Film / Mythica

Mythica is a series of High Fantasy films produced by Arrowstorm Entertainment. It consists of:

• Mythica: A Quest for Heroes (2014)
• Mythica: The Darkspore (2015)
• Mythica: The Necromancer (2015)
• Mythica: The Iron Crown (2016)
• Mythica: The Godslayer (2016)

Magically talented slave Marek escapes from her owner, and joins priestess Teela, fighter Thane and half-elven thief Dagen to rescue Teela's sister Caeryn from an ogre. The artefact that Caeryn is carrying turns out to be more important than first thought, and Marek's magic to be more powerful and dangerous.

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Tropes appearing in these films

• Action Girl: Marek is a handicapped badass initially, but learns how to fight with a staff and her magic nonetheless. Teela, meanwhile, is a healer who’s also trained in combat. Many other minor female characters also show skill at combat with regular weapons or magic.
• Back from the Dead: Szorlok raises the dead to serve him as zombies. In a more positive version, Teela raises Thane from the underworld after he and Dagen kill themselves to get the Hammer of Tek from there.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Marek has Necromancy, which here means she's capable of draining others' life force to empower her magic along with calling up the dead, but is a very good person. In the films she continually struggles since her power is apparently both addictive and corrupting.
• Batman Gambit: Gojun Pye teleports Szorlok into another dimension devoid of life where he fights him to a standstill. Szorlok then can only draw life force from him when his power is depleted to teleport away. Gojun then sends his soul into Szorlok during this, so later he can control Szorlok for just long enough to let Marek kill him.
• Black Eyes of Evil:
  • Marke's eyes go black when she uses her necromancy, which is very dangerous not only to others but her too, because it makes her unhinged. She has to continually resist going fully evil after using it, as it's both addictive to her and corrupting too.
  • Szorlock has black eyes full time, the mark of a necromancer who's fully evil and corrupted, unlike Marek.
• Black Magician Girl: Marek's magic is mostly offensive, and is partly powered by Necromancy.
• Bounty Hunter: Marek is pursued by two elven female bounty hunters in The Darkspore, as she's an escaped slave.
• The Casanova: Dagen is introduced with another man's wife, and is continually shown having seduced women over the next films. Eventually he settles down with Marek-in the afterlife.
• Child by Rape: Dagen was born to an elven woman held in a brothel as a sex slave for soldiers.
• Covers Always Lie:
  • The UK DVD cover of A Quest for Heroes shows our heroine Marek wearing a combat mini dress and wielding a sword. In the film, she wears a long dress and does not have a sword.
  • The US and German covers show her wearing a white blouse and leather trousers. Instead of a sword, she has a staff glowing with magical power. She doesn't have one of those in the film either.
• Creator Cameo: In The Darkspore, co-writer and producer Kynan Griffin appears as "Frozen Wizard".
• Deadpan Snarker: Dagen. Practically everything he says is some kind of witty, cutting remark.
• Death by Childbirth: Marek's mother died while giving birth to her.
• Death of the Old Gods: Szorlok succeeds in destroying the gods prior to his death at Marek's hand. Teela believes they may reemerge someday though.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: The Darkspore is the heart of the long-dead Lich King. In the backstory it was broken into four and the pieces scattered. The villain Szorlok wants to find the pieces and reassemble them to gain the Lich King's ability to raise armies of the dead and make them do his bidding.
• Dragon Hoard: In The Darkspore the party kill a dragon but are unable to rob its hoard. However, wizards pay a lot for dragon teeth, so not all is lost.
• Driven to Suicide: Dagen's mother hung herself when he was a little boy, to escape sex slavery.
• Dungeon Crawling: Every film features the party of adventurers exploring some dangerous locale to retrieve various McGuffins they need.
• Eating the Eye Candy: When they free Qole in The Darkspore from a web, he's clad only in shorts. Marek and Teela can only stare in awe at the man's very buff physique.
• Familiar: Betylla's beetles seem to serve as his, since they can understand and follow his orders, flying to specific people when he's commanded it. He uses it to deliver messages for Peregus. They don't speak though-just flying to people serves as the message.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Averted with Borlund, who has a short musket, which fits into her Steampunk tech. Her pirates also use primitive grenades, and we see ships firing cannons in the last movie.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: When gathering her "team" to aid Teela, Marek herself is the mage, Thane the fighter, and Dagen the thief.
• Gender-Blender Name: "Marek" is the equivalent of "Mark" in Polish, Czech and Slovak.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: Apparently the gods lose power as their worshipers die, according to Szorlok.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Dagen is a half-elf, son of an elven mother and an unknown human father.
• Handicapped Badass: Heroine Marek is clubfooted, with a brace on her leg and using a stick to walk at the beginning. Over time however with training she becomes nearly as mobile as any able-bodied person (magical aid is possibly involved then as well). She does ask if Teela can heal her, but when this turns out to not be a possibility it doesn't faze her. It helps in that her weapon is magic, but she's quite capable physically as well. Her foot is entirely healed later.
• Heroic Bastard: Dagen, though a bit of a knave at first as he's a thief and lech, turns out to be quite heroic, while born to a sex slave. It's possible Marek is too, as her father remains unknown.
• Heroic Suicide:
  • In The Necromancer, Teela tells Marek to take her life energy so that Marek will have the strength to save the others from certain death.
  • The Hammer of Tek is needed for them to destroy the Darkspore. However, it's now in the underworld. The only way to enter the underworld is to die. Dagen and Marek thus kill themselves to go retrieve it.
• High Fantasy: The series builds up to a struggle with evil sorcerer Szorlok, whose goal is to turn all life in the world into zombies.
• Large Ham:
  • Matthew Mercer engages full scenery-devouring mode as the Big Bad, Szorlok.
  • Admiral Borlund Hess seems to enjoy her evil job quite a bit, as well.
• Life Drinker: Necromancers gain power this way, along with raising the dead.
• Made a Slave: It turns out that Marek was sold as a slave by Hammerhead after her mother died giving birth to her. She grew up in slave camps and was eventually sold to an apothecary, then later a pimp who had much worse intentions for her than just being an assistant. Dagen's elf mother was also captured and sold into slavery by orcs.
• The Magic Goes Away: According to Teela in the final movie, the death of the gods will cause magic to fade and die.
• Market-Based Title/Completely Different Title:
  • A Quest for Heroes became Weg der Gefährten (Journey of The Companions) in Germany.
  • The Godslayer became The Dragonslayer in the UK, and Crepuscule des Dieux (Twilight of the Gods) in French.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Gojun Pye is killed fighting Szorlok before he can train Marek any more.
• Misery Builds Character: Szorlok says Marek should be grateful for her hard life as an orphaned slave girl, because hardship makes you strong.
• Nay-Theist: Dagen says he never thought that the gods really listened to prayers. Marek also expresses rage over them not coming to help when Szorlok is waging war on the living, and says mortals may be better off without them at all.
• Necromancy: The magic that Marek and her enemies use is consistently described as necromancy, but this gets powered by sucking the life energy from the living too, not just dealing with the dead. She is the heroine, so it's not inherently evil, though the risk of addiction or corruption make it a dicey business for her.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Because Marek is a necromancer, every time she touches a part of the Darkspore, it alerts Szorlok to that part's location.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Thane and Dagen get Peregus to sell Marek so they can free her. By putting a dagger to his throat and making him sign the contract.
• Older Than They Look: Dagen (a half-elf), says he's in his early seventies, but looks perhaps thirty at most. It's possible he's joking though.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Szorlok's goal turns out to be killing everybody in the world so he can then raise them as undead and rule, along with killing even the gods.

• Parental Abandonment:
  • Dagen has no idea who his father was, as his mother was a sex slave. Later she hung herself when he was a little boy to escape this life.
  • Marek's father never gets revealed, since her mother died giving birth to her with no one else knowing.
• Psycho Lesbian: Admiral Borlund Hess, a female character, collects young women whom she finds attractive to serve as zombified sex slaves for her.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: Thane instructs his soldiers how to kill zombies, which includes this and burning them.
• Sex Slave: Admiral Borlund Hess collects young women whom she finds attractive for her harem, after drugging them with a potion which makes each "brain dead". Dagen's mother was also one, an elven women captured and sold to a brothel. Also Marek was intended for this by Peregus, but Dagen and Thane later forced him to free her.
• Sky Pirates: "The Admiral" (a woman) from The Iron Crown leads a group of Sky Pirates. They have a zeppelin and hang gliders.
• Slave Liberation: Dagen and Thane succeed in freeing Marek by forcing Peregus to sell her to them.
• Son of a Whore: Dagen, whose mother was a sex slave.
• Spanner in the Works: In The Iron Crown, three different gangs of villains are chasing after the heroes, and any one of them could have succeeded if the others did not keep on getting in the way.
  1. Demons raised by the Big Bad Szorlok, who wants an item that the party have.
  2. Mercenaries hired by someone who thinks that he could do a better job than the party at keeping the item out of Szorlok's hands.
  3. The Admiral and her Sky Pirates. She is just angry at the party for stealing her stuff and preventing her quiet enjoyment of her sex slaves.
• Steampunk: Admiral Borlund Hess and her Sky Pirates have a steam-powered air ship and a "war wagon" (essentially a steam-powered automobile).
• Thieves' Guild: There was one operating underneath Marek's home city hiding in the sewer tunnels, where they hoarded priceless ancient documents that prove vital to Marek saving the world.
• Throwing Off the Disability: Marek starts out disabled due to a clubfoot, using a walking stick and leg brace. However, she's trained to fight in spite of it, and gets quite nimble. Later, her foot is healed entirely.
• Together in Death: In The Godslayer Dagen tells Marek about a dream he has of the two of them living on a beach together. A couple of Heroic Suicides later …
• Training the Gift of Magic: The highly experienced Wizard Gojun Pye wants to train Marek, and she wants his help, but events keep on getting in the way.
• Unusual Euphemism: "Fyke" is used rather than the f-word in the series.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Borlund and Caia-Beck both hide the last shard of the Darkspore in their cleavage. It doesn't stop first Marek, then Dagen from getting it back.
• We Can Rule Together: Szorlok makes this offer to Marek, which she seriously considers since he promises to save the rest, but ultimately rejects.
• White Magician Girl: Teela. Support character? Check. Healing magic? Check. Carries a staff? Check.
• You All Meet in an Inn: The party meets in a tavern. It's somewhat justified as this was frequented by mercenaries, and Teela comes in hoping to hire some that will help rescue her sister and retrieve the Darkspore. Also the owner was a mercenary, who acts now as a sort of broker for teams to pursue such missions.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Szorlok unleashes this on the world in the last film, raising all of the dead and then sending them out to kill the living, who become more undead soldiers for him.

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