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itscolourmix · 3 years

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HEADCANONS/IDEAS ON REVIVALS (how they work + who has the power to). Eveything below!

Something I mentioned in my foolish hc's was that Foolish was THE God for things such as life, death and rebirth back when. Someone with such power, it was supposed to be extremely lucky for a mortal to come back (if they did not possess a totem and were instead chosen).

When Foolish went to sleep and the totems were scattered, there were people who wanted this power over death for themselves. The Illagers created successful, working replicas of the totems, but were not willing to give them away so easily. Either you had to raid one of their mansions and take it by force, or be lucky enough to get into a trade with them for something (though what you offer must be of higher value to them)

So the mortal people tried everything over the centuries from what they knew about The Totem God and knowledge surrounding the nature of life and death. Some have claimed for their rituals to work, but there’s not enough record to tell if whether the person brought back was extremely ill or stuck in a kind of coma (in which others assumed they were dead). Some may have ACTUALLY worked, but were lucky in doing so

Perhaps Foolish resurrecting those select mortal people for a second chance gave them abilities or luck out of the ordinary.

We have multiple characters from the Dream SMP claiming they know how the revival process works. I’m going to pitch what differences they share in knowledge and who are more likely to be successful in resurrections:

CONNOR:

Connor says he works in necromancy, but unlike Tubbo, actually has a chance of succeeding. He claims he can bring Schlatt back. He could be the descendant of someone who was ‘blessed’ with this kind of revival luck. With Connor being an immortal time traveller, this could work in hand. Where does his immortality come from?

FOOLISH:

Foolish, as I’d explained before, was the original God for this kind of topic. Millennia ago, he was the man you needed. Foolish does not have full control of the afterlife, but a greater understanding of it .

This allows him to manipulate the process of life and death safely, without disrupting the balance. Rituals conducted by mortal people are considered dangerous and come with great risk.

PHILZA:

Philza’s knowledge of the resurrection process, in my hc, came from Foolish (through “ancient texts”). His knowledge of the process is also one of the more “correct” ways of resurrection. Though it's unknown if CAN work.

ERET:

Eret’s knowledge of resurrection is the most flawed, and less likely to succeed as we’ve seen with the attempt with Wilbur. Eret’s information could’ve been written by people from the past, believing in their claims that it can work.

I would not fault Eret entirely though, he wouldn’t have known better. Knowledge about revivals are very rare now-a-days. The only way to avoid a permanent death would be through totems of undying. But totems work with recent deaths, newer souls. Wilbur has been dead for months (YEARS in the afterlife) and would require a lot more power to pull an already-death adjusted soul back to the land of the living

DREAM:

I don’t need to say much on this one, since its pretty well known that Dream was the first person to successfully bring back someone from the dead. Someone asked if the revival book, in my hc, once owned to Foolish too. And I think thats interesting! BUT I’d like to keep it open. Schlatt could’ve found or stolen the book from somewhere, or written it himself!

SMALL EXTRA DREAM SMP HC:

I’ve seen people talk about how the dsmp doesn’t make sense with all characters having their own unique story and abilities and other than the idea that this is a strange greek-esque kind of story, I like to think everyone was drawn to The Greater DSMP.

Think of it like the town of Gravity falls, The Greater Dream SMP attracts the weird and wonderful people of the world to it like a magnet. Whether it’s the land that has that kind of supernatural power or if it’s Dream himself is up to you. But I believe it to be the most sense, as you can see in TFTSMP: The Haunted Mansion, a lot of Connors outside friends appear a lot more ‘normal’ than the characters in the dsmp. They don’t possess any supernatural powers or incredible knowledge, they’re just average joes vibing

aaandd THATS IT FOR MY IDEAS! It just kinda makes sense to me. i hope you enjoyed reading :]

#dream smp #dsmp #philza #dream #eret #foolish #connoreatspants #colourmix's art #dsmp hc

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joumiwrites · 3 years

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One element, two stories: The Amber Spyglass and The Good Place

This is the first post of a new series in which I'll talk about common elements between two stories, not necessarily two novels. Today we'll compare The Good Place tv series and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, especially the third book, 'The Amber Spyglass'. There will be spoilers for both, especially the fourth and final season of the show, so please stop reading if you don't want to know the ending.

In this context, 'common elements' doesn't mean much; two stories chosen randomly might have a lot of themes and archetypes in common, especially when they belong to the same genre. I'll only analyze those cases where the element in common has a peculiar combination of characteristics. Like...

Like a door in the afterlife that allows the souls of the dead to escape and dissolve forever.

Not only this element is very specific, but the themes that surround it are similar, even if the stories approach them from different angles: grim and hopeless for His Dark Materials, hopeful and optimistic for The Good Place. These doors are both situated in the afterlife of the respective story, as a way for the souls to escape. But why would they want to do that in the first place?

For His Dark Materials, the answer is easy: the afterlife is an endless, empty wasteland. The souls are stuck there in the company of harpies, which are exactly as fun and non-threatening as the ancient greek myths about them suggest. Think the Limbo in Dante's Inferno, but absolutely everyone goes there, regardless of their deeds in life.

What makes everything worse is the lack of daemons: a piece of the person's soul that lives outside their body in the shape of an animal. Upon the person's death, the daemon disappears. Imagine a sentient part of you that has always been by your side dissolve forever, leaving you alone in the aforementioned Limbo of nightmares. Fun, right?

Obviously anything, even dissolving into nothingness, would be better than an eternity there. It would be a terrible situation even if the souls were still alive.

On the contrary, in the afterlife of The Good Place the dead suffer because they are not alive, or better, because they can't die.

But let's take a step back (heavy spoilers ahead): the afterlife of The Good Place has a bad part and a good part. After four seasons of misadventures, our protagonists finally arrive to the good part. In this place, people can do whatever they want, forever. You can literally request anything, and a Janet (an almost omnipotent AI assistant) will bring it to you. Which turns out to be fun for the first millennia or so, but then people start to ask for random stuff, get maybe half a second of satisfaction, then request something else. They become severely distracted and unfocused, because they can go on for eternity, so what's the point of focusing on something? Whatever they want to do, they can always do it later, since they have an endless supply of 'later'. And if you have done everything there is to do, there's nothing left for you.

As soon as the protagonists discover the trap, they scramble to find a solution, which is literally an escape door. Nobody knows what's behind it, but once you go through, you can't come back. The final scenes of the series suggest what might be happening, but we'll examine that later. The main idea is that by having a door that could actually kill you, you'll always have the possibility to leave, so naturally you’re brought to think about what you want to do and act on it before you decide to move on.

Theme-wise, the biggest similarity is that they're both atheist narratives, for three main reasons:

1) Human beings can more or less change their situation, if not on an individual level, at least as a group. No situation is permanent if they don't want it to be, not even when it was imposed by entities bigger and more powerful than them. In the good place this is evident, because the new rules of the afterlife have literally been designed by Chidi, a human. Even before that, during the show humans had a lot of agency and they could negotiate with the powerful beings around them.

The situation is different in The Amber Spyglass. The dead are completely stuck, the only creatures they can communicate with are harpies, and not only they can't do anything to help them, but they wouldn't even if they could. Only the protagonists can save the situation by opening the door with a magical tool. Just like the protagonists of The Good Place, saving the souls trapped in the afterlife is their choice. In this case, opening a door is a more obvious solution, because that's what the aforementioned tool does, but they could have closed it behind them after leaving the place, so props to them.

2) In the end, humans are the ones to decide when to actually go. Sure, gods and superior beings decide what happens after the 'first' death, but humans have the ultimate decision on when to disappear for good.

3) Speaking of gods, they have some characteristics in common in both works. First of all, they aren’t omniscient nor omnipotent, and they’re still subjected to the rules of the universe they live in, just like any other creature. For example, the judge in The Good Place is the highest authority on everything, but she still needs to search inside each Janet to find the “clickery thingy” that can erase humanity. She can’t get this information at will.

The Janets are the second more powerful entities of this universe. Their powers have limits, even if they can be stretched by rebooting them multiple times. But no matter how powerful the Janets become, they have to obey the judge and follow their programming and their 'moral alignment': good or bad, depending on which side they work for. Which means that a simple human can reboot a good Janet without any problem (except having to hear her beg for her life).

In His Dark Materials, 'God' is literally a ruse. The first angel, the Authority, declared himself as god, even if the one actually ruling is Metatron, another angel. But both have physical bodies, can get old and also die.

The last element I want to analyze is what happens after a soul crosses the door. In His Dark Materials, it dissolves into atoms. This is presented by the protagonists as a huge liberation, justified by saying that their atoms belong to the universe and will go back to create everything that lives in it. There's also an awkward line about their atoms finding each other and being stuck together for eternity, even if it's clear that they don't have any control over this. The fact that dissolving into atoms essentially means not existing anymore isn't addressed and analyzed, which in my opinion is a huge oversight.

So, nothing else is left behind? Well, I've talked about daemons and the fact that they dissolve after the 'first' death of the person. The link between daemon and person attracts Dust, particles that in this world are attracted by sentient beings and create angels. They're heavily analyzed in the books, but the gist is that Dust is a metaphor for consciousness. In this world's version of the Adam and Eve story, the apple caused the Dust to settle on them, and thus to become aware of the difference between 'good' and 'bad'. Human beings are in a sense contributing to this universal consciousness with Dust that was 'tainted' by their connection to their daemons, their conscience/inner-self (this isn't explicitly said in the books, I'm just extrapolating).

In the final scenes of The Good Place, after Eleanor crosses the door, we are shown a single speck of golden dust that causes an act of goodness in the world. It falls on a man who had trashed a letter not destined to him and prompts him to pick it up and bring it to the right addressee. We can infer that the souls leave behind their ability to distinguish good and bad actions, skill they have gained while passing through the new afterlife system.

So in both cases human beings keep existing and influencing the world after the end of their lives, even if transformed into something different, be it atoms or fragments of conscience. The afterlife becomes just an intermediary step, a part of life like any other.

#his dark materials #the amber spyglass #the good place #book analysis #one element two stories

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infinite-xerath · 3 years

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Runeterra Retcons 2: Aatrox and the Darkin

I did another one. There’s one more character I have in mind to do, but then I’ll probably take a small break from these))

Aatrox is an interesting case; while I don’t necessarily believe his current lore is BAD per se, I think he’s more-so a case of missed opportunity and wasted potential. Aatrox, to me, reeks of a case where Riot gave zero forethought to the future of this character when they created him. To fully understand why I feel this way, we’re going to have to take a step back and analyze some of the history of League itself, as well as some characters connected to Aatrox. So, with that all said, let’s look back at the history of this angry red swords and see if we can make sense of the changes given to him over the years.

Aatrox was released into the game back in 2013, under the title “The Darkin Blade.” Now, what’s a Darkin, you ask? Well, at the time, we didn’t really know, and it kind of became obvious that Riot didn’t either. Let’s have a read of his original lore, shall we?

I was always a fan of Aatrox’s original lore: an ancient, mysterious figure who shows up to help you turn the tides of a war, but only after you’d effectively surrendered your own humanity for the sake of victory. The fact that there was an entire race just like him became the center of fan speculation of years, and countless theories cropped up as to who and what the Darkin even were. Some assumed that they were related to the Seven Deadly Sins, while others thought they might be akin to the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Some thought they might just be a dying race, and that some might actually be benevolent, unlike Aatrox.

Unfortunately, Riot wouldn’t give us an answer for quite some time. All we knew was that Aatrox was a Darkin and that he looked a lot like typical modern depictions of demons. That does raise the question though: why didn’t they just make Aatrox a demon? He helps turn the tides of conflict with no apparent goal beyond just prolonging the chaos and suffering brought about by war. A lot of his voice lines even painted him as a psychotic “artist” of sorts, prior even to Jhin, that viewed conflict and bloodshed as elegant. Well, to better understand the full picture here, we need to take a step back and examine the broader picture here.

Now, admittedly, we’re delving in some speculation territory here, as it’s impossible to really say what Riot’s original plans for the Darkin were, if any. That being said, the inclusion of something like a demon would have had a lot of implications back in the day, as the Runeterra as we knew it then didn’t really have a “Heaven” or “Hell.” Sure, we had “angels” with Kayle and Morgana, but they were treated more like how Asgardians are treated in Marvel: more like a race of super powerful aliens than actual divine entities (keep that in mind for later.) If anything, what little we knew of an “afterlife” in League came from Yorick’s old lore, in which he acted like a psychopomp similar to Charon from Greek myth.

It wasn’t until Tahm Kench came out in 2015 that Riot properly introduced demons as a concept in the lore, retconning several other champions like Evelynn and Nocturne into being demons. For a bit of context: in Runeterra, demons are effectively malevolent spirits from the spirit realm that feed on negativity: fear, pain, hatred, and so-forth. When other characters started getting turned into demons, a lot of people, myself included, thought that Aatrox would meet the same fate. After-all, they hadn’t actually DONE anything with the “Darkin” outside of Aatrox’s bio, and he functioned in a manner similar to them. Some even theorized that the Darkin would be made to represent a specific breed of demon, and this theory gained even more traction when Tahm Kench was given special voice lines for taunting near Aatrox.

Then, on July 12, 2017, we got Kayn, and with him: Rhaast. Rhaast is the second Darkin character added to the lore: a talking scythe with an eye that possess its host. Kayn is able to hold back Rhaast’s influence, keeping it to a single arm through the use of shadow magic, but depending on your actions in-game, you can see what happens if Rhaast manages to win their struggle and take over Kayn’s body completely. With Rhaast’s introduction, it pretty-much cemented that the Darkin were living weapons that took over the hosts of their wielders, which made sense given that Aatrox’s sword was always hinted to be alive and have a mind of its own. In fact, the idea of the Darkin being living weapons, or at least being bound to their weapons in some way, was one of many fan theories raised since Aatrox’s release all the way back in 2013.

Unfortunately, the new champion’s bio didn’t give us a lot to work with. Rhaast was the weapon, but Kayn himself is the Champion, so a lot of his bio tells us more about Kayn’s backstory: how he joined the Order of Shadows, how he acquired Rhaast in the first place, etc. While this isn’t exactly a problem, it gave us no further information on the Darkin; what they really were, where they came from, and why there are only five left in existence all remained mysteries for the fans to speculate about. It still wasn’t even clear if the Darkin were connected to demons, or if they were something else entirely.

Now, it’s around this time that another theory began to start blowing up in popularity; technically, this was another old fan theory, but now that we had a general idea of what the Darkin actually were, there was another Champion wielding a living weapon that fans started to speculate might be connected to them: Varus. Varus is an old character, and though we won’t be deep-diving into him too much into this video, allow me to give you a tldr of his original story.

Varus was an Ionian archer set to guard the Pit of Pallas, a giant hole where his people had long ago sealed some unexplained corrupting purple entity that seemed like it maybe should have related to the Void somehow but didn’t. Varus resisted the entity’s influence for years until Noxians one day showed up and started slaughtering his people, wanting to get their hands on Pallas so that they could use it as a weapon because of course they did. Varus was faced with a choice: stay and guard the temple built around the pit or go back to his village and help his people fight. Varus chose the former and was apparently SUCH a badass archer that he single-handed kept the invaders at pay with his arrows, though this choice came at a cost: when Varus returned to his village, everyone he knew and loved was dead, including his wife and son.

Enraged, Varus returned to the pit and struck a deal with Pallas: he would allow the entity to inhabit his body in return for vengeance against the Noxians. Varus proceeded to wander the world with a bow made from the entity’s own solidified essence in the hopes of finding and killing… Basically every Noxian he could. Yeah, Varus wanted nothing short of full-on genocide, starting with the surviving soldiers that attacked his village. There’s a lot to go into there, but you’ve probably figured out the relevance of this by now: Pallas turned itself into a bow for Varus to take his vengeance in exchange for possession over his body. Not too dissimilar a living sword and scythe who also possessed people and had an insatiable hunger for death and destruction, right?

Riot seemed to agree, and in 2017 they released a music video along with a comic and an entirely new bio for Varus. Together, these updates served to not only retcon Varus’s backstory (a topic for another episode) but finally give us an update as to who and what the Darkin were. In a word: they were aliens.

In short, the Darkin were a race from another planet/dimension drawn to Runeterra for its abundant use of magic. They tried to conquer the planet, causing the Great Darkin War, which ended only when the races of Runeterra figured out how to seal the Darkin in their own otherworldly weapons. Varus, Aatrox, Rhaast, and two others were trapped in their weapons, which an unnamed warrior queen (possibly an Aspect) used to drive back the other Darkin and seal the portal to their world. The five that were imprisoned in their weapons were then scattered and hidden across Runeterra.

This, at last, brings us back to Aatrox’s new bio:

“One of the ancient Darkin, Aatrox was once a peerless swordmaster who reveled in the bloody chaos of the battlefield. Trapped within his own blade by the magic of his foes, he waited out the millennia for a suitable host to wield him - this mortal warrior was corrupted and transformed by the living weapon, and Aatrox was reborn. Though tales of the darkin have now passed into legend, he remembers only too well the destruction of his race, and wreaks his vengeance one sword blow at a time.”

So Aatrox was made into a general for an alien race who sought to finish what his people started by having the Runeterrans fight and slaughter one another in a series of bloody conflicts… For a few months, at least. Literally the next year in 2018, Aatrox finally got his visual and gameplay update, turning him into the World Ender we know today. Along with this came entirely new lore for him, as well as the Darkin.

Insert lore here

So… The Darkin are no longer invading aliens, but Ascended who went nuts and were trapped inside their own weapons. In other words, the Darkin went from being a race to being more of a derogative term for fallen demigods. What’s more, Aatrox received a VERY substantial alteration his character and personality: he went from being a war-loving “artist” who causes conflict for the sake of it to being a tortured soul who wants to die so badly that he’ll end all of creation to do it.

Now, like I said before: I don’t think this backstory is bad. I don’t hate it. It does a lot to flesh out Shurima as a region, gives us more info on the Ascended, and it adds a bit more nuance to Aatrox as a character. Imagine being trapped inside a weapon, losing all access to your senses. Imagine that the only chance you get to move is when you take over someone else’s body, transforming it into a warped version of your own former glory, only to realize that you’re on a time limit and the only way you can continue to walk, talk, see, hear, or feel anything is by slaughter’s people and consuming their blood. Imagine spending CENTURIES trying to find a way out, only to repeatedly learn that any means to free or even kill yourself ends in failure. Imagine being SO desperate to rest that you’re willing to end all of existence just to find peace.

I like Aatrox’s new story. I do. Honestly, the only real complaint I have is that Aatrox doesn’t exactly have a PLAN for how he aims to end existence? Like, he calls himself a World Ender and a god-slayer, but we only know of one god he’s actually slain (Pantheon) and given that Runeterra is still around, it seems like his world-destroying count is still at zero. Honestly, if he wants to end all of existence, I feel like turning the Void, a reality-consuming threat that he has FOUGHT BEFORE would kind of be the obvious solution? Honestly, I imagine that just chucking the sword into the Void would be a good way for him to end his own existence, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

So, if I like Aatrox’s new lore, why am I rewriting it? Simple, really: even if I overall like his current lore state, I feel like the road we took to get here was… Kind of long and unnecessary. It seems kind of obvious looking back that Riot didn’t have a clear long-term plan for Aatrox or the Darkin, as years of unanswered questions followed by multiple retcons kind of entails. From being the last survivor of an ancient race, to MAYBE being a demon, to being an alien, to finally becoming a fallen demigod. Aatrox’s history is practically a whole story in-and-of-itself, and I’ve long wondered how things might have turned out if Riot had, you know, picked a direction and gone with it a bit sooner?

So, here’s the basis of my rewrite: I’m gonna try and incorporate elements from all of Aatrox’s various backstories into a single, coherent biography. Can I manage it? Well, I’ll leave that for you all to determine…

When the skies are blackened by the flames of war and the earth is dyed red with blood, Aatrox draws near. For as long as conflict has existed among the races of Runeterra, the Chaos Blade has manifested to those deemed worthy, turning the tides of battle in exchange for the flesh of whoever wields it.

The true origins of the Darkin have long been lost time. Some say that they are the first weapons ever forged, corrupted by the malice of those who have wielded them over ages. Others claim that the Darkin are a rare breed of demon, of whom only five remain. Only one thing is certain: the Darkin exist only to bring death and destruction, and none embrace this more than Aatrox himself.

Tales of a wicked blade manifesting amidst the heat of battle exists across all cultures, from the frigid north to the blistering south. The sword is said to appear before warriors on the cusp of defeat: those who would give anything, even their own lives, for the sake of victory. Those who wield the Chaos Blade are granted inhuman strength and endurance, often haled as heroes for turning the tides of battle. With every foe slain, however, the Chaos Blade grows stronger, consuming the mind of its wielder and warping their flesh. In time, the hero becomes a mindless vessel, slaughter all in its path until slain. When its host falls, the Chaos Blade returns from whence it came, waiting for the moment that another might heed the sword’s call.

For ages this cycle persisted, until the day the sword manifested before a warrior of Shurima’s Ascended Host. After the Fall of Icathia, the Sunborn were called to face the encroaching threat of the Void, wielding celestial might and magic great enough to crush a hundred mortal armies. Before the Void, however, even the mighty Ascended began to falter.

The horrors summoned by Icathia steadily pushed north, consuming everything in their path and twisting the earth into maddening shapes. As their numbers dwindled, many Sunborn called to retreat, hoping to regroup within the capital and think of a plan. As some fled, however, the Ascended general Aatrox stood his ground. Pushing his draconic form to its limits, Aatrox struck down one abomination after another. When his great blade, soaked in the Oasis of the Dawn itself, was wrenched from its grasp, Aatrox fought with tooth and claw. Even if he were to fall, Aatrox would do everything in his power to slay as many Voidspawn as possible, resigning himself to death so the other Sunborn might rally their forces.

It was then, amidst the sea of madness woven by the Void, that Aatrox saw a sword embedded into the twisted earth. The blade seemed to call out to him, and Aatrox took it without question. In an instant, the general was filled with unimaginable strength and fury, and his allies watched in amazement as Aatrox fought with strength of ten Ascended warriors. Inspired by his newfound fury, the Sunborn rallied, their fighting spirits renewed at last.

When the conflict against the Void drew to a close, Aatrox was haled as a hero among heroes, though many of his former allies became wary of him and the wicked sword he now carried. Some suggested that the blade should be destroyed, while others, such as Aatrox himself, argued that its power would be instrumental if the Void ever returned.

Resentment and suspicion began to grow amongst the Sunborn, and the cracks only grew larger as Aatrox aided the other Ascended in summoning weapons similar to his own. The warriors of the Ascended host began to distance themselves from one-another and the capital, taking up posts across Shurima’s vast empire. They remained united only in the shared goal of protecting their empire.

And then the Sun Disc fell.

Following Xerath’s Ascension and the death of Emperor Azir, years of growing tensions erupted across the desert. Some Ascended raced for the chance to fill the now-vacant seat of power for themselves, while others insisted on finding a means to restore the royal dynasty. Debate soon turned to bloodshed, and Shurima was engulfed in a war that lasted centuries. It wasn’t until the Aspects of Targon intervened that the war was finally brought to an end.

Those wielding Darkin weapons were bound to their armaments with powerful magic, in-turn trapping the wicked weapons in the physical realm. The Darkin were scattered across Runeterra, and yet the souls of the Ascended persisted, stripped of bodies and senses.

For ages, Aatrox stewed within the sword that had become his prison, his soul slowly being corrupted further and further by the Chaos Blade until the two had become a single being. Ages passed and the sword was slowly forgotten, until a band of thieves broke into the Darkin’s prison in search of ancient treasure. When the thieves’ leader touched the sword, his mind was overwhelmed in an instant, his body transformed into a twisted likeness of Aatrox’s Ascended form. The Darkin slew the other thieves in an instant, drawing strength from their blood before breaking free of his long confinement.

Aatrox emerged into a frozen landscape with but a single goal: to bring about a war so violent, so destructive, that it would be the end of all things. He would be the World Ender, herald of a conflict to end all others. With every foe he slays, with every swing of his sword, Aatrox sews the seeds for violence and carnage, drawing one step closer to his magnus opus.

So, what did you think? As stated before: my primary goal this time around was to try and combine Aatrox’s various origin stories into a single narrative. Admittedly, I could only manage to do this by adding an air of mystery to the actual origin of the Darkin; maybe they’re demons, maybe they’re aliens, maybe they’re something else entirely. I know that might seem like a bit of a cop-out, but a large part of what made the Darkin so interesting to the community in the first place was the air of mystery surrounding them, and the room it offered for speculation and theorizing.

Another main concern, though, was that I wanted to find a way to blend old Aatrox’s personality with his new one. The thing I miss most about the OG Aatrox was that, despite being obsessed with war and bloodshed, he wasn’t just another rage monster. He was calm and composed, and a lot of his lines hinted at a deeper philosophy toward the inevitability of conflict rather than just “I wanna kill everything because I’m angry!” League has way too many of those, in my honest opinion. I thought that, by combining his mind with a semi-sentient sword that brings about carnage because that’s simply its PURPOSE, a little but of that old Aatrox might shine through.

But, as always, this is all just my opinion; how I, personally, would have gone about reworking the character. If you prefer Aatrox as he currently is, or think my version of the story is inferior, that’s fine! Feel free to share your thoughts and comments, but please, let’s try to keep it civil. After-all…

The last thing we want is to start a war over this…

#Outofpower #Runeterra Retcons #League of Legends

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breathingmotherearth · 3 years

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Fig Tree

By Mike Shanahan

17 January 2017 BBC Earth

Over 2,000 years ago, an important tree had one of its branches removed on the order of Indian emperor Ashoka the Great. It was under this very tree that the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment. Ashoka bestowed kingship on the branch, and planted it in a thick-rimmed solid gold vase.

He then took the branch over mountains and down the Ganges River to the Bay of Bengal. There, his daughter carried it aboard a ship and sailed for Sri Lanka to present it to the king. Ashoka loved the plant so much that he shed tears as he watched it leave.

This story, from the epic poem The Mahavamsa, is about a kind of fig tree scientists call Ficus Religiosa. True to its name, an unbroken line of devotion towards it stretches back to thousands of years before Ashoka's time.

But F. Religiosa is not alone. It is just one of more than 750 fig species. No other plants have held such sway over human imagination. They feature in every major religion and have influenced kings and queens, scientists and soldiers. They played roles in human evolution and the dawn of civilization. These trees have not only witnessed history; they have shaped it. If we play it right, they could even enrich our future.

Most flowering plants display their blooms for all to see, but the Ficus species hide them away inside their hollow figs. And while most plants bury their roots underground, the strangler figs and their kin show them off.

They can even smother and kill giant trees, growing into colossal forms.

Take Ashoka the Great's F. religiosa. Buddhists, Hindus and Jains have revered this species for more than two millennia. The same tree featured in battle hymns sung by the Vedic people 3,500 years ago. And, 1,500 years earlier, it appeared in the myths and art of the Indus Valley Civilization.

Elsewhere in Asia — indeed across the tropics and subtropics — cultures have adopted fig trees as symbols of power and places of prayer. These figs feature in creation stories, folklore and fertility rites. The champion is the Indian banyan (Ficus benghalensis), a tree so big it can resemble a small forest from afar.

Banyans grow so large because the roots they drop from their branches can merge into stout pillars as thick as English oak trees. These false trunks support the banyan's huge branches, enabling them to grow longer and send down even more roots.

One banyan in Uttar Pradesh is said to be immortal. Another in Gujarat is said to have grown from a twig used as a toothbrush. A third is believed to have sprung up where a woman threw herself onto her husband's burning funeral pyre and died. That tree, in Andhra Pradesh, can shelter 20,000 people.

The first Europeans to enjoy a banyan's shade were Alexander the Great and his soldiers, who arrived in India in 326 BCE. Their tales of this tree soon reached the Greek philosopher Theophrastus, the founder of modern botany. He had been studying the edible fig, Ficus Carica.

Each Ficus species has its own wasp pollinator.

Theophrastus had noticed tiny insects entering or emerging from figs. Their story would turn out to be one of the most astounding in all of biology. More than 2,000 years would pass before scientists realized that each Ficus species has its own wasp pollinator, while some even have two. Likewise, each fig-wasp species can only lay its eggs in the flowers of its partner figs.

This relationship began more than 80 million years ago and has shaped the world ever since. Ficus species must produce figs year-round to ensure their pollinator wasps survive. This is great news for fruit-eating animals that would otherwise struggle to find food for much of the year. Indeed, figs sustain more species of wildlife than any other kinds of fruit.

More than 1,200 species eat figs, including one-tenth of all the world's birds, nearly all known fruit-bats and dozens of species of primates, dispersing their seeds as they do so. Ecologists therefore call figs "keystone resources". Like the keystone of a bridge, if figs disappeared everything else could come crashing down.

Figs do not only nourish animals. The year-round presence of ripe figs would have helped sustain our early human ancestors.

High-energy figs may have helped our ancestors to develop bigger brains. There is also a theory that suggests our hands evolved as tools for assessing which figs are soft, and therefore sweet and rich in energy. While the first humans benefitted from fig biology, their descendants mastered it. Ficus species are among the first plants people domesticated, several thousand years ago.

Farmers even trained monkeys to climb trees and harvest them

The ancient Egyptians seized upon a species called Ficus Sycomorus, whose pollinator wasp was either locally extinct or had never arrived. By rights, this species should not have yielded a single ripe fig. But through a stroke of luck or genius, farmers worked out that they could trick the tree into ripening its figs by gashing them with a blade. Before long, the figs were a mainstay of Egyptian agriculture. Farmers even trained monkeys to climb trees and harvest them.

Egypt's fig trees fed both bellies and beliefs. The Pharaohs took dried figs to their graves in order to sustain their souls on their journey into the afterlife. They believed the mother goddess Hathor would emerge from a mythic fig tree to welcome them into heaven.

To the north and east, the Egyptian fig's sweeter cousin, F. Carica, became an important food to several other ancient civilizations. The Sumerian King Urukagina wrote about them nearly 5,000 years ago. King Nebuchadnezzar II had them planted in the hanging gardens of Babylon. King Solomon of Israel praised them in song. The ancient Greeks and Romans said figs were heaven-sent. Their allure can perhaps be explained by another crucial point. Aside from being sweet and tasty, they are also packed with fibre,vitamins and minerals. These nutritional benefits have long been known. "Figs are restorative," wrote 1st-century Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder, "and the best food that can be taken by those who are brought low by long sickness."

A famous example of the healing power of figs appears in the Bible. Hezekiah, King of Judah, was "sick even to death" with a plague of boils but recovered after his servants applied a paste of crushed figs to his skin.

These chimps may have been self-medicating

The healing power of fig species is not limited to their fruit. Medicines developed over millennia by people throughout the tropics make use of their bark, leaves, roots and latex.

The use of fig trees as living medicine cabinets may even pre-date the origin of our species. Our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, also appear to turn to these trees for their curative powers, suggesting our common ancestor with them did too.

Researchers working in Uganda occasionally observed chimps eating unusual foods, such as the bark and leaves of wild fig trees. These chimps may have been self-medicating, the researchers concluded. And for good reason, tests show that compounds in the fig leaves and bark are effective against bacteria, parasites and tumours.

Fig trees have not only helped civilizations and cultures rise. They have also watched them fall, and have even helped to hide their ruins. For instance, the great cities of the Indus Valley Civilization boomed between 3300 and 1500 BCE, but they were lost to history until 1827, when a deserter on the run from the East India Company called Charles Masson arrived there. The fig trees helped forests return and overwhelm the abandoned buildings Giant Strangler trees dominated the landscape. Ruins poked out of mysterious mounds. Local people told Masson they were relics of a society that collapsed after some divine intervention corrected the "lusts and crimes of the sovereign". In fact, it was a prolonged drought that brought down the Indus Valley Civilization Strangler figs also replaced drought-stricken people at the Mayan pyramids at Tikal in Guatemala, and the Khmer temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. In each case, the fig trees helped forests return and overwhelm the abandoned buildings.

Their seeds germinated in cracks in the stonework. Their roots ripped masonry apart and crushed walls with their weight. Their figs attracted animals that in turn dispersed seeds of dozens of other tree species. And so, the forest reclaimed these sites. This power has also been observed on volcanoes like Krakatoa, whose 1883 eruption purged the island of all life. Fig trees that recolonized the bare lava were instrumental in encouraging forest to form anew. Across the tropics scientists are now replicating this effect, planting fig trees to accelerate rainforest regeneration in areas where trees have been lost due to logging. All this means fig trees can provide hope for a future with a changing climate.

Fig trees could also help us adapt to extreme conditions.

In north-east India, people encourage fig roots to cross rivers, enlace and thicken to form robust bridges, saving lives in monsoon rains. In Ethiopia, fig trees are helping farmers adapt to drought by providing vital shade to crops and fodder to goats. These two approaches can also be applied elsewhere.

In all, fig trees can help us limit climate change, protect biodiversity and improve livelihoods, as long as we continue to plant and protect these trees, as humankind has done for millennia.

Many cultures around the world developed taboos against felling fig trees. Unfortunately today, these beliefs are fading from memory. We would do well to revive them.

Their long history serves as a reminder that we are the ones who are recent arrivals on an Earth in an 80-million-year-long Age of Ficus. Our future will be more secure if we put these trees in our plans.

Mike Shanahan is a freelance writer with a doctorate in rainforest ecology. His new book about fig trees is out now (published in the UK as Ladders to Heaven and in North America as Gods, Wasps and Stranglers).

#figtree #nature #motherearth #spirituality #happy tree friends

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