神河当時 - 神河次元のヒューマノイド　白と青

昨日の記事の続きです。

Beyond Humanity
The final piece came from another one of my self-imposed restrictions. I think Magic should be about cool creatures, not just humans. That’s why although humans appear in all five colors, they’re outnumbered by other kinds of creatures in each color. So we needed other humanoids to round out the material world. And we wanted these humanoids to represent both Japanese myths and Magic.

Foxes, kitsune, were an easy choice, because they’re such a tremendously important feature of Japanese folklore. The real question was, given the richness and variety of fox stories, what color should they be? That question was answered by Alexander O. Smith, a freelance writer who has done a lot of research on fox stories. He was fascinated by the stories in which foxes were mysteriously benevolent, aiding humans in need or in peril. This image, like the four below it, is one of the concept sketches done for us by Ittoku.

The blue humanoid choice came from one of my favorite Japanese tales, the story of Lady Kaguya (sometimes called “The Bamboo Cutter and the Moon Maiden”). In this story, a simple peasant finds a tiny woman inside a bamboo stalk, and she grows to become the most beautiful woman in Japan. But the night before she is to be courted by the mikado himself, strange celestial beings descend in chariots from the moon and take her “home.” Thus the moonfolk were created.

引用元
A SERIES OF FORTUNATE EVENTS: KAMIGAWA WORLD DESIGN Posted in Feature on October 18, 2004
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/series-fortunate-events-kamigawa-world-design-2004-10-18

神以外の住民に関する話です。

神河には人間が5色すべてにいますが、各色において少数派とされています。つまり、人間に似た生物、ヒューマノイドを創る必要がありました。

白は狐です。ただし、白にふさわしい種族として狐を選んだのではなく、先に狐を使うことが決まり、ふさわしい色として白が選ばれました。狐が選ばれたのは日本の民間伝承の中でもよく登場することからです。そして、人間をピンチから助ける物語に惹きつけられたことから、白になりました。

青はムーンフォークという神河次元固有の種族です。これは著者の好きな物語である「かぐや姫」に出てくる、月に住む人々が由来とされています。



2021/03/09 追記
日本語訳を見つけました。
一連の幸運：神河世界のデザイン――神河の巨大な世界の創造
https://web.archive.org/web/20041113050558/http://www.hobbyjapan.co.jp/magic/articles/files/20041025_01.html