Equipment Files: The Arrow of Time

                The Arrow of Time is the fourth (4th) most powerful weapon in known existence. (See Equipment files: The Loathsome Shears for further details on the most powerful weapon in known existence) It also bears the distinction of being the most powerful weapon authorized for use by a non-deity entity, as sufficiently high-ranking reapers of the Special Task Force are permitted to use it, provided the proper paperwork has been filed. It is further worth noting that it is one of the few weapons in The Reaper’s Armory usable by a being not affiliated with The Bureau of Death, namely Artemis, who, among all gods, is most adroit with a bow and arrow.

The Arrow of Time was created for a singular purpose: to kill a god. Not to kill one god in particular, but to kill any god who may be deemed a threat to The Pantheon. The arrow’s development began immediately after the end of The Divine War, as a countermeasure to prevent a second Divine War before it ever began. Though the Extra-Hellenistic deities outside of Tartarus number too few to pose a significant threat, and a breakout at Tartarus is impossible, The Moirai are nothing if not thorough. To put it in layman’s terms, the arrow works by piercing a deity’s natural protection against aging. Essentially, it renders a divine being into a being that is functionally similar to a mortal. It must be noted that the effects of The Arrow of Time are purely theoretical, as the arrow has never been fired on a divine test subject. That is not to say that its effectiveness is entirely speculation; it was the product of many decades of Research and Development. If nothing else, the fact that none are willing to serve as its target practice is a testament to its lethality.

  The arrow itself is crafted from a femur of Chronos, tipped by an incisor of Cronos. (Note that these are two distinct entities – the former is the God of Time, while the latter is the father of Zeus.) Its tip is aflame with the fires of the nine (9) circles of Hell. The shaft is painted with each of the seven (7) colors the original Covenant’s Rainbow. The bone’s marrow has been replaced with a unique poison, a mixture that includes water from each of the five (5) rivers of Hades. For fletching, it has three (3) feathers, each plucked from a being of a foreign pantheon. One, the feather of a winged serpent, one, the feather of one who oversees the desert skies, and one, feather of a three-legged crow. All forged within the Heart of Chaos, the One (1) being to have shattered the symmetry of time. But an arrow made as described is only a vessel. The true power of The Arrow of Time is imbued by ritual. From the moment of its creation, the names of all gods of time are uttered over it, stretching into eternity in both directions. In the future direction, they are spoken in reverse; in the past direction, they are spoken forwards, converging on the moment of creation.

The Bureau of Death waives responsibility for any personal catastrophe that will befall any foolishly attempting to create their own Arrow of Time outside of The Bureau’s authorization.

Personnel Files: Athena [REDACTED]

Athena! Athena freakin’… I wish that the divine had surnames, just so I could spend more time saying Athena. She’s so cool. Like, if a high-five and a fist bump had a baby, it would be Athena. Which is ironic because… er, she actually never was a baby. She was born a full adult from Zeus’s head, because he had lain with this Titaness, Metis, and then swallowed her because he was afraid her offspring would overthrow him. It was this whole thing. Anyway, details of her birth are mad unimportant, so I won’t go into any further detail.

Athena is basically a bad bitch who gets it done. What is “it”, exactly, you may ask? Well, anything and everything, really. She’s the Goddess of wisdom, crafts, and tactical warfare. She’s basically Ares and Hephaestus rolled into one, except not nearly as sucky as those guys. (Great, now I’m being mean. I apologize to Hephaestus. He’s not that sucky. Ares, on the other hand, is pretty sucky. –Sis) (Wait, I just remembered that Hephaestus is actually HELLA sucky. Basically, every God is just the worst, and I wanna go fight them all right now -Sis again) You know how Hephaestus makes pretty much all of the toys the Gods get to play with? Well Athena designed pretty much all of that stuff. And all the stuff from antiquity, that predates her, was improved by upgrades she suggested. Before Athena, Zeus just had regular old lightning. Now he has forked lightning, upwards lightning, not to mention ball lightning. Do you know how much he loves that stuff? More than his wife, that’s for sure. Hey-o!

Anyway, Athena is pretty much The Pantheon’s problem solver. She has a hand in almost every major project of The Gods. You know how Tartarus has more security measures than you can possibly imagine? Athena came up with at least half of those. Our utter faith that the secrets in The River Lethe will remain lost? All on Athena’s good word. Atropos’ impossibly sharp Abhorrent Shears? OK, Athena had nothing to do with those. I’mma level with you: no one knows what those are or where they came from. At least, I certainly don’t. See, this is why I didn’t think it was a good idea for me to write about Athena. Because I honestly don’t have much to say about her other than “she’s the coolest and greatest” and various synonyms, so I keep getting sidetracked.
While Athena isn’t technically an official of The Bureau of Death, she’s something of a contractor, so you may see her in The Underworld from time to time. And, even though I can totally understand why you would, don’t just stand there slack-jawed at her brilliant splendor. Athena is super chill, and won’t mind at all if you just come up to her and start chatting. Just tell her you’re a fan of her work. Because, trust me, you are. Do you like how The Grim Scythe cuts through souls like a hot knife through butter? Do you enjoy flying across the world on winged sandals at speeds matched only by Hermes? Are you a fan of not being utterly annihilated by angry extra-Hellenistic deities with a vendetta? Then give her your thanks in person. Unless, of course, she’s super busy, which is, unfortunately, all too often. She has a tendency of being rather… curt when she’s focused on a certain task, but she’s still polite. And if she says she’ll get back with you, she will. All in all, Athena is a 10/10 badass, a 10/10 sweetheart, and an 11/10 pal. Would recommend.

Personnel Files: Athena

Hephaestus has no section within this chapter of The Reaper’s Handbook, as he needs none. The entire armory of The Bureau of Death serves as his biography. As the God of The Forge, it is by his hands that the most powerful artefacts of The Hellenistic Pantheon are wrought. Yet it is not entirely accurate to say that they are of his design. For even if you can play the lute skillfully enough to make Hades himself weep, it is quite a different matter to compose a masterpiece. In much the same way, Hephaestus’s aptitude for turning ideas into reality is unparalleled, but his capacity for coming up with those ideas is limited. The task of invention falls to Athena, Goddess of wisdom, crafts, and tactical warfare. The irony of Athena’s role as Inventor of The Gods is that she herself was invented by the Gods. She is unique in all the Hellenistic Pantheon, for she was not born of natural processes, and later assigned a domain by We, The Moirai. Her domain was preordained, and it is the very reason for which she was created. In truth, Athena is a living weapon: a second God of War.

There came a time in The Divine War when it was clear to all that the contest could not be won by brute strength alone. All sides had their champions, their paragons of strength, and none could ever definitively best the others. Mighty though Zeus and Ares were, even they were matched by Thor and Odin, Take-Mikazuchi and Izanagi, Metatron and Michael, and myriad adversaries besides.  We, The Moirai, realized that a new approach to warfare was needed, and with it, a new God of War. Yet it would not do to have this new God of War be anything less than perfect. All our hopes rode with him or her, so it was decided that it would not be enough to merely bestow the title upon an existing God. Only by creating an entirely new being from scratch could we ensure its perfection. We, the Moirai, decided that the one to shift the tides of Fate in our favor must be Goddess, in every way the counterbalance to Ares, so that their combined wisdom and might could topple even the most formidable opponents. With our final reserves of Quintessence, We, The Moirai, wove a thread of immeasurable length, that even Atropos’ own shears would have difficulty severing. Her mind is sharper yet than The Grim Scythe, and her body as resilient as the very Aegis she carries. The former was accomplished in part by the unusual circumstances of her birth: she incubated within the brain of Zeus. His cerebrum was her womb, and his brain stem was her umbilical cord. The latter is the magnum opus of The Lame One. (Look, I know he isn’t the prettiest dude, but you don’t have to call him out like that –Sis) (I cannot be faulted for using his official epithet –Chloe)

The secret of her origin is secret to most, including her “Father” Zeus, her true father, Hephaestus, and even Athena herself. Zeus was tricked into believing he’d impregnated Metis, and further tricked into believing he’d swallowed her. One may wonder what Athena had to gain from the mind of one so easily deceived. But it is not wise to underestimate the mind of one who is deceptively simple. Though originally privy to his own greatest creation, Hephaestus’s knowledge was stricken from him, following an incident that deserves no further description within these pages. Athena herself is ignorant to her own nature, though she is clever enough to figure it out. Thankfully for us, she is also wise enough to know that there are things she is better off not knowing. It is for this reason that Lethe is no stranger to her, though she be a stranger to Lethe.


(This section contains the following violations: explicit names of Divine War Criminals, information that Reapers do not have clearance to access, graphic and misleading metaphorical imagery. Editor, see to it that this section is not published in this state –Atropos)