Hephaistos Saves Achilles

Hi again

As you know
I was preparing my entry for the CGTalk's latest Challenge :
Steampunk - Myths & Legends.
The main page is here---- }features.cgsociety.org/challen…

Just after I upload my image here, Image Competition Deadline Extended submissions is expired, we had a one extra week to complete our works, so I kept on working on mine. And I thought, maybe you might want to see the final result.
Thanks for all comments and all of your nice approach.
Take care.
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It is really heartbreaking challenge. I spend great time when I was out there and it was so good to see all these professionals' work in progress files from start to the end.
I strongly advice all of you to attempt challenges like this. So much is changing while you were sharing knowledge.

And here it is! Orginal name is "Hephaistos Saves Achilles From Skamandros" and it is my entry to CGTalk Challenge.

Topic is "Steampunk" and this challenge asks us to render traditional myths and legends in the steampunk style using elements of gears, springs, brass and steam power. While I was reading, there is only one character hurl in my mind:

!!!HEPHAISTOS!!!

And so, my myth is about Hephaistos.
As you well know Hephaistos was the great Olympian god of fire, metalworking, stonemasonry and the art of sculpture. He was usually depicted as a bearded man holding hammer and tongs--the tools of a smith--and riding a donkey.
According to myth, Hephaistos saves Achilles from the mighty river,Skamandros. Skamandros (or Scamander) was a River-God of the Troad, in Mysia, Anatolia (modern Turkey). The River Skamandros was the largest river of the plain of Troy. Its headwaters were in the foothills of Mount Ida, and its mouth near the entrance to the Hellespont.
I choose this myth for my entry because it's connected to Troy( I love Troy); it takes place in Anatolia, my homeland and it is about the fight between water and fire. And of course it's about steam. And by chance I'm at our summer house near Mouth Ida RIGHT NOW

I imagined a tall legged (ironically Hephaistos has lame legs) character for my Hephaistos. His task was hard to handle. He was sent to fight with the greatest river of the universe and his weapon was the opposite; fire. I imagined the design of his belt, his weapons and his gear according to the information about him. They are based to his characteristics.
So I gave him two flamethrower-like hammers which represents his legs. I also gave him two strong and very tall irony legs to create an irony. And I gave him an ability to create his unlimited fire. His machine is able to transform steam into fire. One leg is vacuming the steam and another is puring the waste. So he became unstoppable with burning when fighting water.

This was the story of my image. Now let's take a look at the original story:

Homer, Iliad 21. 211 ff :
"Now swift Akhilleus would have killed even more Paionians except that the deep-whirling River spoke to him in anger and in mortal likeness, and the voice rose from the depth of the eddies : `O Akhilleus, your strength is greater, your acts more violent than all men’s; since always the very gods are guarding you. If the son of Kronos has given all Trojans to your destruction, drive them at least out of me to the plain, and there work your havoc. For the loveliness of my waters is crammed with corpses, I cannot find a channel to cast my waters into the bright sea since I am congested with the dead men you kill so brutally. Let me alone, then; lord of the people, I am confounded.’
Then in answer to him spoke Akhilleus of the swift feet : `All this, illustrious Skamandros, shall be as you order. But I will not leave off my killing of the proud Trojans until I have penned them inside their city, and attempted Hektor strength against strength, until he has killed me or I have killed him.’
He spoke, and like something more than mortal swept down on the Trojans. And now the deep-whirling river called aloud to Apollon : `Shame, lord of the silver bow, Zeus’ son; you have not kept the counsels of Kronion, who very strongly ordered you to stand by the Trojans and defend them, until the sun setting at last goes down and darkens all the generous ploughland.’
He spoke : and spear-famed Akhilleus leapt into the middle water with a spring from the bluff, but the River in a boiling surge was upon him and rose making turbulent all his waters, and pushed off the many dead men whom Akhilleus had killed piled in abundance in the stream; these, bellowing like a bull, he shoved out on the dry land, but saved the living in the sweet waters hiding them under the huge depths of the whirling current. And about Akhilleus in his confusion a dangerous wave rose up, and beat against his shield and pushed it. He could not brace himself with his feet, but caught with his hands at an elm tree tall and strong grown, but this uptorn by the roots and tumbling ripped away the whole cliff and with its dense tangle of roots stopped the run of the lovely current and fallen full length in the water dammed the very stream. Akhilleus uprising out of the whirlpool made a dash to get to the plain in the speed of his quick feet in fear, but the great god would not let him be, but rose on him in a darkening edge of water, minded to stop the labour of brilliant Akhilleus and fend destruction away from the Trojans.
The son of Peleus sprang away the length of a spearcast running with the speed of the black eagle . . . He sped away, on his chest the bronze armour clashed terribly, and bending away to escape from the river he had fled, but the River came streaming after him in huge noise . . . Always the crest of the River was overtaking Akhilleus for all his speed of foot, since gods are stronger than mortals. And every time swift-footed Akhilleus would begin to turn and stand and fight the River, and try to discover if all the gods who hold the wide heaven were after him, every time again the enormous wave of the sky-fed river would strike his shoulders from above.
He tried, in his desperation, to keep a high spring with his feet, but the River was wearing his knees out as it ran fiercely beneath him and cut the ground from under his feet. Peleides groaned aloud, gazing into the wide sky : `Father Zeus, no god could endure to save me from the River who am so pitiful. And what then shall become of me? ... But now this is a dismal death I am doomed to be caught in, trapped in a bid River as if I were a boy and a swineherd swept away by a torrent when he tires to cross in a rainstorm.’
So he spoke, and Poseidon and Athene swiftly came near him and stood beside him with their shapes in the likeness of mortals and caught him hand by hand and spoke to him in assurance.
First of them to speak was the shaker of the earth, Poseidon : `Do not be afraid, son of Peleus, nor be so anxious, such are we two of the gods who stand beside you to help you, by the consent of Zeus, myself and Pallas Athene. Thereby it is not your destiny to be killed by the river, but he shall be presently stopped, and you yourself shall behold it . . .’
So speaking the two went back again among the immortals, but Akhilleus went on, and the urgency of the gods strongly stirred him, into the plain. But the River filled with an outrush of water and masses of splendid armour from the young men who had perished floated there, and their bodies, but against the hard drive of the River straight on he kept a high spring with his feet, and the River wide-running could not stop him now, since he was given great strength by Athene.
But Skamandros did not either abate his fury, but all the more raged at Peleion, and high uplifting the wave of his waters gathered it to a crest, and called aloud upon Simoeis : `Beloved brother, let even the two of us join to hold back the strength of a man, since presently he will storm the great city of lord Priam. The Trojans cannot stand up to him in battle. But help me beat him off with all speed, and make full your currents with water from your springs, and rouse up all your torrents and make a big wave rear up and wake the heavy confusion and sound of timbers and stones, so we can stop this savage man who is now in his strength and rages in fury like the immortals. For I say that his strength will not be enough for him nor his beauty nor his arms in their splendour, which somewhere deep down under the waters shall lie folded under the mud; and I will whelm his own body deep, and pile it over with abundance of sands and rubble numberless, nor shall the Akhaians know where to look for his bones to gather them, such ruin will I pile over him. And there shall his monument be made, and he will have no need of any funeral mound to be buried in by the Akhaians.’
He spoke, and rose against Akhilleus, turbulent, boiling to a crest, muttering in foam and blood and dead bodies until the purple wave of the river fed from the bright sky lifted high and caught in its waters the son of Peleus.
But Hera, greatly fearing for Akhilleus, cried in a loud voice lest he be swept away in the huge deep-eddying River, and at once thereafter appealed to her own dear son, Hephaistos : `Rise up, god of the dragging feet, my child; for we believe that whirling Xanthos would be fit antagonist for you in battle. Go now quickly to the help of Akhilleus, make shine a great flame while I raise up and bring in out of the sea a troublesome storm of the West Wind (Zephyros) and the whitening South Wind (Notos), a storm that will burn the heads of the Trojans and burn their armour carrying the evil flame, while you be the banks of Xanthos set fire to the trees and throw fire on the River himself, and do not by any means let him turn you with winning words or revilements. Do not let your fury be stopped until such time as I lift my voice and cry to you. Then stay your weariless burning.’
Hera spoke, and Hephaistos set on them an inhuman fire. First he kindled a fire in the plain and burned the numerous corpses that lay there in abundance, slain by Akhilleus, and all the plain was parched and the shining water was straitened . . . So the entire flat land was dried up with Hephaistos burning the dead bodies. Then he turned his flame in its shining into the river. The elms burned, the willows and tamarisks, the clover burned and the rushed and the galingale, all those plants that grew in abundance by the lovely stream of the River. The eels were suffering and the fish in the whirl of the water who leaped out along the lovely waters in every direction in affliction under the hot blast of resourceful Hephaistos. The strength of the River was burning away; he gave voice and called out by name : `Hephaistos, not one of the gods could stand up against you. I for one could not fight the flame of a fire like this one. Leave your attack. Brilliant Akhilleus can capture the city, now, for me. What have I to do with this quarrel?’
He spoke, blazing with fire, and his lovely waters were seething. And as a cauldron that is propped over a great fire boils up dancing on its whole circle with dry sticks burning beneath it as it melts down the fat of wine made tender, so Xanthos’ lovely streams were burned with the fire, and the water was boiling and would not flow but stopped under stress of the hot blast strongly blown by resourceful Hephaistos. And now the River cried out to Hera in the winged words of strong supplication : `Hera, why did your son assault me to trouble my waters beyond others? It is not so much I who have done anything against you as all the rest of the gods who stand by to help the Trojans. Now indeed I will leave off, if such is your order, but let him leave off too, I will swear you a promise not ever to drive the day of evil away from the Trojans, not even when all the city of Troy is burned in the ravening fire, on that day when the warlike sons of the Akhaians burn it.’
Now when the goddess of the white arms, Hera, had heard this immediately she spoke to her own dear son, Hephaistos : `Hephaistos, hold, my glorious child, since it is not fitting to batter thus an immortal god for the sake of mortals.’
So she spoke, and Hephaistos quenched his inhuman fire. Now the lovely waters ran their ripples back in the channel. But when the strength of Xanthos had been beaten, these two gods rested, since Hera, for all she was still angry, restrained them."


Thank you ALL for your kind messages and comments . I love you all!

And thats all, thanks for reading. It's a long entry.


AGAIN, FROM TÜRKİYE TO ALL YOUR FANCY!

Take care
Ertaç

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