#my MUDORA THEORY HI

[powdermelonkeg]

Hey do you think it's possible to fix how time travel works in skyward sword so that this link can be the first hero who fought demise in the distant past? The one from the legend I think Zelda tells us (but maybe it was someone else, my memory isnt that great).

Anyways, I'm curious because I think that's what we were supposed to think. That Link became the hero in the present, them went to the past, and by defeating Demise became the hero from the past.

So, for this, you've got two options, one involving Link himself being known, and the other being Link's legend. They've got different criteria, so it depends on what you're looking for.

If you want it to be Link that's acknowledged, with the caveat that you also subscribe to the belief at the end of the rapidly-fraying timeline post, then you can say that when Fi course-corrected the timeline, that that was a side effect put into motion to make sure Link still encountered the legend that would lead him downward.

However, if you want it to be the legend, provided you also want to go along with what's intended for the timeline (because I doubt they actually put any thought into all those possible splits in the chart), then you can look to the Ballad of the Goddess.

This exists, alongside the legend of the man the goddess gave a sailcloth to. And everything up until this point-

-was pre-determined. Link was supposed to win the Wing Ceremony, Zelda was supposed to hear a call for the surface, and so on.

The Ballad of the Goddess was meant to be a hint and guidance for the hero when he first starts out. He knows what his job is, what the end result should be, even with other stakes at play. So we can reason that Hylia had at least some limited future sight ability in order to generate these prophecies.

With that in mind, the above phrase that generated my whole Mudora theory could well have been the same thing—Hylia telling her people about what's to come, but either leaving out details so they think it's already happened, or time itself distorting the tale to change it from future tense to past tense as it's retold each generation. We know from Gaepora's meeting with Fi that the stories of the past are altered and missing pieces. So if you want to stay as true-to-intention as possible, I'd say go with that.

My own thoughts on this line below the cut.

Personally, it's the past tense that gets me hung up on this bit of dialogue; that the goddess gave the sailcloth back then. It throws me into speculation mode because I'm like "no, that hasn't happened yet, so that means it's happened twice!!!" which gives me a springboard to speculate what the world before Demise might have been like. It's also a line that could have been fixed with a single word.

You know, they say that the goddess promised the Sailcloth to her chosen hero long ago.

If they'd done that, there would be no room for questioning. I do kind of want to ask @sunnylaurels what the exact wording is in Japanese so I know without a shadow of a doubt that it's a dialogue error and not a mistranslation (after BotW's journal conundrum I no longer trust localizations) but-

The fact of the matter is, regardless of what's intended, I think it's more fun to speculate about an unknown predecessor to Link. Someone who tried, who failed, who was given a second chance, who was scattered to the winds of time to fulfill a purpose. It's a whole pocket where I can basically make up what I want, and the canon is just ambiguous enough to support it, which is amazing.

However, I also know that some theories, despite how they're technically canon-compliant, feel like they betray the canon to subscribe to on the basis of the Zeldevs' intentions. I know for a fact that the dialogue was intended to reference Skyward Sword Link. In a similar vein, I know that Breath of the Wild's 10k years ago are intended to happen after everything else in Zelda canon, or that nearly everything in Twilight Princess is intended to be a callback to Ocarina of Time.

I just have a serious case of "but what if THIS tho!"

#ask bee #timeline shenanigans #skyward sword #theory #headcanon #worldbuilding #long post

[powdermelonkeg]

By Hylia, TELL ME about your Mudora theory!

THIS POST CONTAINS HEAVY SKYWARD SWORD SPOILERS

I MEAN HEAVY

READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

The Book of Mudora is an item you get in A Link to the Past.

Looks a lot like Hyrule Historia, doesn't it?

The Book of Mudora is, according to the ALttP manual, "a collection of Hyrule legends and lore," that contains stories about the Triforce. In-game, its use is in tranlating the game's Hylian script.

Unlike all other Zelda games, its script doesn't translate into Japanese or English, instead having three unique glyphs depending on which localization you play.

But why? Why is this particular script so unintelligible?

My theory is that Mudoran Hylian is the very first iteration of Hylian, from before even Skyward Sword.

As far as language goes, plenty of languages tend to start out as logographies (hieroglyphic systems) before they turn into simpler, easier to write markings. Look at the Latin alphabet, for example.

The Proto-Sinaitic pictures up at the top got progressively simplified into the Greek alphabet, then turned into Archaic Latin. The reason Roman Latin looks so crisp and clean is because they started carving these letters into stone. The serif (the little stroke at the ends of the lines) is a chisel mark.

Given how similar Mudoran Hylian is to Egyptian hieroglyphs, we can make that connection and say that Hylian started out the same way.

HEAVY SKYWARD SPOILERS BELOW

Skyward Sword has a LOT of architecture in it. Despite it being the first Zelda game, before Hyrule was ever established, we find ruins of ancient civilizations.

A cistern so good at purifying water that the impurities of it creates the world’s first redead-esque monsters. It contains mechanical wonders like Koloktos and the elevators, and marvels of plumbing and watercourses all throughout.

Colorful palaces capable of channeling LAVA. The kind of structural integrity this would have to have, and the Fire Sanctuary is almost completely untouched by ruin!

Factories! Circuitry! Usage of stones that literally CHANGE TIME, as an integral mechanic!

Even Skyview Temple has a working water system, despite everything, and contains the best item Zelda’s ever come out with.

The civilization that came before Hyrule was ADVANCED. Insanely so. Using everything from AI to magic, these people knew how to fully take advantage of the world the goddesses left them, perhaps even through use of the Triforce.

Back to Mudora.

Although plenty of stuff on the surface uses Skylian text, mostly as easter egg content from the Zeldevs, you can find a lot of designs in Lanayru that capture interest.

Particularly this marking on the ground at that one roller coaster island in the sand sea.

The swirly marks here aren’t seen anywhere else, to my knowledge, and they look a lot like the cover of the Book of Mudora.

Now, why Mudora? Why is it called Mudora?

It doesn’t mean anything in English. And it’s the same name it has in source Japanese.

ムドラの書 | Mudora no Sho

Which, I checked; also doesn’t mean anything different from English.

Here’s the thing. The Surface is nameless. We know it’s later called Hyrule, and that’s derived from Hylia; if it was named that before, Impa or Fi would have called it such. And it had to have had a name before the tragedy of war struck it down.

So, my theory is that Mudora is the name of the world before the Battle of Demise.

When the demons broke free of the ground, Mudora must have been THRIVING. Automatons! Port cities! Dragon nobility, the Triforce itself being a well-known treasure! All of that lost in the destruction that followed.

When Hylia sent humanity skyward, it was her last resort. Almost everyone had perished in the war.

Demise even brags about that conquest.

But...that time also had a hero.

Originally, I thought that this was a time loop; that the legends were about Link and Zelda, just post Gate-of-Time and passed down through legends. However...

By the time you get there, Skyloft is long gone.

They wouldn’t have known about you.

So the first hero, the original hero, was the champion of Mudora. We don’t know what happened to them, but we know that, from Demise’s dialogue, the two never faced each other.

They may have lived a hundred years before Demise, for all we know.

But they existed.

#loz #zelda #my MUDORA THEORY HI #I HAVE BEEN WAITING TO TALK ABOUT THIS #skyward sword spoilers #THAT TAG IS VERY IMPORTANT #skyward sword #mudora #now. the real question. do i make linked universe mudoran hero a girl. because i am tempted #theories #worldbuilding #headcanons #analysis #ask bee #THANK YOU FOR ASKING I LOVE THIS