So I was musing about the gods and how they used to be before Bolas twisted them. Since we've been given quite a few hints throughout Amonkhet (or what could be hints, sometimes) I thought it'd be a neat idea to open a speculation thread.
Anyway, here are my thoughts:
When Samut met Hazoret and talked to her, she said this to the god:
"Kind Hazoret," Samut whispered. "Do you remember how we once called you? The people of this world call you Gate Keeper now, and Trials' End—but also the Mother of Zeal. Nurturer of Hearts. We are your children, your family. You were not always a cruel god, poised with spear and fire at the gates of death. You were a god of compassion and inspiration, whose fiery heart inspired the people to their greatest achievements."
Mother? Nurturer? Family? These are all terms usually more closely associated with Green. Birth and family sound more closely at home in the colour that is about nature and fate (as one cannot choose their family, they are born into it). Could it be that Hazoret used to be red-green, rather than mono-red?
Furthermore, for what it's worth, the Khenra, which seem to be related to Hazoret at least design-wise, are red-green, which could be another piece of evidence.
But wait, if the Khenra being red-green is an indication about "their" god being red-green, what about the other gods?
Well, for one thing there is Kefnet. Although he is currently rooted in blue, the little glimpse we had from pre-Bolas Amonkhet shows him as the protector and curator if the Hekma, which not only sounds like defensive white magic, but actually is. Unless the gods frequently dabble in off-colour magic (which seems odd for incarnations of ideas/concepts) then it stands to reason that Kefnet used to be white-blue, which incidentally also lines up with "his" race, as the aven are also white-blue.
Finally there is Rhonas, who admittedly has little public information. He hasn't even said a single word in the story. And yet there might be reasons why he was a green-blue god, more specifically maybe the god of the Luxa river. Apart from the obvious "the Naga are also green-blue" argument, there is another facet to it: Floodwaters specifically likens the Luxa river to a snake. Admittedly, this could be coincidence, but it got me thinking:
Maro (or someone) said during one of the design articles that they deliberately tried to include elements that just seemed "off". For example the exert mechanic is actually 'hurting' your creatures (or was, in the original design) so from a gameplay perspective it comes across as exploiting your creatures, though ingame it is explained as the creatures doing it themselves. It's this very slight thing that doesn't quite line up that is supposed to provoke uneasiness or the subtle feeling of "soemthing's wrong" in the players. (Whether they have succeeded is another matter entirely.)
So what do game mechanics have to do with the story? Preciously little, BUT it stands to reason that the same logic applies to the worldbuilding. We were already told that they deliberately made Amonkhet a nice-looking plane, despite it being one of Bolas' planes, which most people would expect to be a dark and cruel place. So clearly this subtle uneasiness was also tried to be put into the worldbuilding.
So what does that in turn have to do with Rhonas? Well, Rhonas is the god of strength. And his appearance is a snake. Which at least to me doesn't make a lick of sense. Cobras are among the last animals I'd associate with strength. Venomous snakes are known for their soundlessness and venom, both things that don't spell strength but trickery. However, when viewed through the lens of Bolas twisting Rhoans into a role he did not originally fill, it suddenly starts to make perfect sense.
Then there's the point that half of the druids in Amonkhet are Naga, one of which is associated with fertility and the other directly with the Luxa river, both of which make sense if they are "the race" of the Luxa river god.
So what about Oketra and Bontu? Well, it largely depends on whether or not the idea that each god had a race associated with them is actually true, or if it counts for only some gods and not for others (like in Theros (Though in Theros it makes sense as the gods are born out of ideas and not an actual literal part of the world.)). However, seeing as the majority of Amonkhet has been laid to waste it's perfectly reasonable to assume that not all races had survived this disaster, it could very well be that there used to be cat people and crocodile people or viashino.
In any case, Oketra could have been green-white, as she was able to resist Bolas' mind control together with Hazoret (and green is generally good at doing so) or maybe even red-green-white as catfolk are usually distributed among those colours. Bontu meanwhile strikes me as an originally black-green god, if only because that's the go-to colours for crocodiles. If the "one race per god" theory is true, then her race might be viashino and she was black-red-green, just to avoid being black-red in order not to step on the Minotaur god's toes. (Of course it's also perfectly thinkable they are simply mono-coloured. The intrinsic asymmetrical distribution of the gods implies that the colours are not evenly distributed. Think Lorwyn tribes in terms of colour identities.)
Speaking of which!
We have understandably little to go on for the dead/corrupted gods, but if the previous theories are true (and you can tell how this has become a Jenga tower of theories, where one builds upon the next, not knowing if the previous one is even correct) then we can expect a black-red minotaur god. Apart from that, everything goes, probably, though seeing as there seems to be a lot of gods implied to be at least partially green, I would assume the remaining two gods are non-green. Personally I entertain the idea of a white-black god/race of scarabs, mostly because in ancient egypt Khepri was a scarab god associated with the sun and suns seem to play a big role in Amonkhet, seeing as there are two of them. Also I just realized that if this was the case it'd make sense if Bolas would corrupt the "sun god", as he had to control the second sun for the prophecies. Mmh.
Anyway. I'm not sure if all these pieces of "evidence" are deliberate or just mere coincidence. (The gods and races lining up may simply be because they were both drawn from the same source material) But it's fun to speculate.
Anyway, thoughts? Anyone have come to a different conclusion? Let's hear them.
I wonder if the gods were meant to be tri-colored in identity before Nicol Bolas messed everything up. Like Hazoret being WRG which would be a very motherly color combination.
Other than that, a passionate mother could still be red I guess.
Love is an underrepresented trait for the color that dwells most on emotions imo and maybe they're trying to change that.
That's true, but the specific wording struck me as red-green rather than mono-red. Red is about emotions and love, but loving someone solely because they're part of your family sounds like it has green in it. Red is more the colour of soulmates, while green is the colour of 'kin by blood'.
I mean, this borders dangerously close to splitting hairs, but if it is indeed supposed to be a hint, then it sounds to me like Hazoret used to be red-green.
The gods being duel colored and Bolas corrupting them into mono-colored is a good theory I just personally don't think its true, though I won't be upset or call it wierd this its true. But I do think the story will end with the gods freed from Bolas and driving him off (5/8 gods vs a neowalker Bolas have a better chance).
One of the creative team said Rhonas was given a cobra head since snake bodies are pure muscle and showing another idea of strength.
IMO Harzoert seems more about compassion and creativity then motherly lovely. I got she is a mother as in a "love everyone as my child" way and less about family/fertility/nurture ect. But it is a fair point that the Khenra are R/G and how Harzoret could be seen as a mother god putting her in R/G to match them.
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Yeah, Hazoret seems another example of red getting to show its full range of nondestructive emotions - in this case compassion and fierce love. She's a mother, alright, but less in the sense of "giving birth" and more in "caring a lot about your offspring". She's the reason momma bear wants to take of your head when you go after her younglings (Rhonas is why momma bear is able to do so if she tries).
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[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
Mother (or parent) and family are hardly monogreen concepts. First of all, we just got off a block that featured a VERY loving and nurturing mono-red mother (Pia), who was married to a very loving mono-red father (Kiran). Chandra likewise is mono-red and is fiercely protective of those she cares about, whether its her parents, her fellow monks at the abbey, or the Gatewatch. Way back, Tahngarth was all about his family (when Volrath corrupted him, his biggest issue was the overwhelming shame of what would happen if his family saw him- a concern that proved invalid, especially after he and the Weatherlight saved all their asses).
Kamahl, Jeska and Balthor are additional examples- at least until they all got corrupted in one way or another. Heck, you could even make a case that out of the five praetors, Urabask is the most nurturing.
As far as Hazoret goes, she represents love and emotion, while Oketra represents duty- the two most powerful emotions parents feel in regards to their infants. It makes sense that they were the ones who ran to comfort and protect the children when Bolas attacked.
Here is an idea: There were originally eight gods, but three of them are "stored" by Bolas. Eight is a weird number in the world of five colors. And the existing gods will probably not end all that well after meeting Bolas, but some may survive. Wouldn't it be nice and elegant to have two of them survive but return to their original self (meaning more colors) to complete a cycle of multicolored gods with the three new ones?
Here is an idea: There were originally eight gods, but three of them are "stored" by Bolas. Eight is a weird number in the world of five colors. And the existing gods will probably not end all that well after meeting Bolas, but some may survive. Wouldn't it be nice and elegant to have two of them survive but return to their original self (meaning more colors) to complete a cycle of multicolored gods with the three new ones?
If this theory has any truth to it, I would like the two survivors to be Hazoret and Oketra, since they were the last to fall to Bolas, and the two that were shown to be the closest to their subjects.
Here is an idea: There were originally eight gods, but three of them are "stored" by Bolas. Eight is a weird number in the world of five colors. And the existing gods will probably not end all that well after meeting Bolas, but some may survive. Wouldn't it be nice and elegant to have two of them survive but return to their original self (meaning more colors) to complete a cycle of multicolored gods with the three new ones?
If this theory has any truth to it, I would like the two survivors to be Hazoret and Oketra, since they were the last to fall to Bolas, and the two that were shown to be the closest to their subjects.
Don't forget that Kefnet was already altered by Nissa, that may play some role too. Not that I would want him to survive over Oketra or Hazoret...
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Anyway, here are my thoughts:
When Samut met Hazoret and talked to her, she said this to the god:
Mother? Nurturer? Family? These are all terms usually more closely associated with Green. Birth and family sound more closely at home in the colour that is about nature and fate (as one cannot choose their family, they are born into it). Could it be that Hazoret used to be red-green, rather than mono-red?
Furthermore, for what it's worth, the Khenra, which seem to be related to Hazoret at least design-wise, are red-green, which could be another piece of evidence.
But wait, if the Khenra being red-green is an indication about "their" god being red-green, what about the other gods?
Well, for one thing there is Kefnet. Although he is currently rooted in blue, the little glimpse we had from pre-Bolas Amonkhet shows him as the protector and curator if the Hekma, which not only sounds like defensive white magic, but actually is. Unless the gods frequently dabble in off-colour magic (which seems odd for incarnations of ideas/concepts) then it stands to reason that Kefnet used to be white-blue, which incidentally also lines up with "his" race, as the aven are also white-blue.
Finally there is Rhonas, who admittedly has little public information. He hasn't even said a single word in the story. And yet there might be reasons why he was a green-blue god, more specifically maybe the god of the Luxa river. Apart from the obvious "the Naga are also green-blue" argument, there is another facet to it: Floodwaters specifically likens the Luxa river to a snake. Admittedly, this could be coincidence, but it got me thinking:
Maro (or someone) said during one of the design articles that they deliberately tried to include elements that just seemed "off". For example the exert mechanic is actually 'hurting' your creatures (or was, in the original design) so from a gameplay perspective it comes across as exploiting your creatures, though ingame it is explained as the creatures doing it themselves. It's this very slight thing that doesn't quite line up that is supposed to provoke uneasiness or the subtle feeling of "soemthing's wrong" in the players. (Whether they have succeeded is another matter entirely.)
So what do game mechanics have to do with the story? Preciously little, BUT it stands to reason that the same logic applies to the worldbuilding. We were already told that they deliberately made Amonkhet a nice-looking plane, despite it being one of Bolas' planes, which most people would expect to be a dark and cruel place. So clearly this subtle uneasiness was also tried to be put into the worldbuilding.
So what does that in turn have to do with Rhonas? Well, Rhonas is the god of strength. And his appearance is a snake. Which at least to me doesn't make a lick of sense. Cobras are among the last animals I'd associate with strength. Venomous snakes are known for their soundlessness and venom, both things that don't spell strength but trickery. However, when viewed through the lens of Bolas twisting Rhoans into a role he did not originally fill, it suddenly starts to make perfect sense.
Then there's the point that half of the druids in Amonkhet are Naga, one of which is associated with fertility and the other directly with the Luxa river, both of which make sense if they are "the race" of the Luxa river god.
So what about Oketra and Bontu? Well, it largely depends on whether or not the idea that each god had a race associated with them is actually true, or if it counts for only some gods and not for others (like in Theros (Though in Theros it makes sense as the gods are born out of ideas and not an actual literal part of the world.)). However, seeing as the majority of Amonkhet has been laid to waste it's perfectly reasonable to assume that not all races had survived this disaster, it could very well be that there used to be cat people and crocodile people or viashino.
In any case, Oketra could have been green-white, as she was able to resist Bolas' mind control together with Hazoret (and green is generally good at doing so) or maybe even red-green-white as catfolk are usually distributed among those colours. Bontu meanwhile strikes me as an originally black-green god, if only because that's the go-to colours for crocodiles. If the "one race per god" theory is true, then her race might be viashino and she was black-red-green, just to avoid being black-red in order not to step on the Minotaur god's toes. (Of course it's also perfectly thinkable they are simply mono-coloured. The intrinsic asymmetrical distribution of the gods implies that the colours are not evenly distributed. Think Lorwyn tribes in terms of colour identities.)
Speaking of which!
We have understandably little to go on for the dead/corrupted gods, but if the previous theories are true (and you can tell how this has become a Jenga tower of theories, where one builds upon the next, not knowing if the previous one is even correct) then we can expect a black-red minotaur god. Apart from that, everything goes, probably, though seeing as there seems to be a lot of gods implied to be at least partially green, I would assume the remaining two gods are non-green. Personally I entertain the idea of a white-black god/race of scarabs, mostly because in ancient egypt Khepri was a scarab god associated with the sun and suns seem to play a big role in Amonkhet, seeing as there are two of them. Also I just realized that if this was the case it'd make sense if Bolas would corrupt the "sun god", as he had to control the second sun for the prophecies. Mmh.
Anyway. I'm not sure if all these pieces of "evidence" are deliberate or just mere coincidence. (The gods and races lining up may simply be because they were both drawn from the same source material) But it's fun to speculate.
Anyway, thoughts? Anyone have come to a different conclusion? Let's hear them.
That's true, but the specific wording struck me as red-green rather than mono-red. Red is about emotions and love, but loving someone solely because they're part of your family sounds like it has green in it. Red is more the colour of soulmates, while green is the colour of 'kin by blood'.
I mean, this borders dangerously close to splitting hairs, but if it is indeed supposed to be a hint, then it sounds to me like Hazoret used to be red-green.
One of the creative team said Rhonas was given a cobra head since snake bodies are pure muscle and showing another idea of strength.
IMO Harzoert seems more about compassion and creativity then motherly lovely. I got she is a mother as in a "love everyone as my child" way and less about family/fertility/nurture ect. But it is a fair point that the Khenra are R/G and how Harzoret could be seen as a mother god putting her in R/G to match them.
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Mother (or parent) and family are hardly monogreen concepts. First of all, we just got off a block that featured a VERY loving and nurturing mono-red mother (Pia), who was married to a very loving mono-red father (Kiran). Chandra likewise is mono-red and is fiercely protective of those she cares about, whether its her parents, her fellow monks at the abbey, or the Gatewatch. Way back, Tahngarth was all about his family (when Volrath corrupted him, his biggest issue was the overwhelming shame of what would happen if his family saw him- a concern that proved invalid, especially after he and the Weatherlight saved all their asses).
Kamahl, Jeska and Balthor are additional examples- at least until they all got corrupted in one way or another. Heck, you could even make a case that out of the five praetors, Urabask is the most nurturing.
As far as Hazoret goes, she represents love and emotion, while Oketra represents duty- the two most powerful emotions parents feel in regards to their infants. It makes sense that they were the ones who ran to comfort and protect the children when Bolas attacked.
If this theory has any truth to it, I would like the two survivors to be Hazoret and Oketra, since they were the last to fall to Bolas, and the two that were shown to be the closest to their subjects.
Don't forget that Kefnet was already altered by Nissa, that may play some role too. Not that I would want him to survive over Oketra or Hazoret...