Classification: Mythical Beasts & Cryptids

Temporal Range: 7th Century BCE

Geographic Range: Lerna, near Argos, Greece

Diet: Livestock and would-be-heroes

Horde: Greek

The Hydra, or the Lernaean Hydra to give it its full title, is a serpent with multiple heads that is not to be trifled with. Some stories claim three heads, others as many as 9. A sibling to Cerberus, it was also the child of Echidna and Typhon and another creature that Heracles took to task.

Haunting the marshes of Lerna, the Hydra was known to surface and harass the locals - eating livestock and running amok. While some heroes attempted to take on the monster, they quickly learned that it would not be felled so easily. The key thing that anyone taking on the Hydra should know is that the reason it is so difficult to kill is because if you cut off one head, more will grow back.

While this seems an impossible task, Heracles found that cauterising the wound slowed down the process of new heads sprouting and then, when in doubt, dropping a large amount of rocks and boulders on it should do the trick. While it seemed that the creature was killed during Heracles’ second labor, it would seem that its appearance following the opening of the Rift would suggest that all this did was slow the creature down. And we’re sure it’s very, very angry by now.