Utterings and Invocations

Yesterday on Twitter, Trick Jarret let us know that things are in the works to better introduce the MTG Community to Nic Kelman, who is now the person at @wizardsmagic primarily responsible for Magic narrative. 

But with emotions running among fans high after this week’s story, I worry that Nic’s first impression of us is that we’re a bunch of rabid fans out for blood at the slightest mistake or story hiccup. 

And that’s not what we want!! We want a good, open relationship of communication and trust. So let’s see if we can get things going with our best foot forward. 

Perhaps Nic will be more comfortable introducing himself to us, if we give him a chance to get to know us first. So I thought some introductions might be in order.  

With that in mind, I’m asking my fellow Vorthos and MTG fans to reblog this post with an brief greetings and introduction (and be sure to tag @wizardsmagic so they can pass it along to Nic.) 

Since I’m writing this post, I suppose I should go first… 

Hi Nic! I’m Dave. 

I’ve been playing Magic on and off since 1996, though I only became really active in the online MTG community around 2015 when I started this Tumblr blog. 

Some of the things I love about Magic stories are the wide range of interesting characters, the diversity of locations among the different planes in the Multiverse, and the bountiful opportunities for speculation, discussion, and collaboration among the community. 

I also appreciate Magic stories because even though I’m not a very skilled player, they allow me to still feel strongly connected to the game, and be part of the conversation when new sets and cards are revealed. It adds a dimension where I can still be relevant and valued in the community, even when I rarely win games. 

Some quick facts about me: 

First set - Ice Age 

Favorite format - Commander 

Favorite plane - Lorwyn 

Favorite card - Vigor 

Favorite Planeswalker - Tamiyo (though Angrath is really close) 

Favorite story article - “Release” (Aether Revolt) 

Personal Color Identity - Bant (Green/White/Blue) 

@wizardsmagic 

OK, that’s me. Now who wants to go next?! 

I’m Sonja, mostly known as Rudjedet both here and on Twitter. This blog is actually a side blog, because @wizardsmagic finally gave me (us) my precious Egypt-based plane with the Amonkhet block and I wanted a place to nerd out with abandon. 

I’ve been playing Magic since 2007; mostly casual, kitchen table stuff though I’ve visited a fair few (pre-)releases, FNMs and GPs. I’ll be honest and say I’ve always been critical of Magic’s fiction, both the novels and the online Magic Fiction. It’s partly because I’m critical of every book I read, and partly because fantasy isn’t entirely my genre. 

So why am I still invested in the storyline? Because I enjoy seeing cards “come to life”. I enjoy building flavour decks centered around a character, subtype or theme, and giving them stupid names to reflect their background. Some of my horrible brews include “Sorin’s Thirsty”, “Curses, Foiled (Again)”, “Bitch These Are Hags” and “What Are All These Sexy Vampires Doing On My Side of the Battlefield I Can’t Focus On Winning Now”. 

I used to write humorous articles tangentially related to Magic, and dabbled a bit in cosplay. I had to give up both because of mental health and time constraints. At the moment, I’m desperately trying to hold on to the Amonkhetu days by working on three papers combining my profession (Egyptologist) with Magic. 

I’ll move on to the quick facts now, because I can’t trust myself to talk about Egypt/Amonkhet without going way overboard:

First set: Lorwyn

Favourite format: Casual constructed

Favourite plane: Amonkhet

Favourite plane that isn’t Amonkhet because of course it’s Amonkhet: Innistrad

Favourite card: Master Transmuter / Stalking Vampire (I can’t choose don’t make me)

Favourite planeswalker: I have a soft spot for Tezzeret don’t judge me

Favourite story: The Writing on the Wall (Amonkhet)

I don’t think it was just you! The Apep vibes were very strong, but I’m finding it hard to say those are the only vibes I’m getting from Bolas’ Amonkhetu characterisation/iconography within the Magic Story of Amonkhet. In all honesty, it’s actually a bit of a clutter with at least three deities/traditions I can see having their influence on his depiction.

At first, there was the association with the sun god - the horns, the second sun, his position as god of gods, and his title of god-pharaoh.Then we got the whole god-murder thing as a way to usurp royal/divine power, which seemed to point to a Seth-like strain of influence (and someone on Twitter suggested Gideon would take on a Horus role to defeat Bolas). But the snake devouring the world we see now is far more reminiscent of Apep than of Seth; even if Seth is also an embodiment of chaos. 

The latter makes little biased me hope we will see a Seth-like entity or deity to come kick Apep’s ass, though the odds of that are slim. We’re more likely to see either a Horus-role (and I hope to God it isn’t Gideon because that’d be an incredible shame on many levels, and also Gideon would have to be related to Bolas in some way), or an actual solar deity-like entity. I’m not willing to go out on a limb here, but if I was, I would probably suggest Oketra playing a role in this, since Apep was not only depicted as defeated by Seth, but also at times by Ra himself, with Ra having the form of a cat. 

For some reason I thought I’d posted this but it’s been stuck in my drafts instead. Don’t ask me how but I guess my brain just hasn’t been functioning properly since forever.

Anyway, here’s a line by line transliteration/translation of the Wrath of God card, with commentary.

Dnd nTrWrath (of) God

Both accurate and inaccurate: Middle Egyptian has a direct genitive construction wherein two nouns (possessor and possessed) can be written side by side. However, the flagpole hieroglyph, nTr, should have been written at the start of the line because of honorific transposition. It doesn’t make a difference for the transliteration, since that would still be Dnd nTr, but it just looks weird. It also doesn’t need the seated god-determinative after it. 

ra.wy sn (assuming similar RL orientation as Dnd nTr)Two two suns

The mana cost only works if you take the ideogram ra (sun) as an ideogram for white mana, obviously. This is all very literal. 

HkAMagic, incantation

Could work as “sorcery”, on a semantic level. HkA as a term is not one-on-one translatable with the fantasy kind of magic. Also, the orientation of these signs has suddenly flipped from RL to LR. I can see why these hieroglyphs are oriented LR, but I fail to see why Dnd nTr and ra.wy sn are oriented RL. 

iw HDi Ha.w nb m priDestroy every body in (the) battlefield

Jesus, these hieroglyphs are a mess. The orientation changed again, to RL. But the palm rib (the sign to the right of the arm-with-shield-and-club) is facing the wrong way. The word/sign groupings are also weird. m (the owl) and pri (the battlefield group) should not be mashed together like this. I also haven’t seen pri spelled like that before, but that could be me. 

As far as the grammar goes, I’m ridiculously out of practice with translating/parsing so while I’m not 100% certain this is correct I can’t pinpoint exactly why. I’m honestly no good when it comes to translating to hieroglyphs, since that was never required of us in uni.

n rDi.n=s ts anx tw nhiwithout her(?) giving (?) life this escape

Another orientation change - LR again now. While hieroglyphs could change orientation within a text depending on the situation, there’s no reason for the constant change on this card. It’s just… wrong.  The word groupings are once again off. The r sign (mouth) should not be below the two arms (n), for example. 

Grammatically the first part seems okay because I want to read a negation of the circumstantial sDm.n=f (n rDi.n=s). The rest I can’t make any sense of. The suffix =s is odd. I’d prefer to read =sn (they/them/their), but =sn isn’t at all written like this. Another option could be n rDi n=s, “without giving to her”.