#rhonas

my localization of mtgjp's comic

Ok, so the Locust, Scarab, and Scorpion Gods of Amonkhet. A lot of people I know, including myself, have been trying to figure out what they were the gods of before Bolas imprisoned them and warped them.

What if the five gods we know from the original set (Oketra, Kefnet, Bontu, Hazoret, and Rhonas) were the gods of the “normal” aspects of the world and the entities that reside in them and the other three were the gods of the specifics of the world. So one could have been a god of the “Curse” that brought everything back to life, another could have been the god of the dual suns, or just a sun god to them, and the final one could of been an actual god of the Luxa. The thing that kind of interests me about this is that during the brief retelling of Bolas’ invasion of the plane, the gods mention having lost the rest of the plane, could it be possible that the god of the Luxa and the god of the Curse could have been weakened in some way? Maybe a massive event that made it harder to do massive acts of power or to do something they at one point could do easily. What I’m trying to get at here, is, what if the city was not the exception to the world, but used to be the normal, and the dead that could be given rest were kept in the chambers the Eternals eventually resided in, and the rest existed as a part of life. Maybe the city on Amonkhet, Naktamun,  only survived because the Hekma was a part of it already. What if before all of this, the god of the Curse could in some way control the undead, not in a “They are my army” style like Bolas does, but in a “I can keep them calm and away from the cities” way.

Ok...so with this in mind, here is the actual thing I am suggesting, I am going to refer to the Luxa God as LG, the Sun God as SG, and the Curse God as CG:

On Amonkhet existed eight gods; Oketra, the god of Truth and Mercy, mother of civilization on the plane; Kefnet, the god of Knowledge and Wisdom, father of mages; Bontu, the god of Ambition and Power, mother of the leaders; Hazoret, the god of Zeal and Compassion, mother of the free; Rhonas, god of Strength and Nature, father of the beasts; LG, god of the Luxa and Survival, mother//father of the life-bearing Luxa River; SG, god of the Suns and War, mother//father of flame; and CG, god of the Risen and the Afterlife, mother//father of the fallen. These gods ruled over the plane for centuries, until a catastrophe arose, an event that killed hundreds, if not thousands, of millions of people, as well as corrupting the leylines of mana enough to break some of the bonds that formed LG, SG, and CG, the three dual-colored gods, weakening them. With their powers weakened, CG could no longer stop the undead from attacking the cities, LG could no longer extend the beauty and life of the Luxa far beyond its boundaries, and SG no longer had the power to fight off the endless waves of the undead. Years after this event, the gods have all stood together in the first city of the plane, the birthplace of their people, Naktamun, defended by the mighty Hekma and maintained by Kefnet. One day, an invader arrives and effortlessly defeats the eight gods, erasing their minds and reshaping their identities to what he desires. Having no use for LG, SG, and CG among the people, Bolas instead forces them farther into the earth, tied to the three leylines that closest rivaled the powers he needed them to hold. The Blue-Green LG is forced to become the inversion of who they were before, erasing their connection to Green, Bolas forces them to become the corrupter of the Luxa and the destroyer of the Hekma, the Locust God. The White-Red SG loses control of themself, becoming a god of rage and destruction that could put use to their previous skills of war, their connection to White is severed, and they are forced to become an assaulter of their former brothers and sisters instead of the defender of the people, they become the Scorpion God. The Black-Green CG is warped to force their will onto the undead, preparing them for Bolas’ control, they lose their connection to Green and the natural aspect of the plane, instead, becoming the warped Scarab God.

These gods lay dormant, forced to be slowly rewritten beyond even that of their siblings until the Gatewatch arrive. During their visit, the last portions of the gods previous minds and selves try to force themselves out, as the time comes that they will be completely erased. Nissa, sleeping on the plane, inadvertently reaches to what she perceives as the Soul of the plane, really, she has connected to the fleeting sanity of CG, screaming to not be corrupted as their plane, people, and gift have been. During Hour of Devastation, the revisions of the gods identities are completed, and they are released back onto the world they were taken from so long ago, with no memory of who they once were, or what they were meant for, other than Bolas’ programming.