Hades

After the gods overthrew their parents the Titans, the three brothers Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades gathered to divide the world into lots, over which they would rule. Zeus, the youngest brother, but also the liberator of his siblings and the slayer of their father Chronus, took the sky and the celestial realm of Olympus as his domain. Poseidon chose the mysterious depths of the seas, while dark Hades inherited the underworld and the deep places of the Earth. Hades became bitterly jealous of his younger brother, now patriarch of a new generation of gods who ruled over Mount Olympus, while Hades ruled over nothing but the shades of the dead in his dark and lonely kingdom.
Hades chanced to see Persephone, the lovely daughter of the goddess Demeter. Taken by her beauty, he abducted her to be his queen. Although Zeus and Demeter insisted upon her return, Hades countered that Persephone had eaten the food of the dead, in the form of some pomegranate seeds. So Zeus was forced to rule that Persephone remain Hades’ queen and dwell in the underworld with him for half of the year. The lovely queen of the domain of the dead has been the sole mitigating force on Hades, who seeks to usurp the power of his fellow gods and extend his domain through death and destruction in the mortal world. He has made dupes of his nephews Ares and Hermes on occasion, and used various mortal pawns and monsters to serve his purposes.
One particular mortal who earned Hades’ displeasure was Daedalus, after he spurned the gods’ gift of immortality. Since then, Hades has claimed Daedalus’ soul for his own, although Zeus has forbidden the God of the Dead from striking Daedalus down personally. Instead, Hades has worked through agents and intermediaries over the centuries to kill Daedalus and end his immortal existence. The knowledge Hades awaited him in Tartarus may have very well kept Daedalus from seeking death at times when his life seemed to have lost meaning.
Hades granted immortality to Daedalus’ foe the Minotaur, with the caveat that the man-bull must sacrifice souls each year to Hades. The Lord of Tartarus has also dealt with the likes of Medea and the brass man Talos, although the latter prefers to have as little to do with Hades and the other gods as possible. In recent years, Hades has used the Murder Spirit known as Jack-a-Knives as one of his primary agents, an entity stripped of everything except the will and desire to kill.
When Daedalus adopted his public identity as a superhero in Freedom City, Hades took it as a personal affront. He massed an army of the dead and invaded the city with the unwitting aid of an amateur mortal wizard seeking power. Various heroes, including Daedalus, united to oppose Hades and his forces, and successfully drove them back to Tartarus. Angered by Hades’ presumption, Zeus forbade his brother to so directly invade the Earth again. Daedalus and his allies went on to found the The Freedom League—a target of Hades’ wrath ever since.
For years after the formation of the Freedom League, Hades bedeviled Daedalus and other heroes with his schemes. Unable to invade the world of the living, he still caused considerable trouble through the use of various pawns, granting temporary powers to ambitious mortals, unleashing mythological monsters, or attempting to draw heroes into his underworld domain to entrap them forever, such as when the Freedom League switched places with the condemned souls of Tantalus, Sisyphus, and others. Each time, heroes thwarted Hades’ plans, occasionally with the aid of Persephone, who did what she could to curb her husband’s excesses.
When Daedalus left Earth for a time, Hades lost track of his old foe and fell into a long period of brooding in Tartarus. Daedalus’ return during the Terminus Invasion both drew Hades’ attention and inspired the dark god. Where Omega had nearly succeeded in drawing Earth into the Terminus, Hades would use other super-villains to do his work, leading humanity toward destruction and bringing them under the shadow of his kingdom of death. Then Hades, Lord of the Underworld, would reign as the supreme god of Olympus and the world!

Physical Description

Special abilities

An Olympian god, Hades is tremendously powerful, possessed of titanic strength, near-invulnerability, and immortality. He is a master of dark magic, able to wield hellfire, conjure stygian darkness or legions of damned souls, create portals across space and dimensions, and much more. Hades can transform his appearance at will and possesses a magical helm that renders him invisible, allowing him to move amongst mortals unseen.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Hades is a villainous prime mover, a mastermind who operates behind the scenes and can be responsible for any number of threats for the heroes to overcome. He considers himself cheated of his rightful due by his exile to dark and dismal Tartarus and by Zeus’ decree that the gods will no longer directly interfere in the affairs of mortals. Where once he was due worship and respect, now he is largely forgotten and overlooked, while mortals revere and worship these brightly clad fools they call heroes. Hades has seen their like in the form of Achilles, Heracles, Jason, Bellerophon, and others. They all succumbed to hubris and mortality in time, and so will these modern heroes.