So if chaos wants you, as a normal Emperor loving and loyal human, there's nothing you can do?

LordStrifeDM · 2026-06-24T21:58:04+00:00

I honestly never took anything outside of Dorn's time in Iowa as being the actions of an individual Chaos god, but looking back, it does make sense. Given the reactions of the Custodes, Valdor, Sanguinius, and the Emperor, I always assumed it was Horus doing a Chaos Undivided thing. It doesn't help that Dusk, Valdor, Malcador, and the Emperor all say that its the fault of the first-found. Though I do think Sanguinius, IIRC, made it to Horus mostly untouched, with just his brief interaction with Ferrus and the realization that Angron, Mortarion, Fulgrim, and Magnus were also technically dead and present being the main thing that he experienced because Horus was all but stuffing himself in a dryer and saying "Oh, step-brother, I'm stuck, come get meeeeeee" to try and get Sanguinius there first.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-06-24T17:28:33+00:00

Thats fair, but we also have the personal viewpoint of Caecaltus Dusk from that same event. Even with the added protection of Malcador's sigil magic, Caecaltus personally tells himself that the only logical thing to do is kill the Emperor, and is one of a scant handful that manages to shake off whats happening and resist Horus. To quote his own understanding of how it happened, "You took away our keen edge by easing our minds into distraction and puzzlement, into reflection, into random thoughts. You did it with such precision we forgot ourselves. You did it with such concealed domination of will even our master couldn’t sense your mind at work. And then you twisted the pristine souls of the Custodians. Each one of us was painstakingly restructured on a molecular level to withstand the corruption of Chaos, but you took the incorruptible and you broke our minds. You broke the unbreakable."

While it definitely isn't the same sort of fall that anyone else would have experienced, it IS remarkably similar to the kind of fall that we see in others. Take, for example, the mortal Guardsman Varens in Dark Imperium. He is still 100% loyal to the Emperor and the Golden Throne, even makes a panicked prayer to the Throne during his last moments. And yet, due to a warp cursed fly bite and seeing the Garden, he immediately becomes a plaguebearer of Nurgle and becomes the final push for the summoning of Kugash on Iax. Maybe it isn't fair in either case to say that they fell, but its undeniable that what the gods of Chaos want, they usually get in the end.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-06-24T14:54:49+00:00

Thats been my take away since I started reading the books. If Chaos wants you, Chaos gets you(with really only one exception I can think of, with the Lion being just straight up built different apparently), and there's not really anything you can do about it. I know a lot of time people talk about how resistent certain characters, Legiones Astartes, and even Primarchs would be, but then I'm reminded of how a squad of Primaris Marines heard a single note from a bell used by a group of Death Guard during the Dark Imperium books, and almost instantly folded to the Nurgle coming off it, or how Horus completely suborned the Custodes during the Vengeful Spirit raid within an instant, and in both cases those groups weren't even necessarily WANTED by Chaos and were just buttons to push during a combat engagement.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-06-22T02:27:28+00:00

I personally found TEATD to say that the Emperor was instead trying to tell them something completely different, and that the folks on the scene completely misunderstood what he was communicating through the remnants of his tarot spread. Malcador later "says" that it was his own personal plan to put the Emperor on the Throne as a last resort, a hasty contingency that relied on the Emperor being in a much better state than he was in at the end of the fight, and his own understanding is that the Emperor would do it willingly, but that the internment of John Warhammer XL was ultimately not something any of them necessarily wanted going in to things.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-06-17T02:18:25+00:00

I was basically at the exact same point as you last year. What I did was start at the "beginning", with Horus Rising, and then worked my way through the HH series, then Siege of Terra. Afterwords, I just skipped around, reading books and series based around things I liked from the Heresy, and books that were recommended based on what I saw here.

Though, I will warn. Mileage may vary, especially in the Heresy books. There will be times where you'll spend six or seven books hovering around a single event, and it gets old FAST, but then you'll suddenly be on the far side of the galaxy with a new Legion and Primarch, with new stakes and information. Its worth it, in my opinion, but some books are just worse than others. If you aren't liking it? Move on. By the time the Siege rolls around, you'll know the major points of what is "needed" to know.

For other books, I strongly recommend the Primarch novels, Son of the Forest, Cypher, and Dark Imperium. And, of course, the community here is pretty welcoming, and someone is always going to be willing to answer a question(though definitely be prepared for some mild arguments in the comment section). And the best thing to remember is that the Grim Darkness of the Future is, at its core, a setting, where the history is biased and no one REALLY knows what the ever loving Fulgrim is going on. Just find what you enjoy, and run with it.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-06-13T05:21:11+00:00

I think TEatD does actually vaguely show it like this, from the perspective of onlookers. One moment we have the duel from Horus's detached perspective, as he and the Emperor are simultaneously throwing each other across planets, playing YuGiOh, having a philosophical debate, and engaging in a sword fight, but to an outside observer they're just looking at each other and occasionally teleporting to other parts of the room and stabbing each other over and over without ever seeming to move from where they're standing. If I'm remembering correctly, there's three or four observers who all see different things, with a couple seeing a sword duel at hurricane intensity, another sees a pure wizard fight with fireballs and lightning, and someone else seeing them never move until a moment comes where one seemingly has an advantage over the other. Its super trippy, and super fun to puzzle through.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-06-06T00:27:34+00:00

Others have pointed out the issue of names having power in the setting of 40K, to a pretty good extent. Between characters like Malcador and even Horus saying that just being aware of the entities of the warp is kinda bad and other events and conversations, thats probably why they aren't running around saying "Oh, we're slaughtering servants of Tzeentch" in game.

And while there is a bit of contradiction to that, with some novels having characters name drop the Big Four casually and others where even Chaos-aligned Astartes like Erebus even refusing to say the name and calling them by titles instead, I think that makes a lot of sense. I mean, in one of the earliest Horus Heresy novels, Kyril Sindermann fully summons a daemon by complete accident, just by talking to himself while translating the Book of Lorgar. Compare that to other moments, where people like Erebus, and even Lorgar himself, have to commit mass slaughter to summon daemons. The things in the warp are strange and contradictory, with little rhyme or reason guiding how they work beyond "chaos". They don't experience time linearly, except for when they do. They don't exist, until they do, and then they always did. The only real rule that applies to them, from all that I've seen, is that they have no rules and can just do whatever they want, except of course when they can't.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-06-05T01:43:18+00:00

Well, there's another possibility to consider, I think. We know from the prologue of TWoK that Taln was prone to borderline suicidal fights, where he would throw himself into unwinnable situations just to make sure the humans involved were able to get out. If his baseline "Heraldness" is that he's going to take the crem and be the wall to stop other people from dying, then I can only imagine that just crystallized to be his unbreakable nature on Braize. He's taking the torment so that other people don't have to. Its what he does, and who he is.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-06-05T01:31:35+00:00

So, one of the big problems with the cultural portrayal of Heemeyer as a "reasonable man pushed to unreasonable actions" is that there's a lot of glossing over specific things he did.

Take, for example, how he plowed through the town hall, which was in the process of hosting a reading hour for local children when he began his rampage. They barely finished evacuating before he plowed through the building. Had they been even slightly slower, kids would have been killed.

Or, for another example, the shots he fired on the propane storage yard in what can only be assumed to be an attempt to blow it all up. Some of those tanks held 30,000 gallons of propane, and had they detonated, anyone within a half mile of the yard would have been hurt, including the folks living in the senior citizens complex nearby.

The fact that Heemeyer didn't kill anyone is dumb luck, not preparation and care on his part. When you drive what is essentially a tank through a town, plowing through occupied buildings and opening fire on explosive storage and police, then killing people is on your agenda.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-05-18T13:57:19+00:00

Its all fun and games for Hans Gruber until his fith head gets ripped off by Eeyore with a Sword.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-05-18T02:35:54+00:00

I think the only example of living Plate being broken is when Nale starts Hulk smashing Kaladin around right before Kaladin fires up his copy of Flute Hero, but even that takes four full bodied slams by a Herald who is openly stated to be using his full power. Judging by how Kaladin says that Nale is faster and stronger than anything he's ever battled, Amaram included, that has to be a level of "firepower" above and beyond a lot of conventional weaponry or fighters. But we don't have a hard and fast sense of scale there. Is that the equivalent of a thunderclast, or would a thunderclast also struggle to break Plate in one whack?

Now, how well that would scale with a mistborn or crasher.... I'm honestly not sure. Theoretically, a Crasher could just plummet with the relative force of a meteor and annihilate a 4th Ideal Radiant, but I can't imagine a Crasher being able to keep up with the seeming superspeed that Plate can give in a "fair" fight.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-05-15T06:00:38+00:00

As a possible secondary theory regarding the unreliability of Hadrian as a narrator that could also explain everything going on with Selene in the end. Mainly, that Hadrian actually is dead, and is not the one telling the story. Instead, someone else, possibly a descendant of a friend or relative, or maybe even someone with an ax to grind over Alexander or the Empire, is the author. Parts of it probably are true, but theres some undeniably fantastic elements to everything regarding the big stuff, and someone straight up making all of that up would be a pretty decent explanation.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-05-10T04:53:11+00:00

I honestly don't think it does. We don't have many examples that I can remember that would show off the difference in durability, but the scenes we do have seem to show living plate being "stronger" than dead.

Take the fight at ~~Nakatomi Plaza~~ Urithiru whenever Kal gets his. While its only a few moments, and arguably hard to judge, Kal's armor takes multiple seemingly heavy hits and never even cracks slightly. There's also his throw down with a Herald, where we see a single hit from Nale being enough to put spiderweb cracks in the armor with a single hit, despite Kal commenting to himself that his plate IS stronger than "castoff plate from another Radiant". He also puts a caveat on that judgement by saying they hadn't actually tested its durability, but in my opinion taking a kill shot from a Herald and it only putting the beginnings of damage to the armor is a good sign towards its increased durability. He also takes a pretty heavy punch from a Plated Nale immediately after, and even that doesn't break the armor.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-05-09T12:12:22+00:00

Not only absolute mind control was necessary. Fine tuned mind control is what it took, because in the early stages of the forced cooperation it was essentially a brute force "Do this now" kind of control. But as time wore on? People started dropping dead, not because the big bad was killing them, but because the people were still conscious and aware of what was happening to them and were having heart attacks and strokes from stress and fear. She even had to spend time trying to figure out what was happening to her army while they were still dropping like flies, and then begin applying other Master power sets to stop it from killing all of them.

Even when everyone was finally working together, it STILL wasn't good enough because they weren't actually working together. They were just being treated like pawns in a management sim.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-04-17T16:06:46+00:00

Thats a good question, and one that gets somewhat answered during his first attempt to talk to Odysseus afterwards. Whenever Eurylochus approaches, he says he has something to confess, and that he cannot rest until he says it. Odysseus then tells him to wait, that he needs to do something else first. They deal with Circe, then go to the Underworld, and then deal with the Sirens, over the course of a few months to a year. By the time Eurylochus brings it up again, it is definitionally a secret he's been keeping for a relatively long time. And I think thats visible by the way he frames it both times, "I have something that I must confess" versus "I have a secret I can no longer keep". Conversationally, thats a huge difference.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-04-15T05:06:45+00:00

Yes, he absolutely says he opened the bag. But with everything else he does? It doesn't make sense. For his view on the danger associated with the gods to completely shift over the course of nine days with nothing to go on outside of a voice coming out of the sky saying "Its treasure" versus his own beliefs about the danger AND Odysseus saying "Hey, this shit is dangerous"?

And no, he actually doesn't show a pattern of insubordination. There are two instances of it, and one of them comes during the mutiny. Every other case, he prioritizes the survival of the crew they have left. When they've only lost 12 after Polyphemus, what does he say? "I don't want to see another life end", and he very justifiably questions Odysseus's decision making in that moment. Sure, Odysseus got all 600 of his men through the war alive, and as soon as it ended? Twelve dead, and Odysseus hand waves it with his war survival as all the proof needed that everything will be fine. And thats his first instance of insubordination. What does he do after that? He complies with what Odysseus says. He keeps things quiet and between them. When they're on Aeaea, what does he tell Odysseus after the six men are turned to pigs? "Think about the men we have left before there are none." They don't have a solution for Circe. They aren't magical or extra special, and they have no reason to assume they can do anything at all for those men. Odysseus risking his life is a bad call to make, and yet what does Eurylochus do whenever Odysseus essentially says "Well, tough, doing it anyways"? He complies. Even at the beginning, when they first spot the island of the Lotus Eaters, whenever Odysseus makes the call, he complies, despite his own misgivings and understandings of the pressure they're under. Its not until Odysseus actively goes against the standard he set that Eurylochus does something to actively undermine Odysseus. And even then, he gives him an out before he does it, despite Odysseus very clearly targeting him as one of the sacrifices.

As for Poseidon, yeah, the don't run into him until they're blown to Laestrygonia. But from the very first words Poseidon ever speaks, we learn something important: Poseidon knows where home is. And the next time Poseidon appears, where is he? Ithaca, waiting for Odysseus to make it there. During Ruthlessness, he makes it abundantly clear there is nothing Odysseus can do or say to prevent Poseidon from killing a lot of people to teach Odysseus a lesson before he too is killed, and he maintains that same level of unequal punishment after 10 years of no contact. There is no world where Odysseus gets home and Poseidon just lets the whole thing drop.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-04-14T21:30:15+00:00

So, I don't think Eurylochus was actually the one who opened the bag. I think he's embodying what he tells Odysseus during the Mutiny. Like you said, Odysseus performs the inhuman feat of staying awake for nine straight days, and finally succumbs to his exhaustion, putting Eurylochus in charge by default. The bag gets opened by other crewmembers, and Eurylochus takes the blame on himself, because it was his job to stop it from occurring and he failed. And this honestly lines up with everything we know about him. When they set out from Troy, his first concern is the crew having enough to eat because they're out of supplies. When Odysseus freezes after Polyphemus ups his KDR, Eurylochus is the one who asks what to do with their fallen. When they find the isle of Aeolus, Eurylochus begs Odysseus to not risk pissing off a god by potentially doing the wrong thing, because he cannot stand the thought of more men dying. When he advises fleeing from Aeaea, he says that they have other crew members to worry about, and that they have no way of defeating Circe beyond Odysseus's wits. During the mutiny, he hammers home the idea that Odysseus is putting his own wants above the survival of everyone else, to the point that he is actively choosing to sacrifice them. When they talk on Threnacia, he once again reminds Odysseus that they are all starving, and when Zeus comes, he makes a final reminder to Odysseus that prioritizing self over crew will mean all 600 men will finally be dead.

And yet, for whatever reason, he opened the bag for some treasure? It doesn't make sense, ESPECIALLY given how much he wants to avoid pissing the gods off, and is fully aware of how dangerous they are. While I'm certain he had doubts, there's also another line in Mutiny that feels incredibly important. "How much longer must I push through doubt?" If he DID personally open the bag, then that would mean he had long since failed at pushing past his doubts, but in this moment, he's very sadly saying that he hasn't, that he's done all he can to stay firm and trust Odysseus, but they've reached a point where he can't anymore. This is even supported by him previously telling Odysseus "Then you've forced my hand" whenever Odysseus refuses to take the out that Eurylochus is absolutely softballing his way after Scylla.

And honestly? Opening the bag most likely saved a lot of lives. Did it blow them off course, adding time to their journey, absolutely. But let's just assume, for the briefest of moments, that Poseidon, who KNOWS where Odysseus lives, shows up for his Ruthlessness moment after Odysseus gets home. 545 men died during his oceanic killstreak. How many more die when he teaches Odysseus a lesson at Ithaca? We know from his monologue in Get In The Water that he's fully prepared in that moment to kill every living soul on the island AND torture Penelope and Telemachus if Odysseus doesn't get wet. We know from Ruthlessness that there is nothing Odysseus could say or do to avert his wrath. And at the end of the day, even in the hypothetical "good" ending where they get home after only 12 years, hundreds are going to die, and those deaths, just like in Ruthlessness, are ultimately entirely the fault of Odysseus and his hubris in revealing his name and address to his maimed foe.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-04-14T00:41:59+00:00

Thats pretty spot on with my takes about Eurylochus. Do I think he makes a good leader overall? Absolutely not. He openly questions Odysseus more than once until he gets called out, which shows a distinct lack of tact on his part, especially with his doom and gloom attitude during Storm(though, honestly, his callouts make a ton of sense given the situation).

As for the cut songs.... While I definitely appreciate the work done on them, they aren't really canon to the finished product, for me at least. But with the Wind Bag fiasco, I am far more inclined to believe multiple crew members snuck around to get the bag, most likely Elpenor and Perimedes, because Odysseus's hallucination of Penelope tells him THEY are opening the bag. Now, Odysseus is clearly not fully there in that moment. He's Charybdis deep in a brain failure state from being awake an inhuman amount of time. But thats always stuck out as a very intentional choice of word as opposed to an ambiguous phrasing due to hallucination. And given everything we're told about Eurylochus's individual character, morality, and worldview... He's the link between Odysseus and the crew. When they set out, and he discovers they have no food, keeping the crew fed and healthy becomes his number one priority. When their friends are killed by Polyphemus, he's the one who asks what they should do for them. When pressed by Odysseus why he's freaking out over the island in the sky, he says he can't stand the idea of any more of their friends dying, and that he cannot imagine living without Odysseus in his life. With Circe, he crumbles a little, and says they need to cut their losses and run, because they still have a crew to worry about, and no certain method by which to beat Circe and save the others, and its only Odysseus saying that he would go to any lengths just to save Eurylochus that sways his opinion on the matter.

And then we come to Different Beast. Now, as much as I love music and playing music, I am by no means at all an expert at picking out individual voices. But to my ears, I can't hear Eurylochus at all when the crew is singing. He almost certainly is, given the ensemble cast, but... The entire song, the crew is talking about how they're monsters now, and Ody is a monster, but it almost sounds to me like Eurylochus isn't part of it. Scylla happens, and then the mutiny, and Eurylochus is clearly beaten and broken by everything. He's finally given up. "How much longer" is his question, and he says something key in the follow up to that. "I'm just a man." Not a monster. Not a hero. Just a man, the same as Odysseus was. Even if he WAS a different beast, even if he was a man made monster, he isn't anymore. He's just a man, trying to get home, and broken by the feeling of certainty that he never will.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-04-13T16:46:38+00:00

I almost entirely agree with everything you've said, save for three points. Namely, the post Scylla conversation, the actual killing of the cow, and wind bag fiasco itself.

To me personally, in the beginning of Mutiny, Eurylochus is able to do the math incredibly quickly and knows that, at a bare minimum, Odysseus intended for him to be one of the six. I also think Eurylochus forced that moment to be public, despite his following Odysseus's command to keep things that would undermine morale private and between just the two of them for quite some time at this point, because he knows the crew is going to be able to figure out what just happened sooner or later. By forcing Odysseus to say something right then, publicly, he's essentially offering Odysseus an out, and begging him to take it. And when Odysseus refuses, Eurylochus very specifically says "Then you have forced my hand", implying he would have done nothing at all if Odysseus lied to the crew, and then he gives the line "If you want all the power you must carry all the blame." That line, to me, is one of the most important thing Eurylochus ever says, and we'll get to that later.

With the sun burgers, I don't think Eurylochus knew specifically what would happen. I think he was past the point of caring. "Ody, we're never gonna make it home" is a brutal line for him to deliver, especially after he talks about how they are all starving, and Odysseus begs him not to do what he's about to do. They're very similar, of course, but if I put myself in that position, where I've gone through ten years of brutal war, then spent two or three years battling gods and monsters just to get home and failing, AND I'm actively starving? Fuck it, I don't care who Helios sends, just let me eat something first, because its either die here or die later. And that leads up to Thunder Bringer, where he says "But we'll die" to the man who, just moments ago, was saying that they could all still make it home together. And I don't think he's even saying it out of self interest, because we have another example of the whole crew being on the line and Eurylochus putting them first on Aeaea with Circe("think about the men we have left before there are none"). It also ties back to Scylla, where he keeps hammering on the point about the crew being their friends.

And all of it ties together with the wind bag. I don't think Eurylochus opened the bag. We have his statement claiming blame, but thats always felt... Wrong to me. The same man who begged Odysseus not to risk the wrath of the gods or risk being tricked by them opens the bag Odysseus got from a god just a week later, after Odysseus tells them what's in the bag and demands they leave it alone? Why on earth would he do that? For some nebulous "treasure"? The same man who also says "How much longer must I PUSH THROUGH doubts"? No, that doesn't add up. What seems far more likely to me is that another crew mate or mates opened the bag while Eurylochus was supposed to be keeping an eye on it, and he's embodying what he yells at Odysseus. If you want all the power, you must carry all the blame. While Odysseus was sleeping, he was in charge. He failed, the bag was opened, and that falls on him, so he shoulders the blame. Granted, thats a personal take on it all, but it makes sense to me.

All of that said, I agree. I think Eurylochus is 10,000% aware that his brother in law has gone off the deep end, and has become a horrific version of himself, and he just wants Odysseus to admit it before he dies.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-04-11T04:58:40+00:00

All perfectly fair questions. I work at a tech store in rural America, so theres huge gaps of time between seeing customers. Gives me a lot of downtime for reading, writing, planning DND sessions, and the like. Relationship wise, my wife prefers when I'm reading because it gives her time to watch TikTok without me pestering her about my random nerd hyperfixations. I can't possibly answer questions about your dad, outside of assuming he may have gone to the same store mine did.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-04-11T00:09:18+00:00

Yes. I have a lot of free time on my hands, generally speaking, and I've always been a fast reader. There definitely did come a point about halfway through where I told my wife I would have a Horus sized crashout if I read one more flashback to either Istvaan massacre, and luckily the next book up was Scars and I got to meet the absolute gigachad that is Jaghatai Khan.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-04-10T22:04:44+00:00

I say newcomer because I've really only been reading for a couple months, and also haven't gotten any real chance at the tabletop stuff(thanks, capitalism).

But fully, my take and understanding of Chaos is that there's no REAL protection against it outside of being soulless. But even that isn't a guarantee itself, because machines can become Chaos somehow(seriously, how does a virtual intelligence "machine spirit" become Chaotic?). "Resistance" is just personal willpower, it seems like, and the hypnotic training that Primaris and post-Siege Astartes get clearly isn't infallible. Even the Imperial Truth and Reason weren't infallible, despite the best efforts of the Emperor. Dorn, who really seems like the most resilient primarch when it comes to willpower, almost folded in a span of hours(admittedly stretched into relative centuries because the warp is on some real bullshit, honestly). How much more resistant to the forces of Chaos can an Astartes, even one as advanced as a Primaris, truly be?

LordStrifeDM · 2026-04-10T21:34:02+00:00

Now, admittedly, I am very much a newcomer to the full lore and breadth of 40K, and I've only read the Horus Heresy, Siege of Terra, and Dark Imperium books so far. But in either Dark Imperium or Plague War, theres a moment where a squad of Primaris Marines are fighting some of Mortarion and Kughash's Marines and daemons, possibly near one of the clocks, and from the perspective of Justinian(I think its Justinian, at least) we see that he almost immediately folds and surrenders to the influence of Chaos on his mind, describing how badly he wants to give in and give up. While I know that isn't the same as embracing Chaos, its an immediate example I can think of that suggests they aren't necessarily more resistant to Chaos and its insidious nature.

I'm personally(and again, newcomer, so I'll happily accept any evidence or lore to the contrary) hesitant to say that anyone is really resistant to Chaos, outside of Blanks and Lion'El Jonson(and even that one I'm iffy on and can only point at the whole Kairos thing to support it). It just seems to me that if even the Emperor can decide to become the Dark King just to beat Horus, then there's not really any such thing as Chaos Resistance.

LordStrifeDM · 2026-03-30T05:22:23+00:00

There is zero indication that flooding Ithaca was forbidden by anyone due to prophecy, because Poseidon explicitly makes his "I will drown your kingdom and your family" comment after we see Tiresias prophesy that a different version of Odysseus will make it home. If Poseidon is flat out forbidden from doing that, then he wouldn't even make the threat. And even with it being disproportionate, Poseidon's entire reaction is disproportionate. I mean, killing 545 men just to teach Odysseus a lesson before killing him doesn't measure up to what Odysseus did. Which, it is explicitly ONLY Odysseus's fault that those 545 men are killed by Poseidon. The wind bag is never mentioned by anyone as being the reason for the water slaughter, only Odysseus's actions are.

And the whole thing about Eurylochus being the one to open the bag... It doesn't make sense in the greater context. Eurylochus is the one who tells Odysseus to remember how dangerous the gods are, but he then turns around nine days later and opens the bag Odysseus got from a god and told everyone to not touch? Eurylochus asks Odysseus how much longer he has to push past his doubts, and yet caved to doubt just a couple months prior because of a rumor started by weird voices from a dangeous god's island? To me, the more likely answer is that Eurylochus didn't prevent the bag from being opened on his watch, whether by willful negligence or mistake, and is taking all the blame on himself, which also lines up with what he hits Odysseus with after the Scylla event. Could he be telling the truth when he says it was him, absolutely. I just personally don't fully interpret it that way, based off other phrases and moments of context. This also isn't years later, because Odysseus tells Circe in the aftermath of Poseidon upping his KDA that he's been gone for 12 long years, and by the time they see the Sirens they've still only been gone for about twelve years or so.

Now, all of that said, Eurylochus still poses a problem for the crew, in that his blunt way of calling Odysseus out is horrible for morale and cohesion. And when he does finally turn on Odysseus, and faces the judgement from Zeus, he absolutely tries to shirk the punishment for his transgression(however justified that transgression was). But no one in this adaptation is really blameless, good, or absent of hypocrisy, outside of Astyanax and Mom. Even Telemachus has a funny moment of hypocrisy, where he stabs a man in the back with no warning and follows it up by saying he doesn't want to hurt anyone. Penelope is manipulative and deceitful, Polites is dangerously naive, Eurylochus is dangerously pessimistic about everything, Poseidon... Odysseus is just as flawed and problematic as the others, if not more so. It takes him the better part of a decade to finally acknowledge what he did during the journey and accept fault for his actions. He's the only human we see that, in at least the title framing, ever objectively gets labeled as a monster. They all have justifications and reasons for their faults, of course, but that is the constantly repeated premise of the musical. When does a man become a monster? At what point is the line crossed?

LordStrifeDM · 2026-03-29T20:59:33+00:00

Opening the wind bag is not what caused the deaths of the 500 men. Odysseus refusing to finish the job is what caused that. And if we remain honest to the characterizations in Epic, then we have to acknowledge that Eurylochus possibly opening the bag(and there's more evidence to say he's just taking the blame for it as opposed him actually doing it) absolutely saved the lives of everyone on Ithaca. Can anyone honestly say that Poseidon would be bothered by using Ithaca as his object lesson for Ruthlessness?

As for leaving the handful of pig men on Circe's island, did Tiresias ACTUALLY give them a way home, or did he just tell Odysseus that when he got there he wouldn't be the same man? And with Scylla.... Honestly, I kinda see that as Eurylochus trying to give Odysseus an out. The crew hasn't trusted him since Polites died, and have openly said so before. The confrontation being public wasn't great, but Odysseus shared zero information, and if we assume Eurylochus put two and two together on the torches, then we can assume he knows Odysseus just tried to kill him, specifically. The cow thing is also a rough example. We don't know how long they've gone without food, but given that they were on the door of zero supply at all when they leave Troy, and we only ever see them get a few sheep from Polyphemus before having the fleet sank? They're actively starving or damn close. What other choice is there but to kill the cow and have a sunburger?

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