I'm now also realizing the name of Ulysses is also probably pretty meaningful. Odysseus (also known as Ulysses) sailed around the Mediterranean going on adventures for ten years (about as long as Eternum has existed on Earth), all so he can get back home and back to his wife. The Founder probably named it after him for a reason. He does also have a penchant for Greek-ish aesthetics: The Temple of Acheron, Ulysses, the Praetorians are more Roman but close enough, the Weapons of Atlas, all with Greek names, the statues at the mansion. To me, it seems like there might be some cultural differences there to weed out. Like for instance, if we do think that the ouroborous doors in Hyril'ar are the doors of Acheron, then the elves call the temple they lead to "The Temple of the Ten Rivers", which is not actually named by the elves but rather "the ancients". Maybe differences like that could eventually be useful to figure something out.
Ok, I just had a tiny brain blast, and I feel a bit daft for not realizing this before. The whole game we keep hearing about the "Immortals" and whatnot, and we basically expect that the Founder is one such Immortal, and we're told that they're in some sort of conflict with Hyril'ar and Calypso.
But in the real world, the Immortals were an actual real thing, and were a feature of the Persian military, and the number one context where one would probably have heard about them is of the Greco-Persian War, where Persia, having a vast empire and a vast military force, tried to conquer the much smaller and much more divided Greece, and ultimately failed.
The Immortals/the Founder being symbolically linked with Persia in the context of their attempted conquest of Greece does make sense to me, given that the scale of Eternum does already come off to me as an empire of sorts. But then why would that symbology then be muddled with the Founder appearing to use Greek aesthetics so consistently, the culture that was ultimately able to hold the real-world Immortals back?
The MC ends up using Greek aesthetics too, like for instance when choosing his nickname the three curated options are Heracles, Eros, and Nobody. "Nobody" is a reference to the Odyssey, where Odysseus (also known as Ulysses) tricks a cyclops by saying his name is Nobody. And well, the canon name of the MC is Orion too. But that makes sense for
us, since we're
presumably working against the Immortals. Right? Right??
And, another interesting wrinkle, the Greek word for an Immortal is "Athanatos" which yes is just A-Thanatos or "not thanatos" (thanatos meaning death). And that makes sense too, since Thanatos is in some capacity working for William Bardot against the Founder, who is probably one such "Athanatos". But surely all this Greek aesthetic stuff doesn't just come from William Bardot or his faction or whatever. It's not like he would've named the temple of Acheron. Unless he did???
And why even are the Immortals called Immortals? Presumably they don't die or something like that, but the elves in Hyril'ar are also essentially immortal in that way. Do the Immortals have some sort of extra power over life and death, which is found in the temple of Acheron? But it didn't seem like the temple of Acheron was built by the Immortals, since Arranis said it was built by "the ancients" and the elves grant some regard to it. Could these ancients maybe be a common ancestor of sorts of both the elves and the Immortals? The stated powers of the Immortals, that they could pass through Eternum at will, does sound pretty similar to the powers of the line of Anima. Hmm.
Gah, I don't know anymore, man. At this point I kind of feel like the Founder might also be working to end the Immortals, as crazy as that kind of sounds. I don't know how it all fits together, but it feels.. correct. It's what the symbology kind of points to, with him using all the Greek aesthetics.
And if the MC is an Immortal too, I wonder if the Founder and Idriel could somehow be working to the same goal of joining back together the line of the Immortals with the line of the elves/Anima. But then that would make Calypso a required love interest? Hrmmmmm. Maybe the line doesn't have to be "joined" in a genealogical way, but just a friendly way. I don't know.
Or this could all well just be that I'm taking this Persian Immortals thing way too far lol. But I really think there might be something to it. It still really interests me too that Calypso has a Greek name that stands in contrast to all the elven names of Hyril'ar. I was wondering earlier if Calypso could be some kind of "construct" in the same way that the MC/Orion is. Do we ever hear about her mom? All we know is that her father is Raewyn and that she's the last of her line. That's sort of like the MC I guess, where we only really know our dad. It would be kind of funny too, if we initially thought Calypso was created as a Weapon of Atlas, but then became convinced that actually she's a real, organic person, and then it turns out that actually she
was created just not quite in the way that we initially thought.
This is definitely a very good game though that it creates such a playground for both brain blasts and penis blasts.