RWU are the idealist colours who don't care about GB's pointless fatalism and survival of the fittest. They're mega-communist, or alternatively mega-socialist which also happen to make a profit on the side like Nordic countries.
WBR is about mixing White's dedication to a cause with Red's passion and Black's egocentrism. It takes Red/Black's drive to express one's identity to the world without restraint, and centers that identity around White/Red zealousness and White/Black tribalism. Red/Black fights for oneself, White/Black fights for one's group, and White/Red fights for one's cause, but to White/Black/Red, the self and the group and the cause are all one and the same. It has enough of Black's pragmatism to know that only one faction or ideology can rise to power, and it has enough of White's idealism and Red's passion to be sure that its own faction/ideology is the right one.
Its primary tools are speed, bravery, decisiveness, and ruthlessness. It combines White's willingness to do anything in the name of a higher cause, Black's willingness to sacrifice anyone for the sake of achieving one's goals, and Red's willingness to make bold split-second decisions and jump into action at a moment's notice. It's the most courageous of the color triads, but it can also be the most brutal and violent of them, willing to slaughter its enemies by the hundreds and let its own allies be slaughtered by the thousands if that's what it takes to achieve victory. The Mardu Horde aptly demonstrates the unity, devotion, courage, swiftness, and power of White/Black/Red, as well as the zealous tribalistic ruthlessness endemic to it.
Its opposed to Green/Blue, which is the color pairing most associated with passivity, inaction, and uncertainty. Green and Blue are the two slowest colors, and while they're both associated with change, it tends to be more of the gradual sort. Green is about slow, steady, natural growth, while Blue is about carefully making incremental improvements that have been proven to work through a cautious process of trial-and-error experimentation. In other words, they both require time to grow and evolve and thrive, to fulfill their potential and become all that they can be. In contrast, White/Black/Red doesn't have the patience to cultivate a garden. It wants radical and drastic change immediately, because something needs to be done.
Green/Blue wants to sit back and wait and see how things turn out before taking action, to analyze the situation and figure out exactly what's going on before committing to a major decision. Green/Blue is hesitant to act because it knows it could be wrong about things; maybe the situation isn't actually what it seems like, and what seems like a good idea now could turn out to be a huge mistake. White/Black/Red doesn't feel any such need for caution or hesitation, because it knows for an absolute certainty that it's doing the right thing, that whatever choice it makes is going to be the correct one. And besides, when there are so many things wrong with the world now, hesitation is an indulgence that White/Black/Red simply can't afford. From a White/Black/Red perspective, the cautious approach is unethical, cowardly, and goes against one's own interests.
While the Green hippies and pacifists are preaching peace and tolerance and forgiveness, White/Black/Red is clamoring for war and marching off to fight on the front lines, because if we don't strike first, the enemy will. While the Blue lawyers and judges are fussing over civil rights and due process, White/Black/Red is out on the streets, gunning down criminals before they can hurt anyone else. While all the Green/Blue analysts and scientists are fretting over trying to see the "big picture" and warning everyone about economic and environmental repercussions, White/Black/Red is taking up arms to defend civilization against the barbarians at our gates and the thugs inside our walls. To White/Black/Red, Green/Blue is a spineless weakling that's neither altruistic enough to stand up for others nor driven enough to stand up for itself.
The biggest flaws of White/Black/Red, rather unsurprisingly, are its lack of caution and its lack of stability. Like Red, it's prone to making mistakes because it acts too hastily without fully assessing its circumstances or understanding its situation - and due to its White/Black desire to affect society at large, its mistakes tend to be bigger in scale and more dramatic in consequence than those Red makes on its own. Like White, it's prone to doing absolutely terrible things because it believes it's serving some greater good, and when you combine that with the emotional impulsiveness of Red and the self-centeredness of Black, you get a color triad that's going to do whatever it feels is right, regardless of the actual consequences. It shares White/Red's propensity for Honor Before Reason, except its Black egotism means that even its sense of "honor" is often self-serving and hypocritical. As a result, it can easily become a Tautological Templar, certain that it's right because its cause is just, and certain that its cause is just because it's right.
It's also the least stable of all the color combinations. As I mentioned above, it doesn't cultivate gardens, which means it also doesn't plant crops. It prefers raiding and conquering to farming and building, and it's not overly concerned with what will happen when there are no farms left to raid and no cities left to conquer. In many ways, it defines itself by its enemies, and the innate tension between the righteousness and orderliness of White and the raw wanton destructiveness of Black/Red can cause the color triad to come apart at the seams when there are no external threats left for it to fight against. Also, it often fails to understand that sudden and sweeping changes are usually a lot less likely to produce positive or lasting outcomes than incremental changes.
It's the color triad of the police officer who plants evidence on a suspect because he knows they're guilty anyway; the vigilante who goes around killing rapists and murderers because the cops and the courts always let them get off on technicalities; the warhawk who wants to invade rival nations before they can become a threat; the jingoist who wishes his country would just nuke its enemies back to the Stone Age instead of pussyfooting around with regime change and nation building; the general who looks over a barren war-torn wasteland and calls it peace, who looks upon a battlefield where thousands of his soldiers lay dead and calls it victory; the revolutionary who thinks we need to overthrow the government now, regardless of how many lives it costs, because each day that the current system remains in place is another day that homeless people will be starving in the streets. Fundamentally, it's the color triad of direct action.
Like Blue/Black/Red, White/Black/Red is a color triad that has a lot of representation in popular media, particularly among anti-heroes and anti-villains. Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones is an example of an (almost) purely heroic White/Black/Red character, while Jaime Lannister and Sandor Clegane are both examples of White/Black/Red anti-heroes from the same series. Mad Max is another example of a White/Black/Red hero, albeit a particularly dark one, as he always manages to retain some sliver of altruism and idealism even as his sanity steadily degrades. Caesar's Legion from Fallout: New Vegas is an example of an entire White/Black/Red society, driven to bring order and civilization to the Wasteland through the cruelest and most sadistic means possible. An example of a White/Black/Red villain would be Megatron from Transformers, a revolutionary-turned-tyrant who led his fellow machines in an uprising against their oppressive masters, only to become a ruthless and oppressive conqueror himself upon seizing power.
Maro considers The Punisher to be White/Red and Rorschach to be White/Black, but I see them both as being White/Black/Red; the main difference between them is that The Punisher is motivated primarily by rage and despair over losing his family (Red), while Rorschach is motivated primarily by a sense of nihilism over the evil inherent in man (Black), but The Punisher is fairly nihilistic too, Rorschach is no stranger to anger and hatred, and they both use Red/Black methods like intimidation and torture in the service of an ultimately White sense of justice. Plenty of other similar grim-and-gritty comic book anti-heroes would fall under this color triad too - probably more than I could hope to list, though Venom, Ghost Rider, and Red Hulk are a few that immediately come to mind. The modern film version of Batman is White/Black/Red as well, since the Nolan and Snyder movies downplay his Blue detective skills while playing up his brutality and the intensity of the emotions that drive him. Plenty of comic book villains are White/Black/Red as well, with the Netflix version of The Kingpin being a particularly well-developed and three-dimensional example. Dexter Morgan is an example of the White/Black/Red vigilante archetype in a more realistic setting; he's a serial killer driven by an insatiable bloodlust (Red), and displays sociopathic ruthlessness in covering his tracks and protecting himself (Black), but he has a strict code of honor that compels him to only target other murderers (White).
But the quintessential example of a White/Black/Red hero and a White/Black/Red villain is Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. Maro considers him Red/Black, since he's a Sith Lord who uses anger and hatred to fuel his power so that he can exert his dominance over others. However, he also has some strong White traits: He was originally a member of the White-aligned Jedi Order, seeking to do good and protect galactic civilization, and even after his fall to the Dark Side, he's motivated primarily by a desire to bring peace, order, and stability to the galaxy, albeit through utterly ruthless methods. Unlike his master Darth Sidious (Blue/Black/Red), for whom the entire Galactic Empire is nothing more than a vanity project scaled up to unimaginable extremes, Darth Vader is truly devoted to an ideal greater than himself, which is what makes him so compelling as both a hero and a villain.
RWU are the idealist colours who don't care about GB's pointless fatalism and survival of the fittest. They're mega-communist, or alternatively mega-socialist which also happen to make a profit on the side like Nordic countries.
The utopian socialist/communist ideal is definitely WUR. The Federation from Star Trek is actually a great example of a WUR society, of a very different sort than the isolationist Airbenders or the militaristic Outer Heaven enclaves, and a lot of fans consider the Federation to be socialist or communist (though it might be more properly described as a post-scarcity economic system).
However, I'd classify a lot of real life communist revolutionaries and insurgencies and dictatorships to be WBR, as they're primarily driven by solidarity among the working classes and a hatred of the elites (the latter of which Marx himself would've disapproved of), along with a fervent passion for immediate radical change to correct the injustices of the past and present. Communists of the Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist sort definitely wouldn't be WUR. If anything, I'd say the Soviet Union and Maoist China were actually purely WB institutions, having lost even their R revolutionary fervor after the first few years.
^ That was excellent summary of what WBR represents.
About character in this colors, I agree Daenerys is WBR however her white is still stronger than red/black. I think if she gets more villainous with time this will change. Jaime I see him as mono-red in the beginning of the series. Jaime is completely devoid of ambition and will to power to the point he effectively renounces his title as heir of Casterly Rock. I can't see any black in him. And before his development arc I can't see any shred of white either. Sandor I see him as WR. From that series however you forgot to mention Melisandre who I see as one of the most representative of the WBR wedge in all fiction.
But I think the trophy of most WBR in all fiction goes to Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost. "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." is the WBR moto. It is R because it's statement of freedom, to not serve in Heaven. It is B because it is also a statement of ambition, to rule in Hell. And it also W because it admits the difference between Heaven and Hell, good and evil, and the implied superiority of the former over the later.
Id say another big weakness for a WBR character is pride. You have someone who lacks green humility and acceptance of their "place in the world" and blue want of self perfection and has whites want of the statues quo with black and red selfishness makes a person who's are pressed to take criticism.
About character in this colors, I agree Daenerys is WBR however her white is still stronger than red/black. I think if she gets more villainous with time this will change.
Idk I personally think Daenerys is an example of nearly being equally all three. Yes she wants peace and order for her people (W), she very much want to be in charge and on top (B) and isn't keen on just sitting back to let things happen (R and cuz of dragons).
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“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"
I've mulled over the identities of wedges ever since Shards of Alara came out and I found that the most productive way to look at it is to focus on the colour combination that is omitted from the wedge. The reason is that when you combine colours, you get a bit of a mix-and-match dynamic. You can cherry-pick certain elements, because the colours aren't as monolithic as often thought. However, the absence of something has much farther reaching consequences than the presence of an element that might not be universal for the identity.
I will not go as much into detail as KarnTerrier, because I guess despite some differences the basics will likely be the same. So I will focus on the omitted pair.
The missing pair in WBR is . What both colours have in common is a sense of wonder. Green and Blue want to understand the world, although their methods couldn't be more different: Green looks within, while Blue looks without. Green wants to understand its own role in the grand scheme of things, while Blue wants to understand the universe itself and extrapolate its own importance from there. Both colours deal with a gradual awareness of their surroundings, approaching this from different angles. But for both colours the journey is as important if not more so than the destination. Blue wants to learn, Green simply goes along with whatever destiny has in store for it.
This means that WBR does not care about the mysteries of the world. It has its own idea of how the world works. WBR is driven by dogma and bias. Knowledge is passed down from figures of authority like spiritial leaders or warlords. If WBR was a world, it'd be a wartorn landscape of warring nations fighting wars born out of zealotry, opportunism or perceived injustices with armies led by angels.
The missing pair for URG is , both colours that deal with society, although like with the example before, approach it from a different angle. White focuses on the interactions of society in order to stabilize and protect. It looks at society as a whole to make sure that everyone, itself included has a good life. Black on the other hand interacts with society from the reverse. It does not build, it exploits. It does not want to change the system, only use it for its own needs. Black is the most individualistic colour and yet one of the two colours that needs society the most to thrive. Without a society and anyone else to compare itself to, Black's motivations would crumble. Black is all about comparing and measuring itself against others.
This means that URG is not concerned about societal concerns at all. Whereas Black is used as the prime example of individualism, URG is the prime example of individuality. URG does not care about other people. It does not live in a society. There are no rules and no groups apart from loose familial units. URG seeks its own motivations, be they out of curiosity, emotion or spirituality. It goes its own way and won't let anyone else tell it what to do, nor will it get distracted by what the others have done. URG lacks both peer pressure and jealousy. If URG was a world, its inhabitants would travel the vast ocean each for their own reasons, the few volcanic islands making a permanent stay and the development of civilizations impossible. Many would seek the counsel of or follow the nomadic Sphinxes, who themselves are on a perpetual quest of self-finding.
The missing pair for BGW is , both colours that are ultimately about innovation. Blue is driven by the accumulation of knowledge, which inevitably leads to breakthroughs and new insights as well as technologies, while red is the colour of creativity, having spontaneous ideas, but also being passionate about its interests. Red is the colour of impulsiveness, but when it has found soemthing that interests it, it keeps working on it, finding new ways in the process. Blue and Red are the two colours most associated with change, though Blue tries to bring change actively through progress whereas Red comes across new things by accident and latches onto them, because they sound good.
Meanwhile white craves stability, green likes the world the way it is and black is afraid of losing its status. BGW does not want things to change. It is content with how things are. (At least as long as black is at the top.) BGW is the most traditionalist and indeed stagnant colour combination of all. If BGW was a world, its society would live in a strict caste system born out of tradition, with demons ruling at the top with promises of reincarnation. (Even souls are recycled here.)
The missing pair for RWU is . What both colours have in common is that both care about survival the most. While obviously all colours care about survival, these two believe they truly understand it, though again, coming from different angles. Green sees the threads of mortality woven throughout everything and understands that death, as much as life, is everywhere. All beings must feed and eventually return their own biomass back into the soil. For green survival isn't an end goal, but a key concept in the dynamics that govern the natural world. Black on the other hand sees survival as the, possibly only, goal in life and everything that Black does, from amassing power to eliminating competition is done to minimize the risk of dying. Other colours might sacrifice themselves for things they believe in, but not so Black.
RWU on the other hand doesn't share either's viewpoint. RWU is not concerned with survival, unless of course it is imminent. This results in a society where the sciences and arts are held in higher regard than agriculture and warfare. If RWU was a world, it would be as close to a utopia as it gets, growing tall rather than wide. Even dragons on this world are known more for their inspirational value than their ferocity.
The missing pair for GUB is . Both colours have a very strong sense of justice. For White it is born out of legal obligation, while for Red it is a question of morals and ethics. While both colours often clash with what is right and what is wrong, both colours do agree that there IS a right and wrong.
On the flipside, GUB believes the exact opposite. Green knows that nature just is, Blue sees the world through a clinical lens and Black believes that might makes right. GUB is a combination that would never think about what is and isn't acceptable, but at the same time would never expect the world to owe it either. As a result GUB is extremely pragmatic and uses all tools at its disposal without hesitation. If GUB was a world, it'd be covered in jungle so dense that most inhabitants never reach the murky bottom. Its ecosystem is composed of equally lethal herbivores and predators, causing its sapient inhabitants to struggle for survival and use any means necessary to live to see the the next day. There's also manticores. :^)
I purposefully did not go into further detail on the worlds themselves, because this topic seemed to deal more with philosophies than world building. In case of interest, I could write something up for the worlds though.
^ That was excellent summary of what WBR represents.
About character in this colors, I agree Daenerys is WBR however her white is still stronger than red/black. I think if she gets more villainous with time this will change. Jaime I see him as mono-red in the beginning of the series. Jaime is completely devoid of ambition and will to power to the point he effectively renounces his title as heir of Casterly Rock. I can't see any black in him. And before his development arc I can't see any shred of white either. Sandor I see him as WR. From that series however you forgot to mention Melisandre who I see as one of the most representative of the WBR wedge in all fiction.
But I think the trophy of most WBR in all fiction goes to Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost. "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." is the WBR moto. It is R because it's statement of freedom, to not serve in Heaven. It is B because it is also a statement of ambition, to rule in Hell. And it also W because it admits the difference between Heaven and Hell, good and evil, and the implied superiority of the former over the later.
I would agree that Jaime Lannister has a fundamentally Red personality - he's highly impulsive and largely driven by his emotions, his immediate desires, and by his personal loyalty to people close to him - but I would say his willingness to do anything to protect the power and reputation of House Lannister is very White/Black. His White/Black traits are best displayed in the scene where he convinces Edmure Tully to stand down: He used extreme threats that went against his code of honor in order to secure victory for his faction in a way that minimized the losses on both sides. As for Sandor Clegane, he displays a mercenary side that I feel puts him firmly in Black territory, in addition to his rather obvious White and Red traits.
But I totally agree that Melisandre is an excellent example of a White/Black/Red character, as is Milton's version of Satan. Even their supernatural abilities are firmly White/Black/Red, as they're both associated with fire, light, and shadow. And if we're bringing up classical literature, I would say that Edmond Dantes, the vengenance-driven protagonist of The Count of Monte Cristo, is another great example. Dantes goes to show that White/Black/Red doesn't always have to be stupid or suicidally reckless; White's tactical and organizational skills, Black's ruthless pragmatism, and Red's creativity can produce cunning and flexible strategists on par with the best Blue masterminds.
Another example I was considering was Two-Face, although he's a very unusual example: His good persona would be mono-White and his evil persona would be mono-Black, but the fact that he uses random chance to decide between his better and worse impulses is very Red.
Id say another big weakness for a WBR character is pride. You have someone who lacks green humility and acceptance of their "place in the world" and blue want of self perfection and has whites want of the statues quo with black and red selfishness makes a person who's are pressed to take criticism.
Agreed. Pride is a weakness of Black characters in general, but when you combine it with the fanaticism of White and the recklessness of Red, it can get taken to an almost ridiculous extreme. White/Black/Red's lack of caution and lack of self-reflection are both tied to its lack of humility: It simply can't comprehend the fact that it might be wrong about something, so it's incapable of recognizing when its behavior is immoral or when its conclusions are incorrect or when its methods are ineffective. Of course, not all White/Black/Red characters take their pride to such an extreme; Daenerys is actually quite self-conscious and questions her own decisions a lot, even if she usually ends up going with her first instincts anyway.
I've mulled over the identities of wedges ever since Shards of Alara came out and I found that the most productive way to look at it is to focus on the colour combination that is omitted from the wedge. The reason is that when you combine colours, you get a bit of a mix-and-match dynamic. You can cherry-pick certain elements, because the colours aren't as monolithic as often thought. However, the absence of something has much farther reaching consequences than the presence of an element that might not be universal for the identity.
...
I purposefully did not go into further detail on the worlds themselves, because this topic seemed to deal more with philosophies than world building. In case of interest, I could write something up for the worlds though.
I like your take on how the color triads are affected by the absence of their 'enemy' colors. And I would be interested in seeing your ideas for wedge-colored planes!
(Years ago, before Khans of Tarkir came out, I wondered what Alara-like planes based around wedge colors would be like. I came up with something very similar for White/Black/Red, a plane of brutal empires that were constantly waging wars of ideology and conquest against one another. It wasn't all that far off from what the Mardu Horde ended up looking like, but White/Black/Red is probably the easiest of the wedges to understand, so I guess that was low-hanging fruit. I also envisioned a Blue/Black/Green world where the lines between life, unlife, and artifice were blurred beyond recognition, a society that combined the bio-engineering of the Simic with the pragmatic necromancy of the Golgari. Like Phyrexia, it would be a place where the living and the dead and the undead and the unliving were all seamlessly interwoven into one another, but it would lack the hierarchical and hive mind aspects of both Old and New Phyrexia; after all, this plane would lack White, whereas the current dominant society of New Phyrexia only lacks Red. I never came up with anything concrete for the other three wedges, though.)
Going off of Flisch's post, I imagine the GUR world to have three different major factions, each loosely representing a 2-color pair, with some blending occuring between them:
RG - jungle dwellers interested in experiencing/living with primal nature above anything else. Most spiritual of the factions, valuing raw, visceral experiences and emotions more than intellectual understanding. They live in small family/clan groups on the volcanic islands and perform highly complex rituals aimed at venerating nature and all of its forms of life. UR - seafarers and adventurers. They journey across the seas and explore the islands to (ultimately) find their "true selves" or what they think to be the "truth about the world", developing a multitude of magical and non-magical means to navigate and explore every corner of the world they live in. Most closely associated with the nomadic sphinxes. GU - the faction with the most "academic" approach and also the smallest. in contrast to the seafarers, they want to understand the world more than themselves. They observe, catalogue, classify and collect the flora and fauna of the islands and are loosely organized around a basic framework for further research.
I think this wedge would be a great fit for a partly Polynesia-inspired (sub-)plane in MtG.
That's about right. I saw Strange as black mostly because he outright says he's sacrificing half the universe, including himself, to defeat Thanos. Multiple times, including his last words. And that this is the only way to defeat Thanos.
Four colors would look at "let trillions die to further your goal" and just walk away.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Before Tarkir I had a custom wedge set. These were the 5 wedges. You can find several topics about it in the custom card forums (but it's rather old, I think from 2015 or so).
WBR Vaasch was a nation of exiles and former serves that migrated to inhospitable badlands. The first generations survived by raiding, pillaging and slaving the kingdoms of their former masters. After raiding the neighbor kingdoms to dust, their society faced a existential crises. In the end they survived by the magic nourishment of the fallen angels they worship, the same ones that guided then in the wars of the past. They now live in eternal conflict, fighting amongst each other for the grace of their patron deities. Similar to Mardu in the warrior nation themes but has a far bigger religious background.
URG Umba, a tropical realm with vast seas and scattered islands. In Umba the elements run wild: the sky is permanently cloudy with rain, tornados, lighting storms or volcanic smoke. The weather and it's storm beasts are so aggressive that civilizations couldn't flourish inland and the viashino who stalks the jungles are primitive in their ways. However the merfolks found shelter deep within the seas and there they raised cities which are safer but not quite. These merfolks take Umba's stormy and chaotic environment as a moral example and dedicates themselves to the study of natural magic. Very different from Temur.
BGW Highgad is apparently a abandoned feudal kingdom. In ages past elves ruled and humans served here. During this time longevity was highly associated with elvish nobility and was the fundamental justification for their right to rule. This led the elvenfolk to seek more and more prolonged life until they warped themselves into eternal spirits. They are now immortal but live a twisted existence, haunting the abandoned overgrown halls. These spirits now must decide between living this eternal unlife or live again by reincarnating into the mysterious white trees that covers Highgad landscape. Also very different from Abzan.
RWU Lumia is the most developed of the 5 wedges. Lumia landscape is a massive mountain range with many dwarven, aven and human cities scattered among the peaks. The citizens of lumia are constantly in demand of new gadgets and artifacts, the cities are always trading among themselves using skyships and the stoic aven are always fighting off dwarven pirates and protecting the realm's border. This plane is very different from Jeskai. However it was VERY close to Kaladesh (plane marked by R vs. WU conflict). Even the mechanic (artifact shard tokens which where used to power creatures and spells) was just a different execution of energy.
GUB Sethyr is a continental-size flooded forest. At first glance it appears to be a rather mundane place, despite the big variety of poisonous insects, flowers that induce hallucination and secretive frogman that lives in stony egg-shaped huts. The place is told to have endless underground dungeons and caverns filled with riches, magical artifacts, fantastical creatures and eldritch knowledge. Adventurers from all over the place come seeking these gifts but even when they survive their time in Sethyr, something always change about then. They become aloof, overcome with a sense of wonder and emptiness. Most leave they families behind and come back to the place, searching for closure but end up staying forever, wondering around the lime filled halls and the foggy forests. Flavor wise, very different from the Sultai (except for Delve, which was it's mechanic).
I find it very interesting how close these are from @Flisch and @Mullerornis.
WBG is about mixing White's desire for order and Green's reverence for tradition with Black's need for self-preservation, resulting in the single most stable and unchanging color combination. It combines White/Green's focus on family and community with White/Black's tribalism, resulting in a strictly isolationist social order where people are expected to be devoutly altruistic towards everyone within their designated group (as long as they abide by the group's rules and fulfill their designated purpose within it), and wholly unsympathetic towards everyone outside of it (with the harshest treatment reserved for those who defect from it). Throw in Green/Black's focus on survival at all costs, and you get a tribe or a community or a culture with a very strong and very rigid sense of identity, willing to do anything to defend its culture, traditions, and way of life. Fundamentally, it's the color triad of conservatism.
Its primary tools are endurance, stability, history, and identity. White's core strength lies in unity and altruism, while Black's core strength lies in its pragmatic cynicism and ruthless pursuit of its own interests, but both of these approaches have drawbacks: White is prone to idealistic naivete and can be too self-sacrificing, while Black's selfishness leaves it without the benefits of cooperation. White/Black aims for the best of both worlds by associating the individual with a group, extending the benefits of altruism and cooperation to everyone inside that group while being pragmatically ruthless toward everyone else, and the addition of Green takes it a step further by very clearly defining the group's exact boundaries, giving it a concrete and immutable sense of identity and continuity based around community, cultural traditions, genetic heritage, shared history, or some mix of the above. This makes White/Black/Green groups more cohesive than other groups, preventing them from splitting apart or drifting away from their original values, making them less prone to internal conflict or external subversion, and enabling them to last much longer.
Additionally, Green's core strength lies in its acceptance of the natural order, accepting what is rather than striving for what should be. When combined with the stability of White and the cynical realism of Black, you get a color triad that's utterly determined to ensure its own continued survival, and well aware of exactly what it needs to do in order to withstand whatever the world might throw its way. Green also has the sense to learn from the mistakes of the past and to respect the wisdom of its predecessors, which lends it a sense of perspective and humility not found in the zealous fanaticism of White/Black/Red or the utilitarian perfectionism of White/Blue/Black. All of these traits are evident in the culture, society, and tactics of the Abzan Clan, which has survived for centuries by keeping its defenses strong and keeping its traditions alive, ensuring that the ways of their ancestors will always endure.
Its opposed to Blue/Red, which is the color pairing most associated with creativity, innovation, and novelty. Blue/Red loves to experiment and try new things and make improvements on the status quo. White/Black/Green, on the other hand, is a firm believer in the old adage "if it isn't broken, don't fix it." In its eyes, Blue/Red's innovations are pointless and frivolous indulgences at best, and resources are too scarce to waste on indulgences. At worst, those innovations are dangerous and disruptive threats to the existing order of things. Changing or overturning long-held traditions weakens social bonds, to say nothing of the fact that some of those old rules might be in place for very good reasons, even if those reasons aren't immediately apparent. Allowing new people into a group or a society risks infiltration and sabotage, and even if the newcomers aren't malicious, they probably still have different outlooks and customs and ways of life, which could easily lead to tension and social strife. New technologies could impact the environment or the economy in unexpected ways, some of which could have truly devastating consequences.
White/Black/Green is cynical enough to understand that the world is a dangerous place, that civilization is a thin bubble of safety and security in the harsh, barren, unrelenting desert that is existence and any swift motion could burst that bubble. Society is constantly teetering on the edge of a cliff, and the slightest change in winds could push it over and send it spiraling into an endless pit of chaos. When one wrong move could cause untold devastation, the stakes are too high to allow any experimentation, regardless of the possible benefits. The world is a fragile equilibrium, a precision machine that's far too complicated for any of us to fully understand, and while it may not be perfect, the number of worse configurations far outweigh the number of better ones; precision machines are rarely improved by sudden and random changes. As nature so often proves, sudden mutations in an organism rarely lead to beneficial adaptations; 999,999 times out of 1,000,000, they just lead to sickness, disability, or death. From White/Black/Green's perspective, rapid change is cancer. To put it another way, Blue/Red is a storm, and White/Black/Green is all about weathering storms.
The biggest flaws of White/Black/Green are that it's prone to stagnation, stubbornness, xenophobia, repression, and paranoia. White and Green are both prone to being too rigid, due to White's emphasis on order and Green's emphasis on tradition, and when combined with Black's egotism, the result is a color combination that's utterly averse to any kind of change whatsoever, regardless of how positive or even how necessary it might be. The combination of White self-righteousness, Green complacency, and Black pride make for a color triad that's very set in its ways, wholly unwilling to accept any sort of constructive criticism or advice, and stubbornly determined to stick with its tried-and-true methods even when those methods are no longer effective. Unsurprisingly, it's very bad at adapting to unexpected difficulties or changing circumstances.
White/Black is very suspicious around those outside of its inner circle, and when you combine that with the cultural and/or biological determinism of Green, you get a color triad that's staunchly intolerant of everyone who doesn't fit in its designated group. At best, this results in a policy of staunch isolationism towards outsiders; at worst, it results in a tribe or culture or nation that's downright hostile towards the rest of the world. Green and Black are also the most cynical colors, and when you throw White authoritarianism into the mix, you get a group that's going to be overcautious about everything to an almost absurd extreme. The mixture of White/Black totalitarianism and Green traditionalism also leads White/Black/Green institutions to have extremely repressive rules, which are often enforced in the strictest ways possible.
White/Black/Green characters tend to be rare in modern stories, and mostly show up in medieval or high fantasy settings, since feudal societies tend to be strongly aligned with those colors. A classic example is Macbeth, an initially virtuous yet ambitious nobleman whose desire to gain power ultimately turns him into a murderer, traitor, and tyrant. While his White and Black traits are obvious enough, his concern for his family and for the fate of his bloodline are very Green, as is the fact that he's largely driven by his belief in prophecy; he convinces himself that his actions are justified since he's merely fulfilling his destiny, and resigns himself to defeat when he realizes too late that his destiny is not what he thought it would be.
A very similar but somewhat more benevolent example would be Olenna Tyrell from Game of Thrones, a shrewd and subtle manipulator who acts for the good of her bloodline, her noble house, her kingdom, and Westeros as a whole, in that order. She also uses poison to kill her political rivals, her nickname is the Queen of Thorns, and she almost always wears gold, green, or black outfits. Even the official Tyrell words ("Growing Strong") and sigil (a golden rose surrounded by thorns against a black background) highlight the Great House's strategy of walling themselves off from the rest of the world and outlasting their enemies, a very White/Black/Green approach to war and politics, and whenever they do get actively involved in any conflict, they almost always resort to blockades and siege tactics to starve out their opponents. Boromir from Lord of the Rings is another example of a noble willing to do anything for the sake of his bloodline and his people. His father Denethor has similarly White/Black/Green motivations, though his White traits are largely overshadowed by his Green/Black cynicism, which has metastasized into an all-encompassing nihilistic despair that's consumed most of his sanity. The Wood Elves from The Hobbit are also White/Black/Green, as they combine the White/Green traits common to Tolkien's elves with isolationism, xenophobia, and extreme hostility toward outsiders.
However, not all White/Black/Green societies are primitive; many sci-fi and dystopian settings are fundamentally White/Black/Green as well. The feudal future depicted in the Dune series is a perfect example, with the Houses of the Landsraad being fundamentally White/Black/Green institutions based in maintaining order through hereditary rule. The Dominion from Star Trek is an example of an entire interstellar empire built around White/Black/Green values, with each of its member species serving a designated role in its social order, all for the sake of bringing order to the galaxy through total domination. The civilization from Divergent is an example of a White/Black/Green dystopia, a rigid society with a strict caste system where people are assigned into one of five competing tribes based on their innate characteristics. Likewise, the nation of Panem from The Hunger Games is a repressive dictatorship where people's lives are defined by which district they're born into. The titular Hunger Games themselves are also a White/Black/Green institution, combining the survival-of-the-fittest tooth-and-nail savagery of Green with the corruption and sadism of Black, under a system of rules maintained and enforced by a strict White hierarchy. Yet another example would be the floating city-state of Columbia from Bioshock Infinite, which takes the traditionalism and biological determinism of Green to truly horrifying extremes - a repressive nationalist theocracy based around the civil religion of the United States, with chattel slavery instituted along racial and ethnic lines - and amps up the tribalism of White/Black to a literally apocalyptic level, as the leaders of the city are prepared to annihilate the rest of humanity in order to cleanse the world of everything that isn't them.
For that matter, Father Zachary Hale Comstock, the founder and ruler of Columbia, is an excellent example of an utterly deranged and detestable White/Black/Green villain: A narcissistic Social Darwinist "prophet" whose religious fanaticism is frighteningly genuine and yet still wholly rooted in his own egotism, he seeks to wipe out most of humanity because he believes mankind is irredeemably corrupt (White), because he believes it's his divinely-mandated destiny to cleanse the world (Green), and simply because he can't bear to see anyone be worshiped but him (Black). Another popular example of a White/Black/Green villain would be the film version of Thanos, for reasons I mentioned earlier in this thread. Ra's Al Ghul is a similar example, a terrorist mastermind who seeks to destroy modern civilization and return the world to a primitive state in which humanity will live in harmony with each other and with nature under his strict rule. He also has a deep concern for his family and a deep reverence for his cultural heritage, his immortality and his ability to come back from seemingly fatal defeats aptly demonstrate White/Black/Green's endurance, and his frequent use of poisons and pathogens - on both the small scale as tools of assassination, and on the large scale as weapons of mass destruction - is also fitting for a Green/Black character. The Arrowverse version of Damian Darhk also fits the mold, as his motivations are almost identical to the comic book version of Ra's Al Ghul, plus he uses dark magic fueled by the primordial chaos of nature, which is about as Green/Black as it gets. Darhk's final line - "Humanity is feckless; I wanted to cleanse it of a millennia worth of rot it has been infected by, and I will do it!" - perfectly sums up the annihilationist side of White/Black/Green so commonly seen in its most extreme adherents.
I would argue that in a lot of ways the US is White/Black/Green as well, at least from my observations of it, for a culture that people can relate to. There is a lot of talk of freedom and such, but in terms of actual Red traits they're fairly rare.
I would argue that in a lot of ways the US is White/Black/Green as well, at least from my observations of it, for a culture that people can relate to. There is a lot of talk of freedom and such, but in terms of actual Red traits they're fairly rare.
I wouldn't say that the U.S. as an institution is White/Black/Green (the government itself is White/Black, the founding principles are firmly White/Blue/Red), but in terms of American culture, with its skepticism of outsiders and its emphasis on national traditions and symbols, I would agree.
I was talking more culturally yeah. I think governments in general tend to be White/Black, and the original ideals are rather moot.
And I’d be interested in the shards too. I’d also be interested in a thread on other odd color pie things, like “what happens if Red and Green trade places” or the like.
UBG is about mixing the cold amoral detachment and manipulative nature of Blue with the immoral selfishness of Black and the dog-eat-dog savagery of Green. Green/Black will do anything to survive, while Blue/Black will do anything to thrive, but Blue/Black/Green sees surviving and thriving as the same thing. In its eyes, Green's drive to eat and grow is no different from Blue's desire to perfect itself using whatever resources are available, and no different from Black's desire to acquire power and wealth using any means necessary. Green hunger and Black greed and the Blue desire to improve oneself are all just different expressions of the same fundamental drive - the drive to take whatever you can and use it to build yourself up, the drive to consume, literally or metaphorically. Fundamentally, Blue/Black/Green is about predation.
Its primary tools are realism, efficiency, adaptability, stealth, and total ruthlessness. Green/Blue and Green/Black are both color pairs associated with seeing the world for what it is: Green/Blue is the truth-seeker, the observer studying and examining the world to better understand it, while Green/Black is the cynic, the gritty and pragmatic survivalist that's all too aware of how harsh and unforgiving the world can be. Together, they form a color triad with a deep understanding of the world around it, a color triad that has absolutely no illusions about how the world works, a color triad with a keen awareness of its surroundings that knows exactly how to use everyone and everything in its environment to its advantage.
It knows how to make the most of whatever resources are available, without letting anything go to waste or remain unused. Green/Black is used to surviving for long periods of time with very little sustenance, but it retains its scarcity mindset even in times of plenitude, so it can never hope to move beyond bare subsistence. Conversely, Blue/Black is very skilled at using resources to improve its lot in life, but it doesn't know how to survive when those resources aren't available. Green/Black is like the poor man who wins the lottery and quickly squanders his wealth because he doesn't know what to do with it, while Blue/Black is like the rich investor who goes bankrupt and can't adapt to a life of poverty because she has no idea how to cut expenses or keep a budget. Blue/Black/Green is more like the con artist who's equally talented at grifting common crooks on the street for a few hundred bucks and swindling businessmen in boardrooms for millions of dollars worth of investments. Blue/Black would die of starvation and exposure in the Abzan desert, while Green/Black would be a hopeless and worthless vagabond in the cities of Esper, but Blue/Black/Green could find a way to survive in either. It's wise enough to conserve resources when they're scarce, driven enough to utilize its resources to their fullest potential when they're in abundance, and savvy enough to when the time is right for either.
It displays similar versatility in other areas. Blue, Black, and Green are the colors most associated with stealth: Blue/Black is associated with deception and subtlety, while Green predators rely on physical concealment to stalk and pounce on their prey, taking advantage of cover and camouflage. As a result, Blue/Black/Green knows there's a time to hold back and conserve energy and hide its capabilities, and a time to go all out and fully exert itself and unleash its full strength. It's capable of acting restrained and civilized when interacting with polite society, and just as capable of raw brutal savagery when the veneer of civilization is no longer present. It's capable of feigning helplessness or subservience when it's in a disadvantaged position, but as soon as it has the upper hand, it'll gladly stab its masters in the back and betray anyone who was foolish enough to show it mercy.
Blue/Black/Green has no limitations whatsoever; there is absolutely nothing that it won't do to stay alive and get ahead. While all colors are capable of being ruthless and Black even holds ruthlessness as one of its core values, Blue/Black/Green is the only color combination that's almost wholly defined by total ruthlessness in all things. On its own, Green is savage but fundamentally honest; it may use stealthy tactics, but it won't lie or manipulate people or hide behind laws and social customs. Blue/Black/Green, on the other hand, is a Social Darwinist: It sees society as just another part of nature, and it sees deception and manipulation as simply being natural tactics for a predator to take advantage of. In its eyes, being a social predator is no different than being a natural predator. Green will confront its enemies head-on, even if it means risking defeat; Blue/Black/Green will only confront its enemies head-on when it's certain that it will win.
Its opposed to White/Red, which is the color pairing most associated with altruism, empathy, honor, courage, honesty, and idealism. Blue/Black/Green doesn't have any of those things, and has nothing but scorn and disdain for the suckers who do. In its eyes, the only real purpose in life is to pursue one's own rational self-interest. All living beings, from the lowliest bacterium to the largest and fiercest beast, are driven by the primal urge to survive, to consume, and to grow. Sapient life is no different, and anyone pretending otherwise is just a sentimental fool, a sap who's either too weak or too naive to be a predator and thus destined to be prey. Humans evolved to cooperate and trust each other and make sacrifices for one another because it helped the species as a whole survive, but Blue/Black/Green only cares about its own personal survival. It has no qualms about being a free rider who takes advantage of the fact that other people will be kind and generous and obey laws and make sacrifices, without feeling the need to do any of those things itself.
Even compared to the other two amoral (i.e. Black-aligned, non-White) color triads, Blue/Black/Green is disturbingly lacking in scruples. Black/Red/Green is brutal and violent and bloodthirsty, but it also has a certain survival-of-the-fittest honor: The Black/Red/Green warlord will challenge his rival to a fair fight in order to prove that he's the strongest, and if he loses, then by his own logic he wasn't the strongest and deserved to fall. Blue/Black/Green has a survival-of-the-fittest mentality too, but it has a less restrictive definition of what "fittest" means. In its eyes, the fittest is whoever wins, whether it's through brute force or by poisoning the rival warlord's wine or by convincing his troops to hack him to pieces in his sleep.
Blue/Black/Red is widely seen as the most villainous color triad and has no qualms about using deception, but it generally tends to have some limits to what it will do, even if they're based purely in pride. Blue/Black/Red is all about staying true to oneself, and would rather die than fall short of its own idealized view of itself. But Blue/Black/Green has no ideals, not even narcissistic ones; survival is the only ideal it strives for, and it's not afraid to swallow its pride and beg for its life if that means living another day. Black/Red/Green and Blue/Black/Red are also capable of genuinely caring for others on a personal level, even if they often express those feelings in a twisted way. Blue/Black/Green is completely incapable of caring for anyone but itself. At best, it can like other people, in the same way that one likes a book or a computer, but it still wouldn't hesitate to throw them under the bus if doing so was expedient.
That said, Blue/Black/Green isn't entirely worse than the other two from an ethical perspective. It lacks the bloodlust of Black/Red/Green and the sadism of Blue/Black/Red, so it's a lot less likely to actively seek out violence, to randomly cause harm or destruction just for the hell of it, to pursue vendettas against people who've wronged it, or to engage in purely spiteful behavior when its pride is wounded. After all, it values efficiency and secrecy, so it doesn't want to waste its energy or draw attention to itself unless it can gain something from it.
Blue/Black/Green characters tend to almost always be villainous, even more so than Blue/Black/Red characters. One of the only remotely heroic characters I would consider Blue/Black/Green is Riddick, the interstellar fugitive from the sci-fi series of the same name. A savage and violent beast of a man capable of surviving in even the most hostile environments and escaping from even the most secure prisons, Riddick is frequently assumed to be nothing more than a dumb and impulsive thug - an assumption that often proves fatal for the people who make it. Beneath his brutish exterior is a cunning predator with a keen understanding of human nature and a natural knack for manipulation, one who always ends up getting the drop on all the betrayers and backstabbers who foolishly think they've got the drop on him. Unlike most Blue/Black/Green characters, he's not completely amoral: He's just altruistic enough to help others as long as they don't get in his way, slow him down, or put him at risk; he's (more or less) loyal toward those who help him; he even displays some genuine concern for a select few people. Still, he's far from altruistic enough to be considered White and far from empathetic enough to be considered Red; whenever the people he cares about get killed, he reacts with the same level of anger and sadness that you'd expect from someone who just had their favorite lamp broken.
A similar example is Sabertooth, who's basically Riddick without his few redeeming traits. Like Riddick, he's at once a near-feral monster and a subtle master of psychological manipulation, with decades of combat experience and extensive training in espionage and interrogation, equally capable of surviving in the wilderness for years at a time or infiltrating top-secret government facilities. He's a ruthless mercenary who'll work for mutant supremacists one day and anti-mutant bigots the next, who's willing to team up with the X-Men against a common threat and stab them in the back as soon as they're not useful to him anymore, who has absolutely no compunctions about hurting children, taking hostages, brutally torturing people, or casually murdering anyone who happens to be in his way. Another Blue/Black/Green X-Men villain is Apocalypse, who combines Blue's perfectionism with Green/Black's survival of the fittest mentality and takes it to its most extreme conclusion, a drive to accelerate the process of evolution by purging the world of all inferior beings. Mr. Sinister is an even better example, as he has the same worldview and the same goals, plus he's also a geneticist who uses very Green/Blue methods in his quest to create the perfect lifeform.
Albert Wesker from Resident Evil likewise seeks to transform himself into a living god through biological modification, with the ultimate goal of perfecting the world by cleansing it of all imperfect forms of life. Darth Plagueis from Star Wars is Blue/Black/Green as well; a rare example of a purely cold and stoic Sith Lord, he lacks the raw anger and hatred that drive most Sith, instead being motivated by a desire to live forever so he can keep gaining more knowledge and more power for eternity, so he can keep expanding his influence until the entire universe falls under his domain. An example of a Blue/Black/Green antagonist on a much smaller scale is Dr. Henry Wu from Jurassic World, who uses Green/Blue methods (cloning and genetic engineering) in the service of purely Black goals (making a profit by creating new types of dinosaurs for the titular park).
Villains that seek to assimilate others into themselves are also fundamentally Blue/Black/Green in nature. Ego from Guardians of the Galaxy is a perfect example: As its name implies, it's the ultimate egotist, as well as the ultimate Darwinist - a cosmic intelligence that believes the purpose of all life is to survive and grow by consuming resources, and seeks to fulfill this purpose on the largest scale possible by absorbing the rest of the universe into itself. Despite its omnicidal goals, it sees its actions as fully justified, for very Green reasons: It views itself as the highest form of life in the universe, the natural endpoint of evolution, and thus the destined "winner" of the game that is existence. Father from Fullmetal Alchemist is a similar example, a demonic entity that seeks to perfect itself and become God by absorbing the souls of all other living things. It wants complete and total knowledge of everything that exists, which it hopes to gain by making all things a part of itself (Blue); it wants the freedom of existing without constraint, in the most literal and absolute sense possible, by having nothing else in the universe exist outside of it (Black); and like Ego, it fully believes that it's simply doing what it's supposed to be doing and fulfilling its destiny as a superior being (Green). It also completely lacks Red traits, having fully purged itself of all "vices" and "weaknesses" (including its capacity to feel empathy or any sort of emotional attachment).
I think you emphasise a bit too much the negative parts. Green/Blue identities tend to have a sense of perspective, which is why for the most part they tend to focused on the "True Neutral" archetype or even the wise good person. Green after all values holism, and with Black thrown in it sometimes is portrayed as positively embracing all aspects of nature, as the Golgari generally are depicted.
Its unempathetic and ruthless, but it can perfectly co-exist with others. The Eternal Vows interpretation of The Thing comes to mind; dumb comic, but the idea of Things who realise overconsumption is bad is cool. The Gray Jedi characters that aren't Red are another good example, being in touch with the darker aspects of themselves but not going overly emotional.
Fair enough. Part of the issue is that the actual Sultai Clan from Khans of Tarkir was portrayed in an extremely negative light, and I emphasized a lot of the traits that they displayed, such as their callous disregard for life, their insatiable greed and hunger for power, and their extremely manipulative and predatory nature. I did try to highlight some of their few semi-positive traits too, such as the fact that they refuse to ever let anything go to waste despite their extreme opulence, but those vaguely redeeming qualities are greatly overshadowed by all the ways in which they're just absolutely horrible. They're also an example of the wedge centered around Black, so any examples centered around Green or Blue will probably be considerably less awful.
I do think that utter ruthlessness and a lack of prescriptive morality (i.e. firmly-held principles that say you should do this or shouldn't do that) are fundamental aspects of the color triad, but my post might've overemphasized the negative aspects of that and underplayed the positive aspects. Blue/Black/Green is more likely to be amoral than immoral, and while it's almost never purely Good, it can be Neutral just as often as it can be Evil. As I mentioned, it's a lot less likely to act on spite or sadism or bloodlust than Red. It also lacks the fanaticism of White, and combined with Green/Blue objectivity, this makes it more likely to simply leave other people alone than a lot of other color combinations. It won't hurt people just for fun, or simply to prove a point, or for the sake of some abstract "greater good." In fact, it generally won't hurt people at all unless there's something it can gain from hurting them. And, as with Riddick, it can help people even when it has nothing to gain by doing so, as long as it's not really losing or risking anything by helping them either.
The Gray Jedi are good examples of semi-heroic Blue/Black/Green characters, as is Darth Vectivus, who's the closest thing the Star Wars universe has to a benevolent Sith Lord: "Upon his own ascension to Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vectivus retained the principles and ethical standing of his previous existence. With that foundation he avoided the trappings of the Sith who preceded him; he was never motivated by galactic domination or an all-consuming hatred of the Jedi, and he instead chose to live the remainder of his days luxuriously in the company of his loved ones. However, Vectivus was still a ruthless individual, partly connected to his background as a businessman, and was willing to do whatever it took to succeed, a trait he promoted in others as well. ... Violence, galactic ambition, and the eradication of the Sith's philosophical Jedi rivals were of no consequence to him; his contention was to simply immerse himself in Sith lore and study the galaxy."
All in all I agree GUB is the wedge of moral nihilism, apathy and aloofness. But I think the immediate consequence of not believing and even opposing WR sense justice is not necessarily a predatory and parasitic mind set.
A moral nihilist does not have to be a bad person. Just because you don't believe anything is really wrong don't mean you have to be a practitioner of the things people consider wrong. It's not like evil is inherently rewarding way of living and the only reason people stay away from that is this internal sense of justice.
GUB may not be evil simply because they think 'evil' is inefficient. They may even have this internal feeling of ethics and morals but they don't elevate it to a powerful ideal, a connection to God or anything like that. They interpret it as just the way the mind tells you "don't do that, it's not worth it".
So I think GUB is quite terrible at admitting riskless, commonly practiced evils are wrong. They might be pro-slavery in a very pro-slavery society and see abolitionism as WR nonsense. However because they lack strong ideals they will more easily step down and adapt to the new ways, while W and R aligned slave owners will fight because of their strong belief in the ideals of property rights (W) or because they find abolitionism humiliating for then (R).
I think GUB biggest qualities are pragmatism, non-judgemental approach to things, flexibility and adaptability. They are easy to negotiate and work with for as long as people appeal to their interests and not their emotions. Their lack of moral compass are remediated by the fact they don't resist authority - while they willingness to play along are hardly ever taken advantage off.
Yeah, the Sultai as a worldbuilding faction are just plain horrible. They're literally cartoon villains who are so impossible to take seriously that could could interchange with any Black faction.
Kind of a shame too, since they hinted at some development with the castes thing, but in the end it didn't even matter how they lost the Green in DOT.
One thing I noted going through that is that you focused a lot on what Black/Green and Blue/Black bring to the table, but not a lot of what Green/Blue brings to the table, if at all. I feel like Green/Blue could pull it out a bit from the kind of... negative mire it seems to be in otherwise, even if the Sultai didn't achieve that.
If it's GUB centered in G (unlike the Sultai), the basic MO really seems to be similar to how predators behave in the wild. They hunt and kill others and in some cases even their own offspring; but in most cases they're not going around killing randomly for sport. They kill because they have to sustain themselves. If you extrapolate this to humans and other more intelligent fantasy-species, you get people that can be aggressive, but only as long as they're profiting off it in a personal way - not for a larger group (family members at most, but that doesn't mean all of them are included everytime), not for some kind of ideology, but (ultimately) just for themselves, because whatever they get quenches their innate hunger for resources, knowledge, power etc. However, because the focus is on G and not B, they wouldn't list superficial personal gain as one of the main reasons for their actions themselves but rather some kind of subtly driving, maybe eben subconscious "primal urge". A predefined and unchangeable, but often rather vague goal (G) is achieved through cunning and pragmatism (UB).
They can be powerful and helpful allies if you understand them and/or know how to appeal to their desires, but are quick to change sides if they see a better opportunity to get to the stuff they want. The GU in the wedge stands for stands for how they constantly search and adapt with an open mind in order to find it.
I think we're also downplaying Green's values a bit here. With an emphasis on its enemy colours its more likely to be more flexible and pragmatic, but it still has concepts of holism, community and interconnectivity. This is for example a possible explanation for the caste systems in the Sultai, and their absence in the Silumgar.
A positive example would be a character with Green's best traits and none of its worst (fatalism, anti-artifice, et cetera).
Yes, I think it's easy to overlook/deemphasize G's holism and community themes in this wedge because of the other two colors. With what we have so far it’s easy to envision what an individual GUB person would be like, but it becomes harder when you start thinking about a group or society defined by a GUBworldview.
I think some form of tribalism and close-knit, but overall relatively small communities would play a big role (“hunting packs”, if you want to go back to the predator metaphor). WB are the colors most associated with the concept of “caring about your group and only about that group”, but love/loyalty/attachment to a group of close people is personal enough to not fall into any color specifically. You only become W when you start caring about social organization, structure, rules of coexistence and its benefits on a larger scale. W values community because of its structuring power and the benefit it brings to all its members; G on the other hand values it because it is the “natural mode” for a species to exist in because it allows for the thriving and survival of most of its members as a whole. W would go out of its way to change a system if it believed the changes would make it more just and morally sound, even if the system was already operating fairly well without the changes. Communities centered in G would be far less willing to do that and would instead essentially go by the motto “never change a running system”. Depending on how you look at it, this could be seen as either fatalism or wisdom (which in MtG is closely associated with GU) – wisdom in the sense of an understanding of how difficult it often is for a single person or even a group to fundamentally alter a preestablished order and how attempting to change it head-on can often prove to be futile or even ultimately detrimental.
Basically GUB communities are good in responding to changes in the system, but are very unlikely to change the system itself just for the sake of change. Instead of consciously trying to change it from the outside, they will instead (passively) change it by their actions from the inside – they’ll allow evolution of the system to play out, so to say. But of course they’ll do everything it takes to ensure that their own members stay at the top of the metaphorical evolutionary chain or achieve a higher place within it. They will do that by understanding the system as holistically as possible and then choosing the optimal path of action.
I could see a GUB faction having a big mercantile theme, perhaps a confederation of merchants (f.e. the Hanseatic League). Fittingly the Sultai have already been associated with wealth and riches, even though the villainy theme was played up due to B being to focus color (Villainous Wealth). Because of this theme’s association with greed, it has often been linked with B. However, it doesn’t have to be if trade and commerce are portrayed as being the faction’s main means of “survival” in society. This faction wouldn’t acquire riches with the main goal to gain power, but to “keep the clan alive”, so to say. Unlike a WB group with a finance/money/commerce theme, they wouldn’t be interested in rebuilding the system to ensure they stay on top forever because they’d see it as a resource-intensive and megalomaniacal attempt at something that might not work out in the end anyway. Instead they’d focus on constantly searching for new opportunities and strategies in order to keep going “just a little longer”, constantly transforming themselves. It’s a very corporate mindset and in a sense pretty modern/contemporary.
(Some of my points may have already been made by other posters, but I just decided to write this out anyway...)
Its primary tools are speed, bravery, decisiveness, and ruthlessness. It combines White's willingness to do anything in the name of a higher cause, Black's willingness to sacrifice anyone for the sake of achieving one's goals, and Red's willingness to make bold split-second decisions and jump into action at a moment's notice. It's the most courageous of the color triads, but it can also be the most brutal and violent of them, willing to slaughter its enemies by the hundreds and let its own allies be slaughtered by the thousands if that's what it takes to achieve victory. The Mardu Horde aptly demonstrates the unity, devotion, courage, swiftness, and power of White/Black/Red, as well as the zealous tribalistic ruthlessness endemic to it.
Its opposed to Green/Blue, which is the color pairing most associated with passivity, inaction, and uncertainty. Green and Blue are the two slowest colors, and while they're both associated with change, it tends to be more of the gradual sort. Green is about slow, steady, natural growth, while Blue is about carefully making incremental improvements that have been proven to work through a cautious process of trial-and-error experimentation. In other words, they both require time to grow and evolve and thrive, to fulfill their potential and become all that they can be. In contrast, White/Black/Red doesn't have the patience to cultivate a garden. It wants radical and drastic change immediately, because something needs to be done.
Green/Blue wants to sit back and wait and see how things turn out before taking action, to analyze the situation and figure out exactly what's going on before committing to a major decision. Green/Blue is hesitant to act because it knows it could be wrong about things; maybe the situation isn't actually what it seems like, and what seems like a good idea now could turn out to be a huge mistake. White/Black/Red doesn't feel any such need for caution or hesitation, because it knows for an absolute certainty that it's doing the right thing, that whatever choice it makes is going to be the correct one. And besides, when there are so many things wrong with the world now, hesitation is an indulgence that White/Black/Red simply can't afford. From a White/Black/Red perspective, the cautious approach is unethical, cowardly, and goes against one's own interests.
While the Green hippies and pacifists are preaching peace and tolerance and forgiveness, White/Black/Red is clamoring for war and marching off to fight on the front lines, because if we don't strike first, the enemy will. While the Blue lawyers and judges are fussing over civil rights and due process, White/Black/Red is out on the streets, gunning down criminals before they can hurt anyone else. While all the Green/Blue analysts and scientists are fretting over trying to see the "big picture" and warning everyone about economic and environmental repercussions, White/Black/Red is taking up arms to defend civilization against the barbarians at our gates and the thugs inside our walls. To White/Black/Red, Green/Blue is a spineless weakling that's neither altruistic enough to stand up for others nor driven enough to stand up for itself.
The biggest flaws of White/Black/Red, rather unsurprisingly, are its lack of caution and its lack of stability. Like Red, it's prone to making mistakes because it acts too hastily without fully assessing its circumstances or understanding its situation - and due to its White/Black desire to affect society at large, its mistakes tend to be bigger in scale and more dramatic in consequence than those Red makes on its own. Like White, it's prone to doing absolutely terrible things because it believes it's serving some greater good, and when you combine that with the emotional impulsiveness of Red and the self-centeredness of Black, you get a color triad that's going to do whatever it feels is right, regardless of the actual consequences. It shares White/Red's propensity for Honor Before Reason, except its Black egotism means that even its sense of "honor" is often self-serving and hypocritical. As a result, it can easily become a Tautological Templar, certain that it's right because its cause is just, and certain that its cause is just because it's right.
It's also the least stable of all the color combinations. As I mentioned above, it doesn't cultivate gardens, which means it also doesn't plant crops. It prefers raiding and conquering to farming and building, and it's not overly concerned with what will happen when there are no farms left to raid and no cities left to conquer. In many ways, it defines itself by its enemies, and the innate tension between the righteousness and orderliness of White and the raw wanton destructiveness of Black/Red can cause the color triad to come apart at the seams when there are no external threats left for it to fight against. Also, it often fails to understand that sudden and sweeping changes are usually a lot less likely to produce positive or lasting outcomes than incremental changes.
It's the color triad of the police officer who plants evidence on a suspect because he knows they're guilty anyway; the vigilante who goes around killing rapists and murderers because the cops and the courts always let them get off on technicalities; the warhawk who wants to invade rival nations before they can become a threat; the jingoist who wishes his country would just nuke its enemies back to the Stone Age instead of pussyfooting around with regime change and nation building; the general who looks over a barren war-torn wasteland and calls it peace, who looks upon a battlefield where thousands of his soldiers lay dead and calls it victory; the revolutionary who thinks we need to overthrow the government now, regardless of how many lives it costs, because each day that the current system remains in place is another day that homeless people will be starving in the streets. Fundamentally, it's the color triad of direct action.
Like Blue/Black/Red, White/Black/Red is a color triad that has a lot of representation in popular media, particularly among anti-heroes and anti-villains. Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones is an example of an (almost) purely heroic White/Black/Red character, while Jaime Lannister and Sandor Clegane are both examples of White/Black/Red anti-heroes from the same series. Mad Max is another example of a White/Black/Red hero, albeit a particularly dark one, as he always manages to retain some sliver of altruism and idealism even as his sanity steadily degrades. Caesar's Legion from Fallout: New Vegas is an example of an entire White/Black/Red society, driven to bring order and civilization to the Wasteland through the cruelest and most sadistic means possible. An example of a White/Black/Red villain would be Megatron from Transformers, a revolutionary-turned-tyrant who led his fellow machines in an uprising against their oppressive masters, only to become a ruthless and oppressive conqueror himself upon seizing power.
Maro considers The Punisher to be White/Red and Rorschach to be White/Black, but I see them both as being White/Black/Red; the main difference between them is that The Punisher is motivated primarily by rage and despair over losing his family (Red), while Rorschach is motivated primarily by a sense of nihilism over the evil inherent in man (Black), but The Punisher is fairly nihilistic too, Rorschach is no stranger to anger and hatred, and they both use Red/Black methods like intimidation and torture in the service of an ultimately White sense of justice. Plenty of other similar grim-and-gritty comic book anti-heroes would fall under this color triad too - probably more than I could hope to list, though Venom, Ghost Rider, and Red Hulk are a few that immediately come to mind. The modern film version of Batman is White/Black/Red as well, since the Nolan and Snyder movies downplay his Blue detective skills while playing up his brutality and the intensity of the emotions that drive him. Plenty of comic book villains are White/Black/Red as well, with the Netflix version of The Kingpin being a particularly well-developed and three-dimensional example. Dexter Morgan is an example of the White/Black/Red vigilante archetype in a more realistic setting; he's a serial killer driven by an insatiable bloodlust (Red), and displays sociopathic ruthlessness in covering his tracks and protecting himself (Black), but he has a strict code of honor that compels him to only target other murderers (White).
But the quintessential example of a White/Black/Red hero and a White/Black/Red villain is Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. Maro considers him Red/Black, since he's a Sith Lord who uses anger and hatred to fuel his power so that he can exert his dominance over others. However, he also has some strong White traits: He was originally a member of the White-aligned Jedi Order, seeking to do good and protect galactic civilization, and even after his fall to the Dark Side, he's motivated primarily by a desire to bring peace, order, and stability to the galaxy, albeit through utterly ruthless methods. Unlike his master Darth Sidious (Blue/Black/Red), for whom the entire Galactic Empire is nothing more than a vanity project scaled up to unimaginable extremes, Darth Vader is truly devoted to an ideal greater than himself, which is what makes him so compelling as both a hero and a villain.
The utopian socialist/communist ideal is definitely WUR. The Federation from Star Trek is actually a great example of a WUR society, of a very different sort than the isolationist Airbenders or the militaristic Outer Heaven enclaves, and a lot of fans consider the Federation to be socialist or communist (though it might be more properly described as a post-scarcity economic system).
However, I'd classify a lot of real life communist revolutionaries and insurgencies and dictatorships to be WBR, as they're primarily driven by solidarity among the working classes and a hatred of the elites (the latter of which Marx himself would've disapproved of), along with a fervent passion for immediate radical change to correct the injustices of the past and present. Communists of the Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist sort definitely wouldn't be WUR. If anything, I'd say the Soviet Union and Maoist China were actually purely WB institutions, having lost even their R revolutionary fervor after the first few years.
About character in this colors, I agree Daenerys is WBR however her white is still stronger than red/black. I think if she gets more villainous with time this will change. Jaime I see him as mono-red in the beginning of the series. Jaime is completely devoid of ambition and will to power to the point he effectively renounces his title as heir of Casterly Rock. I can't see any black in him. And before his development arc I can't see any shred of white either. Sandor I see him as WR. From that series however you forgot to mention Melisandre who I see as one of the most representative of the WBR wedge in all fiction.
But I think the trophy of most WBR in all fiction goes to Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost. "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." is the WBR moto. It is R because it's statement of freedom, to not serve in Heaven. It is B because it is also a statement of ambition, to rule in Hell. And it also W because it admits the difference between Heaven and Hell, good and evil, and the implied superiority of the former over the later.
BGU Control
R Aggro
Standard - For Fun
BG Auras
Idk I personally think Daenerys is an example of nearly being equally all three. Yes she wants peace and order for her people (W), she very much want to be in charge and on top (B) and isn't keen on just sitting back to let things happen (R and cuz of dragons).
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
I will not go as much into detail as KarnTerrier, because I guess despite some differences the basics will likely be the same. So I will focus on the omitted pair.
The missing pair in WBR is . What both colours have in common is a sense of wonder. Green and Blue want to understand the world, although their methods couldn't be more different: Green looks within, while Blue looks without. Green wants to understand its own role in the grand scheme of things, while Blue wants to understand the universe itself and extrapolate its own importance from there. Both colours deal with a gradual awareness of their surroundings, approaching this from different angles. But for both colours the journey is as important if not more so than the destination. Blue wants to learn, Green simply goes along with whatever destiny has in store for it.
This means that WBR does not care about the mysteries of the world. It has its own idea of how the world works. WBR is driven by dogma and bias. Knowledge is passed down from figures of authority like spiritial leaders or warlords. If WBR was a world, it'd be a wartorn landscape of warring nations fighting wars born out of zealotry, opportunism or perceived injustices with armies led by angels.
The missing pair for URG is , both colours that deal with society, although like with the example before, approach it from a different angle. White focuses on the interactions of society in order to stabilize and protect. It looks at society as a whole to make sure that everyone, itself included has a good life. Black on the other hand interacts with society from the reverse. It does not build, it exploits. It does not want to change the system, only use it for its own needs. Black is the most individualistic colour and yet one of the two colours that needs society the most to thrive. Without a society and anyone else to compare itself to, Black's motivations would crumble. Black is all about comparing and measuring itself against others.
This means that URG is not concerned about societal concerns at all. Whereas Black is used as the prime example of individualism, URG is the prime example of individuality. URG does not care about other people. It does not live in a society. There are no rules and no groups apart from loose familial units. URG seeks its own motivations, be they out of curiosity, emotion or spirituality. It goes its own way and won't let anyone else tell it what to do, nor will it get distracted by what the others have done. URG lacks both peer pressure and jealousy. If URG was a world, its inhabitants would travel the vast ocean each for their own reasons, the few volcanic islands making a permanent stay and the development of civilizations impossible. Many would seek the counsel of or follow the nomadic Sphinxes, who themselves are on a perpetual quest of self-finding.
The missing pair for BGW is , both colours that are ultimately about innovation. Blue is driven by the accumulation of knowledge, which inevitably leads to breakthroughs and new insights as well as technologies, while red is the colour of creativity, having spontaneous ideas, but also being passionate about its interests. Red is the colour of impulsiveness, but when it has found soemthing that interests it, it keeps working on it, finding new ways in the process. Blue and Red are the two colours most associated with change, though Blue tries to bring change actively through progress whereas Red comes across new things by accident and latches onto them, because they sound good.
Meanwhile white craves stability, green likes the world the way it is and black is afraid of losing its status. BGW does not want things to change. It is content with how things are. (At least as long as black is at the top.) BGW is the most traditionalist and indeed stagnant colour combination of all. If BGW was a world, its society would live in a strict caste system born out of tradition, with demons ruling at the top with promises of reincarnation. (Even souls are recycled here.)
The missing pair for RWU is . What both colours have in common is that both care about survival the most. While obviously all colours care about survival, these two believe they truly understand it, though again, coming from different angles. Green sees the threads of mortality woven throughout everything and understands that death, as much as life, is everywhere. All beings must feed and eventually return their own biomass back into the soil. For green survival isn't an end goal, but a key concept in the dynamics that govern the natural world. Black on the other hand sees survival as the, possibly only, goal in life and everything that Black does, from amassing power to eliminating competition is done to minimize the risk of dying. Other colours might sacrifice themselves for things they believe in, but not so Black.
RWU on the other hand doesn't share either's viewpoint. RWU is not concerned with survival, unless of course it is imminent. This results in a society where the sciences and arts are held in higher regard than agriculture and warfare. If RWU was a world, it would be as close to a utopia as it gets, growing tall rather than wide. Even dragons on this world are known more for their inspirational value than their ferocity.
The missing pair for GUB is . Both colours have a very strong sense of justice. For White it is born out of legal obligation, while for Red it is a question of morals and ethics. While both colours often clash with what is right and what is wrong, both colours do agree that there IS a right and wrong.
On the flipside, GUB believes the exact opposite. Green knows that nature just is, Blue sees the world through a clinical lens and Black believes that might makes right. GUB is a combination that would never think about what is and isn't acceptable, but at the same time would never expect the world to owe it either. As a result GUB is extremely pragmatic and uses all tools at its disposal without hesitation. If GUB was a world, it'd be covered in jungle so dense that most inhabitants never reach the murky bottom. Its ecosystem is composed of equally lethal herbivores and predators, causing its sapient inhabitants to struggle for survival and use any means necessary to live to see the the next day. There's also manticores. :^)
I purposefully did not go into further detail on the worlds themselves, because this topic seemed to deal more with philosophies than world building. In case of interest, I could write something up for the worlds though.
I would agree that Jaime Lannister has a fundamentally Red personality - he's highly impulsive and largely driven by his emotions, his immediate desires, and by his personal loyalty to people close to him - but I would say his willingness to do anything to protect the power and reputation of House Lannister is very White/Black. His White/Black traits are best displayed in the scene where he convinces Edmure Tully to stand down: He used extreme threats that went against his code of honor in order to secure victory for his faction in a way that minimized the losses on both sides. As for Sandor Clegane, he displays a mercenary side that I feel puts him firmly in Black territory, in addition to his rather obvious White and Red traits.
But I totally agree that Melisandre is an excellent example of a White/Black/Red character, as is Milton's version of Satan. Even their supernatural abilities are firmly White/Black/Red, as they're both associated with fire, light, and shadow. And if we're bringing up classical literature, I would say that Edmond Dantes, the vengenance-driven protagonist of The Count of Monte Cristo, is another great example. Dantes goes to show that White/Black/Red doesn't always have to be stupid or suicidally reckless; White's tactical and organizational skills, Black's ruthless pragmatism, and Red's creativity can produce cunning and flexible strategists on par with the best Blue masterminds.
Another example I was considering was Two-Face, although he's a very unusual example: His good persona would be mono-White and his evil persona would be mono-Black, but the fact that he uses random chance to decide between his better and worse impulses is very Red.
Agreed. Pride is a weakness of Black characters in general, but when you combine it with the fanaticism of White and the recklessness of Red, it can get taken to an almost ridiculous extreme. White/Black/Red's lack of caution and lack of self-reflection are both tied to its lack of humility: It simply can't comprehend the fact that it might be wrong about something, so it's incapable of recognizing when its behavior is immoral or when its conclusions are incorrect or when its methods are ineffective. Of course, not all White/Black/Red characters take their pride to such an extreme; Daenerys is actually quite self-conscious and questions her own decisions a lot, even if she usually ends up going with her first instincts anyway.
I like your take on how the color triads are affected by the absence of their 'enemy' colors. And I would be interested in seeing your ideas for wedge-colored planes!
(Years ago, before Khans of Tarkir came out, I wondered what Alara-like planes based around wedge colors would be like. I came up with something very similar for White/Black/Red, a plane of brutal empires that were constantly waging wars of ideology and conquest against one another. It wasn't all that far off from what the Mardu Horde ended up looking like, but White/Black/Red is probably the easiest of the wedges to understand, so I guess that was low-hanging fruit. I also envisioned a Blue/Black/Green world where the lines between life, unlife, and artifice were blurred beyond recognition, a society that combined the bio-engineering of the Simic with the pragmatic necromancy of the Golgari. Like Phyrexia, it would be a place where the living and the dead and the undead and the unliving were all seamlessly interwoven into one another, but it would lack the hierarchical and hive mind aspects of both Old and New Phyrexia; after all, this plane would lack White, whereas the current dominant society of New Phyrexia only lacks Red. I never came up with anything concrete for the other three wedges, though.)
- The RWB place is Shemaharesh/Shemharesh, a Mesopotamian-inspired empire world with decadence, sexism, archons and zombie prostitutes.
- The GUR place is Unaktil, a frozen world kind of like what the Temur ended up being. Except with evil sphinxes and genocidal elves.
- The WBG place is Bhamarivo, a malagasy-inspired world where civilisation and the wilds are at odds.
- The URW place is Daganavia, a sky world. Least developed in retrospect.
- The BGU place is Ranmin, a sea world with expressionistic merfolk courts, environmentalist naga and cunning djinn.
RG - jungle dwellers interested in experiencing/living with primal nature above anything else. Most spiritual of the factions, valuing raw, visceral experiences and emotions more than intellectual understanding. They live in small family/clan groups on the volcanic islands and perform highly complex rituals aimed at venerating nature and all of its forms of life.
UR - seafarers and adventurers. They journey across the seas and explore the islands to (ultimately) find their "true selves" or what they think to be the "truth about the world", developing a multitude of magical and non-magical means to navigate and explore every corner of the world they live in. Most closely associated with the nomadic sphinxes.
GU - the faction with the most "academic" approach and also the smallest. in contrast to the seafarers, they want to understand the world more than themselves. They observe, catalogue, classify and collect the flora and fauna of the islands and are loosely organized around a basic framework for further research.
I think this wedge would be a great fit for a partly Polynesia-inspired (sub-)plane in MtG.
Four colors would look at "let trillions die to further your goal" and just walk away.
On phasing:
WBR Vaasch was a nation of exiles and former serves that migrated to inhospitable badlands. The first generations survived by raiding, pillaging and slaving the kingdoms of their former masters. After raiding the neighbor kingdoms to dust, their society faced a existential crises. In the end they survived by the magic nourishment of the fallen angels they worship, the same ones that guided then in the wars of the past. They now live in eternal conflict, fighting amongst each other for the grace of their patron deities. Similar to Mardu in the warrior nation themes but has a far bigger religious background.
URG Umba, a tropical realm with vast seas and scattered islands. In Umba the elements run wild: the sky is permanently cloudy with rain, tornados, lighting storms or volcanic smoke. The weather and it's storm beasts are so aggressive that civilizations couldn't flourish inland and the viashino who stalks the jungles are primitive in their ways. However the merfolks found shelter deep within the seas and there they raised cities which are safer but not quite. These merfolks take Umba's stormy and chaotic environment as a moral example and dedicates themselves to the study of natural magic. Very different from Temur.
BGW Highgad is apparently a abandoned feudal kingdom. In ages past elves ruled and humans served here. During this time longevity was highly associated with elvish nobility and was the fundamental justification for their right to rule. This led the elvenfolk to seek more and more prolonged life until they warped themselves into eternal spirits. They are now immortal but live a twisted existence, haunting the abandoned overgrown halls. These spirits now must decide between living this eternal unlife or live again by reincarnating into the mysterious white trees that covers Highgad landscape. Also very different from Abzan.
RWU Lumia is the most developed of the 5 wedges. Lumia landscape is a massive mountain range with many dwarven, aven and human cities scattered among the peaks. The citizens of lumia are constantly in demand of new gadgets and artifacts, the cities are always trading among themselves using skyships and the stoic aven are always fighting off dwarven pirates and protecting the realm's border. This plane is very different from Jeskai. However it was VERY close to Kaladesh (plane marked by R vs. WU conflict). Even the mechanic (artifact shard tokens which where used to power creatures and spells) was just a different execution of energy.
GUB Sethyr is a continental-size flooded forest. At first glance it appears to be a rather mundane place, despite the big variety of poisonous insects, flowers that induce hallucination and secretive frogman that lives in stony egg-shaped huts. The place is told to have endless underground dungeons and caverns filled with riches, magical artifacts, fantastical creatures and eldritch knowledge. Adventurers from all over the place come seeking these gifts but even when they survive their time in Sethyr, something always change about then. They become aloof, overcome with a sense of wonder and emptiness. Most leave they families behind and come back to the place, searching for closure but end up staying forever, wondering around the lime filled halls and the foggy forests. Flavor wise, very different from the Sultai (except for Delve, which was it's mechanic).
I find it very interesting how close these are from @Flisch and @Mullerornis.
BGU Control
R Aggro
Standard - For Fun
BG Auras
Its primary tools are endurance, stability, history, and identity. White's core strength lies in unity and altruism, while Black's core strength lies in its pragmatic cynicism and ruthless pursuit of its own interests, but both of these approaches have drawbacks: White is prone to idealistic naivete and can be too self-sacrificing, while Black's selfishness leaves it without the benefits of cooperation. White/Black aims for the best of both worlds by associating the individual with a group, extending the benefits of altruism and cooperation to everyone inside that group while being pragmatically ruthless toward everyone else, and the addition of Green takes it a step further by very clearly defining the group's exact boundaries, giving it a concrete and immutable sense of identity and continuity based around community, cultural traditions, genetic heritage, shared history, or some mix of the above. This makes White/Black/Green groups more cohesive than other groups, preventing them from splitting apart or drifting away from their original values, making them less prone to internal conflict or external subversion, and enabling them to last much longer.
Additionally, Green's core strength lies in its acceptance of the natural order, accepting what is rather than striving for what should be. When combined with the stability of White and the cynical realism of Black, you get a color triad that's utterly determined to ensure its own continued survival, and well aware of exactly what it needs to do in order to withstand whatever the world might throw its way. Green also has the sense to learn from the mistakes of the past and to respect the wisdom of its predecessors, which lends it a sense of perspective and humility not found in the zealous fanaticism of White/Black/Red or the utilitarian perfectionism of White/Blue/Black. All of these traits are evident in the culture, society, and tactics of the Abzan Clan, which has survived for centuries by keeping its defenses strong and keeping its traditions alive, ensuring that the ways of their ancestors will always endure.
Its opposed to Blue/Red, which is the color pairing most associated with creativity, innovation, and novelty. Blue/Red loves to experiment and try new things and make improvements on the status quo. White/Black/Green, on the other hand, is a firm believer in the old adage "if it isn't broken, don't fix it." In its eyes, Blue/Red's innovations are pointless and frivolous indulgences at best, and resources are too scarce to waste on indulgences. At worst, those innovations are dangerous and disruptive threats to the existing order of things. Changing or overturning long-held traditions weakens social bonds, to say nothing of the fact that some of those old rules might be in place for very good reasons, even if those reasons aren't immediately apparent. Allowing new people into a group or a society risks infiltration and sabotage, and even if the newcomers aren't malicious, they probably still have different outlooks and customs and ways of life, which could easily lead to tension and social strife. New technologies could impact the environment or the economy in unexpected ways, some of which could have truly devastating consequences.
White/Black/Green is cynical enough to understand that the world is a dangerous place, that civilization is a thin bubble of safety and security in the harsh, barren, unrelenting desert that is existence and any swift motion could burst that bubble. Society is constantly teetering on the edge of a cliff, and the slightest change in winds could push it over and send it spiraling into an endless pit of chaos. When one wrong move could cause untold devastation, the stakes are too high to allow any experimentation, regardless of the possible benefits. The world is a fragile equilibrium, a precision machine that's far too complicated for any of us to fully understand, and while it may not be perfect, the number of worse configurations far outweigh the number of better ones; precision machines are rarely improved by sudden and random changes. As nature so often proves, sudden mutations in an organism rarely lead to beneficial adaptations; 999,999 times out of 1,000,000, they just lead to sickness, disability, or death. From White/Black/Green's perspective, rapid change is cancer. To put it another way, Blue/Red is a storm, and White/Black/Green is all about weathering storms.
The biggest flaws of White/Black/Green are that it's prone to stagnation, stubbornness, xenophobia, repression, and paranoia. White and Green are both prone to being too rigid, due to White's emphasis on order and Green's emphasis on tradition, and when combined with Black's egotism, the result is a color combination that's utterly averse to any kind of change whatsoever, regardless of how positive or even how necessary it might be. The combination of White self-righteousness, Green complacency, and Black pride make for a color triad that's very set in its ways, wholly unwilling to accept any sort of constructive criticism or advice, and stubbornly determined to stick with its tried-and-true methods even when those methods are no longer effective. Unsurprisingly, it's very bad at adapting to unexpected difficulties or changing circumstances.
White/Black is very suspicious around those outside of its inner circle, and when you combine that with the cultural and/or biological determinism of Green, you get a color triad that's staunchly intolerant of everyone who doesn't fit in its designated group. At best, this results in a policy of staunch isolationism towards outsiders; at worst, it results in a tribe or culture or nation that's downright hostile towards the rest of the world. Green and Black are also the most cynical colors, and when you throw White authoritarianism into the mix, you get a group that's going to be overcautious about everything to an almost absurd extreme. The mixture of White/Black totalitarianism and Green traditionalism also leads White/Black/Green institutions to have extremely repressive rules, which are often enforced in the strictest ways possible.
White/Black/Green characters tend to be rare in modern stories, and mostly show up in medieval or high fantasy settings, since feudal societies tend to be strongly aligned with those colors. A classic example is Macbeth, an initially virtuous yet ambitious nobleman whose desire to gain power ultimately turns him into a murderer, traitor, and tyrant. While his White and Black traits are obvious enough, his concern for his family and for the fate of his bloodline are very Green, as is the fact that he's largely driven by his belief in prophecy; he convinces himself that his actions are justified since he's merely fulfilling his destiny, and resigns himself to defeat when he realizes too late that his destiny is not what he thought it would be.
A very similar but somewhat more benevolent example would be Olenna Tyrell from Game of Thrones, a shrewd and subtle manipulator who acts for the good of her bloodline, her noble house, her kingdom, and Westeros as a whole, in that order. She also uses poison to kill her political rivals, her nickname is the Queen of Thorns, and she almost always wears gold, green, or black outfits. Even the official Tyrell words ("Growing Strong") and sigil (a golden rose surrounded by thorns against a black background) highlight the Great House's strategy of walling themselves off from the rest of the world and outlasting their enemies, a very White/Black/Green approach to war and politics, and whenever they do get actively involved in any conflict, they almost always resort to blockades and siege tactics to starve out their opponents. Boromir from Lord of the Rings is another example of a noble willing to do anything for the sake of his bloodline and his people. His father Denethor has similarly White/Black/Green motivations, though his White traits are largely overshadowed by his Green/Black cynicism, which has metastasized into an all-encompassing nihilistic despair that's consumed most of his sanity. The Wood Elves from The Hobbit are also White/Black/Green, as they combine the White/Green traits common to Tolkien's elves with isolationism, xenophobia, and extreme hostility toward outsiders.
However, not all White/Black/Green societies are primitive; many sci-fi and dystopian settings are fundamentally White/Black/Green as well. The feudal future depicted in the Dune series is a perfect example, with the Houses of the Landsraad being fundamentally White/Black/Green institutions based in maintaining order through hereditary rule. The Dominion from Star Trek is an example of an entire interstellar empire built around White/Black/Green values, with each of its member species serving a designated role in its social order, all for the sake of bringing order to the galaxy through total domination. The civilization from Divergent is an example of a White/Black/Green dystopia, a rigid society with a strict caste system where people are assigned into one of five competing tribes based on their innate characteristics. Likewise, the nation of Panem from The Hunger Games is a repressive dictatorship where people's lives are defined by which district they're born into. The titular Hunger Games themselves are also a White/Black/Green institution, combining the survival-of-the-fittest tooth-and-nail savagery of Green with the corruption and sadism of Black, under a system of rules maintained and enforced by a strict White hierarchy. Yet another example would be the floating city-state of Columbia from Bioshock Infinite, which takes the traditionalism and biological determinism of Green to truly horrifying extremes - a repressive nationalist theocracy based around the civil religion of the United States, with chattel slavery instituted along racial and ethnic lines - and amps up the tribalism of White/Black to a literally apocalyptic level, as the leaders of the city are prepared to annihilate the rest of humanity in order to cleanse the world of everything that isn't them.
For that matter, Father Zachary Hale Comstock, the founder and ruler of Columbia, is an excellent example of an utterly deranged and detestable White/Black/Green villain: A narcissistic Social Darwinist "prophet" whose religious fanaticism is frighteningly genuine and yet still wholly rooted in his own egotism, he seeks to wipe out most of humanity because he believes mankind is irredeemably corrupt (White), because he believes it's his divinely-mandated destiny to cleanse the world (Green), and simply because he can't bear to see anyone be worshiped but him (Black). Another popular example of a White/Black/Green villain would be the film version of Thanos, for reasons I mentioned earlier in this thread. Ra's Al Ghul is a similar example, a terrorist mastermind who seeks to destroy modern civilization and return the world to a primitive state in which humanity will live in harmony with each other and with nature under his strict rule. He also has a deep concern for his family and a deep reverence for his cultural heritage, his immortality and his ability to come back from seemingly fatal defeats aptly demonstrate White/Black/Green's endurance, and his frequent use of poisons and pathogens - on both the small scale as tools of assassination, and on the large scale as weapons of mass destruction - is also fitting for a Green/Black character. The Arrowverse version of Damian Darhk also fits the mold, as his motivations are almost identical to the comic book version of Ra's Al Ghul, plus he uses dark magic fueled by the primordial chaos of nature, which is about as Green/Black as it gets. Darhk's final line - "Humanity is feckless; I wanted to cleanse it of a millennia worth of rot it has been infected by, and I will do it!" - perfectly sums up the annihilationist side of White/Black/Green so commonly seen in its most extreme adherents.
Spirits
I wouldn't say that the U.S. as an institution is White/Black/Green (the government itself is White/Black, the founding principles are firmly White/Blue/Red), but in terms of American culture, with its skepticism of outsiders and its emphasis on national traditions and symbols, I would agree.
I've got one more wedge left to cover and then maybe I'll make another thread for the shards, if that's something people want to see.
And I’d be interested in the shards too. I’d also be interested in a thread on other odd color pie things, like “what happens if Red and Green trade places” or the like.
UBG is about mixing the cold amoral detachment and manipulative nature of Blue with the immoral selfishness of Black and the dog-eat-dog savagery of Green. Green/Black will do anything to survive, while Blue/Black will do anything to thrive, but Blue/Black/Green sees surviving and thriving as the same thing. In its eyes, Green's drive to eat and grow is no different from Blue's desire to perfect itself using whatever resources are available, and no different from Black's desire to acquire power and wealth using any means necessary. Green hunger and Black greed and the Blue desire to improve oneself are all just different expressions of the same fundamental drive - the drive to take whatever you can and use it to build yourself up, the drive to consume, literally or metaphorically. Fundamentally, Blue/Black/Green is about predation.
Its primary tools are realism, efficiency, adaptability, stealth, and total ruthlessness. Green/Blue and Green/Black are both color pairs associated with seeing the world for what it is: Green/Blue is the truth-seeker, the observer studying and examining the world to better understand it, while Green/Black is the cynic, the gritty and pragmatic survivalist that's all too aware of how harsh and unforgiving the world can be. Together, they form a color triad with a deep understanding of the world around it, a color triad that has absolutely no illusions about how the world works, a color triad with a keen awareness of its surroundings that knows exactly how to use everyone and everything in its environment to its advantage.
It knows how to make the most of whatever resources are available, without letting anything go to waste or remain unused. Green/Black is used to surviving for long periods of time with very little sustenance, but it retains its scarcity mindset even in times of plenitude, so it can never hope to move beyond bare subsistence. Conversely, Blue/Black is very skilled at using resources to improve its lot in life, but it doesn't know how to survive when those resources aren't available. Green/Black is like the poor man who wins the lottery and quickly squanders his wealth because he doesn't know what to do with it, while Blue/Black is like the rich investor who goes bankrupt and can't adapt to a life of poverty because she has no idea how to cut expenses or keep a budget. Blue/Black/Green is more like the con artist who's equally talented at grifting common crooks on the street for a few hundred bucks and swindling businessmen in boardrooms for millions of dollars worth of investments. Blue/Black would die of starvation and exposure in the Abzan desert, while Green/Black would be a hopeless and worthless vagabond in the cities of Esper, but Blue/Black/Green could find a way to survive in either. It's wise enough to conserve resources when they're scarce, driven enough to utilize its resources to their fullest potential when they're in abundance, and savvy enough to when the time is right for either.
It displays similar versatility in other areas. Blue, Black, and Green are the colors most associated with stealth: Blue/Black is associated with deception and subtlety, while Green predators rely on physical concealment to stalk and pounce on their prey, taking advantage of cover and camouflage. As a result, Blue/Black/Green knows there's a time to hold back and conserve energy and hide its capabilities, and a time to go all out and fully exert itself and unleash its full strength. It's capable of acting restrained and civilized when interacting with polite society, and just as capable of raw brutal savagery when the veneer of civilization is no longer present. It's capable of feigning helplessness or subservience when it's in a disadvantaged position, but as soon as it has the upper hand, it'll gladly stab its masters in the back and betray anyone who was foolish enough to show it mercy.
Blue/Black/Green has no limitations whatsoever; there is absolutely nothing that it won't do to stay alive and get ahead. While all colors are capable of being ruthless and Black even holds ruthlessness as one of its core values, Blue/Black/Green is the only color combination that's almost wholly defined by total ruthlessness in all things. On its own, Green is savage but fundamentally honest; it may use stealthy tactics, but it won't lie or manipulate people or hide behind laws and social customs. Blue/Black/Green, on the other hand, is a Social Darwinist: It sees society as just another part of nature, and it sees deception and manipulation as simply being natural tactics for a predator to take advantage of. In its eyes, being a social predator is no different than being a natural predator. Green will confront its enemies head-on, even if it means risking defeat; Blue/Black/Green will only confront its enemies head-on when it's certain that it will win.
Its opposed to White/Red, which is the color pairing most associated with altruism, empathy, honor, courage, honesty, and idealism. Blue/Black/Green doesn't have any of those things, and has nothing but scorn and disdain for the suckers who do. In its eyes, the only real purpose in life is to pursue one's own rational self-interest. All living beings, from the lowliest bacterium to the largest and fiercest beast, are driven by the primal urge to survive, to consume, and to grow. Sapient life is no different, and anyone pretending otherwise is just a sentimental fool, a sap who's either too weak or too naive to be a predator and thus destined to be prey. Humans evolved to cooperate and trust each other and make sacrifices for one another because it helped the species as a whole survive, but Blue/Black/Green only cares about its own personal survival. It has no qualms about being a free rider who takes advantage of the fact that other people will be kind and generous and obey laws and make sacrifices, without feeling the need to do any of those things itself.
Even compared to the other two amoral (i.e. Black-aligned, non-White) color triads, Blue/Black/Green is disturbingly lacking in scruples. Black/Red/Green is brutal and violent and bloodthirsty, but it also has a certain survival-of-the-fittest honor: The Black/Red/Green warlord will challenge his rival to a fair fight in order to prove that he's the strongest, and if he loses, then by his own logic he wasn't the strongest and deserved to fall. Blue/Black/Green has a survival-of-the-fittest mentality too, but it has a less restrictive definition of what "fittest" means. In its eyes, the fittest is whoever wins, whether it's through brute force or by poisoning the rival warlord's wine or by convincing his troops to hack him to pieces in his sleep.
Blue/Black/Red is widely seen as the most villainous color triad and has no qualms about using deception, but it generally tends to have some limits to what it will do, even if they're based purely in pride. Blue/Black/Red is all about staying true to oneself, and would rather die than fall short of its own idealized view of itself. But Blue/Black/Green has no ideals, not even narcissistic ones; survival is the only ideal it strives for, and it's not afraid to swallow its pride and beg for its life if that means living another day. Black/Red/Green and Blue/Black/Red are also capable of genuinely caring for others on a personal level, even if they often express those feelings in a twisted way. Blue/Black/Green is completely incapable of caring for anyone but itself. At best, it can like other people, in the same way that one likes a book or a computer, but it still wouldn't hesitate to throw them under the bus if doing so was expedient.
That said, Blue/Black/Green isn't entirely worse than the other two from an ethical perspective. It lacks the bloodlust of Black/Red/Green and the sadism of Blue/Black/Red, so it's a lot less likely to actively seek out violence, to randomly cause harm or destruction just for the hell of it, to pursue vendettas against people who've wronged it, or to engage in purely spiteful behavior when its pride is wounded. After all, it values efficiency and secrecy, so it doesn't want to waste its energy or draw attention to itself unless it can gain something from it.
Blue/Black/Green characters tend to almost always be villainous, even more so than Blue/Black/Red characters. One of the only remotely heroic characters I would consider Blue/Black/Green is Riddick, the interstellar fugitive from the sci-fi series of the same name. A savage and violent beast of a man capable of surviving in even the most hostile environments and escaping from even the most secure prisons, Riddick is frequently assumed to be nothing more than a dumb and impulsive thug - an assumption that often proves fatal for the people who make it. Beneath his brutish exterior is a cunning predator with a keen understanding of human nature and a natural knack for manipulation, one who always ends up getting the drop on all the betrayers and backstabbers who foolishly think they've got the drop on him. Unlike most Blue/Black/Green characters, he's not completely amoral: He's just altruistic enough to help others as long as they don't get in his way, slow him down, or put him at risk; he's (more or less) loyal toward those who help him; he even displays some genuine concern for a select few people. Still, he's far from altruistic enough to be considered White and far from empathetic enough to be considered Red; whenever the people he cares about get killed, he reacts with the same level of anger and sadness that you'd expect from someone who just had their favorite lamp broken.
A similar example is Sabertooth, who's basically Riddick without his few redeeming traits. Like Riddick, he's at once a near-feral monster and a subtle master of psychological manipulation, with decades of combat experience and extensive training in espionage and interrogation, equally capable of surviving in the wilderness for years at a time or infiltrating top-secret government facilities. He's a ruthless mercenary who'll work for mutant supremacists one day and anti-mutant bigots the next, who's willing to team up with the X-Men against a common threat and stab them in the back as soon as they're not useful to him anymore, who has absolutely no compunctions about hurting children, taking hostages, brutally torturing people, or casually murdering anyone who happens to be in his way. Another Blue/Black/Green X-Men villain is Apocalypse, who combines Blue's perfectionism with Green/Black's survival of the fittest mentality and takes it to its most extreme conclusion, a drive to accelerate the process of evolution by purging the world of all inferior beings. Mr. Sinister is an even better example, as he has the same worldview and the same goals, plus he's also a geneticist who uses very Green/Blue methods in his quest to create the perfect lifeform.
Albert Wesker from Resident Evil likewise seeks to transform himself into a living god through biological modification, with the ultimate goal of perfecting the world by cleansing it of all imperfect forms of life. Darth Plagueis from Star Wars is Blue/Black/Green as well; a rare example of a purely cold and stoic Sith Lord, he lacks the raw anger and hatred that drive most Sith, instead being motivated by a desire to live forever so he can keep gaining more knowledge and more power for eternity, so he can keep expanding his influence until the entire universe falls under his domain. An example of a Blue/Black/Green antagonist on a much smaller scale is Dr. Henry Wu from Jurassic World, who uses Green/Blue methods (cloning and genetic engineering) in the service of purely Black goals (making a profit by creating new types of dinosaurs for the titular park).
Villains that seek to assimilate others into themselves are also fundamentally Blue/Black/Green in nature. Ego from Guardians of the Galaxy is a perfect example: As its name implies, it's the ultimate egotist, as well as the ultimate Darwinist - a cosmic intelligence that believes the purpose of all life is to survive and grow by consuming resources, and seeks to fulfill this purpose on the largest scale possible by absorbing the rest of the universe into itself. Despite its omnicidal goals, it sees its actions as fully justified, for very Green reasons: It views itself as the highest form of life in the universe, the natural endpoint of evolution, and thus the destined "winner" of the game that is existence. Father from Fullmetal Alchemist is a similar example, a demonic entity that seeks to perfect itself and become God by absorbing the souls of all other living things. It wants complete and total knowledge of everything that exists, which it hopes to gain by making all things a part of itself (Blue); it wants the freedom of existing without constraint, in the most literal and absolute sense possible, by having nothing else in the universe exist outside of it (Black); and like Ego, it fully believes that it's simply doing what it's supposed to be doing and fulfilling its destiny as a superior being (Green). It also completely lacks Red traits, having fully purged itself of all "vices" and "weaknesses" (including its capacity to feel empathy or any sort of emotional attachment).
Its unempathetic and ruthless, but it can perfectly co-exist with others. The Eternal Vows interpretation of The Thing comes to mind; dumb comic, but the idea of Things who realise overconsumption is bad is cool. The Gray Jedi characters that aren't Red are another good example, being in touch with the darker aspects of themselves but not going overly emotional.
I do think that utter ruthlessness and a lack of prescriptive morality (i.e. firmly-held principles that say you should do this or shouldn't do that) are fundamental aspects of the color triad, but my post might've overemphasized the negative aspects of that and underplayed the positive aspects. Blue/Black/Green is more likely to be amoral than immoral, and while it's almost never purely Good, it can be Neutral just as often as it can be Evil. As I mentioned, it's a lot less likely to act on spite or sadism or bloodlust than Red. It also lacks the fanaticism of White, and combined with Green/Blue objectivity, this makes it more likely to simply leave other people alone than a lot of other color combinations. It won't hurt people just for fun, or simply to prove a point, or for the sake of some abstract "greater good." In fact, it generally won't hurt people at all unless there's something it can gain from hurting them. And, as with Riddick, it can help people even when it has nothing to gain by doing so, as long as it's not really losing or risking anything by helping them either.
The Gray Jedi are good examples of semi-heroic Blue/Black/Green characters, as is Darth Vectivus, who's the closest thing the Star Wars universe has to a benevolent Sith Lord: "Upon his own ascension to Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vectivus retained the principles and ethical standing of his previous existence. With that foundation he avoided the trappings of the Sith who preceded him; he was never motivated by galactic domination or an all-consuming hatred of the Jedi, and he instead chose to live the remainder of his days luxuriously in the company of his loved ones. However, Vectivus was still a ruthless individual, partly connected to his background as a businessman, and was willing to do whatever it took to succeed, a trait he promoted in others as well. ... Violence, galactic ambition, and the eradication of the Sith's philosophical Jedi rivals were of no consequence to him; his contention was to simply immerse himself in Sith lore and study the galaxy."
A moral nihilist does not have to be a bad person. Just because you don't believe anything is really wrong don't mean you have to be a practitioner of the things people consider wrong. It's not like evil is inherently rewarding way of living and the only reason people stay away from that is this internal sense of justice.
GUB may not be evil simply because they think 'evil' is inefficient. They may even have this internal feeling of ethics and morals but they don't elevate it to a powerful ideal, a connection to God or anything like that. They interpret it as just the way the mind tells you "don't do that, it's not worth it".
So I think GUB is quite terrible at admitting riskless, commonly practiced evils are wrong. They might be pro-slavery in a very pro-slavery society and see abolitionism as WR nonsense. However because they lack strong ideals they will more easily step down and adapt to the new ways, while W and R aligned slave owners will fight because of their strong belief in the ideals of property rights (W) or because they find abolitionism humiliating for then (R).
I think GUB biggest qualities are pragmatism, non-judgemental approach to things, flexibility and adaptability. They are easy to negotiate and work with for as long as people appeal to their interests and not their emotions. Their lack of moral compass are remediated by the fact they don't resist authority - while they willingness to play along are hardly ever taken advantage off.
BGU Control
R Aggro
Standard - For Fun
BG Auras
Kind of a shame too, since they hinted at some development with the castes thing, but in the end it didn't even matter how they lost the Green in DOT.
They can be powerful and helpful allies if you understand them and/or know how to appeal to their desires, but are quick to change sides if they see a better opportunity to get to the stuff they want. The GU in the wedge stands for stands for how they constantly search and adapt with an open mind in order to find it.
A positive example would be a character with Green's best traits and none of its worst (fatalism, anti-artifice, et cetera).
I think some form of tribalism and close-knit, but overall relatively small communities would play a big role (“hunting packs”, if you want to go back to the predator metaphor). WB are the colors most associated with the concept of “caring about your group and only about that group”, but love/loyalty/attachment to a group of close people is personal enough to not fall into any color specifically. You only become W when you start caring about social organization, structure, rules of coexistence and its benefits on a larger scale. W values community because of its structuring power and the benefit it brings to all its members; G on the other hand values it because it is the “natural mode” for a species to exist in because it allows for the thriving and survival of most of its members as a whole. W would go out of its way to change a system if it believed the changes would make it more just and morally sound, even if the system was already operating fairly well without the changes. Communities centered in G would be far less willing to do that and would instead essentially go by the motto “never change a running system”. Depending on how you look at it, this could be seen as either fatalism or wisdom (which in MtG is closely associated with GU) – wisdom in the sense of an understanding of how difficult it often is for a single person or even a group to fundamentally alter a preestablished order and how attempting to change it head-on can often prove to be futile or even ultimately detrimental.
Basically GUB communities are good in responding to changes in the system, but are very unlikely to change the system itself just for the sake of change. Instead of consciously trying to change it from the outside, they will instead (passively) change it by their actions from the inside – they’ll allow evolution of the system to play out, so to say. But of course they’ll do everything it takes to ensure that their own members stay at the top of the metaphorical evolutionary chain or achieve a higher place within it. They will do that by understanding the system as holistically as possible and then choosing the optimal path of action.
I could see a GUB faction having a big mercantile theme, perhaps a confederation of merchants (f.e. the Hanseatic League). Fittingly the Sultai have already been associated with wealth and riches, even though the villainy theme was played up due to B being to focus color (Villainous Wealth). Because of this theme’s association with greed, it has often been linked with B. However, it doesn’t have to be if trade and commerce are portrayed as being the faction’s main means of “survival” in society. This faction wouldn’t acquire riches with the main goal to gain power, but to “keep the clan alive”, so to say. Unlike a WB group with a finance/money/commerce theme, they wouldn’t be interested in rebuilding the system to ensure they stay on top forever because they’d see it as a resource-intensive and megalomaniacal attempt at something that might not work out in the end anyway. Instead they’d focus on constantly searching for new opportunities and strategies in order to keep going “just a little longer”, constantly transforming themselves. It’s a very corporate mindset and in a sense pretty modern/contemporary.
(Some of my points may have already been made by other posters, but I just decided to write this out anyway...)