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Description
Hermes, called Mercury by the Romans, is one of the most iconic gods in the vast pantheon of Greek mythology. His name is attested in inscriptions dating back to the 15th or 14th century BCE, in its Mycenaean form, "Hermahas". This name is related to the Greek word "herma", literally meaning "stone heap" but more specifically referring to stone guide posts with the head and… other parts of Hermes carved into them. This is why most scholars suspect that Hermes was a hypostasis of the wilderness god Pan, who was the most commonly depicted god on herms in the olden days. Hermes was originally an epithet of Pan associated with attributes of commerce and wayfinding, before eventually he was split off to become his own individual.

There are actually very few myths with Hermes as the main character specifically. More often than not, he's a side character who pops in and out to lend various heroes a helping hand and exchange messages between the gods. The only tale that really centers on him is that of his birth. Born of the goddess Maia and the God Zeus, because everyone is the son of Zeus, his birth took place in a cave far away from outsiders and Zeus. While Maia rested from the ordeal, the newborn baby Hermes wandered away from home and stole the sacred cattle herd of Apollo for sustenance. Understandably, Apollo was quite peeved, and wanted the baby to be punished, but Maia insisted that a newborn would be incapable of frolicking away with an entire herd of cattle. Apollo then went to tattle to Hermes' other parent, who found the situation absolutely hilarious. Zeus ordered his younger son to lead Apollo back to the remaining herd, and along the way Hermes wins over the sun god with the wonderful music of the lyre he invented from a tortoise shell. Apollo trades his herd for the musical gifts of Hermes, and also gives his little brother his most iconic symbol: the staff Caduceus.

Elsewhere, Hermes is attested as siding with the Achaeans during the Trojan War, though when Priam begs his aid in reclaiming the body of his slain son, Hector, he has a brief change of heart to broker a truce on that matter. Later, he'd lend frequent assistance to his descendant Odysseus on his famous voyage home. Other tales attest to Hermes' nature as a trickster and patron of thieves and merchants. He was a god of the roads, including those that lead to the realm of the dead. This is likely why the Romans associated the Germanic psychopomp god Wodanaz with their equivalent, Mercury, though it is unlikely they derived from a common source. Later Christian and Muslim tradition would turn to the Ptolemaic fusion of Hermes with the Egyptian god Thoth, Hermes Trismegistus, or "Hermes the Thrice Great". These later scholars would interpret Hermes Trismegistus as an ancient human sage responsible for the invention of writing and esoteric wisdom. They'd identify him with the biblical figure of Enoch, who was the only man ascended to heaven without dying. Hermes Trismegistus was said to be the initiator of the great mathematician Pythagoras, and later the scholar Apollonius of Tyana would unlock the god's lost tomb where the famed Emerald Tablet and its maxims was sealed away. This tradition would later go on to inspire an entire sect of Hermetic magic cults starting in the Renaissance, and culminating in the Order of the Golden Dawn and its daughter religion, Thelema.

It is this later tradition which influenced the canon narrative of Hermes in the Drake Hero universe. Born the human Enoch in the 3rd millennium BCE, his god brought him on high for his righteousness, transforming him into the angel Metatron. The promise was that the great Deluge would wipe out the evil that plagued their people forever, eliminate death in exchange for an eternity in heaven. And then the promise was broken. A thousand years later and Enoch's people were still suffering, made slaves in Egypt, and then made to wander in the desert. Then the real kicker: Metatron discovered the great mechanism behind the existence of the supernatural. If belief in the Canaanite pantheon was forgotten, it would wipe the gods and everyone in their afterlives out of existence, including the very family Enoch was sent to persuade it was okay to die before the Deluge, like the gods had promised. Unable to wait for his god to slog through the divine bureaucracy any longer, Metatron went rogue and used black magic to reincarnate himself into a different supernatural being from a different belief system so as to escape the old gods. He was born Hermes, a Greek god, in the 15th century BCE, and spent the next thousand years building a network to find buried esoteric secrets which may be able to help him and his family escape the cycle. In the end though, it was not a power that any entity could control, and in the 6th century BCE, he changed his tone. He merged with the Egyptian god Thoth, once his enemy, to become yet another incarnation: the divine sage Hermes Trismegistus. He devoted the rest of his life to studying this mechanism rather than controlling it, passing on his wisdom and waiting for the prophesied day when humanity would need it the most…

Design notes, Hermes is a very recognizable god, so the basic silhouette was fairly easy. In most ancient Greek art he's depicted as a man, mostly naked save for a traveler's cloak, winged hat (some interpret this as a metal helmet but as far as I can tell this is a much later version) and winged shoes. I have never drawn a naked person and I don't think DeviantArt would be very happy with me if I started now, so I threw a few layers on him based on sparse pottery art depicting him as such. I tried to portray the fabric as loose and flowing, perfect for a runner. Those damned sandals gave me so much trouble, because the feet are like the least aerodynamic placement for a wing and it looks really awkward when you actually stop and think about it. I think I eventually got it, though. As for his head area, usually Hermes is depicted as a smooth baby face, reflecting his younger nature among the other gods. However, while researching the history of this god, I found that this is actually a later interpretation, and earlier depictions give him a beard, which I thought both looked unique and fit the setting of the D&D game I ran better. Since that game was set in the 6th century BCE, right on the cusp of when artwork began to shift away from the beard, I decided to go with a very thin peach fuzz sort of facial hair. I'm actually really happy with his look, and it's pretty versatile to plop into any time period. As for colors, I leaned heavily on those color-enhanced photos of the planet Mercury from NASA, for fairly obvious reasons. I wasn't sure about it at first but the more I filled in the lineart, the cooler it looked. Very, for lack of a better word, otherworldly. Fitting for a god.

Description
Hermes, called Mercury by the Romans, is one of the most iconic gods in the vast pantheon of Greek mythology. His name is attested in inscriptions dating back to the 15th or 14th century BCE, in its Mycenaean form, "Hermahas". This name is related to the Greek word "herma", literally meaning "stone heap" but more specifically referring to stone guide posts with the head and… other parts of Hermes carved into them. This is why most scholars suspect that Hermes was a hypostasis of the wilderness god Pan, who was the most commonly depicted god on herms in the olden days. Hermes was originally an epithet of Pan associated with attributes of commerce and wayfinding, before eventually he was split off to become his own individual.

There are actually very few myths with Hermes as the main character specifically. More often than not, he's a side character who pops in and out to lend various heroes a helping hand and exchange messages between the gods. The only tale that really centers on him is that of his birth. Born of the goddess Maia and the God Zeus, because everyone is the son of Zeus, his birth took place in a cave far away from outsiders and Zeus. While Maia rested from the ordeal, the newborn baby Hermes wandered away from home and stole the sacred cattle herd of Apollo for sustenance. Understandably, Apollo was quite peeved, and wanted the baby to be punished, but Maia insisted that a newborn would be incapable of frolicking away with an entire herd of cattle. Apollo then went to tattle to Hermes' other parent, who found the situation absolutely hilarious. Zeus ordered his younger son to lead Apollo back to the remaining herd, and along the way Hermes wins over the sun god with the wonderful music of the lyre he invented from a tortoise shell. Apollo trades his herd for the musical gifts of Hermes, and also gives his little brother his most iconic symbol: the staff Caduceus.

Elsewhere, Hermes is attested as siding with the Achaeans during the Trojan War, though when Priam begs his aid in reclaiming the body of his slain son, Hector, he has a brief change of heart to broker a truce on that matter. Later, he'd lend frequent assistance to his descendant Odysseus on his famous voyage home. Other tales attest to Hermes' nature as a trickster and patron of thieves and merchants. He was a god of the roads, including those that lead to the realm of the dead. This is likely why the Romans associated the Germanic psychopomp god Wodanaz with their equivalent, Mercury, though it is unlikely they derived from a common source. Later Christian and Muslim tradition would turn to the Ptolemaic fusion of Hermes with the Egyptian god Thoth, Hermes Trismegistus, or "Hermes the Thrice Great". These later scholars would interpret Hermes Trismegistus as an ancient human sage responsible for the invention of writing and esoteric wisdom. They'd identify him with the biblical figure of Enoch, who was the only man ascended to heaven without dying. Hermes Trismegistus was said to be the initiator of the great mathematician Pythagoras, and later the scholar Apollonius of Tyana would unlock the god's lost tomb where the famed Emerald Tablet and its maxims was sealed away. This tradition would later go on to inspire an entire sect of Hermetic magic cults starting in the Renaissance, and culminating in the Order of the Golden Dawn and its daughter religion, Thelema.

It is this later tradition which influenced the canon narrative of Hermes in the Drake Hero universe. Born the human Enoch in the 3rd millennium BCE, his god brought him on high for his righteousness, transforming him into the angel Metatron. The promise was that the great Deluge would wipe out the evil that plagued their people forever, eliminate death in exchange for an eternity in heaven. And then the promise was broken. A thousand years later and Enoch's people were still suffering, made slaves in Egypt, and then made to wander in the desert. Then the real kicker: Metatron discovered the great mechanism behind the existence of the supernatural. If belief in the Canaanite pantheon was forgotten, it would wipe the gods and everyone in their afterlives out of existence, including the very family Enoch was sent to persuade it was okay to die before the Deluge, like the gods had promised. Unable to wait for his god to slog through the divine bureaucracy any longer, Metatron went rogue and used black magic to reincarnate himself into a different supernatural being from a different belief system so as to escape the old gods. He was born Hermes, a Greek god, in the 15th century BCE, and spent the next thousand years building a network to find buried esoteric secrets which may be able to help him and his family escape the cycle. In the end though, it was not a power that any entity could control, and in the 6th century BCE, he changed his tone. He merged with the Egyptian god Thoth, once his enemy, to become yet another incarnation: the divine sage Hermes Trismegistus. He devoted the rest of his life to studying this mechanism rather than controlling it, passing on his wisdom and waiting for the prophesied day when humanity would need it the most…

Design notes, Hermes is a very recognizable god, so the basic silhouette was fairly easy. In most ancient Greek art he's depicted as a man, mostly naked save for a traveler's cloak, winged hat (some interpret this as a metal helmet but as far as I can tell this is a much later version) and winged shoes. I have never drawn a naked person and I don't think DeviantArt would be very happy with me if I started now, so I threw a few layers on him based on sparse pottery art depicting him as such. I tried to portray the fabric as loose and flowing, perfect for a runner. Those damned sandals gave me so much trouble, because the feet are like the least aerodynamic placement for a wing and it looks really awkward when you actually stop and think about it. I think I eventually got it, though. As for his head area, usually Hermes is depicted as a smooth baby face, reflecting his younger nature among the other gods. However, while researching the history of this god, I found that this is actually a later interpretation, and earlier depictions give him a beard, which I thought both looked unique and fit the setting of the D&D game I ran better. Since that game was set in the 6th century BCE, right on the cusp of when artwork began to shift away from the beard, I decided to go with a very thin peach fuzz sort of facial hair. I'm actually really happy with his look, and it's pretty versatile to plop into any time period. As for colors, I leaned heavily on those color-enhanced photos of the planet Mercury from NASA, for fairly obvious reasons. I wasn't sure about it at first but the more I filled in the lineart, the cooler it looked. Very, for lack of a better word, otherworldly. Fitting for a god.