Bonus Content - Sequel Storylines

Hey everyone!

This month’s editing-related bonus content involves a few of the individual character routes for the upcoming sequel. As you’ll probably notice as we go, these are all still very rough ideas; all I’ve needed so far is a general storyline, and a way of splitting it into roughly five parts. I’ve tried to involve existing myths in as many of them as possible but a few of them are more my own creations than anything you’d find in the Greek mythological ‘canon,’ such as it is. And of course, where myths do appear, I’ll be altering them significantly, given that FoA is about completely different themes and a completely different view of the world than the myths tend to be.

Anyway, without further ado, today we’ll be looking at two of the character routes: Pyri’s and Hermes’s.

Needless to say, major spoilers for Blood of the Living follow.

To begin with, I tried to some up with a one-sentence or less summary of what was going on in the route. For Pyri, it was a single word: Ariadne.

The myth of Dionysus and Ariadne is one of the most well known of the Dionysian myths I think, and in a romance game where you’re playing as an amalgam of Dionysus and Persephone, I wasn’t just going to ignore his established love interest. This is actually a twist I’ve had in mind since first conceiving of Pyri’s character – they were either going to be Ariadne’s sibling, or be Ariadne. All things considered, I decided there was no reason they couldn’t be the latter.

So, there are a lot of fun tie-ins with things that have always been hinted at for Pyri: their mysterious lost memories, the scars on their face, the (as yet unaddressed with them) appearance of Theseus, who also appears in a pivotal role in the myth of Ariadne, and so on.

The basic five-point plan I have for the route is as follows:

1: Oh shit, I recognised that Theseus guy and now I’m starting to remember things.

2: I feel like I need to go to Crete (identity discovery, minotaur in the underworld?)

3: What happened to me? (Track down Theseus, who reluctantly explains, help Pyri decide what to do about that.

4: I want to go visit the place where I was abandoned (fight the monster that killed them)

5: I can see why I chose to forget, but now that I have you, I’m glad I remember again.

(Please excuse the informality of these; they are very much still written as they occurred to me!)

As you can see, Pyri’s route will involve learning what they chose to forget, gaining closure on painful memories, and deciding who they are in the wake of all these revelations. This is an intimate and frightening process, one ripe for Pyri and the PC to grow closer.

For each route also I’ve tried to come up with a central question, something driving the plot forward and something for which the answer is something the character at the centre of the route is (consciously or unconsciously) seeking. For Pyri and their route, this question is one of identity: who am I, Pyri or Ariadne, and can I handle remembering everything that I once chose to forget?

For Hermes’s route, on the other hand, the one-sentence summary goes like this: “Help I may have screwed up and now this friend of mine wants to kill a relatively innocent Gorgon lady.”

As the myth-savvy of you might guess from this, Hermes’s route will involve the myth of Perseus and Medusa. As the very myth-savvy of you might realise, for this to be happening at the same ‘time’ as the Dionysus and Ariadne myth suggests that time is being quite bent around. To which I say: yes, it absolutely is. Please ignore that for the sake of the story. There’s a slight in-universe justification in that one of the major characters has time-control powers he’s not fully mastered yet, but I’d rather not trot that one out as an explanation unless I really have to. Timey-wimey stuff gets weird fast, after all.

Anyway! Hermes is indeed friends with/a patron of Perseus in this story, and this is one of those stories in the source material where most of the people involved are stuck between a rock and a hard place if you look at it. Or at least, Perseus and Medusa both are, which makes for interesting conflict, and means that changing the outcome of the myth isn’t going to be as easy as a charisma check or two!

Here’s the outline:

1: So, uh, I have this friend named Perseus, and I’m afraid he’s about to do something stupid (backstory reveal)

2: Warning Medusa, but also please don’t kill him he’s just a dumb idiot. (She makes no promises.)

3: Trying to convince Perseus not to do the dumb thing. (This doesn’t work because he gave his word and believes it will be saving his mother from an unwanted suitor.)

4: Interceding in the fight between Perseus and Medusa. Coming up with a trickster solution. (Impersonating Zeus?) Maybe some intercession by Athena, who agrees to help?

5: I know I’m not always the most responsible. I’ll try to be a little more careful about these things in the future, but I’m never going to stop wanting to help my friends. Thank you for understanding me.

While this story might initially seem quite unrelated to anything deeply personal to Hermes, that’s not really the case here. Hermes, at this point in things, is not a god most people ever rely on for anything, and certainly not to actually fix their problems. He’s more of a problem-causer than a problem-solver, and he knows this is how he’s perceived, and knows that it’s largely his own fault that this is so.

But that doesn’t mean he necessarily wants it, and in a sense, this is personal growth for him: taking the risk of failure to help a friend and a (relatively) innocent person, putting himself out there in hopes of being the solution, even if his trickster’s talents are usually only considered good for causing trouble. It’s about learning that who he is and who he wants to be don’t have to be in complete opposition, that any kind of person can do a good thing. And that, maybe, taking responsibility now and then isn’t the worst thing he could do. He’ll need the PC’s support, advice, and help to make it happen.

The central question at the heart of his route is basically what I’ve just said: Can I be the kind of person who fixes problems, instead of making them? There’s a corollary in there about whether or not he can trust his instincts, which should get a decent amount of addressing as well.

And that’s the preview! I hope you’ve enjoyed learning a bit about what’s to come, and hopefully the plots are interesting, even in this bare-bones sort of form. Have a great week!