At last we come to the final run. Curious what a Xinthos run in this format would look like, but given the patch it'd be a completely different kind of marathon. Trivia on the skulls: Witchcraft in Ancient Greece did involve the use of bones, often, but typically animal bones rather than human ones. This is referenced in how bones are the main currency used for unlockables, although in this case they use bones of the dead (humans) rather than animal bones. I assume this is because Mel is heir to the God of the Dead, and as such, the bones of dead humans are part of her domain. She tends to be fairly dismissive of mortals when Chronos, Prometheus or Nemesis speak highly of them (despite being quite taken with the smarter mortals like Odysseus, Arachne, Icarus and--so she thinks--Schelemeus), so it's not too surprising to me that she's fine with using their bones in place of animals' for greater magical potency. A novel called Metamorphoses III by Roman writer Apuleius (no relation to Ovid's own work called Metamorphoses) describes a witch's workshop as having 'the mutilated skulls of animals with teeth pulled from their sockets' as one of its core features, while according to some writers (I couldn't find reliable sources for this one, but it's repeated a few times) diviners sometimes used the burnt and cooked shoulder blades of oxen for divination--if light was able to pass through cracks in the bone formed from the heat, it meant victory or rains. In Athens, a 2300 year old jar containing the bones of a chicken was found inscribed with curses intended to strike down the opposition to a craftsman's guild in a coming lawsuit. The bones were burned at a sacrificial altar and then set into a jar that was stabbed with a nail. The inscription compares the intended victims to the chicken, who was 7 months old at the time and invoked as a sacrifice because it was 'helpless' (per the inscription). Sounds like a lovely bunch of people--hope they lost their suit. Speaking of sacrifices, sacrificing bones of animals to the Gods was perhaps the most widespread way in which Greeks used bones to try to obtain magical aid. Skulls specifically were regarded as being able to give advice or even divine the future if treated or cured properly. There's an apocryphal story of Spartan King Cleomenes who swore an oath to a childhood friend that he'd always consult him for advice if he ever became king. Once he became king, he chopped off the head of a childhood friend and pickled it in honey, then confided in it for said advice. Orpheus' severed head (torn off by frenzied worshippers of Dio who hated how gloomy he'd become without Eurydice) landed near the island of Lesbos, and was also said to be able to whisper prophecies if consulted. More generally, there are surviving recordings of rituals from Hellenic Egypt that describe how to use magic in order to invoke prophecies in skulls. This kind of witchcraft was generally seen as a taboo, macabre thing that was shameful to practice, but this didn't seem to actually stop people from doing it in secret. As mentioned before, sorcery kits in Ancient Greece are fairly common, as are the materials to construct curses similar to the one discovered in Athens using the bones of certain animals. But there were more 'mainstream' and 'acceptable' ways to consult animal bones over the future or invoke their power. While magic derived from another's soul was considered a vile and diabolical power, using bones to invoke the power of the Gods was perfectly fair play. Oracles would roll a set of five sheep knucklebones to help divine the future. Numbers were set upon the four sides of the bones, and the Oracles would record the dice number they rolled and compare it to a set of potential meanings indexed by numerical value. This practice was called astragalomancy--divining from the astragals, the knucklebone that is square enough to roll like a dice. These dice were also used for gambling in Ancient Greece, which is where the expression 'rolling the knucklebones' comes from. And by widespread, I mean omnipresent. Any ritual in which meat was consumed involved sacrificing to the Gods to try to win their divine favour. In the Iliad, one of the main reasons Zeus supports the Trojans for much of the war is that Hector devotedly sacrifices sheep thighbones to him on a yearly basis. The Athenians had a whole legal system in place for how to ritually sacrifice oxen and the guilt involved in the murder of the animals. It was seen as common practice to sacrifice animals any time you had a major request of the Gods, with oxen being the most valuable (being the hardest/most expensive to raise) and pigs and sheep being the most common. As mentioned in the Prometheus video, mythologically this is because Prometheus had Zeus agree to only take part of a meat's meal from humans when they feasted, then tricked Zeus into accepting the bones of animals as sacrifice because he wrapped them in tasty fat and hid the nutritionally valuable meat inside a stomach. Thus, the Gods were forced to keep their word and accept the bones. The Greco-Roman world would use animal sacrifice as part of its traditions all the way up to the advent of Christianity, but some Greek philosophers questioned the ethics of animal sacrifices as early as Alexander the Great's time. Human sacrifices, however, were considered taboo and blasphemous to the Gods themselves. Zeus made this abundantly clear when he threw Tantalus into Tartarus for sacrificing his son to him in a feast, forcing Tantalus to constantly seek water and food but never be able to reach it. The Gods then reassembled Tantalus' son, save for his shoulderblade that Demeter absent-mindedly ate as she grieved for missing Persephone, which Heph replaced with an ivory one. Thus, the Greeks believed the Gods found the sacrifice or use of human bones in their spells to be distasteful or blasphemous. The Gods, however, have no such restrictions upon them, and the domains of bones belonging to the Chthonic Gods means that Mel as Hades' daughter is free to use them. As to Revaal specifically, he is a bit of a mystery in terms of his own origins. In life he was apparently an 'adjudicator', or judge, though who or what he judged the game does not say. The term is however used for judges of the dead in Greek myth, so perhaps he is a judge of mortal souls whose own bones defend them in death. He certainly seems to be willing to be used as a weapon by Mel, since he appears to grin more widely when she upgrades him ('did that skull just grin at me...?'). Given the level of devotion to Hecate her followers have extending beyond death, I assume he was some kind of devotee to her in life and in death donated his bones to the Silver Sisters' cause. Where does that leave Mel's use of the dead's bones as weapons, though? Is it ethical within the context of the setting? Well, as mentioned before, divine power is different from power derived from others' souls. In historic records of her mythos, Mel herself is not said to use skulls specifically as weapons in her invocations, but she is said to use the spirits of the dead as weapons when seeking out vengeance. Thus, using a skull bound with the spirit of a dead man as a weapon seems on-brand for her domain, especially since Hades himself is master over the dead and uses their skulls and souls as weapons in his boss fight in the first game. In-game Mel doesn't seem particularly bothered by her regular use of mortals' remains for magical power, and when questioned on the value of mortal spirits, she seems to have an odd kind of cognitive dissonance about it. She finds mortal souls to be valued and cherished friends individually, but collectively seems to be quite dismissive of them as being simply beneath her time or care. We'll see if she ends up having any qualms about so liberally using the bones of mortalkind for her own purposes by the end of the game, but as of now, she doesn't really seem to notice the hypocrisy. Some room for growth in our hero yet.
I'm with you on the idea of having Revaal as a devout follower of Hecate. As per her Book of Shadow's Entry, apparently she (Revaal) was irresponsible before she passed. So perhaps this is her way of atoning and helping Hecate and the Silver Sisters with their cause. I even speculate that she may have been a former sister herself. Nevertheless, very insightful info you have here. Thanks alot for yet another juicy trivias; looking forward to some more on the next vids.
It's funny cause Medea seems to be the "Zeus shield" of Hades 2 where it's very consistent if you have an high skill investment. So hypothetically there are very few "impossible" situations if played perfectly (which obviously isn't probable). Thanks for the video mate! Super lucky first half.
Dude great job with the run! Also I hate that I need to quit your surface videos to avoid new region spoilers. I've not been able to make it olympus at all so do you have any tips? Note: I've not maxed out my grasp, arcana or weapons so that might be it.
Grasp, arcana, and weapons certainly help. While I have 30 grasp, the build I use only takes advantage of 29 grasp so that extra grasp doesn't often matter for me (so don't fret about the last grasp). I maxed out Charon axe and it's great for surface. Admittedly, axe no longer blocks with special like it used to, so that's a downside now for the new patch. The surface bosses are very hard so don't beat yourself up if you think you're struggling.
What would you think the way to go is with the new fears and all the other stuff? I feel like with no healing (at least for me) stalwart defense is like a mandatory item, fig leaf really helps time as well.
At last we come to the final run. Curious what a Xinthos run in this format would look like, but given the patch it'd be a completely different kind of marathon.
Trivia on the skulls:
Witchcraft in Ancient Greece did involve the use of bones, often, but typically animal bones rather than human ones. This is referenced in how bones are the main currency used for unlockables, although in this case they use bones of the dead (humans) rather than animal bones. I assume this is because Mel is heir to the God of the Dead, and as such, the bones of dead humans are part of her domain. She tends to be fairly dismissive of mortals when Chronos, Prometheus or Nemesis speak highly of them (despite being quite taken with the smarter mortals like Odysseus, Arachne, Icarus and--so she thinks--Schelemeus), so it's not too surprising to me that she's fine with using their bones in place of animals' for greater magical potency.
A novel called Metamorphoses III by Roman writer Apuleius (no relation to Ovid's own work called Metamorphoses) describes a witch's workshop as having 'the mutilated skulls of animals with teeth pulled from their sockets' as one of its core features, while according to some writers (I couldn't find reliable sources for this one, but it's repeated a few times) diviners sometimes used the burnt and cooked shoulder blades of oxen for divination--if light was able to pass through cracks in the bone formed from the heat, it meant victory or rains.
In Athens, a 2300 year old jar containing the bones of a chicken was found inscribed with curses intended to strike down the opposition to a craftsman's guild in a coming lawsuit. The bones were burned at a sacrificial altar and then set into a jar that was stabbed with a nail. The inscription compares the intended victims to the chicken, who was 7 months old at the time and invoked as a sacrifice because it was 'helpless' (per the inscription). Sounds like a lovely bunch of people--hope they lost their suit. Speaking of sacrifices, sacrificing bones of animals to the Gods was perhaps the most widespread way in which Greeks used bones to try to obtain magical aid.
Skulls specifically were regarded as being able to give advice or even divine the future if treated or cured properly. There's an apocryphal story of Spartan King Cleomenes who swore an oath to a childhood friend that he'd always consult him for advice if he ever became king. Once he became king, he chopped off the head of a childhood friend and pickled it in honey, then confided in it for said advice. Orpheus' severed head (torn off by frenzied worshippers of Dio who hated how gloomy he'd become without Eurydice) landed near the island of Lesbos, and was also said to be able to whisper prophecies if consulted. More generally, there are surviving recordings of rituals from Hellenic Egypt that describe how to use magic in order to invoke prophecies in skulls.
This kind of witchcraft was generally seen as a taboo, macabre thing that was shameful to practice, but this didn't seem to actually stop people from doing it in secret. As mentioned before, sorcery kits in Ancient Greece are fairly common, as are the materials to construct curses similar to the one discovered in Athens using the bones of certain animals. But there were more 'mainstream' and 'acceptable' ways to consult animal bones over the future or invoke their power. While magic derived from another's soul was considered a vile and diabolical power, using bones to invoke the power of the Gods was perfectly fair play. Oracles would roll a set of five sheep knucklebones to help divine the future. Numbers were set upon the four sides of the bones, and the Oracles would record the dice number they rolled and compare it to a set of potential meanings indexed by numerical value. This practice was called astragalomancy--divining from the astragals, the knucklebone that is square enough to roll like a dice. These dice were also used for gambling in Ancient Greece, which is where the expression 'rolling the knucklebones' comes from.
And by widespread, I mean omnipresent. Any ritual in which meat was consumed involved sacrificing to the Gods to try to win their divine favour. In the Iliad, one of the main reasons Zeus supports the Trojans for much of the war is that Hector devotedly sacrifices sheep thighbones to him on a yearly basis. The Athenians had a whole legal system in place for how to ritually sacrifice oxen and the guilt involved in the murder of the animals. It was seen as common practice to sacrifice animals any time you had a major request of the Gods, with oxen being the most valuable (being the hardest/most expensive to raise) and pigs and sheep being the most common. As mentioned in the Prometheus video, mythologically this is because Prometheus had Zeus agree to only take part of a meat's meal from humans when they feasted, then tricked Zeus into accepting the bones of animals as sacrifice because he wrapped them in tasty fat and hid the nutritionally valuable meat inside a stomach. Thus, the Gods were forced to keep their word and accept the bones.
The Greco-Roman world would use animal sacrifice as part of its traditions all the way up to the advent of Christianity, but some Greek philosophers questioned the ethics of animal sacrifices as early as Alexander the Great's time. Human sacrifices, however, were considered taboo and blasphemous to the Gods themselves. Zeus made this abundantly clear when he threw Tantalus into Tartarus for sacrificing his son to him in a feast, forcing Tantalus to constantly seek water and food but never be able to reach it. The Gods then reassembled Tantalus' son, save for his shoulderblade that Demeter absent-mindedly ate as she grieved for missing Persephone, which Heph replaced with an ivory one. Thus, the Greeks believed the Gods found the sacrifice or use of human bones in their spells to be distasteful or blasphemous. The Gods, however, have no such restrictions upon them, and the domains of bones belonging to the Chthonic Gods means that Mel as Hades' daughter is free to use them.
As to Revaal specifically, he is a bit of a mystery in terms of his own origins. In life he was apparently an 'adjudicator', or judge, though who or what he judged the game does not say. The term is however used for judges of the dead in Greek myth, so perhaps he is a judge of mortal souls whose own bones defend them in death. He certainly seems to be willing to be used as a weapon by Mel, since he appears to grin more widely when she upgrades him ('did that skull just grin at me...?'). Given the level of devotion to Hecate her followers have extending beyond death, I assume he was some kind of devotee to her in life and in death donated his bones to the Silver Sisters' cause.
Where does that leave Mel's use of the dead's bones as weapons, though? Is it ethical within the context of the setting? Well, as mentioned before, divine power is different from power derived from others' souls. In historic records of her mythos, Mel herself is not said to use skulls specifically as weapons in her invocations, but she is said to use the spirits of the dead as weapons when seeking out vengeance. Thus, using a skull bound with the spirit of a dead man as a weapon seems on-brand for her domain, especially since Hades himself is master over the dead and uses their skulls and souls as weapons in his boss fight in the first game. In-game Mel doesn't seem particularly bothered by her regular use of mortals' remains for magical power, and when questioned on the value of mortal spirits, she seems to have an odd kind of cognitive dissonance about it. She finds mortal souls to be valued and cherished friends individually, but collectively seems to be quite dismissive of them as being simply beneath her time or care. We'll see if she ends up having any qualms about so liberally using the bones of mortalkind for her own purposes by the end of the game, but as of now, she doesn't really seem to notice the hypocrisy. Some room for growth in our hero yet.
I'm with you on the idea of having Revaal as a devout follower of Hecate. As per her Book of Shadow's Entry, apparently she (Revaal) was irresponsible before she passed. So perhaps this is her way of atoning and helping Hecate and the Silver Sisters with their cause. I even speculate that she may have been a former sister herself.
Nevertheless, very insightful info you have here. Thanks alot for yet another juicy trivias; looking forward to some more on the next vids.
Yeah we will do it again in the future
6:52 That dude who wanted you to pick up fate fabric is very happy rn lol
Lmaooo
Awww you noticed! It made my afternoon! ♥️
@@pranavkarthik9250 I be trying to snatch em up
YESSIR!!! THERE IT IS!!! skulls are definitely one of the weapons of all time but YOU MADE IT WORK!!!
medea and persephone got big buffs this patch to be fair, mel skulls is ... a weapon
It's funny cause Medea seems to be the "Zeus shield" of Hades 2 where it's very consistent if you have an high skill investment. So hypothetically there are very few "impossible" situations if played perfectly (which obviously isn't probable).
Thanks for the video mate! Super lucky first half.
I always loved Medea but it felt so clunky, with this patch that’s gone so it’s probably going to be one of my most played aspects next to the coat
Great run man! Gratz on running the weapon gauntlet undefeated. Just have to do it again with the black coat.
We will have to go for another 6 in this patch yep
Omggg that dem legendary coming in clutch
You picked up the fate fabric too TT congrats!!
Yes !!
@@Boat3d i feel gunuinely happy
Hello, love your videos, could you please make a tutorial on arcana loadouts? I struggle to have good ones adapted for each weapon....
Have one for the old patch, will be making one for this patch soon! Thanks for watching 🤠
This guy wishes he could be me so bad
I could never live up to the vibrator but I will try
The what?
These runs make my whole quiver
Same brother
Dude great job with the run!
Also I hate that I need to quit your surface videos to avoid new region spoilers. I've not been able to make it olympus at all so do you have any tips?
Note: I've not maxed out my grasp, arcana or weapons so that might be it.
Grasp, arcana, and weapons certainly help. While I have 30 grasp, the build I use only takes advantage of 29 grasp so that extra grasp doesn't often matter for me (so don't fret about the last grasp). I maxed out Charon axe and it's great for surface. Admittedly, axe no longer blocks with special like it used to, so that's a downside now for the new patch. The surface bosses are very hard so don't beat yourself up if you think you're struggling.
Yeah I’d start with that
@@l.n.3372 Thanks for the help
What would you think the way to go is with the new fears and all the other stuff? I feel like with no healing (at least for me) stalwart defense is like a mandatory item, fig leaf really helps time as well.
No clue yet
GG!
Thank you 🤠
1900 runs mad respect 🫡
Thank you 🤠
discord link isnt working
Yeah it expires every so often I’ll update it later today sorry about that !