Wrath of the Gods Page #8

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He transfers the crown from his head to yours.

KING:

If only Princess Dione were here to see this. But

alas she was carried away by that despicable

tyrant, King Minos.

He hands you a parchment scroll.

KING:

She left this message for you—just in case.

You unroll it and a cameo of Dione comes up over the

writing and speaks to you:

DIONE:

My precious, my lost, my son I thought I’d never

see; if you have need to come to me and prove

who you might be; remember this and pace it

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true and step it carefully…

(pause)

As the seasons follow, beginning in the Spring

with its budding growth, so shall you proceed.

The scroll pings into your inventory.

KING:

The kingdom is yours, though I’ll keep an eye

on it while you continue your adventuring.

Farewell.

There are two exits from the Banquet Hall. One leads to the

palace exterior, the other to the Princess’s Room (below).

Princess’s Room

CASTLE INTERIOR:
BEDROOM. There are four tiles on the

floor here, colored pale green, dark green, gold, and white.

Hop from one tile to another according to the riddle of the

Princess’s message: “As the seasons follow, beginning in the

Spring with its budding growth, so shall you proceed.” If

you follow the sequence representing the colors of Spring,

Summer, Autumn, and Winter, a panel slides up and reveals

a jewel box. Inside is a beautiful tiara. This will serve to

prove your identity to your mother when you eventually

find her. Click on it and it goes into your inventory.

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UNDERWORLD CATACOMB WITH BOULDERS. Having

been poisoned at the Banquet (page 38), you come to your

senses in Tartarus (TAR-tuh-rus). This was the zone of the

Underworld where the greatest sinners were punished

for their transgressions. The worst of these offenders were

deemed to be those who had sinned against the gods

themselves. The fifty daughters of Danaus (DAN-ay-us)

murdered their husbands on their wedding night, driving

daggers into their hearts and chopping off their heads. In

fairness, they had not sought the marriages and were acting

on their father’s orders. All the same, they were condemned

in the afterlife to a perpetual labor of carrying water from

the river Styx (STIX) in jars—jars that leaked like sieves.

For throwing his father into a fiery pit, Ixion (iks-EYE-on) had

to be purified by Zeus (ZOOS). Then he ungratefully tried

to seduce the great god’s wife. Hera (HEE-ruh) warned her

husband what was afoot, and Zeus fashioned a cloud into

Hera’s likeness. Ixion made a pass at the cloud and was

caught in the act. In punishment, he spends eternity in the

lowest level of the Underworld, chained to a fiery wheel.

The greatest crime of all was to abuse the gods’ hospitality.

All the more so since to be on familiar terms with the great

deities was a particular favor, reserved for the elect. Thus the

hero Bellerophon (beh-LARE-uh-fon) was guilty of the greatest

presumption when, in his later years, he dared to ride

the winged horse Pegasus (PEG-uh-sus) to the very gates of

Olympus. Apparently he imagined that his heroic conquest

of the Chimaera (kye-MEE-ruh) qualified him automatically

Rock-Breaking

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for admission to the company of the gods. Zeus repaid this

arrogance by sending a horsefly to sting Pegasus. The flying

horse reared and Bellerophon was flung from its back, falling

so far and landing so hard that he was crippled for life. He

spent the remainder of his days a miserable, wandering

outcast.

Tantalus (TAN-tuh-lus), on the other hand, was invited to

share not just Zeus’s table but the great god’s secrets. But

Tantalus dared to tell these secrets to his fellow mortals. Or,

some say, he stole Zeus’s ambrosia (am-BROH-zhuh). (Nectar

and ambrosia were the special treats of the gods. Nectar

was fermented honey, or mead. Ambrosia may have been

a concoction of honey, water, fruit, cheese, olive oil, and

barley.) For either or both of his transgressions, Tantalus was

consigned to Tartarus—as far beneath Hades as Hades is

beneath the sky.

A dead soul stands in a field of boulders.

ROCKBREAKER:

Wha’cha in for? Me, I pulled fifteen to eternity at

hard labor for swipin’ ambrosia from the gods.

(pause)

Tell ya what, you break some of these rocks for

me and I’ll clue you in.

If you don’t happen to have a sledgehammer, you try the

hand or “do” cursor on one of the boulders. This causes you

to kick it—futilely. This hurts your foot, so you hop around

saying, “Ooh, ah, ow, oh!” Using your hands and/or sword,

if you hit the rock a few times:

ROCKBREAKER:

You’ll never get nowhere that way. You’re gonna

need some kinda rock-buster.

You’re free to click your way along an exploration of Tartarus.

When you return with the sledgehammer (page 36) and click

it on a boulder, it causes you to hit some of the various

boulders scattered around. After breaking three boulders:

ROCKBREAKER:

Okay, okay, that’s enough… The king at the

banquet? He expected you ta recognize the royal

pattern ‘cause it’s on the sword.

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If you enter this scene from Hades Portal 1 before you’ve

died at the Banquet, the Rockbreaker is off on his lunch

break.

Nymph

TEMPLE INTERIOR. When the hero Perseus (PUR-see-us)

found himself committed to bringing back the head of the

Gorgon Medusa (GORE-gun meh-DOO-suh), he might have

paused to consider the extent to which such a quest was

akin to graphic adventure games like Wrath of the Gods. For

starters, there’s the essential business of bringing back—as

in Heracles (HUR-a-kleez; Roman name: Hercules) “bringing

back” Cerberus (SUR-bur-us) from the Underworld, or Jason

“bringing back” the Golden Fleece. How remarkably similar

to a gamer acquiring a particularly hard-sought icon for his

or her inventory—or so Perseus might have reflected had he

been born in the era of computers. And then, in furtherance

of the Medusa quest, there was the laundry list of other

“inventory” that had to be acquired first: the shield with

the mirrored surface, the helmet of invisibility, the sandals

of Hermes (HUR-meez) which, when strapped even to mortal

feet, conferred the ability to fly.

Now, some of the inventory that Perseus needed was in

the care of certain nymphs (NIMFS), or more accurately,

naiads (NYE-adz)—who were specialized nymphs (young

and beautiful female spirits) of springs, ponds, and rivers.

And just to find these naiads, let alone induce them to part

with the needful items, Perseus had to go to great lengths

indeed—but that is another story.

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Some versions of the myth have it that the naiads in question

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