The Olympian gods all possess certain superhuman physical attributes. They are true immortals, who cease to age upon achieving adulthood, and who are unable to die by conventional means. The Olympians are immune to all terrestrial diseases and are resistant to conventional injury. If an Olympian is wounded, his or her godly life force will enable him or her to recover at a super human rate. It would take an injury of such magnitude that it incinerates an Olympian or disperses a major portion of his or her bodily molecules to cause him or her to die. Even then, it may be possible for a god of greater or equal power, or several gods acting together, to revive the deceased Olympian before the god’s life essence is beyond resurrection. Olympian flesh and bone are about three times denser than similar human tissue, contributing to the gods’ superhuman strength and weight. The metabolism of the gods gives them superhuman endurance in all physical activities. In addition, many Olympian gods possess additional superhuman powers which may be magical in nature.

According to ancient myths, the primeval Earth goddess Gaea is the progenitor of the principal Olympian gods. However, it is unclear whether the Olympian race originated on Earth, on Olympus, or in another dimension linked to Olympus. Gaea gave birth to the sky god Ouranos (who is not to be confused with the Eternal named Uranus). Gaea mated with Ouranos and bore him the first generation of the Olympian race, known as the Titans. One of the Titans, Cronus, rose to power when he fatally wounded Ouranos. (Cronus is not to be confused with the Eternal known as both Chronos and Kronos.) The dying Ouranos prophesied that Cronus would likewise be overthrown by Cronus’s children. As a result, upon the birth of each of Cronus’s children, he had the infant imprisoned in Tartarus, the most dismal section of the Olympian underworld known as Hades.

Appalled at the mistreatment of their children, Cronus’s wife, the Titaness Rhea, concealed her sixth pregnancy from him and secretly gave birth to Zeus in Greece. Zeus grew to adulthood among the human shepherds of Crete.

Zeus set his siblings—Neptune, Pluto, Hera, Demeter, and Vesta, now all grown to adulthood—free from Tartarus. Zeus and his allies fought a ten-year war with the Titans, a war which ended with Zeus’s victory. He imprisoned most of the male Titans in Tartarus and established himself in Olympus as supreme ruler of the Olympian race. Zeus married the goddess Hera, but he engaged in many affairs with goddesses and mortal Earth women. Some of his children were gods. Zeus, Hera, Neptune, Demeter, and Vesta, together with Zeus’s children, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Hephaestus, Hermes, and Venus, comprised the membership of the high council of the Olympian gods, known as the Pantheon. Vesta later resigned her seat on the council in favor of Zeus’s son Dionysus. Zeus’s brother Pluto was not a member of the Pantheon, preferring to stay within Hades, which he ruled.

After the end of the Hyborian Age, the Olympian gods sought worshippers on Earth. Neptune became the patron god of the water-breathing Atlanteans. Zeus worked for the Olympian gods to be worshipped by the people of the land now known as Greece. Mount Olympus lay near Olympia, the principal city of the Eternals. Zeus and his daughter Athena met with Zuras, the leader of the Eternals, and his daughter Azura. Noticing the physical resemblance between Zeus and Zuras and between Azura and her self, Athena suggested that the Olympian gods and the Eternals form an alliance in which the Eternals would act as the gods’ representatives on Earth. The other three enthusiastically agreed, and Azura took her current name of Thena to signify the sealing of the pact. However, over the years, many humans came to think of many Eternals not as the gods’ representatives but as the gods themselves. This led to a growing resentment by the gods toward the Eternals, a resentment that recently erupted into war, but today they are again at peace.

Worship of the Olympian gods spread from Greece to Rome, and throughout the Roman Empire. But when Christianity finally replaced the worship of the Olympian gods in the Roman Empire, Zeus decided that the time had come for the Olympians to break most of their ties with Earth. Neptune, however, was still allowed to watch over his Atlantean worshippers. Zeus’s children Hercules and Venus have spent periods living among Earth mortals.

An alternate future has been depicted in which Zeus and the other Olympians, except for Hercules, leave their plane of existence in the 23rd century so that Hercules may father a new race of gods. Whether the Olympian gods will come to such an end in what becomes the “main stream” future is as yet unknown.