Literature / Helen and Troy's Epic Road Quest

Waechter: A quest without a mystery is like a wolverine wearing a carnation.
[Beat]
Helen: OK, I give up[.] How is a quest without a mystery like a wolverine wearing a carnation?
Waechter: Beats the hell out of me.

Helen Nicolaides and Troy Kawakami are two normal American teens (as normal as one could be as a minotaur and dorky, yet charming boy respectively) when they are suddenly tasked by a God to go on a Quest, lest they die a horrible death. Even worse, they become the target of a group of rather reluctant orc assassins who have been sent to ensure that they don't finish their quest.

Helen and Troy's Epic Road Quest is the tenth novel written by A. Lee Martinez, a Comic Fantasy novel published in 2013.

In the 2013 anthology book Robots versus Slime Monsters, one of the stories — "Imogen's Epic Day" — set after the events of the novel, starring Troy's sister Imogen.

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Helen and Troy's Epic Road Quest contains the following tropes:

• Aesop Collateral Damage: For every official quester who's thrust into the Call to Adventure, there are wannabe questers who go to quest landmarks (monster lairs and death-castles and so on), only to die tragically. Questers are almost always the last person to make it there, the corpses keeping them cautious enough to ensure their survival. Because of this, a lot of questers heading to the same landmarks will become paranoid over who goes first and will inevitable turn on one another.
• Amazon Chaser: Troy has always had a thing for strong and tall women, so it should come as no surprise that he develops a crush on Helen.
• Awesome, but Impractical: As Nigel points out, Franklin's chain-mace has never actually been used as a weapon in real life due to its poor design, one more likely to take off their own head than the opponent's.
• Bait-and-Switch: As the quest progresses, Helen and Troy learn that one or both of them are destined to die tragically at the end of the quest. That is if they were the protagonists. Turns out that the Wild Hunt gang were the "good guys" in this story, and it was Franklin who died heroically this time around.
• Blessed with Suck: Troy is basically the Platonic ideal of a boy his age; intelligent, compassionate, magnetic, athletic, an ideal son to his parents, classically handsome and the kind of guy any girl would be comfortable with meeting the folks. With that said, being so likable has led to him lacking any meaningfully deep relationships with anybody, his sister Imogen comparing it to a parasocial relationship between an actor or a pro athlete and their fans. Even worse, he knows that most people would kill to have their lives like his and venting about these feeling makes him come across as an Ungrateful Bastard complaining about his First-World problems. When he asks Helen if they could go on a date after their quest ends, Helen declines because she doesn't want to drag him down with her problems.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Helen's mother Roxanne believes that the National Questing Bureau doesn't actually exist and that a Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy called the Black Knights are ruling the world from the shadows, the exact reasons for why things happening changing on a weekly basis.
• Cutting the Knot: One of the games at Land of Adventure is "Dunk the Ga-gorib", where you get three balls that dunk it in water if they hit the target. If they win, they get a prize. If they lose, the ga-gorib gets to dunk them, and it's implied that it actively drowns the participants. Instead of making the attempt, they just give the employee $100 and he just gives them the prize; a dagger with the Lost God's symbol on it.
  Troy: Feels like cheating.
  Helen: It worked, didn't it? Legends are full of heroes breaking the rules and getting away with it.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Imogen briefly dated some Belgian guy because both of them wanted to piss off their parents. While they parted on good terms, Imogen broke it off with him because her mother grew to like him.
• Decoy Protagonist: As the story goes on, it becomes clear that Helen and Troy aren't the "good guys", since their quest is meant to bring the Lost God to the mortal plane so that he can begin his reign of terror on humanity. The Wild Hunt gang, a crew of orcs (and Franklin) tasked by the orc gods to stop that from happening, wind up being the "good guys" in this narrative. Franklin even suffers a Heroic Sacrifice (as was part of this specific quest) when Nigel kills him while the Lost God possesses him, killing the Lost God permanently.
• Demonic Possession: Helen and Troy's quest ends with one of them becoming the Lost God's host. Since Helen's horns make putting on the magic helmet anatomically impossible, Troy winds up being his vessel.
• Eldritch Location: The Sacred Glen is a liminal space where "neither mortal nor immortal treads lightly", existing in-between "you name it". With industrialization in the mortal world on the rise, it currently takes the form of an empty suburb, and it's where most quest-havers meet with the Herald Pollux Castor.
• Evil Is Petty: Many of the Lost God's worshippers do so out of the idea that he will grant their hearts desires as payment for their devotions, ranging from protecting the animals, to doing something about "the Man", to smiting people who use their reserved parking space. Being a god, he has no actual intention of following through on such promises since he thinks Humans Are Insects.
• Evil Overlord: Implied to be the case with Adolf Hitler, who in this world had his own Artifact of Doom — a cursed ring, of course — before it was thrown in the fiery pits of Mt. Heidelstein under the supervision of the National Questing Bureau.
• Fairytale Motifs:
  • Babs and the Mystery Cottage have all the hallmarks of the Witch and Gingerbread House from Hansel and Gretel; a kindly old woman that baits adventurers (in this case, Helen and Troy) to her inn where she feels them, only to capture and eat them to "repay" her for her hospitality. They even manage to defeat her by having her own oven eat her alive.
  • After Helen and Troy escape the Mystery Cottage, it grows a pair of chicken legs similar to Baba Yaga's home. Her being a witch named "Babs" hunting children may imply she might actually be Baba Yaga, or at least an Expy of her.
• Fantasy Americana: The story is set in a version of modern-day America that just so happens to have magic. Enchanted Americans (Orcs, elves and other magical creatures) are treated as minority groups, complete with their own history of Civil Rights Movements, and being a Minotaur is treated as a type of disability.
• Fantasy Conflict Counterpart: This being a Low Fantasy version of the real world, World War II is mentioned multiple times. Adolf Hitler is framed as having been an Evil Overlord not unlike Sauron, there were ice-dragons at the Battle of the Bulge and Nigel's grandfather killed Nazis with a battle-ax.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Franklin is Nigel's human coworker who's really into Orc culture, feeling a desire to live out the badass ideal of orc barbarism due to how boring his own life is in comparison. His overeagerness comes across as reckless and annoying to the rest of the Wild Hunt gang, made all the more difficult because he can discern the mistreatment his antics earns him from "orcish camaraderie." Nigel even theorized that the gods had put Franklin in their group just to make their lives harder.
• From Zero to Hero: Invoked. While the National Questing Bureau tries having trained agents take on the role of questing, most of the time it's some normal schmoe who finds themselves having to go on daring adventures whether they like it or not. All the National Questing Bureau can do really is find them, fill them in on what they're in for, provide travel expenses and let it happen.
  Neil Waechter: We've tried having trained questers in the NQB, but it never really worked out. Even if you put them in the right place at the right time, they never get picked. it's always some poor sap who happens to be walking by, some unfortunate farm kid, a bank teller, a reluctant rogue. it's never the guy or gal who should be saddled with the burden. It's always the one you don't expect.
• Genre Savvy:
  • The National Questing Bureau follow traditions not out of a cultural obligation, but because "patterns" all tend to emerge whenever a Call to Adventure happens and trying to change or uproot those patterns can have cosmic ramifications, hence why they only support the ones going on quests rather than doing quests in their place. Helen and Troy's specific quest — a Fetch Quest appointed by the Lost God to two to four mortals for magical MacGuffins — has actually happened before on a 500-year cycle.
    Helen: So your job isn't to help us with the quest. You're just here to maintain the status quo.
    Neil Waechter: You're a very astute young woman, Helen.
  • When the Three Sisters refuse to give them directions until Helen or Troy buys something, Troy asks if the things they buy will reveal themselves to be important down the line. Future practically admits that he's correct to assume such a thing would happen.
  • Helen manages to get out of the Three Sister's Psychological Torment Zone test when she correctly guesses beat-for-beat what it's going to be (citing the iconic cave-scene from The Empire Strikes Back), defeating the whole purpose of the test in the process.
    Past: I keep telling you we should update the test.
    Present: But it's a classic.
    Past: There's a fine line between classic and uninspired.
• Glass Cannon: Ranger Grainger claims that dragons were specifically designed by the gods to be used as fodder for quests, hence why it's so easy for them to die in an improbable number of ways (striking at a specific spot next to their heart, tripping over something, spontaneously exploding from anger, etc). Combined with their low birth-rates, dragons are considered a protected species in the United States due to their declining population and there are dragon preserves that have a no weapons policy because of it.
  Ranger Grainger: ...if you put a wandering idiot up against a dragon in a fair fight, well, the dragon will win most of the time. But all it takes is that one time, that on stumble, that one desperate stab with an enchanted dagger, that impossible moment of triumph, and the dragon ends up dead.
• Government Agency of Fiction: The National Questing Bureau is a government agency that's called in whenever someone is tasked with the Call to Adventure. Or in Helen and Troy's case, Kidnapped by the Call.
• Graceful Loser: After Helen and Troy shove her in her own oven and escape the Mystery Cottage, Babs commends them for their wits and decides to leave them be.
• The Great Serpent: Waechter offers Nigel a job by mentioning that the NQB is having trouble with a giant snake rampaging through Brazil that is supposedly destined to devour the world, all of their more conventional weaponry doing nothing to slow it down.
• The Grim Reaper: Shoth is an avatar of death, specifically for orcs who've died an Honorable Warrior's Death, here manifesting as a dapper man in a red suit and fedora and a shadowed face, the only expression visible being a rictus grin. He only appears to orcs too stubborn to admit that they have died, and will sometimes honor them with a night of sexual passion before they meet their eternal fate on the Mound of Unworthy Bones.
• The Hecate Sisters: The Three Sisters are Anthropomorphic Personifications of the Past, Present and Future, appearing in the form of a young girl, a middle-aged woman and an elderly woman. They're just one of countless other manifestations The Fates that exist wherever they're needed for people on quests.
  Past: It's a franchise thing, [l]ike Stuckey's, but with more prognostication.
• Herald: Seers are a go-to for any person assigned a quest, acting as a middle-man to give the quest-givers just enough information to go on since the gods themselves don't think it's important enough to tell them themselves.
  • Pollux Castor is a seer who runs a food truck called The Meat Wagon in a neighborhood that was once the Sacred Glen. When he's not serving brisket and fries, he sends quest-havers on their way.
  • In the case of the Wild Hunt motorcycle club, they are assigned Peggy Truthstalker, a seer assigned to them by the Orc-God Grog. She's known as the most feared trader on Wall Street thanks to her skills at reading omens.
• Hero of Another Story:
  • According to Waechter, a random plumber in North Dakota pulled an enchanted mace from granite and was named King of the Djinn for it.
  • At the battle arena in Gateway, Nevada, Helen and Troy meet Smith, a seasoned warrior who was promised a seat among the gods if he beats 77 monsters in his lifetime, Clifford the Cyclops being his 41st match.
  • Pollux mentions a quester in Colorado — a middle-manager — who's quest involves procuring a golden fleece or else "you can kiss the Atlantic Ocean goodbye."
• I Just Want to Be Special: Franklin — the Token Human of the Wild Hunt gang — is the only one enjoying himself on their mission from the Orc Gods because it's the first time he's one anything worth while, having spent his life as a pencil-pusher.
• It's Not You, It's Me: Helen turns down Troy's proposal for a date out of the belief that Beast and Beauty pairings don't work with the genders reversed, and that whatever relationship they would start would just be a footnote that won't last when their adventure is over.
  Helen: What happens when it's more than that? What happens when you want to introduce me to your parents? What happens when your friends start making cow jokes of the tenth time some hot babes hits on you right in front of me because she assumes it'd b easy to steal you away? Or you start losing friends because they're not sure how to deal with your girlfriend? Do you think you're ready for that? Are you ready for people to start disliking you, being uncomfortable around you, just because your girlfriend has fur?
• Jerkass Gods: All the gods seem to be fickle and selfish at the best of times.
  • The Lost God curse Helen and Troy where if they don't go on his quest, they die, and the quest itself is basically "find some things and take them to a place" while refusing to actually give any specifics as to the what, where and why. Even worse, their quest is the kind that guarantees that one or both questers die in the end anyway because "the gods love melodrama."
  • Orc religion dictates that unless you can kill one of their gods in a duel after your death, you'll spend the rest of eternity as a corpse on the Mound of Unworthy Bones. The closest anyone has ever come to succeeding is Rork Orabrork, who managed to crack the toenail of Grog (who's described as being a giant orc with five heads) before his skull was used to decorate the top of the Mound.
• Kill the God: The only way a God can actually die is when a mortal kills it with a Magical Weapon not on orders from another god, but by their own free will. Nigel manages to kill the Lost God (in Franklin's body) with his grandfather's magic ax.
• Literal Metaphor: When Waechter tells Helen and Troy to "look for a sign" at the beginning of their quest, they find an actual street-sign labeled "Augury Avenue", "Augury" meaning "sign" (as in "a sign from above" or "an omen"). Since both Troy and Helen know the obscure phrase, they both agree that it's the sign they're looking for.
• Made of Magic: Every part of a dragon's physiology are made of magic, making them prime targets for poachers.
• Magical Weapon:
  • Magical weapons are so commonplace, the National Questing Bureau does public tours for an entire warehouse full of them.
  • Troy's sword has supernatural sharpness, if held with both hands with both feet on the ground it protects him from harm, and tapping the blade three times on the ground summons an elemental spirit that obeys one command, but only once a day.
  • Helen's wand is an "unharnessed battery of magic" that can do anything as long as it neither harms or heals another person.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: In spite of how influential the National Questing Bureau is, the public doesn't really know about them. They don't even try to keep themselves secret, Waechter throwing "might be magic" as one explanation as to why.
• Muggles Do It Better: Gargoyles are a product of magic usually created as a form of security, but modern-day surveillance technology has made them obsolete.
• Mundane Fantastic: Magical Weapons imbedded in stone awaiting their chosen wielder are so common, the National Questing Bureau started giving tours in a warehouse they're kept in.
  Neil Waechter: Once you've seen one ax or spear or halberd stuck in something, you've seen them all. But people still try because... well... you never know.
• Mythology Gag: Much like in the A. Lee Martinez novel Divine Misfortune, The Fates have given up controlling fate and destiny because a large enough population made controlling anyone's destiny too big of a mess to bother.
• Nay-Theist: Orc religion is described as "ignoring the gods and having them ignore you in turn." It also doesn't help that when an orc dies, they are expected to either kill a god or spend eternity adding to an ever-growing mound of corpses, the former having yet to be accomplished.
• Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy: The Black Knights are a recurring topic of Conspiracy Theories that claim them as responsible for all the problems of the world, from supposedly being responsible for various high-profile deaths, to ensuring that flying carpets won't replace cars as an eco-friendly alternative to keep smog levels high.
• Only a Flesh Wound: It takes Shoth gesturing to the various tree-branches sticking out of Peggy Bonebreaker's torso for her to realize that the wounds are fatal and that he had come to reap her, and even then she insists that she's had worse.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Dragons are mythical creatures that give off their own ambient magic and are natural kleptomaniacs with a particular fondness for stealing cattle, treasure and virgins. Because their physiology is made entirely of magic, killing them can result in an "ecological disaster just waiting to happen", instantaneously rebooting an ecosystem at the moment of death.
• Our Minotaurs Are Different: "Minotaurism" is a mythical condition that gives those afflicted with it cow-like characteristics. While the majority of people with minotaurism are men, it can afflict women, as is the case with Helen.
• Parental Favoritism: Invoked and ultimately subverted. Troy's parents originally tried pitting him and his sister Imogen against each other for their approval, only for Imogen to make herself the Black Sheep when she realized that it wasn't worth it. While Troy and Imogen are on good terms, their parents have taken to boasting about Troy's achievements while Imogen left for Europe to find herself.
• Pet the Dog: When Franklin pours his heart out to Nigel, Nigel acknowledges that as much as he dislikes him, he acknowledges how Franklin is more dedicated and earnest than most Orcs he knows. While most of his pick-me-up speech is just him railing on Franklin for being an irritant, Franklin still accentuates the positives.
  Peggy: That was a decent thing you did.
  Nigel: Hell, he's not all useless. Don't tell me the spirits approve.
  Peggy: The spirits think you should've killed him. But the spirits are assholes.
• Phlebotinum Pills: Helen's minotaurism also gives her Super-Strength that, when she was little, had a hard time controlling. So she was prescribed a bracelet that medically suppresses her strength to acceptable levels. She claims that as she gets older, it will become less and less effective until it loses its effects entirely.
• Punch-Clock Villain:
  • Clifford is a Cyclops that Questers who come to Gateway, Nevada have to fight as part of their quest. He's actually a Nice Guy in his off-hours, the grand battle treated like a day job at a local attraction than a genuine battle between good and evil. When Helen and Troy first encounter him, they actually find him on his lunch-break and hold a conversation with him.
  • It's normal for questers to have adversaries of some kind chasing after them for one reason or another. When the Wild Hunt gang try intimidating a waitress in a diner in Gateway, she remarks that she's served things from talking dire wolves to armies of the undead, so a biker-gang of orcs won't intimidate her.
• Riddle Me This: The gargoyle guarding the entrance into the NQB asks Troy and Helen to answer a riddle before allowing them passage because he was created to do so or kill them should they not give him the answer. He asks "Men seek me out, yet fear what I have to say. I am unavoidable, yet always surprising. All travelers meet me, regardless of which road they travel, and even if they choose not to travel at all. I am a burden to many, a joy to a very few, and something only a fool thinks he can know. What am I?" The answer — "destiny" — was actually spoiled by the business card Neil Waechter gave Helen and Troy the day before.
• Rule of Seven: Seven is a very popular number for quest-landmarks, including the Cave of Seven Riddles, the Peril of the Seven Sisters, the Deadly Trial of the Seven Knights, the Deathly Lair of the Seven-Headed Ogre, and the Seven Perils of Deathly Doom.
• Running Gag: Troy summons an elemental spirit with his magic sword, only for the once-a-day request to go unfulfilled, either because Troy had no intention on using the spirit for anything, or because the spirit refuses to do it for one reason or another.
• Shout-Out:
  • When Helen tries using magic with her new wand, two of the phrases she uses include "For the honor of Grayskull" and "It's clobberin' time!"
  • Helen correctly guesses what's behind the Three Sister's challenge door — her having to fight a monster, only to reveal it to look identical to her and that the real obstacle was her all along — by citing it happening in The Empire Strikes Back.
  • Ranger Grainger mentions one of many reasons why one would poach a dragon is to literally grow invincible soldiers by planting dragon teeth like seeds, a reference to Jason and the Argonauts when King Aeëtes used the Hydra's teeth to create his skeleton-warriors.
  • Helen compares herself and Troy to She-Hulk and Wyatt Wingfoot respectively; Wyatt is this amazing adventurer and genius who could do and be with anybody, and while he dates She-Hulk on and off again, they will never stay together because "nobody wants to write that story."
• Sins of Our Fathers: Most curses and mythical afflictions are usually the result of a god or wizard cursing someone's bloodline, so the curse will often crop up in their descendants with varying severity. In the old days, they would be shamed for it, but modern thinking takes a more nuanced approach and treat the afflicted with less judgment.
• Slipping a Mickey: At the dragon preserve, Peggy Truthstalker drugs the Wild Hunt gang with vision weed in their sandwiches so that they can all undergo a Vision Quest.
• Souvenir Land: Land of Adventure is equal-parts Disneyland, SeaWorld and Amusement Park of Doom. A lot of the rides and attractions based off of mythological legends, with many of its "cast members" being real Enchanted-Americans, and prizes are given to the park-goers after running through simulated adventures. The "of Doom" part comes in when it's revealed that the park is run (and attended) by cultists who worship the Lost God.
• The Strongman: The last known case of female minotaurism was Gladys Hoffman, AKA Minotaur Minnie, who served as a strongwoman for P.T. Barnum's Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan and Hippodrome. Considering it was the late 1800's, it was the best situation a woman in her situation could hope for.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Old Orc culture believed that basic shelter against the elements was considered a sign of weakness. So naturally, history is full of Orc royalty and warlords dying of pneumonia, dehydration, hypothermia and other conditions that could have been prevented easily should they have done anything about it.
• Transparent Closet: One of the orcs in the Wild Hunt gang, James, was gay the whole time and all of his friends knew it already.
  Nigel: Your love of musical theater kind of gave it a way.
  James: You can be straight and love musicals.
  Nigel: True, but when you get drunk, you won't shut up about Minnelli and Streisand.
  Franklin: Your favorite movie is Funny Girl.
  Peggy: You once punched me because I didn't know the difference between lavender and lilac.
  James: [slams his fist on the table] They're two different colors!
• Trashy Tourist Trap: Landmarks of importance for quests and questers typically take the form of roadside attractions that exist within the Fantasy Americana otherworld quests typically occur in. Such landmarks include the town of Gateway, Nevada (where people come to wrestle Clifford the Cyclops), convenience stores ran by personifications of fate, dragon wildlife preserves, a bed-and-breakfast ran by a witch that will try to cook and eat them as payment for hospitality, and a Souvenir Land where important MacGuffins are given to customers as prizes for games which is actually a front for summoning the Lost God ran by its Cult.
• Who Writes This Crap?!: While Troy is willing to go along with the usual genre-staples that come with questing, Helen is the one to point out how contradictory the narrative logic quests run on are; how the less likely you are to survive, the more likely you are to survive, or how being the last person to enter a dangerous place increases your odds of survival. The person explaining these conventions to her usually just shrug and agree with her while also saying that it doesn't make any of it less true.

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