Ilium Ridge

Synopsis

• 1917: Captain Achilles is living with his mother Thetis, disguised as a girl to avoid fighting in the Great War. • Hermes, messenger of the Gods, uncovers him and carries him off to the war, where the Achaeans are besieging the Trojans at Ilium Ridge. • Achilles is reunited with Patroclus, his aide and inseparable companion in many past battles. • Hector, son of Trojan leader Marshall Priam, attacks the Achaean camp to reveal their weakness. • The War is revealed to be a game played by the Gods Zeus (for Troy/Germany), Poseidon (for Achaea/England) and Hades (Assyria/Russia). • Achilles and Patroclus meet their commanding officer, upper-class twit Agamemnon, who hates Achilles’ popularity and lower-class origins. • Agamemnon assigns Achilles to conquer a Trojan village. • Achilles captures the village, revealing himself to be immune to bullets. • He also captures two nurses, Chryseis and Briseis, and (with help from Aphrodite) falls in love with the latter. • Agamemnon takes Chryseis as his prize. Achilles and Briseis pledge their love. • Agamemnon kills Chryseis when she resists him and takes Briseis instead. Achilles is furious but powerless to oppose his commander. • Priam’s degenerate son Paris and his companion Helen (who started the war by running away with Paris from her husband Menelaus 10 years before) visit Priam at Ilium Ridge. Menelaus sees them together and tries to kill them. • Chryseis’ father, the god Apollo, persuades Thetis to seduce Zeus and allow him to punish Agamemnon. • Apollo provides the Trojans with a plague in the form of poison gas. • Achilles refuses to fight for Agamemnon when Troy attacks Achaea with the gas and routs its soldiers. • Helen watches the battle from the Ilium Ridge balcony and is delighted to see all the men on both sides dying for her. • It appears that Troy has won, but Poseidon raises a tsunami that drives them back and re-equalizes the odds. • Achaean Colonel Odysseus wants Achilles to lead a counter-attack, but he refuses. Odysseus arranges for Patroclus to magically impersonate Achilles. • Aphrodite arranges a secret reunion between Achilles and Briseis. He reveals his secret: his whole body is invulnerable, except his right heel. • The Gods think the game would be more interesting if it were more like the original Trojan War, so they deactivate all guns, forcing the soldiers to fight with bayonets and knives. • Patroclus leads the Achaeans against Troy, but is killed by Hector. Achilles is enraged and joins the battle, killing Hector and dragging his corpse behind his car through no man’s land. • The Fates force the Gods to re-activate the guns. Since their commanders are dead and cannot advise them, Achaeans and Trojans agree to stop fighting and return peacefully to their bases. • Priam confronts Achilles and persuades him to take his son Hector’s body back to Ilium Ridge for proper burial. • When Achilles returns, Agamemnon arrests him for treason. • Agamemnon persuades Briseis that Achilles has left and betrayed her. She is angry and reveals Achilles’ secret. • Agamemnon tells Achilles that if he delivers a secret treaty to Priam at Ilium Ridge, he and Briseis can go free together. • The next day, Agamemnon shows Briseis that he was lying about Achilles, and she is forced to watch as his sidekick Sergeant Erpo shoots Achilles in the foot, causing a fatal spurt of blood. She runs out to join him and they have a last moment together before Erpo shoots and kills her too. • Poseidon inspires Odysseus with a plan to end the war. • The Trojans find that the Achaean camp has been abandoned, but they have left all their explosives and ammunition behind. Gleefully the Trojans take it and store it in their fortress, not knowing that Odysseus has set a timer in one of the boxes. • When war-weary Priam works out the actual Achaean plan, he leaves everything to Paris and departs. • Odysseus’ timer goes off, utterly destroying Ilium Ridge and everyone in it. • Zeus congratulates Poseidon for winning this round, and gets ready to take on Hades in the next. • Ilium Ridge is revealed as a tiny part of the whole war, which continues indefinitely.