Theory: Spyro is part of a Dictatorship and Gnasty Gnorc is the Good Guy

Ever since the release of Spyro: Reignited I have been developing a theory about the beloved purple dragon and the world he lives in that may make you see him in a whole new light: Spyro is part of a dictatorship. Now, hear me out. This theory started off as me just messing about and kind of thinking “damn, isn’t it funny how this is a thing, and then that’s a thing…” then I started thinking about it more and more…

I’m basing this purely on the first game as that is based in the dragon’s domain where as others are a bit more all over the place.

Let’s examine the evidence.

The Plot

Gnasty Gnorc is sat in his shack, he’s watching TV and the dragons are being interviewed about their realm. The interviewer mentions Gnasty Gnorc and the dragons say they’re not worried about him and that he’s ugly. This angers Gnasty who uses a hammer/wand to turn all the dragons (except Spyro) to statues. Spyro then needs to travel the realms freeing the dragons and collecting gems.

My theory

Gnasty Gnorc used to be a dragon slave that escaped. He becomes a Gnorc freedom figther leading the gnorcs that he can free to rebellion. Using the hammer weapon that he steals from the dragons he’s able to turn them to crystal and turn the dragon’s gem horde into more gnorcs to help his cause.

With me so far? Ok, well buckle up, hold on to your hats and let’s break it down a bit…

Gnorcs Are Dragon Slaves

What makes me think that Gnasty Gnorc was a dragon slave? Ever notice how the Gnorcs are usually portrayed as ‘workmen’ from soldiers, to electricians, to whatever they’re doing with those barrels on one of the last levels… They are clearly used to manual labour. On the other hand, dragons you rescue are generally kitted out in luxurious or pricey looking clothing, armour, or jewellery. They are artists, scholars, and fancy warriors, their personalities seem to revolve around their hobbies. They aren’t working, they’re doing things they enjoy and appear incredibly chilled out about the whole ordeal, but the Gnorcs’ look and personalities revolve around their jobs. I believe the dragons are the ‘social elite’, leaving the gnorcs to do the menial work so that they can live a life of luxury and leisure. For example, here we see Baker dragon and… BBQ Dragon? How much cake do you see Gnorcs eating? Not that much, if any, I’ll bet.

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In fact, when you visit each world the dragons you rescue are in theme with that world but there are no other inhabitants other than the gnorcs and maybe some other enemies like wizards, strongarms etc that are more native to those particular areas. Why would they also be enemies though? Because the dragons in their area were keeping them in check and with them all turned to crystal they were able to join the rebellion with the gnorcs. You didn’t think this guy did all the manual labour in the swamp did you?

Warriors and Gems

We are told right at the beginning that Gnasty has a spell that is creating warriors from gems to ‘aid his cause’, this informs us of two things: Gnasty needs warriors, and gnorcs are (or can be) created from gems. We’ll tackle the Warrior shortage first: Why does he need to create more? Is he the only gnorc? Are there so few of them? The mountain of envelopes behind him says not. They’re also sealed with hearts: fan mail. Other than other gnorcs who would send Gnasty Gnorc fan mail? Exactly. No one. So this proves that there is a large number of gnorcs out there somewhere that are liking what Gnasty is doing. Why can’t they join his cause though? Because they are the gnorcs he’s trying to save! He needs the gems to create his band of Merry Men and save the imprisoned gnorcs.

Now we come to the gems, if gnorcs are created by gems was Gnasty a gem too once? Who would have made Gnasty? THE DRAGONS. This is why they are so protective over their gem horde and why the aim of the game is to get the gems back, it provides them with slaves and prevents Gnasty from making more rebels! Somehow Gnasty escaped the dragons, stole the magical hammer (which acts like a wand, enabling him to do magic) to stop the dragons creating more gnorcs, and started a rebellion.

The Dragons Are Overpowered

In the first levels the Gnorcs actually run away from Spyro because they’re scared, they don’t even try to hurt you. Why so scared of a tiny dragon when all the other dragons are frozen? Because even a tiny dragon is more powerful than a Gnorc, incredibly more powerful. You don’t even get extra powers in this game you just have headbutts and fire-breath from the get-go and that is the level you stay at.

Spyro indulges in the time-honored tradition of Gnorc hunting before his mission

Meanwhile, none of the older, more powerful dragons really help you that much in your quest. Once freed they’re generally incredibly nonchalant about their whole ordeal, some fly off to try and stop Gnasty at the final level, a bit like when you’re playing through a low-level dungeon in an MMO and some level 80 that just needs the rare loot from the boss at the end gets randomly put in your team, uses their boots of hasty assholery and runs straight there leaving the rest of the team, who are actually the right level for the dungeon, fighting goblins in the first room. In short, the dragons are really not worried about this rebellion, as if they’re used to this sort of thing happening and have stopped them in the past without a problem. They are so confident in their power they are happy to send a child to sort it out for them.

Look at this poor Gnorc, he’s terrified!

Spyro and the Dragon Eggs

Speaking of Spyro being a child, I think this is why he wasn’t crystallised along with the rest of the dragons. Despite the name I don’t think Gnasty is evil, he didn’t want to curse an innocent child, maybe he even hoped that Spyro could be saved and brought around to the ‘freedom’ way of thinking. Unfortunately for Gnorc, Spyro’s mind has already been warped. I don’t believe he is aware of the dictatorship or has considered the consequences of his actions (he’s not renowned for being a thinker), but he believes he is doing the right thing. Now stay with me, I will admit this next section is pure conjecture and I have no screenshots to illustrate this but it makes sense to me: This is why the thieves have been commissioned to steal the dragon eggs. Spyro is the only young dragon we see so baby dragons are pretty rare, Gnorc steals the eggs so that they can be raised without the privilege and power that has come so easy to the rest of the dragons, maybe so that they can fight on his side or maybe to try and bring about a new world of equality. After all, if Spyro had been frozen too then that would have been it for Dragon-kind and the world would be different, maybe Gnorcs and Dragons would have lived side by side in peace. Why else steal the eggs? Though while we’re on the subject of eggs let’s just recognise the blatant female dragon inequality. Where are all the lady dragons? If you think about it their absence is a little sinister… The eggs prove that they exist after all (unless male dragons can breed, they are fictional beings so it’s not out of the realms of possibility).

Have I convinced you? Are you helping Spyro to quash a slave rebellion, or have I gone a little over the top? Just have a think next time you play…

I am also not the biggest Spyro fan in the world so if I have missed out some essential Spyro lore please feel free to share in the comments! 

100 Baby Challenge – Episode 7: Full House! … Now What?

← Episode 6

It’s a new dawn here in the Olympae household. Our new Matriarch, Artemis, is a young adult and she is inviting over a street performer she met in the city… I think a cool, guitar playing guy from the big city is a good first victim for her.

When your one-night stand tells you she’s pregnant and you realise you’ve become a Victim of the 100 Baby Challenge

Ghost Mum is thrilled at the news though

Very good start, a couple of days later and Artemis welcomed Hestia to the family. The new generation has begun.

I was initially annoyed about the Aretmis’s younger brothers (Apollo, Hermes and Hephaestus) still being around for all this but honestly they are being so helpful and I think it’s quite a nice that they’re helping their sister in this. Speaking of brothers, as a WTF side note, she’s very friendly with her brother, Hades who stops by quite a lot and I noticed that she has the romance bar with him. How?! Why?! Gross! She doesn’t have the romance chat option with him but I freaked out when I saw that. Suddenly I had a horrible fear of accidentally making one of the brothers a father (there’s so many kids, if it wasn’t for the Ancient Greek names I would forget). Ew. Luckily it just seems to be some weird glitch so it’s not possible.

Queue the Game of Thrones theme tune

Back to the babies; Second baby, Nike, made things a little more difficult. The brothers still had to go to school so they weren’t always around and I lost a day trying to get Artemis energised enough to go and meet someone else. Her body clock is all wrong now, she’s really awake at night and out cold most of the day and when you phone men and ask them to come over in the middle of the night they (totally realistically) tell you to go away and that it’s too late, they’re sleeping goddammit, what could you possibly want this late at night? We may have to go clubbing to get some eligible, night owl bachelors.

Welcome to Motherhood, Artemis

Christmas time happened before we could do that and I was wondering about another Father Winter baby (it’s a different Father Winter every year, why not?) but of course, someone died (I couldn’t figure out who, there’s so much death in this playthrough, I’ve lost track… Artemis’s half-brother on her dad’s side maybe…) and so Atremis trying to flirt while sobbing to a guy dressed as Santa wasn’t really going down well. WE ARE BEHIND SCHEDULE, ARTEMIS. YOU NEVER EVEN MET YOUR HALF BROTHER.

We lost two days but then we were back on track. I was determined to beat Gaia’s record of 14 children. Skipping forward a bit we find ourselves now both brothers moved out, and 7 children while Artemis is still only halfway towards becoming middle aged!!! That is half our goal already! Maybe I can do this…

Here we see the Matriarch of the 100 Baby Challenge in their most common state: Smelly and unconscious.

Now we have a full house (you can’t have more than 8 Sims in a household) and that kind of stalls the challenge a bit. My lovely Hestia (now a teen), while incredibly helpful, is not doing great at school and I can’t boot her out until she either becomes an A student or ages up naturally and she has a while to go… But even when I’ve done that I’ve still got a household of 7 which would make twins (or dare I even dream of triplets?) impossible… Hmmm… If I hold off though and she doesn’t have twins then it’s a waste of time.

Ghost Gaia is around to help with the kids. When she’s not breaking everything in a fit of poltergeist rage that is.

Anyone got any theories? What would the best tactic be? Hold off on kids and make some space, or keep going whenever a spot opens up?

I dunno Love Guru, I think you may be wrong about that…

Baby count: 21/100 (This is embarrassing but I totally forgot about Hermes, one of Gaia’s last children – I’m sure everyone forgets about one or two of their children sometimes when they have so many – so she actually had 14 babies! I may have said 13 in previous posts…) 

• Zeus
• Hera
• Demeter
• Persephone
• Poseidon
• Hecate
• Aphrodite
• Athena
• Boreas
• Hades
• Artemis
• Apollo
• Hermes
• Hephaestus
• Hestia
• Nike
• Ares
• Tyche
• Nyx
• Iris
• Dionysus

Episode 8 →

100 Baby Challenge – Episode 6: Saying Goodbye

← Episode 5

Baby free post today! Today it’s all about recognising Gaia for all the hard work she put into this challenge.

A flashback to young Gaia just before the challenge. So innocent and blissfully unaware of the challenge to come…

I originally planned for Gaia to marry the original Victim, Travis (Zeus’s dad, blast from the past!) After a bit of wasted time I realised they weren’t actually hitting it off that well and while they were happy to sleep with each other they didn’t actually seem to enjoy chatting to each other much. Fair enough. She was also just most happy when she was around her family so we decided not to worry about Travis anymore. She’d had enough flirting and men for a lifetime anyway.

I knew her final days were coming so I threw some big parties with the whole family where she got to speak to everyone. I actually got quite emotional.

 

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Finally, the time came. She woke up and immediately collapsed. Grim appeared to take away her soul but Hades ran in and pleaded for her life! Grim relented and Gaia was brought back to life! I may not have been able to have Hades be the son of death but he lived up to his name eventually.

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Your mother is lying dead on the floor, the Grim Reaper is standing in front of you but no, by all means lets focus on the black pit that is your stomach, Boreas.

Gaia lived another 3 days and then took me on an emotional rollercoaster. I had just loaded up the game and the very first thing that happened was she collapsed in the living room and died. For good this time. I was a bit shocked, wasn’t expecting that first thing. I may have been a bit choked up, I had dedicated a lot of time to Gaia and I was really proud of her…

Noooooooo. She died embarrassed and smelly!

I spent some time making her a shrine. This of course now means that every time any of the moved out children come to visit their siblings they just stand in the living room in front of the urn and cry for 5 hours then go home. Whatever they need to do to come to terms with the death I guess.

I’m missing some photos but it’s getting there

Here are Gaia’s stats from the game. I’m very proud that her most prominent moodlet was Happiness, I thought for sure it was going to be Uncomfortable (though that was a close second at 556 times). She also wet herself a record 24 times and passed out 22 times… Ouch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a quiet and sombre day in the Olympae household but then Hades got a text from Ghost Gaia saying she needed some ‘retail therapy’ and could they go to the flea market together. You know… As ghosts do… I guess she’ll be hanging around a bit.

Finally, Artemis aged up and I got to randomise her final personality trait. It is my honor to present to you the new Matriarch as an adult: Artemis! Active, wannabe chef, outdoors lover, and kleptomaniac. It could have been much worse.

We’ll finish this post with some flashbacks to moments throughout Gaia’s life…

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RIP

 

100 Baby Challenge – Episode 5: The Clock Starts Ticking

← Episode 4

I’m going to skip the Olympae family ahead here a bit as I’ve been playing this A LOT and I haven’t been writing fast enough to keep up. When we last saw the Olympae family they had moved into their new, 2 bathroom home and had a lot more space. Since then Hades and Artemis have also been born and another baby is on the way, the lovely Poseidon (one of my favourite children) had moved out to make some room for potential twins and I was waiting for Hecate to come of age too. I was toying with the idea of letting her stay on as she’s magical and that makes repairing and cleaning stuff very, very easy. Here she is repairing the fridge and oven that she set fire to trying to cook lunch.

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We got an answer to ‘Who is the most beautiful Greek Goddess?’ from the old myth Judgement of Paris. Aphrodite and Athena became teens and look at how gorgeous Aphrodite is. Hera was the prettiest but she’s been de-throned. Not only is Aphrodite gorgeous but she’s super chill and helpful too. Athena is a bit alternative and also has the evil trait so she was often happy just because she enjoyed being around sims that had negative moods. Aphrodite was the clear winner in both looks and personality, in this universe anyway.

Aphrodite in her Winter finery, she looks like she’s about to hit the slopes and slay the snowboard competition.

I did move Hecate out in the end as having twins would be amazing and I guess the more space in the house the higher the chance? Spoiler alert: twins have not been a thing since Demeter and Persephone and annoyingly they continue to not be a thing for the rest of Gaia’s matriarchy.

Speaking of our next Matriarch I suddenly became acutely aware that Gaia was approaching retirement. The rules state that the youngest daughter has to continue the challenge as the new Matriarch once their mother has become an elder. If only it had been Aphrodite… At that moment Artemis was the youngest daughter but Gaia had another baby on the way and enough time to have another one. Ideally the next Matriarch would be Gaia’s final baby then you have a nice gap where everyone else gradually gets out of the house, there’s a break where there’s no babies and you can just focus on the Matriarch’s development.

The next Matriarch?

The baby was born and unfortunately it was a boy, named Apollo. Gaia was straight on it finding a new victim ASAP and I crossed my fingers… I was working on Artemis already just in case, getting her good grades and getting her skills up nice and high. Also letting her have some fun though, she potentially has quite a life ahead of her, let’s give her a fun childhood.

Next baby was born and it was… Another boy! Crap. This was Hephaestus. So… Artemis, the maiden Goddess who in mythology is chaste and virtuous, is going to be the next Matriarch. Ironic. On top of that she has 2 younger siblings that won’t be moving out before she’s started the challenge. Not the best outcome but never mind. Time was up and Gaia aged up into an elder.

Silver Fox!

Good news for Gaia though, she just needs to enjoy her retirement now. I think she did pretty well in her Matriarchy career with 13 kids. Or at least I thought I did until I watched an episode of Single Girl’s stream of this challenge (which inspired me to do it) where her first matriarch becomes an elder and she had 33 kids!!! WHAT?!?!?! HOW?! Maybe I let Gaia rest too much. I was too concerned with making her happy. Honestly that depressed me a bit. My girl doesn’t even have half that amount of children… I’m going to be really mature and say that Single Girl owns way more expansion packs than me, therefore she has more stuff so maybe it’s easier, and she got incredibly lucky with twins. That’s totally it, right? Also my PS4 is really struggling with this game sometimes and it bugs out quite a lot… I do wish I had a gaming PC for it instead but nevermind.

My future Matriarch needed a new look…

Much better

To sour my mood even more and make me want to curl up into a ball on the floor and reevaluate my choices in life I decided to calculate, based on Gaia’s 13 kids, how long it would take me to get to 100 babies… 7.5 GENERATIONS! … I can’t do that… I have to step it up… Is teen pregnancy a thing in the Sims?  Oh no…

Gaia is finally having a great time now that she is unburdened with upcoming children and men

Baby count: 13/100

• Zeus
• Hera
• Demeter
• Persephone
• Poseidon
• Hecate
• Aphrodite
• Athena
• Boreas
• Hades
• Artemis
• Apollo
• Hephaestus

Episode 6 →

100 Baby Challenge – Episode 3: Fire and Death

← Episode 2

Today is a baby-free post. There’s 7 in the house which means no room for twins/triplets so the focus was on making everyone happy, building relationships with future victims and getting some desperately needed money coming in (current household total $57 with bills of nearly $400).

Making everyone happy is my biggest struggle in this challenge, I know they don’t have to be but it makes everything so much easier when they are. Unfortunately, I seem to be cursed with bad luck where whenever the household is feeling particularly good something will go wrong and unleash a chain of unfortunate events. This was a particularly bad one.

It all started when Zeus put the entire challenge in peril by setting fire to himself. If a teen dies then I lose the challenge and I have put WAY too much time into this challenge at this point to be taken out by a house fire. He managed to extinguish himself but was understandably rather tense and upset about the situation… As was everyone else.

When you’re on fire but you really want those scrambled eggs…

It took a while for everyone to get over it. We ran out of money replacing the oven he’d destroyed and got the power shut off which really didn’t help anyone’s fun levels and meant Gaia couldn’t make any money programming. I really should have gone down the artist route there. She might not have made as much money but she’d have been able to do it whatever the state of the electricity and it would have increased her fun levels too.

My gorgeous girl, Hera in her Winter best

Luckily, it was Harvestfest (see also Thanksgiving) which we don’t do in the UK, but apparently it’s when gnomes invade your home and break all your stuff if they don’t like you but give you seeds if you appease them. We appeased the hell out of those gnomes and they gave us lots of seed packets that we sold, and then we sold the gnomes, which gave us enough to get the power back on.

I thought everything was sorted, we had some spare cash, Hera was now a GORGEOUS teenager with a good job (seriously look at her. I don’t think I could have made a prettier Sim if I tried), and everyone was actually pretty happy!

Gaia decided to make a big meal for everyone to celebrate and invited over a group of potential victims to chat up. Not to seduce just yet, we’re still biding our time there, just to see who she has the best relationship with. She invited over Don Lothario, Simeon (he’s incredibly unattractive but is also a sage at the magic school so I assume his offspring would have that similar Ancient Bloodline trait that Hecate has), and blond guy. I didn’t realise that Simeon is an elder now at this point! What?? Maybe we won’t resort to that, there are other sages after all. He seemed to be enjoying himself anyway so no worries you can stay for some food. Suddenly, with no warning, he falls to the floor and DIES. WHAT?!?!?!?!

Everyone is just stood around eating eggs and bacon and this guy is lying there dead in the middle of them. The Grim Reaper shows up and everyone (understandably) suddenly freaks out and starts crying. There goes the happy moods everyone was in.

Thanks Simeon, this is going to take them ages to get over. We can’t even sell his urn which is now just on the kitchen side being useless. What do I do with it? It’s just there and it’s not like anyone in the house was particularly close to him. Awkward.

Gaia was having a pretty good chat with the Grim Reaper though and I had the sudden realisation that the name Hades was still available and how awesome would it be if he could literally be the son of death… You can flirt with the Grim Reaper after all, maybe you can have a baby with it/him/her?

Power through the sadness, Gaia

She spent a bit of time chatting but I decided to Google if it was actually possible as I can’t really waste any time on this challenge, I’m already on a child break as it is. Turns out you can’t have the Grim Reaper’s children. Damn, that would have been a good.

It really did take a while for everyone to get over Simeon dying but eventually they did and we had some birthday parties! Poseidon, Persephone, and Demeter all aged up! Poseidon into a child and Persephone and Demeter into teens. We now have 4 teen incomes! Thanks to the randomised traits Persephone and Demeter were given some interesting personalities. Demeter is a lone wolf who has the Popularity aspiration of being a comedy queen and Persephone is an insane music lover intent on finding her soulmate. That will be fun.

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Demeter and Persephone (and Simeon in the background)

Finally, with Zeus nearly a young adult, which means he can move out, I decided to try and time the next birth with his birthday. Gaia invited Victim 6: Don Lothario (famous Sim Romantic) round and child number 7 was on the way. The names Cupid or Aphrodite are being reserved for this baby, inspired by the father.

Things we learned

• Can’t have the Grim Reaper’s children
• Except for Hera all children have been automatically given a dreadlock-based hairstyle at some point… There are so many different ones and they keep giving them the same ones??
• Gaia had red hair so almost everyone had red hair, now she’s blonde which means her new kids are too. Seems the dads’ genetics don’t have a huge amount of say (Hera again being the one exception)

Child count: 6/100

• Zeus
• Hera
• Demeter
• Persephone
• Poseidon
• Hecate

Episode 4 →