Maligula

Maligula

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Maligula
Official render created by Double Fine.
Biography
Aliases	Lucrecia Mux Lulu Lucy Nona Deluge of Grulovia Malugly (by Raz)
Gender	Female
Race	Human Unique Mental Figure
Age	Unknown (adult)
Occupations	Circus performer (formerly) Military General (formerly) Terrorist (formerly)
Status	Suppressed
Abilities
PSI Powers	Hydrokinesis (speciality) Aerokinesis Cryokinesis PSI energy transfer Levitation Astral Projection Telekinesis
Other Abilities	Super Strength Size Augmentation
Relationships
Family	Zalto Galochio (father) Mirtha Galochio (mother) Marona Aquato (sister)† Lazarus Aquato (brother-in-law)† Gelshin Mux (husband)† Augustus Aquato (nephew and adopted son) Donatella Aquato (niece-in-law) Dion Aquato (eldest grand-nephew) Frazie Aquato (eldest grand-niece) Razputin Aquato (middle grand-nephew) Queepie Aquato (youngest grand-nephew) Mirtala Aquato (youngest grand-niece) Maligula's serpents (pets)
Associates	Gzar Theodore Malik (former employer turned enemy) Gristol Malik (former employer) Ford Cruller (enemy) Deluginaries (followers)
Physical Description
Skin Color	Purple
Hair Color	Dark purple
Eye Color	Black (Pupil) Yellow (Sclera)
Gameplay
Appearances	Psychonauts 2
Mind	Lucrecia's Lament
Voice Actor	Audrey Wasilewski

“The cruel laughter as Maligula realizes the killed a lot of people and doesn’t care if she murdered Marona is the final piece of evidence that this part of Lucrecia needs to be locked away for good and is incapable of redemption. That’s when Maligula decides it’s time to go big…really big.”

–A description in The Art of Psychonauts 2.

“Maligula was a thing for like 10 years or so. I thought of the name, and I was like, ‘This is my single greatest creation in all games’. My whole career is this name: Maligula. And I thought ‘It’s too silly. It’s too ridiculous. People are gonna laugh at me.’ But then I was like, ’Nope, I’m going to use it in Psychonauts 2.’ And I did, and no one said a word. No one has ever acknowledged that it’s the greatest villain name in all of history. Malignant Caligula. Maligula!”

–Tim Schafer description in The Art of Psychonauts 2.

Maligula was a very powerful psychic and known mass murderer. She was the alter-ego of Lucrecia Mux, and the main antagonist of Psychonauts 2; functioning also as the final boss of her debuting game. She commanded powerful water serpents and manipulated in many shapes and ways the water using Hydrokinesis.

Appearance

Maligula takes the form of Lucrecia Mux's during the final days of her employment under the Malik's, when the two of them became their own entities. She is dressed in a fine, black Grulovian fur coat, with a large diamond-shaped, fur lined hood. Her hair is slicked back, with the only exception being four braids at the left side of her face. Interestingly, her skin is a different color to Lucrecia's, as it is purple instead of orange. It is unknown if this is only unique to her mental image of her, or if being surrounded by so much cold water caused her to contract hypothermia.

While using her 'Waterspout' ability (inside the water tornado), she takes on the form of Nona except only her head completely bald; featuring a darkish blue skin, two glowing 'Aqua' color eyes like her serpents and respectively presenting the same fangs as them.

Personality

Maligula is the personification of Lucrecia's darkest instincts, an overcharged "fight or flight" response, and her beast within. A part of the psyche that everyone has, and most everyone keeps locked away except in the most extreme circumstances. When Lucrecia inadvertently murdered her own sister while in a hypersensitive state of mind, the shock made Maligula a dominant part of her psyche. This persona enjoys the name "Maligula" that fearful Grulovians gave to Lucrecia, and claimed it as her own.

Maligula is empowered by the sorrow, guilt, and rage associated with the death of Marona Aquato. Unlike Lucrecia who feels guilt and empathy, Maligula is callous about murdering her own sister. She is cruel, sadistic, and diabolical to the point she would happily kill anyone: (even children or entire families). Maligula holds power over Lucrecia by claiming she is a part of her. Reminding Lucrecia of her sins emphasizing herself as a critical part of the psyche. With Raz's help, Lucrecia sees Maligula for what she is: a persona everyone has that should be kept locked deep down in the mind.

Story

Background

Maligula initially started off as a nickname for Lucrecia Mux, given to her by the angry citizens of Grulovia due to her increasingly cruel actions against them. However, once Lucrecia accidentally killed her sister, Marona Aquato, the grief she felt, combined with the stress of fighting in the previous war and the fact that her mental barriers had been weakened by psychic experiments, caused Lucrecia to retreat into her Maligula persona and get consumed by her overcharged "fight or flight" response. Concerned by Maligula's sudden bloodthirsty attitude, Gzar Theodore Malik ordered her to be executed. However, when the executioner tried to do so, Maligula drowned him in Theodore's pool. Maligula then proceeded to the flood Grulovia, prompting Theodore and his family to flee.

The international community then summoned Lucrecia's former friends, the Psychic Six, to fight Maligula before she flooded the rest of the world, in what would be the first mission for the organization known as the Psychonauts. However, the Psychic Six didn't want to hurt their former friend, and tried to reason with her.

Helmut Fullbear attempted to appeal to her humanity with a heartfelt monologue about how important she was to them. This did snap Lucrecia out of her murderous persona, though only briefly. Cassie O'Pia then tried to encourage Lucrecia with a motivational speech, but Maligula just threw water in her face. Compton Boole then summoned an army of animals to attack her, but Maligula just washed them away with a wave. Otto Mentallis then prepared to freeze the lake with a device called the Hyperhyglaciator, to try and render her powerless, while Bob Zanotto tried to restrain her with some vines. But Maligula broke free and proceeded to try and drown Bob. However, Helmut got in the way, and was badly wounded and knocked into the lake, just as the Hyperhyglaciator went off and froze all the water.

Eventually, Ford Cruller, Lucrecia's former boyfriend, managed to defeat her. Ford then carried her to their home base and used a device known as the Astralathe to seal her Maligula persona away and replace it with a persona of her dead sister, as well as implanting a fear of water to prevent Lucrecia from remembering who she was.

Maligula then went down in Psychonauts history as the one who shattered Ford Cruller's mind, as Ford used the Astralathe to shatter his own mind to hide what he had done to Lucrecia. She also went down in her own family's history as the one who killed most of the Aquato's, as Lucrecia peddled the false narrative that Ford put in her head that Maligula was a member of the Aquato's rivals from another circus, who cursed all the Aquato's to die in water. A story that Augustus Aquato, Lucrecia's nephew, passed on to his family.

Even though Maligula was sealed away, Ford's imprinted persona began to weaken over the years, which caused the Maligula persona grow in power, to the point that it would eventually break free given time.

Psychonauts 2

Maligula first appears at the end of Loboto's Labyrinth, used by the mastermind to terrify Loboto into secrecy. Later on, during PSI King's Sensorium, a shadowy version of Maligula appears to torment Helmut Fullbear once he regains his memories and senses, forcing him to regress into the Memory Vault. During this, Raz learns that Maligula was once Lucy, a friend of the Psychic Six before becoming evil. With Raz and the Feast of the Senses help, Helmut manages to banish the nightmare from his mind.

After fixing Ford's mind, Razputin soon learns that Ford used the Astralathe on both her and his father to protect them both. Due to Nona being at the Motherlobe, her old memories where returning, and with it, Maligula as well, and so, to combat this, Ford requests Raz fix up the Astralathe to seal away Maligula for good. After gathering all of the members of the Psychic Six to repair the Astralathe and entering Nona, Norma, believing Raz to be the mole, tells "Truman Zanotto", actually the mastermind, interrupting the process. The interruption allows Maligula to reawaken within Nona, and soon creates a massive water tornado that threatens to drown everyone.

Maligula grabbing Adam's yo-yo during the final battle.

Raz works with his family to reach the tornado and into Nona's mind, where he, along with the interns, battles against her until she is separated from Nona after reliving the memory of drowning her sister Marona. After which, she enlarges herself to titanic proportions as Nona gives Raz all her psychic power to become big enough to punch her all the way into a hole made by the Astralathe. Falling, Maligula grabs onto Nona's coat, saying that she can't be destroyed, as she's a part of her. In response, Raz states that everyone has something like her, and that they know where to keep it, and Nona uses her scissors to cut her fabric, banishing Maligula for good.

Strategy

“I’m not afraid of you! You’re just an overgrown lust for violence and destruction! Okay that’s sounded scarier than I wanted it to, but you’re actually a normal part of any human mind!”

–Razputin to Maligula before the battle.

Maligula has two ways of fighting Razputin; using a waterspout form where she dashes through the entire platform in erratic or zigzagging patterns while sending many of her serpents at him and the other being direct melee (sometimes spawning in enemy allies to put more trouble onto the young psychic). Initially she features a total of 5 phases where 3 of them she relays on her waterspout form and 2 on her regular form: in the first mentioned form she can only be damaged with PSI-Blast and Pyrokinesis, using melee attacks will result on Raz getting push and damaged too; on the other hand at her normal form Mental Connection, Telekinesis and PSI-Punch (including its variants like the dodge punch or the ground pound) can be used against her but with high precision and quickness needed since she can dodge most attacks or block them. At all times Raz must watch out not just on his combatant and constant allies but also on not falling into the ocean since the Hand of Galochio can pull him immediately and specially when the platform is moving.

Recommendable Pins to use with specific PSI-Powers to face Maligula much better are: "Brain Drain" so the grapple kick does the double of damage by taking good amount of her health and passing it to Raz’s own, "Strike-onaut" so the punches performed onto her get much powerful and harmful and "Plucky" to throw auto-generated objects at her (using TK throws at her in the right times is useful since she can be dazed for nearly 5 seconds and as a bonus her resistance decreases).

Once Raz gets saved from crashing into the Valermo Dam and Nona finally sets free from Maligula’s body the last and sixth phase beginnings. In this final phase Maligula enlarges herself to an unimaginable size but so does Razputin, thanks to Nona giving all her power to him, bringing once more the powerful and wrecking beast known as "Goggalor". In this form Raz can still use his classic 1-2-3 melee but now including a new move which consists of sending a giant pyro breath at the opponent: these being the main keys to bring Maligula to her imminent fall to the darkest and deepest corner of Nona’s mind.

Attacks and Health

• Hydrokinesis: Possibly one of the greatest users with this ability. She can use it on many ways and forms, examples being: in the memory vault of Protect the Queen! Maligula could use the ink from the book of Cassie against her as a type of geyser, in multiple vaults it is implicated that she was capable of manifesting heavy rains that could break strong dams like the Valermo one, and provoke huge waves that could storm entire towns.
• Maligula’s Waterspout: A second form she can use where her entire body disappears except the head to keep a look of her surroundings. In this form she can move a lot faster and break through a lot of objects like the ice formations made by Lizzie, by freezing a part of the ocean. Coming across her watery tornado will push Razputin aggressively and also deal 4 hit points to the mental health (a whole brain specifically).
• Serpents of suffocation: Her second most prominent ability. In both normal and waterspout form she can send a set of literal liquid-shaped snakes that chases after Raz and leaps onto him once they have him nearby; these can come in numbers from three or even four serpents. Each one of them deals 4 hits but all of the serpents in a row can hurt Raz with 12 to 16 hit points (around 3 to 4 brains, exactly the amount of serpents sent).
• Evasion of the Deceiving: At her physical form, by trying to use PSI-Punch or any ranged abilities like Marksmanship and TK she can instantly evade them if it’s the first shot/hit. Though not perfectly as the Panic Attack which can keep up evading hits constantly.
• Sprint Smash: Right after evading attacks or sending her serpents, she covers herself on a blue glowing shield that makes her invulnerable of any hits, but more importantly she rushes forwards Raz while extending her left arm which holds a large liquid serpent which decreases its size after reaching the destination. During the dash sometimes the direction of Maligula can be moved or blocked if an enemy is in the way. Like most attacks getting injured by it deals a total of 4 hit points.
• Aqua-Claws: For closer range Maligula swings her hands at a horizontally manner yet fast enough to make it hard on dodging. Once performed, she wouldn’t stop until Raz moves far enough from her (during the process of performance her swings will make her move forwards as well). Each scratch deals 4 hit points so in total she can at least deal 8 hit points (2 whole brains), and as a negative side unlike most enemies; dodging to block the damage of the attack doesn’t work in this and even all other attacks. She uses a similar move in her giant form but only the first scratch since the second gets replaced with move where she rises both of her hands for an uppercut-like attack involving a tidal wave (None does damage but pushes Raz a little bit far).
• The Cleaner of the Streets: After Raz does quite the damage to Maligula at close range; covers herself on the blue glowing shield she occasionally uses and charges for about 2 seconds before releasing a splashing shockwave that pushes Raz far from her. While it doesn’t do any damage into Raz, for some reason into the enemies that get caught by this attack besides getting pushed they also get damaged. This attack was also seen back in the pre-cutscene before reentering Nona’s mind (when she pushes everyone around far from her).
• Aerokinesis: Before her battle at the point of The Deluge of Grulovia in Lucrecia's Lament. While Raz takes the path out from the Forgetful Forest she casts two tornados and presumably more at the Green Needle Gulch (possible since a car and the Otto-Matic went thrown where Raz is passing). When facing her giant form in the last phase sometimes she’ll use this ability by charging enough energy and pushing back Razputin with a huge breeze. In the mental world this deals no damage but in the real world getting capture by one of her tornados deals 1 hit point.
• Size Augmentation: Once Nona gets separated from Maligula and after presenting no remorse at the dead body of Marona, she starts to increase her height to the point she nearly reaches the grulovian palace seen in the background. This also can increase the power of her psychic powers like how it does for Razputin when reaching his form of Goggalor.
• Super Strength: In multiple occasions she was seen using a lot of her strength, like when she breaks free from the vines that Bob used to stop her temporarily, when she stops and destroys the yo-yo from Adam after he interrupted her waterspout form or the multiple attacks with her hydrokinesis like the moment where she throws Helmut into the ocean or when she starts channeling a water tornado inside the heptadome which absorbs everyone who was inside it.
• Levitation: Once she takes control over Nona at the heptadome she uses levitation to impose her presence towards all psychics around the place. The last time she’s seen using it again is just when Raz enters into the giant tornado she made, she’s seen floating at the inside of it while moving her hands to keep control of the tornado.
• Enemy Spawning: In the two phases where she takes on Raz in her normal human form, she makes Doubts and Bad Ideas appear to help her fight him more easily. Their damage stats remain the same being between 1 to 3 hit points. There’s no limit on this since even after taking down the three sets of enemies that she tends to spawn, eventually she makes more appear.

Like most bosses, enemies and mid-bosses in Psychonauts 2 her health varies according the powers used on her. However for the most part the player will be using PSI-Blast against her and plus Adam and Norma from time to time offers some help via firing at her with energized yo-yos and fire blasts. But for an approximate number with PSI-blast only at perhaps the occasional free hits from Adam and Norma, Maligula takes a total of 110 hits (or 112 if not attacking her while knocked out) to be defeated. And with that she becomes amongst the bosses with the largest amount of health to take down, to add more sauce into, the levitation wrecking ball and each hit from pyrokinesis could be above that, perhaps outpassing the 200 hits.

Maligula fighting Goggalor along Lucrecia (Nona).

Before Battle

• (At the real world) "Little Gzesarevich! Have you come to pay for your father’s sins!"

• (At the real world) "Ford, you’re here too? This is awkward…"

• (At the real world) "Ah, there’s too many people here. Too much baggage."

• (At the real world) "Need to… WASH IT ALL AWAY!"

• "AH HA HA HA HA!"

• "FAMILY?"

• "All I see is another unruly Grulovian peasant."

• "Another bit of trash I need to WASH FROM THE STREETS."

• "MWAH HA HA HA HA!"

• "Oh! Agh! Oof! Aah!"

• "Two of you are no more a threat than one!"

• "In my time I have vanquished entire ARMIES-"

• "Careful, children…"

• "Ooh, I fear a storm is coming."

• "AAAH HA HA HA HA HA!"

• "I am the Deluge of Grulovia!"

• "Let the streets…"

• "…be cleansed…"

• "…Forever!"

• (Last Phase) "Marona… wasn’t supposed to be there."

• (Last Phase) "Lazarus shouldn’t have brought her!"

• (Last Phase) "He killed my sister!"

• (Last Phase) "No, that’s not quite right…"

• (Last Phase) "I… I killed my sister."

• (Last Phase) "I killed my sister."

• (Last Phase) "But so what? Eh? Ha ha ha! I killed lots of people."

• (Last Phase) "But there’s always room for one more!"

During Battle

• "Fool!"

• "Did the Gzar send you?"

• "Why are you here?"

• "You shouldn’t be here!"

• "You brought this upon yourself!"

• "I will defend Grulovia against all her enemies!"

• "Pay no attention to that strange old woman."

• "This is MY mind, not that ugly aberration you just saw."

• "Nobody wants you out here. Stay inside until the fight’s over."

• "I am the Deluge of Grulovia!"

• (When sending her Serpents variant 1) "Quickly!"

• (When sending her Serpents variant 2) "Feed, my child!"

• (When sending her Serpents variant 3) "Flow."

• (When sending her Serpents variant 4/When spawning in enemies) "Get him!"

• (When sending her Serpents variant 5) "Fill his lungs!"

• (When sending her Serpents variant 6) "Serpent of Suffocation!"

• (When sending her Serpents variant 7) "Swim!"

• (When sending her Serpents variant 8/When spawning in enemies) "Go!"

• (When sending her Serpents variant 9) "That little boy looks thirsty."

• (When sending her Serpents variant 10) "Take his breath!"

• (When sending her Serpents variant 11) "Drown the peasant!"

• (By using her Sprint Smash variant 1) "Aagggh!"

• (By using her Sprint Smash variant 2) "Uuuugh!!"

• (By using her Sprint Smash variant 3) "RAAAHH!"

• (By using her Sprint Smash variant 4) "Raawwrrr!!"

• (By using her Sprint Smash variant 5) "Rah!"

• (By using her Sprint Smash variant 6) "Ugh!"

• (Aqua-Claws move version 1) "Oh-Rrraah!"

• (Aqua-Claws move version 2) "Grrraaah!"

• (Aqua-Claws move version 3) "D’oh! Aghhh!"

• (Aqua-Claws move version 4) "Ah-Oough!"

• "Gah! What dares block my FLOW?"

• "Oooh…"

• "Back to your quilts, weakling!"

• "Now that you’ve seen that, I’m afraid I can’t let you leave."

• "Ooh…"

• "Rah!"

• "ENOUGH!"

• "This has gone on LONG ENOUGH."

• "We’ve gone down this river TOO FAR."

• "I know you’re afraid of the water, but once you give in and let it take you, your fear will be over!"

• "I don’t think you’re going to like what’s at the end of this ride, little boy."

After Battle

• "You can’t get rid of me."

• "I am a part of her!"

Trivia

• "Maligula" may be based on the name Caligula, an infamous Roman emperor.
  • Additionally, "mal" is a prefix with latin roots meaning "evil" or "bad".
• There was a post-it note from an extremely early DoubleFine update YouTube video pre Psychonauts 2 release that mentioned "Maligula Not Evil", hinting that Maligula was always meant to be redeemable villain. Technically, this talks about "Lucrecia/Nona", Malugila's true self.
• She’s by far the boss with the largest amount of phases in the game. Having a total of 6 phases, others close to this approximation are Linda with 5 and Truheltia with 4.
  • But as for bosses with a complete different gameplay style phase she’s along with the Blueprint Brain Tank.
• Leitmotifs of Maligula’s song are used throughout the entirety of the game, similar to how Coach Oleander did back in Psychonauts 1 thanks to his villainous role.
  • The musical stage presentation for the Game Awards 2021 used the leitmotif of her theme which also is used for the Title Screen music for the game.
• Early Concept arts for Maligula reveal that her younger version wasn’t meant to be the one foughtable but instead a strange mix of her Nona and younger form. Presenting the largeness of her younger self but wearing a teared up and extended version of the clothing Nona wears and her facial characteristics.
• From Mental Worlds she’s from the few antagonists that doesn’t die or that its existence gets erased. Other examples of this are: Jasper, Truheltia, Die-Brarian, El Odio (become smaller or back to their origin forms) and Luchadores (befriended).

Video Battle Walkthrough

Psychonauts 2 - All Bosses -No Damage-

Gameplay by Gellot. (47:45 for the fight)