This story stands out as one that I didn't especially enjoy at the time of playing, but that has since grown on me considerably. I would recommend, as I saw recommended in the forums after playing, that you do some reading up on the Mythraic Mysteries before playing. There's some good coverage age https://www.worldhistory.org/Mithraic_Mysteries/ . It will both give you a better idea of what the Classicist is after as well as giving context for the many elements of the Mysteries and Tauroctony that show up in the story, physically and metaphorically.

You bump into a Blighted Classicist trying to set up a dig for a lost Mythraic Temple, a cult from ancient Rome that we know very little about even today. She's desperate both because of the potential data they can find, but also because she's dying. And here I have to put in a body horror warning, it's not the only element in the story, but it's the most prominent. The Classicist has been infested by galblighter wasps. They lay eggs in their victims eyes, and the wasp larvae develop there over time before bursting forth in a swarm, killing the host in the process. Much excellent descriptive text is used to establish you can hear them crawling around when your standing near her, and other off-putting details. As the condition progresses, she also begins to hallucinate, or at least perceive things that humans normally cannot.

So she is fighting a doomed battle that is also making her functionally disabled to complete one last great work in her life. It's a fascinating story that almost immediately goes off the rails as the once the excavation uncovers the temple was connected to a literal road to Hell.

In fairly short order, the dig is effectively taken over by the more militant arm of the church, and an expedition is launched, including the player, a Turncoat devil, a Veteran of the war with Hell, and surprising everyone, the Blighted Classicist. What follows in part travelog, part discourse on Mythraism, part meditation on the horrors of war. And it definitely leans into the horror of the setting, in ways that surprisingly few of the Exceptional Stories I've played do.

The next segment, which is the bulk of the story, is where things didn't work out well for me. You're given many options for searching along the way, investigating what is going on, and in some cases just letting the Classicist investigate Mythraic ruins. Investigation gives you a better idea what's going on, but also tires the party, particularly when there are complications. After a certain amount of exertion you need to camp. On the one hand this lets you get to know your companions better, but it also drives home that the Classicist is living on borrowed time, and will not survive the journey if you tarry too long.

The Turncoat is also an interesting character, though almost everything you learn about him has to be on the road. I can't speak directly to the quality of the Veteran as a character because every discussion and playthrough I've seen didn't find him interesting enough to get to know better. It doesn't speak well for his intro except that he's clearly supposed to be blunt and standoffish.

So you have two veterans from different sides of a war going on what feels like a suicide mission accompanies by a terminally ill academic who is desperately hoping that this discovery can be made to mean something before her death. It's great material, but it works best with room to breath, which I didn't really give it.

I would advise you to play more on the edge. Don't just bee-line down the road. Investigate, learn more about what's going on, and take some risks with your time. It will both give more texture to the story and characters , and it increases the tension. The ending was quite good. In some ways it felt like a very dark farce. It also included one of the nastiest choices I've seen in some time, though I didn't actually take that.

I'm very curious to try further work from Harry Tuffs. In hindsight I found this quite satisfying, but I'd encourage anyone else who plays through it to take some of those recommendations, and likely get a much stronger first impression than I did.

As a final note, the Classicist is a recruitable companion from Mr. Chimes Lost & Found, in game. I haven't actually done this yet, so I'm not sure how it's handled, but if it is just having a character who is terminally ill at best inexplicably live on if you're willing to pay out money, then that's going to knock the story for me, even if that's not on Tuffs. I've tried not to reflect that in the review score, and I hope to update this once I'm in a position to actually recruit the Classicist and see how it's handled.