Well first of all, here is a lovely piece of artwork from Carolyn Carter who is working on the design for Cerebus. This piece looks very Greek and will deffinatley be in our show in December.
Next up, here is a story rough I wrote tonite at Rosana's request. She wants to write a script so that we can story board some of this.
Helen, Daughter of Hades
In Athens there was a girl who seemed to love death. While everyone else wore normal white tigas she dressed in the gray ankle long shrouds that were normally used to dress corpses. Also, most Athenians enjoyed writing poems about life and nature, Helen spent her days writing goos (funeral) music. People explained that this was because her mother was a seamstress who specialized in funeral shrouds, and her father was a goos singer. They figured that naturally Helen would be interested in her parents work, and that her strange behavior was just a phase and that she would grow out of it. The only thing they couldn’t understand was Helen’s sword.
The sword was of typical Greek fashion except for one thing, it was entirely black, the blade, the handle, the sheath. If they could have held it they would have also learned that it was deathly cold to the touch. Helen always had her strange sword with her. It was uncustomary for a woman to ever use a sword; no one knew where Helen had gotten it. She never used it. They assumed that like most girls she had no idea how. If they could have seen the blade they would have known that this sword was from the underworld, it was the sword of Hades.
Why did Helen have this sword? It was the sword of her true father. Only three people knew that the Goos singer was not her true father. The singer knew it, her mother knew it, and Helen knew it. They kept this secret because the truth was that Helen was the daughter of Hades.
On the day that the city of Athens was attacked Helen was sitting in the cool shade of a tree writing a death song, as usual. She probably would have ignored the invasion if she could have. Idiocraties, a philosopher who had been banished from Athens, had returned. The people thought he was quite mad. When he had been hired by the city to create a more advanced device for predicting the moon, sun and stars he had instead created a number of strange contraptions that had accidentally caused a great deal of damage to the city. Now he rode in a great bronze, beast, another of his creations it seemed. The machine he had built was titanic. It had the form of a great beast with the head of a man, but the body of a lion, and the wings and legs of an eagle. He came crashing through the city destroying homes, temples and bath houses all the while laughing manically, and talking about revenge. He was quite mad it seemed.
The city was in peril. The greatest warriors were no match for the beast. Ballistae had no effect. The citizens fled in terror and panic. Still Helen remained calm in the cool shade of the tree, writing her dirge. But when fire from the head of Idiocraties’ beast set fire to the tree and her parchment Helen became quite upset. Only one Athenian saw what happened next. He had been cowering beneath another tree nearby when Helen rose and drawing her sword spoke the words “By the Power of Hades” and having so spoke raised her sword over her head. The Athenian, whose name was Cowerdicus, watched in horror as the very bowels of the underworld opened and a great figure who had a volcano for a head rose out of the ground. It was Hades, brother of Zues, Lord of the Dead. He gave to Helen Cerebus, the three headed dog, and a smoldering spear just as black as her sword. She mounted her steed and with spear in hand wet to challenge Idiocrates.
“You will not have your revenge today” said Helen, and she cast her spear at the bronze titan. It exploded in a thousand pieces. The city was saved. Idiocraties fell. With his last breath he said “I fall now, but other titans have I created, they will give me my revenge.” Since that day Helen has kept a vigilant guard of the city, anticipating the day when another titan will rise. But until then she still enjoys dressing in death shrouds while se writes her dirges.
