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No Wednesday without its portion of amazing stories. Today, in our Magic Chronicles, we talk about one of the most special cards that have been printed to date. The only real character that has reached an official letter of Magic: The Gathering.
But it is not only interesting how Nebuchadnezzar managed to overcome the rule of not including real people in the letters of Magic. The very history of the Babylonian king is in itself a collection of legends and exploits that are worth knowing.
The origin of legendary cards
We are in 1994 and in the offices of Magic They continue to work on making the game grow, which in less than a year has already become a phenomenon.
The fourth edition is already in the streets together with the expansions of Arabian Nights and Antiquities, but Magic prepares for its largest expansion set to date: the 310-card Legends.
Behind its creation are two enthusiasts of Magic, Steve Conard and Robin Herbert. Two fellow students that Richard Garfield introduced to his pre-release testing group for the game and who, after falling in love with the game, have been inventing their own cards for the past few months just for the fun of it.
From the mix between your games to Magic and Dungeons and Dragons, the idea of creating a different group of cards was born. One based on extremely powerful heroes capable of turning the game around thanks to their mythological abilities.
Those heroes would be so unique and powerful that only one of them could be on the table at a time. As you may have imagined, that idea would end up becoming the germ of the legendary cardsbut it is not the only crazy thing that occurred to them.
The real character who became a Legend
Following in the wake of what was marked with Arabian Nights, the team behind Legends It occurred to him that the finishing touch for this combination of heroes should be to go to authentic legends of our history, both mythological and real.
Thus, following the trend of clinging to myths such as Aladdin or Sinbad, they would look at real and mythological heroes like the ones you have below.
- Achillesthe legendary Greek hero of the Iliad.
- Beowulfthe warrior from the epic poem who fought against monsters and dragons.
- Circethe sorceress of La Odiosea who turned men into pigs.
- Gilgameshthe mythical king of Mesopotamian mythology.
- Hiawathathe legendary leader of the American Indians.
- Jasonthe captain of the mythical ship Argo.
- Lancelotthe legendary seeker of the Holy Grail and right-hand man of King Arthur.
An insane collection of myths, legends and real historical heroes destined to further catapult the name of the expansion, but a strategy that, however, did not come to fruition when it came to confirming the set for its launch.
Real names could bring problems and, given the rule of clinging to the creation of an ecosystem of identities typical of the multiverse Magic: The Gatheringthe ideas for those legendary heroes stuck around, but their names were dropped by others.
All except one. A name strange enough so that at that time no one realized that its origin did not belong to one of the planes of Magic: Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar II for friends.
The amazing story of Nebuchadnezzar the Great
Especially known by those who have looked at the Bible on occasion, the story of Nebuchadnezzar It is especially marked by his military campaigns against Jerusalem, a city that he besieged twice until he took control of it and, after losing it again due to the alliance of the Jews with Egypt, he ordered the city to be razed.
After proving his military might against the Egyptians, he spent the rest of his life rebuilding Babylon and shaping some of the city’s most mythical buildings. Underground passages, canals, aqueducts, a third wall, enormous buildings in which there was no shortage of materials and precious stones and, of course, also the reconstruction of the Temple of Marduk and his Ziggurat.
The temple, a pyramid-shaped Mesopotamian building, is the mythical building that the rest of us mortals know under an even more famous name, that of the Babel Tower. Among all the citizens taken to Babylon after its conquests, and all the workers who joined in the reconstruction of the city, the myth of a tower capable of bringing together all the languages of the world would grow even more.
Nebuchadnezzar is also credited with creating the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, considered one of the great wonders of the ancient world. However, what appeared to be a gift to his wife in the form of large gardens created on balconies and walls, could well be the credit of a nearby palace due to the lack of records and the depiction of a similar idea on a relief in the city. of Nineveh.
But as if all this were not enough, to Nebuchadnezzar, or to the demonization of his figure in the Bible, we also largely owe the myth of lycanthropy and werewolves.
In the same way that occurred in the Greek legend of Lycaon, king of Arcadia, Nebuchadnezzar is reported to have spent his last years with a type of dementia that would have led him to develop a case of zoanthropya delusion capable of making you believe that you are an animal.
Linked to the belief that Nebuchadnezzar had been punished by God for the destruction of Jerusalem, in reality it could well have been a fairly common type of dementia in which, faced with the abandonment of the sick in the middle of the woods, the growth of the hair and nails, added to the fact of living like animals, would have shaped the werewolf myth.
