Hephaestus’s mountain
Hephaestus is the god of fire, blacksmiths, metallurgy and volcanoes. Hephaestus is Hera’s son and is usually shown as a lame blacksmith. When she gave him birth, Hera rejected him because of his deformity and she threw him off of Mount Olympus. Since then, he is limping!
He is, above all, a divine inventor and magical items creator. His characteristics are a hammer or a pair of tongs.
His creatures
Cerberus is the monstrous multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead and the Stix from leaving. Most of the time, the three heads represent the past, the present and the future; but some say they symbolize infancy, youth and old age.
They are commonly portrayed as serpentine. These monstrous creatures are often portrayed as hoarding treasure or sacred places. Some dragons are said to breathe fire or to be poisonous, or to have several heads. Among the most famous are the dragon of Colchis and Ladon.
The Chimera is an evil fantastic fire-breathing creature. It is usually depicted as a hybrid creature composed of the body of a lion, the head of a goat arising from its back, and a tail that might end with a snake's head.
The phoenix is a long-lived bird that obtains new life by arising from the ashes of its predecessor who died in a show of flames and combustion. He is the symbol of death cycles and resurrection. Herodotus describes him: “the plumage is partly red, partly golden, while the general make and size are almost exactly that of the eagle”. He is also associated to the Egyptian Bennu.
