Betrayers of Kamigawa Player's Guide & the Kamigawa Map

I couldn't find a better scan of the cover than this one, which comes from this Ebay auction. And if you're wondering why I don't just buy a copy of the booklet and scan it myself... follow that link to check out the asking price. I think we can all agree that's too much money just to write a mini-article like this one!

This is going to be a short review. The lore in this booklet, scans of which can be found here, consists of a summary of the Outlaw novel, a few more character blurbs and part two of the Kamigawa glossary. What can I really say about that? It’s cool to showcase this information in the booklet, though I am always a bit annoyed when stuff like the backstory of Oyobi only shows up in sources as obscure as this. Other than that… well, I’ve got some continuity nitpicks? And to spice things up a little, I'll discus the Kamigawa map afterwards!

The Rest of the Booklet

The intro piece to the summary says Michiko’s mother died in childbirth, while the novel says she was killed by kami in the first year of the war. Other than that the story doesn’t really contradict anything. It fast tracks some bits to the point of confusion (Michiko secretly leaves Eiganjo, Toshi goes to see Hidetsugu… and then suddenly they are trapped in a cave together!?) but obviously they have to keep some stuff vague to get you to buy the novels.

Some other interesting trivia:

• The Umezawa family was once of good standing, but Toshi's grandfather died at Shizo. We learned from the Champions booklet that the dishonorable battle that created Shizo happened 100 years before Konda's rise to power, so this sounds like a continuity error, but remember: many characters throughout continuity use magic to stretch their lifespans. Clearly Toshi's dad must've done the same. (See also Jodah being Jayrsil's great-grandson)
• The Hidetsugu write-up suggests there were many Hyozan Reckoners at some point. I wonder what happened to all of them then?
• The Ink-Eyes vignette implied she was exiled for her visions, here it is said she was exiled for being “almost sociopathic”. I guess the one thing doesn’t exclude the other.

The Map

Well, that's all there is to say about the booklet, let's take a look at another Kamigawa oddity to fill the time. Check out this map!

I was complaining before about putting lore in obscure places, well, this was a laminated poster given out to gamestores and the like. You'd think it would be interesting to showcase a map of the world your flavor-based set is taking place in on your website somewhere, but apparently not. I mean... I appreciate that WotC is catering to weirdos like me who are actually in archiving and enjoy tracking down and cataloging rare documents, but you'd think there was more money to be made by appealing to a larger market. Perhaps the creative team had just been around R&D too long and thought they needed a rare lore source in addition to the common vignettes and the uncommon novels.

Back to the map itself! There is some debate as to how accurate it actually is. That's clearly Eiganjo in the middle, and what looks like Minamo is at the bottom left. Which for one would mean the map is upside down, as characters head north to Minamo from Eiganjo in the novels. Scott McGough, who wasn't involved with the creation of the map beyond a rough outline, agrees it works better upside down. Clever inversion of the north-at-the-top convention of most maps or simply an oversight? Decide for yourselves how much credit you're willing to give!

Whichever way is up, there are some more oddities when comparing the map to the books. Outlaw starts with Toshi in a ruined city on the outskirts of Eiganjo which is only divided from Takenuma by a muddy hill. Here both swamps seem to lie on the other side of a forest from the plains area. Speaking of those forests, they seem pretty sparse and small compared to the other landmarks, while in the novels Jukai is described as a sea of trees so humongous that no one has even explored to its eastern edge. So while its likely that the swamp, mountain chain and forest on the left side of the map are Takenuma, Sokenzan and Jukai respectively, I wouldn't take the map literally. It seems more likely to be an in-universe map with the goal of glorifying Konda by putting the castle he build in the center of the universe, like how European medieval maps put Jerusalem at the center.

At the very least, don't believe this is all of Kamigawa, with the mountains wrapping around the back of the map. We know from Outlaw that the world is a globe with multiple continents.

I am still intrigued by that second "color wheel" on the right side of the map though. I wonder if there was ever any thought put into fleshing out that part of the world...

Sadly, this will be the last map we'll get for a long, long time. While Kamigawa is in a way the end of a protracted decline in importance of the storyline and the beginning of its recovery (I'll talk more extensively about this in the Kamigawa wrap-up article) and this will give us more lore articles and short stories, maps were a no-go for a long time. Why? Well, if you look at the end of this article by Doug Beyer, he says that a map would generate inconsistencies because stories, flavor text and his own articles were bound to contradict the distances given in the map at some point. Personally I would've thought that not nailing down distances would also be bound to lead to inconsistencies, and that having a map to check against might actually help prevent those. Perhaps more enlightening is a comment by Brady Dommermuth (follow the link and search for "maps" to find it) where he says maps would be mainly used by fans to point out the inconsistencies.

As I've touched upon in my Ur-Golem's Eye post, after the shoddy continuity of the last few years the storyline community had come to see themselves as the curators of continuity, and the relationship between them and the creative team, especially Brady Dommermuth, was rather fraught at times. The creative team's response to this seemed to be to limit the amount of continuity in the story. The typical story of the planeshopping era (Time Spiral being the glaring exception!) is entirely focused on one plane, with only a minor link to larger continuity, usually revealed near the end of the third book. No continuity means no continuity errors, which leaves the fans with nothing to complain about, so they'll focus on the actual story instead. Similarly, no maps means geographical inconsistencies can only be found if you're going through all sources with a fine-tooth comb, and who would do something like that?

This is a gross oversimplification of course, and we will deal with Time Spiral and WotC's other attempts at embracing continuity eventually, but on the whole I think the point stands. From now on the storyline is going to increase in importance, but WotC will first focus on worldbuilding, then on storytelling, and anything requiring more stringent continuity, like an ongoing story or timelines and maps, will remain on the backburner for a good long while.

Luckily WotC would eventually get over its fear of continuity and I now have this beauty up on my wall!

Nice, that map discussion more than doubled the length of this post! Next time, let’s quickly move on to Saviors of Kamigawa, and the actual review of the three novels!