神河当時 - 鬼とオーガと血

昨日の記事の続きです。

Those Bloody Ogres
In the Kamigawa Style Guide, a guide of art and concept sketches for the setting sent out to creative writers and artists, I was really intrigued by the section on Bakemono, or Ogre-Mages. The ogres of Kamigawa not only looked fierce, but they were described as “wise and reclusive,” which seemed to me like a nice twist on the typical Magic ogres (quite different from the tone of, say, Drooling Ogre or Ogre Taskmaster). It was this line that caught my eye, though: “These huge monsters...wield forgotten magic. They worship oni (Japanese demons) with strange rituals involving fire, smoke, and blood.”

That sounded cool, so I ran with it. I first submitted the flavor text for Gutwrencher Oni and Painwracker Oni, which was an attempt to tie the oni worship to practices of blood-magic (smoke and fire references, it seemed to me, were a lot more common in Magic than blood). When they were accepted, I went crazy, naming every ogre with “blood” in its name and having every bit of flavor text somehow tied to their bloody-blooderson rituals. Blood Speaker; Initiate of Blood; Blood Rites; Seizan, Perverter of Truth; and Villainous Ogre all explore the ogres’ connection with oni through blood-magic.

What’s particularly funny for me is that when the ogre-blood connection was established, Brandon then had to go back and revise some earlier submissions so that ogres had a monopoly on blood references. Thus Blood Before Dishonor became Vassal’s Duty. Bloodthirsty Ronin became Battle-Mad Ronin. Bloodstained Koto became Hair-Strung Koto. Impure Blood became Ragged Veins. Drain Blood became Crushing Pain. We flirted with a very bloody set for a bit there.

引用元
LAND OF TEN-THOUSAND LEGENDS Posted in Feature on October 4, 2004
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/land-ten-thousand-legends-2004-10-04

フレイバーについての資料、『神河スタイルガイド』にあったオーガと鬼についての文章が発端です。

“These huge monsters...wield forgotten magic. They worship oni (Japanese demons) with strange rituals involving fire, smoke, and blood.”

ここから、鬼である《内臓捻りの鬼/Gutwrencher Oni》《痛めつける鬼/Painwracker Oni》のフレイバーテキストは「血」を使ったものになりました。

そして、鬼を信仰するオーガは「血の儀式によってつながっている」という発想になり、オーガの名前には「血」が入ることになりました。《血の語り部》《血に飢えた大峨》などです。

このように「血」が鬼とオーガの信仰関係を表す重要キーワードになりました。

そのために、他の「血」が入ったカードは一部カード名を改めることになった、とのことです。

《Blood Before Dishonor》　→　《臣下の義務/Vassal’s Duty》
《Bloodthirsty Ronin》　→　《戦に狂える浪人/Battle-Mad Ronin》
《Bloodstained Koto》　→　《髪張りの琴/Hair-Strung Koto》
《Impure Blood》　→　《ほつれた血管/Ragged Veins》　※結局、日本語だと「血」が入ってしまいますが……。
《Drain Blood》　→　《すさまじい痛み/Crushing Pain》

それだけ、「血」による鬼とオーガの繋がりを重要視していたのでしょう。




追記
webアーカイブに、日本語訳の記事があるのを発見しました。

一万の伝説の地 ――神河物語の名前とフレイバーの幕裏
https://web.archive.org/web/20041217002944/http://www.hobbyjapan.co.jp/magic/articles/files/20041013_01.html