettes. With them, she can easily bisect a man without effort.
- Really 700 Years Old: Kratos. He's been alive for about 3,000 years at this point. He was later able to piece together that he was born somewhere around 700 B.C.. This means that by the time the story starts, he'd have to be, at most, 2,711 years old. Freya was this as well, Taylor stating she may have been older.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Medical authority that is. Amy is able to accept pretty quickly that Taylor is a god rather than a parahuman, since her power lets her understand someone's biology she knows Taylor doesn't have either organ needed to be a parahuman.
- Rule of Three: A god that swears thrice is magically binding. Taylor proves to Lung that she is not Rune by declaring it three times to him.
- Save the Villain: A tragic example. Moord Nag's mother asks Kratos to kill her daughter in order to save her soul.
- Secretly Wealthy: Much to Taylor's shock, her father has amassed a large amount of wealth and treasures over the years, so her family is actually incredibly rich.
- Strong as They Need to Be: In Chapter 5, Kratos lampshades that his strength is practically whatever is needed to solve the situation at hand.Kratos: I am as strong as I need to be.
- Superior Successor: Taylor's invulnerability when compared to Baldur's is this. She has the same enchantment to make her invincible, but it's been perfected so she can still feel sensations like pain and touch, ensuring that she doesn't go mad from sensory deprivation. Also while it still has the same problem of her having a single weaknessnote , her weakness is much, much rarer even with capes. Not to mention that unlike with Baldur, using her weakness against her doesn't cause the enchantment to break and render her vulnerable to everything else.
- Superpower Lottery: Gods and goddesses in general, but Taylor manages to take the cake due to her mother imbuing her with the powers and domains of multiple deceased gods that she collected over the years. Coupled with her Nigh-Invulnerability from her mother's enchantments alongside the natural power that comes with being the daughter of the God of War and the Goddess of Magic, and she's probably the most powerful being on Earth Bet.
- Tattooed Crook: Averted. Taylor's tattoos are actually an extensive series of runes made to bestow nigh absolute protection as well as the powers of various deceased gods on her. However, everybody else who doesn't know better believes this trope is played straight since the only people in town with full-body ink like hers are the resident Neo-Nazi gang.
- Undignified Death: Eidolon is killed instantly by Ciara before their Simurgh bomb could go off.
- War Is Hell: Kratos describes war as horrid when conversing with his daughter about it.
- Wrong Context Magic: Gods and goddesses do not follow the main rules that the parahumans do. Because of this, gods often live in secrecy from the public and any time they make an appearance, their abilities are categorized as parahuman despite the differences. At one point, a god was attacked by an Endbringer while on a flight and the PRT had to label him as a parahuman under their employ to rationalize it to the public.
- Year Outside, Hour Inside: A divine realm can have this effect. It happens literally in the place where Danny hid Triton's trident - Taylor and he only spend an hour inside, but when they come back an entire year has passed.
- Your Soul Is Mine!: Taylor has the ability to remove and manipulate human souls which she can use for a variety of reasons, like she did when she took Thomas Calvert's soul and used it to create her domain.
- A benevolent example is that once she establishes her domain, anyone who truly believes in her divinity will have their soul enter it when they die as their form of heaven. The soul of a true believer increasing her power with everyone in her home.
