Editing Sylvannos

'''Sylvannos''' is said to be the son of the trickster god Hermerces and the agricultural goddess Karameter. He is the god of nature and is associated with the wild places, shepherds and flocks, goats, fields, groves, wooded glens, masculine sexuality and virility. One legend states he learned of masturbation from father, Hermerces, and then passed the habit on to shepherds. Sylvannos is never worshipped in temples or man-made edifices, but only natural settings such as caves, grottos, and glens. 

His position as male counterpart to Ethulia often results in an.... interesting relationship with the Goddess. 

One such legend (and one of the more bawdy ones at that) among the faeries of Arcadia describes how he discovered the wild goddess bathing in a spring. The sight ignited flames of love in his heart (and lust in his furry loins). He pursued a relationship with the goddess through the many methods a man might use to woo a woman: he gave her flowers, wrote and recited poetry in her honor, played songs for her on his pipes. At each turn, she denied him. 

Eventually, he could stand for it no more, and chased the Huntress through the forest. Entrapping her against a great apple tree, the god surrendered to his bestial desires... As he reached his bliss, the goddess's laughter from some distance away snapped him from his reverie. He had never had her at all; his essence was spent in a knothole of the tree. With furred loins stiff and sticky from tree sap, he wandered away to bathe in a nearby lake, burning with embarrassment. The tree flowered, fruited, and dropped its seeds. These seeds became the first of the dryads. 

As he bathed, the goddess appeared nude and beautiful in the water nearby and taunted him. Again he claimed her, and again the goddess outwitted him. He had spent himself in the maw of some large fish. The goddess again mocked him from the shore and fled away with Sylvannos is in furious pursuit. His seed seeped from the maw of the fish and mingled with the waters, finding within freshly spawned fish eggs. From these divinely fertilized eggs, the first of the aquatic nymphs would be born.

The goddess would lead him on a merry chase that ended in a wide pasture. Full of rage and rut, Sylvannos mated with Ethulia many, many times (or so he thought) until the veil of sleep claimed him. He awoke the next morning amidst a flock of nanny goats, heavy with his offspring. His heart was broken that the object of his affection would go through so much effort to deny his love, and so Sylvannos vowed to never again pursue her. The first of the short-statured and perpetually child-like fauns were born from his tryst with the goats.

And now the story turns... As the goddess of hunting, Ethulia was thoroughly enjoying Sylvannos' pursuit of her, and watching his antics with those things she made appear as her fanned her own excitement. In hearing his vow to never chase her again, she realized she had gone a bit too far. She made attempts to apologize but the God ignored her words and ran away in shame. Resolved, the Huntress hunted Sylvannos down as the wolf hunts the rabbit. For three days and nights she harried her prey until exhaustion claimed him. She took him to her bower where he slumbered for three days and nights. He awoke finally to find himself at the peak of pleasure with Ethulia astride him. She had, while he slumbered, made herself quite "familiar" with his body. She proclaimed her own affection for him and swore that, in return for his forgiveness, he would never have to chase her; she would come willingly to him. And so he gave her his forgiveness and she gave him three twin sons; the first of the satyrs who became the nobility among all the other children Sylvannos had sired in his pursuit of Ethulia. Or so the legend says.


[[Category:The_Mysteries]]