Footenotes: The Matriarch and the Red Herring

General GTG Sentinel Comics Lore
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  • Before I begin, I would like to thank imprimis5 and Pydro for their wisdom and expertice on this topic. There are things I would have never put together without their help. Also, there will be a lot of information that will be missing due to it being related to Vengeance. I will update the theory in full once Vengeance hits. Let us begin.

 

"And, even though The Matriarch is certainly a petulent child, she also harnesses a TON of power. Power she doesn't entirely understand. I wonder if there will ever be more about her..."

https://greaterthangames.com/comment/42774#comment-42774

A mask that lets you control all the birds in the sky is a pretty niffty power. But a "TON" of power? No. No, I do not believe so. This needs investigating. Let's start at the begining. Her Bio.

She is a child with a rather strange thirst for power. Curious. In her rebelion she turned to dark poetry. Poetry? Look at Matriarchs group affiliation. "The Undead Poet Society". The bio goes on to explain that this society was just a bunch of other angsty teens. And here is where I throw first red flag. I find it very hard to believe that her bio, under group affiliations, would list a random group of unimportant teens. Counter-example, why doesnt Naturalist have a group affiliation with his previous company? Because it bears no meaning to the larger comic arch at play. Other groups mentioned in this way include FILTER, Freedom 5, Prime Wardens and the Dark Watch. There is no group affiliation mentioned anywhere else in any bio that is not relevant to the major arch.

Side step for a moment. Anyone know anything about Norse mythology? Of course we do. Marvel put out a few Thor movies staring his all powerful yet sleepy father Odin. I recently learned that Odin, like many polytheistic pantheon figurheads, represents a multitude of things. Allow me to quote the Odin Wikipedia if I may. 

  • "His role, like that of many of the Norse gods, is complex. Odin is a principal member of the Æsir (the major group of the Norse pantheon) and is associated with war, battle, victory and death, but also wisdom, Shamanism, magic, poetry, prophecy, and the hunt."

Woah. WOAH. Poetry? I wonder...no, no way. A mere coincidence. But I kept reading that Wiki...

  • Odin has a number of magical artifacts associated with him: the spear Gungnir, which never misses its target; a magical gold ring (Draupnir), from which every ninth night eight new rings appear; and two ravens Huginn and Muninn ("Thought" and "Memory"), who fly around Earth daily and report the happenings of the world to Odin in Valhalla at night.

BOOM. My mind blew apart. Huginn and Muninn? Those two nightmares of villain targets found in Matriarchs deck are basically scouts for a greater power. Hmmm...

The bio continues as she attains the Mask, the source of her power. But read it carefully. First she puts the mask on and then instantly senses a "great presence in the sky." Singular presence? Continue reading. She tries to pull that great presence toward her, and by doing so the sky errupts with birds. The Matriarch is born.

What if...and this might be crazy...the Mask was something a bit more? Again, Christopher said she is harnessing a "TON" of power. What if that power just happend to manifest itself this way in her? A sort of "One Ring" that gives a power dependant on the wearer. And to challenge another big assumption, what if the "great presence" she felt was not that of her bird army?

Odin has been called many things with many meanings over history it seems. A lot of them have a form of the word "father". Possibly where we get the name Matriarch from. She felt a "great presence" in the sky due to an artifact that has ties to a "father" figure, to which she also shares personality traits with (need of respect and a love for poetry jump out as the big ones). By now you should all be thinking what I am thinking.

That "great presence" she felt? Yeah. That is, without doubt, the Cosmic Entity that has been alluded too for so long now. The common theory about this Cosmic Entity is that it would be pretty much a direct analog to Galactus. But "father"...what if they are foils? Maybe this Cosmic Entity is more of a "creator" to Galactus's "destroyer". Certainly >G wouldn't make such a direct analogy as to make their big bad just a re-skined Marvel entity.

 

"The child is the center" - Timecrazed Prisoner

"I rule from the center to the sea" - Matriarch's Mask

Since The Block came out at the same time as The Dreamer, popular speculation has posited her as the one being referenced here, that she is the center of the craziness going in the multiverse set in motion by Vanessa's massive time jump. How else were we supposed to interpret the image on Fixed Point? That was a red herring.

This 17 year old "petulent child", as Christopher said above, could hold the key to everything.

 

There is more to come! I have yet to unpack art clues and flavor text clues, but Vengeance related material will have to be my jumping off point. Stay tuned. We have much to talk about.

 

Update #1: In another thread recently, I brought an interesting fact. Have you ever noticed that we have artwork in game depicting a hero in combat with every single villain in the game with the lone exception of Matriarch? There is no card outside of her deck that has her in it! Why is that? There is either a massive oversight by Adam, or, more likely, there is a reason.

Popular speculation at this time strongly suggests that the giant Thorathian girl thats depicted in The Dreamer's deck is a future hero. The rational behind the speculation is that no card art currently exists depicting two villains in combat. Hero vs Villain is the norm by far, with a small scattering of Hero vs Hero art (Expat hitting Setback, Tachyon kicking Writhe). 

Side steping for a moment, I also have outlined my current thoughts on the final 2 expansions and how I see them playing out in the same thread I mentioned at the start of this update. This can all be found starting here:

https://greaterthangames.com/comment/48298#comment-48298

I bring this up here because when working out the math and theme on the expansions, it became clear to me that there is a possibility that the final mega expansion may not introduce any new heros (or at least, no new Nemesis Icons).

Steping back and looking at all of this together, I can only come to the reasonable conclusion that Matriarch could become a hero deck by the end of SotM.

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Lots of stuff here. Norse mythology again references garments made from feathers that confer powers upon the wearer. Freyja (and Loki, at one point) wore a cloak made of feathers that allowed flight.

As far as "the centre" goes, I don't know that I'm fully in line with this yet. We've got compelling arguments for Young Legacy and Vanessa Long, too. I think more information needs to be revealed to get to the heart of that matter.

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I dig it.  Please continue.

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I've known about Huginn and Muninn since long before Sentinels. Silly me to think that the names of those birds were just casually reused, rather than being part of a larger plot.

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Interesting! It would certainly be fun to see Lilian take a more central role. I've always though she had a great concept and feel rather sorry for her even if she is somewhat emo and annoying.

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Its possible that she could be reformed and is now operating as a hero (since we don't know how much damage she did as a villain, its plausible), but the bitterness that she harbored doesn't seem like the kind that goes away after being beaten.

 Interesting thought- the quote on the mask mentions that she rules from "the center to the sea"

Now, Chris is a big Norse fan, true..but he's also a major fan of mythology in general.  So we could have a mix.  The birds are certainly named after Odin's birds, but I'm not sure that they ARE Odin's birds, and I feel that its a bit of a misdirection.

I think its more plausible that it might be more geared towards the Morrigan than Odin.  Theres a LOT of carrion, eyeball feasting, fury, and scorn in her deck, which are far more geared towards Celtic than Norse.  I have a feeling that we're going to see an evolution from Lillian as "the Matriarch" to Lillian as an aspect of the Morrigan.   My guess is that the "cosmic event" that we are gettting hints at is going to involve a lot of primal and legendary things being unleashed.  Some of them will be from beyond the stars, but i suspect that some of them will be mystical and mythological as well.  hitting all the angles, you know?

Also, Lillian is a Irish/Scottish/Welsh name.

 

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So, while Stanley Ipkiss got Loki's mask, Lillian got Odin's or Morrigan's?

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Could this give any more credence to my Timecrazed Prisoner connection? "The child is the center".

I know very little about the Morrigan and Celtic mythos. But this possible connect is awesome. I will be doing a lot of reading tonight it looks like.

Brilliant work.

 

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Quick reading into the history of the Morrigan yielded incredible results!

Morrigan is the goddess of battle and strife and there are stories of her showing up on the battlefield as a crow flying overhead. She also appears to men in the form of a crow in multiple stories.

Morrigan usually appears as one of three sisters. Linking that relationship possibly back to Matriarch and Tachyon might be a stretch, but well worth noting.

There is also a figure in the Vulgate, which is a latin translation of the Bible that mentions Lamia, who very closley resembles the Morrigan. Interestingly, the name in Hewbrew translates to Lilith, another Morrigan-ish figure in mythology. Lilith is very close to Matriarchs real name Lillian. 

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I love the Morrigan angle, also. I don't find it likely, but it's fun to run with.

Also, I have far more knowledge of the Morrigan than I do Odin. However, they share many characteristics. I could go into this, but I don't have time at the moment. Maybe later.

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You might be reading too much into this Foote, but that's what makes it fun. I certainly see there being more to the Matriarch then meets the eye. I have also known for a while that Huginn and Muninn come from Norse mythology, but I had never tought of it to have a larger impact in the overall multiverse. Very interesting theory can't wait to see how accurate it is.

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Oh of course. There are absolutely things I'm reading into. But, keep in mind, I never made the connection without Veangence info as well. There's more to this story, I just can't expand on it quite yet. Wait for it. All I ask. 

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I assumed Matty named two particular birds of her flock Huginn and Munnin and just adopted them as pets, whose card abilities represented that they were particularly large and fierce, either naturally or due to her infusing them with the power of the Mask to some greater extent than just controlling them like the other birds.  I did not for a moment consider that they were the REAL Huginn and Munnin, but it's not like we don't have at least eleven mythological gods walking around messing things up already, so it does kinda make sense.  I guess in a way Lilian is a sort of valkyrie, as these were always associated with the carrion-birds who feed on the dead after battles.  Still doesn't necessarily mean that the name Matriarch is anything other than her being intentionally pompous, but you never know.

If the cosmic entity is indeed Odin, I hope he's not coming alone.  There is already one mythos (besides Marvel Comics) which posits the idea that the Norse gods were actually a race of Sufficiently Advanced aliens: Stargate, in which the "gray" aliens are actually a race called the Asgard, who write in runes and have been protecting Earth from the evil Goa'uld (who masquerade primarily as Egyptian gods, with two of the worst being Ra and Anubis) for centuries.  So basically, if your theory is right, we have a reverse Stargate here.  Should Odin (or O.D.I.N. or Ohdihnn or 0dh1n or however they style it so it can be trademarked) turn out to be one of the game's last villains, I'll definitely have to make sure to play Ra against him.  (And if the Matriarch is a difficulty 4 just for being associated with him, does that mean he himself will be difficulty 5?!?)

On the Morrigan thing, I'm inclined to doubt that the streams will be crossed that much, but it did touch off an interesting thought in me.  I've never heard an analogy made between Morrigan (goddess of death and battle) and Lilith/Lamia (goddess of child-killing and things that go bump in the night) before, but if there is a connection between them, it puts an interesting new spin on the Arthurian mythos...Lilith is classically a seductress among other things, and I seem to recall that Arthur's doom had something to do with a certain Morgana (Morriganna?) Le Fay....

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As Arthurian legend is mostly taken from celtic mythology, there is a strong connection there.

Ravens are prevalent in many European myth, from psychopomp figures to supernatural messengers to harbingers of change to embodiments of wisdom and the mind itself, they nearly always have a connection to death and the afterlife. Similarly, the deities that associate themselves with ravens tend to be wise and bloodthirsty.

However, for all their darker tones, they are rarely connected to evil. Perhaps we're looking at a character (villain?) that is similar to Iron Legacy on a greater scale. Warped through a complete lack of humanity, this character empowers those who are so inclined (Omnitron, Lillian, and others), sees that they are not capable of becoming like it, and them summarily destroys them in the most efficient way possible: removing their plane of existence.

I'm rambling here. Perhaps this character is Odin or something named such by ancient peoples. I don't know. Right now I'm just tossing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.

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A theory that (to me) supports the Morrigan angle are a couple of details about Tempest. 

The Morrigan was nboted to have three forms (as seen in her fight against Cuculain).  One was a crow, the next an eel, and the third a wolf.

Well, the Matriarch has plenty of crows...but we've seen tempest talking to an eel in aquatic correspondence.  And we've seen him petting a dog- its no wolf, but its not too much of a stretch.

In addition, in the artwork for Silver Shadow, we see two speficic things- Tempest wielding a sword, and wearing white and blue robes over his tights.  You can a loose (blue) sleeve poking out behind the adept, and some sort of emblem on his chest.  White robes can mean a lot of things, and one of them is a more druidic focus (especially with Tempest's control over the natural world).

The sword is a short wasp-waisted blade, with rounded bronze quillions.  Now, there aren't a lot of double-edged wasp-waisted swords.  A gladius can be wasp-waisted, but it is more often seen as a straight blade, and they have minimal crossguards.  A Xiphos can be wasp-waisted, but its more often a single-edged surved sword, and has straight crossguards. Celtic shortswords can have curved crossguards, and a wasp-waisted blade.

In addition to that, there are two specific swords that both tie into the Morrigan in celtic Mythology.

Macha (one of the aspects of the Morrigan) was the wife of Nuada (king of the Tuatha de Danaan).  In a fight against a terrible enemy, Nuada had his hand chopped off and (after many adventures) replaced with one of silver.  The comparison to tempest's arm issues seem relatively obvious, and Nuada had a sword (this one) which looks very similar to the one tempest is wielding- the crossguard is a bit off, but the blade is dead on.

Another possibility is Lugh.  Lugh was admitted to the ranks of the Tuatha for being a master of all things- they had someone who was better in each of his skills, but no one that could match his breadth of talent.  Now, I've heard tempest described as a lot of things, but the one that I hear the most is that he's a jack of all trades- someone who can do a little bit of everything.  The Morrigan is more associated with Lugh's son (Cuculain), but she does appear in his stores as well.  Lugh had a sword (Fragarach) that (among other things) granted command over the winds.  I haven't been able to find any good pictures of it (given that legendary named swords have been co-opted by a variety of fantasy games), but it could certainly fit the profile.  Lillian becoming the Morrigan could tie into him getting it.

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Ha! A fellow enthusiast of Celtic myth!

As an aside, whenever I read or pronounce "Fragarach" I always giggle when I hear it as "Fraggle Rock."

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Probably way off, but this talk about the intent and evilness (and lack there of) of the cosmic entity got me thinking about Voyager's "Year of Hell." Manipulating timelines, giving powers, etc. could be its way to fix things.

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I've heard the name Fragarach before - I always thought the name was German, being derived somehow from the root word Frage, meaning "to question".

Also Tempest does more than a little bit of just about everything.  Lightning Slash is just as deadly as Ra's Fire Blast, although he doesn't have as many ways of boosting it.

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Thats the thing, though.  Its right there in how you followed it up.  Lightning slash can do as much as Fire Blast, but Ra is overall much better at damage output.  He can do a bit of card manipulation, but others do it better.  He can do a bit of healing, a bit of ongoing/environment destruction, some AoE, some support...  He can fill just about any role for the team, but there is always a specialist in that role who could do it more effectively.  His skill is that he can switch from role to role in a way that the specialists absolutely can't do.  I can't think of any hero that is as versatile as Tempest.

Arguably, the only thing that he does better than anyone else is AoE damage effects- but we've yet to meet all the heroes in the Sentinels universe, and who's to say that there won't be an AoE specialist down the line?  

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Yay for mythology class! While I knew about the origins of Huggin and Munnin, I’m not as up on Celtic mythology. Very spiffy stuff.

The only time I’d ever heard of Fragarach was as the enchanted sword in the original Temple of Elemental Evil.