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Well, after a day or so of bedrest and faffing about aimlessly, I think I'm feeling well enough to lay down some more Argonaut Argot. Which is actually a really appropriate term, because we're going to start off by talking to everyone, traveling to Saria... and then talking to everyone AGAIN. I am RELENTLESS in my pursuit of dialogue. Worldbuild at meeeeeee.

Pre-Travel / Post-Mycenae Thoughts -

MEDUSA STATUS: She's amused by the call to power that drives Mycenae. Also I can chat her up about Athena for several minutes, chattering on about various things the goddess enjoys or doesn't.

MEDEA STATUS: Curious. For years she cursed Lycomedes, but now she's interested in chatting with him. When Jason offers to fetch him, she backpedals so hard she practically leaves a trail of rubber on the Argo carpets. Apparently she's not really ready for that meeting just yet. Good thing, too. With Argos dead and Daedalus settling in I don't think we have anyone who could repair EXPLOSION HOLES.

LYCOMEDES STATUS: He likes my boat. ... I like my boat too. BONDING. He also shares tales of the days when he just had a big list of Blacktongues and all he did was sail around making the list shorter. I hear you, man. Mobile Murder Squad Go.

DAEDALUS STATUS: Our new navigator. I don't have to try to figure out the weird psudeoGPS on the Argo anymore. Oh good.

PAN STATUS: Wants to talk about Apollo for hours.

HERC AND ACHILLES: Playing the "What shall we have to eat" game. They toss delicious foods back and forth verbally for a while, then proudly declare they know what they want to eat. Wine and eels! ... Jason agrees. Although their eels will be suspiciously gruelish and their wine will be amazingly watered down. Herc wonders if water can -be- watered down, and Achilles opts for water that has been wined down.

Damn it. I'm NOT SUPPOSED TO LIKE Achilles, but that was genuinely kinda funny.

...Also, guys, one thing I'm disliking about this game: The crashes. There's a fair number of them, and no matter how often you save it doesn't seem to -really- save. What it does is make a note of the latest checkpoint you passed, or somesuch. So I'll run around talking to everyone, saving after each conversation, and then the game will crash and I'll be taken back to just post-Mycenae, with all my dedications to do and conversations to have. That's kind of a pain in the ass.

HERC STATUS: Smug about Arena victory! Uh, that was me, Herc...

ACHILLES STATUS: Still a big vain ass. Hey, Athena, can we get some snake action down on this dude? Oh, I guess he's not actually making statues to himself yet. Anyway, we talk for a while... or he talks mostly, about how awesome he is... and I move on to SARIA!

Where I will be talking to everyone again. But first we get another scene with Pelias about how flippin' evil he is, yadda yadda, and we get a shot of the Argo pulling into port, watched by... Oooh! Centaurs! Centaurs, y'guys!

Okay... Medusa's pissed about the humidity affecting her hair, though "it's better than what I had before", hee. Medea offers a "watch out for manticores", Lycomedes admires the centaurs (yay centaurs!). Daedalus offers to upgrade my arena armor, and I get a boost to POWER, because yay power.

Herc offers wisdom on the different kinds of centaurs: There are big ones and little ones.

...thank you, Hercules. Your insight makes us all greater people.

Meanwhile, Pan and Achilles play name-games about the Gods. I join in, win, and Achilles ragequits. Bwahaha. ... Uhm. Achilles offers commentary on centaurs slightly more useful than Herc's, and Pan offers a beginner's introduction to the Prisoner's Dilemma. How can altruism exist when it is the least beneficial of choices, he asks? Man, science has studied this one for years.

In a way it's strange that people still display a bias towards helping each other when the "obvious, rewarding" strategy is to screw everyone else over... but it gives me hope and pleasure that so far an optimistic and forgiving strategy (that still smacks back when hurt) seems to be the widely accepted "best plan".

Anyway, it's off to shore. I get to select one argonaut, and roll out with Pan, since he is a native to these shores and can probably keep a running tally of all the ways I am pissing off the locals. Note that I only get to pick ONE companion, which screams to me that I'm about to get a second here on Saria.

Centaurs, it turns out, DO come in two flavors. There's the "built like a horse" type, which are sort of like elves on four legs and look basically like you'd expect, and then there's the type that are built more bullishly, large and squat and low to the ground. It's like the difference between a pickup truck and a camper van. It is important to note, however, that either one can -run you the hell over-. I elect to maybe avoid pissing off these guys.

Figure 1: Pan has his photo taken with a Type 2 "Landbarge" Edition Centaur. (It is HARD to get Jason out of the way of a screenshot, you guys. HE IS ENORMOUS.)

I'm skimming again, but here's how it goes down: The centaurs don't wanna hang with me until I've chatted with their leader. The leader of the centaurs is a massive dude who basically wants to lounge around and smoke a pipe all day. He totally wants to help me get my Hermes Descendant on, but there's nobody around who fits the role of a fast tricky type, so he pawns me off to go deep into the Satyr-infested woods and check in at the temple to Hermes. To get me through the woods, he hands me off to his daughter, Atalanta, a human girl whose parents died to manticores and who was raised by A: Herself and B: Centaurs, staying alive using only her wits, who is fast and agile and wields a bow.

Man, I wonder where we'll find someone descended from Hermes on this island. OH WELL, COME ALONG GIRL OF MYSTERIOUS PARENTAGE WHO EXEMPLIFIES THE VALUES OF HERMES.

(Okay, actually she's often seen aligned with Artemis in most myths, but let's not start dragging in gods that aren't represented around here.)

I like Atalanta! She is snarky but not in a jerkass kind of way, so she makes a nice foil to the way I'm playing Jason, which is kind of "RAR GRR snark RAR", and she's bouncing well off Pan. She also knows offhand that the Golden Fleece brings people back from the dead, and seems a bit intrigued by the idea of using it on Jason's wife, so hey! This oughta go swimmingly.

It seems like taking Team Let's Do Ranged Damage out into the woods was a good choice, actually, as Pan and Atalanta often fill satyrs and blacktongues alike with fireballs and arrows and flaming arrows while I'm busy whalloping the other on-screen enemies. Also with my new mace OF KINGS I get to lay down a lot of on-the-ground smackings. So the Jungle Crawl is going nicely.

On the way through, we bump into Hep'naje, who is eating someone! This is, essentially, the LARGEST MANTICORE IN THE WORLD. (Provisionally. I have not yet seen all the manticores in the world. But this is the biggest and only one I've ever seen, so I'm prepared to make that claim.) You can't come at it from the front or sides, because it has enormous stinger tentacles, and you can't come at it from behind because it has a scorpion tail back there. I end up slow-timing and flailing madly, as well as hurling spears and generally hit-and-running. Luckily while it's focused on Jason it is NOT eating my backup duo, who provide ranged support constantly. Eventually it runs away. Whew.

Jason gives the last rites a LOT in this game. Grim, but in-character.

Meanwhile, back in the village, this is pretty much what I expect from Wild Untamed Frontier Land. Pan and one of the centaurs get in a vaguely-lewd-joke contest, while the centaur beastmaster ponders if a human can be tamed. Y'know, I've seen fanfict-- let's actually not make ANY moves in that direction, shall we? Yes, carrying on.

I mop up sidequests for a while, what few there are around here, then head off into the jungle to hit the temple. The game crashes again. Sigh.

Meanwhile, while leveling after this crash, I achieve the perk for getting to the top rank of Ares' favor and the perk for getting to the top rank of Hermes' favor. I dedicate my favor with Ares to Hermes and my favor with Hermes to Ares. ... I JUST THOUGHT THEY'D LIKE TO KNOW, OKAY? ...anyway I guess now I can branch a little into the other gods.

But first, the Shrine to Hermes. Where Jason decides "Hey, is that a fruit that drives people crazy but also gives them spirit vision? IMNA EAT IT." Obviously this brilliant plan instantly pays off, as Hermes shows up -- to apologize about how bad the taste of the fruit is.

Oh and also to let Jason know that his wife is going to be lost soon. Only he can give her last rites properly! (A running theme, as I noted before.) If HE dies, she's doomed forever! No pressure! Find that fleece! ... Oh, and run some errands for me, would you? Good chap. Tally-ho. Hermes out for a cuppa tea.

...okay he does not actually get all EDWARDIAN BRITISH on my ass, but this is MY writeup.

Anyway, Jason and his new Sight Beyond Sight go off to yammer at the dead. ("A SPIRIT! Can you see it?" "Nnnno, Jason.") Poor party members. They get to watch Jason rant at himself and eye each other behind his back.

Turns out the first spirit we meet is Atalanta's mom! She of course died tragically and now we have to put her to rest with MORE LAST RITES. Anyway as it happens Atalanta's -dad- was an assassin who was gonna kill the previous oracle (Atalanta's mom, so you can guess what happened here) when she told Lycomedes about the whole Blacktongues Wanna Kill Alceme thing. So it turns out we're all interconnected in a giant soap-opera style WEBWORK PLOT OF DOOOOOOM.

I love when that happens.

Anyway, we charge off to go finish up some quests and to weird out the party some more. ("LOOK! The tracks of Hep'naje! Can you see them?" "NO, Jason.") We do a lot of fighting and find the last resting place of Atalanta's mom, so Jason does the last rites thing and...

"Atalanta, I see your mother's spirit, can y--" "NO, Ja-- wait, YES."

So that's a touching reunion! And flowers burst into bloom, and the fog clears a little, and it's generally -really nice-. But I still have to find her father and put him to rest too, so it's off for that.

Once I locate him, he fills me in on the Dirt, like that Alceme's fate is totally in my hands (I had gathered this, but thanks for the thought) and that Nessus, mister "Can I tame a human", is actually controlling Hep'naje for DARK PURPOSES. Now, mythologically speaking, Nessus is kind of a major asshole in general. I really should've seen that coming, but I'm used to this game handwaving all over the place. I am blindsided by characterization lining up even when the actual place and time does not. Well, no longer. Atalanta's new-stated goal is to rip Nessus' heart out. I am totally down for some Mortal Kombat-style manuevering here. IT'S SMASHIN' TIME.

And then the game crashes.

This is probably my fault for doing a lot of alt-tabbing to write over here, but guys, I have to point out again, this is NOT a stable game.

Humdedum re-doing a bunch of stuff... okay back to smashy time.

As it happens, Atalanta bursts in with an arrow nocked and goes "HE'S A GIANT ASS" and Lykos the tribe leader smokes a lot and goes "Proof?" and everyone goes "UHHHH" and now we're back out in the jungle looking for proof. Sigh.

In the criminal justice system of RPGland, the people are represented by one group doing two jobs: The player characters who investigate the crimes, and the player characters who beat the living hell out of the guilty. These are their stories.

(Oh, and then the game crashed again.)

Out in the jungle, Jason follows tracks straight into a cliff wall, and smashes it down with his mace to reveal IT'S A FAAAAKE and so we're off into a new world map area whee.

Anyway, we confront the manticore, I use Slow Time and hack it to bits, and I swear it gives me a "WTF" look just before it goes down. Back to the village, and there's of course a cutscene where Nessus interrupts and we have to duel HIM now. Nessus is one of those bosses that likes to throw you as far from him as you can go, and then you have to dodge his projectiles while running to his side of the arena, and then you beat on him a while and he throws you away again and so on and so on.

That's basically how that works. In the end, Jason leaves literally every weapon he's carrying sticking out of Nessus at some angle or another, and then scares the satyr population away with the severed head. He does NOT catch fire or die from poisonous blood, so I guess THAT aspect of the myth is bein' ignored. I'm okay with this.

Anyway. THAT'S JUSTICE DONE. Dun-dun.

Atalanta gives me her father's spear, and ... oh hey! Hermes showed up again! ("Does anyone else see--" "YES.") He takes back the Spirit Vision (and the fog filter that's been making navigating this island a pain in the ass), hands over a nice sword, and reveals that he pretty much fathered all centaurs everywhere ("Long story", he says. My guess is that if you cut out the "And then there was wine, and then there was MORE wine" buildup it's NOT THAT LONG REALLY.) so Lykos is pretty much fine to come with as a descendant of Hermes.

...Gonna be honest, did not see that coming.

Jason also invites Atalanta along, though, so that's cool. Anyway, our adventure on Saria ends with heroism an--

And the game crashes.

GOD DAMN IT ALREADY.

Next Time -- Return to Oracle Island