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Episode 16: Goblin Game – Mercadia vs. Personality Types
102 Plays6 years ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to the Goblin Lore Podcast!
In our sixteenth episode, Joe tries out a new episode format where we take listener suggestions for a piece of Magic: the Gathering lore and draw parallels between it and something completely unrelated. Can Joe survive an Iron Chef-like secret ingredient showdown... with himself?
This episode, we were suggested to talk about lesser known planes (i.e. Ulgrotha, Mercadia) and personality types. So, Joe digs into Mercadia's creation story, "The Myth of Ramos" and compares it to ancient Greek philosopher and physician Hippocrates' theory of the "Four Humors".
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Remember: we've reached 300 followers on Twitter, so we'll do our next giveaway soon! Keep the word of mouth going; another is up at 400!
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You can find the hosts on Twitter: Joe Redemann at @Fyndhorn, Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at @AlexanderNewm. Send questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to @GoblinLorePod on Twitter or GoblinLorePodcast@gmail.com.
Goblin Lore is proud to be a member of the Geek Therapy Network (on Twitter at @GeekTherapy).
Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art courtesy of Greg Staples, design by Joe Redemann.
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Transcript
Episode Introduction and Format Change
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of Goblin Lore. This episode is a bit of a departure from our typical structure and cast size, but I'm hoping it's something that you will still find interesting, informative, and fun. This week's episode got a little bit mangled by one of our producing goblins, and for whatever reason the audio was completely unable to be found.
00:00:32
Speaker
And so we're trying something new here.
Listener Appreciation and Magic Lore Exploration Invitation
00:00:35
Speaker
We really appreciate that you all are interested in the discussions that we're interested in and interested in the topics and thoughts that we're interested in. So we want to make sure to honor that and continue to bring you good compelling content even when a certain post editor and producer goblin may or may not have made a mistake. This is a little bit of a experiment.
00:01:01
Speaker
We're gonna try. I solicited some topics online tonight about magic lore that you wanted to hear more about as well as a random topic of your choosing. The first response to us came from at David underscore a underscore Schultz who said
00:01:19
Speaker
I want to hear more lore about lesser known planes like Mercadia or Algrotha. I'm also interested in different personality types and how they interacted the world. Again, we're talking lesser known planes and different personality types. So ready?
Exploring Mercadia: Geography and Myth of Ramos
00:01:36
Speaker
Mercadia is the one that I want to focus on. It's a plane that was sort of near Dominaria in the multiverse. It was ruled from this one specific city called Mercadia City, which sat on top of sort of an inverted mountain. It's kind of like a stalactite, but sitting on the ground that opens up into this giant plateau.
00:01:58
Speaker
and it was part of the Weatherlight saga where during the story of Mercadian Masks the Weatherlight crew got stranded on this plane and needed to re-power the Weatherlight's engines and get back to Dominaria and Wrath and all the other places they were jumping around.
00:02:17
Speaker
Specifically, I want to talk about one core concept of the Mercadia story, and that's the myth of Ramos. So Ramos was, he was seen in the story by the people of Mercadia as a dragon god from another world.
00:02:33
Speaker
And so the legend of Ramos goes that in the wake of combat, Ramos attempted to save as many people as possible from the devastation of this place. He gathered merfolk, the crew of a ship, tribesmen from the plains nomads, took them all in and brought them to Mercadia and saved them.
00:02:54
Speaker
Once he was there, Ramos collided with something in the sky and fell out of it. He was on fire from this planar jump, from this explosion, through the worlds, and so he fell into three pieces, they say. Mind, soul, and body. The Chorim, these rebels who live in the forests of Markadia, rode Ramos' soul into the Rushwood forest, supposedly.
00:03:21
Speaker
The Soprazan merfolk fell with Ramos' mind into the sea, and the Rashadans fell off with part of Ramos' body onto Mercadia's shores. Ramos' bones crashed into the forest of Deepwood, where those who did not survive this collision and explosion were left as zombies to guard his final resting place.
00:03:41
Speaker
So this is essentially an interesting creation myth for these people of Mercadia, which ostensibly was not populated prior to their arrival.
Ramos' Origin and Journey to Mercadia
00:03:51
Speaker
It all comes around this idea of the dragon god Ramos. Well, what we find out later on in the story of Mercadian masks, and you know, what we realize now, commander players who've seen the card Ramos Dragon Engine, is that Ramos was
00:04:08
Speaker
a dragon, but he was an artificial dragon created by Urza and battling Mishra in the brother's war. So, Ramos was created with the main purpose that when the tide turned against Urza's forces, Ramos was one of the dragon engines that would scoop up people, civilians in harm's way and try to save as many people as possible.
00:04:31
Speaker
When Urza activated the Golgothian Sylex, the magical device that created the Ice Age and blasted Argyve into a thousand pieces,
00:04:41
Speaker
Ramos gathered as many people as he could, including merfolk, soldiers from the battlefield in Arghoth, and a pirate ship, and then he was phased into Phyrexia by the blast of the Sylex, where he then went through a Phyrexian portal, which would later connect Mercadia and Wrath, which is part of this story, to Mercadia. This is how he got to Mercadia.
00:05:07
Speaker
The blast of the silex though had ruptured Ramos' engines and the strain of passing through a planar portal was also so much that eventually he just gave out. So he set the merfolk in the sea, losing his power matrix in what would become Soprazo. And so they say it was a broken heart at seeing the refugees set aflame by the blast of the silex. The Rashadans did fall off on the shore and the Chilverim did fall off in Rushwood.
00:05:37
Speaker
But after crossing through known Mercadia Ramos his body fell in deep wood This is the final resting place of the dragon engine where the fallen ghouls were animated by his last energies So these zombies were actually created by the leached out power of
00:05:52
Speaker
coming out of Ramos that seeped into the ground, that mana created these zombies.
Mercadia's Diverse Groups and Personality Representations
00:05:58
Speaker
The reason I bring all this up is because these are distinct groups who all came from the same place in the same origin, but they all have different ways of seeing their purpose and their part in the origin of Mercadian life and civilization.
00:06:13
Speaker
And so this comes to me, you know, in the idea of four, the four fundamental personality types are what was called originally, I believe it was Hippocrates, the Greek philosopher and physician who said that they were the four humors, sanguine, melancholic, phlematic, and choleric. While, you know, there are many more variations of personality types today that we realize and recognize and that everybody has,
00:06:38
Speaker
you know, bits and pieces of each of these. This was kind of one of the first ways that we rationalized out personality types. And so you have these four different ways of seeing people, these four moods, the four humors. And so I think it's interesting to look sort of at these same groups, these populations brought to Mercadia by Ramos through this sort of lens.
00:07:01
Speaker
You have these pirates who became the population of Rishada, this port on Mercadia, this sort of cutthroat, driven, you know, do anything at all cost people. And that sort of, to me, is a little bit of the choleric personality type, very ambitious, very me first individual, decisive, fact-based, you know, very pragmatic.
00:07:30
Speaker
You have the Choharim who landed in the Rushwood Forest, and they are sort of this rebel type, these people who are hoping to change the power structure of Mercadia for the better, and I see them a little bit as sanguine. They're very active, they're very focused on social things, they enjoy being part of a crowd, you know, they engage in risk-seeking behavior, and so they're those people who are willing to do what it takes to topple a regime.
00:07:59
Speaker
You have the Suprazans, the merfolk, and I see them sort of as the melancholic, the introverted, introspective, sort of forget the rest of the world. We're going to stay here in our bubble and take care of ourselves and our community underneath the sea, protecting themselves.
00:08:17
Speaker
And then you have the zombies of the deepwood forest guarding Ramos' bones and the dryads as well, and they seem to fall into that phlegmatic space. Relaxed, peaceful, quiet, easygoing, you know, sort of languid, you know, just doing their job so long as nobody comes to disturb them.
00:08:38
Speaker
And so I think it's an interesting way to see that these four groups sort of reflect the four personality types of the four humors.
Real-World Connections and Episode Conclusion
00:08:47
Speaker
And I don't think that was intentional by the writers necessarily, but I like that there is a connection here to this and that there is
00:08:55
Speaker
It's interesting to me that this sort of outdated personality typing of Hippocrates really aligns with this archaic derived myth of Ramos that there is sort of a beauty in wizards recognizing and reflecting the real world nature
00:09:15
Speaker
of people who don't understand the circumstances of where they came from or how they got there or what's really going on around them, they'll try to find a way to rationalize it and realize it and create a logical sense-making view of the world. And that's kind of what we see when we compare the myth of Ramos and the Four Humors.
00:09:38
Speaker
So thank you all for listening. I hope that was an interesting bit of information for you all. A brief peek into a bit of magic lore with a little bit of a fun of connecting a thematic challenge to it as well. If this is something you like, please let us know. This could be a fun thing to continue doing if you are interested and like it. Thank you all for listening and we'll talk to you again soon.
00:10:04
Speaker
That's our show. You can find the podcast at goblinlorepod on Twitter or email us any questions, comments, or concerns at goblinlorepodcast at gmail.com. Joe Redemann can be found at Findhorn on Twitter. Hobbs Q can be found at Hobbs Q and Alex Newman can be found at Alexander Newham.
00:10:29
Speaker
The Goblin Lore podcast is a member of the Geek Therapy Network. Geek Therapy is a network of like-minded content creators in a variety of nerd spaces that seek to use hobbies and gaming as a way to understand how our minds and communities work. For more information, check them out at Geek Therapy on Twitter or geektherapy.org. Thank you all for listening. And remember, goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.