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Bonus Content - Sequel Storylines II
🕑 Added 2024-05-08 02:00:01 +0000 UTCHey again everyone!
I'm once again here with some insight into the individual character storylines for the sequel. This month, I have Charon's and Hekate's for your consideration.
As before, major spoilers for Blood of the Living lay ahead!
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As before, I've attempted to condense the plot of each route into a one-sentence summary. For Charon, that sentence is "Atonement is hard."
The big backstory reveal that sets all of the rest of this in motion is the fact that Charon (formerly Ares), got caught up in a deific rage one time and... sank Atlantis. This, as you might imagine, is the event that got them exiled to the Underworld, not so much because anyone care all that much about the humans on Atlantis, but because it was considered Poseidon's city, and Charon himself was considered a bit too reckless and uncontrollable for most people's taste, drunk on human worship as they were. This plot is less about rehashing all of that and the godly politics of it all, and more about Charon trying to maintain the positive changes they've made in their life in the face of temptation to revert to old habits. And it's less about that than it is about learning to forgive oneself, even when other people won't forgive you (and are quite amply justified in that).
Here's the plot beat breakdown:
1: Theseus and Pirithous were idiots, but… (backstory reveal)
2: I got permission to leave but I need an escort/a visit to Poseidon to find out what happened with Atlantis after I sank it. It is not very welcoming.
3: An Atlantean more willing to try and forgive me has sent a request for help dealing with a monster. I don’t want to fight, but I feel as though I must.
4: It turns out that sea monster was a trap/attempt to kill me. This is the kind of thing that previously would have sent me on a murderous rampage, but this time I am going to just forgive them and leave.
5: It hurts that there are things I may never be able to make up for, but I’m glad I had the courage to try. Also I belong here with you, thank you for your support.
As you might gather from the above, the central questions in this plotline are "can you be redeemed if no one forgives you?" and "how much of my old self can I allow to remain?" The latter is particularly relevant with respect to violence and its use to do harm versus its use to protect.
I anticipate all of this being quite angsty, but I'm pretty sure those of you playing Charon's route already expected at least some of that!
So then, next we have Hekate! Her route has some similar themes in terms of touching on human interaction with the gods, and the direct intervention of the gods on human life, but she comes at it from a completely different angle, as someone who maintains good relationships, some of them even personal, with her worshippers, who are oftentimes also her collaborators in magic.
The central question here is in fact about that: to what extent is it wise to directly interfere with the lives of humans? Is there a way to do so responsibly, or should the gods simply leave them alone?
And the summary is: "Ex-Titan goddess puts perhaps too much power in the hands of mortals, then has to fix it and decide what lesson to take from that."
In particular, it goes something like this:
1: Seeing those guys reminded me a bit of my own trial (backstory)
2: I’ve seen a world where the gods are no longer relevant; I want to give humans tools to look after themselves without our direct intervention.
3: Hekate’s cult summons a child of Echidna/meeting Echidna and Typhon
4: Hekate helps her cult defeat the thing they called, informs them she will not directly intervene again.
5: Helping humans is still something I believe in, but I also look forward to seeing how they do in a time when we no longer directly interfere with them.
Two very different approaches to the ways gods and humans can interfere with one another, and hopefully plotlines that have been a little foreshadowed by some of the contact the PC has had with humans thus far (if they chose to at all, that is!)
