Ares

Character

Where Athena is war made strategy, Ares is war made appetite — loud, indiscriminate, and honestly uninterested in which side wins, so long as the fighting itself does not stop.

Earning Favor

Ares seeks out the strong and the courageous — those who charge into battle without hesitation and strike fear into their enemies. He has little use for tacticians or diplomats, and even less for those who fight in his name without ever having bled for it.

Notable Relationships

• Parents — Zeus and Hera
• Lover — Aphrodite (famously caught with her by Hephaestus's net)
• Companions — Phobos (Fear) and Deimos (Dread), his sons; Enyo, his sister and battle-companion

Anecdote

Caught in an unbreakable net of Hephaestus's own forging while in bed with Aphrodite, Ares was put on humiliating public display before the assembled gods, who reportedly laughed until they wept. It remains the one story in which the god of war is not fearsome at all — merely, briefly, a punchline, which the myths seem to relish precisely because it happens so rarely.

Emblem & Companions

The spear and a chariot drawn by four fire-breathing horses named for the terrors of battle: Flame, Terror, Fire, and Uproar.

Real-World Sites

Sparta, which claimed him above all other cities as spiritual patron of its warrior culture; the Areopagus in Athens, a hill named for him and used as a court for trials of bloodshed.

Appears In

• The Hot GatesThe session's win condition is earning his favor and summoning him to the pass.
• The Laurels of OlympiaA human mafia fraudulently invokes his name; the god himself never claims them.