Dota 2 Lore – Theology
DISCLAIMER: Use of religion in this video
is intended only as cultural, historical and
artistic. I do not seek to offend anyone.
I identify as an atheist, and lover of all
theology including the semitic and polytheistic
faiths.
The Beginning
1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven
and the earth.
1:2 And the earth was without form, and void;
and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face
of the waters.
1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and
there was light.
1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good:
and God divided the light from the darkness.
1:5 And God called the light Day, and the
darkness he called Night. And the evening
and the morning were the first day.
Why are we here? What is here… and… Who
are we…? While I cant answer that in regards
to our universe…, maybe I can for the dotaverse.
Reality is only our subjective interpretation
of the objective truth, so really anything
you believe in is real, and everything you
don’t believe in is also real, somewhere.
You see, reality, and the multiverse used
to be a tightly woven fabric, a whole piece
of reality with different universes within
the mesh. It was made by the loom, which much
to the distress of skitskurr the weaver, meant
that the original job of creation was already
done. His job was only to maintain what was
already made. He had been delegated a small
patch of reality to weave, and in secret he
tinkered and altered it to his own innovative
ideas. This upset the guardians, and so they
cut off his part of reality and rewrote it
without him in it. This was meant as punishment,
but much to skitskurrs delight, this now meant
he was free to create the reality as he had
envisioned it. This reality, woven from the
threads of conflict, would become the host
of the new multiverse we know as the dotaverse.
Or at least that’s how I interpret it.
The newly woven reality was now created, but
it was… rather empty. So "How did this world
take its form?" Why of all the worlds in creation,
has this one its strange properties, its diverse
and motley collection of creatures, cultures
and lore? "The answer," One whispers, "lies
with the Titans."
Ok, once again, here comes another theory
of mine, and I will show you my evidence so
you can decide for yourself, but I actually
think elder titan was the one who created
everything. As in EVERYTHING, including the
shattering of the primordial mind. I might
be wrong, and im very interested to hear your
thoughts, but before that please hear me out
with an open mind. To show you what I have
realized, we must compare arc wardens and
elder titans backstories.
So what we know about arc warden, is that
he is a fragment of the primordial mind. The
primordial mind existed before even the beginning
itself, only in my understanding, predated
by weaver. It was an infinite, unified presence.
But as the universe was created, probably
similarily to as in our world through a big
bang, the primordial mind was fragmented,
or shattered, and so we now had cosmos and
a bunch of shards from this awesome being.
Arc warden was one of these shards, as well
as the dire and the radiant. Arc warden would
later imprison the ancients and send them
out in space, and I will come back to this,
but for now all you need to know is that arc
wardens ultimate goal is to unite all the
primordial fragments, including himself and
the ancients, back into the whole, unified
primordial mind.
But who shattered the primordial mind in the
first place? Elder titan, similarily to arc
warden, also wants to reach Unity and symmetry,
and bring together what he once broke. We
know that elder titan created our world and
the fundamental laws of the universe when
he accidentally caused the schism, an event
that divided the world. I believe that the
schism is in fact the same event that shattered
the primordial mind, as both events happened
as the universe came into existence.
Now when the schism created the fundamental
laws of the universe, in the dotaverse, they
came in the form of actual sentient beings.
And the writing is beautiful, because it seems
to be both a homage to the creation in genesis
AND many pagan faiths. The first fundamental
force, was chaos knight, the embodiment of
darkness and chaos. The second, at least I
think, is keeper of the light, who is actually
not just the light fundamental, but also order.
In genesis there is first darkness and then
light, and in for example Greek myth, there
is first chaos and then order. And like day
and night chase eachother endlessly, so does
chaos knight and keeper of the light. Keeper
also created the suns in the universe. The
last two fundamentals are enigma, who is gravity,
and io, who is a bit difficult to pinpoint
exactly what he represents. If enigma is mass
and space, then io must be everything in between.
According to his bio, he is everything that
binds existence together. According to arc
warden he is in all things. He could also
be magneticicm. Or electromagneticicm, but
I think that would be weird as I feel that
belongs to keeper of the light. He could be
the essence of life, of consciousness or free
will. Honestly, your guess is as good as mine.
Let me know in the comments if you have a
good, coherent description of what he is.
but anyways, the fundamentals sprung out from
the schism at the same time as the primordial
mind shattered, and the cosmos soon turned
to a warzone. The dire and the radiant, the
two opposite ancients who were two of the
bigger parts of the primordial mind, were
so conflicted in nature that they battled
endlessly. The colatteral damage seemed only
to get worse to the point where they became
a threat to the cosmos, and so a third fragment
of the primordial mind, arc warden, imprisoned
them. he did this by putting them in a sphere,
sealing their conflict within, and sent them
into space, drifting through the darkness.
So it did for aeons, until one day, it was
caught in the orbit of a certain planet.
Life
so now the reality had been woven and the
universe created. But the planet which I will
from here on refer to as earth, of which the
dota history takes place on, was still in
its infancy, still cooling. It wasn’t until
the prison of the ancients caught its orbit,
that life started to spring forth. And with
it, tales of how it came to be.
Theres 3 dota gods that I have chosen to group
together as the creators of the world. Wether
they actually did, or its just stories, is
up for you to decide, but regardless it’s
a cool parallel to genesis of the old testament
and the myths of the antequity. Theres the
omniscience who created the earth, maelrawn
who created the oceans, and verodicia who
created the life inhabiting it.
The omniscience, also known as the all seeing
one, claims to have formed the earth around
itself in order to stay hidden from the dangers
of space. It would later be worshipped as
a god, and I will come back to the faith.
But for now all you need to know, is that
in regards to the genesis of the dota world,
and grecoroman paralells, he is the god of
the mineral part of the world. All rocks,
stones, mountains, cliffs and caves. Earthshaker,
earth spirit and tiny are also connected to
the spirit of the earth, but if they even
are, they are lesser dieties compared to the
omniscience.
Maelrawn the tentacular is presently worshipped
by the levianths, who you might recognize
in tidehunter. Maelrawn, at least in my mind,
looks a lot like chtulu. A big boy with tentacles.
He resides in the oceans depths, perhaps within
a whirlpool. While the levianths worship him,
other meranths such as the slithereen who
inhabit the sunken cities, despise him. Apparently,
he cracked the shell of the world, which I
interpret as him creating the oceans and seas.
And thus, the world was ready for life. Verodicia,
the goddess of the woods, gave her own life
in order to cover the world with green during
a single season. Maybe, in order to create
life, you must sacrifice your own very life
force, bit by bit, seed by seed. But as she
was about to die, she had one last seed left.
Her last action was to swallow the seed, and
dead she fell, fertilizing the ground throughout
the coming winter. From the seed she swallowed,
furion the natures prophet sprung. To our
knowledge, he is the only one who knows about
the goddess, likely because she died before
there was any life intelligent enough to remember
her, other than furoin. By the way, did you
know furion was first named tequoia? In dota
1 he was named furoin, so they had to change
his name in dota 2 to avoid copyright issues.
But they later removed this name, tequoia
(and thank god for that), and since his name
is still furoin in the game files, and most
people call him that, im sorry nerds but that
is his name. his name isn’t tequoia. Other
protectors and spirits of nature is treant
protector, lone druid, enchantress and leshrac.
The latter two are the most interesting, because
they are two opposite dieties of the same
coin, that is nature. Lesh is a depressed
philosopher pondering the meaning of life
and creation, and he has pretty much concluded
that the truth of reality is evil. Where he
sees the macabre darkness of nature, enchantress
on the other hand, only sees beauty and purity.
Leshrac is too nihilistic, while enchantress
is too naïve. And they keep the balance of
protecting nature. Enchantress travels through
every forest in every climate through any
season, healing and spreading positivity where
she goes. She sees the smallest, most fragile
creatures, and helps them stay safe. Some
theoretisice that she is the reincarnation
of the goddess verodicia herself. Some even
thinks that earth spirit is her reincarnation.
But anyways, we now have a planet with early
life, magically influenced by the emissions
of the prison above. And the radiation of
the nemesis stones, not yet landed, made life
on earth flourish. From diverse fauna to primitive
societies, a rich set of species and races
formed, and those intelligent enough to wonder,
gazed up at the mad moon in curiousity. And
where there is mystery and power, faith soon
follows. The mad moon and the ancients quickly
became dieties of their own, with loyal followers
on both sides. It started with prellex, the
priestess of the radiant. She started having
visions of a violet sky, a sundered moon,
and a voice that whispered to her “prepare
for my arrival”. Prellex and the other radiant
followers started building towers and an altar
in preparation. The altar, very much looks
like a fountain, and a very particular one,
if you look away from the trees that have
grown around it in dota 2. But, they also
built barracks, to recruit new followers for
an army. Because someone was not happy with
the radiant way of life. That someone, was
Kanna, who is no less than prellex’ own
daughter. The radiant creates, but it also
enslaves. Much like our own Abrahamic religions,
if adam and eve had just stayed in the garden
of eden and not taken a bite from the apple
to aquire freedom of will, they would have
lived peacefully. Ignorance is bliss. But
humanity is curious, and demands freedom and
rebellion, and so kanna did what repressed
teenage daughters often do, she rebelled.
She bit the apple of knowledge of good and
evil, and chose freedom and chaos and destruction
over safe enslavement. She did not actualy
bite an apple, but rather she is described
as reborn by the dire. She would lead the
army of the opposing side against her own
mother, but that is as far into the story
we know. We don’t know if either side won,
and if so who did. My guess is neither did,
because this was at least 500 years before
the story in the first dota comic. We do know,
though, that the landing of the ancients,
when the mad moon sundered and shattered into
many fragments, was an apocalyptic event.
So maybe this stopped the original feud between
the priestesses? Maybe its unknown simply
because nobody who presently lives know, since
it was a prehistoric event. But we do know,
that from the shattering of the mad moon,
caused by the dueling ancients within the
prison slowly deteriorating it, some of the
pieces of the rock landed on earth. Direstone
and radiant ore. And as the earth recovered
from the apocalypse, life boomed even brighter
than before, now under even closer influence
by the radiant and dire shards within the
land.
Ok, but if theres a bunch of shards and not
a single lump that makes up the ancients,
how do you explain the dota map? Theres clearly
2 big buildings that are the actual consciousnesses
that is the radiant and dire. Well, I have
another biblical theory. Lets go back to genesis.
2:8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward
in Eden; and there he put the man whom he
had formed.
2:9 And out of the ground made the LORD God
to grow every tree that is pleasant to the
sight, and good for food; the tree of life
also in the midst of the garden, and the tree
of knowledge of good and evil.
2:10 And a river went out of Eden to water
the garden; and from thence it was parted,
and became into four heads.
So the garden of eden is divided by rivers,
and has 2 powerful trees within it. The tree
of life, and the tree of knowledge of good
and evil. The latter tree is a mouthful, so
lets shorten that to the tree of free will.
If we look at the ancients, you can see that
the radiant has trees growing around it, and
the dire a bunch of rocks. And while id ont
think this is a literal copy of eden, I think
its almost certainly influenced. The tree
of life is the radiant that creates, nurtures,
keeps you safe but also forever an ignorant
pet, like mother prellex. The tree of free
will, that bears the forbidden fruit that
lead to humanitys banishment, is so obviously
the dire. It’s the curiousity and freedom
that no matter how hard an authority might
try to beat down, it will always prevail,
and often rather violently. You can push and
push a beach ball into the pool, and you can
push it quite far and for quite a long time,
but the more you do it and the deeper you
go, the harder it will surge back up and hit
you in the face. Kanna chose the dires anarchy,
over the radiant totalitarianism.
So yeah, I think the dota map could be based
on the garden of eden, even if very loosely.
Death
What happens when we die? That’s perhaps
the most important question people want answered
through faith, so lets talk about the dota
2 afterlife and underworld.
When a living being dies in the dotaverse,
their name is added to the book of the dead.
Then, the soul is sent to the narrow maze,
to wander through a labyrinth which will determine
where you end up. If you try to escape death,
its visage, the bound form of necro’lic,
who will hunt you down and bring you back.
The point of the narrow maze is to sort the
dead souls into the right afterlife. Theres
different theories about how the afterlife
works after this point, but ive chosen to
go with what is written in the bios and responses,
and for once not read too much between the
lines, and also makes sense with the real
world religions. Wether someone believed in
hell or the nothl realm, when they die, both
are correct. The narrow maze will send you
to the underworld which best suits your ability
and faith. since the underscape is only mentioned
in razors lore, I think it’s a blanket term
for all underworlds. So the narrow maze sends
you into the underscape, but how the underscape
looks depends on how you did while in the
labyrinth. Razor is a guardian of the narrow
maze and underscape, and will not hesitate
to hasten the souls wandering towards their
eternal slumber, by giving them a good old
electrocution. But while razor is what most
people first think of when hearing the afterlife
in dota, in my opinion, visage gives much
more evidence to what its like. He talks about
“some restless soul escapes their hells
and heavens”, which reveals that 1. Heaven
and hell are real as afterlives, and 2. That
the afterlife is a subjective thing. All afterlives
are real, just like every subjective interpretation
of reality is real. if you believe that when
you die you will go to hell, you will go to
hell.
One of the places souls go after dying, is
the nothl realm. Huskar and dazzles people
believe in it as the afterlife and where their
gods reside, and that it has a dark and light
side. The living may enter it, which dazzle
and huskar both have done, but you need to
do a special ritual and, when returning to
the land of the living, you will be irrevocably
changed. Only the dezun order knows the ingredients
needed for the rite, and not everyone who
enters returns. Huskar and dazzles people
believe that the nothl gives life, so they
must return in sacrifices. Slaughtering their
enemies count as sacrifices, but it is unknown
wether or not their souls will necessarily
go to the nothl, or instead just whatever
afterlife the victim believes in. dazzle visited
the nothl realm for enlightenment and to become
a full member of the dezun order, while huskar
actually wanted to sacrifice himself, to live
with the gods for eternity. But instead dazzle
interfered, and made huskar an immortal warrior.
Their people may or may not be linked to bloodseeker
and witchdoctors people.
Okay, so I said earlier that visage is a gold
mine for lore-digging. And one of the most
interesting things about him, is his interaction
with lion. Apparently, visage has sent lion
to hell before, and when meeting him, is annoyed
that he is back to life. This means that hell
is beyond the veil, or in other words, since
its inhabitants are uinder visages surveillance,
it is indeed an afterlife souls go to after
dying. Demons and other heroes who believe
in hell, also assume all their kills go to
hell when they die, as do huskar and dazzle
that their kills go to the nothl realm. If
hell really is real and a place some damned
souls go, does that mean there is also a heaven
for those who have been good?
When terrorblade interacts with skywrath mage,
he suspects he might be an angel. When he
kills skywrath, he says “an angel falls”,
and that is only one example. Is maybe the
ghastly eyrie and skywrath people, the dotaverses
equivalent of angels and heaven? When lucifer
the doom was banished from the realm behind
the light, his wings were branded until only
stumps remained. Then he fell to earth, and
became a demon, able to travel between all
the seven hells. And while it would be really,
really cool if the skywrath people were angels,
and the ghastly eyrie heaven, I don’t think
so. I think then there would be more hints
towards it. So you can believe it if you want,
but for me I need more evidence.
But anyways, so even if we know nothing about
heaven, we do know quite a bit about hell
and several demons. Lets go through all of
it, starting with what we know about hell,
and then the inhabitants. There is seven hells,
and they are ruled by the demon lords. We
know the name of 3 locations associated with
hell, but if they are the name of either of
the hells, which one they are, or if they
are just a location within one and not defining
the entire thing, is unknown. Siractionslacks’
loregasm about hell is very good even if a
lot of it is from speculation, so if you want
more details and reading between the lines,
I heavily suggest you watch it. I will just
brief over the places, and then you can decide
for yourself how it looks in your mind. Anyways,
moving on. The 3 locations are vashundol,
which may or may not even be in hell at all,
foulfell, which is the hell of hell, where
demons are imprisoned, such as terrorblade
and chaos knights horse, and the abysm, where
shadow fiends home is, and he keeps his gathered
souls. The first to forth hells we know nothing
about, but the fifth one may be where the
demon smiths reside, the sixth is where the
demon maraxiform was from, and killed by clinkz,
and the seventh is the lowest one, where lucifer
lives. There are quite a few characters and
heroes associated with, and from, hell, so
I will list all of them but then only talk
about the most interesting one in my opinion,
who is terrorblade. Siractionslacks’ hell
and demon loregasm episode is linked in the
description if you want details about all
of them. They include doom, shadow fiend,
shadow demon, queen of pain, terrorblade,
maraxiform, eztzhok, abzidian, warlocks golem,
chaos knights horse, and the demons of the
cataract.
Terrorblade, the demon marauder is one of
my favorite heroes in the entire dotaverse.
His bio contains a lot of words that us mortals
maybe don’t understand, which is actually
pretty important to understanding his personality.
A demon marauder means a demon raider, an
outlaw hellion means an outlaw who is mischievous,
often associated with children, and usually
the evil type of mischief, since the word
derives from hell, and cosmic iconoclast.
An iconoclast is a person who criticizes or
attacks other beliefs, such as religion. This
can be either through questioning, or physically
destroying images. So hes a mischievous demon
raider, who other demons fear. He stole from
the demon lords, and broke all the laws of
the seven hells, almost certainly purposefully
to provoke, and ended up imprisoned in foulfell.
Foulfell, like I touched on, is the hell of
hell where demons imprison their own. But
instead of having raging flames and physical
torture, the inmates are instead sentenced
to look into the darkest parts of their own
souls. This was meant to drive him mad, but
instead he conquered his, heh, demons, and
took control of his reflection. He used this
new immensely powerful inner beast to escape
the prison, and was free to torment anyone
who he might stumble upon. Unless it’s a
dragon, because he seems to like dragons.
Oh, and enchantress, for some reason. He calls
her his best friend, but at least to my knowledge,
we have no other information about their relationship,
other than this one, onesided voiceline. I
think, the point terrorblade is trying to
make, is that theres nothing wrong with trolling
demons. He will criticize and refuse to obey
those who he deems impure of heart, but he
will never hurt those who are genuinely kind.
That’s why he wasn’t disgusted by his
inner self, but instead got empowered by it.
He wasn’t hiding some inner shame or bitterness.
He stayed true to his cause, motivations,
and honor, if you can even call it that, and
everything he does he fully believes is the
right thing. If there was even a shred of
doubt, he would have gone mad at the monster
in the mirror. Hes just him to the max like
pepsi, even if that means hes a piece of shit.
At least he doesn’t pretend to be better
than he is.
Ok, so that’s the basics of hell, and what
happens when someone dies in the dotaverse.
But what happens when whats dead wont die?
there is an ominous presence that for hundreds
of years, if not since the dawn of the first
day, has plagued some of the living. He is
called the dead god, and with the power of
the Dirge, a hypnotic song, he converts the
living and rises the dead to do his bidding.
Saying they worship him is not entirely accurate,
as they don’t really have a choice and are
more his puppets, but regardless he controls
endless armies of dead soldiers. But… other
than his followers not really consenting to
their commitment, theres 1 other thing that’s
a bit off. The dead god doesn’t convert
just anyone, if he did as many as he could
the entire dotaworld would be consumed by
now. The dirge song, and the god himself,
has the power of poisonous nihilism. Toxic
darkness and fatalism. Is the dirge, and the
force that rises the dead, just the thought
that life is meaningless? And then, ironically,
that turns you into a literal zombie, not
dead neither alive? I don’t know. But the
dead god, if a god at all, is one of my favorite
characters in the dota universe, and I could
probably make an entire video only about him.
But we have to move on.
The beginning of the end
We have now arrived at the present. In the
multiverse of dota, theres a bunch of events
being played out simultaneously in artifact.
Some after one another in the same timeline,
others as 2 parallel outcomes.
Much like in our world, the dota world doesn’t
just have one monotheistic god that’s interpreted
in different ways into different religions.
Theres pantheons of a bunch of gods that have
powers specific to natural or cultural phenomena,
like the moon, sea or war. Some of them I
have talked about in regards to how the planet
was formed, but heres all of the dieties currently
worshipped.
The dead god and his influence, which I talked
about before, is the mortal enemy of the rumusque
faith. the rumusque faith has been around
for centuries, but it is unknown what exactly
they believe in. necrophos who was previously
a cardinal in the religion, references biblical
verses, and theres many other details that
makes it extremely similar to catholic Christianity.
Necrophos was the scamming cardinal of the
rumusque, taking advantage of a plague perhaps
conjured by himself, slowly killing most of
the rumusque while taking a lot of money for
healing a last few survivors. As punishment
he was sent to the plague ward, where he was
supposed to die a long painful death to illness,
but he turned out to be immune, and instead
it made him the powerful pope of pestilence.
The cathedral of rumusque is where the worshippers
reside. They have a lot in common with both
omniknight and chens gods, and are perhaps
the same. We know that they purged the fields
of endless carnage, where corpses don’t
decompose. The pangolier has described the
purge as “dark”, so maybe the fields of
endless carnage weren’t evil at all… in
artifact, we have a few sources that also
support this, that they were in fact peaceful
people, even civilized. The clerics and warrior
priests as we know purged them still though,
and were led by lady ashnu. Lady ashnu is
also not a fan of necrophos, as pudge hints
to when he tells necro that maybe if he gave
lady ashnu his head, she would stop harassing
pudges undead friends. By the way, in artifact,
chen is seeking out the rumusque and specifically
lady ashnu, and he wants to do it to convert
them to the holy knights of the fold. But
he also mentions that lady ashnu might be
the second coming of “crella”. Crella
was an extremely powerful priestess from the
cathedral of the rumusque a long time ago.
She formed the chains of abscession from pudges
dota 2 arcana cosmetic. The chains were meant
to bind the servants of the dead god, but
over time they became corrupted by the dirge
instead and took a mind of their own, and
destroyed her homeland.
But anyways, the rumusque is basically catholic
Christianity, and perhaps one of three interpretations
of the same god, like in our worlds Abrahamic
religions: Christianity, islam and judaism.
Chen and the knights of the fold worship obelis,
who they consider “the one true god”,
which they violently force victims to convert
to. That, and the fact that he knows crella
and wants to convert rumusque faithful specifically
to the knights of the fold, makes me suspect
that they actually worship the same diety.
But what diety is that? There is one more
religion, and god, who I have talked about,
which also practices the violent obsession
of monotheism.
The omniscience, the all seeing one. Omniscience
means the state of knowing everything, and
is often associated specifically with monotheistic
gods. The omniscience faith has scripture,
and members go on bloody crusades. Purist
thunderwrath, the omniknight, is one such
crusader. But seeing his associates die around
him over a very long period of time, wore
down his faith, and he started questioning
it. This doubt was quickly erased though,
when he actualy got to meet the all seeing
one, and his faith grew stronger than ever.
Another hero that confirms the omniscience
is real, is zeus, who claims to know him.
Bloodseeker too, or at least his gods, the
flayed twins, wants the omniscience as a sacrifice,
implying they know he is real. but even if
he is real, some suspect his powers are not.
Other characters who may not be a god like
they claim, is the dotaverses grecoroman pantheon.
To our knowledge, it includes all the gods,
such as zeus, hera, Poseidon, and ares who
renamed himself mars to rebell against his
father and wants to start a new pantheon.
Theres also other ancient Greek characters
like the gorgons, and ogre magis goddess of
luck might be Tyche. The aegis is also a reference
to Greek antique faith. some people think
that maybe they aren’t divine at all, and
are just powerful wizards. But with the addition
of mars I think its pretty safe to say that
they are gods. Gods, that unlike the omniscience,
knights of the fold and rumusque, don’t
mind the existence of other gods. They are
happy as long as they receive the worship,
and see other gods as competitors rather than
false gods. Hey there might even be a hades
for the specific dotaverse inhabitants that
believe in Greek myth, where they go when
they die. There is also 2 references to norse
myth, thor and the dwarves brok and eitri,
from mjollnir, and skadi from eye of skadi.
But other than that it seems like they abandoned
norse myth entirely.
Selemene is the goddess of the moon, and also
of magic, according to artifact. Her name
is likely based on selene, the Greek goddess
of the moon. The nightsilver woods is where
the temple of selemene, and shrine of mene
is located. On the night of each new moon,
the followers burn offerings for their goddess
at the temple. Her two most notable followers,
are luna and mirana. Luna is also in the dark
moon order, a sect of warriors that fight
for selemene. Like the omniscience and grecoroman
pantheon, selemene is very real, and in artifact
we have even seen her come to earth physically.
And the last, maybe Greek-inspired diety,
but not really, I think this one is independent,
but it has a Greek goddess name, is nyx. Nyx
in Greek myth is the goddess of the night
though, and is very different from dota-nyx.
Contrary to common belief, nyx is not the
name of the dota hero. it’s the name of
the goddess he serves. But is she really a
goddess, or is she just a queen mother, ruling
her hive like a theocracy? If she is the all
powerful queen of a hive that only knows her
leadership and nurture, would they even question
her divinity? I think shes just a hive queen
that got so powerful to the point where even
she believes shes a goddess. And if people
have faith, then whos to say she isn’t?
but anyways, shes the queen goddess of the
zealot scarabs, some of whom turn into nyx
assassins, killing in her service. She hates
abaddon, and so does nyx assassin the hero,
but we don’t know why.
The flayed twins are two gods worshipped as
one by the people of the xhacatocatl mountains.
They need insane amounts of blood sacrificed
to them to live, although they cant be destroyed.
But stopping the blood sacrifices wont kill
them, because first they would drain the entire
mountain for all the blood of its inhabitants.
To satisfy their thirst without having to
give up the lives of their people, the priests
of xhacatocatl send out bloodseekers like
stygwyr the bloodseeker, with special weapons
and armor that sends the blood from his battles
directly to the flayed twins. The flayed twins
are likely based on xipe totec, the aztek
god of way too many things. He was also known
as the flayed one.
The celestials might be an Asian-inspired
pantheon. It has the Japanese god of thunder,
raijin, kaolin is sometimes called china-clay,
and xin is the name of at least 2 historical
Chinese generals I could find. Storm, earth
and fire. But are they gods? Do they have
worshippers? Or are they just powerful characters?
A god gets its power and existence through
people believing in them, and in my mind,
are even more real if they don’t actually
exist. If its an actual living thing that
walks among us then is it really a god, or
is it just a powerful being? Mystery leads
to obsession, which you see in the most popular
gods, and also cult-leaders and celebrities.
So I don’t know, ive decided not to talk
much about the celestials for this reason.
ok, so that’s it for the most important
gods and goddesses in the dotaverse. But just
so my weird brain can get some rest, heres
all the ones I haven’t mentioned because
theyre too small and insignificant and probably
only mentioned once. Medusas mother was a
sea goddess. Morphling worships the god polymorphia.
Venomancer once killed some worshippers of
the god aktok. Nyctasha is a goddess, whose
midnight terrors created bane. Bane is part
of the 3 shades who may or may not be dieties.
Bane is associated with terror, and belladonna
and tyrian, the other 2, are associated with
madness and death. Dark seer worships the
God-king damathryx. Juggernauts people worshipped
the Faceless ones and the maker of masks.
The dark ones may be gods, and if they are,
they are worshipped by slark. the solar goddess
is worshipped by people from the desert land
the scilliant waste, and is associated with
lina and maybe mirana and sand king. Clasz
is a deity from the claszureme realm, worshipped
by faceless void. Scree’auk is the goddess
of the skywrath people. She turned shendelzare
into the vengeful spirit, so she could get
revenge on the ones who betrayed her.
The end
You queue up for a game of dota 2. You endure
a raging, feeding midlaner, a cs-stealing
support, an orchestra of pings and your own
frustrating mistakes. But eventually, you
farm your way up to the point where you 1v9,
destroy the enemy ancient, and win. The game
ends. But what actually happened? What happens
when one ancient is destroyed? If we have
already seen the end of the conflict between
the radiant and dire, how come dota isn’t
an rpg that you can complete? Well, that’s
because you never really win. Or rather, evrytime
someone wins and every time someone loses,
all of it is real and all of it has happened,
and all of the times it’s the last bus stop
on the route that is the dota history. Because
when one ancient is destroyed, the timeline
resets. And the endless battle continues.
If youre as imaginative as me, you might even
suggest theres a biblical allegory here too.
Or maybe you prefer the norse mythological
ragnarok. The propheciced doomsday of 2012.
Regardless, we know its coming and we know
fighting only repeats the problem, and wars
will never stop, unless we learn from history.
The dire and the radiant are imagined enemies.
They are opposite authorities in this world,
swaying people to either side by labeling
“us” and “them”. And we fall for it
every damn time.
in loving memory of valves miscarriage, artifact,
and the lost comrades wandering the earth
refusing to be content with a mobile game
brapping to hide their internal tragedy with
external comedy
just seeking a new home
but hey
at least the ending was fanta-stic
better to be remembered as the biggest failure
than not remembered at all
an artworks quality isn’t determined by
how good or bad it is in craft
but rather, its impact, and how much real
estate it owns in peoples memory
the worst art is the kind that comes and goes
and people might release some air from their
nostrils if it’s a bit funny, or think “eyy
that p cool” or just yike at it, but in
either of the cases immediately forget about
it
real, true, works of art is the kind that
sets its mark on history. It lands on your
brain, and before leaving, plants a flag there,
to forever put you in awe or disgust.
Love and hate are opposites yes, but they
are only opposite sides of the same coin.
The coin is passion.
And no matter what side you were on as artifact
went through its last convulsions - wether
you loved and defended it, or hated and attacked
it - you cant deny that there was passion
involved. Every brapp a tender kiss goodnight.
Good night, sweet children. And thanks for
watching.
PEACE!
