Souyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume 11/Chapter 2

Chapter 2 旅路　What's_That_Adventurer’s_Party? Journey – What’s_That_Adventurer’s_Party? Volume Navigation GT Volume 10 GT Volume 11 N/A Chapter Navigation Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3

Synopsis

This section requires expansion Pts 1-9

Characters

By order of appearance:

• Anna Kingsford
• Kamijou Touma
• Johann Valentin Andreae

New Characters

• Christoph Besold (クリストフ＝ベゾルト, Kurisutofu Bezoruto^?) (flashback-only)

Abilities

• Qliphoth-converted Magic - Anna Kingsford

Locations

• 'Hell'

Trivia

Referbacks

No referbacks currently recorded for this chapter/episode.

Cultural References

This section requires expansion Christoph Besold, Heinrich Kramer/Malleus Maleficarum, Other

• The chapter's subtitle "What’s_That_Adventurer’s_Party?", which seems to be referring to the group journeying through hell (Kamijou Touma, Anna Kingsford and Johann Valentin Andreae), might be a reference to the term party in the RPG sense (which carries forward to other forms of media), referring to a group of characters adventuring together in the game or the group of playable character in the same context.
• Several beings from Greek mythology appear as the group continue their journey through hell:
  • Cerberus is a three-headed dog that guards the entrance to the Greek underworld.
  • Harpies are half-human half-bird creatures, usually female and believed to a personification of storm winds.
  • Nyx is the primordial goddess and personification of the night.
• There are more references to Inferno, first part of Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy:
  • Some of the Greek mythological beings appearing in this chapter also appeared in Inferno:
    • In a similar scene to the one seen here, Cerberus appears in the third circle of hell, where the gluttonous wallow in a freezing mire, with the ravenous dog guarding the bog and tormenting the sinners as they howl. Virgil managed to get him and Dante past Cerberus by feeding his three mouths with mud, something that Johann references.
    • A key needed to lower a drawbridge is found in a harpy's nest, up in a tree resembling a human silhouette. In Inferno, harpies are found in the second ring of the seventh circle of hell, which punishes violence against oneself. In the 'Wood of the Suicides', the souls of those who attempted to or died through suicide transformed into gnarled trees, only allowed to speak when broken and bleeding, with the harpies feeding upon them.
• Christoph Besold (alternatively Christopher Besoldus, 1577 – 1638) was a German jurist and publicist who was born, studied as a Doctor of Law (graduated in 1598) and worked as a professor of law at Tübingen (starting in 1610). Differing somewhat from the relation depicted in this chapter and starting slightly later, the real-life Johann Valentin Andreae was one of his pupils, and Besold has been considered as an influence on his Rosicrucian writings, along with Tobias Hess, the two also being speculated by some as alternative authors.
• Described in this chapter by the young Johann Valentin Andreae as their country's greatest author of nonsense, Heinrich Kramer was a 15th century German inquisitor, who wrote the Malleus Maleficarum (published in 1487), a widely-distributed book on witchcraft and witch hunting that endorses the extermination of witches, which played a key role in instigating the witch trials in the early modern period.

Unanswered Questions

• Does Kingsford has an ulterior motive?