This is for those of you that also play Titan Quest, for I have learned of a great conspiracy from my source, Deep Larynx. You see, your hero is actually a cold-hearted business(wo)man schemer that engineered the whole war just to earn some cash.
When your hero arrives at Helos, they come from the docks but so far as I’ve ever seen, there is no boat so how did they arrive? If they were walking, surely they would’ve come any direction but from the West. If they came from the South, there’s have been no point to adhere to the river once Helos was near, so the South is discounted. Coming the East or North are discounted because satyrs blocked the path and if they truly did come from the East, there should’ve been a boat or bridge, of which there are neither. So where did our hero come from? I shall explain further on, but before I do I must note some discrepancies that arrive at that point.
When our hero arrives at Helos, he is greeted by the captain of the guard in a way that seems much more friendlier than you’d expect for someone to greet a man that arrived in a time of war and is a stranger. You’d expect a much more standoffish hostile meeting as they sized him up, but no (s)he’s greeted and then asked to clear out the farmland. Now how did they know your hero could do it if they just met them? Obviously there’s some deeper plot going on there, plus if you have immortal guards, why would you ever need another person to come save you? See what I’m getting at? Your hero set the whole thing up so that they could make the village be under attack and kill the satyrs so a gold payoff would be justified from Diomedes.
Once your hero arrives at Sparta later on (Once again, why should Diomedes have to ask for help when he has immortal guards? Obviously a plot.) he is greeted coldly by the leadership, but Brassias[?] (doing this from memory) gives it away when he asks for help finding Hippias. If your hero weren’t known to the Spartans already, Brassias wouldn’t be looking to a stranger, much less a non-Spartan stranger, to help find his bestie. That interaction clearly shows that your hero has spent time with the Spartans before, likely getting them to come into his plan of bringing war upon Greece so that the Spartans could increase their influence by appearing to save everyone, making way for tribute later on. And again, your hero gets to kill all those monsters and sell their weapons for cold hard cash.
Later on in the Pythian Caves, we are introduced to Feiyan, a trained warrior and member of the Order of Prometheus [OoP]. Later on in Athens our hero ‘frees’ the leader of OoP from Alastor, allowing him to be put forth as a candidate to defeat Megalios without the intrigue behind it being obvious. Why else would OoP choose a stranger to fight a Telkine over the warrior that’s trained for much of her life? I hypothesize that our hero approached OoP with a way to increase its influence into tangible power with armies across all the lands, in exchange for getting Telkine gold. Once more you see the sinister plot.
In Knossos, Megalios breaks the Conduit but for a long time I’ve always wondered, while the Conduit was still up, why did the gods not come to help mankind? And even after the Conduit was down, surely they had to notice something was up. Well after your hero defeats Typhon, it’s clear our hero had a partner in masterminding the scheme with Hades. Hades had the influence necessary to keep the gods calm while chaos reigned. Hades had the power to release the Telkines and Hades’ influence was able to help your hero influence the Spartans and OoP. When your hero died, Hades had to consent to letting your hero’s soul live again, so the Rebirth fountains are a product of, you guessed it, Hades. It was also Hades that brought your hero to Helos, which was a crucial stepping stone to launch the plot. Your hero for money and Hades for world domination, they worked together to release Typhon and scare away the other Olympians (politically handled as “We wouldn’t want to inconvenience you by getting the way of your big boy stuff so we’ll just pop out.” even though the reality was “That stuff scared the feces out of us.”)
But your hero fights Hades later on you’ll say, well I’ll get to that but let’s also take a look at the hero’s reaction to when he learns Hades is behind it all, they’re rather nonchalant aren’t they and back to slaughtering stuff within a minute. There’s no shock that one of the Olympians, whom they ‘saved’, has turned against mankind. Your hero already knew. All the while they’ve been selling loot from the dead bodies of their fallen enemies and increasing that gold stock. And to help Hades, your hero becomes a mole in the operations of humans, using their Typhon-killer status to get unlimited access to plans. The campaign also helps Hades run a fear campaign back in the Underworld, helping to get more recruits into his army. It’s not until by the City of Lost Souls when your hero sees Hades’ Treasury’s doors that they decide there’s more profit to be had with Hades’ death than working with Hades. Once at the City, your hero sends a message to Hades about a necessary face-to-face meeting, which is a agreed to and gives cover for your hero making their way to Hades’ palace. Once at the palace, Hades needed to keep up the appearance of not working with your hero to Persephone as he knew about her betrayal, so he set up a guard with Typhon.
Now let’s think about this, Hades lusted for Persephone yet he used a hated enemy of the Olympians as her guard? Would you guard your wife/GF with someone you hated? …unless they were meant to die?
To finalize the whole plot, after killing Hades your hero take all that profit and goes through a portal to with all the gold they’ve gained to enact the plot all over again, with cements the true fact that your hero engineered the whole way to make cash from selling the weapons of their murdered enemies.