神河当時 - 《蝕まれた正気、凶鬼/Kyoki, Sanity’s Eclipse》のフレイバーテキスト

昨日の記事の続きです。

Those Chanting Ogres

R&D Card Name: [MS Mind Blanker]
Mana Cost: o4oBoB
Spell Type: Legendary Creature —
Creature Type: Demon Spirit
Power/Tough: 6/4
Rules Text: Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, target opponent removes a card in his or her hand from the game.

Art Desc.:
Color: Black
Location: doesn’t matter
Action: Show a really big, truly terrifying oni (Japanese demon) of your design. Must have the oni horns and vertical third eye.
Focus: the demon
Mood: You’ll go insane with fear just looking at it
Notes: Oni are spirit-world creatures, so they should have strange objects orbiting them. There are all sorts of oni. Attached are a few good examples.

Once again, you see the difficulty in figuring out a name for Oni based on the art description. Having it be legendary, though, made it a bit easier since I could play around with titles, actions, and other sorts of “legend tags” that often define legendary cards. (Note by the way the "MS" in the R&D name... Arcane was first known as "Mystic" during design, so "MS" refers to Mystic/Spirit.)

In fact, it was precisely this card’s name that led me to its flavor text. I tried [Dogu], Eater of Minds as a way of describing the card’s mechanics. Then I thought maybe [Dogu], Corrupter of Thoughts sounded cooler. Sometimes I think of discard as inducing insanity, so I then went with [Dogu], Bringer of Madness and tried [Dogu], Lord of Fear. I then experimented with the idea that this Demon had somehow aided in the destruction of the Minamo School, leading me to [Dogu], Scourge of Minamo. That was a lot of submissions for names, and as I looked through the other submissions I thought some of the others were cooler and might get picked. For fun, then, I combined all of my name submissions into one slice of flavor text:

"[Dogu], Eater of Minds, Corrupter of Thoughts, Bringer of Madness, Lord of Fear, Scourge of Minamo. Return, by our blood, and walk again." -Ogre chant

In a block focused on legends, I figured this sort of flavor text was acceptable if used sparingly. Besides, I have a thing for ogre chants (I wrote the flavor text for both Painwracker Oni and Gutwrencher Oni), and apparently so do Brandon and Brady since they selected this “title heavy” piece to represent Kyoki, Sanity’s Eclipse (see? cooler title).

引用元
A FLAVORFUL VIEW OF BETRAYERS Posted in Feature on February 14, 2005
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/flavorful-view-betrayers-2005-02-14

昨日の記事では、鬼の名前を考えるのが難しい、という話がありました。

しかし、伝説のクリーチャーでは、いわゆる「二つ名」をつけらて個性を出せるため、少し楽だったようです。

その「二つ名」をいろいろな人が考えて、応募してきました。どれも良いと思えてきた結果、それらを全てフレイバーテキストに入れる、というアイデアに辿り着きました。

凶鬼、精神の食み手、思考の堕落者、狂気の運び手、恐怖の君、水面の災い。 我らの血によりて、戻れ、そして再び歩め。
――― 大峨の詠唱.

引用元
《蝕まれた正気、凶鬼/Kyoki, Sanity’s Eclipse》

伝説テーマのブロックでは、このようなフレイバーテキストは使っても問題ない、とのことです。

これを聞いて思い出したのが、ベルゼンロックです。要塞のエヴィンカー、闇の末裔、愚者滅ぼし、荒廃の王、漆黒の手の主、陰謀団の永遠総帥などを自称していました。同じく伝説テーマのブロックですから、こうした二つ名・称号をフレイバーテキストにしようとしていたかもしれません。