The Martial Maenads

An encounter with Odysseus at the festival of Athene leads into the first leg of a voyage that will eventually take Atalanta, Ariadne and Eurysakes across the seas to Thrace, where a false god is interfering with the worship of Ares and Dionysos...

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The web version of the game is identical to the download, but it will take a long time to load, as its load time is determined by the length of the script, and the novel itself is 111k words long, plus the 30k+ words in the glossary section.

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This is book three in a series of seven (vaguely) Young Adult novels I wrote back in 2014.  (Book one can be found here, and book two here.)  In the rewriting process, I have added some light interactivity (which can lead to game overs, but cannot change the actual outcome of the story).  In addition to this interactivity, I have added a glossary section, which includes a "Recap" section that contains not only recaps for both of the previous novels, but also some other material about the general setting, and further material unlocks after the novel has been fully read, including a timeline.  (The timeline can't be given beforehand because it contains some spoilers.)

All the visuals in the game were  made by me, tracing over photographs of Mycenaean and Minoan frescoes.  (With the sole exceptions of the ivy on the spears in the logo, which was traced over the ivy around a thyrsos in the hands of a maenad on a classic-era pot, and the leopard-skin print behind the logo, which was traced over a photograph of an actual leopard.  Still done by me, though, as the shakiness of the lines proves all too well...)

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I did not add music, however, so I recommend putting on some music you enjoy while you read.  :)  That being said, I did find some music being sold as a game-making resource here on itch.io that would suit the setting, but there are only about 7-9 tracks that would work (maybe as many as 11 if I accepted a few with heavy brass sections) but since there aren't any that properly fit a few scenes, and since that's still not very many tracks to accompany 111k words of text...I thought better not to go that route.  (Still, if it would make people feel more inclined to read this, I'll be glad to reupload with that music...)

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Content Warnings:

Period-appropriate misogyny (albeit toned down), cultural racism, non-ethnic slavery, mentions of past physical abuse, mentions of rape,  non-graphic descriptions of violence and people being devoured by horses...and probably a lot of other things, too, as the Late Bronze Age was not a pleasant place.  (Nor was the Greek Heroic Age, and this is sort of a fusion between the real LBA and the mythical one...)

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The ebook versions are very much "quick and dirty," having been downloaded from where I posted the novel to AO3.  But they're functional, and that's what matters, right?  (I do recommend the Ren'py version over the ebooks, though, for the glossary if nothing else.)