Kamigawa Lore 2 - The Ages Between

And it's just it's just trying to act like a river in the middle of Times Square. Oh, to be a river in the middle of Times Square. Lore boys here. Hi everybody.

Welcome to the lore boys where we discuss lore and our boys. I'm your host Ethan Palmer with me is Peter O'Donnie. Hi Peter O'Donnie. Also lore also boys.

Hello guys. Hi. I think I'm both of those too. Yeah.

Lore and boy. Perfect. Check out. We've completed the Catcher for today's episode.

We're ready to start. The inspector behind Ethan can take that box off on our board. Check to the lore boys. Good.

And then it's like a health inspector or it's just like, but they didn't clean the grease trap. So that's good. Doc, join on that one. I'm wearing the no-suff shoes.

This episode is a part two. So if you're just doing it to the lore boys for the first time or some other this episode would make more sense if you check out the links in the description, which will take you to our original Kamehawa episode where we talk about the Kamehawa. Kamehawa is what do you guys remember about Kamehawa? So I know you mentioned it, but I will toot my own horn here.

Definitely top 10 title cards that I've done for the Kamehawa one. We had a solid bit running the entire time. So it was easy to develop, but it is an ancient Japanese themed Magic the Gathering setting where there was an emperor who like went into the plains or something to steal the tears of a dragon or the heart to make himself immortal. And then demons came through to try and steal it back and then so did the like serpent God.

There's a bunch of dragons representing the different elements then they all had thematic names, which I don't remember whatsoever. But they're all very cool. I would have been amazed if you remembered Yossai the morning star. You know, I mean, I knew they were all something some nonsense blank star.

Yeah, I couldn't remember the title. I was just like, yeah, I for me, it was like river or something. Like, I don't even know if I could remember I wrote this script today. And I mentioned them all by name.

I remember Jukin, Ryu, say, and Yossai, can't remember the water one or the fractally one that was like in that dome. That's part. Yeah, that's that's Kia or I was the heart of Okegachi. But Peter Peter nailed it.

So that's what he's for there too. So I was gonna say, Oh, come, you got a lower voice got the power. And then that was my whole thing. But I think they're pretty cool.

Yeah, thanks. Pete would have been better if you'd like you get a word in that choice. Now, now all we know is we're going into the start of this one. So right.

So, yeah, as a recap, a lot of what Peter said, it's dynastic warrior samurai powerful spirits called Kami, we're based on real Japanese myth and only where demons of Japanese myth. As I mentioned, we're gonna cover roughly 1200 years of history between the end of the last episode leading right up to Neon Dynasty for anyone who had their hopes up. We're not actually gonna get quite into the end. I see that I would love to do an episode focusing on some of the stories of that time specifically that cyberpunk future, but we're gonna we're gonna bridge the gap before we get to 1200 years and one hour take that Dan Carlu.

It takes like four hours to cover like a year of here at 430 in the afternoon, he got on to feasting and raping once again. So I guess as Mike, quick recap, the war began with like Pete said, the de facto leader of the largest of coming, I was getting them Lord Takeshi Kanda stole a piece of the greatest commies very essence known as Kiaodai or that which was taken. The war ended with Takeshi's daughter Michiko merging with Kiaodai to become the guardian of the two worlds and material in spirit. Together they destroyed the rogue father of Kiaodai Okagachi and sentenced Lord Kanda to an eternity of suffering as a million pieces of sentient stone.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was that was hardcore. And then peace and prosperity rain forevermore in Kamigawa.

Right. That's how we can get through 1200 years so fast. Yeah. That's it.

That's it. That's been a great. Nothing of consequence ever occurred to be like to be a million little pieces of stone like pieces of your be like washing down a river and sand like pieces of you would be like stuck onto the side of a cliff. It might be kind of cool.

It doesn't sound that bad. Unless it's like pretty Zen eventually considering you'd end up like parts of you would be under the set of a river or like maybe in the bottom of a glacier and you get to move four and a half inches every 80 years or something. I mean, you'd gradually be like broken down into more and more pieces right like as erosion occurs, those rocks would eventually rub down to nubs and wash up to nubs. So like I actually like I've heard this statistical form.

I've no idea what your truth is that like every breath you take you breathe at least one molecule that was breathed my Napoleon Bonaparte just like the kind of like love numbers like they're so small and there's so many that it's likely that one of them was in him at some point. Not any other human just him. He breathes. Just a whole lot.

Yeah. He breathes a lot. Yeah. Despite his Napoleon.

It sounds like another fucking Dan Carlin fact. Yeah, or like maybe you like end up like as a perfectly smooth river rock that gets swallowed by a bird to grind up its food in his belly. Birds do that. Some birds something.

All right. Take off. Never. Never swallow the stones.

You have to chew no more. Come on. Do you do it? Wait so we time chewing.

I was doing one bird with teeth and it's always sunny and I think they made that one. Imagine going out to a nice place with someone for like a glass of whiskey and just like swallow the stones in front of breadsticks and then a basket of river rocks are completely with every table. You go for a drink. You swallow your whiskies and then you ask them as they're going to finish theirs.

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't chew my lunch. I really need these.

Yeah. It's a joke to die for. So yeah, peace and prosperity didn't quite rain in coming out at the end of the commuore when Michiko and and I defeated the their fathers essentially to bring peace and prosperity to the region. So for the common person in coming out those, you know, we're out till in the fields, you know, we've in the cloth in the textile factories or, you know, the soldiers in the Lord's armies.

Most of them never really found out about like Lord Kona's crime, right? That he stole the heart of of an ancient the most ancient commu the barrier between the very worlds. So to most people, there wasn't really any telling why the commu decided to suddenly invade their realms and conduct wholesale slaughter. All that they saw was that our Lord was doing everything he could sending his armies to different lands to protect them and, you know, sacrificing his men in the fight against these commu to protect the people is kind of what they saw, kind of what the laborers and stuff, you know, what mainstream media would have you believe.

So all the King's horses and all the King's men may have shattered Humpty Dumpty behind the scenes, but everyone watching, they were just trying to put him back together. Okay, right? Okay, interesting. Yeah, yeah, you've got you've always got the the Emperor's press secretary coming out on TV to walk back every single thing he said three hours later.

Well, Mr. I know he said that he went out there and pushed Mr. Dumpty off the wall, but to be totally not anything to do with it, or you know, in the heat of the moment, taken out of context might seem like you wanted him dead. But that's not good.

So now that Takeshi Kanda was gone, sentenced to being rebel for attorney, like we said, people saw his daughter working closely with the child of Ocagachi, the great serpent who killed thousands of humans during the war. We're kind of like, what's going on here? You know what I mean? They're actually going to work with the enemy.

Now you're like, you've replaced him. He got killed. You know, maybe some people knew she did it, doubt it. Maybe plenty of people thought she did it.

And now she's working with the spirits that have been terrorizing them for decades at this point, right? So in light of this, Joe, I am just go agree, the world should know of her father's crown. She's like, I'm gonna put on blast, you know what I mean? Together, they revealed the truth of things how Takeshi has stolen the heart of Ocagachi, which had led to the war in the first fall.

And now he sent prosperity rain forevermore in County Gala. Thanks so much for listening to everybody. He's still not really the rest of me. She goes life would be spent trying to undo the damage of her father, though it would forever remain a struggle for her.

She never quite got to a point where people were chill. People had no chill. I guess. Okay, the expose she did with Ronan Farro didn't pan out and say exactly.

She really got dang when she was making fun of Greta Thunberg. Right. So uh, so knowing the truth of the case, she's transgression. There were many who felt she was unfit to rule simply because she was his daughter.

They're like this. She's like, Hey, this, you know, things are good. I'm here to help the last guy. He like went into the spirit world and stole the heart of a God.

And that's what caused the war. Okay, but I'm here. I'm working with that heart and I'm here to make it better. And everybody was like, I choose daughter.

And I mean, okay, so she did sentence to him. She literally sends it to him to an eternal punishment as a pile of feeling debris. But I guess people were still still pretty angry about all the life. I could have been part of her plan, you know, and she had all those carrier pigeons that she didn't tell everyone about the secret carrier pigeons.

Yeah. Yeah. In cryptic carrier pigeons on 100 Biden's lap. Yeah.

So we've got the one camp. We've got the liberals who are like, Hey, you know, you're not fit to rule because your father was the one who did this to us. And then we have the conservatives who are like, no, you're just making this up. We still believe the thing that we believe before we refuse to ever change our viewpoint.

You were corrupted by a canny euro puppet to the center sphere shadow cabal that is made up of checks, notes, the gods and spirits of the natural world, I guess. So, um, like a pile of rubble in a pizza shop basement for dads down there, man. I'm sorry. So I'm going to share the first artwork for today's episode with you guys.

So Pete, I want you to tell me as quick as you can, the first thing you noticed about the image. Okay, genuinely not to know the park last time. I'm one thing, one, one specific detail, which I'm curious if you'll pick up. I don't know.

It's like there is just a big thumb. No, so it's very tall. It's all in thin, right? Yeah.

So a lot of the, um, a lot of the lore from this episode comes from this, this type of card called sagas. They were introduced in the domino area block. I want to say the recent return to domino area block, which we did an episode around domino area around the time in that block. So how's sagas work there in chamois that you basically play you put it onto the battlefield and every turn it like grows as it kind of tells the story.

So if you can destroy the enchantment, if you're at an opponent can destroy your enchantment before your sagas completed won't do everything that it was set up to do as the fans opening. It's telling the whole story. It looks like each blade of the fan like paints the picture behind it. Yeah, exactly.

So it's like the fan that's basically showing Michiko as Empress during this time or ever as she's kind of leading the world out of ignorance. But you'll notice there's I think just two pictures that I'm actually going to share with you guys that come from this type of card called the sagas. But basically they're supposed to tell the story through the In-game actions that the car does, which is kind of an interesting kind of intrusive a while ago. So this one's called Michiko's Rain of Truth.

So anyone listening at home, you guys want to see the art that we're talking about? It's by Volcan Bagha. The car is called Michiko's Rain. Yeah, I wouldn't notice that because like pictures from Wikipedia or like from a fan wiki or he's so kind of obtuse and randomly shaped the actual like the fact it looks like a phone wallpaper, a square on a magic card.

It's just like it's a hand with like a big thumb. And I thought the guy holding this fan is I did set up to fail. I thought maybe on the off chance you would be like, why is the resolution like this? But I think I set up to fail and look outside the picture to find what I'm talking about.

It's funny that you said normally pictures from a fan wiki and there's a little bit of it. Oh, yeah. You're less funny than I thought you were. I did get this one on fans.

So despite the trials and tribulations, Michiko would eventually usher in an age of progress upon Kamigawa as both people and Kami worked her very well. Michiko had wanted to lead as a spiritual advisor more than as a traditional leader and had refused the title of emperor in her lifetime. But she was awarded the title posthumously as the first emperor of a new Kamigawa. So she didn't want to be seen as an emperor and she passed away and people were like, she was the emperor, new emperor, her kid, basically right away.

Kia or I for what it's worth is very enigmatic throughout the story that I'm in until today feels like that which was taken whom Michiko would work so closely with to kind of build this piece and foster this piece is surprisingly absent. I'm gonna say Lord, boy's cannon. Kia or I is dealing with a lot of commie bullshit. Right.

Not again, this game of a lot less. I'm not commie bullshit, but I'm. Yeah, exactly. You can't have a lot of like the spiritual angry spirits and things like that kind of calming them.

There will be, I think just one bit of Lord, boy's can where we talk about where it made. So now finally, peace and prosperity would ring on Kamigawa for a little while, at least like like like weeks or decades, a couple generations. Oh shit, okay. It is good.

Michiko's descendants work with the great commie, Jedi, the uphold piece and prosperity for future generations. But as time passed and the deeds of the past gradually forgotten by short of humans, the lessons learned were also eventually forgotten. So this is kind of a recurring theme where the commie didn't necessarily forget, you know, their anger at the war and everything, but they did kind of move on from it and kind of remember the lessons that they learned there. As humans who die and you know, just briefly further humans, you know, who are who live on through their children rather than living on through their living on.

Obviously forget the mistakes of the past and repeat them all over again, which gets the coming guy right? No, exactly. They typically just get reborn. Oh, yeah.

What the stronger they are, like the longer their respawn is or something. Yeah, exactly. All right. And it gets a little interesting a little bit later with some commie that we're gonna talk about who didn't seem like they were gonna respond, but we'll cover that in a little bit.

I got so it all came to a head all this this human human bullshit when one of me goes to sentence the emperor at the time because we are doing like a head come on here where it's just passed on from empress emperor to child emperor to child emperor to child. One of me goes to sentence passes away suddenly without an air. So now, you know, the best way planes of my command, commie, gone astray. The question of succession was one to fight over as some sided with her brother while other sided with her husband.

She's married and has a brother. It's the worst of all worlds. No, no child. I got Joe the castle where the cone does rain from this evolves into war.

And from the castle, it infected the realm entirely spreading to the most distant reaches of the world. The world was still weak and the losses sustained in the war. People were still desperate. You know, there was still kind of like petty world lords who were harboring grudges for losing whatever and you know, just opportunity to saw the opportunity when I got into the world to kind of make their own claim on the world.

So we've regressed to this, you know, dynastic feudal world where people are kind of always firing with each other and this all at war over who should be emperor taking place in the castle. This is like a classic. Schism when it's just like, okay, yeah, peace and prosperity guys. Remember to have a son or a daughter who cares how that rule is, but just like, just get pregnant, okay?

Will do says we're having a having an aneurysm dropping down. I don't know. Exactly. Just like as soon as you can just, you know, advocate doesn't matter what's with so that you raise them right and they get the emperor cool.

Yeah, this make you out. That's what's taken and that which is about to be taken his lunch break. So I'm gonna be in the break room. Okay.

Don't don't die. I'm just kidding, but I'm kind of serious. I'm just Don't die long. You only got one shot this, you know, like we learned that the hard way trusting you guys to remember things through death.

You don't so just just pay attention right now. Okay. Okay. So the dragon coming who had once protected kind of got was mortal inhabitants had all been lost, but for one during the war.

Peter mentioned these dragons each one kind of aspect into a plane that was white, a blue, a black green, a red and green. So, you know, the morning sore morning, sorry, excuse me was destroyed by Ocagachi trying to defend Eigangjo Tower. Also, Jugan and Kaga, the black or sorry, the blue and the green both fell during the war off camera, I guess. Or off camera for us is all you guys need to know.

Jugan died on his way to his home planet. Coke show the evening star, the black aspect of dragon actually died in the intervening year between the Kami War and kind of where we are today with the war of succession raging, but not too much before. So he died defending the swamps that he called home from an invasion of only or demons. In the chaos of the Kami War, many only who were once imprisoned within the Sozinkin Mountains were released by ogres who live there merely to spread further death and destruction amongst the humans.

We didn't talk too much about the Ocagachi, the ogres of this plane, but they are just kind of these agents of chaos who live in the mountains and were once a very powerful faction who has now kind of taken the sidelines to humans. So, in the war, they saw their own opportunities. They saw their opportunity and they kind of released a bunch of demons to go mass with humans as well. Seems like a lot of them are still running rampant.

And they did seem to be dealt with at the end of the war, and this was kind of something that I was researching a bit and there seemed to be a bit of like, oh, it's the demons from during the Kami War, but then there was also something we're going to talk about a bit later, which may have caused the demons to show up. So, which it was, I'm not sure, but for right now, what we need to know is a bunch of demons showed up at some point after the Kami War and killed Kosho. And Kosho is defending the swamp. He died in a swamp.

I would suck the die in a swamp. Yeah, well, don't cuz I'm sure. Yeah. I got an over-over territory, baby.

I remember having a dream when I was like pretty young that I was playing in the backyard of my grandma's place and I tripped into a puddle and I was like drowning in the mud or whatever, and I couldn't quite yell out to my just out of reach parents kind of thing. And then I woke up and I was just had two pillows stuffed in my face. Oh, it's gonna say, yeah. Were you face down?

I was face down. I got the same thing. Yeah, that guy came from a dream with my face down in a pillow, but he was a nuclear blast that hit me in the face. I guess as I rolled over or something.

Oh, wow. That was on my brain. But in real life, when I was, I don't know, maybe like 13, 14 something at that, I was at a friend's cottage and he had a, there's a lake outside his cottage and there was this like, it was like a very mucky. You know, where you like, you got like halfway through paths in the summer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or whatever we were kids and I've never been serious about that kind of stuff. So we had a lot of fun in there. And like one day we're at the on the other side of the lake.

And his mom had like an old air raid siren that she used to call us in for like lunch and dinner with. Which was very cool. So he's like, okay, he's like jumps into the water, so I swim across the lake. I didn't feel like swimming across the lake.

So I start running across. I'm like, I'm gonna cut across the bay. I step into the bay. I know joke, sank in mud up to my nipples with just like two feet of water above my head.

And had a real ass moment of panic. I was just like, oh shit, I have no leverage to manage to get myself. I'm like, oh, wait, fuck. Had a real pre-second.

I was like, what's up? One time I had a last dream really quick. I had a dream of I was in like a house that I thought was like, it was made out of stone that it felt like it was in like Greece or something. It was with my mom and my brother.

We looked outside in the night sky and there was like flying saucers. And then I was like running on this like grassy hill and I fell and I felt the grut the saucer go over my head and the warmth of the engine like felt on my back. And then I woke up and I was like in in the summer like in my room or whatever. My back was still a little bit warm and I was like, oh my god, I just got abducted.

His brother, his brother passed on his back while he was sleeping. I didn't know if that was going to be a peed myself story or like it was early morning. The sun was beating through the window and that was like the residual warmth. No, I had a very weird dream this weekend that I won't get into it.

Okay, we'll save that. Yeah, I'll have to say four of the dragons, four of the five dragons died either in the war or in the years since. Only re-uside the falling star of the red dragon would remain relatively unscathed throughout the age. So with the realm's strongest protectors gone, the civil war amongst the humans wasn't the only concern.

Those only who had killed coke show are still kind of a problem in the swamps and are still kind of spreading around destruction. This time in history is known as the shattered states era and it is again a saga card. Shattered states. Okay.

So it wasn't clear precisely, like I kind of said before what Kyodai was doing during this time. Here's our Lord boy's cannon is that Kyodai perhaps realizing that it was typical human bullshit to be killing each other. You know, just willy-nilly wholesale. Kyodai decides to rush off to deal with the demon threat.

As spirits themselves, the only are linked to the commune in many ways after all. Seems like they're not, like they're not, like they're not spirits in the same sense demons because we talked about last time the older our own demon of chaos was essentially what the Okagashi was where it was he was the barrier between the material world and the demon world. That said, I also can't find anything about the demon world or the fact that it's really anything like that. For Oni, like I know in anime they go like this Oni-chan, which means older brother.

Does Oni just mean older, I wonder? It's spelled differently. I know like Oni-chan I think has two eyes when spelled in English. And it's probably like pronounced differently in actual Japanese and then like when we romanticize it, it ends up like similarly sounding.

But Oni in Japan as a demon is like you've seen it before. It's like the smiling demon with the horns, the white mask with the horns on it and the tusks or whatever. I think Japanese goblin is in a moat in Discord and it might be close to what the Oni is. Oh, okay.

The pale white skin in the tusks, just like your older brother. Yeah, that looks like the Japanese ogre looks a lot like a... Eastman. Okay, yeah.

Yeah, so Keo and I, we're gonna say Lord West Ganon goes off to deal with the Oni in the forest and that's why they're not sticking around in the human capital at Gondor. This left the human order rage unabated for some time, though while people were taking the side of the husband or the brother, there were those who saw that both sides were flawed and sought to just, you know, and limit them both. We don't need either. Republicans, Democrats, both bad.

So thank God, libertarians for the rescue. Now there was a clan who had served in the Condemilitary for generations, had earned a reputation of an untarnished honor in their service. They were known for having an unwavering duty to the betterment of all citizens. A real clan Superman.

Which means death of everyone around them. Is the best of all citizens. No, death of the two guys fucking this up right? Okay.

Well, only people that he wanted to kill us up. It was a young Yamazaki soldier, Yamazaki's the clan specifically they were talking about who served the Condemilitary for a long time. Who realized two men sending way after way of citizens against each other was maybe not in the best interest of the people. Gee, the young Yamazaki took it upon himself to challenge Imperial Decree and end the bloody contest.

He assassinated successfully the late Emperor's husband, but when he went for the brother, he found the target all too ready for his attack. Armed and waiting in the throne room, it would be a difficult fight for Yamazaki to win. It seemed like he has unwittingly played into the hands of the brother, taken out his rival, who is now waiting in the throne room, you know, with a Kyo-Dai's bedroom basically, where while Kyo-Dai is off doing something else with presumably all his guards and he's fully kidded out in the throne room. I actually meant to save this picture as well, but didn't I save a picture of the sword you guys can see the battle between the Emperor and the Emperor's brother, excuse me, who's the white figure.

Name was Conker is the back side of his card, the trans-formed side of his card and the one in red is presumably the Yamazaki soldier who was sent to take him out. That's very cool. Okay, so it's just like a G-Man basically working for the other clients. He's like, no name, no face, nothing, just no identity, just sent in to eliminate.

Yeah, I tried really hard to find a name for this person, this Yamazaki, because the Yamazaki, there are panning Yamazaki's in the two candies I was at. So in the first kind of Yamazaki, the Yamazaki, excuse me, brothers, and they have a legendary card. If you usually have a card with a name, like if you play a Koko show, the evening star, you can't play two, because there's something called the legendary rule, and if the card says legendary in its height, you can't have two cards in the same name. Yeah, exactly, you can't have two cards in the same name.

So the Yamazaki brothers, basically you can have up to four cards in a deck, and they have a card text which says if there's already Yamazaki brothers on the battlefield, the legendary rule doesn't apply. So you can play, I think, up to four of them, maybe it was just two of them, but you can play more of them and just like the legendary rule doesn't apply. And then in the young dynasty, so again, this lore is from the Neon dynasty expansion, and they're just backfilling the space between basically. So in modern-day, there are figures called Yamazaki, and we'll probably talk about a few of them whenever I do a property on dynasty episode.

Okay, cool, cool. But for this young lad, potentially, you know, changed the fate of the world in some ways, definitely saved it. No name. Might as well be a horse that you ride through the desert on.

Okay. So while the faceless nameless Yamazaki was getting his work done, the Kiaodai had reached Jukai Forest, where the only were becoming a bigger and bigger threat. So they kind of taken over the swamp at this point, and now we're like, dude, get in their feet wet, hate this, let's go to the dry forest, and are kind of creeping into the dry forest. Okay.

So the only threat was pouring like a tide over the sea of trees, and this event came to be known as the Night of Withering. Perhaps in desperation, the Orochi, who we talked about a bit last time, the snakefolk. Oh, yeah. Right.

Yeah. Also the for honor character with the really fast attacks that cheeses you. I remember that one. Yeah.

So the snakefolk, in other words, they devised a point. What was Gannon still is that they did this with Kiaodai's help, because again, I couldn't figure out what Kiaodai would be doing at this time, and it seems like they could have used Kiaodai's help in this, right? So the Orochi clan succeeded. They were able to resurrect Jugan the rising star to help defend them.

So their protector, Dragon, who had died during the Kami War, they managed to resurrect him. That's what I'm like, we'll say it was with Kiaodai's help, because again, Kami don't seem to die. The dragons are Kami. They seem to just go to the spirit realm where they have to re-manifest for a long time.

Yeah, the fast-tracked, basically like fast-trasted reincarnation tickets through ghost IT or some shit. Exactly. And you know, I haven't done that much training on Neon Dynasty, but in theory, Okagachi also just build enough, build enough steam, right? Yeah.

So I don't know how long it would have taken the dragons to respond if they would have responded at all. They almost certainly would not have responded the same way, where they were pretty intrinsically tied to Sichio, which is a material plane rather than the spirit plane, because they spent all their time here, right? Right? If ghosts, like if ghosts did IT and they had the perspective of living forever, imagine how long your tickets are taken to get done.

They already take long and we have like a finite amount of time to live, right? Yeah. I have my IT today, actually. My laptop battery is dead.

And now that I'm back at the office, I have to unplug it to take it to the theater that's at the studio. And I think it's like, I'm in there leaning a pad of paper at the screen, as though I'm like writing like war letters by candlelight. And like at some point, the executive producer for the movie, KVT, why don't you bring your laptop? I was like, oh, yeah, I can't unplug it.

He's just like, that is unacceptable. I will contact IT. I was like, thanks, man. Because I tried.

You guys are doing a lot of IT bashing when I feel like a significant demographic of people who listen to lore podcasts are IT professionals. So I'm going to say that I spent all day troubleshooting because I had this problem with my VPN connection, like our word VPN. Yeah. Like only when I'm connected to the VPN, my internet super slowly dies, where like I was in a global meeting with Jamie today and the I was troubleshooting at the same time with this tech.

Because this is something that's been happening for a few weeks now. I was in the meeting and I'm troubleshooting. So I connect my global protect the meeting, the audio, the video, never stutters, don't drop a frame. Everything's fine.

But like, I can't load Google. I can't send teams messages, like just like random parts of my computer software. I guess I got this problem with MS teams recently as well. Just as well.

It's like, while we're IT bashing. I'm not I'm not saying thankfully that's IT. I'm going to do this with me. I'm just saying we're the three of us united against IT.

But I'm being able to say what up there. The longer the longer a meeting goes on. I'm going to get a new computer tomorrow, thankfully. But the longer a meeting goes on, the shittier the connection gets.

And my laptop starts to take off. Like just by streaming a meeting with like six people in it. It's just like, it's like, okay, we got like eight minutes before this thing dies, dude. The harder my graphics card needs to work, the less my internet works.

Don't know why. That's very funny. Yeah. Yeah.

That's just how it works. Okay. That's a personal computer, but I'll blame it for that. Yeah.

We'll fix it yet. So I'll thank IT for sabotaging James computer on my back. Thank you. I'll thank IT for assassinating my rival emperor or whatever.

So we're saying, Laura's Canon, Joe and I helped the erotian, the snake people of Jukai forest, resurrected Jugai and the rising star to help defend them from the only threat that demon threat coming out of this one. Good. Joe. Work is done here, brought a dragon back from the from the nether realms.

I'm off back to the guy, Gancho Castle. My lunch break is over. Got to see what those crazy kids are getting up to. Just in time, see the emperor's brother squaring off with the young Yamazaki warrior.

Okay. Finally, fat up with it all. Joe, I issued an agreement. The Kona family would no longer serve as a hereditary rulers of Kenagawa, as they pretty clearly lost the plot at this point.

They would become ordinary citizens and free and fair elections would take place instead. Almost. The comment is not it's not often that like a deposed emperor or like a deposed royal family is just like, you go get a day job now instead of just being executed and devoured by the peasants. So I say almost free and fair elections.

The truth is Kia or I decree that the commie would elect new rulers for their noble qualities and commitment to the nation. So we now have this CIA imposing a new leader in their place and the old leaders get a disappeared Argentine for a while. Oh, yeah, no, the president moved to a farm out in the country. He's fine.

No, we can't go visit him. So such was the birth of the class known as the Imperials, those chosen by Kia or I to lead Kenagawa. The moment of confrontation between the word the emperor and the brave young soldier willing to defy orders in the name of peace is depicted on the health of a sword. The image that I've shown the the boys here, the card art is the shattered state's era.

Like I said, the art is by David Gaiyat. Meanwhile, across the plains over the river into the woods. If you'll remember a dragon was a dragon was squaring off at grandmother's house with a tide of demon. Right.

More on that after the break. OK, was it? Sorry. I don't know how to clap you in to be honest.

I just did three claps and then I rushed the click and it really felt off time. Well, I got yeah, Jimmy just claps were lives to be in Morse code. So welcome back three slow claps is. Oh, right?

Uh, yes, which I assumed meant. Oh, by the way, we're back from breaking out live. Yeah. So I really know SOS is like the three letters I know just in case I've ever stuck in a submarine and trying to get someone's attention.

But it's two letters. If you think about it, yeah, it's I guess the same place. Did you guys know that SOS was a background where it was originally chosen as SOS just because how easy it was to remember. You guys are so simple.

Jamie can remember it. You guys know it's three quick, three flow, three quick. Yeah. Not going to be on the mic, but he did clap it.

Not for you, but it is for me because I'm the discord car. That's what I got this, but audacity got our back. OK, perfect. Yeah.

Yeah. I'd like to see it's just like Jamie puts out like the Morse code, like lines of coconuts on the beach when he's like stranded on an island. That's the big SOS letters. So in Jukai forest, a dragon god had been forcefully reborn.

The night of withering was terrorizing the people's of the forest and their god had been ganked back from whatever realm of death they knew to turn the tide against the invading oni hordes. He's just like, oh, you guys, the wrong time twins, Basil to it. The ritual had been successful. And together with his brother, Rusei, Jukai was able to push back the oni hordes at least for the time being again, we'll get into another possible explanation of where the oni came from.

But for now, the forest is clear. When the dust had settled, however, Jukai could feel something was off. The world had changed when she was gone. The barrier between the spirit world and mortal world was no longer there.

Okagachi was no longer there. And she could no longer feel a spiritual connection to Kamigawa. She was just a dragon. She wasn't really a dragon con.

OK, three of her four siblings were dead. And now that she had returned, she barely felt alive. She knew that Kamigawa had moved on without her and to be truly reborn. She'd have to go all in.

She left Jukai on a journey to collect the essences of her fallen siblings and place them all within a single egg. Then she and her last living relative, Rusei both placed themselves in the egg and fell into a deep sleep. The egg was sealed and placed within the oldest and tallest tree within Jukai forest, a tree known as Boseiju. For 50 years, the egg lay dormant nurtured by the energy of Boseiju and the stewards set in place protected until finally five dragons emerged, fully reincarnated.

So we got new dragons, y'all. We went through the pictures last time. We'll do the same thing this time. So still one for each color.

The first one up, art by Chris Ron, is known as A.O. The Dawn Sky. I think this dragon is so cool as the white dragon because as Jamie Peter will notice and the listeners will hopefully hear when I'm done this sentence. It's not very white.

It's actually quite dark, but it's called the Dawn Sky. And the other one was the rising star. So kind of like the Dawn Star, maybe. Whereas like Dawn is actually very like dark, right?

Like at dawn, there's kind of this thin line of light along the horizon. And this dragon just has this like line of golden light, like running down its side. Yeah. Yeah.

Very much the red eyes black dragon for the blue eyes, white dragon. It looks a lot more Asian, I guess, than the last ones did. Because the last series of dragons were all very kind of pointy and abstract looking. And that one straight up just looks like a Chinese dragon, like kind of like a catfish.

Were they? Well, I think I remember some that were kind of very ferocious and odd looking. Were they not? Joe, I was.

I found they all looked pretty Asian. You're the visual guy. So I'll leave it to you. I'll leave it to you to look these things up after the show.

But. Yeah. I remember. Yeah.

Maybe it was that weird dream. I had really, though. I think this one looks like long stringy. He's got like a big spaghetti.

Yeah. It was more Italian than anything. Look at that. Italian.

You look really good. Spagoob. Hey, hey, yo, the down sky. Do you want to go for Chinese Chinese dragon or Italian dragon?

What do you want to order with? Where they go? You can have both. You guys may also notice ao in a lot of creation.

Miss that we've covered in fantasy is usually the creator like the progenitor god and Diablo, I believe it was for like some variation here too. Indeed, it was a always often considered the creation. I don't know why they went with that for the white dragon specifically, but. They did.

I guess I was addressing next up is Kyrie, the swirling sky, who is also a very cool design. I have to say, I went through a lot of art researching these because it's I'm doing a magic gathering episode. I'm just looking at pre pictures. Then you on dynasty art, which like where again, these are the new on Dinesys set talking about the older times, but then you on Dinesys the art that I'm going to show some of you guys are you two guys next time on the Patreon listeners.

I'll provide the links to the art on the next episode is some of the best magic art I've ever seen, which is really saying something. Yeah, always should always fantastic. But oh, man, some of it is so so cool. This is the blue dragon clearly.

It's very cool. Okay. Yeah, blue dragon, surprisingly, not water, not very water. I feel it is in the clouds, which is like his water, obviously, like I was like a blue lightning, rippling around itself.

It reminds me of like when Goku's running to go and meet like his master for the first time on that really long cloud road, he goes to see a little planet, it looks like like that area. There's just clouds everywhere where he is. And then it's like poking his head out. There's like a blue lightning bolt going around.

Like he's long and skinny. Like he's not his, he's the spigotini if the other guys are spaghetti. Yeah. You think you've seen spigotini?

Why don't you just get ready for Junji, the midnight sky? So obviously the black aligned dragon. This one's really fucking cool. It's got like a raver techno antlers.

Exactly. Nice, nice, lots of pink flowers all around it. Was the only picture I couldn't find a high res artwork for. So that's why the edges are like really cropped, I guess.

But next up at Sushi, the Blaison Sky, which I'll let you guys guess which one, even the listeners at home, I'll let you guys guess which color red or green the Blaison Sky is associated with. This one's very obvious. Like, it's cool. But it's, I guess it's a little less creative than the previous ones, as far as being like, I'm spoilers if you haven't guessed by now.

It's the red aspect and what it looks like a very long lion with like a mane of fire. Very cool, but like very straightforward. Like right. Yeah.

I mean, they're all done by different artists, right? So I think I stopped giving credits after the first one. First one, AO is by Chris Ron, Kyrie is by Tyler Jacobson, Junji is by Chase Stone. And this one, Sushi, the Blaison Sky is by Victor Adam, I mean, yes.

Looks like it has little windows on the side of them. Like there might be passengers in there. Like that one Christmas polar express or whatever. Right on the magic drag.

And then this one, which was, or this one, which is cool, Red, the Boundless Guy, which was my least favorite art when I first saw it. And the more time I spent looking at these, I think it might be my favorite one. There's just something about the head of this, which is it's kind of has these like ephemeral like ghostly moose antlers, I guess, with kind of this green. But it's like a way the antlers are intertwined.

It almost looks like a real animal where it has like fake eye spots, where it's like hard to spot where it's actual eyes are, which a lot of animals have to defend mechanism, right? And I just thought the more time I spent looking at this picture, the more time I was just like a little bit. It reminds me of something so specific that I'm going to post in chat. But when I was a kid, I used to play marbles on the on the playground.

And you would bet like whoever could get the marble is basically like golf, but you're like flicking a marble, right? And whoever got it in the least amount of shots would win the other person marble. And I would like, I had a backpack where I just like would get more and more marbles and reminds me of the Ninja Turtles marbles. I don't know why the color scared.

Oh, yeah. Five cents for like fucking 20. Jesus Christ. So yeah, inflation, right?

So for the listeners at home, if we're not doing a good job describing these things to you and you're not a patron, the subscriber, then just imagine if a teenage mutant Ninja Turtle marble was a dragon, that's what the fun looks like. That helps, right? I mean, so good on the last one. And this time I'm not helping at all.

So there is a saga. So these are all individual cards with the legendary role. Obviously, there is a saga card tied to this one, which is called the dragon commie reborn, the art club. Yeah, the art is why Alex Bronwyn and I mean, this art with kind of all of them rising out of, I forget the name of the tree, Boseu Zhaia, something like that.

Boseu Zhaia, they're all kind of rising out of the egg crack at the base of Boseu, this like the oldest tree in the jukai forest. And it's a very, very cool. Look it up. It is the dragon commie reborn by Alex.

So wait, was the middle one of that? Do we pass over the middle one already? The middle one is the is the oldest guy. No, it's that's cool.

The boundless guy that you can see her ghosting antlers. And when you so the reason Jamie asks is because it almost looks kind of rainbowy. This is what I'm going to guess. It doesn't necessarily look green.

It kind of looks like all of them combined. You guys will remember it was the green dragon jugen who collected all their souls and put them back into the egg. So I like that she got a little extra flair for doing that work and for kind of coming up with the plan. The in-depth artwork by Donato Jankola, who I also forgot their credit for her actual card, her core as actual card work, also pretty technical.

Like you can see the different like the yellow, the green, the blue, and then the red and kind of the black and the black and the black and the black. In that that are cool. So while the dragons had slept beneath the old ginsotry, Candy Gala was flourishing in what would be known as the age of enlightenment. So it turns out that forcefully imposing, you know, a foreign government body and forcefully imposing a ruler on a new state can work.

It didn't kind of go us. So why not here? It turns out not relying on man to decide who to lead, but letting God can really solve a lot of problems with the imperials being chosen by Qodai. Qodai was off to the races producing art and not killing the sign of a progressive society, right?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Manamo Academy, which was destroyed in the commi war, was rebuilt. Laws about ethics and fair treatment for all were written.

So, you know, they're looking good. Uh, years. Yeah, rules are made to be broken, baby. Let's go.

Laws are rules, I guess. You got to admit. Uh, so years merged decades, merged centuries and things remained largely peaceful, but some lingering effects of the commi war persisted. As a year passed.

I'm sorry. I'm so distract. Can you play marbles today? Well, with people, can you just go and shoot marbles and back?

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Nobody's going to want to bet marbles. I'm going to steal some kids marbles if I do this, but you have to break marbles right? But you have to get people hooked first.

Oh, then they buy their own marbles. Then I win that. Exactly. Then you play keeps.

OK, sorry. And those five said marbles are probably worth a lot. I'm sorry to cut you off. I needed to get that out.

I was getting Matt who used to love playing keeps in marbles. And anytime he'd lose, he was a very big kid. Anytime you'd lose, he'd scream, run over, grab all the marbles and just run away. I've heard of winning a ball bearing, dude, that was the size of my childhood fist.

And the bus ride home, it was basically gambling. Because you're like, with skills. Yeah, skill game. I won something for keeps.

I remember going home like I didn't own this when I left school, but first of all today. But now this is mine. And then it got me hooked on that kind of thing. Jamie wins the value of hard work by getting a free ball bearing.

That's one of the things I'm good at, too. It's like random skill shots that shouldn't, like it's never useful in real life. But for only for marbles or for darts and stuff like that, I'm good at that stuff. When you have your own business, you know how a business man will have his first signed dollar in a frame and up in the office, Jamie's got a framed filthy ball bearing.

It's not me, everything I knew. Above it, like above a degree, which is like a kid probably nicked it from his dad's shop, too, because like it's, you can't buy that big of a ball bearing at like the dollars where you get it. Playing for keeps as humans do, the mortal inhabitants of Kamigawa did notice with the years passing that the number of commie on the mortal plane was increasing. And at first, no one can really explain why a lot of them are friendly.

Some of them were angry or even enraged to the point of causing harm to humans. So it seems like things are going badly. And for once, not the humans default. Kami are just showing up and kind of, you know, pissed off.

We're not going to find out that there's like a toxic waste pipeline that goes with the spirit world or whatever. Like that's why things are so good. Where it's just like, yeah, we don't need to deal with our trash anymore. We we kind of are, but not yet.

That's not. Nice call. So having spent their lives in service to the commie and maintaining the PSP models and spirits, the monks of the order of jukai sent out to investigate. So there's this order of monks called the order of jukai who live in jukai for us.

And they're like, Hey, there's these random commie attacks kind of bringing up around the kamigawa. Nobody really knows why so we'll go investigate. Troublingly, they found that these commie were not coming to the to the mortal plane on their own, but instead we're being inject ejected out of their home. Strange riffs had appeared throughout kamigawa and from the sharing portals, commie were occasionally tossed out of the spirit world to find themselves in the mortal plane without themselves understanding why.

So usually why they're angry. And again, like a lot of the commie we've talked about so far are very intelligent, very sapient. Uh, it does seem like with a lot of Japanese myth and also the lower here, a lot of them are probably just like, it's a river spirit. It's going to act like a river, you know what I mean?

Or it's this is this is the spirit of a grasshopper. It's just going to be like a grasshopper when it gets it. Not necessarily going to be capable of complex speech. Uh, it's like bringing it back to the Ninja Turtles.

I'd like to imagine there's just like, uh, like a business commie, like reading a newspaper in front of its face and there's like drops through an open manhole and then it's ejected into the material plane. Yeah, exactly. It's ejected into the streets of Manhattan. You have a dog sitting on pavement.

You got like people fucking screaming at each other. Horans honking at Times Square fucking blinding you like stressing for anybody. And it's just, it's just trying to act like a river in the middle of Times Square. Oh, to be a river in the middle of Times Square.

Uh, so without a kagachi, the barrier between worlds, who was destroyed at the end of the economy war around, it seemed like the mortal and spirit realms were drifting together and were destined to eventually overlap. The months brought their findings to Eigangiocastal and the Imperials reached out to the Minano, Minamo Academy to try and find a solution to the problem. Their spots were designated mergings where the realms are merging, uh, where the barriers between Connie and mortal worlds weekend. These places were powerful and dangerous.

They were places where the very structures of reality were laid bare, like badwiring in an old house. They literally just be walking along and then suddenly you just see like Hasserach's forming, you know, at a place where reality was slowly unwinding itself. Okay. Pretty, pretty deep.

You just see like a spirit of a podcast host and all they're able to do is reawicki and not speak with any type of any original thought. Nobody wants to hear a visual thought. Trust me, we tried. I shared some card art with you guys from Touchless Bear Round the Art is by Marta Nail.

You guys want to take a crack at driving it for the listeners? Gee-boo, you want a little redemption here? All right. Yeah.

So background, I'll paint the background first, a bunch of like heavenly looking cubes, like with wings and purples and like they're like big old cubes, like in reboot coming on down and then in the front, there's like, it looks like some type of angel and she's like falling backwards with her hand up in the air. She looks like really limp in like the life. Very, to me, it's very like Victorian era woman's thing. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Onto the stage lounge. Like lots of golds in the dress in the wings as well. She has wings and then her hands are pointing out and she has a mask and her mask is like, looks like the eyes are closed and the mouth is in like a loose frown.

Well, that's the best I could do. It was okay. Yeah. And I mean, like the kind of frayed, the hems of her like dress and sashes are like pixelated.

Yeah, they seem to be like becoming unreal, right? Like they seem to be like, tesulating in a way that's going to be this woman probably didn't exist for much longer. The captain's press. Rising are basically those cubes are supposed to be tesorax, but obviously I can't see what a tesorax looks like.

Like, okay, you're gone. Got it. It's because it's because I actually pasted that to the image, not the three image. If I paste it, you would be able to see the four D because we can see one up from it.

Thank you. Yeah, you're right. So after studying these mergings for some times, the scholars have kind of got what developed technology to stabilize them and at least hold them in one place. So if it appeared somewhere, they could kind of pin it there.