Tiamat, the goddess of the salt sea

(from smitegame.com) "Tiamat is the first. The begetter of all life. The mother of creation. When the heavens did not yet exist, nor the earth below, she was there. For aeons, she coiled silent and sleeping in the cosmic abyss, until she met Apsu, the god of fresh waters. Together, they drew up the primeval waters of creation, and from those waters came all things.

Her eldest children gave shape to the Heavens and the Earth, and created the younger deities. But these younger gods were treacherous creatures – duplicitous and cunning. They trapped Apsu in his temple, angering Tiamat. She fashioned monstrous children to punish the traitorous gods. Harried from their palaces by Tiamat's armies, they were forced to seek the protection of Marduk, mightiest of the young gods.

Marduk forced the other gods to acknowledge him as their king, and then went to war with Tiamat. After a great battle that rocked the heavens, Marduk managed to defeat Tiamat and cast her back into the cosmic abyss from which she had been born. Locked out of the world she had given birth to, Tiamat returned to her slumber, deaf to the cries of her children as Marduk and the other gods hunted them almost to extinction.

But now the wheel of creation has turned once more, and the primeval waters recede. Tiamat has surfaced from her enforced sleep and risen from the abyss to find the world – her world – much changed. Worse, it is infested with lesser gods. Not those she knew, perhaps, but the same even so. Like all lesser gods, they claim ownership over the Heavens and the Earth – of that which does not belong to them. They believe themselves to be all powerful. But Tiamat will show them what true power really is."