Pious Augustus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the talk page for details.
Pious Augustus is the primary villain of the Nintendo GameCube game Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, though in terms of influence or power many would consider his role to be secondary. Initially a playable character in the first chapter of the Tome of Eternal Darkness, Pious is quickly thrust into a villainous role by powers well beyond his control and initially beyond his understanding.
In the game, he is voiced by Richard Doyle.
Contents |
[edit] Backstory
Pious Augustus was born into a family of wealthy patricians and joined the army of the Roman Empire at a young age. He rose through the ranks and was a centurion and commander during the empire’s campaigns in Persia. When the game begins, he is in his late twenties - an age at which most of his peers and colleagues have retired to lives in Roman politics. He is acknowledged as an excellent leader of his troops, and is fiercely loyal to his emperor and his country.
[edit] Biography
[edit] Pious the Centurion
In 26 BC, Pious and his troops are sent on an expedition by their emperor to find an artifact which is apparently of unimaginable value or power. Though some of Pious’s soldiers doubt whether or not the artifact actually exists, Pious is adamant in his faith in his emperor’s belief - and, more importantly, his orders. After a notable battle, Pious has to reassure one of his subordinate commanders that he does, in fact, believe that the artifact exists - and, more importantly, that the emperor has commanded that they should search for it.
After bidding his subordinates to tend to the troops, Pious hears disembodied voices calling to him. Following the sound of the voices, Pious comes to a ring of five obelisks decorated with indecipherable runes. Walking into the middle of the ring, Pious is engulfed by yellow magick emitted by the obelisks and apparently disappears.
Reappearing inside of a subterranean temple, Pious is forced to explore in an attempt to find a way out. During his exploration he is forced into combat with zombies (creatures of Mantorok, vainly attempting to guard the Ancients’ Essences) and comes upon artifacts in several rooms which evince the further presence of magick in the temple.
Eventually, Pious discovers a room notable in that it contains three pedestals with floating statues above them. Whether Pious assumes that these statues are the artifacts he is searching for is never made clear, but he means to take one or all regardless. Unbeknownst to him, these statues are actually the Essences of the Ancients, a race of beings that exists beyond the normal boundaries of reality. When he touches one of these essences he is bombarded with a colored magick and arises, some time later, as Pious Augustus the Liche.
[edit] Pious the Liche
Pious Augustus exists essentially as an undead sorcerer after coming into contact with the essence of his chosen Ancient. He is filled with the power of the Ancient he represents, almost acting as a conduit for their power on Earth. The choice Pious makes is the root of the diverging timelines within the game.
The unifying actions in each version of Pious’s life are as follows, and apply for every Ancient’s timeline:
- Pious is attempting to free the Ancient he is serving.
- Pious is the one who binds Mantorok by impaling him with magickally-empowered stakes (a spell which utilizes a rare 9-level Circle of Power in the game, and of Mantorok’s own alignment, no less).
- Pious is directly or indirectly responsible for the death of every character who dies during the course of the game.
- Pious serves a Nyarlathotep-like role in the human universe, being a mere envoy of the true force behind him, with the same characteristic ability to use masks to cloak its true form and purpose, and bizarre gods with destruction of humanity as main themes of their agendas.
Aside from those unifying themes, Pious’s relationships with his particular Ancients are strangely different.
[edit] Chattur’gha
Under Chattur’gha, the Ancient whose power lies in force and who is sometimes referred to as “The Great Being of Matter”, Pious chiefly serves as the mind behind all scheming: he plans the death of Charlemagne without having to consult his lord, independently plans the summoning spell that will release Chattur’gha, and in general works with Chattur’gha’s blessing instead of his permission.
It should be noted that Chattur’gha is the only Ancient that Pious even comes close to questioning, particularly when the Ancient places his faith in an unspecific vision while Pious is having to retool his plan to deal with some very heavy setbacks. If not for Pious’s generally unwavering loyalty, it could even be put forth that Pious looks down on Chattur’gha, in a way, as his mental inferior.
[edit] Ulyaoth
Under Ulyaoth, the Ancient whose chief power lies in magick and who is sometimes referred to as the “Master of the Planes”, Pious’s role is still central to the success of the Ancient’s release but he is looked down upon by his master. An example of this would be when Pious says that his meditations reveal a flaw in “our plan”, and Ulyaoth mocks him for calling it their plan, simultaneously belittling Augustus for his stupidity (a theme in their conversations) and absolving himself of all responsibility if anything goes wrong.
[edit] Xel’lotath
Xel’lotath appears to be insane, suffering from a condition akin to disassociative identity disorder, in this case she displays two distinct personalities that are apparently aware of each other and even passively communicate.
Xel’lotath takes a more active role in planning her escape than the other Ancients - as an example, when Pious serves her, she is actually the one who plans out Charlemagne’s death, at least insofar as she decides that he should be eliminated.
[edit] Death
Regardless of whom he serves, Pious ultimately succeeds in releasing his patron Ancient, though his efforts are counter-acted by Alexandra Roivas, who summons the Ancient dominant over his own (if he summons Xel’lotath then she will summon Chattur’gha, etc.) and engages him in combat. Pious is initially protected by a shield provided by his patron Ancient’s essence, but it requires a recharging by the essence itself if the shield is disrupted by a dominant magick. Alex is able to disrupt the power of the essence by using a dominant magick, allowing the ghosts of those killed by Pious and the Ancients to do battle with him.
Eventually, through the efforts of the dead, the essence is destroyed - this occurrence means that Pious cannot receive the power from his Ancient, and Pious is left to do combat with Alex and her Ancient’s power by himself. Pious meets his end at Alex’s hand when he collapses and she impales him with his own staff.
[edit] Miscellaneous
[edit] Pious the Liche
Shortly after the game begins, Pious is transformed into a Liche - an apparently undead creature who looks like a skeleton and possesses a great talent for magick. His weapon and magickal conduit of choice is a massive staff made of at least two elongated human spines with a set of human ribs at the bottom and a human pelvis at the head.
He is different from the typical liches in fantasy stories or, more particularly, Dungeons & Dragons in that his transformation is instant and his state of being is not the result of life-extending magick. His flesh is apparently eaten away by the power of his chosen Ancient in a matter of minutes, the price he pays for focusing so much power through his mortal body. In this respect he may be more similar to Star Wars's Emperor Palpatine as he was presented in Shadows of the Empire than he is to the traditional liche.
[edit] Alter-Egos
One of Pious’s most notable powers is that of deception, and he regularly makes use of his ability to hide his true form from people who are not gifted enough to see him. The forms he takes in the game are as follows:
- Paul Augustine, a wealthy and eccentric archaeological collector who wears a black trench coat, black gloves, spectacles and wide-rimmed black hat. After funding Edwin Lindsey’s expedition into Cambodia, he attempts to kill Lindsey to prevent him from possibly coming to Mantorok’s aid; this, of course, is thwarted.
- Phillipe Augustine, a priest in the Oublie Cathedral who poses as one of the most powerful figures in the Albigensian Crusade of the Inquisition. In this form he walks hunched over, and appears to be an extremely decrepit priest in crimson robes. He appears this way to Paul Luther as a head of the Inquisition.
- Masked Warlord, an unnamed warlord in Persia who wears a metal mask and dresses in the fashion of a Persian warchief. Responsible for the building of the “Pillar of Flesh”, a massive monolith made of concrete and filled with human bodies, of which Roberto Bianci is part. A 14th-Century Turkic-Mongol conqueror named Timur gave a speech after sacking Damascus that is similar to that which Augustus proclaims after the Pillar’s completion. An implication is presented that Timur, in fact, may have been Pious Augustus. An apparently "gifted" warrior is able to see through this illusion, and thus earns the "reward" of being in a prime point of the tower.
- Edward Roivas (ghost). In several chapters, Alex will be visited by her grandfather’s ghost when she is reading the Tome. The things Edward says become increasingly odd or frightening until it is revealed that this is Pious in disguise. Note that these scenes are treated as sanity effects and may be hallucinations on Alex’s part.
Though these are the only forms he exhibits in the game, it is not hard to imagine that he might have more that are simply never seen.
[edit] Oddities
Though not quite as notable as his role as a villain, Pious’s role as the game’s first “hero” is noteworthy because it deviates so much from the rest of the cast.
- Pious is the only character who is not driven insane when he realizes that unnatural creatures (Mantorok’s zombies) are real. Whether this is because he is the most special of the “Chosen many”, or simply because he expects the supernatural, is never made clear. The latter thought is given some credence when we see Pious approaching a corridor filled with rotting bodies, and then proceeds to adopt a fighting position before they have even risen and shown themselves to be reanimated zombies.
- Pious is the only playable character who never claims the Tome of Eternal Darkness. This is noteworthy because the Tome is what seems to designate the Chosen, and Pious apparently is one, as he has authored at least two chapters in the Tome (his own that Alex reads, and another which Ellia is seen to be reading that details his imprisonment of Mantorok, both of which are written in the first person). Because of this, he is also the first of only two characters who cannot use magick.
- Pious is the only character whose statue in the otherworldly hall where the Tome of Eternal Darkness often resides is shattered - every other Chosen person killed in the conflict between the Ancients has a statue in that hall, but Pious destroyed his own statue in his chapter, on the orders of the beckoning Ancients. This may be a metaphorical representation of Pious’s service to the darkness and thus fall from grace, his undead state - neither living nor dead, or the ensurance by the Ancients that his spirit was ultimately doomed when the darkness claimed him. The various parts of the statue may have represented the things he was losing (i.e. his head represented control, his arms represented his doing the ancients' bidding and the torso (or heart) his humanity).
[edit] Mantorok
Pious is responsible for the death of Mantorok in two respects: firstly, he was responsible for making the Khmer people think of Mantorok as a demon, where he was previously assumed to be a fertility god. Second, he is responsible for the literal millennia-long death of Mantorok in that he impaled him with multiple magickally-enchanted stakes.
Mantorok, in-game, is regarded by the other Ancients as being the most powerful amongst them, especially before Pious strikes him down. How Pious, the servant of the apparently “lesser” Ancients, is able to kill Mantorok is never actually stated, but a couple of things are made clear in-game that might help solve the problem.
- Mantorok exists in all worlds simultaneously, which is at least part of the reason for his apparently meaningless shape.
- Contrary to when Pious says he used the power of his guardian Ancient to strike down Mantorok, he uses purple, or Mantorok-aligned, magick. This would mean that Mantorok’s own power was what was turned against him by Pious, instead of that of the lesser three Ancients.
[edit] References
- Information has been taken from the Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem video game and, in the case of Pious’s backstory, its instruction manual.
[edit] Inaccuracies
- ‘Pious’ should be spelled ‘Pius’ in Latin.
- ‘Augustus’ was an honorific title only awarded to the reigning Emperor, who at the time (26BC) was in fact Caesar Augustus. However, this practice did not begin until many years into his reign and with the arrival of subsequent Roman emperors.
- Pious wears lorica segmentata that was not available at the time.
- The son of a patrician family, especially a wealthy one, would not need to ‘rise through the ranks’ to become a centurion; they would receive an entry-level position, such as a military tribune. The possibility exists, however, that his character chose the desired method.
- Caesar Augustus did not conduct any wars in Persia (although the wars in question may have been Marcus Antonius’s expedition to Parthia).
