Ulysses Dies at Dawn

Ulysses Dies at Dawn is a film noir retelling of Greek myth, using folk songs in blues-y and rock styles. It is the Mechanisms' second story set / studio album."Ulysses Dies at Dawn. That's the word on the street, at any rate, if you talk to anyone who saw what went down at Calypso's Bar the other night. Who is behind the thuggish band known as the Suits - Heracles, Ariadne and the others? What is Ulysses's secret? And what is hidden within the security of the Vault?""This is the second studio album by The Mechanisms, written 2012-2013 and presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2013."

Setting
Ulysses Dies At Dawn is set on a cyberpunk city-world. Initially there were several settlements on the planet, but the city of Labyrinth grew rapidly, spreading across the planet and absorbing all the other settlements into itself. Labyrinth eventually covered all the landmass of the planet, becoming known solely as "The City" to its inhabitants. Still needing to grow, the City built atop the seas, then started building ever taller. Eventually, it started to build sub-terranian sections. This created a vast, towering metropolis, devoid of nature, and where only the highest floors receive sunlight. The geography mimicked the social stratification of the planet, with the poorest inhabitants living in tunnels and lower surface-levels with no sunlight, and the richest living in the upper floors of the skyscrapers.

The city's systems depended on a centralised computer system called the Acheron which consisted of human brains. Upon death, the brain was removed from every inhabitant of the City and entered into the Acheron, with varying levels of self-awareness based on the condition and intelligence of the brain. The Acheron also recruited volunteers to die early and enter their brains at their peak, offering various benefits as incentive, or coercing them in with threats.

The Acheron was an end feared by many of the City, but was also only avoidable by never dying. This was an option available to the richest denizens of the City - the Olympians - who control the City through their crime syndicates.

For further information, see the The World of Ulysses Dies At Dawn page.

Plot
Ulysses is a war-hero of the City from the war against Ilium, the only part of the planet that hasn't been subsumed by the City. Ten years into war they come up with the idea of gifting a horse statue to Ilium, using it to broadcast a signal that drove everyone in Ilium to murder each other, ending the war. The war takes its toll on Ulysses, and they decide to take revenge on Poseidon, one of the instigators of the Ilium war, by stealing the Cyclops Eye diamond. They are recognised but not caught, fleeing with just the diamond and a single shot in a laser pistol, and they turn to drink and the sirens to cope.

Twenty years later, Ulysses' will is found, with reference to them having built a Vault as a youth - before the war - and having hidden something within the Vault that could destroy the Acheron and topple the ruling Olympians. Some of the Olympians recognise this as a threat, and make plans to break into the Vault and claim its contents for themselves, securing their power. To this end, Oedipus, Heracles, Orpheus and Ariadne are hired to either convince Ulysses to open the Vault with their passcode, or to open the Vault themselves by completing the four trials Ulysses has set to allow the Vault to be opened after their death. These are the Trail of Wits, the Trial of Strength, the Trial of Song and the Trial of Love.

Oedipus, Heracles, Orpheus and Ariadne assemble, and discover that they have all ended up wearing pinstripe suits, giving them the narrative nickname of the 'Suits'. The Suits locate a drunk Ulysses in Calypso's and kidnap them, bringing them to the Vault, which is labelled "Penelope'". Penelope is identified by the Suits as a woman who is dead, but not in the Acheron, confusing them, as the brains of every dead person are put into the Acheron.

The Suits pressure Ulysses to use the passcode and open the Vault for them, but when Ulysses refuses, the Suits realise they will need to complete the trials set as the alternate unlocking mechanism.

What follows is a sequence of revels of each of the Suits' identities and backgrounds before each attempts the task they were chosen for.

First is Oedipus. Seemingly an orphan, Oedipus worked hard to escape the slums he grew up in, and became a doctor, believing this to be entirely by his own hard work - but he had secretly been helped by the Olympians. As a doctor, he turned to studying the Sphinx Disease, a fatal wasting disease that rapidly aged children physically. Discovering the disease was a by product of the Olympian's method of immortality, he pushed to help those infected, finding a cure but also suggesting alternate methods of immortality should be found. However sympathetic the Olympians claimed to be though, they then set about destroying Oedipus, first by setting Oedipus up to kill his own father in a break in at his lab, then by setting up Oedipus to secretly marry his own mother before revealing both of their identities and disgracing Oedipus.

Oedipus is required to solve the Trial of Wits, a series of coding and logic problems. He solves them by directly interfacing with the computer through the data ports he has replaced his eyes with.

Second is Heracles, one of the bastard sons of Zeus who was granted immortality and a place in the Olympian family, as long as he continued to complete the suicidal tasks Zeus set him and he acted as Zeus's general hired muscle. When Heracles started a family, Zeus refused to extend Heracles's payment (immortality) to Heracles’s family, so Heracles left the Olympians. In response, Zeus had Heracles's family killed and framed Heracles for the killing, using the debt incurred by getting Heracles off the hook to tie Heracles back to him.

Heracles is required to complete the Test of Strength, which is turning a heavy wheel.

Next is Orpheus, picked for the Trial of Song, a young man whose lover had died and became part of the Acheron. Orpheus wants his lover re-bodied and brought back to life, but he cannot afford the cost, so Hades has set Orpheus up on this job as a middleman. Hades has also set Heracles up on this job as payment for trying to steal Hades' dog, and had even suggested to Ulysses that they needed to return to their Vault when they came to them looking for respite. When Orpheus admits to being in debt to Hades, some of the Suits start to realise who might be pulling the strings behind their work.

The final trail is the Trial of Love, for which Ariadne has been hired. Ariadne is famed for her love of Theseus, who she helped slay the Minotaur, a robot built to kill people and harvest their minds for the Acheron. However, when it is revealed that the Trial of Love involves sacrificing yourself and dying, Ariadne refuses as she has never actually loved Theseus - it was a publicity stunt to improve her image when it was revealed that it was her family that had built the Minotaur, a publicity stunt she has kept up, even when spurned by Theseus.

The architect of the mission now reveals himself as Daedalus. He demands the job completed, and Orpheus volunteers to undergo the Trial of Love. However, he looks back at the last moment, so the 'without hesitation' requirement of the Trial is not met, and Orpheus is not killed. Daedalus however realises the Trial is using motion sensors to judge the conditions. He offers a raise to three of the Suits, so long as the fourth is bound and used for the Trial.

Using the confusion that this creates, Ulysses draws their pistol, shooting through the Cyclops Eye diamond to hit each of the people there, killing Ariadne, Heracles and Orpheus immediately, and leaving Daedalus alive but injured.

Ulysses, dying, opens their Vault with the pass-code, entering and locking themself in. It is finally revealed that the Vault contains the last remnant of nature on the planet - a single oak tree - and is the burial place of Penelope, their wife, who is the only person to have died a true death since the creation of the Acheron. Lying beneath the tree, bathed in sunlight, Ulysses dies in peace.

Characters

 * Ulysses (played by Jonny d'Ville): The hero of the Ilium war, thief of the Cyclops' Eye and builder of Penelope's Vault. The vault was originally intended to spark rebellion in the City, reminding people of the possibility of death without the Acheron. They are described as "black, beautiful and had a pair of cold blue eyes", and all information on their gender has been lost, so they are consistently referred to by 'they/them' pronouns.


 * Heracles (played by Marius von Raum): The bastard son of Zeus who at first trades working for Zeus for Olympian immortality, and is then coerced into it when Zeus kills Heracles' family and frames him. Hades recruits Heracles for Daedalus when Heracles is caught trying to steel the Acheron's guard dog. He had previously worked with Orpheus on retrieving the Golden Fleece.
 * Oedipus (played by Gunpowder Tim): A doctor who thought he had legitimately worked his way upwards from being an orphan in the slums, but was secretly the abandoned child of two wealthy inhabitants of the City. He cures the fatal wasting Sphinx disease, but when he tries to convince the Olympians to change their method of immortality to stop causing the Sphinx disease, they disgrace him by setting him up to marry his mother, before revealing the incest and that he had also previously unknowingly killed his father. He is blind, having data-port interface cords rather than eyes, and intends to use his fee to leave the planet the City is on.
 * Orpheus (played by The Toy Soldier): A young man whose fiancé has died and who wishes to rebody them, Hades having sent him to this job to get the money for it. He is described as seeming out of place with the rest of the Suits, but has worked several criminal jobs previously, including with Heracles.
 * Ariadne (played by Raphaella la Cognizi): Seemingly the spurned lover of Theseus who helped him deactivate the Minotaur, really the Minos heir who was using Theseus as a publicity stunt after it was revealed the Minos family were the creators of the Minotaur. She has kept up the act of the spurned lover ever since.
 * Hades: Actually Ashes O'Reilly, who has taken control of the Acheron, and acts as a middleman for Daedalus
 * Daedalus (played by DrumBot Brian): The architect of the City, creator of the Acheron, and the Olympian Hephaestus. He wants the contents of Ulysses' vault, and gathers the Suits for that purpose.

Information about the background characters mentioned in the album and related fiction can be found on the Minor Characters In Ulysses Dies At Dawn page.

Tracks
This album is one of only two of the four studio albums to contain original, non-filked music. It is the only studio album to contain a mix of both filk and original music, with The Bifrost Incident containing entirely non-filk material.

Fiction

 * You'll Have to Tell Us The Story Sometime The Mechanisms land of the planet of the City, discovering it deserted and slowly realise that most of the have been there before. Nastya and Ivy ask for the story.
 * Death In The Metropolis A newspaper style report on the job done by those employed to harvest brains from corpses.
 * How Not to Die A newspaper style report on those who try to die in a way to avoid being put in the Acheron.
 * FAO: Hermes - not urgent A recorded conversation between an editor and a journalist about publishing guidelines and sedition.
 * Orpheus, Dionysus, Muriatic Acid and the Strange Whirring Thing More information on Orpheus' background, and how he got involved in the Ulysses job.
 * Orpheus and Narcissus Go On a Trip to the Seaside More Orpheus background, plus a variation on the myth of Narcissus
 * In the Madness of War The military leaders of the City convince Palmodes to recruit Ulysses, then a researcher and pacifist, to end the war with Ilium
 * The Hacker's Mistake Zeus visits Prometheus and explains his punishment
 * One of the Chosen A young scholar is informed she has been selected to immediately join the Acheron.
 * Eskhatos The Mechanisms watch as Ulysses dies, and prepare to burn the Acheron and leave the planet.

Songs

 * Iphis (Tales to be Told): Iphis wishes for a male body to marry her fiancé Ianthe, which he is given if he will join Isis when requested. Isis takes Iphis away from Ianthe the day after they are married.
 * Prometheus (Tales to be Told): A radio-broadcast about Ilium's folk hero Prometheus, who gave them the information needed to fight the City.
 * Twisted Threads (Tales to be Told, Volume II): Arachne is recruited as a spin-doctor by Athena after her attempts to begin her own independent career lead to her being killed and used as an Acheron mouthpiece for the Olympian propaganda.
 * Actaea and Lyssa (Tales to be Told, Volume II): The sisters Actaea and Lyssa sneak into Olympian territory and see Artemis bathing. She causes Lyssa to hunt her sister as if she were prey.

Solo Work

 * Narcissus Under The Knife (Jessica Law): A song on Languid Little Lies about Narcissus getting plastic surgery.

The Mechanisms' Locations

 * Jonny d'Ville: 'Was in one of the lower levels, depopulating it'
 * Marius von Raum: 'Psychoanalysing the Olympians'
 * Toy Soldier: appeared in the basement of Parsiphäe Minos, the automata maker, and was sold to Dionysus, where it worked as a nymph before replacing Orpheus as Dionysus' PR officer when Eurydice died.
 * Ashes O'Reilly: Running the Acheron as Hades
 * Drumbot Brian: The Oracle of Delphi . He was on his Ends Justify The Means setting.
 * Gunpowder Tim: In the army, rank of Enomotarch . Caused an explosion on level 54D, killing forty.
 * Raphaella la Cognizi: Collaborating with Athena
 * Ivy Alexandria and Nastya Rasputina: Away from the Aurora

References in Ulysses Dies At Dawn
Line by line explanation of the references in the lyrics in Ulysses Dies At Dawn can be found on Genius, explanation of references included in the associated images, characters, background and fiction can be found within References In Ulysses Dies At Dawn. Background reading material on the source myths can be found on the Further Reading page.

Live Performances
Several live performances of Ulysses Dies At dawn were given by the Mechanisms. The recordings that were taken of some of these performances are compiled on the Past Events page.

Trivia

 * Ulysses' fake ID that they use to access Poseidon Labs uses the name "Annipe Naiad" . Naiads are a form of water nymph, while Annipe is a female name likely meaning 'place without horses' linking to their role in the Ilium war.
 * Hercules was not the only person considered for the Trial of Strength - both Jason and Perseus have files within the Strength folder for Daedalus' consideration.
 * Orpheus was not the only person considered for the Trial of Song - Linus is also noted as a possibility . Linus probably refers to the son of Apollo who was also heavily linked with music in greek mythology, and may have invented harmony and the harp (Orpheus also being linked to the invention of the harp, and Linus was occasionally portrayed as Orpheus' brother).
 * All the names in the album take their greek forms, except for Ulysses and Ilium which are the latin form of Odysseus and Troy. Ulysses and Ilium are the ones to resist the Olympians, as Rome fought and conquered Greece. Prometheus, who also resisted the Olympians has a name that is the same in both greek and latin.
 * In the debut performance of the album, Marius is more specifically described as psycho-analysing Dioynysus than the Olympians as a whole, and retorts with "He's just this guy you know". This references or is referenced by the teaser of a newspaper article with Dioynysus' therapist visible in the background image for "Trial by Love".
 * In addition to the pages viewable on the bandcamp page for the album, the physical album liner included Daedalus' notes on the potential candidates for each trial. Parts of these can be seen in the background images for the album on youtube.