The Lore of Zendikar: Ancestral Memories - Gods and Eldrazi (Part 1)
“When Sorin, Nahiri, and Ugin first brought the Eldrazi titans to Zendikar, the alien horrors were greeted as monstrous gods, and all the races of Zendikar fought the hordes of the titans’ brood. This battle persisted long after the titans were imprisoned, until at last all the lesser Eldrazi were wiped out and no new ones could be made. And then, for generations, the peoples of Zendikar passed down their tales of the dark gods’ coming.
As the centuries passed and the tales were retold again and again, though, they changed ever so slightly — but in terribly important ways. Angels had been among the first creatures to mount a resistance to the Eldrazi, and they fought on the forefront of every great battle. To the people of Zendikar, the defiance of the angels seemed like concrete proof that a benevolent divine force stood between them and the horrors of the Eldrazi. The kor and merfolk remembered stories of three gods who were present as their ancestors fought hordes of monsters. But in time, they forgot that those gods birthed the monsters.
Might Ulamog, who swam through the seas as easily as he walked across the land, became an ocean deity. The merfolk worshipped him as Ula, god of the ocean depths, while the kor called him Mangeni, ‘blood of the world,’ god of the waters and of movement and change.
Dread Kozilek, whose presence warped the nature of reality, became a god of chaos — not a friend to mortals, but not their implacable foe. To the merfolk, he was Cosi, the malevolent trickster-god of chaos and misfortune, not so much worshipped as appeased or avoided. Cosi’s realm was thought to be the solid ground between sea and sky. To the kor, Kozilek was Talib, god of the earth and ‘body of the world,’ who created rockslides and aberrations in gravity while also providing herbs and fungi to feed the kor as they wandered their pilgrimage routes.
And maddening Emrakul, whose presence in the sky blotted out the sun, became the goddess of the air. The merfolk called her Emeria, goddess of the wind realm, while the kor called her Kamsa, the ‘breath of the world.’ As the one most easily associated with the angels, she was always depicted as kind and benevolent. Remembering the kindness of the angels above all, the humans of Zendikar adopted Emeria as the First among Angels, the center of their own faith.
Passed down from generation to generation, the legends of these races told of Emeria/Kamsa sending angels to fight the invading monsters and of Ula/Mangeni providing knowledge and resources to help their followers endure the conflict. Some legends identified the trickster Cosi/Talib as the source of the monsters, as he attempted to scour the earth of the annoying pestilence of mortal life. Others claimed the trickster didn’t send the monsters but didn’t help in the battle against them either. A few stories even told of how the trickster helped clever and resourceful mortals overcome the dangers they faced.”
Art by Chippy and Daniel Ljunggren
