portrayals of oppressed peoples (the mesoamericans) must be done much more sensitively than portrayals of oppressors (the spanish, the church). while not all conquistadors/spaniards/catholics were bad and not all mesoamerican were good, only one of those groups had to endure genocide, slavery, conquest, subjugation, economic disenfranchisement and exploitation among other horrors at the hands of the other. when representing these cultures it is important to carefully consider it and depict it based on its own merits, rather than through the lenses of the oppressors or in way where it is defined by its subjugation. that is why they feel the need to skate around things like human sacrifice and bring in consultants for those. the spanish depictions come with none of this baggage.
Some stuff I found cool from the world building panel at Pax;
-The vampire conquistadors was the starting point. This lead to the idea of mixing age of discovery and lost world which added in the Pirates and the Dinosaurs. The Vampires have a queen, Miralda.
-Gobins are confirmed.
-The Sun Empire built Orazca and seek to reclaim their ancestral home. The Sun Empire see the Sun as creator, sustainer, and consumer of life.
-Confirmed that planeswalkers can't leave Ixalan. Huatli sparked and saw visions of other planes and seeks Orazca to understand what she is.
“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
So, if Huatli ever leaves Ixalan, would she go the Nissa route and have more generic abilities in future cards, would she only show up in planes with Dinos (akin to Tezzeret showing up in artifact-centric planes), or would she keep the Dino-specific theme using the "aether copy" thing as justification?
I know that no-one can answer, but I'm just thinking aloud.
portrayals of oppressed peoples (the mesoamericans) must be done much more sensitively than portrayals of oppressors (the spanish, the church). while not all conquistadors/spaniards/catholics were bad and not all mesoamerican were good, only one of those groups had to endure genocide, slavery, conquest, subjugation, economic disenfranchisement and exploitation among other horrors at the hands of the other. when representing these cultures it is important to carefully consider it and depict it based on its own merits, rather than through the lenses of the oppressors or in way where it is defined by its subjugation. that is why they feel the need to skate around things like human sacrifice and bring in consultants for those. the spanish depictions come with none of this baggage.
This is at least an honest depiction of what Wizards of the Coast probably thinks.
This closer to the truth to what actually happened.
The Aztecs were brutal conquerors that sacrificed captives to their gods to stop the world from ending as a religious practice, they usurped the mayans who practiced the same rituals.
They ravaged their neighbors, who despised them and sided, when the Spanish arrived, with the Spanish.
The mesoamericans were waging war on each other and enslaving each other before the Europeans arrived.
What the Spanish conquered, the enslaving of natives was condemned by the Papacy and the Crown, but because the Spanish were busy fighting rebels in the Netherlands and an alliance between the Ottomans and the French they lacked at first the resources to crackdown on the encomieda system though they eventually did.
The Ottoman Empire was the most powerful nation in the western hemisphere and arguably the world, in alliance with the second most powerful nation in the western hemisphere.
Tunisian/Ottoman corsairs were raiding the Mediterranean and enslaving people after the fall of the mamluks Western Trade was cut off from India, the fear of Ottoman Invasion and re-re-conquesta was very real, hence the expansion into Morocco by Spain to provide a buffer zone.
The whole reason Portugal would go South and Spain west was to try to reopen trade routes with India.
The Spanish and the conquistadors weren't greedy monsters looking for money and souls, they were a nation fighting other nations and they happened to find a place with wealth while looking for trade so they took that place to help them fight other nations.
Also this is how American depicted the Spanish at one point:
Its good that Wizards of the Coast is keeping the tradition alive.
can we please keep this topic out of our game. If you're in anyway offended by Ixalan, don't play it. 1 Charlottesville is more than enough, thank you.
What a strange comparison. Charlottesville was about literal, self-described nazis trying to stop the dismantling of a statue of a confederacy general, then killing someone once the counterprotests started. I really don't see the connection. But I agree that this is getting out of hand and I would like to return to the story discussion too.
Burning_Paladin, you keep ignoring facts you don't want to hear: Wizards didn't just say "alright, let's make the conquistadors the evil faction and all the natives the good faction". That's not what happened. It has been shown that all factions are at least morally grey (the "aztecs" brutal expansion doesn't seem to be ignored for example and the vampires aren't just evil conquerers). You know what is being ignored aside from human sacrifices? The death of up to 90 percent of the native population brought on by either plagues spread by the conquistadors or being straight up killed by them. You are so zealous in your opinion that I have to ask: If you were in charge, how would your Ixalan look like? The conquistadors as heroes saving the evil, human sacrificing natives from themselves and installing such a peaceful religion like catholicism (which at the time at least was anything but, and I say that as a catholic myself)? Glorifying violent conquest is never the right way to go, and Wizards doesn't do it for either sides. And seeing Ixalan as political propaganda against Spain is far fetched at best.
And now, could we please get back on topic? It is now official that Ixalan is some kind of planeswalker "black hole", no one leaves once they entered it. I can't imagine Vraska planeswalking there without Bolas at least promising her a way to get out of the plane. Also I hope that Jaces character arc here starts something similar to the time skip in One Piece, each member of the gatewatch getting some necessary character growth before getting back together. Just my opinion though.
I really hope this is a character development time for Jace, and not just "got my memories back, I'm a dope mind mage". The fact that each of the Gatewatch members had to rep mono color pigeonholed them. If Jace could learn a few new tricks while on Ixalan that would be cool. Hopefully they start dipping them into "enemy" colors like they did with Nissa, although that may have just been a color balance thing mechanically speaking.
I think we probably will get a wild west plane at some point. Dwarves as prospectors, bounty counters as a mechanic, goblin outlaws, it practically makes itself.
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burning_paladin, im sorry are you really trying to play off the people who committed genocide, instituted slavery, and practised brutal economic exploitation for centuries as the victims in this conflict?
burning_paladin, im sorry are you really trying to play off the people who committed genocide, instituted slavery, and practised brutal economic exploitation for centuries as the victims in this conflict?
History is seldom as black-and-white as people like to imagine. Any time different peoples come into conflict, you can find heroes and villains on both sides. It is also important to bear in mind that the most powerful weapon in the conquistadors' arsenal was one they didn't know they had, and, having met humans from a wide variety of backgrounds, I suspect that most of the Spaniards would have been horrified at what the microbes they carried could do to the people they met. Cortez and his comrades were initially heroes to many natives who they helped to overthrow the oppressive Triple Alliance that dominated much of northern Mexico. Then introduced European diseases began to ravage native populations, and the Spanish found that they were dealing with peoples that had lost the ability to govern themselves. Wave after wave of disease kept disrupting these societies. How could a good person not step in, take over, to try to help these people whose social fabric had been torn apart, and continued to be torn apart? How could a selfish person not take advantage of the situation? We are all motivated by a complex web of selfish and altruistic impulses, and this was an unparalleled moment in human history where the most benign of intentions could lead to great evil, and opportunities for self-enrichment were unbounded. It would take many extraordinary people on the Spanish side to prevent what happened, but like every human society, the vast majority of people available to them were quite ordinary. That is, in my mind, the greatest tragedy of contact - it was inevitable.
can we please keep this topic out of our game. If you're in anyway offended by Ixalan, don't play it. 1 Charlottesville is more than enough, thank you.
What a strange comparison. Charlottesville was about literal, self-described nazis trying to stop the dismantling of a statue of a confederacy general, then killing someone once the counterprotests started. I really don't see the connection. But I agree that this is getting out of hand and I would like to return to the story discussion too.
Burning_Paladin, you keep ignoring facts you don't want to hear: Wizards didn't just say "alright, let's make the conquistadors the evil faction and all the natives the good faction". That's not what happened. It has been shown that all factions are at least morally grey (the "aztecs" brutal expansion doesn't seem to be ignored for example and the vampires aren't just evil conquerers). You know what is being ignored aside from human sacrifices? The death of up to 90 percent of the native population brought on by either plagues spread by the conquistadors or being straight up killed by them. You are so zealous in your opinion that I have to ask: If you were in charge, how would your Ixalan look like? The conquistadors as heroes saving the evil, human sacrificing natives from themselves and installing such a peaceful religion like catholicism (which at the time at least was anything but, and I say that as a catholic myself)? Glorifying violent conquest is never the right way to go, and Wizards doesn't do it for either sides. And seeing Ixalan as political propaganda against Spain is far fetched at best.
And now, could we please get back on topic? It is now official that Ixalan is some kind of planeswalker "black hole", no one leaves once they entered it. I can't imagine Vraska planeswalking there without Bolas at least promising her a way to get out of the plane. Also I hope that Jaces character arc here starts something similar to the time skip in One Piece, each member of the gatewatch getting some necessary character growth before getting back together. Just my opinion though.
Its hard to respond because of how unwieldy the quote system works.
-The vampire conquistadors was the starting point. This lead to the idea of mixing age of discovery and lost world which added in the Pirates and the Dinosaurs. The Vampires have a queen, Miralda.
So yes they did start with lets make the conquistadors vampires with a dark church.
The only changes I would make would be to make the Mayan and Aztec stand ins depict those cultures more accurately aka waging war on each other for dominance and sacrifice.
Id also make the Pirates what they really were, paid mercenaries by a rival empire to attack the Vampires.
Its hard to respond because of how unwieldy the quote system works.
-The vampire conquistadors was the starting point. This lead to the idea of mixing age of discovery and lost world which added in the Pirates and the Dinosaurs. The Vampires have a queen, Miralda.
So yes they did start with lets make the conquistadors vampires with a dark church.
The only changes I would make would be to make the Mayan and Aztec stand ins depict those cultures more accurately aka waging war on each other for dominance and sacrifice.
Id also make the Pirates what they really were, paid mercenaries by a rival empire to attack the Vampires.
But the Maya and Aztec stand-ins do wage wars for dominance, the only element missing are the human sacrifices. And while they started with Vampires as conquistadors, they obviously try to make them at least morally ambigious (they have understandable motives that are not conquest-related, their goal is to bring immortality to to their people without the vampiric aspect, someone stole an important artifact from them, they try to control their bloodlust... doesn't sound like the "pure evil" kind of vampires at all to me). Let me state that again: There are no "pure good" or "pure evil" factions here. There is no Anti-Spain propaganda in this set.
Also, since there aren't any other factions the pirates (who aren't attacking the vampires only by the way) can't be mercenaries paid by them.
Its hard to respond because of how unwieldy the quote system works.
-The vampire conquistadors was the starting point. This lead to the idea of mixing age of discovery and lost world which added in the Pirates and the Dinosaurs. The Vampires have a queen, Miralda.
So yes they did start with lets make the conquistadors vampires with a dark church.
The only changes I would make would be to make the Mayan and Aztec stand ins depict those cultures more accurately aka waging war on each other for dominance and sacrifice.
Id also make the Pirates what they really were, paid mercenaries by a rival empire to attack the Vampires.
But the Maya and Aztec stand-ins do wage wars for dominance, the only element missing are the human sacrifices. And while they started with Vampires as conquistadors, they obviously try to make them at least morally ambigious (they have understandable motives that are not conquest-related, their goal is to bring immortality to to their people without the vampiric aspect, someone stole an important artifact from them, they try to control their bloodlust... doesn't sound like the "pure evil" kind of vampires at all to me). Let me state that again: There are no "pure good" or "pure evil" factions here. There is no Anti-Spain propaganda in this set.
Also, since there aren't any other factions the pirates (who aren't attacking the vampires only by the way) can't be mercenaries paid by them.
Because the pirates are refugees from when the Vampires took over their continent.
The Vampires fast (which totally isn't Lent) and then go crazy.
While I don't have a problem with any of the faction depictions, I might point out that the Legion of Dusk, while in the historical 'character' of the conquistadors, they are not conquistadors. (At least in the story of Ixalan...) In fact, I rather don't think they want to be there. They are there not for guns, God, OR gold, but to reclaim something stolen from them (admittedly, for religious reasons, but the motivation is perfectly acceptable to irreligious people). As such, I think the issue is quite inverted from the 'norm'.
The Sun Empire is hardly perfect, but yes, they 'whitewashed' (featherwashed?) some of the source material. They also did the same for the Legion. It's actually fairly evenhanded.
I was just commenting on the fact that WotC felt that they had to comment on seeking advice for one of them but not the other. It might be something as simple as that they felt on firmer ground with how they were handling the Dusk Legion as they had been developed first. I dunno.
Edit: Given the images here... I tend to start siding with the Legion. If the Legion of Dusk are, indeed, conquistadors in the general sense... then yes, there's something quite wrong with the adaptation of the source material to Ixalan.
While I don't have a problem with any of the faction depictions, I might point out that the Legion of Dusk, while in the historical 'character' of the conquistadors, they are not conquistadors. (At least in the story of Ixalan...) In fact, I rather don't think they want to be there. They are there not for guns, God, OR gold, but to reclaim something stolen from them (admittedly, for religious reasons, but the motivation is perfectly acceptable to irreligious people). As such, I think the issue is quite inverted from the 'norm'.
The Sun Empire is hardly perfect, but yes, they 'whitewashed' (featherwashed?) some of the source material. They also did the same for the Legion. It's actually fairly evenhanded.
I was just commenting on the fact that WotC felt that they had to comment on seeking advice for one of them but not the other. It might be something as simple as that they felt on firmer ground with how they were handling the Dusk Legion as they had been developed first. I dunno.
Edit: Given the images here... I tend to start siding with the Legion. If the Legion of Dusk are, indeed, conquistadors in the general sense... then yes, there's something quite wrong with the adaptation of the source material to Ixalan.
I dont know what your talking about its a t for tolerance.
If you want to go off in the anthropological weeds, based on certain theories of the origins of human sacrifice in Mesoamerican societies, Aztecs with tame dinos would probably never develop human sacrifice.
After the late Pleistocene extinctions, the Americas had few large, domesticable animals, and llamas and their relatives were confined to South America. Small, band- and tribe-level societies could obtain needed protein by hunting, but civilizations (I use the word "civilization" in the strict sense, to refer to cultures with large, permanent settlements, i.e., cities) had no reliable source of protein. Sacrifices of livestock in Eurasian civilizations were almost always occasions to feast - on the animals slaughtered in the ritual. I'd prefer not to spell out where I'm going with this, but with domesticated dinosaurs, the Empire of the Sun may simply have no reason to develop the institution of human sacrifice.
If you want to go off in the anthropological weeds, based on certain theories of the origins of human sacrifice in Mesoamerican societies, Aztecs with tame dinos would probably never develop human sacrifice.
After the late Pleistocene extinctions, the Americas had few large, domesticable animals, and llamas and their relatives were confined to South America. Small, band- and tribe-level societies could obtain needed protein by hunting, but civilizations (I use the word "civilization" in the strict sense, to refer to cultures with large, permanent settlements, i.e., cities) had no reliable source of protein. Sacrifices of livestock in Eurasian civilizations were almost always occasions to feast - on the animals slaughtered in the ritual. I'd prefer not to spell out where I'm going with this, but with domesticated dinosaurs, the Empire of the Sun may simply have no reason to develop the institution of human sacrifice.
This is actually pretty interesting. And it highlights another thing that bugs me about the whole issue: This is a fantasy world with dinosaurs and magic INSPIRED by mesoamerican societies and colonialization at the time. It is not supposed to be a 1:1 representation of the Spanish conquests or the Aztecs. The dinosaurs alone change too much in regards to the power dynamics to make it a direct parallel. Also, Burning_Paladine, I would like to point out that you showed the detailed descriptions of the Dusk Legion (leaving out that they still aren't vampires like Innistrads vampires: They don't relish in their blood lust, why else should they fast in the first place? And why should they seek the Immortal Sun to bring immortality without the bloodlust? Why the connection to white and all these not very "evil vampire"-like characteristics?), but showed only Huatlis descriptions and pictures to make your point that the natives are portrayed as morally in the right. Guess what, Huatli is only one individual and a planeswalker, which tend to be positively highlighted if they are not direct villains. That's a pretty skewed comparison. Everything else we know about the Sun Empire (lets their dinos slaughter their enemies as shown on multiple cards, is just as much focussed on conquest as the vampires are, has driven of the merfolk (implying a war between them)) points to a quite morally ambigious culture. Individuals are a totally different story. Huatli might or might not be friendly, but that has nothing to do with the Sun Empire itself.
They are typically sinister and bloodthirsty vampires. Straight from the slide.
Set sale for glory and riches.
The legions drive for conquest ensures they always have enemy blood to drink.
Right from the slides.
I couldnt find slides for the other factions.
I dont mind that the Spanish are portrayed this way, i mind that in the Podcast about the world building it sounds like Alison Lars is reading an official statement stating that they were careful to not be disrespectful and portay the natives in a stereotypical fashion but apparently dont care about portraying the spanish in one.
I dont understand why people are issuing apologetics, I think Elesh_Nornn pretty much summed up what Wizards is thinking.
This closer to the truth to what actually happened.
The Aztecs were brutal conquerors that sacrificed captives to their gods to stop the world from ending as a religious practice, they usurped the mayans who practiced the same rituals. They ravaged their neighbors... The mesoamericans were waging war on each other and enslaving each other before the Europeans arrived...
Did you really just "brown on brown crime" this thread? I can't...
The Aztecs' conquest of others in the context of precolombian history has little bearing on the current oppression of that people (or any of the other native american people, for that matter) today.
This closer to the truth to what actually happened.
The Aztecs were brutal conquerors that sacrificed captives to their gods to stop the world from ending as a religious practice, they usurped the mayans who practiced the same rituals. They ravaged their neighbors... The mesoamericans were waging war on each other and enslaving each other before the Europeans arrived...
Did you really just "brown on brown crime" this thread? I can't...
The Aztecs' conquest of others in the context of precolombian history has little bearing on the current oppression of that tribe (or any of the other tribes, for that matter) today.
The spanish conquered the Aztecs and Mayans for a no more villainous cause then the Aztecs and Mayans conquered their neighbors.
Arguably less so because they werent sacrificing them and eating them.
The Aztecs' conquest of others in the context of precolombian history has little bearing on the current oppression of that tribe (or any of the other tribes, for that matter) today.
I'm sorry, it really bothers me when people refer to the Triple Alliance, or the Mayan city-states or Tawantinsuyu, for that matter, as "tribes." These were most emphatically not tribal societies, any more than Persia, Greece, or Han-dynasty China. These were fully-developed states, and calling them tribes simply because they arose in the Americas is more than a little problematic.
The spanish conquered the Aztecs and Mayans for a no more villainous cause then the Aztecs and Mayans conquered their neighbors.
Arguably less so because they werent sacrificing them and eating them.
There is nothing villainous about cultures finding the most effective means of satisfying their needs over the course of centuries of adaptation. Humans are exceptionally brilliant creatures that will find solutions to their problems. Sometimes, the best available solution is beautiful, sometimes, it's horrifying, but that doesn't make it any less ingenious.
There is nothing villainous about cultures finding the most effective means of satisfying their needs over the course of centuries of adaptation. Humans are exceptionally brilliant creatures that will find solutions to their problems. Sometimes, the best available solution is beautiful, sometimes, it's horrifying, but that doesn't make it any less ingenious.
It is pretty intriguing when that need transforms into superstition or simple tradition to the point where the practice is carried out when there's no longer any need for it. That can also have beautiful or horrific consequences.
Waging war to gain captives to sacrifice and eat isnt evil?
"Good" and "evil" are not concepts you can reliably apply to civilizations at that time. The Aztecs and Maya weren't the only Mesoamerican tribes that had human sacrifice and waged war like it was their daily chore, but they were among the few that built civilizations advanced enough to dominate the others.
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-The vampire conquistadors was the starting point. This lead to the idea of mixing age of discovery and lost world which added in the Pirates and the Dinosaurs. The Vampires have a queen, Miralda.
-Gobins are confirmed.
-The Sun Empire built Orazca and seek to reclaim their ancestral home. The Sun Empire see the Sun as creator, sustainer, and consumer of life.
-Confirmed that planeswalkers can't leave Ixalan. Huatli sparked and saw visions of other planes and seeks Orazca to understand what she is.
EDIT: Vampires are only the nobility.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
I know that no-one can answer, but I'm just thinking aloud.
This is at least an honest depiction of what Wizards of the Coast probably thinks.
This closer to the truth to what actually happened.
The Aztecs were brutal conquerors that sacrificed captives to their gods to stop the world from ending as a religious practice, they usurped the mayans who practiced the same rituals.
They ravaged their neighbors, who despised them and sided, when the Spanish arrived, with the Spanish.
The mesoamericans were waging war on each other and enslaving each other before the Europeans arrived.
What the Spanish conquered, the enslaving of natives was condemned by the Papacy and the Crown, but because the Spanish were busy fighting rebels in the Netherlands and an alliance between the Ottomans and the French they lacked at first the resources to crackdown on the encomieda system though they eventually did.
The Ottoman Empire was the most powerful nation in the western hemisphere and arguably the world, in alliance with the second most powerful nation in the western hemisphere.
Tunisian/Ottoman corsairs were raiding the Mediterranean and enslaving people after the fall of the mamluks Western Trade was cut off from India, the fear of Ottoman Invasion and re-re-conquesta was very real, hence the expansion into Morocco by Spain to provide a buffer zone.
The whole reason Portugal would go South and Spain west was to try to reopen trade routes with India.
The Spanish and the conquistadors weren't greedy monsters looking for money and souls, they were a nation fighting other nations and they happened to find a place with wealth while looking for trade so they took that place to help them fight other nations.
Also this is how American depicted the Spanish at one point:
Its good that Wizards of the Coast is keeping the tradition alive.
What a strange comparison. Charlottesville was about literal, self-described nazis trying to stop the dismantling of a statue of a confederacy general, then killing someone once the counterprotests started. I really don't see the connection. But I agree that this is getting out of hand and I would like to return to the story discussion too.
Burning_Paladin, you keep ignoring facts you don't want to hear: Wizards didn't just say "alright, let's make the conquistadors the evil faction and all the natives the good faction". That's not what happened. It has been shown that all factions are at least morally grey (the "aztecs" brutal expansion doesn't seem to be ignored for example and the vampires aren't just evil conquerers). You know what is being ignored aside from human sacrifices? The death of up to 90 percent of the native population brought on by either plagues spread by the conquistadors or being straight up killed by them. You are so zealous in your opinion that I have to ask: If you were in charge, how would your Ixalan look like? The conquistadors as heroes saving the evil, human sacrificing natives from themselves and installing such a peaceful religion like catholicism (which at the time at least was anything but, and I say that as a catholic myself)? Glorifying violent conquest is never the right way to go, and Wizards doesn't do it for either sides. And seeing Ixalan as political propaganda against Spain is far fetched at best.
And now, could we please get back on topic? It is now official that Ixalan is some kind of planeswalker "black hole", no one leaves once they entered it. I can't imagine Vraska planeswalking there without Bolas at least promising her a way to get out of the plane. Also I hope that Jaces character arc here starts something similar to the time skip in One Piece, each member of the gatewatch getting some necessary character growth before getting back together. Just my opinion though.
Hah, brb, I'm going to collect my bragging rights.
And them battling pirates and dinosaurs. Think we might have a Magic midwest style expansion later on? (like Kaladesh = Magic steampunk)
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History is seldom as black-and-white as people like to imagine. Any time different peoples come into conflict, you can find heroes and villains on both sides. It is also important to bear in mind that the most powerful weapon in the conquistadors' arsenal was one they didn't know they had, and, having met humans from a wide variety of backgrounds, I suspect that most of the Spaniards would have been horrified at what the microbes they carried could do to the people they met. Cortez and his comrades were initially heroes to many natives who they helped to overthrow the oppressive Triple Alliance that dominated much of northern Mexico. Then introduced European diseases began to ravage native populations, and the Spanish found that they were dealing with peoples that had lost the ability to govern themselves. Wave after wave of disease kept disrupting these societies. How could a good person not step in, take over, to try to help these people whose social fabric had been torn apart, and continued to be torn apart? How could a selfish person not take advantage of the situation? We are all motivated by a complex web of selfish and altruistic impulses, and this was an unparalleled moment in human history where the most benign of intentions could lead to great evil, and opportunities for self-enrichment were unbounded. It would take many extraordinary people on the Spanish side to prevent what happened, but like every human society, the vast majority of people available to them were quite ordinary. That is, in my mind, the greatest tragedy of contact - it was inevitable.
RWU
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Its hard to respond because of how unwieldy the quote system works.
-The vampire conquistadors was the starting point. This lead to the idea of mixing age of discovery and lost world which added in the Pirates and the Dinosaurs. The Vampires have a queen, Miralda.
So yes they did start with lets make the conquistadors vampires with a dark church.
The only changes I would make would be to make the Mayan and Aztec stand ins depict those cultures more accurately aka waging war on each other for dominance and sacrifice.
Id also make the Pirates what they really were, paid mercenaries by a rival empire to attack the Vampires.
But the Maya and Aztec stand-ins do wage wars for dominance, the only element missing are the human sacrifices. And while they started with Vampires as conquistadors, they obviously try to make them at least morally ambigious (they have understandable motives that are not conquest-related, their goal is to bring immortality to to their people without the vampiric aspect, someone stole an important artifact from them, they try to control their bloodlust... doesn't sound like the "pure evil" kind of vampires at all to me). Let me state that again: There are no "pure good" or "pure evil" factions here. There is no Anti-Spain propaganda in this set.
Also, since there aren't any other factions the pirates (who aren't attacking the vampires only by the way) can't be mercenaries paid by them.
Because the pirates are refugees from when the Vampires took over their continent.
The Vampires fast (which totally isn't Lent) and then go crazy.
As opposed to warrior poets:
Sure both sides look equally morally grey there.
The Sun Empire is hardly perfect, but yes, they 'whitewashed' (featherwashed?) some of the source material. They also did the same for the Legion. It's actually fairly evenhanded.
I was just commenting on the fact that WotC felt that they had to comment on seeking advice for one of them but not the other. It might be something as simple as that they felt on firmer ground with how they were handling the Dusk Legion as they had been developed first. I dunno.
Edit: Given the images here... I tend to start siding with the Legion. If the Legion of Dusk are, indeed, conquistadors in the general sense... then yes, there's something quite wrong with the adaptation of the source material to Ixalan.
I dont know what your talking about its a t for tolerance.
After the late Pleistocene extinctions, the Americas had few large, domesticable animals, and llamas and their relatives were confined to South America. Small, band- and tribe-level societies could obtain needed protein by hunting, but civilizations (I use the word "civilization" in the strict sense, to refer to cultures with large, permanent settlements, i.e., cities) had no reliable source of protein. Sacrifices of livestock in Eurasian civilizations were almost always occasions to feast - on the animals slaughtered in the ritual. I'd prefer not to spell out where I'm going with this, but with domesticated dinosaurs, the Empire of the Sun may simply have no reason to develop the institution of human sacrifice.
RWU
GUB
WBR
URG
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This is actually pretty interesting. And it highlights another thing that bugs me about the whole issue: This is a fantasy world with dinosaurs and magic INSPIRED by mesoamerican societies and colonialization at the time. It is not supposed to be a 1:1 representation of the Spanish conquests or the Aztecs. The dinosaurs alone change too much in regards to the power dynamics to make it a direct parallel. Also, Burning_Paladine, I would like to point out that you showed the detailed descriptions of the Dusk Legion (leaving out that they still aren't vampires like Innistrads vampires: They don't relish in their blood lust, why else should they fast in the first place? And why should they seek the Immortal Sun to bring immortality without the bloodlust? Why the connection to white and all these not very "evil vampire"-like characteristics?), but showed only Huatlis descriptions and pictures to make your point that the natives are portrayed as morally in the right. Guess what, Huatli is only one individual and a planeswalker, which tend to be positively highlighted if they are not direct villains. That's a pretty skewed comparison. Everything else we know about the Sun Empire (lets their dinos slaughter their enemies as shown on multiple cards, is just as much focussed on conquest as the vampires are, has driven of the merfolk (implying a war between them)) points to a quite morally ambigious culture. Individuals are a totally different story. Huatli might or might not be friendly, but that has nothing to do with the Sun Empire itself.
Set sale for glory and riches.
The legions drive for conquest ensures they always have enemy blood to drink.
Right from the slides.
I couldnt find slides for the other factions.
I dont mind that the Spanish are portrayed this way, i mind that in the Podcast about the world building it sounds like Alison Lars is reading an official statement stating that they were careful to not be disrespectful and portay the natives in a stereotypical fashion but apparently dont care about portraying the spanish in one.
I dont understand why people are issuing apologetics, I think Elesh_Nornn pretty much summed up what Wizards is thinking.
Did you really just "brown on brown crime" this thread? I can't...
The Aztecs' conquest of others in the context of precolombian history has little bearing on the current oppression of that people (or any of the other native american people, for that matter) today.
The spanish conquered the Aztecs and Mayans for a no more villainous cause then the Aztecs and Mayans conquered their neighbors.
Arguably less so because they werent sacrificing them and eating them.
I'm sorry, it really bothers me when people refer to the Triple Alliance, or the Mayan city-states or Tawantinsuyu, for that matter, as "tribes." These were most emphatically not tribal societies, any more than Persia, Greece, or Han-dynasty China. These were fully-developed states, and calling them tribes simply because they arose in the Americas is more than a little problematic.
EDIT:
There is nothing villainous about cultures finding the most effective means of satisfying their needs over the course of centuries of adaptation. Humans are exceptionally brilliant creatures that will find solutions to their problems. Sometimes, the best available solution is beautiful, sometimes, it's horrifying, but that doesn't make it any less ingenious.
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It is pretty intriguing when that need transforms into superstition or simple tradition to the point where the practice is carried out when there's no longer any need for it. That can also have beautiful or horrific consequences.
"Good" and "evil" are not concepts you can reliably apply to civilizations at that time. The Aztecs and Maya weren't the only Mesoamerican tribes that had human sacrifice and waged war like it was their daily chore, but they were among the few that built civilizations advanced enough to dominate the others.