[quote from="ashrog »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-storyline/754032-amonkhet-general-discussion?comment=1827"]
People always judge Nicol's actions from a human perspective, but he's not a human, he's a millenia old formerly omnipotent dragon planeswalker.
Would we treat cows and pigs and chickens differently if they were sentient?
Mmmmmmmaayyybe not. We were pretty mean to the Neanderthals.
Dude a substantial portion of our population can't even accept other humans with different color skins. There's no way we could handle sapient or even humanoid non-humans.
But that's not really his point. Its not so much species as it is age. Bolas is ancient. Only Ugin rivals him in age. And when you live that long and see entire civilizations rise and fall before your eyes the value of a single life becomes pretty small. You can see this attitude in basically all the long-lived oldwalkers. Bolas takes that to the extreme. All lives that are not Bolas are devoid of value. And because morality is subjective, based on point of view, so far as Bolas is concerned he hasn't done anything wrong(what with black not believing in good and evil and all that. )
I mean, Bolas can have that viewpoint, but I wouldn't really say that makes it an accurate one. Bolas isn't accidentally stepping on ants, Bolas is the kid with a magnifying glass burning a colony because he can. And while we don't really judge the former, the latter is seen as a not good thing by most people I would say. Bolas doing what he feels like because he can doesn't stop it from being an evil act, nor does his not seeing value in their lives take away from the value those lives have.
But I also don't really see this argument going anywhere either, I think people take the morality is subjective line and run with it a bit too far for my tastes.
Then again, maybe WotC finds a way to still do it eventually.
I think they already found a way, if they are using the new coreset right, we could get all the "old stuff that never got cards and don't fit into a normal set" things.
Well, I was talking about a dedicated set, and coresets will likely only have random references here and there.
But that's not really his point. Its not so much species as it is age. Bolas is ancient. Only Ugin rivals him in age. And when you live that long and see entire civilizations rise and fall before your eyes the value of a single life becomes pretty small. You can see this attitude in basically all the long-lived oldwalkers. Bolas takes that to the extreme. All lives that are not Bolas are devoid of value. And because morality is subjective, based on point of view, so far as Bolas is concerned he hasn't done anything wrong(what with black not believing in good and evil and all that. )
When I emphasized 'dragon', I was specifically referencing the fact that dragons are usually portrayed as brutal and arrogant in most fantasy stories.
Also, he's not even just a mere dragon. He is an elder dragon, which is even farther removed from humans.
I think we can rationalize Bolas's actions without going for the excuse that "he's a super ancient and powerful dragon so we mere humans can't comprehend him."
Nicol Bolas can no longer afford to ignore those bellow him. Now that he is weaker, those lowly mortals can actually present a threat to his plans. An old Bolas wouldn't need an army of eternals to get the job done, but now he does, and regular humans are able to put up a fight against them. Would Amonkhet win against the eternals and the three gods without Bolas's intervening? Highly unlikely, but they could kill a few, and Bolas likely needs a lot of them to accomplish whatever he has in mind.
The problem is that Bolas play in a cruel way with the ants and enjoy killing them. The action is not evil (from his point of view), is the method used that is evil.
Well, if he's going to get rid of them anyway, why not have some fun with them? Bolas is a busy guy. He's gotta get his entertainment in somewhere.
Bolas is the kid with a magnifying glass burning a colony because he can.
I think it's more like a guy who needed a colony of ants to do some work and now that he doesn't need them anymore and know that keeping them alive could cause problem later decide to get rid of them. The action it self isn't that evil from his point of view, is just killing ants for safety reason, if a man would do that you wouldn't think it is a bad person.
The problem is that Bolas play in a cruel way with the ants and enjoy killing them. The action is not evil (from his point of view), is the method used that is evil.
I mean, I'm still not seeing any evidence that he needs to do this. People keep saying that he needs to get rid of Amonkhet, but it seems mostly like a theory, not something really directly stated by the story so far. If we get through it all then I'm pretty much going to think it's just like what happened with Alara, he wanted to because he felt like it. I'm not really sure why people resist that so much, he is Grixis after all, Red is part of that and it seems like they're showing that beyond his just being a dragon.
Nicol Bolas can no longer afford to ignore those bellow him. Now that he is weaker, those lowly mortals can actually present a threat to his plans.
That got me thinking, maybe he learned from the whole Umezawa dilemma, or it's still somewhere in the back of his mind. The Situation back then was different, but the essence was the betrayal of a minion, so why not kill them, most of all a God that openly states she is ambition incarnate.
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Thanks to DarkNightCavalier from Heroes of the Plane Studios for this sick Signature.
What is the first thing that the slave-master in Astapor tells Daenerys after he sells her the Unsullied?
"You're going to want to blood them. Find a village and let them go to work."
She does exactly that... just with his city
This is Bolas doing the same thing. He's got his new army. He's got three dark gods that can be used as weapons of mass destruction. He's blooding them. Letting them loose on the city to see their capabilities. Its an evil training mission, more or less.
What is the first thing that the slave-master in Astapor tells Daenerys after he sells her the Unsullied?
"You're going to want to blood them. Find a village and let them go to work."
She does exactly that... just with his city
This is Bolas doing the same thing. He's got his new army. He's got three dark gods that can be used as weapons of mass destruction. He's blooding them. Letting them loose on the city to see their capabilities. Its an evil training mission, more or less.
It's incredibly wasteful because unlike Denarys this city is also his means of production to make more armies. If the Wise Masters had simply given the army to Denarys for free she wouldn't have killed them all.
What is the first thing that the slave-master in Astapor tells Daenerys after he sells her the Unsullied?
"You're going to want to blood them. Find a village and let them go to work."
She does exactly that... just with his city
This is Bolas doing the same thing. He's got his new army. He's got three dark gods that can be used as weapons of mass destruction. He's blooding them. Letting them loose on the city to see their capabilities. Its an evil training mission, more or less.
It's incredibly wasteful because unlike Denarys this city is also his means of production to make more armies. If the Wise Masters had simply given the army to Denarys for free she wouldn't have killed them all.
Actually, she probably would have. Dany hates slavery (being somewhat of a slave herself at the start), and was more outraged by the abuses she saw in Astapor. Even if they hadn't insulted her and pricejacked on her, she still probably would have instilled a bit of payback. Look at what happened to Yunkai, even after they tried to pay her off.
Back to Magic... if you think the Eternal Army is Bolas' end game plan, then you don't know Bolas. Like pretty much every single tool Bolas has had before, its a temporary one, and one that will likely be broken once its use is at an end. The guy does not like leaving leftovers for the mongrel littlewalkers to eat.
Bolas is going to use the eternal army to get... well, something. After that, he very likely won't have any use for it, so the idea of leaving nothing behind that a potential enemy could use is a practical one. The only way he'd ever need to make more is if the current crop gets wiped out, and I'm sure he has safeguards in place for that (probably the Scarab God).
Besides, he still is a dragon. Dragons like to destroy everything. Heck, even Ugin has an ability that pretty much vaporizes anything with colored magic in them, and he's kinda the Big Good right now.
Bringing death and harm to innocent people for personal gain is evil. Regardless of color affiliation. Lacking the capacity to care or see this makes the individual a sociopath/psychopath, which is no excuse in itself. We can argue the intricacies of morality all day - even murder can be justified in self-defense - so it's a context issue. The context here is personal gain. Therefore, Bolas is evil, just in the context of Black.
We've seen Toshi be all out for himself and for personal gain, doing some questionable things (but out of tact and reason) and still ultimately doing the greater good for all, while benefitting. Bolas is outright ending an entire world of people, bringing untold suffering to all who are innocent, and killing off beings devoted to protecting their children. There is no justifying this with any color philosophy or moral debate.
Not going too much into the debate on "evil or not". I suddenly got reminded of Nahiri and the "oldwalkers are practically Eldrazi when it comes to being desensitized of empathy due to their longevity" argument I gave back in SOI and I think there's no one more suitable to apply that on than Bolas (and Ugin), especially when they belong to a particularly brutal and unfeeling species to begin with (which probably also has to do with their long lives).
What I really want to touch on, is Bolas isn't "wasting resources". At least not until he is actively showing killing the Eternals himself. He knew he was telling one giant lie when he set the whole thing up. He knew his arrival will more or less immediately expose the entire lie. He knows everybody who finds out about the lie will turn against him, which is the entire city. He either doesn't have the time or power to mentally rewrite the entire city into an equivalent of Eternals. He knows the Gatewatch is there from the whole Eldrazi set-up and observation. As far as he is concerned, Amonkhet is a factory (of ants) on a strike that will never ever end (or at least like I said he doesn't have the time/power to make it end via memory rewriting).
Bontu is the closest case where Bolas could be considered "wasting resources", but I'm thinking he planned the whole Eternals for "0% chance of backstabbing" to begin with, the same way he accounted for lying to Amonkhet knowing it's going to be "100% chance of "backstabbing" when he arrives". Outside of the Eternals, there was no resource left for him to use on Amonkhet once his lies were exposed (whose going to keep the factory running even if he just took the Eternals and left?)
It didn't help that Bontu was bragging about being ambition incarnate though. The Elder Dragon Wars mirrored the order he gave Bontu and from the war, Ajani and maybe Ugin he learnt that he himself (and others like him) were the most dangerous threats to himself.
This was the reason why I didn't want Razaketh to be the disappointment he turned out to be - he was probably the only being that was really loyal to Bolas from the start and while that still doesn't grant him immunity to Bolas, it would paint a much clearer picture of Bolas from Razaketh's interactions with Bolas (he won't be surviving either way, but the interaction itself is what matters). Liliana's Defeat implies he doesn't care about Liliana's entire quest to begin with, so Liliana was definitely no insurance for Razaketh, but if Bolas showed no signs of wanting to kill Razaketh (and he gets killed later resulting in Bolas deciding to destroy the factory), there was a chance Razaketh was really the only factory manager Bolas wanted to leave behind to not waste resources. As it is now though, we have no way (unless Bolas tells us directly) to tell if Bolas had that plan in mind to begin with.
I've seen a few people say that Bolas' arrival would expose everything for the like that it was, as a reason for his destruction of Amonkhet.
The problem with this rational is that the only reason that's true is because Bolas set it up that way. He didn't HAVE to set up the hours the way he did, he just did it. He could easily have made prophecies that DIDN'T require such action. How hard would it have been for him to pop in, act all benevolent for a few days/weeks/whatever, then take his Eternals "to the great and wonder us afterlife that awaits them, and all who prove worthy" and leave, promising to come back for the next batch later?
Nothing necessitates a grand reveal even be a part of the scheme. HE wrote the prophecies afterall. He just did it, cause reasons.
While that is largely true there are two points to consider:
a) Bontu knew about it. Apparently Bolas needed Bontu to maintain his control over the other gods. Otherwise he would have wiped her too. However, chances are that Bontu would not be satisfied with doing this forever and somehow seek a way to get out of his control. Promising her a definite reward after a set period of time may sway her to be more cooperative.
b) Bolas used existing social structures to set up the trials. It is unknown how far he could have deviated from what was already there while still maintaining control over the gods.
But yeah, I kinda agree. If Bolas wanted, he could have been smarter about this. Which leads me to believe that he didn't want to. Everyone says that Bolas is wasteful, but he probably just doesn't need more than the eternals he got. He just doesn't care about any more eternals.
I agree about Bolas creating the Eternals to be blindly loyal, as opposed to agents like Tezzeret who would double cross him, and have. Destroying Amonkhet makes sense, in that context.
What's interesting is Samut. Unless she dies (unlikely), she's going to hold a nasty grudge against Bolas. Could he truly not have accounted for a Planeswalker sparking, and carrying a vendetta? Perhaps considered it too rare, perhaps destroying Amonkhet now as a means of avoiding such a possibility. But the reality is, this has transpired, and the roster against him just grew +1.
That said, an army of eternals would probably handle all that, wouldn't it…
He was also lond of in a hurry when he set up the system. Even someone of Bolas' brilliance can only do so much thinking and still do the necessary magical preparations under a serious time crunch. I'd imagine he couldn't be sure exactly when the mending would happen and how much of his power it would take.
He was also lond of in a hurry when he set up the system. Even someone of Bolas' brilliance can only do so much thinking and still do the necessary magical preparations under a serious time crunch. I'd imagine he couldn't be sure exactly when the mending would happen and how much of his power it would take.
Is it stated somewhere that Bolas's first arrival 60 years ago was before the Mending? I thought it was right after the Mending, and Bolas knew his power was rapidly fading away. This was the reason why he has so much haste... Or not?
Then again, 60 years ago Amonkhet was already reduced to Naktamun, and this apparently wasn't Bolas's doing. Is it possible that the plane was slowly crumbling away? Or was it someone else's doing (Ob Nixilis)?
I've seen a few people say that Bolas' arrival would expose everything for the like that it was, as a reason for his destruction of Amonkhet.
The problem with this rational is that the only reason that's true is because Bolas set it up that way. He didn't HAVE to set up the hours the way he did, he just did it. He could easily have made prophecies that DIDN'T require such action. How hard would it have been for him to pop in, act all benevolent for a few days/weeks/whatever, then take his Eternals "to the great and wonder us afterlife that awaits them, and all who prove worthy" and leave, promising to come back for the next batch later?
Nothing necessitates a grand reveal even be a part of the scheme. HE wrote the prophecies afterall. He just did it, cause reasons.
Besides the fact he likes grandeur, I think he just didn't want to keep too many plans running for too long either, because that just exposes too much points to be attacked (or worse, hijacked by someone else). Chronologically it didn't fit with the Infinite Consortium (because he likely took over Amonkhet before Tezzeret ascended), but technically Madara/Umezawa could count to some degree (which makes the whole Infinite Consortium business a bit silly by Bolas standards).
Besides, he knew he wrote the prophecies in a hurry, that's like publishing a research paper without proofreading. Considering Samut (and possibly some other dissenters) could find those leaks in 60 years, the plan might crumble even further if he kept it going. Add the factor he introduced Liliana to Razaketh and was aware of the Gatewatch from the Eldrazi set-up, I think he just decided to drop all the pretending. If the Gatewatch wasn't around he might choose to act benevolent but now that Razaketh is gone (and Bontu isn't reliable from his perspective), there would be less reason for him to keep up the lie.
I do realize that considering the Scorpion was released before Bolas himself even arrived, but in the realm of reasonable speculation he could always just kill Scorpion and still keep up the act if he wanted to (he's the highest power there in the prophecies and in reality anyway), so I don't consider that a direct detriment to Bolas definitely not wanting to be "benevolent" at all.
But that reminds me that since Bontu was aware of everything (assuming Bolas didn't twist it that she thinks she is), that means everything she told Gideon back then was correct, again on the assumption that Bolas simply built on the infrastructure Amonkhet already had, mainly the trials. Perhaps Bontu did go a lot more vicious after Bolas, but I don't think she was all that nice to begin with in her trial before Bolas interfered and we all know Gideon would still be judgmental about the whole trial of ambition even if it was tamed down a notch.
Is she though, is she? Hazoret would have made a cooler speedster planeswalker imo. After the greatest lie she's ever known, and the fall of her siblings, her spark ignites. And we got huge doggo PW.
But, I do understand beings of mana cannot be PWs sad. Tragic.
Is she though, is she? Hazoret would have made a cooler speedster planeswalker imo. After the greatest lie she's ever known, and the fall of her siblings, her spark ignites. And we got huge doggo PW.
But, I do understand beings of mana cannot be PWs sad. Tragic.
I'm curious to know if Xenagos lost his spark after he became a god. Theran gods aren't like Amonkhet gods, plus Xenagos wasn't normal either. However you would think a mana connected being like a god planewalked, they would just die or lose power, since they aren't on their home plane.
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Would we treat cows and pigs and chickens differently if they were sentient?
Mmmmmmmaayyybe not. We were pretty mean to the Neanderthals.
But that's not really his point. Its not so much species as it is age. Bolas is ancient. Only Ugin rivals him in age. And when you live that long and see entire civilizations rise and fall before your eyes the value of a single life becomes pretty small. You can see this attitude in basically all the long-lived oldwalkers. Bolas takes that to the extreme. All lives that are not Bolas are devoid of value. And because morality is subjective, based on point of view, so far as Bolas is concerned he hasn't done anything wrong(what with black not believing in good and evil and all that. )
But I also don't really see this argument going anywhere either, I think people take the morality is subjective line and run with it a bit too far for my tastes.
Well, I was talking about a dedicated set, and coresets will likely only have random references here and there.
When I emphasized 'dragon', I was specifically referencing the fact that dragons are usually portrayed as brutal and arrogant in most fantasy stories.
Also, he's not even just a mere dragon. He is an elder dragon, which is even farther removed from humans.
So they can kill her in episode 7, I would love for her to have her become a planeswalker. Jackal god planeswalker? Cool.
Nicol Bolas can no longer afford to ignore those bellow him. Now that he is weaker, those lowly mortals can actually present a threat to his plans. An old Bolas wouldn't need an army of eternals to get the job done, but now he does, and regular humans are able to put up a fight against them. Would Amonkhet win against the eternals and the three gods without Bolas's intervening? Highly unlikely, but they could kill a few, and Bolas likely needs a lot of them to accomplish whatever he has in mind.
Well, if he's going to get rid of them anyway, why not have some fun with them? Bolas is a busy guy. He's gotta get his entertainment in somewhere.
I mean, I'm still not seeing any evidence that he needs to do this. People keep saying that he needs to get rid of Amonkhet, but it seems mostly like a theory, not something really directly stated by the story so far. If we get through it all then I'm pretty much going to think it's just like what happened with Alara, he wanted to because he felt like it. I'm not really sure why people resist that so much, he is Grixis after all, Red is part of that and it seems like they're showing that beyond his just being a dragon.
That got me thinking, maybe he learned from the whole Umezawa dilemma, or it's still somewhere in the back of his mind. The Situation back then was different, but the essence was the betrayal of a minion, so why not kill them, most of all a God that openly states she is ambition incarnate.
Thanks to DarkNightCavalier from Heroes of the Plane Studios for this sick Signature.
"You're going to want to blood them. Find a village and let them go to work."
She does exactly that... just with his city
This is Bolas doing the same thing. He's got his new army. He's got three dark gods that can be used as weapons of mass destruction. He's blooding them. Letting them loose on the city to see their capabilities. Its an evil training mission, more or less.
It's incredibly wasteful because unlike Denarys this city is also his means of production to make more armies. If the Wise Masters had simply given the army to Denarys for free she wouldn't have killed them all.
Actually, she probably would have. Dany hates slavery (being somewhat of a slave herself at the start), and was more outraged by the abuses she saw in Astapor. Even if they hadn't insulted her and pricejacked on her, she still probably would have instilled a bit of payback. Look at what happened to Yunkai, even after they tried to pay her off.
Back to Magic... if you think the Eternal Army is Bolas' end game plan, then you don't know Bolas. Like pretty much every single tool Bolas has had before, its a temporary one, and one that will likely be broken once its use is at an end. The guy does not like leaving leftovers for the mongrel littlewalkers to eat.
Bolas is going to use the eternal army to get... well, something. After that, he very likely won't have any use for it, so the idea of leaving nothing behind that a potential enemy could use is a practical one. The only way he'd ever need to make more is if the current crop gets wiped out, and I'm sure he has safeguards in place for that (probably the Scarab God).
Besides, he still is a dragon. Dragons like to destroy everything. Heck, even Ugin has an ability that pretty much vaporizes anything with colored magic in them, and he's kinda the Big Good right now.
Bringing death and harm to innocent people for personal gain is evil. Regardless of color affiliation. Lacking the capacity to care or see this makes the individual a sociopath/psychopath, which is no excuse in itself. We can argue the intricacies of morality all day - even murder can be justified in self-defense - so it's a context issue. The context here is personal gain. Therefore, Bolas is evil, just in the context of Black.
We've seen Toshi be all out for himself and for personal gain, doing some questionable things (but out of tact and reason) and still ultimately doing the greater good for all, while benefitting. Bolas is outright ending an entire world of people, bringing untold suffering to all who are innocent, and killing off beings devoted to protecting their children. There is no justifying this with any color philosophy or moral debate.
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
What I really want to touch on, is Bolas isn't "wasting resources". At least not until he is actively showing killing the Eternals himself. He knew he was telling one giant lie when he set the whole thing up. He knew his arrival will more or less immediately expose the entire lie. He knows everybody who finds out about the lie will turn against him, which is the entire city. He either doesn't have the time or power to mentally rewrite the entire city into an equivalent of Eternals. He knows the Gatewatch is there from the whole Eldrazi set-up and observation. As far as he is concerned, Amonkhet is a factory (of ants) on a strike that will never ever end (or at least like I said he doesn't have the time/power to make it end via memory rewriting).
Bontu is the closest case where Bolas could be considered "wasting resources", but I'm thinking he planned the whole Eternals for "0% chance of backstabbing" to begin with, the same way he accounted for lying to Amonkhet knowing it's going to be "100% chance of "backstabbing" when he arrives". Outside of the Eternals, there was no resource left for him to use on Amonkhet once his lies were exposed (whose going to keep the factory running even if he just took the Eternals and left?)
It didn't help that Bontu was bragging about being ambition incarnate though. The Elder Dragon Wars mirrored the order he gave Bontu and from the war, Ajani and maybe Ugin he learnt that he himself (and others like him) were the most dangerous threats to himself.
This was the reason why I didn't want Razaketh to be the disappointment he turned out to be - he was probably the only being that was really loyal to Bolas from the start and while that still doesn't grant him immunity to Bolas, it would paint a much clearer picture of Bolas from Razaketh's interactions with Bolas (he won't be surviving either way, but the interaction itself is what matters). Liliana's Defeat implies he doesn't care about Liliana's entire quest to begin with, so Liliana was definitely no insurance for Razaketh, but if Bolas showed no signs of wanting to kill Razaketh (and he gets killed later resulting in Bolas deciding to destroy the factory), there was a chance Razaketh was really the only factory manager Bolas wanted to leave behind to not waste resources. As it is now though, we have no way (unless Bolas tells us directly) to tell if Bolas had that plan in mind to begin with.
The problem with this rational is that the only reason that's true is because Bolas set it up that way. He didn't HAVE to set up the hours the way he did, he just did it. He could easily have made prophecies that DIDN'T require such action. How hard would it have been for him to pop in, act all benevolent for a few days/weeks/whatever, then take his Eternals "to the great and wonder us afterlife that awaits them, and all who prove worthy" and leave, promising to come back for the next batch later?
Nothing necessitates a grand reveal even be a part of the scheme. HE wrote the prophecies afterall. He just did it, cause reasons.
a) Bontu knew about it. Apparently Bolas needed Bontu to maintain his control over the other gods. Otherwise he would have wiped her too. However, chances are that Bontu would not be satisfied with doing this forever and somehow seek a way to get out of his control. Promising her a definite reward after a set period of time may sway her to be more cooperative.
b) Bolas used existing social structures to set up the trials. It is unknown how far he could have deviated from what was already there while still maintaining control over the gods.
But yeah, I kinda agree. If Bolas wanted, he could have been smarter about this. Which leads me to believe that he didn't want to. Everyone says that Bolas is wasteful, but he probably just doesn't need more than the eternals he got. He just doesn't care about any more eternals.
What's interesting is Samut. Unless she dies (unlikely), she's going to hold a nasty grudge against Bolas. Could he truly not have accounted for a Planeswalker sparking, and carrying a vendetta? Perhaps considered it too rare, perhaps destroying Amonkhet now as a means of avoiding such a possibility. But the reality is, this has transpired, and the roster against him just grew +1.
That said, an army of eternals would probably handle all that, wouldn't it…
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
Is it stated somewhere that Bolas's first arrival 60 years ago was before the Mending? I thought it was right after the Mending, and Bolas knew his power was rapidly fading away. This was the reason why he has so much haste... Or not?
Then again, 60 years ago Amonkhet was already reduced to Naktamun, and this apparently wasn't Bolas's doing. Is it possible that the plane was slowly crumbling away? Or was it someone else's doing (Ob Nixilis)?
Besides the fact he likes grandeur, I think he just didn't want to keep too many plans running for too long either, because that just exposes too much points to be attacked (or worse, hijacked by someone else). Chronologically it didn't fit with the Infinite Consortium (because he likely took over Amonkhet before Tezzeret ascended), but technically Madara/Umezawa could count to some degree (which makes the whole Infinite Consortium business a bit silly by Bolas standards).
Besides, he knew he wrote the prophecies in a hurry, that's like publishing a research paper without proofreading. Considering Samut (and possibly some other dissenters) could find those leaks in 60 years, the plan might crumble even further if he kept it going. Add the factor he introduced Liliana to Razaketh and was aware of the Gatewatch from the Eldrazi set-up, I think he just decided to drop all the pretending. If the Gatewatch wasn't around he might choose to act benevolent but now that Razaketh is gone (and Bontu isn't reliable from his perspective), there would be less reason for him to keep up the lie.
I do realize that considering the Scorpion was released before Bolas himself even arrived, but in the realm of reasonable speculation he could always just kill Scorpion and still keep up the act if he wanted to (he's the highest power there in the prophecies and in reality anyway), so I don't consider that a direct detriment to Bolas definitely not wanting to be "benevolent" at all.
But that reminds me that since Bontu was aware of everything (assuming Bolas didn't twist it that she thinks she is), that means everything she told Gideon back then was correct, again on the assumption that Bolas simply built on the infrastructure Amonkhet already had, mainly the trials. Perhaps Bontu did go a lot more vicious after Bolas, but I don't think she was all that nice to begin with in her trial before Bolas interfered and we all know Gideon would still be judgmental about the whole trial of ambition even if it was tamed down a notch.
And if Samut's own power level is on par with her card's, I wouldn't be worried.
I'm sorry Samut, you're still cool.
But, I do understand beings of mana cannot be PWs sad. Tragic.
I'm curious to know if Xenagos lost his spark after he became a god. Theran gods aren't like Amonkhet gods, plus Xenagos wasn't normal either. However you would think a mana connected being like a god planewalked, they would just die or lose power, since they aren't on their home plane.