Hoplite: the undead soldiery of the dead lands

The Hoplites were undead soldiers of the Greek world, skeletal corpses dressed in the standard armor of Greece that rose from death to fight with two swords in hand. They were the counterparts of the Undead Legionnaires, that greater host of risen warriors which served the gods across the mortal world, yet the Hoplites kept mostly to the realms of the dead themselves. Kratos met them in Asphodel, in the depths of Tartarus, and in the Elysium Fields, where they charged him with their blades, climbed the walls above his paths, and reached for him with grasping hands. Among their ranks marched archers, shield bearers, and the blood-armored Sentries, the strongest of their kind.

The risen soldiery of Greece#

The Hoplites belonged to the vast family of the undead that plagued the Greek world, the risen soldiers who fought on long after their deaths. Where the Undead Legionnaires marched in the armies of the gods across the living lands, the Hoplites served as their counterparts within the realms of the dead. Each appeared as a skeletal corpse adorned in the standard armor of a Greek soldier, and each carried two swords, one in either hand.

In battle they showed little in the way of caution or craft. A Hoplite charged straight at its enemy and delivered strong strikes with its dual swords, trusting in numbers and in the tirelessness of the dead. They were kindred to a wider host of risen creatures. Beings much like them, the Shades, had haunted the dreaming fog of Morpheus in an earlier age, so alike in nature that the Shades might have been called the Hoplites of that god. Among the dead themselves, however, the Hoplites answered to no dreaming power, standing instead among the endless soldiery of the Underworld.

Haunts among the dead#

Kratos encountered the Hoplites in three regions of the world beyond death: Asphodel, the depths of Tartarus, and the Elysium Fields. Even in Elysium, that place of reward, the risen soldiers barred his way, and in Tartarus their stronger breeds gathered in the dark.

They were not bound to level ground. Hoplites climbed along the walls of the dead lands, and when a living climber crossed their territory they grappled with him and tried to throw him from his handholds. Against the Ghost of Sparta such tactics bought them little. Kratos seized the creatures and drove his head into their skulls with such force that bone gave way, and when a Hoplite had been battered near to breaking he threw it to the ground and struck its head from its shoulders with his chained blades. By that method the Spartan destroyed them in every field and pit where they rose against him.

Shields of bronze and iron#

Two breeds of Hoplite went into battle behind shields. The first, the Shielded Hoplites, appeared almost identical to the common soldier but carried a large bronze shield, and no blow could harm the creature while the shield endured. Only when the bronze had been shattered did the thing beneath stand exposed, and then it fought as any other Hoplite fought, with its two swords, and died as they died. Kratos met these shield bearers chiefly in the depths of Tartarus, where they stood among the strongest gatherings of their kind.

The second breed, the Hoplite Guards, bore shields of a sterner making, powerful barriers of metal that no ordinary strength could break. Against these Kratos turned the fire of Thera's Bane, the burning power bound into his blades, for only that flame could shatter the Guards' defenses. Stripped of their shields, the Guards proved no different from their lesser brethren, and the Spartan disposed of them by the same means he used against every other soldier of the risen dead.

Archers and Sentries#

Not every Hoplite closed to sword's reach. The Hoplite Archers resembled the standard soldiers in every way but their weapon, carrying a bow in place of the twin swords. They fought alongside the common Hoplites and supported the charge from a distance, loosing arrows at any enemy their brethren engaged. Some among them commanded a crueler art, firing a flaming arrow high into the sky so that the burning shaft fell upon their quarry from above a short time later. For all their reach, the Archers died as easily as their sword-bearing kin once Kratos closed the distance, broken by the same grip and beheaded by the same blades.

Above all these stood the Hoplite Sentries, the strongest class of Hoplite that Kratos ever faced. They looked much the same as their lesser brethren, but they were known by their blood-red armor and by their curved, scimitar-like swords. The Sentries fought with all the tactics of the common soldiery and added to them powerful leaping strikes that were difficult to block or to parry, blows that punished any warrior who stood his ground carelessly. Yet caution was answer enough. A fighter who watched for the leap could bring a Sentry down by the same means that felled any standard Hoplite, and so even the strongest of the risen soldiers of Greece went in the end to the same fate as the rest of their silent host.