First Titan War

"I remember the war. Lightning shook the world, we threw rocks. The Titans almost won."

- Briares

The Titanomachy, also known as the First Olympian War was the ten year war fought between the elder gods, fighting from Mount Othrys and the younger gods, fighting from their future home of Mount Olympus. The war was said to have been fought on the plain of Thessaly in Greece.

Beginnings
The roots of the Titanomachy begin when Ouranos imprisoned the Cyclopes and Hekatonkheires in Tartarus. Furious with her husband's treatment of their children, Gaia asked her son, Kronos to take revenge for her. Attacking his father with a scythe, Kronos cut Ouranos into pieces and cast them into the sea, eventually forming into Aphrodite. Kronos then established himself and his siblings as masters of the universe with his sister, Rhea as his queen. Kronos' rule would be called the Golden Age because it was a time of peace and prosperity.

However, Kronos came to love his power even over his own family. When his child was born, he learned that it would eventually try to supplant him and swallowed each of his children as soon as they were born. Horrified by the fate of her children and their father's savagery, Rhea spirited away her youngest child, Zeus after his birth and raised him in secret from his father.

After reaching adulthood, Zeus was told the truth about his parentage and became determined to depose his father. With the aid of his cousin, Metis, Zeus sneaked into Kronos' palace and slipped an emetic into his drink, causing him to become very ill and regurgitate his five elder children, who (because they were immortal) had grown up inside Kronos. Because of the order they were eaten and thrown up, their ages are quite confusing. For example Hestia was the oldest child, so the first one born and eaten but the last thrown up. This makes her both the youngest and the oldest of the children of Kronos, and she was named "Hestia, the first and last". Zeus' freed siblings readily agreed to join their brother in his war against their father.

The War
The gods quickly divided between Kronos and his children with most of the Titans rallying behind their king. However, some such as Prometheus supported the Olympians while others such as Oceanus remained neutral. From Olympus in the north and Orthys in the south, both sides were kept in a deadlock for ten years. In the final year, Zeus freed the long imprisoned Cyclopes and Hekatoncheires who gratefully offered their services to the Olympians. With their aid, the Titans were defeated and exiled to Tartarus.

Aftermath
After the last battle, Zeus took his father's scythe and hacked him into pieces before throwing them into Tartarus. Kronos' sons then divided his former domain between themselves with Hades claiming the Underworld, Poseidon holding the sea, and Zeus winning the sky. With the fall of the Titans, the Olympians came to replace them entirely and mankind developed under them to create Western Civilization.