Fantasy races are facing genocide...
You will be open to an exciting and original tale of a confused and lost succubus named Faira. She will meet various friends and foes on her journey to bring peace to the world and perhaps learn about her true identity.
— The game's readme file.
— The game's readme file.
Scelus' Path is an American freeware game made using RPG Maker. It was created by Sean J. Nichols, who published it under the pseudonym of Earalia Nolan.
The game takes place in a world which was created by Voluntes, goddess of creation, and Scelus, goddess of death. Bishalt, king of the humans, has set up an evil religion to keep humanity under his sway and launched a campaign of genocide against all other races. In the midst of this slaughter, a succubus named Faira decides to band together the eight races of the world to overthrow Bishalt and end his evil reign. However, Faira eventually finds that she is actually an incarnation of the evil goddess Scelus, sent to the physical world by Voluntes as a chance to redeem herself for her sins. Will Faira carry out her mission to defeat Bishalt, or will she give in to her dark side?
The game can be seen as a Spiritual Successor to Nichols' earlier title, The Last Resurrection. Both games have a succubus as a lead, an organised religion as the main threat, and to an extent similar character designs. However, the turn-based battles of Scelus' Path depart from the game's The Legend of Zelda-influenced predecessor; also, while Last Resurrection had a quasi-historical backdrop, Scelus' Path takes place entirely within a fantasy secondary world.
Sadly, the game seems to have vanished off the face of the internet, with this page being the only record of its existence.
This game provides examples of:
- Always Lawful Good: With the exception of a single rowdy dwarf who attacks you early on, it seems that humans are the only one of the eight main races who are capable of evil.
- Author Filibuster: At one point the player has to rescue four elemental spirits; most will give a speech that amounts to Nichols expressing his preference for matriarchal nature worship over organised monotheism. Typical samples (sic throughout): "The humans have spreaded lies of a male, God, and are using this left-brained thinking which invokes sexism and specism. Human women are also being hurt along with all the other non-human species." "Greed is within the human heart, for they have brought capitalism and money into the world". "Good is anything that helps Magic to exist. Evil is the opposite. Male-dominated religious monotheism is evil". "The problem is that as technology increased, men took power since they are more oriented with the Word rather than the Image. Men have turned the Goddess into God and this causing chaos. The Goddess isn't a person on a could. She IS the cloud." One of the spirits will answer a single question; if Faira asks which sex is superior, the spirit will reply simply "women".
- Bad Powers, Good People: A curious example. As a succubus, Faira has the ability to seduce certain unimportant NPCs through supernatural means (which arguably constitutes rape) and suck out their souls, which are then converted into healing items. It is possible to do this even if you choose the "good" path.
- Big Bad: King Bishalt is the leader of the Religion of Evil who desires to commit genocide of all non-humans.
- Cast Full of Gay: With the exceptions of Sashia the elf (who is straight) and Asbeth the half-spider (who lacks genitals and is therefore asexual), every playable female character is either bisexual or lesbian.
-
Character Alignment: At a certain point you are given a choice between carrying on along the path of good, or defecting to the dark side. The choice you make here will result in a different final boss and a different ending. - Corrupt Church: Bishalt's religion is the result of corruption.
- Elemental Embodiment: The four Elementalists.
- Elemental Powers: With the exception of the dragon Bishalt, who cannot use magic, each character is associated with an element. The traditional four are covered, along with ice, electricity, dark, spirit and poison. The primary villains use holy/light-associated magic.
- Fantastic Racism: King Bishalt and his followers are portrayed as genocidal racists who are trying to wipe out all non-human races.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: It is pretty obvious that the evil religion of King Bishalt and his men is meant to be Christianity. It has churches, monks and even a pope (whose clothing has a cross on it).
- Standard Fantasy Races: The game has eight main races: dwarves, goblins, elves, fairies, humans, succubi, gnomes and dragons.
- Game-Breaking Bug: If you say the right things to the fairy Ray, she will become Faira's girlfriend. Because of a glitch, the commands to get her to join or leave your party no longer work once this happens: if she is in your party when she becomes your girlfriend then she is a permanent member, if she is outside then she will never join you again. As you need her in your party to obtain an important item sortly after meeting her, this bug can break the game.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Asbeth the Half-Spider.
- High Priest: If you choose the good path, the final battle will pit you against - amongst other enemies - the Pope.
- Our Goblins Are Different: The game has an unusually benign set of goblins, portraying them as green-skinned and short but basically decent folk.
- Patriotic Fervor: Apparently part of King Bishalt's philosophy. "It's not good to label things as evil... the human king has that prejudice and uses conditioning and nationalism to gather people against the other races", says the Goblin King.
- Really Gets Around: When you talk to the characters in your party, it is possible to flirt with each one, with the sole exception of the dragon Bishalt (although certain characters reject Faira's advances). It is actually possible to have sex with three of them. Of course, you're a succubus.
- Religion is Magic: Although god worshipped by the villains is accepted by the protagonists to be a non-existent entity conceived by King Bishalt to control his subjects, the priests of the faith have spells such as "prayer" and "holy".
- Religion of Evil: The faith set up by Bishalt. The world was created by the goddesses Voluntes and Scelus, but the human king Bishalt sets up a monotheistic religion worshiping a male God. Bishalt then uses said religion to rally his people against the other races of the land and kill them all. It's all just a ludicrously unsubtle metaphor for Christianity (the leader of the religion is called the Pope, even) which is hardly surprising considering the creator's previous game, The Last Resurrection, featured Jesus of Nazareth as the Big Bad.
- Rouge Angles of Satin: As the quotes on this page should tell you, the game's English is not up to the highest standard. The worst example is the item which protects you while walking on lava, called "Safe Tea Boots". Surely that should be Safety Boots?
- Shout-Out:
- Nichols is fond of pop culture references. The most obvious comes when you must rescue a group of captives from a prison; one of them is Toad. If you try talking to him, he repeatedly says "our princess is in another castle" until Faira kills him to make him shut up.
- Possibly coincidental, but it is interesting to note that, like in the original Final Fantasy there are four elemental temples, each with a guardian - and the guardians almost completely overlap. Final Fantasy has a Lich for earth, a Kraken for water, and the dragon Tiamat for air; Scelus' Path has a Skeleton Chief for Earth, a Giant Squid for water and the dragon Bestilia for air. The overlap ends with fire: FF has a "Marlilith" demoness, while SP has a fire dragon (which is already dead by the time Faira gets there - the actual boss fight is against the villain who killed it)
- Straw Feminist: Quite a few characters would seem to fit this bill... were it not for the fact that the game's creator apparently agrees with them.
- Succubi and Incubi: The main character is a succubus.
- Take That!:
- If you examine a certain tombstone in one graveyard, you will see that it bears the name "Jesus Christ". Given the virulently anti-Christian slant of his previous game The Last Resurrection, it's pretty clear what Nichols is getting at here.
- "Who is this God fellow?" asks a dwarf who has taken a human bad guy captive. "You fool! He lives in the sky and I'm going to Heaven with him when I die and your going to burn in Hell forever!", replies the prisoner. "Your [sic] fucking crazy", concludes the dwarf.
