Helene/Introduction
Many versions of the legend of Helen of Troy exist, and some bear some truth, but there is a story rarely told. A story from the mouth of Helen herself. Pegasus, the great spirit, came to Leda, a queen of Sparta and a powerful elder Theurge of the Black Furies, and with her sired children of his spirit. She later gave birth to two great eggs. One egg bore two infant male humans, named Castor and Pollux, or Polydeuces, whom were Baptised by the Furies and named as kinfolk. From the second egg, two females were born. Clytemnestra, born as a wolf with a back blazed in white, was proclaimed Garou under the gibbous moon. Her sister was different. She bore the form of her great father, appearing as a winged filly of purest white with wings that shone with the fire of opals. She was given the name Helene.
Akin to her twinborn sister, Helene grew to learn how to change at an unusually early age, learning to take the guise of a human woman to pass among the mortals of the world. Though only late in her childhood, her beauty was of great renown, and many men both mortal and supernatural sought her. One, a young Ahroun named Theseus, sought to claim her and tried to steal her but was struck down by spirit servants of Pegasus. He would later go on to become the slayer of the last Apis. She was raised among her siblings, along with three sisters born of Leda and Menelaus – Timandra and Philonoe, both kin, and Phoebe, a Theurge like her mother who would create the fetish Phoebe’s Veil. When she was old enough to wed, Helen’s step-father, King Tyndareus, accepted the proposal of Menelaus, a neighboring king with whom he sought an alliance.
With Menelaus, Helen bore three human sons, Aethiolas, Maraphius, and Pleisthenes, all of whom the Furies acknowledges as kinfolk. She also had a daughter, Hermione, who bore the Garou blood as a Philodox and found great honor among the tribe as a trueborn Dauhter of Pegasus. Helene was happy enough with her husband, though often she would take to her true form and travel far and wide to seek out lost treasures and wild places, unable to remain confined to the ground for more than a few days at a time. Very few knew of her true heritage, but her beauty alone was enough to invoke discord. One young man, a prince of Troy named Paris, sought to make her his own. On a diplomatic journey, Paris met Helene and secretly followed her, witnessing her transformation. Appealing to the gods and spirits for aid, a servant of Karnala, the Urge Wyrm of Desire, appeared in the form of the goddess Aphrodite, and told him how to bind her. Like her spirit father, a bridle of pure gold could tame Helene. In sacrificing his soul to her, Paris received the golden bridle, and stole upon Helene transformed one night as she set to fly and captured her. The bridle (or a collar of gold, as it appeared in her human form), bound her to Paris and turned her will to obey and desire only him. Even her power to change her form was only available by his will. He stole her away to Egypt where he kept her for ten years while a war in Troy raged as her family sought to recover her. It is unknown if Helene ever bore Paris children. If she did, no record of them exists and she refuses to speak of it. By great fortune, Menelaus and his forces finally located her, and he struck down Paris and freed Helene and she flew in her true guise to Troy, aiding in the final destruction of the Trojan forces. Disgusted with her capture and finally fed up with her mortal life, Helene left her family behind, taking to the skies and world to fully embrace her true form as an immortal creature.
She would disappear for several centuries, living her life as a free and wild creature, watching the world changing and growing from afar. She remained aloof from it all, content without the concerns and struggles of the mortal world though curious to keep an eye on it. She remained aware of her mortal descendants and those of her siblings as they moved among the world, though in time even the very story of their own blood was lost in legend and regarded as little more that fanciful recitations to make an old and dignified bloodline sound even more impressive. When it suited her, she would appear once or twice throughout the millennia, perhaps aiding a struggling Fury caern out of regret for leaving her children behind, but she never lingered long. As time changes and the world believed less and less, her grief became greater and greater, and soon loneliness took the place of freedom. Attracted to the brilliance of the Americas and the rumors of the End Days coming, she descended once more and took the guise of a woman, borrowing some clothes and supplies from those who didn’t seem to need it and decided to see what the world of man had come to since she’d been gone.
