Wrath of the Gods Page #6

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the Avalanche (page 20) or the Market (page 112) and click it on

one of the men, you throw it and it hits a seed man on the

helmet. He doesn’t catch on to where it came from and turns

to his neighbor.

SEED MAN:

Hey, man, what’d you do that for?

They go at it with their swords, the brawl becomes general,

and soon all are lying dead. You receive 25 points.

DARK WOODS WITH CROSSROADS. There are multiple

choices of direction here. Crossroads were haunted by the

hellhounds of the awesome goddess of the night—Hecate

(HEH-kuh-tee), patroness of sorcery, queen of ghosts.

Crossroads

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SEASIDE CLIFF-TOP. When the hero Theseus (THEE-see-us)

set out on the road to Athens to meet his father for the first

time, he ran into a number of robbers and thugs. He dealt

with most of these briskly, making it a point to give each

a dose of his own medicine. For instance, a fellow named

Sinis (SIN-is) used to ask passers-by to help him bend two

pine trees to the ground. (Why the wayfarers should have

wanted to help in this activity is not disclosed. Presumably

Sinis was persuasive.) Once he had bent the trees, he tied his

helper’s wrists—one to each tree. Then he took a rest break.

When the strain became too much, the victim had to let go,

which caused the trees to snap upright and scatter portions

of anatomy in all directions. Theseus turned the tables on

Sinis by tying his wrists to a couple of bent pines, then letting

nature and fatigue take their course.

Further along the road, not far from Athens, Theseus

encountered Sciron (SKY-ron). This famous brigand operated

along the tall cliffs which to this day are named after him.

He had a special tub in which he made each passing stranger

wash his feet. While they were engaged in this sanitary activity,

Sciron kicked them over a cliff into the ocean below, where

they were devoured by a man-eating turtle. Theseus turned the

tables on Sciron, just as he had turned them on Sinis.

You encounter Sciron and talk to him.

SCIRON:

I am Sciron and these are my cliffs. I demand that

you kneel down before me and wash my feet.

Sciron

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For some reason you kneel down and proceed to do so. If

you talk to Sciron again:

SCIRON:

Shut up and wash!

BANKS OF THE RIVER STYX. Having been kicked off the

cliff by Sciron, you land in a heap in Hades (HAY-deez). It was

to the kingdom of Hades, god of the dead, that all traveled

Styx

If you draw your sword or click the hand or “do” cursor

anywhere on the screen except your own foot (the trick for

solving this puzzle and winning 25 points), Sciron kicks you

over the cliff. Sciron laughs diabolically. You fall for a long time,

into Hades and onto the banks of the River Styx.

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when life was done. This realm lay beneath the earth and

was called the Underworld, or Hades, after its ruler. The first

barrier to the journey of the dead beyond the grave was the

most famous river of Hades, the Styx (STIX). Here the newly

dead congregated as insubstantial shades, mere wraiths

of their former selves, awaiting passage in the ferryboat of

Charon (CARE-on) the Boatman. Charon was an ill-tempered

and imposing figure to his would-be passengers, but he was

capable of being cowed by a more forceful personality. When

Heracles (HUR-a-kleez; Roman name: Hercules) sought to bring

back Cerberus (SUR-bur-us), the hellhound, in furtherance of

one of his quests, he glared at Charon so menacingly that the

ferryman poled him across forthwith—fare or no fare. The

customary bribe, however, was a coin called an obol. And

the customary way of presenting it to Charon to ensure safe

passage was to place it in the mouth of the corpse.

You pick yourself up and click over to a Shade.

SHADE:

Welcome to Hades, kingdom of the dead. Say,

you look kind of healthy to be hangin’ around

down here. Oh, no matter. That’s Charon the

Boatman over there. He’ll take you across the

River Styx if you’ve got the toll.

Charon’s face is invisible in the shadow of his large hood. If

you talk to Charon he growls. If you’ve acquired a coin from

the female Shade (next page) and you click it on Charon:

CHARON:

No, no, no, that won’t do at all. Bad form, bad

form.

If, however, you click the coin on your own head:

CHARON:

That’s right, under the tongue it goes. Good

show!

He reveals his face to be a skull with glaring eyeballs.

CHARON:

Climb aboard!

You cross the river and climb out onto the far bank. If you

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think to talk to Charon again:

CHARON:

I’d avoid Sciron if I were you. But if you should

run into him again…quit trying to use your head

and use your foot.

Charon remains on this side of the Styx so that you can come

back to him to get this hint. (There’s only one coin in the

game, so you won’t be able to pay for another ride.) When you

enter from the exterior Hades Portal 1 (page 37) without dying

first at Sciron (page 32), Charon is still on the other shore so you

can’t cross the Styx from this direction. Of course the boat ride

with Charon requires that you’ve got a coin for the toll, so

you are compelled to wander around looking for one. The exit

from the first scene leads to some Underworld catacombs.

Shade

CATACOMBS OF HADES. You wander through these

Underworld grottoes. The afterlife, as conceived by the early

Greeks, was a grim and gloomy proposition. Although there

was no religious dogma on the subject, most imagined that

some part of a being lived on after death. What survived,

however, was very insubstantial, a ghostly shadow—or

shade—of the living being. The surviving families did

their best to provide for these specters, sending them off

to the Underworld with a bribe for Charon, to induce him

to ferry them across the Styx to the kingdom of the dead.

Here they would live on forever in the company of their

fellow wraiths—unless, that is, they had been guilty of

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some egregious sin, in which case they might be punished

for eternity by the ruler of the Underworld. The only worse

fate, perhaps, might be to lack the toll for Charon and be

condemned to wander in lonely desolation on the near shore

of the river Styx until the end of time.

You encounter a female Shade. She points at her mouth and

uses facial expressions to try to clarify her meaning.

FEMALE SHADE:

I han’t halk. I gah a coy unner eye ung.

She drops a coin from her mouth; it can be heard to hit the

floor with a “ching!”

FEMALE SHADE:

Now look what you made me do!

You add the coin to your inventory in order to pay Charon’s

toll.

Sledge Rack

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