Hades Game Idea - Neoptolemus Keepsake

Hades Game idea - Neoptolemus Keepsake

Keepsake

Scyrian ribbon => A hair ribbon that once belonged to Achilles during his time on the island of Skyros.

Description

Gain the feature of enemies either slowing down their attacks or having smaller fields of noticing Zagreus, except for bosses. Effects increase as keepsake levels rise.

Idea behind it

The ribbon slows enemies' attacks or makes them not notice Zagreus because of having a smaller detection field. The idea behind this is that it is disguising Zagreus similar to how Achilles was hidden on the island of Skyros away from the perception of the Greeks. This was originally something that Deidamia had and was given to Neoptolemus who will give it to Zagreus.

Dialogue

Similar to other keepsakes if you have it around certain figures they will comment on it. Off the idea that Pyrrhus is in the game he will comment on Zagreus having it on him, Achilles and Patroclus will I imagine question how Zagreus got his hands on a Scyrian hair ribbon. In my mind it could be the trigger to a plot line for Neoptolemus, so if you come across Patroclus and Achilles with the ribbon they will make a general comment on it but when you get back to the house Achilles will question Zagreus about it because he recognizes it. (Possibly Patroclus simply doesn’t recognize it or because he has taken tiny slips from the Lethe he doesn’t recall such a detail)

kaveh remembers returning from the desert, from his project, only to find the akademiya thrown into utter disarray. the sages gone, a large portion of the ground near the sanctuary of surasthana collapsed and crumbling, and rumours spread like wildfire. remembers realizing just how much he’s missed, how much danger alhaitham was in without his even knowing (alhaitham was injured, and he was none the wiser—). remembers hearing divine knowledge capsule and the scribe in conjunction and ice flooding his veins until he finds alhaitham, alive and well, in the house of daena. only then does the cold finally fade.

still. it could’ve so easily gone wrong. he could’ve returned only to find alhaitham dead, or gone, or his sanity shattered.

(there are fates worse than death, kaveh knows. that—that would’ve been one of them.

what is alhaitham, without that cunning, that stubbornness, that surprising deep-seated kindness? what would be left of him, without his mind?

kaveh has nightmares about it sometimes, about how he could have come back to find alhaitham an empty shell of himself, that brilliance so neatly excised. to see him without any of his sharp intellect, to look into his eyes and find no recognition there. for all their disagreements, kaveh does not think he would have been able to withstand that.)

I’m thinking about Song Of Achilles again and like….I cannot think of the logic behind how Madeline Miller wrote Pyrrhus (Neoptolemus).

Like, he was a cruel asshole in the myths, so she got that part down.

But she added the wrinkle of him being raised by Thetis and did….nothing with it.

He quite literally exists solely to be a hate sink and to drag the plot out just a little longer.

Maybe he exists to give Thetis some form of redemption, by having her correct his big mistake.

But that raises even more questions because Thetis had been filling the role Pyrrhus had nearly the entire book. Pyrrhus may exists to show why its a good thing Thetis didn’t raise Achilles, but that is never the focus.

As far as the book is concerned, Pyrrhus is just a hate sink like Thetis (until the end) or Agamemnon to throw onscreen to get in the way of Achilles and Patroclus’ happy ending, and the inherent tragedy of him being a twisted Achilles or him being thirteen fucking years old by the time he’s onscreen is never touched upon.

Pyrrhus quite literally exists solely to be a replacement hate-sink for Thetis, and to provide some damn-near unearned last minute redemption for her.

Was Pyrrhus an ass in the original myths? Yes. Does that mean Madeline Miller could have wasted a potentially interesting character so she could throw in yet another one-note hate sink? Absolutely.

where did your love of neoptolemus come from please tell me all about your special boy

Of course of course, there aren't enough words.

I really came about getting into Neoptolemus from getting properly into Classics, part of having hyperfixiations/special interests is really learning everything you can on that subject. That was the case with Neoptolemus, I started learning more and more about Achilles and his deal and it led me to learn about him as well.

A lot the current 'fandom' of Greek mythology/classics comes from Madeline Miller so while trying to learn more and more about Neoptolemus and the other characters I saw the information presented by texts and then the way the fandom behaved. These conflicting sides of things only further got me into learning more, and it is where a lot of my love for Neo comes from. I found myself really taken by the characterization of Neo in works like 'Philoctetes' by Sophocles and 'Fall of Troy' by Quintus. I interpreted his character as far more sympathetic. I will not lie he does very terrible things, but so do all the Greeks and arguably Trojans as well. However he is a fictional character at the end of the day, and when judging him from the stance of his sources you need the context of when and who is writing it. For those antique texts it matters a lot if Romans or Greeks were the ones writing them.

None the less I really found myself drawn to him and his story, a lot of my own 'canon' is heavily changed/interpreted from the original but I will never lie and say that is it the correct, because it isn't. Most of the art I depict him in is my own canon and not correct, even some of my pieces of him are different canons. As I have gotten to know his character more and more I have changed the way I chose to write his story and the surrounding 'au's I have.

Now the timeline of the epic cycle isn't real lol

the epic cycle isn't meant to be read as super linear, none of the antique writers were counting out the years, they just called someone an 'old man' or 'young man' and called it a day (it is a bit more complex than that but this is a simplification) but when you think about that in versions of Achilles leaving the island of Skyros either Neo wasn't born yet or was still very small this means that by the time of the 10th year of the war Neo could very well be from 10-15, I generally put it at 13-ish.

He is a child soldier drafted into a war, and that aspect of his character and how that must shape a person is very interesting to me. Some childhood trauma I think is something a fair bit of us can relate to. I don't see him through the lenses of Madeline Miller or Virgil, I see him just as a traumatized kid reacting to the world around him in the best way he can. Trying to survive and being influenced by the many adults around him, the adults around him are the ones that have agenda and plans, the ones who more so care about fame and glory. He is a child responding to all that. He has only loose idea of those concepts. Furthermore Neo's story doesn't end in the abrupt way that Madeline Miller writes it in SoA.

There is a lot more going on and there are a fair amount of details that go on between the time that Neo leaves the shores of Troy and is buried in Delphi.

That is another thing that draws me to Neo but also to most everyone in the epic cycle. what you see with basic google searches and in many books surrounding these myths is only the most basic things, there are so many more myths and small details that you find out from sitting down and reading texts, combing through these stories and Neo was exactly the same. There are plenty of little details that he has that can influence the way you see him when you just look a bit deeper and for me those make all the difference. I think some of the beauty can be found in the drama, in the sadness of these characters. In the details and pieces that others will miss because they never looked deeper.

I could truly could just go on and on about my thoughts on Neo and what motivates me to love him.

In my mind it is a true shame that people will learn about Neoptolemus from Madeline Miller's, Song of Achilles and will never look deeper and just accept everything she says in her book.

She is straight wrong and in some cases the way she portrays things are harmful.

It pains me when I see people take her work for fact, it only pushes me to create to try and get people to see Neoptolemus for what I see, for all the possibilities I see in him. I create more and more for myself and for my friends who like my work and inspire me, but I also create in the hopes of getting others to see what I see.

To inspire them to look deeper into these amazing characters in the same way as I have been inspired.

i feel like every fandom needs to have that one mind reading fic wherein a character gains the ability to read someone's mind and like so much stuff is revealed in the process

and i feel like there HAS to be one for Kaveh & Alhaitham but one where only Kaveh gains said ability and Alhaitham doesn't know Kaveh has it.

so Kaveh's like: finally, i know just how badly he thinks of me. but, like, it's just 20.000 words of him trying to get Alhaitham to think a single bad thing about him and he never manages to do it. all Alhaitham thinks are just such mundane small things like "oh, i need to make a copy of that" or "what am i gonna eat today?" and when he does think of Kaveh it's just him being like "why is he mad at me?" or silly stuff like "did his fanclub make a tcg card of him yet?"

of course there's a subplot wherein Kaveh thinks Alhaitham has to know and he does a trillion tests only to find out Alhaitham really has no clue.

and then Kaveh has to face the bitter reality that he's a MASSIVE overthinker and there's a really impactful moment where he realizes Alhaitham's harshest insults only come as reactions to HIS OWN rude quips born from the assumption that Alhaitham secretly hates his guts