Greek Choose Your Own Adventure
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Try again Epimetheus.
YOU LOSE
It’s ancient Greece. Writing a story around a female protagonist in ancient Greece is either really boring or really terrible.
You are Andros, and you live in the bustling, civilized city of Podismos. Sporting a population of three thousand people and not one, not two, but THREE cobblers, Podismos is the most bustling polis within a twenty minute walk. Located between three-syllable mountain and the unnavigable river, and only a five minute walk from a rocky beach, Podismos is the destination for anyone too lazy to travel an hour in any direction.
You are a relatively well-off olive farmer. Also, you are the nephew of Muthuous the king. Don’t ask. One drunken night you went drinking slightly less watered down wine with your friends after a successful harvest. Your friend, Koalemos, hands you one too many, unfortunately, and you find you are making grinder and grinder boasts. Eventually you knock over a thrice emptied wine jar, shattering an utterly intricate design of centaur genitalia.
Sure someone will eventually pick up the pieces, you proudly thank the gods for a wonderful harvest and solemnly promise to sacrifice to each and every one of them. It is only after the horrified expressions on your friends faces do you realize how utterly stupid those words were.
You head back home and gather all the food you can, as it turns out, even giving the bare minimum, you would not be able to eat for the next three days if you kept to your word. In order to sustain yourself, you need to pick one god not to sacrifice to. You pick:
Zeus. Really? What possibly made you think this was a good idea? Are you TRYING to die? Welp, your call, I’m just the narrator, and shall make no judgement on your choices. Moving on.
Like an idiot, you sacrifice to all of the Immortal Gods except to Zeus, King of the Gods.
a. What could possibly go wrong?
You get hit by a thunderbolt and turned into a big piece of tasty bacon. You die.
You decide it would be a wonderful idea not to give sacrifice to the wife of Zeus. How bad could it be?
Life goes on perfectly normally. You farm, you sleep, you farm, and occasionally you drink, the perfect life in Greece as far as you care. One day, your uncle invites you over for dinner. While you are there, you drink, and excuse yourself to go to the privy pot. You walk by the room of your uncles’ two young sons, and for a second everything goes red. And then you blink, and everything is fine again and you find yourself looking out one of the windows overlooking the cliff the palace was built on. Then you look down, and you see the mangled corpses of your cousins strewn across the far-away ground. Shit.
Do you:
a. Beg forgiveness from your uncle
b. Run away immediately and go somewhere else to get cleansed for the murder
a. You come clean to your uncle and beg for forgiveness. He is utterly devastated and doesn’t seem to buy that you just “happened” to be possessed at the time you killed the two people ahead of you in line to inherit to the city. He has you killed by defenestration.
You get the hades out of doge. You run past your uncle as he asked what all the screaming was about, out past the palace gates, and you just keep running. Soon you are in the middle of the hills with nothing in sight but more hills, though you can see someone in the distance. You follow the person and as you get closer you realize not only were you closer than you thought to them, but the person is twelve feet tall!
b. Steer clear
You steer clear and keep going along your way. Night comes and you see something big and fast in the distance. It runs faster than you. You die.
You approach the person, waving at them. They stop and wait for you to come to them. At closer look you realize you are looking at none other than Herakles!
a. OMG Hercules I’m your biggest fan!
a. Herakles looks at you, frowns and swings his club at you. You land on the moon.
He stops and smiles at you. At twelve feet tall and every inch of him muscle, armed with nothing but a club and a dirty lion’s skin, he would make you question your own sexuality if you knew what sexuality was.
You two get to chatting as you walk together. Herakles was going in the direction you were coming but you don’t mind, you get to walk alongside HERAKLES. He asks what you are doing alone and afraid in the countryside, and as soon as you mention Hera, he interjects and predicted everything that happened. When you ask him how he knew, he responded grimly: “experience.”
As it turns out, He’s going to Podismos, where he has been heading and wishes to stay for the night. He offers to help you out no questions ask. You ask him why, and he just shrugs and says that’s what he does. When you mention your uncle now owns the family heirloom he brightens up and offers his full help in exchange for it. Herakles suddenly goes still and held up a hand. You ask what’s wrong and he says he hears a jakowpion. You make to ask what the hades a Jakowpian is when it jumps on top of you.
a. Kick it!
b. Punch it!
a. You kick the Jakowpion where you think it’s manhood will be. Unfortunately for you it’s a female jakowpion. It rips off your head and after Heracles kills it, he buries you in the hillside. When your uncle refuses him passage without tribute he kills him, and gives the land to the man with the prettiest wife after sleeping with her. He names the baby after you.
You punch the jakowpion. It freezes long enough for you to roll out from under it. Once up on your feet you lay eyes upon the strangest thing you’ve ever seen. The beast’s head and for-legs were that of a Jackal, it’s hind legs that of a cow, and has a scorpion’s tail. And no, it’s parts were not anatomically proportional. You watch as Herakles begins beating it with his comically oversized club before it lunges and knocks him over.
You jump on the jakowpion, it distracts it enough for Herakles to hit it again, but you are caught in the blow and killed. Once he finishes with the jakowpion he buries you in the hillside. When your uncle refuses him passage without tribute he kills him, gives the land to the prettiest guy after sleeping with him, and renames the city after you.
You throw rocks at the jakowpion, which irritate it enough for it to turn and roar, allowing Herakles the room to wind up for a mighty swing. The blow connected and the beast went flying through the air like an unholy bird before impaling itself at the height of a tall, sharp hill nearby. Herakles thanks you for your help, stating it would have been more tedious to kill the beast by himself. He stops and thinks to himself, then tells you to follow him. You make your way to a nearby city, and Herakles has the local king purify you for the murder of your cousins. Then together you head back to Podismos. Herakles wants to talk to your uncle, you think it’s a bad idea.
Herakles, despite your begging, insists they go face your uncle because “he has a hunch.”
You find your uncle in a drunken wreck, with broken fragments of wine vases everywhere. He greets you with a wine vase to the face. Herakles asks nonchalantly to stay the night before heading on down to Lakedemonia, where he has business. Your uncle looks at him, recognizes immediately who he is, and the gears begin to turn. He told Herakles he could stay when he killed the Arcadian Jakowpion. Herakles says he already did “thanks to Andros.” Muthuous immediately breaks down shouting how he knew that you knew he killed your father, but this was a twisted way to get revenge. As you take in the shock of what you just heard, Herakles asks again if he can stay the night. Your uncle drew his blade and charged Herakles, who swatted him aside with his club. He was dead before he hit the ground. As you stare in shock at your father’s corpse Herakles takes one of the non broken vases of wine, raises it to you and says “to the king I can never be,” and drinks it straight in one gulp, with dribbles getting on his lion skin. He spends the night, not like you could do anything about it, and leaves the next day to Lakedemonia. You become the king of Podismos, the most powerful man in the city. You marry a beautiful princess, have children, and your reign lasts ten years before you decide to leave. Not out of wanderlust, but out of despair. You have adventures but can never integrate into society like before, you become known as Monandrous, the lone man.
You decide not to sacrifice to Hephaestus. He is busy with smith stuff, what is the worst that can happen? Your life becomes very hectic. Different bronze animals attack you every day. The first day it was just a squirrel, which after one good hit fell apart. By the eighth day it was a full bronze bull which you barely managed to trick into running off a mountain cliff. On the 9th day after yet another sleepless night, you run outside and yell to the heavens “Is that all you got Hephaestus? Throw whatever you want at me, I shall always stand!” And then you notice something dark at your feet, a growing circle of shade. You look up- and a comically huge anvil falls on top of you. You become known as Platusandros, the flat man.
You decide not to sacrifice to Aphrodite.
Incest, bestiality, and rape occur. To make a very long and painful and inappropriate story short, you die after suffering a fate worse than death. You don’t get a nickname, people try to forget about your story.
You decide not to sacrifice to Apollo. He won’t mind right?
Wrong. You wake up the next morning with a splitting headache and a churning stomach. One look in the nearby tepid lake and you know you are horribly ill. Only thing to do is go to Delphi.
The oracle of Delphi listens to your story and gives an answer in response.
“Go find the snake in the attic. He will help you.”
a. Go look for a snake in your attic
b. Go to Athens
c. Prophecies are scary, I’m sure homeopathic treatment will work.
You go into your attic to look for the snake. You find the snake or rather, it finds you. It bites you and you die in hours. Apollo got impatient at your spring cleaning instead of following the prophecy.
YOU DIE. They don’t work back then and they don’t work today.
You pack up for your journey to Athens, and take a lovely walk through the countryside to reach Attica. Luckily for you Theseus had cleared out most of the criminals and bandits in the area, so it should be a safe journey...
Then you see a big man a standing behind you. At least two heads taller than you, shirtless, with a manic smile and a bloody club and hair as red as fire, you can tell immediately that he’s a Thracian, and, worse, judging that he’s wearing his pants on backwards, that he’s a son of Ares.
The man bellowed. “I, Moros, Thracian king of the Morosians, have been sent by Ares who has been sent by Apollo to seek vengeance on you for…” He paused in his speech, scratched his great bald head, and shrugged “It matters not! You die!”
You are running away from the madman wielding a club and you trip and fall down a hill. When the tumble ends and you remember that your feet go on the ground, you stand up and pull off the strange white thing that got tangled in your hair. It was a rib. You quickly check to make sure it isn’t yours, and are relieved.
All around you are bones, most of which look human. Hearing the crazed laughter above the bluff, you panic and pick up one of your uncles ribs, a sharp looking one, only for it to break in two in your hands. These bones have been here too long to be used as weapons. The bones go on until the sea, the only way out is back up the hill you came. Frantically looking around, you find a small brown lump in the sea of bones. You wade through to it and you see a turtle.
“AHA!’ The madman bellowed, you turned and saw him grinning madly at the top of the bluff, “Time to die!”
You clutch the turtle to your chest and pray, and then you feel a pain in your chest. At first you think it’s just your heart racing, and then everything begins going black on the edges and you look down to see the turtle having eaten its way into your chest cavity. You die.
You grab a rib and turn to face the man in battle. You scream and charge at him and stab at him with the rib. It breaks. The barbarian laughs, picks you up over his head, and rips you in half.
Wow, really? Ok.
You pick up the turtle and hold it as one would a javelin, and yeet the poor bastard right at the Thracian. It hits the man square in the face, hopefully stunning him long enough to allow you to slip away-
It stayed on his face. The man begins screaming as blood begins coming down his exposed chest. First just as a drip then as cascades, as the turtle, claws digging into his face, begins chomping down on his nose and eyes. The man grabs the turtle and tries to pull it off, and in so doing you see a good chunk of his face go with the turtle. He collapses onto the ground writhing in pain and the turtle drops his quarry to slowly amble up to his neck. You watch in slow horror as the turtle takes a big bite out of the man’s neck, and the blood pool grows, at this point some is coming down the hill. The screams die down as the turtle keeps on eating.
Taking a WIDE girth of the man-eating turtle you make your way up the hill towards Athens.
Congratulations! You made it to Athens. Upon entering the city you see the most magnificent cow you have ever laid eyes upon in the town square. A squat tan man is standing on it and shouting out bidding numbers. Since everyone is crowded around him, that's the best place to start asking about a snake. You ask and, to your amazement, the stout man laughs and says he is Draco, the Snake. He asks if you came to see his prized cow. Saying it can work the field without eating, and that if you decide to eat it will taste like “ambrosia itself.” He wants to sell it for two talents. Everything you own isn’t even 1/10th of a talent.
Well, you put two and two together and your head and you realize that Draco here must have stolen one of Apollo’s cattle and is trying to get rid of the evidence for the highest price. Obviously, you need to return or sacrifice the cattle to Apollo. But How?
a. Declare he stole the cattle to the public
b. Wait until night and steal it from him
You wait until night, and try to steal it. You sneak in only to find guards guarding the bull, they kill you.
You declare he stole the cattle. The declares himself innocent. Your squabbling goes on until it’s decided to arbitrate the dispute before the King of Athens, Theseus. The man gives his garment that he raised the bull really well. When it’s your turn, you quote what they man said verbatim and asked Theseus to decide. Theseus thinks a bit and then asks to speak with you privately.
Once alone, he notes your sickness and concludes you must have been cursed by a god, and correctly guesses Apollo. He says he will arbitrate in your favor if you allow him to keep the bull. He received portents from Delphi stating he would lose control of Athens unless he sacrificed a god’s bull to Apollo.
a. Agree
b. Disagree
You disagree. Theseus says the cattle belongs to the man and sends you back to Podismos. As you lay dying the next day, you learn from travelers that the man came down with a case of broken neck and Theseus sacrificed an immortal bull to Apollo…
You agree. Theseus rules in your favor. However, he says that he should be the one to sacrifice the bull to Apollo since he arbitrated the dispute. He has his men bring out the sacrificial blood bowl and sword, and prepares to sacrifice. You smile and nod, knowing if you don’t sacrifice the bull to Apollo or give it back to him you will die.
a. Steal the bull from Theseus at night
b. Kill the bull right now in sacrifice
You try to steal the bull from Theseus at night. However he knew you would do that and this. Along with your illness you come down with a bad case of broken neck.
You have sly idea. You tell Theseus that a deal is a deal, but since you will die anyway you rather it be sooner rather than later, and ask for his sword to fall on. Smiling, Theseus hands it to you and back steps towards his guards. His smirk quickly vanishes as you plunge his sword into the cow’s neck and wretch the poor creature’s head over the bowl. You hear a shout and something blunt hits your head, it’s Theseus’ club. Dizzied, you topple over into the blood bowl and are soon inundated with holy cow blood.
You choke and sputter and claw your way out of the bowl and stand upright. Once you rub the blood from your eyes you see Theseus and the entire town glaring at you. However, you feel really, really good. Once your throat is cleared of all the blood, there’s no phlegm or anything, you have been cured!
Theseus looks angry though, but his stern face breaks into a smile, and he leans in and thanks you for using his sacrificial knife to kill the bull, as that means his prophecy is averted too. You keep to yourself the fact that Theseus’ main weapon is his club and the knife had no real connection to him as you merrily walk back home with not a single person trying to kill you. Maybe it’s because word spread of how you pissed off Apollo and lived, or maybe it’s because you are happily whistling while covered in cow blood.
When you die forty years later of old age you are forever known as Aimandros of Podismos, or “Bloody Andros.”
You decide not to sacrifice to Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. What’s the worst that can happen. A giant angry boar. A giant angry boar is the worst thing that can happen. It literally comes from out of nowhere.
a. Run!!!
Is your name Herakles? No. It’s Andros. You die.
You run for your life. Luckily the giant boar is more interested in destroying your home and eating your leftover food. You race to your uncle the king and tell him what has happened. He chokes on his wine and sends you to Delphi. Upon arrival the oracle gives you a prophecy.
Ignore men who are weak.
Gather the women.
You have five times a week.
You return with the rather cryptic message. Your uncle Muthuous immediately orders you to gather the great heroes of Greece to take on the boar in five week’s time.
You go gather heroes. You end up with ten battle hardened heroes, all of them demigods. One from Apollo, two from Ares, one from Dionysius, one from Poseidon, and five from Zeus. You make ready to fight the boar...and watch in horror as it utterly destroys each of your companions. You run again, this time there is no house to distract it. You don’t make it far.
You decide to take the message differently. It is Artemis we are talking about, after all. You ask your uncle for his best boat. He is so distracted trying to dig an underground shelter that you just take it. You set sail for the amazons in the black sea. Luckily for you Jason and his crew had sailed the route a few years back and everything that can harm you is dead or dispersed. You make your way to the Amazons and are greeted with spears and arrows pointed at your face.
a. Ask for their help defending your city.
You ask for help defending your city. They say they don’t care about your puny city. They kill you for trespassing.
You ask. They ask what. You say a boar. They agree, but demand the tusks as payment.
A group get on board and you set sail back to Greece. You get briefly pulled over by pirates but the amazons make very short work of them. You stop by Boeotia and venture into the wilderness looking for the Bacchae. They find you first, find yourself surrounded by at least twenty of them, all of which have blood on their hands and twigs mixed in with their matted hair.
a. Ask if they want to kill a boar
b. Ask if they want a very special gift to Dionysius
You ask if they want to kill a boar. One of them maniacally laughs and shouts that you are the boar and the entirety of them tear you limb from limb.
You ask if they want a very special gift to give to Dionysius and to come with you if they do. They agree. When they finally ask what you were offering you replied with any part of the boar they wanted. Apparently, they want the feet. You know better not to make comment.
You sail back to Podismos with your ship laden with femme fatales and upon landing your uncle looks at you with mouth agape. He asks where his boar-hunters are and doesn’t believe your interpretation of the prophecy. Your uncle laughs at you and it’s all you can do to convince the woman not to kill him where he stands. He declares if even those women were able to slay the boar, it meant anyone could. Thus he marches off with a small army of mercenaries to kill the boar, taking you and the women along to show them “how it’s done.
They don’t last five minutes and are killed and run through to a man. The boar turns to your group and charges.
a. Run!!!
You run, you are shot in the back by an amazon who doesn’t appreciate your cowardice.
You stand your ground with the group, a spear in hand. The boar charges and you and the amazons all throw spears at it, leaving it stunned long enough for the Bacchae to jump onto it and begin trying to rip off it’s hooves. To its credit, it struggled fitfully, but the Bacchae seemed largely unharmed...until they were all flung by the bull’s own weight. It looks at you and the spearless amazons, bloodied but enraged, and charges. Out of nowhere a lioness attacks it from the side and you and the amazons are left speechless as it proceeds to rip out the throat of the boar, then quickly run off and disappear into the hills as quickly as it appeared.
Utterly baffled, you divide the loot, giving the tusk to the amazons and the hooves to the Bacchae, who then leave. You are left with a hoofless, tuskless boar you proceed to skin. Then you see the lioness come from the corner, who was apparently in wait until you are alone.
You leave the meat and take the hide. She can eat her share of godly boar meat. You turn around only to be pounced on, your throat ripped out, and the hide taken in its mouth before it runs away. Apparently she wanted the hide.
You load the boar meat into the back of your uncle’s wagon, which he had brought for the occasion, and left the hide where it lay. The lioness approached it, took it up in her teeth, and walked to a nearby cave, where she came out with three golden apples in her mouth, spat them out at your feet, bowed her head to you, and walked away. You have absolutely no idea what to make of any of this, but you take the apples along with the carcass back to the city. You hold a feast in honor of the slain men at your uncle’s palace, which is now your home due in part to yours being destroyed by the boar and in part since your cousins are not old enough to rule, you are the regent. The boar meat is stringy and tough, but you know better than to throw it away, and you even set aside the only portion that could taste good to be burned in sacrifice for Artemis. You sell one of the apples to build a little temple to Artemis, put the second one in the temple as a gift just to be absolutely sure she is no longer angry at you. You keep the third for yourself.
You decide not to sacrifice to Hermes, god of liminality and messenger of the gods. He’s so busy he can’t possibly notice, right? You sleep well that night and wake in the morning to a knock on your door. You open it to find a man a little shorter than you who is wearing nothing but a pair of winged sandals. It’s Hermes.
a. Ask if he’s here to deliver a message
He smiles, puts a hand on your shoulder, and informs you he is here to deliver a message. He grabs hold of your clothing and suddenly you feel a massive gush of air coming down on and the ground gone beneath your feet. You find yourself looking over Greece from a mile in the air hoisted by a grinning Hermes. He smiles and tells you the message is not to trifle with a god. He drops you.
You become known in myth as Platusandros, the reason to never neglect Hermes.
You collapse on your knees and beg for your life from the almighty Hermes. His smirk softens into a smile and he rubs the back of his neck. He admits he was here to kill you but since it’s obvious you rightfully acknowledge his power he will let you live... if you make up for your transgression with interest. He wants your uncle, the king, to build him a temple in Podismos to pay respects.
Wasting no time you rush to the palace and explain everything to King Muthuous. He squirms and takes sips of his wine throughout, and when you are done explains the city simply doesn’t have the money for such an indulgent project. Seems you need to find the money from elsewhere.�
You try some good honest work farming your butt off selling enough olives to build a temple. It takes you three years, but you finally did it. You made enough drachmas to purchase one brick. Hermes gets impatient and tests his aim by flinging you at the sun.
A. You try to steal the gold from your uncle. You head in the dead of night, slipping past the guards into the palace. You walk in and make your way to the treasure room. Once inside, you find shelves and shelves full of...wine. You find the chest in the middle of the wine-filled room and open it. The first thing you see is the prized family heirloom, the Makguffin, ambrosia between two pieces of bread. There is also another jug of wine, this one very intricately decorated, and next to it a small pouch bingo. You grab it and pick it up-CLING CLING to find, to your horror, Muthous left it face down and open, making the drachmas spill everywhere. There are shouts in the hall that someone is stealing the king’s money.
You give yourself up. Your uncle locks you away and you never see the light of day again.
You gather as many drachmas as you can and try to run for it, the guards catch you and, in the dim light, run you through with their swords.
You grab the fancy wine jar and uncork it. The scent drifts to your nose and you suddenly understand why there is so little money in the treasure room. This is some good wine. You take the smallest sip (by Zeus that’s some good wine), and pour the rest on the floor, beseeching Dionysius to help in exchange for this offering. The guards run in and pause, looking at you in confusion and ready their spears to run you through, only to turn to each other in the last moment and start laughing maniacally at each other.
Ignoring the scene entirely you scoop up the drachmas and the Makguffin for good measure and run. Stopping only to turn to see the two men are writhing together on the ground. You don’t want to know. You keep running until night falls. You need to find somewhere to hide for the rest of the night.
a. A cave
b. The shore
You take a nap by the shore, and are found by your uncles’ guards and killed for your crimes.
. You find a comfortable cave and sleep in it for the night. You wake up, eager to eat the little food you had left, only to find messy crummy remains. You get up to look around for what happened to your food when you hear a buzzing behind you. Turning around you see a swarm of bees and before you can panic they begin speaking, claiming Hermes sent them to tell you to throw the drachmas into the sea to repay a debt Hermes has to Poseidon.
You throw the drachmas into the sea. Hermes appears and asks you why you would do that and that he’s going to kill you now. You panic and jump into the sea trying to grab at coins only to be pulled under and drowned by Poseidon, who doesn’t appreciate take backs.
You feed the bees the Makguffin. After eating all of your prized family heirloom they sing a different song, and say Hermes sent them to test you and see if you would give up your prized possession for them. They say to head to the nearest friendly town and build a small temple to Hermes. You build a nice little temple to Hermes and he comes down, smiles, and thanks you. And for your trouble, he gives you a hat. You ask if it will make you fly. He says no. You ask if it will make you invisible. He says no. You ask what it does, and he says it’s just a nice hat he found.
You become known as Andras Kalos Petasus, the man with the pretty hat.
You decide not to sacrifice to Poseidon. Podismos is a landlocked city after all, with not a single earth shaking in the last several decades, what is the worst that can happen? You go about your day, and as your are farming your fields you see a big black speck in the distance. You walk up to a higher hill and squint, and, sure enough, there is a giant bull rampaging through the countryside. You immediately rush to your uncle, the king, and tell him of the bull and that you caused it. He listens contentedly and when you finished said if you caused it, you fix it. Shit.
You try to fight the bull by yourself and are aptly killed.
You run through the Peloponnese shouting for a hero to take on a giant bull. None show up, until one day you are approached from behind by a large man literally twice your size in a lion skin. He asks in a powerful voice if the bull is sent by Poseidon, you say yes. He makes you lead him back to Podismos. When you find the bull, to your horror he runs at it with nothing but a club in hand. The horror grows as he throws the club away and tackles the bull and wrestles it to the ground, eventually tying it firmly with numerous ropes. With the bull slung over his shoulder he thanks you for leading him to the Cretan bull. When you respond that he isn’t in Crete his face drops, and he drops the bull with a thud. “Well, I have a boat to catch.” With that the huge man walks away. You now have a writhing bull at your feet.
You decide to keep the bull for yourself. You kill it, dress it, and sit down for a nice meal of bull. You take one bite and then you hear rushing water. You look outside to see a giant wave descending on you, despite being miles inland.
You sacrifice the bull to Poseidon. You get to keep the inedible bits, however, and make a very nice horned helmet. It doesn’t help you in battle since it’s rather impractical but it’s a great conversation starter. You become known as Kerasandros, the Horned Man.
You decide not to sacrifice to Ares. Luckily for you Ares is an idiot and doesn’t know how to read, so he has no idea you didn’t sacrifice to him. You live to the not-ripe age of forty and die from a goat ramming your spleen. An insignificant end to an insignificant plot-line dead end.
You decide not to sacrifice to Athena. She’s a smart woman who isn’t petty enough to care, right? You sleep well that night and awake the next day to a knock at your flimsy wooden door. You open it to see wiry muscular young man...at least eight feet tall... holding a large club. He unsheathes a large club, declares himself Hoplon of Hipomaios, and says he was sent by Athena to get your assistance.
You blink and ask what. He demands the Makguffin, ambrosia slathered between two You know your uncle, you know he loves the Makguffin. You know he gets violent when he’s drunk, and he’s ALWAYS drunk. Nope. You try to explain to the man that the Makguffin is just ambrosia slathered between two slices of bread and no one has touched it.
The man shrugs, lifts up the club and swings. You hear a rushing and it seems like the entire world moved. It didn't. Just your house. Moved from upright to a pile of timber.
The man smiles and leans the club over his shoulder. “Athena told me to squash you for not sacrificing to her, unless you helped me get her something. So, what say you Andros? Be you a thief or a pancake?”
a. Thief
b. Pancake
Why did you choose this option? He explained very clearly what would happen to you if you didn’t and he did just that. YOU DIED.
You head out together to the town proper. It is a bustling city of two thousand. Together you make your way up to the high hill in the center of the town(which is a lot of smaller hills because, Greece). You walk into your uncle’s hall and see him with a vase full of wine. The pile of broken wine pots has grown substantially since you last visited. It was almost as big as the giant amphora in the corner used to store all the wine.
Your uncle greats you drunkenly and turns and looks up at the naked man. He offers both of you drinks and sits you both down and shares some wine and olives with you two. Only you partake, since you are now homeless who knows when you will get another meal? Hoplon declines. Only after two hours of small talk he asked what you are doing here. When the large man responds he is there for the Makguffin the drunken smile leaves and the flush grows greater. After stammering for a good minute he went quiet, only to smile once more and say the Makguffin is theirs if kill the Hysialian Goose.
You look utterly dumbfounded as you ask your drunken uncle what in the hades a Hysialian Goose is. As it turns out, the women of the city of Hysiae neglected to included Aphrodite in one of their worships, and so Aphrodite sent a giant rabid goose to ravage the countryside. Hoplon pulls out a tablet from a back pocket you didn’t even know he had and, after looking it over, shrugged. He was supposed to get the Hylian Goose for Athena three weeks next Tuesday, but it would kill two birds with one stone.
You wish him luck on his adventure and make to pour another cup of wine when your uncle suggests you should go with him. You decline but Hoplon grabs you by the rim of your tunic and hoists you in the air and taking you with him.
After a solid day of travelling you finally make it to Hylia. “Where’s the goose?” You ask, before a giant white goose flies over the hill land lands between you and Hoplon. It’s facing towards you, and it’s covered in blood.
a. Duck
b. Kick it
You duck. It just brings its beak down and into your ducking head. You die. It kills Hoplon next.
Against your better senses your hands reach out and grab the blood smeared neck of the goose and squeeze. To your surprise, the goose is surprised, and begins quacking and wailing it’s head around while you hang on for dear life, making the both of you look like a flag blowing in a hurricane.
You hear an especially loud squawk from the goose and as your body whips around you look behind it to see Hoplon whacking away at it with his club.
a. Let go
You let go, the goose whips its head forward and into Hoplon skull, it then turns it’s head around 180 degrees and does the same to you.
You keep hanging on. The goose is obviously confused, unsure how to get rid of the parasite attached to its neck nor how to attack the person behind him that is attacking him. Eventually it resolves to turn itself fully around and lunges it’s head back for a major peck. You give the goose a good tug as it’s neck is down and it falls on top of you. Still holding onto the neck with your legs pinned, you see Hoplon walk over the two of you with the club held high. He tells you to hold it still.
b. Let go
You let go, the goose whips its head forward and into Hoplon skull, it then turns it’s head around 180 degrees and does the same to you.
You keep holding on. Hoplon swings and you grit your teeth, the club connects on the section of neck right above your neck and you can feel the breeze from the club as it breaks it. With one final mighty quack the goose falls lump on top of you. It’s strangely pleasant. Now that the goose isn’t trying to kill you, you realize just how soft and buoyant its feathers are. Then it’s lifted off of you and Hoplon hoists it onto his back.
The walk back is quiet. Hoplon has slung the goose over his shoulder by the neck and letting the body comically drag on the ground behind him. Neither of you talk about what has happened as you walk back. When you arrive back at the castle your uncle looks shocked to see the both of you in one piece. When Hoplon demands the Makguffin your uncle gaufs. He stutters a bit and then says Hoplon could have it once he killed the Argonian Eel. Hoplon looks at him, smiles, and then heaved his club over his head and turned your uncle into a bloody pancake. He walked across the room full of stunned servants to the Makguffin box, takes it out, and walks out without another word. You become regent for your cousins and sacrifice the goose to appease Athena. Not before you took feathers from the goose to make a feather bed and pillow for yourself for the trouble. You come to be known as having been a decent ruler until your cousins came of age and of having the best feather bed this side of the Aegean. While a decade later you die from a dagger in your neck from the younger nephew, you live on forever in the annals of history as Petomandros, and your bed becomes the cause of many wars of those trying to claim it.
You decide not to sacrifice to Dionysus. He’s a nice guy, right? He won’t mind, surely. You enjoy your little meal of what’s left after the sacrifices to all the other gods, and then go to sleep. You wake up the next day with a hangover from the night of drinking, but otherwise feel fine. Like any good Greek, you get yourself a cup of wine mixed with water to start the day. You take a sip and it doesn’t seem strong, so you add more wine. It still doesn’t seem strong so you add more. Before you know it you have emptied all of your wine into your drinking jar yet it all simply turns into water... It seems you have been excommunicated from drinking.
a. So?
b. THIS TERRIBLE CURSE MUST BE LIFTED
So you can’t drink wine, what’s the big deal? You go about your life as any Greek without alcohol. Terribly. With no wine to mix with the not-so-clean waters of ancient Greece, you get sick, a lot. Worse, it means you are always sober. Yet as word of your curse spreads, some people avoid you like the plague, but others come to see you as a sign of temperance, and you come to get a cult following. Despite how much you insist to your followers how terrible life is, they are just convinced you are humble, and people bring giant amphora of wine for you to “purify” for them to drink, which is torture for you. After living a miserable sober life surrounded by cultist nutjobs the cult slowly dies out after your death. However the whole debacle has so amused Dionysus that a thousand years later he gives the opposite curse to a guy in Judea.
You sprint to the nearest Bacchic temple. You make to knock but before your knuckles touch the door it opens and a shrouded man greets you, hands you a piece of papyrus, and closes the door. It reads:
You are cordially invited to Dionysius’ birthday party. Location: Mt. Ithome. When: always. Do come, it will be hip.
Facing no other choice but crippling sobriety you head south and west to Ithome. On the way you see a strange sight: in the hills, a camp filled only with women who are covered in dirt and leaves, who appear to be bathing in a pond. Darkness will soon descend and might be unsafe to travel the countryside alone.
b. Wait until they are clothed and moving, then approach
You approach the camp. One of the women see you, and shout pick up a boulder twice her size, and hurls it at you. You dodge it only to be set upon by the women, who tear you limb from limb. That’s what you get you peeping tom.
you steer clear from the camp and keep on your way. At one point you round the corner and come face to face with a lion. The lion kills you and eats your face.
You wait until you see them come down the hill clothed in dirty yet elegant torn robes that leave little to the imagination. You hail them and they, to your surprise, hail you back and ask if you are also going to Dionysius’ party. You respond yes and they say they should keep you around for protection. You find the notion silly that one man can protect all these women, but when turning a corner a feral mountain lion jumps the group on top of a woman and bites. Its teeth break on impact, and the women tear it limb from limb. You realize just who is protecting whom.
You make it to Ithome to see an enormous open air party underway. You are greeted at the entrance by a man who offers you a cup of wine.
a. Accept it
You politely decline wine at a Bacchic party. The man smiles at you, picks you up, and throws you off the cliff.
A. You accept the wine and it turns to water once it touches your fingertips. The man doesn’t even blink as he notes you must by Dionysius’ special guest, and to go right in. He told you Dionysius is “here somewhere.” You decide to check:
The orgy looks fun. You can’t find Dionysus but you are having a good time. Things keep escalating past the normal boundaries of even orgies and eventually you are torn limb from limb from the frothing erotic mob.
You walk to the exotic foods table and lay eyes upon the most beautiful man you have ever seen. He would make you question your sexuality if you knew what sexuality was. He smiles at you, introduces himself as Dionysus and thanks you for coming to his party. He offers you a wine glass.
a. Take it
you take it and throw it in his face. He isn’t amused. He turns you into a dolphin then has the Bacchae tear you apart limb from limb. You became the main course.
You take it and it doesn’t turn to water. Delighted, you drink the night away and wake up hungover and happy before heading back to Podismos. Your brief stint of sobriety was so terrible you spent more time drinking than ever before with your uncle Muthuous, since he had bottomless stocks of wine. You become regent when he dies of overconsumption three years later before dying yourself three months after that from the same cause. What a great way to die.
You don’t sacrifice to Demeter. She’s the goddess of the harvest, she has enough food, right?
You console yourself over your poor choice by eating the little food you have left only for it to rot and dissolve into nothing in your hands. You have a problem.
You search and you search, but all food you touch rots in your hands, from grains to meat to mere flies. The only living thing that doesn’t die when you touch it is humans. After several days, you snap and become a cannibal. You are killed by the village. At first your uncle, taking pity on you, buries you outside the city. However, all the crops begin to die. Facing famine, your uncle orders for you to be buried far into the countryside. The ground never recovered but luckily the town still had their livestock and fishing industries to feed them. Then the livestock that grazed in the hills begin to die. The people, now reduced to eating fish, demand the uncle remove the body from the countryside. Your uncle, grievously torn, finally throws you into the sea. All the fish die. The city starves. The men die first, and the women sell themselves and their children into slavery in order to survive. This becomes the story of Andrapodosmos, the first enslavement.
You make your way to the oracle of Delphi. Along the way all the grass or animals you touch die, but you are relieved to see, when accidently bumping into someone heading down a hill, that your rot does not affect people. That relief turns into horror as you realize what the only food you will be able to eat is unless you fix this issue. When at the gate you are offered some bread, you take it and it turns black in your hands. The guards try to shoo you away but the oracle emerges from the temple and points at you.
“You have taken from Demeter what is her due, so she has taken away what sustains you.
If you don’t wish to wither away until you and your city are gone, take from the kinslayer what the gods feast on.”
a. Go back to Podismos and steal your uncle’s secret ambrosia stash
b. Sacrifice the largest animal you can find.
c. Hunt and kill every kinslayer until you find something
As you slowly wither away from the hunger you somehow miraculously manage to steal an elephant from some Lydian traders. Careful not to touch it, you continuously throw spears at it until it bleeds out, and you collect the blood and burn the meat in sacrifice. Despite an amazing feat of animal cruelty, Demeter is unimpressed and you starve to death walking back to down.
You set about to hunt down every kinslayer in Greece trying to find something “the gods feast on”. Luckily for you there is no shortage of kinslayers, yet even burning their bodies as sacrifice won’t allow you to eat. You hunt down and kill as many as you can find but eventually your hunger worsens until after one murder, you consume the body. Having been the first food you have had in days it tastes better than ambrosia. However, you are determined to right this curse eventually, even if it means cannibalism to sustain yourself until you do. Word goes around of a monster of a man that goes around, killing kinslayers and consuming their corpses. The man who eventually tracks you down and kills you gets stories told of him, you don’t.
Well, your father died in a “hunting accident” while with your Uncle, and he assumed rulership since. Come to think of it, you are amazed you didn’t realize it sooner. Yet you have bigger issues to worry about at the moment. You return to Podismos. Your family has an old heirloom, ambrosia slathered between two pieces of regular bread, called the Makguffin, that has been with your family for as far back as oratory time goes, with it passing from your grandfather to your father to your uncle upon his untimely death. You head back to the city and make your way nonchalantly to the massive sprawling two story sixteen room palace that is the home of your uncle. Since no one knows of your ailment, your uncle greets you cordially, and offers you some bread and wine. He asks why you are here.
a. Tell him you are dying and need to take the Makguffin
b. Say you want to visit your cousins
You come clean and tell him you need to take the Makguffin. He sips his wine, ponders, and order his guards to lock you in the basement. You starve there.
you say you want to visit your cousins, he shrugs and gestures to the inner rooms of the palace. It’s not like you’re an untrustworthy stranger, after all….well...at least not a stranger. You make your way through the house, the smell of lunch being made in the kitchens wafts to your nose and temps you to no end. Since there is so much food in the kitchen, surely you can get some of it to your mouth before it rots, right?
You turn and sprint to the kitchen. The chefs are surprised to see you, and are more surprised when you begin desperately shoveling everything edible in sight into your mouth. Unfortunately as soon as the food touches you it begins to rot, and the faster you pull it into your mouth the faster it rots, so the same bile slides down your throat all the same and you vomit it back up. Your uncle finds you attempting to eat your regurgitated meal and in horror locks you in the basement, you die there.
You gotta stick to the plan! You push the entire idea of food to the far corners of your mind long enough to make it to the inner rooms of the palace. Instead of taking a right to see your nephews, you take a left, into the room where the Makguffin is hidden. It’s an old family secret that it’s hidden underneath the far right stone slab. To your relief, it’s still there, looking like a glowing sandwich. You quickly wrap it up in some cloth. Now you have to get out.
You casually make your way out through the winding passages to the exit. However your uncle notices something under your tunic and, since you refuse to show what it is, has his guards seize you. Discovering you fleeing with the prized family heirloom, he throws you in the dungeon to make you think about your actions. He doesn’t believe that you can’t eat the food he sends, and thinks your stubbornness will end eventually. You starve to death in prison.
You climb out the window overlooking high cliff the palace is situated on and shimmy your way until you are on better ground, and then you run like a man who slighted the gods to the local temple of Demeter, where you lay the wrapped bundle by the feet of the crude statue of Demeter. Then, turning, you cautiously touch one of the food offerings on her alter, and it doesn’t turn to ash. You have been cured! You really, really appreciate the taste of food from here on out and become known in legend as Limosandras, while meaning “Starving Man” you ironically didn’t starve to death, but lived a fat, happy life.
You decide not to sacrifice to Hades. King of the Underworld. You sleep well that night, like a dead man. Yet you wake in the morning, and everything seems fine. You hear a knock on the door. Surely it’s just Koalemos come to see if your stupidity hasn’t killed you yet. You gingerly open it, and see a mostly naked man at your door. Standing just under your height, the man is completely naked, hold for a pair of sandals...with wings on them. He holds out his hand. “Hermes, god of liminality, nice to meet you. “You take his hand. He doesn’t let go. The earth opens up underneath you and you plummet straight down. You fall for a good ten minutes before you see the ground rush up underneath you, and stop just an inch from your nose. Scratch that, you broke your nose. Hermes is holding your ankle and fluttering with his sandals. And then he unceremoniously drops you.
He smiles and says he’s been sent to deliver you to the underworld. Just then the walls in front of you split open to reveal a pair of enormous doors, and out from them walk a petite pale lady. She walks directly up to you, and when you try to make eye contact you feel you retinas burn.
You tilt your eyes downward, she takes it as you looking at her cleavage. She slaps you. It kills you. You don’t have a nice time in hell.
You hear a rye laugh from the woman that reminds you of sour grapes. She remarks how good you are at ignoring the gods. You ask what you can do to make up for angering Hades. She laughs again.
Turns out you didn’t anger Hades, which angered Persephone. Persephone did NOT get dragged down to the underworld against her will only to see her husband “doesn’t care about the trifles of one man” enough to uphold the ONE thing good about the lazy bastard, his prestige. The gods hath no fury like a scorned, it seems.
a. Ask what you can do to make amends with her
You attempt to seduce Persephone. She appears flattered and tells you to take a seat in a nearby chair. You do. The wood wraps around you. She thanks you for finding someone to take Theseus’ former chair. You don’t leave. Enjoy hell you perv.
You ask what you can do to make amends with her. She laughs a little gentler, thinks about it, said she originally planned to throw you with Tantalus and see who would eat the other first, but instead, since you asked, she was packing up to leave the surface for her fourth month custody with Hades in the underworld, when she forgot her hairbrush in Crete. She says she sent six handmaids to retrieve it but they never returned. She tells you to go get it, bring it back, and everything will be peachy. You try to get a word in edgewise to ask about the missing nymphs and what in Zeus’ name happened to them and will happen you, but you feel a hand on your shoulder, and you are pulled up by the crazed naked Hermes by the edge of your shirt back upwards to the surface to be dropped unceremoniously in the rocky grass. Hermes wishes you luck and with that dashes off...What do you do now?
You go back home. You go to sleep. You wake up and are sure everything was just a nightmare, until you open your eyes and see a man with no fat or muscle, just skin stretched over bone, staring down at you with a black sky above. He opens his mouth “Finally, FOOD!”
You book passage on a merchant vessel and are off to Crete. You ask around town if anyone has seen any nymphs talking about hair brushes. Oddly the seventh person you ask says they saw a Nymph. Luckily for you one man said he found one just two miles out of town, and said he saw six go that way. He advises that you go during the day, for at night, he says, “who knows what lurks there at night?” Do you know? It’s a half moon out.
a. Go by day
b. Go by night
You decide to go by day. You hear a rolling, and are crushed by a rock. Persephone greets you in the underworld with a manic smile before deciding your fate.
You go by night and find a light in the distance, you sneak through the woods. On one ledge you find a very large rock that would roll down the hill if a rope weren’t securing it. You slowly make your way down the hill to see six rocks, each of them with a splatter of red and random limbs about. The handmaids. You continue quietly to the firelight to find ten centaurs all drinking and laughing. You notice something strange about their heads. Their hair, even in the light of the fire, is absolutely gorgeous. Luckily you weren’t born with a centaur brain and can put two and two together rather quickly, these nefarious beings have stolen Persephone's’ hairbrush! How will you get it back?
You challenge them to a duel. They look at each other, look at you, and you get ten daggers in numerous parts of your body. Et tu Brutes? The end.
You walk up to the group, who immediately tense and some stand when they see you. You see one reflexively pull their hand behind their back, that one must have the hairbrush. You say you are a lost traveler and am looking for a place to spend the night. They all look at each other, some with hands on daggers, and begin murmuring to each other, and you can hear one say “Anais only sends searchers by day.” After a few nods, they welcome you in the circle for a drink. One still has the brush in his grasp, and after an hour of drinking it’s clear at least some of them are up at all times. You are in, how do you get out, with the hairbrush?
You challenge them to a duel. They look at each other, look at you, and you get ten daggers in numerous parts of your body. Et tu Brutes? The end.
You point out that you notice the hairbrush and offer to brush them for their hospitality. They look at each other somewhat perplexed, but being drunk, stupid, and hubristic as Centaurs are, they agree. After brushing for a bit and letting their guard down, you turn and run really fast back up the hill. You hear shouting and hoofbeats behind you but you have the stamina of a man who is cursed by a goddess and is being chased by ten savage centaurs. You make it up the hill to the big rock, take out your dagger, and cut the rope. It rolls down the hill with a great thunder, and rolls over every single centaur, flattening them.
Now safe, you call to hades, banging your head against the floor numerous times, and the ground cracks open in front of you. Persephone’s voice floats up and tells you to drop the brush down it. You do. Going back to the centaur’s camp you find numerous items they must have stolen off of the handmaids and other unfortunate travelers that came upon the centaurs. With this double-stolen stash you live comfortably until the old age of seventy-two, and are known even past death as Petrandros, the Heroic Rock Man.