Odysseus is the king of Ithaca and captain of the Ithacan army, a contingent of the unified Greek Army that fought in the ten year long Trojan War. As the son of Laërtes and Anticlea, husband of Penelope, and father of Telemachus, Odysseus is renowned for his intellectual brilliance, guile, and versatility and he is thus known by the epithet Odysseus the Cunning. He is most famous for his nostos, or "homecoming", which took him ten eventful years after the decade-long Trojan War.

Eurylochus is the second-in-command of Odysseus' ship during the return to Ithaca after the Trojan War. Eurylochus primarily acts as the voice of the crew, and he does whatever the majority wants, even if it goes against Odysseus’ direct orders.

A legendary, man-eating monster that lives on one side of a narrow channel of water, opposite her counterpart, the sea-swallowing monster Charybdis. The two sides of the strait are within an arrow's range of each other—so close that sailors attempting to avoid the whirlpools of Charybdis would pass dangerously close to Scylla and vice versa. Specifically goes for the men who hold the torches, no one knows that she goes for the torches.

Forty-two men under Odysseus’s command.