Saviors of Kamigawa Player's Guide

 

Another short review, as this booklet contains just another summary, this time of Heretic, another glossary and another batch of character blurbs. The one extra bit is an article on the “Shinen”, manifestations of the spirit world beyond the veil. As always, you can find the relevant scans here.

The summary links the rising of the ghost samurai around Konda at the end of Heretic to the “shinen” reaching its breaking point (as in, the veil between worlds blurring beyond definition) the moment Toshi stole TWWT. Cool to have an explanation for this somewhat random development in the novels. On the less cool side, the text doubles down on Michiko’s mother dying in childbirth, which we saw in the Betrayers booklet as well, but which was already contradicted in the Outlaw novel.

The Shinen articles tells us that-

“In the many millennia before the Kami War, the denizens of Kamigawa gave no thought to a place called the spirit world. They believed that the kami lived in the material world – the only world that mortals knew.”

The Champions booklet said that people have been worshiping the kami for “centuries”, significantly shorter than millennia. Those two facts taken together seem to suggest that there was something that changed a few centuries before the Kami War. Could this be proof that the Apocalypse Chime disrupting veil between worlds actually happened centuries before Konda started mucking about with stealing a kami? (If you've got no idea what I'm talking about here, check the timeline portion of my review of the Kamigawa trilogy) Eh, probably not. I think the intention was to say that people didn't know about the spirit world until the Kami War, but it’s fun to speculate! Perhaps the weakening barrier allowed Kamigawans to first perceive the spirit world, or merely made them interested into researching it. Stories like the Eight-and-a-Half-Tails vignette do suggest at least some people already knew of the spirit world. More knowledge about the role of kami in the world could lead to them being seen as gods, or perhaps the weakened barrier led to them taking a more active role in mortal life, which in turn led to them being revered? And this newfound worship of the kami could explain why it took a few centuries until someone like Konda came along who was willing to do the blasphemous act of imprisoning a god.

Again, pure speculation, hence I didn't include it in my actual timeline discussion. In the comments of that review Ethan Fleischer said the War of the Spark artbook might actually have some hints towards the placement of Kamigawa, so we'll see soon if this theorizing will get thrown out. Glad that I've gotten it out my system while it was still possible though!

The article also says O-Kagachi, who has previously been described as the kami of the entire spirit world and the soul of the world, is the kami of the veil between worlds. I guess he’s just all of those things at once.

To pad out this review a little, let’s have a quick discussion about what a “Soul of the World” actually is. We’ve seen a few of them around over the years. O-Kagachi, Progenitus, Gaea… more recently we’ve also seen Nissa talking to the woldsouls of various planes. but what actually is a worldsoul? Honestly… we have no idea at all. It’s a term that gets thrown about occasionally, but we rarely delve into the details. Progenitus wasn’t featured in any stories, Gaea never actually appeared (outside form in-universe myths like in The Lady of the Mountain), we just get characters like Multani saying that he can hear her, so O-Kagachi is probably the worldsoul with the most screen-time and he’s just roaring mad the whole time.

We can deduce some things though. We know from Planeswalker that artificial planes need active tending by a powerful being to keep them from collapsing (Yawgmoth on Phyrexia, Serra on her Realm), and significantly all the known worldsouls are from natural planes. So maybe natural planes generate their own soul to keep them going. It seems like a logical assumption. Beyond that though? Do they need to actively keep their planes going, and was Kamigawa thus in danger of collapsing during O-Kagachi’s rampage? Are the other World-Souls also responsible for maintaining the barriers of their planes? Who knows! Brian Sanderson has revealed that the Entities from Children of the Nameless are supposed to be the worldsouls of dead worlds, so let’s hope WotC can one day mend fences with him so we can get a sequel and learn more about all this! (Also, let’s just hope for that because it’ll give us another amazing story.) Oh, and perhaps when I've covered all of Nissa's chats with various worldsouls I can do a full article on the subject!

And then there is the weirdness of Mat'Selesnya, who was created from the merger of a bunch of dryads, but who is also described as "a manifestation of the soul of the world"... but that discussion will have to wait until I've covered the relevant Ravnican sources!

So. That finally wraps up the last Kamigawa source I'll cover, so next week will be the final wrap-up article!