#Hades is great too

[demigods-posts]

luke fumbling in recruiting percy has to be one of his greatest failures. a beautiful thing the show does regarding luke and percy's relationship is building rapport between them through shared moments like settling into camp, eating meals together, but especially through swordfighting lessons. the swordfighting scene at the beginning of episode 8 not only reveals that percy and luke already share similar beliefs about the fear-based system the gods have cultivated, but it's clear the conversation stays with percy when he fights ares and later calls out zeus on his waning skills as a father and a king. however, luke's plan fell through the moment percy learned that the winged-shoes were meant to drag him to tartarus. not only that, but the shoes nearly killed grover, a friend percy cared for deeply. if nourishing loyalty and trust was the key to ensuring a partnership with percy, then it was luke's faulty planning, arrogance, and impatience that cost him the greatest ally he could ask for.

[sisididis]

Let me tell you, the post-House of Hades heartbreak is like no other.

[salvepersone]

people who say the relationship goal of greek gods are persephone and hades have never heard of aphrodite and ares

[gingermintpepper]

SO BASICALLY,

The general concept is that Hyacinthus, the (secret) sixth prince of Laconia is sent to Olympia to help out after the catastrophic earthquake that's completely paralysed the town. He gets there, he's given his land and he finds this cool statue of his Very Handsome Man on his land and would you look at that, the Very Handsome Statue is talking to him and introduced himself as Apollo, how nice-!

In short, it's something of a domestic mystery - much like in Fields of Mistria itself, the earthquake has awakened old magic in Olympia once more due to interfering with the seals far below the earth. Hyacinthus, motivated to help Apollo get his lost memories back and for the good of the town, traverses down the mines so he can break the seals and, in the process, maybe un-statue the really hot guy that's sharing this farmland with him.

Below the cut I'll put the list of the characters I assigned to the townspeople if you're interested <33

Farmer → Hyacinthus

Sent by the Adventurer’s Guild to help repair Olympia. Is the only one that can hear the voice of the Radiant from the statue on his farm. Sixth prince of Laconia, still in contact with his family, wanted to help his people after the disaster. 

Caldarus → Apollo

A God of old Olympia, used to be widely worshipped but is now sealed away deep under the earth. Has lost most of his memories along with much of his power but has recently reawakened due to a disaster which disrupted his seals. Can only communicate to Hyacinthus through the statue on his farm.  

Balor → Hermes

A prolific merchant who excels at delivering quality goods in unorthodox places. Took a special interest in Olympia after the disaster and remained the town’s sole contact to the outside world in the wake of their bridge collapsing. Always smiling and extremely mysterious - he has suspiciously low prices despite the danger of his work. 

Nora → Demeter

Head of Olympia’s Chamber of Commerce and co-owner of the General Store in town. Works closely with both Hermes and Hektor to keep the town running smoothly as well as coordinate the restoration of Olympia after the disaster. 

Holt → Triptolemus 

Co-owner of the General Store and Demeter’s life partner. Extremely reliable but a bit lost without Demeter’s instructions, he’s extremely skilled at cultivating crops and is responsible for stocking the general store with seasonal seeds and saplings. Strictly vegetarian.

Celine → Persephone

Demeter’s daughter and an avid lover of flowers. Constantly busy with the beautification of Olympia when she’s not researching the rare and mythical flora of Olympia’s past. She handles stocking the general store with seasonal flower seeds and furniture. Is in a secret relationship with Hades, one of the merchants from out of town.

Dell → Pelops

Demeter’s ward and a greatly troubled child. Rambunctious with a very vivid imagination, he has big dreams of returning to the capital and taking his rightful place as a Duke. Due to the remote nature of Olympia, it is the perfect place for him to be hidden away from his father’s madness and, luckily, no one in Olympia takes his tales seriously. Demeter worries about him endlessly.

Eiland → Cassandra

The younger child of the Baron and Baroness of Olympia, she is greatly concerned with the history and architecture of Olympia. Extremely perceptive and always on the lookout for more hints about Olympia’s buried past. Founded the History Society so she could more effectively research her current obsession, the scattered steles of a long dead god.

Adeline → Hektor

The elder child of the Baron and Baroness of Olympia, after the disaster struck he dedicated himself to restoring Olympia at all costs. He truly believes in the people and potential of this town and though he has never been particularly superstitious, he has found himself more inclined to pray and pay attention to natural omens since starting this project. He personally dedicates himself to working alongside Hyacinthus for the sake of restoring Olympia to its former glory. 

Elsie → Paris

Older relative of the Baron and a Count, he agreed to look after Hektor and Cassandra in Olympia while their parents were away. Seems to prefer Olympia’s quieter countryside but always has a story or two to tell about his exploits in the Capital. Seems especially fond of a particular man and woman he left behind in favour of coming to live with the Baron and his family.

Juniper → Penthesilea

A foreign woman who has not entirely settled into Olympia. Runs the bathhouse and gym and spends a lot of time on the Eastern Road. Is especially interested in the seals and inscriptions scattered around Olympia but staunchly refuses to join the History Society. Apparently, she is not very fond of Orpheus. 

Valen → Orpheus

The extremely skilled but extremely reserved town doctor. He has a clinic in the town centre and mostly keeps to himself, though he is especially fond of flowers and trees. Doesn’t speak much and instead prefers to write his thoughts down or communicate with sign language. Wears a wedding ring but notably, lives alone.  

Olric → Zephyrus

The older of the blacksmithing duo, a gentle man with a big heart. Part of the History Society and very enthusiastic about life, he was part of a skilled band of adventurers called the ‘Anemoi’ before eventually retiring and moving to Olympia. Spends a lot of his time on high hills and summits and can speak the language of flowers. Is good friends with Persephone.

March → Dionysus

The younger of the blacksmithing duo and undoubtedly the more skilled craftsman of the two, has been working extremely hard to help put the town to rights after the disaster and is a bit on edge because of it. Super welcoming and friendly but also somewhat unsettling due to his intensity, doesn’t actually care much about smithing and would much rather spend his days making wine casks and custom drinking cups.

Hemlock → Asclepius

Co-owner of the Sleeping Eclipse Inn and the town doctor before Orpheus moved in. He’s an anchor of the town and the inn is Olympia’s beating heart. Extremely well-read and a skilled luthier he helps wherever he can. Due to some difficulties with his health after the disaster, his family has been forcing him to take it easy. Cries every time he hears Orpheus sing.

Josephine → Epione

Co-owner of the Sleeping Eclipse Inn and the town veterinarian. She’s a powerful woman, the second tallest person in Olympia and very intimidating on first glance because of it. Despite this, she is extremely gentle-natured and always has a smile for those who enter her doors, works closely with Aristaeus to ensure the town’s internal supply of animal produce isn’t threatened, especially after the massive losses taken after the disaster. Was a ranger before she met Asclepius and still has her horse, Miel.

Reina → Iaso

Eldest child of Asclepius and Epione, was educated in the Capital but came home in a huff due to a major blowout with her boss at the hospital she worked at. Currently studying the healing power of food and cooking and works as the Sleeping Eclipse’s chef while she does her research. Is extremely concerned about her father’s health but refuses to let it show.  

Luc → Machaon

Middle child of Asclepius and Epione, he is determined to become a surgeon and surpass his father’s legend. Very smart young lad and one of the few people in town who completely believes Pelops’ stories, he loves small animals like insects and birds and often tries to nurse any small injured creature he can find back to health. Is fascinated by Pelops’ shoulder prosthetic and hopes to one day be able to make such a difference for someone else.

Maple → Hygeia

Youngest child of Asclepius and Epione, is a  twin but her sister died shortly after being born. Despite never knowing her sister, Hygeia struggles with a deep sense of loneliness and grief that has only recently started to ease with the help of the townspeople. Adores Orpheus and often spends the day shadowing him in the hopes of hearing him sing or play his lute. She is the only one Orpheus talks to about his dead wife.

Ryis → Thamyris

A carpenter who studied music in the Capital, came to Olympia shortly before the disaster at his friend’s request and was trapped after the bridge collapsed. Has a bit of a poor attitude due to once having big dreams of becoming a famous bard but is now too attached to Olympia to leave, no matter how much he grumbles about its backwater nature. Is convinced there’s something singing in the mines but is completely useless with a sword. 

Landen → Hippolytus

Owner of the Red-tailed Stag House of Carpentry (or the Stag House for short) and a very good friend of Thamyris. He gave up on urban life a long time ago and is dedicated to living in oneness and harmony with nature. Strictly vegetarian and kind of a stickler for his views being respected, he’s been on edge since the disaster since there’s been a massive change in the lands of Olympia. Most of the townspeople don’t take him seriously, but Penthesilea seems to think of him as a kindred spirit. He doesn’t work on the 6th or 16th of every month.  

Errol → Eros

Museum Curator, ex-adventurer and all around incredibly offputting guy, despite his open nature and pretty face, Eros seems to know everything about everything yet is unwilling to share that information with the rest of the town. His only delight seems to be the History Society and he is extremely pleased that Hyacinthus has decided to collect old artefacts and explore the mines. Apart from Cassandra, Eros is the only one that acknowledges the statue on Hyacinthus’ farm and occasionally passes by just to stare at it.  

Hayden → Aristaeus

Owner of Sweetwind Farm and the only other farmer in Olympia, Aristaeus has deep roots in this town and his family has lived and farmed here for generations. Skilled with animals and is extremely handy with preserving food, pressing olives into oil and keeping bees, he has almost single-handedly kept the town fed during the worst of the shortages brought on by the disaster despite the losses to his animals. Has a deep aversion to dogs and wishing stars. Seems to know a few things about Olympia’s history that no one else does but isn’t exactly eager to talk about it.

Terithia → Medea

A beautiful woman who lives alone on the beach. Has lived a long and eventful life and refers to Olympia as her ‘jail-cell’, her ‘gilded cage’ and her ‘death-house’ based on her mood. Much like Eros, she seems to know many things but is not inclined to let anyone else know, but unlike Eros, she very openly spins exciting tales of her youth when she was a court sorceress and princess. Though she doesn’t do much magic these days, she still has the knowledge and is always willing to decode some arcane knowledge for a price. 

Obviously there are a lot of liberties taken for the sake of the AU but that's the broad strokes of it. Thanks for asking about it @gotstabbedbyapen !!

[gettingnowherefaster]

real nerd gamer talk but. reading the comments on steam for the latest Hades II patch… wow. people are very rude. To a small indie studio who is honestly doing amazing work.

Also the people claiming certain aspects of the current version make it unplayable.... idk get better I guess? It's also okay to admit something is hard and you can't do it?

[triple--a--threat]

when the going gets tough the tough gets going (only one result while searching for some damn fics on ao3)

[argetcross]

if zagreus from wasting beats was born as a mortal man into BG3's Faerun instead of ancient Greece what would his story be??? What would be different/the same??

HNRGHHHHH Robin, this question is like catnip for me.

Oh man, if we're following wasting beats logic (he was once a god but is now just a mortal human man who doesn't have memories of being a god), then I think he'd be a prime target for tadpoling.

The cult of the Absolute would probably want to capture him alive and see if they could "release" his latent divine potential, as an asset to their cause. Zagreus starts investigating them because he wants answers about his life, damnit, and quickly finds out that, actually, he wants to stop this cult more than anything.

Given Zagreus in general can accept all sorts of punishment, a small thing let getting his brain chewed open wouldn't necessarily stop him, but I think he'd have a super rough time of it! He'd have to grow very quickly into the DND adventurer hardiness, perhaps specializing in necromantic magic and every melee weapon known to man. Thanatos could even be his patron and he could go hard down the warlock route, wielding blood magic and blade alike.

Zagreus' quest would probably still center around the unspoken questions of his parentage and also the missing divine goddess of nature. It's almost an easy fit, because so much of BG3's Faerun is based off wild hunches and adventurers galloping about the world. He'd make friends with the druid Callisto and the light cleric Iapyx and help mediate the local orcs and their failing marriage.

Thanatos would show up in the camp and leave without warning, but no one other than Zagreus could see him. The god seems to want to leave some sort of warning, but Zagreus keeps trying to get him to play drinking games with him instead. :'D

But as he journeys through Faerun and explores old temples and starts to get hints of what, exactly, his origins might be, there's this growing fear that he might be reclaimed by whatever plane his father resides in. He might not be able to stay at all. The god of death, his FATHER, wants him back, mortality be damned, and he might have to make the ultimate choice:

Embrace the tadpole and allow himself to be forever changed, casting aside who he once might have been-

or

Finally understand who he was born to be, take the power of his bloodline, but forever leave behind everything he cares about to fulfill that destiny.

[asleepinawell]

this little quest chain was one of my favorites in ew because of the perspective it gave into the ancients, a very different one from what little we get from emet and hermes. there’s pretty ample proof that their society was not in any way perfect and was actually really deeply flawed to the core, but this is a look at people, individuals, and ones outside of the main bunch we talk to

put in a read more to spare your dashes

they go to speed up the aether dispersal of some creations (animals) that were killed and they call the deaths distressing and want to find a way to pay respects to the fallen and bring peace to their souls. at the wol’s suggestion they gather flowers for the dead. and they say what amounts to a prayer over the bodies. it’s so very very different from how hermes believes everyone feels and how hythlodaeus spoke of ‘returning to the star’ being beautiful (though even hythlodaeus said a brief prayer for the first boss in ktisis hyberboreia)

and yes, they still talk about life and death in terms of ‘purpose’ and this is no way refutes the callousness towards other lives we’ve seen some of the ancients display in elpis, but my personal take is that it shows that some of them at least understood on some level that there were important things missing in their culture that they needed. even if they didn’t fully grasp why, they were searching for these missing pieces. in this case, a way to process grief and acknowledge the worth of a life, even a non-human life. and they also actively ask for the new ideas the wol presents and talk about incorporating them into their lives and duties

there’s also a ton of little side quests in elpis that involve one person asking you to find or check on another person, or to carry a message to them. there’s so many people who care about each other and are just absolutely godawful at expressing it in person and need the poor wol to act as an intermediary (this happens in present day as well but it was just every 5 seconds in elpis)

there’s one striking one where one person asks you to bring a second person a message about how that second person’s concept was approved and succeeding (I forget the exact details) in the hopes that it would dissuade them from returning to the star. it didn’t dissuade them and the first person accepted that pretty calmly, but the thought was there. there was this hope that they could keep someone they cared about around longer even if the argument they tried to use to persuade them came back to that grim ideology about ‘purpose’. they lacked the framework to think about it another way, but they still tried

it’s definitely a stark contrast from the shade amaurotines we saw in shb (assuming for the sake of argument that they were accurate depictions and not biased by emet which is a big assumption), especially the ones who turned the topic of ‘should we save the lives of others on the planet or just focus on ourselves’ into a casual debate topic as a pastime. there are really terrible ways of thinking about the world that have been ingrained into the population presumably from birth. that’s not something that can easily be changed. but it could be changed. the potential was there

at a societal level the ancient world was terrible in so many ways, and ultimately doomed if it couldn’t change, but at an individual level the people had so much potential and at least some of them were trying their best to make sense of the things their society denied them and adapt their lives

my personal takeaway from all this (which is just a headcanon aka an opinion and i’m not trying to sell as canon), was that if their society could have been changed then the ancients had the potential to have produced people who could have faced meteion. i’m leaving aside the questions of the timeframe and zodiark tempering everyone because that’s not my point. my point is that the ancients weren’t inherently unable to be who was needed to save their world. the density of their aether making them unable to interact with dynamis is highly symbolic of the flaws of their society, of course, but that shouldn’t have stopped them from talking to meteion, from showing compassion and understanding and hope in the face of despair

i’m not trying to take any jabs about any characters’ decisions in the story because the actual situation they were in was extremely complicated (like hey zodiark tempering people!) and that would also miss my point. mostly i’m just saying this makes the fate of their people even more depressing. they were an entire race of people who had all the potential that the sundered humans do despite being stuck in a shit society that happened to be shit in the exact way that made dealing with meteion and the final days a seemingly insurmountable task. their near-immortality and creation powers made it even harder for them to really understand the problem, but not impossible. they had the raw potential and lacked the tools to use it to save themselves. it’s just really damned sad

[cyborg-squid]

I don't like FF14 PvP and I'm not particularly good at it, but I do like Nadaam day (best game mode) and playing Samurai and insta-ing people with Zentetsuken. Really conveys the feeling of going silly mode Ushiwaka-mode and just stacking up heads.

I'd actually had a SAM LB3 (here meaning Limit Break, not Lostbelt) macro calling it Shimatsuken- Settlement Sword and having Izou's 'genius swordsman' NP quote. But now I might change it to Kagekiyo's [Fleeting World, Fleeting Might], "The hue of the sal tree's flowers shall teach you the providence of the world!" because the name and line for that NP just fits so well with SAM's "Doom of the Living".

[lovelylovelyartist]

100% on Steam.....

What do I do now....? I could do Skelly's last statue, and get to Alpha Warden, and buy all of the house stuff.... but....

[ytcomments-archive]

[aroaceleovaldez]

okay that is all i can muster for tonight. my insanity will have to wait.

[pirunika]

my vision of Astoria MC is this sweet young charming woman in vintage expensive clothes who s hardworking and bakes for her coworkers and is always there 15 minutes before her shift starts but also does 'experimental drugs' in the bathroom as 'medicine' and is a complete complete mess, has been admitted to a mental hospital more than once bc she kept claiming suffering great pains the titan poisoning ofc it was kept from her, killed an ancient creature in a fit of rage - she doesn't remember, fucked her boss' lover just because (Ares) to say Alex was crestfallen is an understatement but they still stopped Aphrodite from demolishing her oof (couldn't stop the cursing tho)

this pretty much

[zo-monty]

this is for a very niche audience but please I swear

sanzang handsome squidward skin = chaos from hades. I cannot be the only one who sees this

[samwisefamgee]

everyday I join lethal company lobby to Just Vibe and am sent Multiple Friend Request

[aria0fgold]

The 5 stages of having no phone:

Silly whimsy fun of annoying everyone in the vicinity by making it known that you have a broken phone.

Deflate upon realizing the harsh reality that IT'S THE THIRD TIME YOUR PHONE HAS BEEN BROKEN IN A SINGLE YEAR.

Anger. Time to play Hades after so many months to kill monsters to take your anger on. Realize that your last game was in the middle of an ongoing run you have no idea what to do on now.

Ouch, my hands hurting. Win the run by sheer muscle memory and luck. Do another run. Ouch, hands hurting even more. (Keyboard and mouse curse).

Eat chips that's been expired since September 27.