Type: Hex Power
Effect Text: Pick a card from the top three in the power graveyard, and add that card to your hand.
Flavor Text: "Not all the gold that is beneath the moon, Or ever hath been of these toil-worn souls, Might purchase rest for one."
Flavor Source: Dante Alighieri, Inferno
Artwork: Dante and Virgil in Hell by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1850)
Strategy:
Styx can help you reuse your best power cards, or obtain a power card your opponent has recently played. Styx is also useful for stalling, as it allows you to customize your hand and avoid committing resources for a turn.
About the card:
Why journey into the depths of hell? for Orpheus it was to reclaim his love from the king of the dead (see also Knight), for Heracles it was to wrestle Cerberus as his 12th and final labor of his repentance, and for Dante it was to cleanse his soul and to ascend to heaven. Even in the Greek interpretation, where the underworld was not a place of constant suffering for all, it was still a place to tread lightly, as you might be tricked into becoming a permanent resident. So it is interesting that our greatest heroes often find themselves entering the Great Pit. Maybe it's a writers get out of jail free card when they've killed off a fan favorite, or maybe we see ourselves in the hero stepping over the rotten dead souls and our enemies in the doomed and damned.
As Dante journeys to the center of hell he finds all sorts of ill-reputes, but perhaps the most interesting occurs in Canto VII where he finds the greedy and the spendthrifts. They joust with giant weights, fighting over whether they've spent too much or too little. This mindset pervades unquestioningly in the goals and aspirations of our culture, but it should be questioned. After all, what is a golden casket to the corpse inside?
