The Moirae's Mirror - May

Hey all,

This month, I figured I'd use the Mirror to give you something of a little walkthrough of part of a scene I'm working on. You'll see it all with the BIP this month, of course, but this is just a little bit of my thought process about it. 

So! This happens along the branch where PC has chosen to go find Hermes in the morning, rather than Charon or doing something on their own. Hermes is hanging out in the lounge, messing around with a lyre, as one does. This is technically an allusion to that myth where child Hermes invented it and gave it to Apollo as an apology for stealing some cows, more or less. Though Apollo is the god of music, Hermes is no slouch at it, and is particularly good with the instrument he invented, though he doesn't often take it that seriously (in public). For this scene, it's just sort of a set piece, something for him to be doing while this conversation is going on that showcases a bit of his personality.

So here we are just establishing some continuity. Demeter is definitely working as hard as she can to get the PC back, but because of how Olympian politics work, it's going to take some time to see results from that. I want this plot point to have a presence through the narrative, though how much the PC asks about it or wants to know will certainly affect how often they're updated on it! Nevertheless it should loom, whether in a good way or a not so good one depending on the PC's attitude towards their situation. 

Hermes, of course, is quite biased in the Underworld's favor, at least in some ways, and thinks Demeter is way too much of a stuffy grump, something reflected in how he talks about the matter. This isn't anything so awful as a personal grudge; it's just that in D&D morality terms, he's CG and she's LN, so their personalities and outlooks are very different. PC can of course react to this in a variety of ways.

There also might be a bit of a shock in here for certain types of PC. Demeter has never treated her child as any less or less important for being half-human. She is raising them as her heir, and while she is certainly overprotective and inclined to helicopter, she definitely doesn't love them less for being a demideity. PC can also be something of a snob—inclined to think of themself as more important or civilized than the residents of the Underworld. 

So, realizing that not everyone's number one priority is returning them to Olympus might be a bit of cold water to the face, hence Hermes's apology in the last choice. Of course, PC could also just think that the people of Olympus are fundamentally decent and wouldn't stand for this on principle, so learning that most of them… don't really care could be a blow in a similar way, even for those who aren't snobs!

This is only a small selection of the first branch of the next choice. I have some nested things in here. Basically the PC gets their initial choice of reaction, then based on that Hermes will respond differently, and then the PC gets another response, to which he will usually reply differently depending on his backstory with them. 

This scene is the first place where the backstory actually makes a major appearance. It's a lot of extra work, but I've had fun with the variations, and I think the differences illustrate a lot about Hermes as a person. He's also one of the few characters who will from the beginning snipe a little back at an obviously rude or insulting PC. Not as much as he would if they were in different circumstances, but he lacks the patience of Hades or Charon or Hekate and the obliviousness of Pyri. So he's a bit similar to Alekto in this respect, though his sniping, as hers will settle to be, is always reactionary—he's not mean first, so to speak. 

I've skipped the rest of the options for that bit and brought the preview here, because this is another way in which backstory affects this scene: it branches into two, based on whether PC is reasonably friendly with him or not. If they are (the player picked the backstory where they're best friends or the one where they get along pretty well), he offers to give them some bits of gossip and information on some of the other people they've met so far. 

This one I had fun with. The information isn't anything too revealing, as Hermes really thinks PC should earn that stuff from the people themselves, but some of it's kind of fun, and more importantly I like it because this is a situation in which he's actually mostly sincere, and I think it comes through just how much he loves his found family. 

The other branch, for those either rivals with him or who don't know him very well, is him proposing that they try to get to know each other somewhat better. In the rival case, he won't say he's offering the olive branch, but he is. As some of the responses might make clear, a rival Hermes has never really been interested in having a rivalry, so keeping it one will be almost entirely PC's decision haha. And of course in the other cases, he either is or is basically a stranger, so the idea is just to rectify that! Again, backstory affects some of his responses, particularly whether or not the PC considers him a rival. 

And that's this month's Mirror! I hope the additional insight was at least a bit enjoyable; I'm glad to get to share this stuff with people, to be honest. :)