Olympian Immortal Theory
by Marco DalmonteI've also thought about a possible explanation regarding the bizarre events detailed in IM2.
As you all may (or may not) know, in IM2 a clique of immortals calling themselves Olympians descend on Mystara, build a palace atop Mount Olympus near the border between southern Broken Lands and northern Darokin and terrorise Corunglain and the Darokinians in order to get their attention and open worship. Entropics under Nyx's leadership (including Talitha, Hircismus and Brissard) then take immediate action to imprison and execute these immortals, responsible for breaking the immortal laws, so that they make space for new candidates and weaken the other spheres whom they belong.
One of these renegades escapes (Athena aka Lokena) and calls for plea and for help; obviously the Immortal PCs answer, and they're sent there by Hierarchs of the Spheres to investigate on the matter.
My answer to this weird sequence of events is the following (and I borrow bits of a theory by Victor Caminha, IIRC, who invented the Mandala of Myth): The immortals known as Olympians are a group of relatively young or weak immortals (Initiate to Temporal rank) who were assigned to a certain duty, guarding an ancient artifact of the Dimension of Myth called the Mandala of Myth. Inside this artifact the Immortals actually bound the souls of some deities who ruled over the Dimension of Myth when they attempted to invade the Multiverse and take over.
What happens is that some of these deities manage to possess their wardens (Zeus becomes Taroyas, Athena becomes Lokena, Hermes become Turmis, Ares become Bemarris, Aphrodite become Kythria and Hera becomes Patura) and thus they improve the immortal rank of the host (thus the higher stats in IM2 for these immortals, in comparison to WotI stats). Then they come down to Mystara and start to wreak havoc much like they did in the Dimension of Myth, knowing that the immortals would have never intervened directly due to their laws. What they didn't consider was that this whole situation was set up by Entropics (probably Talitha), who wanted to eliminate low level immortals to weaken the basis of the other spheres, and that they intervened directly to kill the deities (thus violating the Prime Law as well and taking the Olympians by surprise) and to avoid any possible exposure. Unfortunately, during the battle Lokena managed to get rid of Athena's influence (or maybe they cooperated) and she flew to an outer plane, sending out a distress call to immortals to come and investigate the matter.. and from here the adventure starts.
What do you think? Sounds more reasonable than that mish-mash of absurd events you read in IM2 ?