Augustus Aquato

Augustus Aquato is a supporting character in the Psychonauts series. He is the father of Razputin Aquato and the patriarch of the Aquato Family Circus. Secretly a psychic himself, his anti-psychic sentiments spurred Raz to run away to Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp and ultimately become a Psychonaut.

Appearance
Augustus is a tall, limber man with tanned yellow skin, deeply sunken purple eyes, and wavy hair and beard. He has a scar over his right eye, spanning from his forehead to his cheek. His head and eyes are smaller than those of his children.

In both games, he wears a green-and-white striped jumpsuit covered in colorful patches, and holes through which chest hair is visible. Over the circus jumpsuit, he wears shorts, a cummerbund, and cloth wrist straps. He wears one laced purple boot, and one green one, which is falling apart and reveals his bare foot.

Psychonauts
In Psychonauts, Augustus's hair and beard is dark and nearly purple in daylight shots. His shorts are red and his cummerbund is green.

Psychonauts 2
In Psychonauts 2, minute changes were made to Augustus's appearance. His hair is lighter and auburn, closer to the shade of Raz's. His jumpsuit is covered in large safety pins. His shorts are brown and his cummerbund is red.

A memory vault in Psychonauts 2 depicts Augustus as a child. In these images, young Augustus wore a striped shirt, a large belt, and had the same wavy peaks of hair. A photograph in Lucrecia's Lament reveals that as a teenager, Augustus greatly resembled his son Dion.

Personality
Augustus's traumatic childhood in Grulovia created a deep fear of psychics. His determination to protect his family from psychics superseded all else, including a healthy relationship with his son. He put his children through rigorous acrobatics training so that they could protect themselves from their family's "powerful enemies." However, this, combined with his stories about psychic curses, convinced Raz that his father hated psychics, and by proxy, him. Augustus was saddened and surprised to learn that Raz perceived him this way.

Augustus is a harsh man, but one willing to learn from his mistakes and adjust his worldview to become a better person. After seeing the monstrous manifestation of himself in the Meat Circus, he encourages Raz's psychic pursuits, and even begins to explore his own powers to bond with Raz.

He displays oblivious traits in Psychonauts 2 as he explores his psychic abilities, such as not immediately noticing that his thumb has caught fire, and accepting his wife's explanation that his model train collection was crushed by an elephant, despite the fact that their circus has no elephants.

Between himself and his wife Donatella, Augustus is the more diplomatic and open-minded of the two, defusing an altercation between her and Hollis Forsythe, and embracing the world of psychics to better connect with Raz and Frazie.

Notable Psi-Powers and Skills
Astral Projection

After multiple attempts, Augustus successfully projected himself into Raz's brain to free him from the Meat Circus Raz's psyche created by merging with Morceau Oleander's. Augustus was able to amplify his son's mental power enough so that Raz could defeat the Two-Headed Dad Monster. He stayed with Raz while the Psychonauts untangled his psyche from Oleander's.

Pyrokinesis

Augustus spent much of his time in the Questionable Area attempting to light a pinecone on fire with pyrokinesis. He finally succeeded, when the Aquato family gathered to propel Raz toward the rampaging Maligula via their Devil's Firehose stunt. He also levitated the pinecone and used it to boost Raz up the Firehose.

Non-Psychic Abilities

Augustus is an acrobat, from a prodigious Grulovian family of acrobats. His evil Meat Circus counterpart in Psychonauts shows off circus skills such as juggling and trapeze work, although Augustus himself only briefly displays balancing tricks and flips in Psychonauts 2. He taught his children to be capable acrobats with the intent that they protect themselves from psychic dangers. His fears and foresight are ultimately proven correct, as Raz is only able to scale the Thorney Towers asylum and thwart Coach Oleander due to his acrobatic skill.

Major Relationships
Razputin Aquato

Although Augustus drove Raz from home by ripping up his Whispering Rock pamphlet and suppressing his psychic tendencies with aggressive acrobatic training, he came to Raz's rescue and confessed the truth about his own psychic powers by the end of Psychonauts. He gave Raz permission to rescue Truman Zanotto as a proper Psychonaut, declaring that he had taught Raz everything he could and that he was proud of him. This pride continued into Psychonauts 2, when he brought the Aquato family caravan to the Motherlobe to support Raz on his new journey. After the truth of Ford Cruller's manipulation of his mind is revealed, Augustus is shaken and isolates himself, but still assures Raz that he is always willing to talk to him and understand him as a fellow psychic.

Donatella Aquato

Augustus and Donatella are married and deeply in love. He declared that Donatella is "the hottest thing [he] can think of," and Donatella in turn speculates postgame that Augustus is "handsomely" contemplating somewhere. Augustus brought the Aquato family to the Motherlobe to legitimize psychics to Donatella in addition to supporting Raz. Although Donatella is disdainful of psychics and worried that Augustus's new psychic "hobby" is ultimately unhealthy, she comforted him when his memories of his real mother returned, and even gave him his pinecone back as a show of support for the new, psychic chapter of his life.

Lucrecia Mux

Having spent most of his life under the forced illusion that Lucrecia was his mother, Augustus was heartbroken when the Astralathe's deception crumbled and he was confronted with the truth that Lucrecia killed his real mother. Despite this, he expresses sympathy for her suffering and insists that she is still part of their family.

Ford Cruller

Augustus feels betrayed and hurt by what Ford Cruller did to him as a child, though he is not vengeful, insisting that Ford has already sufficiently punished himself.

Frazie Aquato

Augustus is aware that his eldest daughter Frazie is psychic, but instructs Raz to keep that a secret until Frazie is ready to tell the family herself.

Backstory
Born to Marona Galochio and Lazarus Aquato, Augustus was raised in Grulovia during the reign of Gzar Theodore Malik. The Aquatos performed in a prestigious national circus until the rise of the gzar's enforcer, Maligula, the alter ego of Augustus's aunt, Lucrecia Mux. Augustus's parents opposed the gzar's treatment of the Grulovian people, and were summarily drowned when Maligula broke the Valermo Dam during a peaceful protest. Augustus, still a child, was placed in an orphanage.

After the Psychic 6 defeated Maligula, Ford Cruller took Augustus from the orphanage and brought him to Green Needle Gulch. In his bid to protect Lucrecia from the consequences of her crimes, Cruller used the Astralathe to alter Augustus's memories of his parents' deaths. According to the newly-implanted memories, Lazarus drowned when the dam broke, but Marona escaped Grulovia with her son. To complete the lie, Lucrecia and Augustus were both made to believe that Lucrecia was Marona. Ford also implanted a deep-seated phobia of water under the guise of a psychic "curse."

Under the same folie à deux manufactured by Cruller, Lucrecia and Augustus continued a small branch of the Aquato Family Circus as a false mother and son. Over time, they developed a genuine relationship and love for each other. Regardless, the memory of a psychic killing his father remained intact, and the resultant fear of psychics would go on to fracture Augustus's personal relationships decades later.

When Augustus grew up, he married Donatella and had five children with her: Dion, Frazie, Razputin, Mirtala, and Queepie. Along with Lucrecia, who believed she was Marona and was dubbed Nona, the Aquato family maintained their traveling acrobatics show in their Aquatodome despite financial difficulties.

Prior to the events of Psychonauts, Augustus frightened his children with stories and warnings of evil psychics and "fortune-tellers," including the psychic that killed their grandfather and cursed the Aquatos to die in water. He attempted to distract Raz from developing his psychic powers through strenuous acrobatic training, intensely enough that Raz believed his father was trying to kill him. Additionally, Augustus was unable to keep his own psychic abilities completely hidden, as Raz became suspicious that his father was secretly psychic as well.

When Raz acquired a pamphlet for Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, Augustus destroyed it, prompting Raz to run away from home.

Psychonauts
After Raz arrived at Whispering Rock, camp counselor and Psychonaut Milla Vodello contacted Augustus to pick up his son. Using the psychic connection he shared with his son, Augustus sensed Raz was in danger and located him, brainless and surrounded by unconscious camp counselors, in Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed across the lake from Whispering Rock. As his brain mingled with Morceau Oleander's, Raz's memories of the circus intertwined with Oleander's memories of his father's butcher's shop, creating a mental circus made of meat.

While Augustus attempted to enter Raz's mind, sporadically appearing to Raz as a ghostly figure calling his name, Raz squared off against a twisted mental version of his father who berated Raz for affiliating with psychics and forced him through a gruesome obstacle course. When the real Augustus finally joined Raz, he was dismayed to see Raz's grotesque mental version of him and psi-blasted the creature into a meat grinder.

Augustus explained that he was trying to protect Raz from their family's enemies, and that he doesn't hate him or psychics, as Raz assumed. He infused Raz with enough of his own psychic power to defeat the Two-Headed Dad Monster (Augustus's mental monster counterpart combined with Oleander's father's.) As the two brains were unweaved, Augustus peeked into Raz's memories and wondered upon Raz's awakening who Lili was.

Augustus watched as Ford Cruller honored Raz with the title of Psychonaut. He gave Raz his blessing to go rescue Truman Zanotto from the Rhombus of Ruin, declaring that he taught him everything he could, and now only requesting that he "show them all."

Psychonauts 2
Augustus surprised Raz by waiting for him in the lobby of the Motherlobe, where he revealed that he brought the whole family to support him and to convince Raz's mother to accept psychics. When Donatella quarreled with Hollis Forsythe, Augustus intervened and steered the family to the Questionable Area, the campgrounds beyond the Motherlobe.

When Raz found his family in the Questionable Area, Augustus participated in Donatella's new act, the Devil's Firehose. He annoyed his wife and destabilized the balancing act by insisting upon adding "psychic flourishes" to the performance.

After this, Augustus spent time in the campgrounds, attempting to set a pinecone on fire with pyrokinesis. Raz visited him, gave him psychic advice, and thanked him for his help in the Meat Circus, but balked when his father asked how things were going with Lili. Augustus expressed hope that he and Raz could bond over developing their psychic powers. Norma Natividad watched him and snooped for information to embarrass or incriminate Raz, under the guise of coaching Augustus. Augustus was oblivious to this, appreciating her flattery.

Although Augustus was not physically present, learning of his father's past and altered childhood memories gave Raz an emotional crisis and permanently damaged his faith in Ford Cruller.

As Lucrecia relapsed into her Maligula persona, the Astralathe's influence over Augustus's memory faded, causing him to break down. His family comforted him as his real memories returned, the death of his mother among them. Joining the family to aid Raz's battle against Maligula, Augustus was once again forced to the ground with despair, although Donatella rallied him and the rest of the Aquatos in a reprise of the Devil's Firehose to fling Raz into the eye of the storm. After Raz defeated Maligula and restored Lucrecia, Augustus tenderly lifted her from the lake and carried her to shore.

As Augustus elaborates when Raz finds him alone by the Far-Fetched Falls, the ordeal has left him with both an identity crisis, and a determination to create new memories for his family. However, he is optimistic about the future, eager to include new water acts in their show since the "curse" has been lifted. Hollis Forsythe also says that she sees psychic potential in him, inviting him to learn psycho-safety at the Motherlobe.

Behind the Scenes
NOTE: The following information is not canon.

Concept art and trailers for Psychonauts 2 depicted Augustus wearing a long, blue ringmaster's coat. This accessory was not used in the final game.

An early draft of the finale involved Raz entering Augustus's mind to personally dispel the water curse to defeat Coach Oleander's stolen "mer-mech" war machine piloted by Gristol Malik.

Trivia

 * One of Augustus's idle animations in the postgame shows him briefly levitating off the ground.