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Mythology

2020-01-03T16:26:25Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:24EA:B669:CB67:A273: /* Abrahamic Mythology (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) */

In the olden days, before science existed, people sought explanations for why the world exists as it does. Humans being humans, their first explanations revolved around ascribing human-like characteristics to natural phenomena, which in turn became the first gods worshiped by humankind.

From there, stories spread about the nature of the gods. In time, people began telling other stories that sought to explain such things as the origins of humankind, what happens after death, or the exploits of ancient heroes. Many other mythical creatures are thought to have started the same way - for example, stories of giants being an attempt to explain the existence of massive fossilized bones (which we now know belonged to long-extinct animals such as mammoths). As these stories passed down from generation to generation as either legends or religion, it gave birth to the fantasy genre we all knew and love.

In a sense, '''mythology''' is a blend of history and fantasy, with elements of what might have really happened wrapped up in cultural beliefs, and the shaped by the worldview of the societies that created the myths in question. Even in the present day, more than a few such myths are still prevalent despite their no longer being openly supernatural, such as the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. Many other such mythos are often tied significantly to the culture's religion

Older myths often contained bizarre and fucked up shit like incest and rape, because people in ye olden times [[Slaanesh|were fucking deranged and kinky as all hell]], and as far as they were concerned, nothing was off limits.

Put far less bluntly, several cultures saw their gods as models ''OF'' human behavior rather than FOR human behavior, and as such are not inherent indicators of how [[/d/|"deviant"]] a society was (though it ''also'' doesn't mean they might not have been fucked up in some ways). Naturally, exceptions to this "rule" do exist, e.g. the schools of Buddhism, where a core tenet is to transcend the impermanent nature of existence and break the cycle of death and rebirth, thus achieving ''nirvana''; the central figurehead, Buddha, and his teachings are explicitly to be emulated as opposed to worshipping him directly (which is apparent if you're not the kind of sheltered, brainless worm [[Derp|who thinks all religion is the same]]).

Shifts in mythological narratives can also occur due to cultural osmosis and/or conflict; some "foreign" gods are integrated into local mythos or considered an aspect of a "native" god within the pantheon, while other gods (usually from conquered peoples) were sometimes demonized, [[Demon|often literally so]]. With different cultures from country to country, mythologies all had their own angels/demons/spirits/energies, with their moralities varying based on how their own cultures and others perceived them. Natural phenomena (the sun, the sea, storms, etc.) and common abstracts (chaos, order, art, etc.) will inevitably feature in nearly any culture's pantheon.

==Connection with Fantasy Genres==
As you can see, many an author took interest in the old legends and decided to include its elements in their own stories. Notably, Tolkien took many elements from the Norse and Germanic Mythologies and popularized the concept of fantasy races like Dwarfs and Elves.

Between these connections and the fact that some mythologies form the basis for many beliefs, both ancient and modern-day (e.g. the Abrahamic religions), while others often incorporate historical and semi-historical figures (with obvious overlap), the following thus bears mentioning: Many other authors have used existing religions (often including their own) as a basis to inform the mythos or cosmology of their settings; [[J. R. R. Tolkien]] in particular is well known for this, as is C.S. Lewis. Liberties will be taken with adapting such figures directly or creating analogues for a given fiction, the same as it would be with any other adaptation. As such should not be taken as absolution or commentary on the reality of such beliefs unless explicitly intended; even in that event such liberties can only be indicative of the author's own beliefs or lack thereof, which is still a far cry from true spiritual or theological objectivity, regardless of how much (if at all) the author may actually want it to be.

<span style='font-size:150%'>{{BLAM|'''''TL;DR The following descriptions have no ''necessary'' bearing on the matter of whether or not a given being exists or how much of any Scriptures are true or false.'''''}} [[Skub|That's a matter we'll leave to the reader.]]</span>

For the purposes of this article, we're focused more on '''characters''' (including Deities), '''species''', and '''artifacts''', along with particular '''individual stories''' that get repurposed or directly referenced in RPGs. If you're genuinely curious about religious beliefs and/or specifically how it figures into RPGs, we have the [[religion]] article for that.

==Mythologies==
===Abrahamic Mythology (Judaism, Christianity, Islam)===
The one set of mythology everyone most familiar with in the West and the Middle East, since you learn them in church. Or synagogue, or mosque, you get the idea.

Much of the Abrahamic mythology is drawn from the old Hebrew Bible, though it has been expanded considerably by prose and poetry over the centuries, meaning that there is a wealth of third-party, non-canon material out there for DMs to use in their campaign settings. Christian mythology is one of the many mythologies that were derived from Jewish mythology; the same goes for Islamic mythology and many others from Middle Eastern countries. Hence, they are collectively referred to as "Abrahamic" after the Biblical patriarch. As Islamic mythology is not commonly depicted for a bunch of reasons (most notably a taboo against depicting Muhammad that Muslim extremists have violently enforced more than once), this section will primarily cover the Jewish and Christian elements of Abrahamic mythology.

'''Most notable heroes with lots of media adaptions:'''
*Jesus Christ: Please tell us you're joking. If for some reason you're actually serious and have a few hours to spare, find the nearest church and ask whoever's in charge to tell you about him. He will be happy to give you the full story. Otherwise you can ask a Christian you know or pick up a copy of the Bible - being the best-selling book of all time copies usually aren't hard to find - and see for yourself.
*Abraham: The common tie between the three Abrahamic religions, his covenant with God makes him and his descendants the first of the Jews.
*Samson: Legendary hero whose power of super strength was tied to <strike>never cutting his hair</strike> ACKCHYUALLY his power was tied to keeping his covenants with God, it just so happened that cutting his hair was the last one to break and he knew it.
*David: Once killed a mighty warrior with a slingshot. He became the king of Israel afterwards.
*Solomon: David's son, also King of Israel. Better at his job then just about anybody who came after him, and (more relevant to media appearances outside of direct-Biblical-adaption) frequently reputed to be a (usually holy) sorcerer of some kind. Islam further credits him with authority over the djinn.
*Moses: See the Exodus for details.
*Noah: See below for his boating adventure.
*A few angels; notably, only two are given names: Michael and Gabriel, as well as Raphael in the Book of Tobit though its canonicity is disputed(there's also an Abbadon (no, not [[Abaddon|the armless retard one]]) in the Book of Revelation, but he's usually considered a Fallen Angel like Lucifer). Also notable and mentioned in the Bible: the Angel of Death, aka The Destroying Angel (no name given Biblically, but the Catholic and most Eastern Orthodox Apocryphas (as well as Jewish tradition, especially the later Kaballic one), identify him as Azrael).
*God is rarely depicted as a particularly active hero, but may [[Just as planned|work in mysterious ways.]]
* Satan and the demons of Hell (see below) are sometimes depicted as an unpleasant but necessary part of the divine plan (compare to Hades, above), as the ones who punish sinners who escape mortal justice. In the early parts of the Old Testament, Satan is seen as a prosecutor of souls who puts people through spiritual trials to test their faith, rather than tempting people into evil for evil's sake, and to this day we speak of the "Devil's Advocate" who points out flaws in popular people or ideas (the term originates from the Catholic Church, of all places; when someone is considered for sainthood, the Devil's Advocate is specifically appointed to argue against them to hopefully ensure all sides of the story are considered).
** Alternatively, Satan is sometimes portrayed as a hero rebelling against an oppressive divine order. Obviously this is [[extra heresy]] (see also: Gnosticism).

'''Most notable villains with lots of media adaptions:'''
* Satan/Lucifer/The Devil (may or may not be the same character): With the many different interpretations, it's hard to tell which is which, but the general gist is that one angel disagreed with how God was doing business and staged a great rebellion. God cast him and his kin out of heaven and forced them to live in a realm where they are never able to feel his presence, and now he takes his hatred of God out on humanity by leading them into damnation. If you want to trigger people, just ask how he could have fallen and introduce evil to the universe when God's supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and purely good. It's been giving theologians headaches for centuries (though a reasonable answer involves the aspect of free will).
** Relevant note: One approach used in various media is to have multiple Hellish factions, each of whom have some claim to the title of Supreme Evil. Usually, they're opposed to one another, and usually represent different kinds or aspects of Evil (e.g., one wants to destroy the world, and is directly opposed by another who wants to tempt and corrupt). Note that the Bible is completely silent about most things about demons, so both "they're all working for one master" and "it's every demon for himself" are plausible readings. The Ars Goetia is often a handy source from which to pull such factions.
* Baal, Moloch, and others: False idols (i.e. pagan gods) worshipped by the Caananites, which the Israelites would repeatedly turn to worshipping despite God punishing them every single time they did so.
* Judas Iscariot: One of Jesus' apostles who sold him out to the Romans, leading to the crucifixion. He hung himself shortly afterwards in a fit of despair.
* Cain: Adam and Eve's son after being cast out of paradise. Murdered his brother Abel for petty reasons.
* Pharaoh from the tale of Moses
* Sometimes God and/or various angels are depicted negatively, as either being passive in the face of evil or complicit ([[Adeptus Evangelion|or being giant monsters out to destroy the world]]). Naturally, those kinds of interpretations are highly frowned upon for the obvious reason that people still worship God, this can involve in-universe retcons of Scripture, consider God good and do not like it when other people call His actions evil, so naturally this is [[Extra Heresy]] (and blasphemy).
** It should be added that Fallen Angels are a Canonical (as in, actually appear in the New Testiment) option to have Evil Angels without making God Himself Evil, although it still runs into the problem of why God made his own angels susceptible to becoming evil in the first place. Note that this is more an early Jewish and Christian motif than a later Jewish or Islamic one, due to changes and differences, respectively, in theology.

'''Non-Biblical figures who show up in media adaptions'''
* Lilith, the fanon first wife of Adam, the first man. It must be emphasized that she '''does not exist in any biblical source''' (other then the first woman being created twice -- but then again, a lot of things happen twice, slightly differently described each time, in Genesis), but that being said, she was reputed to be one of Satan's many wives and a mother of demons.
* The Wandering Jew and Longinus: Because Jesus implied that certain people listening to him speak would be around for the Second Coming (although two obvious alternate readings are that Jesus was talking about his shortly impending Resurrection, or referring to the then-future, but politically easy to foresee, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Jewish%E2%80%93Roman_War Great Revolt of 66 AD], whose results could easily be seen as something that would be talked about in the same tone as the end of the world at the time), two non-biblical figures show up, starting in medieval works: The Wandering Jew, an Jew of the era, cursed to immortality, and Longinus, the Roman soldier who pierced Jesus' side with a spear during the Crucifixion, similarly cursed to immortality. Can show up as villains, heroes, or mere cameos. (Both are more likely to show up in literature and RPGs then visual media; Longinus in particular is the identity claimed by an important historical vampire in ''[[Vampire: The Requiem]]''.)
* Various non-Biblically mentioned Angels.
*[[Djinn]]: Originally an element of pre-Islamic Arabian mythology, they are mentioned in the Quran as spirits born of "smokeless fire". Unlike Islamic angels, they are capable of sin and can go to either Heaven or Hell. The Islamic version of Satan (called Iblis or Shaitan) is said to have originally been a djinn. Over time and several (mis)interpretations, they came to be portrayed as the figures we now know as [[genie]]s.

'''Artifacts that tend to show up in media adaptions:'''
* The Holy Grail: The cup that Christ drank from at the Last Supper and/or a cup used for various purposes during the Crucifixion.
* The True Cross: So named because of the dozens of other crosses falsely passed off as the one Jesus was crucified on--not helped by the fact that the Roman Empire crucified a ''lot'' of people, as Crucifixion was the standard Roman method of execution of non-Romans. Whether it actually ''is'' the cross Jesus was crucified in is another story.
* The Spear of Destiny and various other objects associated with the Crucifixion: In certain media, the Spear of Destiny (which pierced his side during crucifixion), as well as the nails which pinned him to the cross, are considered gifted with magical powers because they have the blood of God on them.
** Other objects from the Crucifixion that can show up in media and are sometimes (but more rarely then the above) assigned supernatural powers include the Crown of Thorns, the 30 pieces of silver payed to Judas, the whip used for the 39 lashes, and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Sponge a sponge].
* The Veil of Veronica and/or the Shroud of Turin: These are two relics that purported to be pieces of cloth that were miraculously imprinted with an image of Christ's face after being in contact with him sometime during the crucial four days. The former is lost; the latter is of rather dubious authenticity and is now considered by most scholars to be a forgery made in the Middle Ages.
* The Ark of the Covenant: Where Moses supposedly put the shards of the original Ten Commandments (and possibly Aaron's rod and a pot of manna). Famously disappeared during one of the various times Jerusalem was sacked, and has never been seen since.
* The Fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil
* The Fruit of Life.
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==== Creation Myth ====
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So in Abrahamic mythology there is only one god, or at least only one ''true'' god: '''YHVH''', which most people would just refer to him as '''GOD''' since his name is too sacred to speak of and because he is the only god that exists, with all others being false idols and products of human imagination. In fact, we don't even know how its pronounced, the two most common anglicizations being '''Yahweh''' and '''Jehovah'''. In Islam, he is instead called '''Allah'''.

Before the world was born, according to Milton, there was the "war in heaven" [[War in Heaven|(not this one)]] where [[Horus|Lucifer]], [[Horus Heresy|the most perfect of God's creations and the best of the archangels, rebelled against God with a third of the angels in Heaven, but was defeated and cast down to Hell]], in which he was imprisoned.

After that, God creates the world. It is said that he created the world in 7 days, hence the seven-day work week we all know and love: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (although those names themselves are drawn from various pagan, Roman, and Norse traditions -- Sun, Moon, Tyr, Woden/Odin, Thor, Frigga/Freya, and Saturn -- because flexibility is important when it comes to winning converts). He then created many animals, plants and the first two humans: Adam and Eve. He observed them in the Garden of Eden ''(aka his research facility)'' watching them having fun and telling them that they could do anything they wanted, except from eat the fruit of one particular tree in the garden. But that promise was broken when the woman, Eve was tempted by a winged serpent - who according to Milton, was actually Lucifer in disguise seeking to avenge himself by corrupting humanity - to eat the fruit, which held within it the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve, having eaten the fruit, gained knowledge and dignity which made them embarrassed by their lack of clothing. God found out and exiled from the garden them to the mortal world. The serpent is also punished, with his wings taken from him, turning him into the [[snek]] we all knew and feared. According to Christianity, this also introduced original sin, fundamentally changing the nature of humankind from natural innocence to inherent wickedness.

In the mortal world, Adam and Eve worked hard to survive and later conceived two sons: Cain and Abel. Cain was a farmer while Abel was a shepherd. When they both offered their produce to God, God only favored Abel's. ''(According to some, it was because Cain hid his best offering from God, and others because he gave God leftovers while Abel gave the best; others still say (frequently either looking to blame-shift or suggest that even small evils can lead to larger ones in other people), Abel's overweening pride at being favored provoked what followed. By this point if you are a true [[Vampire: The Masquerade]] fan, you would know what's coming next, but without the vampire shit.)'' Cain killed Abel, and his punishment for murder was to never farm ever again; wherever he spilled his brother's blood, the earth became cursed so that it can never grow anything, putting an end to Cain's favorite job and career. However, punishments differ in other mythologies and it's a clusterfuck, though the 'Mark of Cain' deal is a common point of reference - Cain fears the cold, cruel world will be out to get his marauding criminal ass, so God set a mark on him that made it clear anyone trying to inflict their justice over His own would get it seven times worse.

Adam and Eve later had the third son Seth, who is the true ancestor of mankind, and [[Command and Conquer|Cain is then exiled to the land of the Nod]] where he built the City of Enoch (because he can't farm) and conceived many other descendants. There's also the claim that Eve was not the first wife, but Lilith, a woman who was created from the same dirt as Adam. Felt too hot shit for Adam, so she ran away with an archangel called Samael ''(the Fallen name for Lucifer in some stories)'', though in other stories she ran away a demon prince called Asmodeus ([[Asmodeus|the one this guy was named after]]) and begat a whole race of demons called the Lilim or Lilitu. In [[Vampire: The Masquerade]] however, she taught Cain cool dark magic and shit.

As for the rest, it's easier to find the nearest Bible and/or Koran and read it for yourself. Just don't call it mythology or worse where anyone can hear you, unless you enjoy offending people, want to provoke an argument and don't particularly care about being ostracized or worse, depending on where you do it.
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==== Noah's Ark ====
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Humankind had become incredibly corrupt and sinful, so God decided to have the sea level to suddenly rise to the kind you see in disaster movie like [[/tv/|The Day After Tomorrow]]. He instructed the sole righteous man on Earth named Noah to build [[Imperial Navy|an ark big enough to contain every animals and in the world as well as his family]], or just each animal species with their own female and male pairing so that they could reproduce. God even instruct Noah to build the ark with the size he demands: 300 cubits in length, 50 cubits in width and 30 cubits in height (450 × 75 × 45 ft or 137 × 22.9 × 13.7 m), [[just as planned|it's almost as if God intended this]]. The ark is also made out of some probably extinct wood called "Gopher" (that's just how the Hebrew word is pronounced, ''gofer'' -- it's not related to the furry critter), probably the best kind since the ark has to withstand waves after waves of tsunami for a long time and a tragically, all of them are probably used up just for the ship. After the flood came and everyone is on the ark, they basically float for 40 days until the water goes down.
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==== Moses and the Exodus of the Hebrews ====
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Another myth took place in Egypt. There once lived the Israelite (later the Jewish) people, the chosen people of God. They had come to reside in Egypt after a renowned ancestor Joseph helped Egypt survive a major famine, and were living in peaceful harmony until one day some asshole [[Tomb Kings|Pharaoh]] came and starts to oppress the shit out of them. The Pharaoh hated how the Hebrews bred like rats and got paranoid that they '''might''' ally with Egypt's enemies, so he ordered [[grimdark|every one of their male babies thrown in the river of Nile to either drown or get eaten by wildlife]]. Moses, our hero of the story survived as an infant and was adopted by Pharaoh's daughter (oh the irony). Moses eventually grow up and learn of God '''Yahweh''' and is commanded to free his people and guide them on an exodus to the promised land. Pharaoh and his army tried to stop them but God basically said fuck you and send [[Nurgle|twelve powerful plagues]] to fucked them over; it could've ended sooner if he just let them go, but the Pharaoh was [[Dwarfs (Warhammer Fantasy)|stupidly stubborn and always tried to tweak the deal to his advantage]]. [[Nagash|The plagues were so effective that Egypt became a frigging wasteland, but no undead unfortunately]]. Later, Moses guide his people to close the red sea where he do the iconic sea splitting to make a crossing passage. The Pharaoh and his goons tried to take chase but was once again pwned by the sudden sea crushing them both side when they were on the sea.

After traveling with his fellow Hebrews, Moses was called to Mount Sinai by God, who gave him the '''Ten Commandments''': ten rules willed by God as the foundation of Jewish law and the worship of God. Later on other rules were given, and then sometimes God gave direct orders (e.g. commands to commit [[exterminatus|genocide]] on the entire cities of man, woman, chidren and animals for failing to worship God, though some sources cite that it was also punishment for the practices of those religions, which were said to include [[Khorne|human sacrifice]] and [[Slaanesh|ritual prostitution]]).

While he was up there, the Israelites believed he would never come back and had built an idol of a golden calf that they claimed as their new god. When Moses returned, he was enraged and had the calf ground to powder, which was scattered into water and force-fed to the Israelites, which were then struck with a plague as a punishment for their idolatry. Moses and his followers arrived to their promised land after a delay of 40 years due to the Israelites' incessant disbelief in God despite all he'd done, which is, unsurprisingly, Israel! The Israelites then spend a long chunk of their history trying to kill off the native Caananites, all while being repeatedly punished for continually abandoning God's worship in favor of false idols in what can only be called a stunning inability to learn from experience.
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====Things drawn from Abrahamic Myth / Demonology ====
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The "bibles" ''(Jewish, Christian and Islamic holy books)'' and associated apocrypha are undoubtedly HUGE sources of inspiration for game developers, particularly [[Dungeons and Dragons]] where monsters are ported over, virtually unchanged and names of significant figures are also often used.

*The idea that Hell has Nine layers - [[Baator]] - though where Dante's layers have distinct punishments, Baator's layers are the realms of powerful lords.
**Names of significant demon/devil characters: [[Asmodeus]] - demon of Lust, '''Baalzebul''' ''(or other variants like Baalzebul, Beelzebub)'' - demon of gluttony, or '''Mammon''' - demon of avarice
*Different orders of Angels, or angel analogues such as [[Genie]]s (or djinn, as they were originally called in Islamic tradition)
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==== Gnosticism ====
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A wide family of heretical beliefs mixing Abrahamic theology with Greek philosophy, Gnosticism believes in the existence of two gods; the true omnipotent God of the spiritual world and the Demiurge, the false god who created the Earth. Seeing as the world was created by a flawed creator, it is inherently flawed itself, so your goal ought to be to transcend the physical plane and escape to the perfect world of the spirit. Typically the Demiurge was identified with the god of the Old Testament, while the true god was seen as the one preached by Jesus, in an attempt to explain the apparent dissonance between their depictions. Where Satan fits into the picture depends on the exact sect, some portraying him as a force of liberty that seeks to free mankind from the tyranny of the Demiurge while others see him as seeking to further mankind's imprisonment by distracting them from spiritual matters with his temptations. Often associated with the western occult tradition of Hermeticism, also a mixture of Abrahamic and Greek traditions, though not all Hermetics are necessary Gnostics. There were countless different sects of Gnosticism, and describing the differences between them would likely require its own article.

While Gnosticism is hardly the most well-known religion due to the early Christian Church's ultimately successful efforts in wiping it out and the lack of surviving information on how it was practiced, it has influenced several fantasy settings, like [[Kult]], [[The Elder Scrolls]] and both of the [[World of Darkness]] Mage games.
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===Arthurian Mythology===
The story of a boy who becomes king of England and his knights. Arthurian lore is unusual among mythology in that historians actually know the names and history of the authors who created most of it. This doesn't make it any more consistent, in-fact even authors directly continuing existing stories couldn't be assed to keep basic things consistent. The issue has to do with Arthur's story being used by every ambitious bard to introduce their own [[Original character, do not steal|OC]] Knight of the Round Table and why theirs is the best of the bunch, as well as many of Britain's monarchs adjusting his story for their own political gain.

Of some minor note, the story of King Arthur ''may'' have some sorta kinda basis in reality. If he existed, he was apparently a '''general''', not king, who successfully fought in at least one battle to contain the invading Anglo-Saxons during the era after the collapse of the western Roman Empire. Given many, many washings through the story retelling and expanding machine after being combined with the mythos associated with the Holy Grail, we wind up with the King Arthur mythology.

For the closest thing to an official "canon" for Arthurian literature, it officially begins with Geoffrey Monmouth's ''The History of the Kings of Britain'', with some of the more prominent stories including ''Le Morte D'Arthur,'' ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,'' ''Perceval, the Story of the Grail,'' etc.

(Side note: If you intentionally quote from ''Monty Python and the Holy Grail'' at the gaming table, you deserve to be punched in the face.)

'''Notable Characters:'''
*Arthur <s>(no shit are you fucking stupid oh my god jesus christ come on its IN THE FUCKIN-)</s>
*The Knights of the Round Table
**Lancelot: The closest of Arthur's companions and the greatest knight of the age, but also infamous for his long affair with Guinevere. Some scholars believe he was not part the original group of knights and actually just a completely separate fictional knight that met Arthur in a crossover and never left.
**Gawain: One of the earliest knights in Arthurian mythos, representing Wales. He typically gets shit on by the newer, fancier knights, but really comes into his own during his duel with the Green Knight.
**Galahad: Lancelot's son. [[Grey Knights|Absolutely pure of heart]], and the only one able to sit in the lethal chair at the Round Table known as "The Siege Perilous." For this he is able to complete the quest for the Holy Grail. After finding it, he ascends into Heaven along with the Grail.
**Percival: The Knight who was supposed to find the grail before Galahad appeared. In his version of the story, he finds the grail is kept by the Fisher King, ruler of a wasteland that can only be healed by Percival becoming the new king. In later versions, Percival is unsuccessful in healing the land, allowing Galahad to take over.
**Kay: Arthur's [[Gish]] step-brother. One of the earliest written knights, but nobody remembers him. Kay was a guy's name once upon a time.
*Merlin: Arthur's wizard and mentor, as well as the template for almost every other wizard in fantasy fiction since the genre was a thing. Works vary wildly on how benevolent he is and how he got his powers. Originally named Myrddin, but that sounded too close to "shit" for audiences that knew French, which was a lot of people at the time, so it was changed. Since having a super OP wizard as a buddy would make things too easy for Arthur, some stories have him trapped by Morgan's apprentice Vivian or the Lady of the Lake so that Merlin can't warn Arthur of his impending doom.
*Morgan le Fay: Merlin's opposite number. Sometimes Arthur's half-sister because fuck consistency. Depending on the story, she is either an ally or an enemy of Arthur.
*Guinevere: Arthur's wife. Falls for Lancelot shortly after they meet, and somehow their affair goes unnoticed until exposed by Morgan le Fay and Mordred.
*Lady of the Lake: A fey chick who gives Arthur Excalibur after the sword in the stone breaks. Since most adaptations make the sword in the stone and Excalibur one in the same her role varies wildly. Sometimes said to be Lancelot's adoptive mother.
*Mordred: Most commonly depicted as Arthur's bastard son with his half-sister (who may or may not be Morgan le Fay depending on the story) or possibly his aunt, but like a lot of things in Arthur Mythos his background is inconsistent as hell. All that's certain is he doesn't like Arthur and wants to take over.
*The Green Knight: Shows up to the castle one day and challenges each knight to chop his head off with an axe, on the condition he gets to do the same thing to them next year. Nobody is willing to accept the challenge... except Gawain. Gawain beheads the Green Knight [[Dullahan|only for him to pick the head right back up and walk away]], reminding Gawain of their deal. Gawain survives thanks to the the Green Girdle and learns the whole thing really was a test of the knights' courage by Morgan. If this sounds uncharacteristically consistent to you, it's because he only appeared in one story, albeit a well regarded one.
*The Black Knight: There's a few different ones, or it could just be another case of zero consistency. (It should be noted that knights with black armor were actual semi-historical figures; blackening up your armor made it vastly easier to maintain for a solo knight without a squire, so a Knight without a liege sometimes did so while either seeking new employment, or just plain wandering; alternately, the knight painted up his armor and shield to conceal his identity. Either way, you have a knight without a master, a worrying prospect to the feudal mind.)
*The Fisher King: Usually only shows up in Holy Grail-related stories; in some versions, as he suffers, so does the land, and vice versa, and in others, he's just a protector of the Grail who was wounded by it for some sin (usually, adultery or getting married in the first place), and the wound also in some way renders the land barren (and thus, needing to fish in order to get food, thus, "''Fisher'' King"). In the latter case, he's associated with a "Healing Question", a question that when asked of him will heal his wounds, which varies from version to version (the two most famous are "Who serves the Grail?", and "Why are you so wounded?").
*Very few adaptions use the Anglo-Saxons, the people who the earliest chronicles claim he fought against.

'''Notable Artefacts:'''
Arthurian myth has some of the highest artifact density out there. Among the most famous are:
*The Holy Grail: Has some connections to the life of Jesus, see above. Short version is that it grants immortality.
*The Sword in The Stone and/or Excalibur: The legendary sword which acts as Arthur's badge of office. In some versions of the myth they are the same sword, others not; some versions even name the other sword "Caliburn" (which is just a translation of the French "Excalibur" to Latin) The scabbard in particular protects Arthur from all wounds; for this reason, Morgan steals the Scabbard to weaken him.
*The Green Girdle: Obtained by Sir Gawain in ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight''. A girdle of green silk and none who wear it can be killed.
*The Round Table itself: Most works just make the round table a mundane table, but a few give it magical powers of some kind. The symbolic importance is that all knights are considered equal to each other as it lacks any ends for a head to claim. One seat, the Siege Perilous, kills all unworthy knight who would sit on it; only the one who will find the Holy Grail may sit in it.

===Chinese Mythology===
Since China lived right next to various, heavily religious nations countries like India and Tibet, their mythology contains many gods from Buddhism, although the ancient Chinese tended more towards Taoism as a general rule. Chinese mythology is pretty well known and famous in Asia and one of its most famous myths, "The Journey to the West", brought forth near-endless adaptations, including everyone's [[anime|favorite anime/manga about a certain half-monkey xeno super fighter]].
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==== World Creation according to Chinese Mythology ====
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The Chinese mythos displays a heavy Taoist belief influenced by the Zhou Dynasty that passed it down from generation to generation until the Three Kingdoms era, where one Xu Zheng finally committed the story to paper. Basically, there is but formless [[Chaos]] in the beginning and it coalesced into a cosmic egg for about 18,000 years. Within it, the perfectly opposed principles of Yin and Yang became balanced, and Pangu emerged (or woke up) from the egg. Pangu was a [[anime|Tengan Toppa]]-sized sky titan and a hairy primitive humanoid; he would separate the yin and yang (earth and sky) by lifting up the sky and holding it for the next 18,000 frigging years (because fuck you Atlas, you derivative hack). While doing his lifting, both the sky and earth grew ten feet (3 meters) everyday.

Pangu finally died at the end of this period, with the world forming from several of his remains: His breath became the wind, mist and clouds; his voice, thunder; his left eye, the sun; his right eye, the moon; his head, the mountains and extremes of the world; his blood, rivers; his muscles, fertile land; his facial hair, the stars and Milky Way; his fur, bushes and forests; his bones, valuable minerals; his bone marrow, sacred diamonds; his sweat, rain; and the fleas on his fur carried by the wind became animals. Kinda similar to [[#Norse|Ymir the giant]], except he wasn't murdered and it wasn't metal enough that the blood became killer tsunamis.
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==== Nüwa ====
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An ancient goddess named Nüwa was the one who created humanity out of clay. She was busy but the the pillar holding the sky broke so she had to fix it herself using a giant azure turtle's shell as water container. But even then that is not enough so she had to sacrificed herself to repair the sky. There's also other version where she is depicted as the Chinese version of Eve, as well as the daughter of Jade Emperor, the first god.
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==== Xiyou Ji (Journey To The West) ====
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Xiyou Ji (or ''Journey To the West'') is an important historical Chinese fantasy adventure novel about a journey undertaken to India by a Chinese Buddhist monk, known as Tang Sanzang/Xuanzang or Tripitaka, to get better copies of the Buddhist sacred texts. In this, he has recruited four protectors throughout the journey who agree to help him in atonement for their various sins; two guys nobody cares about: a disgraced commander from heaven named Zhu Bajie, whom was punished by the gods into a pig like beastmen (who ''everyone'' calls an idiot, even ''the narrator'') and Sha Wujing, a random sand bandit whom was also from heaven and was banished (the black sheep of the party); a horse (whom was secretly the dragon king's son, also disgraced); and the ''real'' protagonist, Sun Wukong, the Monkey King.

Wukong is quite a [[Mary Sue]] at first glance, with a superpower suite to match (Flight, immortality, disguise-piercing super sight, a steel-hard body, transformation mastery, [[What|being able to turn strands of hair into anything up to and including ''perfect clones of himself...'']] DBZ ''wishes'' it could be that bullshit.); '''HOWEVER''', he's also very much the Only Sane Man™ on this journey and proves to be an archetypical, cunning-if-occasionally-childish trickster through and through. In contrast, Xuanzang is rather unworldly, Zhu Baije is an idiot, Sha Wujing is what effectively amounts to a non-entity, and the horse is essentially just a horse. (For more detail, see "The Monkey King's Backstory" below.)

They proceed to set off on a journey where they learn the virtues and teachings of Buddhism and encounter a lot of interesting folks and weird episodes (such as monsters who wanted Xuanzang's flesh for immortality and power) along the way, many of which you might recognize if you're a fan of Japanese or Chinese-themed fantasy works.
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====The Monkey King's Backstory====
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Because it gets referenced a lot, but isn't quite that important to discussing the rest of Journey to the West, here's The Monkey King's history:

Sun Wukong was born from a stone egg, which was contained within an ancient rock that had been created by [[PROMOTIONS|the coupling of Heaven and Earth]]; the meteor struck a mountain inhabited by wild monkeys. (Yes, this is the basis for Goku's origin, so [[/co/|Superman fanboys]] claiming originality can eat shit.) Despite his categorically extraterrestrial origin, he emerged from the magical egg looking much like the locals, save for being made of rock. After leading his tribe to the well-hidden source of a stream, Sun Wukong took the title of "Handsome Monkey King". From there he would proceed to travel the world and establish further influence and power, making several alliances after collecting powerful weapons and armor like your average JPRG protag. This included his trademark staff, phoenix-feather cap, gold chian-mail shirt and cloud-walking boots.

At some point, the Chinese equivalent of Hell came calling for his soul; rather than accept death and reincarnation, Wukong decided to [[Settra the Imperishable|wipe the names of him and any monkey he knew from the Book of Life and Death.]] This pissed off the gods - in particular troubling Yama (also known as Enma), the other Kings of Hell and the Dragon Kings - due to the inherent blasphemy and the sheer clerical hell that would result. When the Jade Emperor got wind of this, he figured the solution was to kick Sun Wukong upstairs to Heaven, thinking that a place amongst the gods would keep him in line. Unfortunately, he tried to pull one over on the Monkey King - Wukong was indeed admitted to heaven, but as protector of the Cloud Horses, I.E. a fucking stable boy. The Monkey King's reaction was [[RAGE|measured and reasonable]]: he sets the horses loose, fucks off back to his mountain and declares himself "The Great Sage, Heaven's Equal (齊天大聖)". Unable to arrest the sneaky bastard, Jade Emps thought to pacify him again, this time appointing him guardian of a heavenly peach garden. While a much higher position than before, it conveniently excludes him from being invited to a royal banquet for all the ''important'' gods. [[Derp|Apparently Jade Emps thought the same trick would work twice.]]

Deciding to step his rebellion game up a notch, he drinks the Jade Emperor's royal wine, along with chowing down on longevity pills and the garden's peaches - which he likely was doing anyway, since each peach on their own would grant immortality. Thoroughly stocked up on extra lives, the Monkey King then proceeded to '''''solo the entire Army of Heaven''''' - 100,000 celestial warriors, all 28 constellations, and the four Heavenly Kings - all without breaking a sweat. He even matched the strength of Erlang Shen, a pretty cool guy who is the Jade Emp's nephew, has a [[Archaon|truth-seeing 3rd eye on his forehead]] and was the best of Heaven's generals; even when Sun Wukong was captured, it was only through the combined efforts of Tao and Buddhist forces, including several of the greatest deities, and finally Guanyin, a Bodhisattva (an incredibly powerful god-like entity that guides others towards enlightenment, and the only one who could actually subdue and control him).

...and then what? They certainly couldn't execute the Monkey King for obvious reasons, and trying to distill him into an elixir for recreating the longevity pills [[FAIL|just made him '''stronger''' and gave him even more fucking superpowers]]. Enter Buddha, as in '''THE''' Buddha, who appeals to his pride by claiming that he can't escape the Buddha's palm. Sun Wukong accepted, being the smug motherfucker he is, and leaps almost effortlessly to an area with five pillars, where he leaves his mark by writing his title on them (and in some versions by ''peeing'' on them as well). Leaping back, he finds himself back in the Buddha's palm, where it turns out he'd never left - [[Just As Planned|the pillars he'd marked were Buddha's ''fingers.'']] Having one-upped the ultimate trickster, Buddha then turns his hand into a mountain and traps him under it, sealing him with a special talisman before he can lift it off (yeah, he can bench press mountains, get on his fucking level).

Then the monk Xuanzang came along, prompting the Monkey King to bargain for his freedom - as it happens, Guanyin (the Bodhisattva who had helped captured him previously) is searching for disciples to act as his bodyguard, and allows him to join. Buddha ensures his compliance with an unremovable headband that he tricks Sun Wukong into wearing, which tightens painfully when the monk chants a certain sutra. (That's 2-0 for Buddha!) Guanyin decided it wasn't fair for Buddha to COMPLETELY own his shit, and gave Wukong three super-special 'emergency' hairs. He then sets off with the monk, and the rest is history.
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====The Twelve Zodiac====
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In the ancient China, there is this "Twelve Earthly Branches" that the ancient chinese used to identify dates and time. However, it's origin wasn't clear but it was explained in a humorous manner and replaced with the twelve animal instead. You see a long ago, the Jade Emperor decided to host a race to see which animal would be worthy for the calendar years. The race is special because the animals will have to cross a river to prove their resolves.

The first three animals mentioned in the story are the Rat, Ox and Cat. Since both the Rat and the Cat are bad at swimming, they decided to ride on the Ox's back. The Ox was easy going and just let them have the free trip. Just before they reach the finish line, [[Skaven|the Rat backstabbed the Cat by pushing it into the river and went for the 1st place itself]]. Because of that, Rat became the 1st in the race with Ox being the 2nd. The Tiger got the 3rd place, the reason being it was pushed back by the downstream currents despite being strong and powerful. The Rabbit got the 4th place after it crossed the river by jumping on the exposed rocks in the water. It almost drowned if it weren't for a drifting log that washed it to shore. The frigging dragon (the slender Chinese type) takes the 5th place after that. Despite it being celestial and all powerful, it explained to Jade Emps that it had to stop by a village to save the people there from a housefire. Then on the way, it found the Rabbit helplessly clinging onto the drifting log that the Dragon gives a boost with just one breath. The Horse steadily appeared with galloping sound from a far, but was frightened by the sudden appearance of The Snake, which ended up giving Snake the 6th place with the Horse being the 7th. The Goat, the Monkey and the Rooster gets the 8th, 9th and 10th place in order after they please the Jade Emps with some good teamwork crossing the river. The Rooster found the raft with The Monkey and The Goat pulling the raft. The Dog ended up being the 11th place despite being the best swimmer and runner, simply because it was playing in the water the whole time. The lazy Pig ended up being the 12th and final place despite it eating and sleeping in the middle of the race. The Cat that was drowned did not make into the race and it is the reason why it hates rats so much, as well as suffering aquaphobia because of that.
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===Egyptian Mythology===
Most well known for its collection of gods with [[Furry|the heads of animals]]. Unlike Greek or Norse mythology, has very little emphasis on mortal or demimortal heroes.

Egyptian mythology is wildly inconsistent due to spanning numerous cultures over thousands of years: for instance, the world is alternately said to have been created by Ra, Atem, Ptah, Thoth, or a collection of eight gods known as the Ogdoad. Whoever was the supreme god mainly depended on what city you were in and what time period it was, but the most well-known one was the sun god Ra. A common theme was the maintaining of a divine order known as Ma'at. Maintaining Ma'at on Earth was seen as the prime responsibility of the Pharoah, a priest-king who was seen as the bridge between mortals and gods. Another major theme is the concept of the death and rebirth of mortals and gods alike, leading to the famous Egyptian practices of [[Mummy|mummification]] and the construction of elaborate tombs.

'''Notable Gods:'''
*Ra: Falcon-headed (although he was also often depicted as a ram or a scarab) god of the sun. During the night, he voyaged through the underworld where he would battle the monstrous serpent Apophis.
*Osiris: Formerly the god-king of Egypt, he was murdered by his brother Set and became the god of the afterlife. Due to the Egyptian obsession with funerary rites, this made him a very important god.
*Isis: Sister/wife of Osiris and goddess of magic and wisdom. Her sorcery was what allowed Osiris to rise from the dead to become god of the afterlife. Her influence was particularly strong during the Roman Empire, and some scholars believe that elements of her worship may have influenced Christianity by way of the veneration of the Virgin Mary.
*Horus (no, not that [[Horus]]): Falcon-headed sky god and son of Osiris. Waged war against Set to avenge his father. This included humiliating him by [[/d/|ejaculating in his salad]]. He is heavily associated with the symbol known as the Eye of Horus, which was believed to protect against evil.
*Anubis: Psychopomp deity. Although in actual Egyptian mythology he was only Osiris' servant, his striking jackal-headed appearance has made him more well-known.
*Set: God of deserts, who due to being associated with foreign invaders was demonized into an evil god who murdered Osiris. Wasn't the ultimate villain of Egyptian Mythology, that would be Apophis (who was so evil Set was portrayed as fighting him even after being demonized), but Apophis is nowhere near as infamous.
*Apophis: Essentially, the God of Evil and Darkness. Enemy of all living things, and the sort of guy who picks a fight with Ra each and every night, even though he loses every time.

===Greco-Roman Mythology===
[[Category:Greek Mythology|The stuff introduced in Greek myth]] is pretty widespread. Some of it is so widely used people forget it came from the Greeks in the first place.

Interestingly, [[Eldar]] and [[High Elves|Elves]] [[Dark Elves|of the]] [[Wood Elves|Warhammer]] worlds took a lot of elements from Indo-European myth, the prime examples of the west being Greco-Roman mythology.

'''Most notable heroes with lots of media adaptions:'''
*Zeus (in his more positive depictions)
*Hercules/Heracles
*Theseus
*Perseus
*Daedalus
*the leaders of both sides of the Trojan War (Achilles, Hector, Paris etc.).

'''Most notable villains in media adaptions:'''
*Zeus (in his more negative depictions)
*Hades (only a villain in media adaptions; the original Hades was considered highly honorable if rather dour)
*Hera (but only in works involving Zeus' bastards)
*The Titans
*Ares
*The various offspring of Echidna.

'''Artifacts that tend to show up in media adaptions:'''
*Pandora's box
*Daedalus's inventions (especially the wings of Icarus)
*The sun chariot of Helios
*Pelt of the Nemean Lion
*Ambrosia
*All sorts of stuff used by the gods (Zeus's thunderbolts, Hades's helmet of invisibility, Neptune's trident, Hermes's winged sandals, Athena's shield -- sometimes with [[Medusa]]'s head on it...).

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==== The Gods & Creation Myth ====
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There's a god for every aspect of ordinary life, like smithing, governing and war. The most important gods/goddess you need to know are '''Jupiter/Zeus''', the guy with the lightning bolts who is the king of the gods; '''Juno/Hera''', wife of Zeus
and goddess of marriage, childbirth, and women; '''Minerva/Athena''', goddess of wisdom and war born from Jupiter having a massive headache [[Sisters of Battle|fully grown up and armed]]; '''Dis Pater/Pluto/Hades''', Jupiter's eldest brother and the god of most of the Greco-Roman afterlife; '''Neptune/Poseidon''', Jupiter's other brother and the god of the seas; '''Apollo''', god of the sun, music, and archery; '''Diana/Artemis''', goddess of the moon and the hunt; '''Ceres/Demeter''', goddess of the harvest; '''Mercury/Hermes''', messenger of the gods; '''Venus/Aphrodite''', goddess of sex and love; '''Mars/Ares''', god of war; '''Vulcan/Hephasteus''', god of the forge; '''Vesta/Hestia''', goddess of the hearth; '''Bacchus/Dionysus''', god of wine and drunken revelry.

According to Greek myth, the first beings to come into existence were '''Gaia''' (the Earth) and '''Uranus''' (the sky). They had three sets of children: the Cyclopses, the Hecatonchires (giants with a hundred hands), and the Titans. Uranus imprisoned the first two in Tartarus, the deepest part of the underworld. This upset Gaia and she called upon the Titans to [[FATAL|castrate their father with a flint scythe she had made]]. '''Saturn/Kronos/Cronus''', the youngest of their number, agreed and duly carried it out, becoming the new king of the world. However, Uranus warned Cronus that he too would be overthrown by his children.

Cronus sought to avoid this, so he ate each one of them as a new one is born from his wife Rhea, but Rhea hid Zeus and fooled Cronus into eating a rock. Zeus then grows up and tricks his father into drinking wine mixed with mustard which makes him puke, saving all his brothers and sisters inside his father's belly (and who were somehow undigested), thus igniting a war that leads to the overthrow of the Titans. This event is known as '''The Titanomachy''' (Battle of the Titans). After all the Titans had been imprisoned in Tartarus and the Cyclopses and Hecatonchires freed, Zeus formed a government with the rest of his gods while living a [[Slaanesh|comfy hedonist life where he raped many mortal girls and had many bastard sons for the lulz]].

Roman myth can't agree on anything, because, unlike Grecian legends, it isn't racist and isolationist as fuck and takes from all Indo-European religions it encountered. This also means that it deviates from the "twelve important gods" rule that the Greeks had, and every area and time period had its own important gods. Imagine it as something akin to ancient Hinduism, minus all the mysticism (at least until all the Egyptian-esque mystery cults started popping up at the dawn of the Empire) and with the occasional emperor being declared a god after his death.
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===Hindu Mythology===
India is a big place with millennia of history, so it has a lot of deities; dominant sects frequently absorbed deities from competing sects into their mythos as aspects of their own favored deity, so many of those once distinct deities have coalesced together. The Puranic period saw a deliberate effort to harmonize rival sects together, which gave rise to the Trimurti ("Three Forms"); this is the subset of the Hindu pantheon that is most well known in the Western world; it is also the subset of Hinduism which formed the mythological backbone of two popular [[RPG]] games: ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]'' and ''[[Mage: The Ascension]]''. The three cyclical concepts underlying the Trimurti are Creation, Preservation, and Destruction, with a particular deity filling each role as the divine manifestation of that concept, with deities differing by sect. When the roles are filled by goddesses (''devi'') the triad is known as the ''Tridevi''. In ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]'' the Trimurti are known as the ''Triat'', and ''[[Mage: The Ascension]]'' uses an atheist version of the concepts called the ''Metaphysic Trinity''. The [[grimdark]] spin that [[White Wolf]] puts on the Triat is that the three deities are embroiled in a vicious theomachy against each other, and have all fallen from grace and have become corrupted extremist versions of themselves.

====Creator/Creatrix====
The androcentric denominations of Hinduism speak of ''Brahma the Creator'', whereas gynocentric denominations speak of ''Saraswati the Creatrix''. In ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]'' the analogous androgynous deity is known as the ''Wyld'', and in ''[[Mage: The Ascension]]'' the corresponding concept is called ''Dynamicism''.

====Preserver/Preservatrix====
The androcentric denominations of Hinduism speak of ''Vishnu the Preserver'', whereas gynocentric denominations speak of ''Laxmi the Preservatrix''. In ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]'' the analogous feminine deity is known as the ''Weaver'', and in ''[[Mage: The Ascension]]'' the corresponding concept is called ''Stasis''.

====Destroyer/Destructrix====
The androcentric denominations of Hinduism speak of ''Shiva the Destroyer'', whereas gynocentric denominations speak of ''Kali the Destructrix''. In ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]'' the analogous masculine deity is known as the ''Wyrm'', and in ''[[Mage: The Ascension]]'' the corresponding concept is called ''Entropy''.

===Japanese Mythology===
Japanese laymen don't really bother separating their religions, taking up whatever is convenient or trendy at a particular phase in their life, and thus the major religions (Shinto, Buddhism), some more minor ones, and various folk heroes exist simultaneously. Rarely touched by non-Japanese works that aren't the pantheon for [[Japan]] analogues.

'''Notable Characters:'''
*Izanami and Izanagi: See above.
*Amaterasu: Goddess of the sun. The Japanese impeeial family once claimed descent from her, but stopped doing so after World War II. How the majority to entirety of Japan's people as a whole weren't as well, since far younger people are ancestors of the majority of far larger and less isolationist populations, was never explained.
*Susano-o: Amaterasu's brother and god of storms. Kicked out of heaven for being a dick. While walking the earth he proceeds to kill the Orochi, among other (anti-)heroics, and bribes his way back into heaven with the fat loot he finds.
**The Orochi: Giant nine-headed snake monster that likes to eat (?) female sacrifices. Susano-O gets it drunk and kills it, then he finds the Kusanagi on its corpse.
*The Buddhas: While normal Buddhists don't "worship" the Buddha, more Shinto leaning Japanese often do. See Buddhism whenever someone is assed to add it for how it's supposed to go. Gautama Buddha is the one people talk about when they say "The Buddha", but the completely separate Budai/Laughing Buddha is the main one ignorant westerners know the visual of.
**Various Buddhist demons: Mostly assholes that tried to stop people from achieving enlightenment. Some are actually former assholes who were redeemed by enlightened people and now act as protectors.
*The Four Heavenly Kings: Bishamonten, Jikokuten, Zouchouten and Koumokuten, the guardians of the North, East, South and West respectively. Their title is co-opted by everything (no seriously, '''everything''': examples include Hollywood stars, Japanese comedy acts, Chefs, (female) Idol Singers, even foodstuffs like meats and canned goods) with four members in Japanese culture, [https://legendsoflocalization.com/tricky-translations-2-the-four-heavenly-kings/ though westerners may not notice it because the title gets translated a shit ton of ways depending on the context].
*Yokai: Various mythical monsters. The most famous are the [[Kitsune]], Kamaitachi, [[Tengu]] and (though not always counted as one) [[Oni]].

'''Historical People Shrouded in Myth'''
*Emperor Jimmu: [[God-Emperor of Mankind|THE GOD EMPEROR OF JAPAN]] as well as the first Emperor. The descendants of Goddess Amaterasu and the leader of Yamato clan. Most of his records were old and depict him as a warrior hero god character accompanied by a three legged crow and wielding a long bow. He died at the age of 126 and has little to no worshipers in modern day other than having at least a shrine and grave.
*Abe no Seimei: A court magician who lived between 921 and 1005. Fiction tends to make him an actual wizard.
*Himiko: Queen of Japan around 200 AD. Chinese records make it clear she existed but very little is known about her.
*Masakado: Samurai who led a brief rebellion in 940. He's considered the god of Tokyo. His shrine/grave occupies some of the most expensive real-estate in the world, as it is thought that neglecting his shrine will cause his angry spirit to bring disaster upon Tokyo.
** Takiyasha Hime: His daughter. Fiction makes her a sorcerer with a toad [[Familiar]]. Possibly entirely fictional.
*Tomoe Gozen: A female [[Samurai]] that actually fought in battle in 1184.
*Oda Nobunaga: Self proclaimed "Demon King of the Sixth Heaven" (That's '''''historical fact''''' recorded by a Jesuit missionary who knew him personally). Defacto unifier of Japan, while the dominos he set up were falling, he was murdered by his retainer Akechi Mitsuhide for unknown reasons. His successors conquered the country after he did the hard parts, forming what would become the Tokugawa Shogunate. Since he was ruthless and called himself a demon, it's no mystery why fiction depicts him as a literal one.
*Hattori Hanzo: A general during the late Sengoku era. He's better known for allegedly being a [[Ninja]].
*Ishikawa Goemon: Bandit during the late Sengoku era, executed along with his infant son by being boiled alive after a failed assassination attempt on Nobunaga's successor. Reputed to be a Robin Hood-like figure and also allegedly a [[Ninja]].

'''Artifacts that tend to show up in media adaptions:'''
*The Imperial regalia (Kusanagi, Magatama and the Yata no Kagami): A sword, mirror, and rosary that are considered the badges of office for the emperor.
*Katana created by famous swordsmiths
**Muramasa: Swords created by the famous (and real) swordsmith Sengo Muramasa. Allegedly his swords have a taste for blood and are demonic in nature and can't be sheathed if they haven't tasted blood yet.
**Masamune: Even though Masamune lived hundreds of years before Muramasa, their swords are often counterparts in fantasy. In contrast to Muramasa, Masamune's blades are supposedly holy.
**Kotetsu: Nagasone Kotetsu was a quality swordsmith from the Edo period with a really fitting name (虎鉄 or "Tiger Iron"). His works are notable but if they show up in fiction expect them to be inferior to the above two.

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==== Creation Myth ====
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According to the Kojiki, the world (or just Japan because every culture at that time are so close minded that they believe their kingdom is THE entire world) was created by 2 gods: Izanami (the wife) and Izanagi (the husband). There were 5 other gods with difficult to pronounced name like Kotoamatsukami (別天津神, "Separate Heavenly Deities") before them but they entrust these two for the world's creation because they are gender-less and thus unable to procreate next generation. Izanami and Izanagi belongs to the Kamiyonanayo ("Seven Generations of the Age of the Gods") and they shape the earth with this totally awesome spear called Ame-no-nuboko (天沼矛, "heavenly jewelled spear") and create islands, lands using salts.
They then settled down onto the land they've created and mated. Unfortunately, the first two children: Hiruko and Awashima they've conceived were mutants, badly formed that the parent decided to send them on a lone boat trip before their 3rd birthday (Hiruko survived, worked hard and became a god known as Ebisu). Turns out after confronting their elder about the misfortune, it was Izanami's fault for not acting properly during the mating ritual, causing birth defect and such. After some proper mating, their descendants were born, that would eventually be modern day Japanese islands(or they children's name were given a land to lived on and those land were named after them). Izanami then died giving birth to Kagu-tsuchi, a human torch wannabe that burned his mother upon his birth. Izanagi was angered and behead his child into eight piece, which would became 8 volcanoes and his blood on Izanagi's sword became the sea god Watatsumi and rain god Kuraokami. This also marks the end of the creation.

Izanagi was in grief that he traveled to Yomi ("land of the dead") to see his dead wife. Unfortunaly, Izanami already belong to Yomi after eating its food. Izanagi's stubbornness to not left Izanami in the dark land, he waited there because Izanami agree to go back if she had some rest, but the worried Izanagi decided to see what's going on with his dead wife by lighting a torch using his magical head comb only to find his wife was already a maggot ridden ghoul like monster. Izanagi scared shitless that he ran away while Izanami called Shikome (ugly underworld woman) to chase him. After a long looney tune chase that involves Izanagi's use of his magical hair dress and his urine to stop his pursuer, he eventually return to the living realm with Izanami cursing that she will kill 1000 person everyday with Izanagi responded that he will give birth 1500 person if so.
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===Norse Mythology===
Like the Greeks, there's a god for every aspect and their most hated enemies are humanoid creatures called Jotun (Jætter), often translated to Frost Giants in adaptations, who the gods/goddess also related to. They come in all sizes, from mostly humanoid to the size of mountains; from humans with big noses to actual beasts. The Norse mythos contains a lot more references to snow, winter and wolves than the Greek one. This is somewhat unsurprising.

Basically, in the early world's life cycle, there were these '''Jotun''' or '''Frost Giants''' who [[wat|were sweats born from the armpit of '''Ymir''', the first of their kind and, at the time, so huge he was the entire world]]. There was also a giant cow, '''Audhumla''', the udder of which Ymir frequented. [[wat|Then that giant cow accidentally created a god by just licking a salty rock]], '''Buri''', who then "begat a son" - fuck knows how. This son, '''Bor''', had a wife '''Bestla''' who gave birth to '''Odin''' and his brothers. Odin does not like jotun since they come out of Ymir's stinking armpits like rats and they eat a lot so he and his brothers '''Vili''' and '''Ve''' killed Ymir. [[Khorne|Ymir was so fuckhuge that his blood caused a massive flood that killed most other jotun right there!]]]. Odin then used Ymir's body to forge a new world. The death of Ymir also brought forth many life forms without Odin's touch like the Dwarves, who were basically [[Nurgle|Ymir's corpse maggots]]. Then like the Greek gods, Odin formed a government with gods/goddess of each daily life aspect. And then [[The End Times|Ragnarok]] will come.

'''Notable Characters:'''
*'''[[Odin]]''' - The king of the gods, as mentioned above. The All-Father, the One-Eyed Wanderer, and Patron of Shamans and Berserkers. He wasn't actually the first of the gods, but rather he is named "All-Father" for slaying his tyrannical grandfather and creating Midgard (Earth) from his body and bones. His stories are full of sacrifice in the pursuit of higher wisdom, such as hanging himself on the World Tree, Yggdrasil, in order to be granted the knowledge of runes. He has two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, which deliver him news of the nine realms every day, as well as two fucking huge wolves, Freki and Geri, which he uses as guard dogs/hunting hounds. His major schtick is trying to prevent Ragnarok. He also has a sick-ass spear called Gungnir, which will never miss it's mark. Known for being wise, but also manipulative. Not a god you should underestimate, by any means.

*'''[[Frigg]]'''- Wife of Odin. The Matron of the Aesir and Odin's wife. Sort of a power-behind-the-scenes, she is just as wise and manipulative as her husband but much more subtle and slow-moving in her plots. When she appears she seems more like the kind of person who looks to the greater good. She's a goddess of the housestead but in the distant, measured manner. Unlike her version in the Greek Pantheon, Hera, she isn't vindictive in any way and seems to take her husband's infidelity in strides.

*'''[[Thor]]''' - Son of Odin, the God of Thunder, Storms and Oak Trees, the Protector of Mankind, and arguably the most popular god, even in the [[Vikings|Viking Age]]. (No, his popularity isn't really due to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, that came much later) He wields a mighty warhammer named Mjolnir, and uses it to great effect. Out of all the Norse gods, he's probably one of the most bro-tier, although it's ill advised to piss him off (as several giants and dwarves could attest, were their heads not smashed in). He's so unbelievably OP that even when he thought he'd lost against Utgard-Loki (no relation to Loki, btw), Utgard-Loki had to admit defeat because Thor almost destroyed the world ''by accident.'' Prophesied to die fighting the world serpent Jormungandr.

*'''[[Loki]]''' - The Trickster God, the Deceiver. Unfortunately, the Norse had a rather dim view of tricksters and deceivers, so he's usually a villain in the myths. Probably doesn't help that he and his children are responsible for killing several gods (It also probably doesn't help that the Christians writing down the Norse myths identified him with Satan). Responsible for many shenanigans, including [[Wat|turning himself into a mare and fucking a stallion,]] [[/d/|getting pregnant from said stallion, and giving birth to an eight-legged horse that Odin rides as a mount ]] (part of a crazy scheme to defraud a contractor, no less), killing the near-invincible god Baldur (see below) as a prank, and being Odin's blood-brother. Yes, you read that right, ''Odin's'' brother, not Thor's. Essentially the That Guy of the Norse pantheon, complete with uncomfortable sexual stuff involving animals and betraying his party members.

*'''[[Freya]]''' - Goddess of Fertility, Erotic Love, Magic, and War (In case you haven't noticed, the Norse really loved to fight). She claims half of all warriors slain in glorious battle, bringing them to her meadow of Folkvangr. The other half are chosen by Odin and become Einherjar, the Chosen Slain, where they will feast and fight in Valhalla until Ragnarok, where they will all charge the wolf Fenrir and die. She is among the most powerful of the Norse gods, but originally came from the Vanir alongside her brother and dad.

*'''[[Freyr]]''' - God of Fertility, Harvest and Farmers. Brother of Freya but quite a lot more mellow. He's a protector of the homestead and its prosperity. Some translations make him the god of "half-men", which is still disputed to be anything from men who don't own a homestead to actual homosexuals.

*'''[[Baldur]]''' - Son of Odin and Frigg. God of light, joy and the sun, said to be the most beloved of all the gods. Frigg asked all things to swear an oath not to harm Baldur, save for the mistletoe bush, which she thought to be harmless. Loki, being a spiteful jackass, took advantage of this oversight and arranged for Baldur to be slain by a mistletoe dart.

*'''Høder''' - The God of Cripples. Very unimportant - only known for being tricked to shoot a mistletoe-arrow at his brother Baldur, which killed him.

*'''[[Heimdall]]''' - The watchman of the gods, the Guardsman of the Bifrost and [[/pol/|the whitest of the gods, seriously, compare and contrast the Marvel Thor movies for a laugh.]] - Whether this meant he was physically white or just a radiant person is open for debate. There's...very little to be said about him, other than that he's watching everyone, everywhere, at all times due to his super senses so keen he could hear grass growing on the other side of the world. He and Loki are going to kill each other come Ragnarok and he was birthed by nine mothers, with no dad. Just how this works is never expounded on.

*'''Njord''' - God of the Sea, Fishing and the Wind. Father of Frej and Freya, but otherwise unimportant; lives far away in a tower by the sea.

*'''[[Tyr]]''' - The One-Handed God of Justice, Warfare, Strategy and Government. How does he have only one hand, you may ask? Well, let's just say...when a giant wolf demands your hand as payment for the gods binding him in unbreakable teathers, and you're known for keeping your word...well...

*'''Sif''' - The Goddess of the Hearth and Home, wife of Thor. There's little information on her, but she has golden hair. Like, literally hair made of gold, gifted to her by Loki to make up for the fact that he cut her hair in the first place.

*'''Bragi''' - God of Music, Bards and Entertainers. Not a lot is know about him, other than he's engaged to Idunn.

*'''Idunn''' - Provider of the Golden Apples, magical apples that give the gods their youth. THere's evidence that she was never a goddess, but instead a fey-creature or an elf who's a retainer within the Valhallan court.

*'''Skadi''' - Goddess of winter and'''fucking skiing'''. Only notable because she's a jotun inducted into the pantheon as repayment for the death of her father, who had been slain after he manipulated Loki into kidnapping Idunn on his behalf. She demanded she be allowed to take an Aesir husband as part of her weregild; she was hoping to snag Balder, but wound up choosing Njord by mistake. They ultimately got divorced because they couldn't stand each other's favoured territory.

*'''The Valkyries''' - Adaptions only, they're forces of nature at best in the original myths.

*'''Fafnir''' - Son of Hreidmar who after being cursed by Andvari's gold, becomes a fuckhuge dragon yo.

*'''Sigurd''' - Also known as Siegfried, this top bloke single-handedly slew Fafnir and had a tragic romance with the Valkyrie Brynhildr.

*'''Grendel''' - technically from Beowulf, this guy is the son of Cain and is "harrowed" by the sounds of singing from the King Hrothgar's mead-hall Heorot. One day he snaps and attacks the hall, continuing to attack it every night for twelve years. Did we mention he [[Chaos|consumes the men he kills?]]

'''Other important things associate with Norse Mythology:'''
*'''Yggdrasil''' - The World Tree. An actual gigantic tree, but also a sort of metaphysical highway linking nine universes - it is the core of the Norse Mythology, and should it die, everything would go with it. Those realms are: Asgard (Home of the Aesir). Vanaheim (Home of the Vanir), Alfheim (Home of the Elves/Dwarves; there isn't much destinction in Norse mythology between Elves and Dwarves), Niflheim (Land of ice and fog), Musphelheim, (Land of ash and fire), Midgard (realm of mortals/Earth), Jotunheim (Home of the giants), Svartalfheim (realm of dark elves/dwarves), and Helheim (realm of the dead). Encasing Yggdrasil is the Ginnungagap, the chaotic abyss from which all life sprung from. A great serpent called Nidhogg lies within its roots and tries to kill it by biting them.

*'''The Norns''' - These are the three sisters who preside over the fate and destiny of gods and men, much like their Greco-Roman counterparts. They reside near Yggdrasil's roots at a great well of knowledge, and their names are Urd (What Once Was), Verdandi (What Is Now), and Skuld (What Shall Be).

*'''Sleipnir''' - As noted above, Loki got fucked by a stallion while disguised as a mare. Well, in truly horrifying mythological fashion, he gave birth to an eight-legged horse named Sleipnir, who later became Odin's favorite warhorse. Family reunions must've been ''awkward'' in Asgard.

*'''Fenrir''' - Another one of Loki's animal children, and the aforementioned giant wolf whom bit off Tyr's hand due to Odin and the rest of the Aesir-Vanir binding him out of fear. He's prophesied to eat the sun and then kill Odin during Ragnarok, only to be slain by his son, Vidar.

*'''Jormumgandr''' - Yet another Loki spawn, the World Serpent. Basically, a snek so fucking huge that he can encircle all of Midgard when he bites his tail. Prophesised to annihilate Midgard and then fight Thor to the death during...yep...Ragnarok.

*'''The Jotunn''' - Usually called "Giants" or "Frost Giants" in the US, Jætter or Jotunn are the personification of nature's chaos to the gods' personification of human order. Many of them are barbaric or even evil, but they aren't automatically [[Chaotic Evil]] - though they are almost always Chaotic. They live in most other planes, though they are by far most numerous in Utgard. They tend to hate the gods because Odin killed their primordial father, Ymir, who the entire world is made out of. Notable Jotunn are Loki and Skadi above; Utgard-Loki, a powerful lord in Utgard who humiliated Thor by convincing him to wrestle with a personification of old age, and Surtr, king of the fire jotunn, who leads the charge during Ragnarok and succeeds in killing off most of the gods.

*'''The Vanir''' - Rival god pantheon of the Aesir which we know little about. The Aesir and Vanir fought a war at some point but eventually made peace and exchanged captives to keep it. These captives are Freya, Frej and Njord. Due to these three gods being fertility gods who are among the least masculine gods (compared to the likes of Thor or Tyr, this is understandable), some researchers propose that the Vanir represented feminine virtues to the very warlike and masculine Aesir. Says a lot about the [[Vikings]] that they didn't even flesh out the Vanir pantheon, let alone worship them.

'''Notable Artifacts:'''
*Mjölnir - Thor's Hammer. Could return to him when thrown like a boomerang, but has a rather short handle because of Loki messing with its creation.
*Lævateinn - A really powerful sword.
*Gram - Sigurd's Sword, used to kill Fafnir.
*Gungnir - Odin's Spear.
*Megingjörð - Belt of <s>Giant's Strength</s> Power.

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==== Dwarf ====
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While there many mythologies that have different telling of the dwarf race, we will be talking about the Norse version.

After Odin murderfucked Ymir and killed a bunch of giants through blood flooding (see above) maggots came out and were festering on Ymir's flesh. Yes. [[Nurgle|These corpse maggots are the precursor of the dwarfs.]] So Odin found these maggots and turned them into the dwarf we all knew and love. [[Dwarfs (Warhammer Fantasy Battle)|They have the talent of mead brewing, metal smithing and making magical artifact]]. Many of iconic weapon like Thor's hammer are crafted by the dwarfs. But most importantly of the dwarfs creation is perhaps Odin's spear, why? BECAUSE IT IS NAMED "GUNGNIR"!! that's like the name of the warhammer dwarf god "Grungni", only with the letter "r" in the wrong place.

Anyway, other things about dwarfs is that they can turned to stone if they exposed to the sun for too long (wtf were they vampires too?). They are sometimes refer to as "black elf" since they were corpse maggot and they were described as being dead or resembling human corpses.

There are also four known dwarfs in the mythologies: Austri, Vestri, Norðri, and Suðri (which means “East,” “West,” “North,” and “South”) and they got the crappy job of holding the corner of the sky (aka the Atlas treatment) just because they have super strength.
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==== Elves ====
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In Norse myth, they were demi-god like beings whose sole purpose is to be [[High Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|more beautiful and superior-than-you]]. They are described as [[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure|"more beautiful than the sun"]] with their demi-god status apparently linked to the gods of Vanir and Aesir. Their lord is a Vanir god called Freyr, who rules the elves’ homeland, Alfheim. They commonly cause humans to suffer illness but have the power to cure any illness only if sacrifices are offered to them, what a bunch of dicks. It is also possible for humans to become elves upon death. Elf and human can also interbreed; the mix of human and elf is described as having the look of a human but possess extraordinary intuitive and magical powers.
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==== Ragnarok ====
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Also known as "Fate of the Gods", "Twilight of the Gods", Götterdämmerung
[[The End Times|It is the end of all thing. Apocalypse. Whatever you want to call it]].
A pretty particular unique myth since no other mythologies of other culture has an event that kills most of its deities (well, the Bible has stuff that might count (The Book of Revelations, the Flood of Noah's Ark fame, and Jesus' death and return), and Greek myth has the Titanomachy, but the former is more of a case of "all according to God's Keikaku", whereas Ragnarok counts as "NOT AS PLANNED", and the latter is more a case of a victorious revolution, rather then Ragnarok's straight up disaster for everyone involved). According to History Channel, it says this was an free add-on by that new religions everybody was talking about at the time, where they "naturally" [[squat|killed]] the pagan beliefs, and [[The End Times|reboot]] [[Age of Sigmar|the whole setting]] to better fit their [[Imperial Cult|new edition of the rulebook.]]

'''''How The fuck did it started and why?'''''

It is said that Odin was the one that had foreseen this event through his empty right eye socket and he had saw "signs" that would brought forth it:

1.The death of Baldr.

2.Three uninterrupted long cold winters

3.Two wolves in the sky swallowing the sun and the moon, and even the stars will disappear and send the world into a great darkness.

Frigg had the dreams about Baldr's death and this depressed her to the point Frigg decided to made every frigging object like weapon, poison and harmful thing, sharpest corner of table and the table itself to take a vow not to hurt her precious sunshine boy. All object made the vow but mistletoe, because it is soft and harmless. When Loki got the wind of the spell's weakness, the cunny fuckwit thought it was pretty funny and made a spear out of mistletoe using his magic. Since now every object is no longer harmful to Baldr, his brother gods are just fucking hurling object and weapons and him for their amusements. Loki during their entertainment, carefully placed his magic spear onto the hand of Höðr, a god who was blind and killed Baldr with it. Höðr was then blamed for Baldr's death which Odin had to fuck a giantness and gave birth to a god named Váli, who grew in one day just to kill him.

The secound sign has not yet come. There will be a winter that lasts three years with no summer in between. The name of these uninterrupted winters are called “Fimbulwinter” during these three long years, the world will be plagued by wars, and brothers will kill brothers.

'''''The End Times'''''

A beautiful red rooster named “Fjalar” ( meaning “All knower”), will warn all the giants that the Ragnarok has begun. At the same time in Hel, there is also a red rooster warning all the dishonorable dead, as well as in Asgard, a red rooster named “Gullinkambi” warn all the Gods.

Heimdall will blow his horn as loud as he can and that will be the warning for all the einherjar (dead warrior) in Valhalla that the war has started. This will be the battle to end all battles,
and this will be the day that all the Einherjar from Valhalla and Folkvangr who had died honorably in battle, to pick up their swords and armor to fight side by side with the Aesir against the Giants.

Odin will be riding on his horse Sleipnir with his eagle helmet equipped and his spear Gungnir in his hand, and lead the enormous army of Asgard with all the Gods and brave einherjar to the battleground in the fields of Vigrid.

The Giants will come together with Hel, and all her dishonorable dead, sail in the ship Naglfar, which is made from the fingernails of all the dead, sail to the plains of Vigrid.

The dragon Nidhug will come flying over the battlefield and gather as many corpses for his never-ending hunger.

Odin will be torn apart by Fenrir, but shall be avenged by his son Vidar.

Loki will turn on the Aesir and fight Heimdall to the death.

Tyr will fight the watchdog “Garm” that guards the gates of Hel and two of them will also kill each other.

Thor will fight the Midgard Serpent Jormungand and kill it, but he will die of the poisonous wounds left behind by Jormungand.

Freyr will be killed by the fire giant named Surtr.

Finally, Surtr will set all the nine worlds on fire and everything sinks into the boiling sea. There is nothing the Gods can do to prevent Ragnarok.

Everything looks pretty '''FUCKED UP''' however, as devastating as Ragnarok could get, it doesn't destroy everything or necessary killed everyone which is the only comfort Odin could get from his prediction.

'''''The End of Another Beginning'''''

While most of the Gods will perish in the mutual destruction with the Giants, it is predetermined that a new world will rise up from the water, beautiful and green. Before the battle of Ragnarok, a couple by the name Líf and Lífþrasir will find shelter in the sacred tree Yggdrasil. As foretold by the wise Jotunn Vafþrúðnir(Odin's intellect rival), they consume mourning dew as food during the Ragnarok. When the battle is over, they will become the Norse version of Adam and Eve and repopulate the earth again.

The few Gods who survive as well as the resurrected Baldr will go to Idavoll (the ancient altar and meeting site for the gods), which has remained untouched. There, they will build new houses, the greatest of the houses will be Gimli, and will have a roof of gold. There is also a new place called Brimir, at a place called Okolnir “Never cold”. It is in the mountains of Nidafjoll.

But there is also a terrible place, a great hall on Nastrond, the shore of corpses. All its doors face north to greet the screaming winds. The walls will be made of writhing snakes that pour their venom into a river that flows through the hall. This will be the new underground, full of thieves and murderers, and when they die the great dragon Nidhug, is there to feed upon their corpses.

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==Urban Legend==
The '''Urban Legend''' is another type of myth, specifically one of a modern-day taste and often significantly connected to that country's pop culture. In Japan, many classic myths of Yokai continue to "exist" and have modernized to fit with new technology (for example, a cursed cart may become a cursed car). [[Board-tans/x|Creepypasta]] are a common sub-variant. Here are some examples:

*'''Bermuda Triangle''' - A triangular region in the gulf of Mexico with Bermuda island, Pureto Rico and Miami, Florida as its angle point. Reputed to be a place of paranormal activity where ships and aircraft suddenly loses their signal and disappeared, both on air or water. In reality, the Triangle is just one of the most heavily trafficked areas in the world, in a region known for storms and general bad weather; if there weren't several mysterious disappearances (and nautical and aeronautical life had, and occasionally still has, plenty of those), it would be surprising.
**'''Mary Celeste''' - A ship that was found abandoned in 1872 undamaged, with ample provisions, undisturbed cargo and a log dated to ten days prior to it being found. Was actually found well outside of the Bermuda Triangle, but often associated with it. Proposed solutions for what happened range from attempted insurance fraud to equipment malfunction, a waterspout strike and a butane explosion. The "wreck" was acquired by a new owner, who promptly sunk it in a poor attempt at insurance fraud.
**'''The Flying Dutchman''': Associated with the Cape of Good Hope, rather then the Bermuda Triangle, but frequently mentioned in connection with the Triangle as well. The most famous "Ghost ship" other then the ''Mary Celeste''; unlike the ''Celeste'', the ''Dutchman'' was only reported to have been seen, but never boarded. The ''Dutchman'' was supposedly an omen of doom; but given that in order to see a ship that isn't there, you're probably in very poor visibility conditions, this reputation has an obvious explanation.
*'''Bloody Mary''' - It is said to be a malevolent spirit who if you call its name "Bloody Mary" in front of a mirror three times, she will come and do something horrible to you. A pretty stupid game often participate by very small children and idiots.
*'''Cryptids''': Various creatures of folklore that, other then being fucked up looking, are actually plausible animals of one sort or another. Some have been substantiated, but most are just fake or distorted stories of other, known animals (as is speculated having happened with the [[Unicorn]] and Rhinoceros). Such creatures include:
**'''Bigfoot''' - Also known as Sasquatch. It is a creature of ape and man named after its big foot print on the ground. Its sighting are mostly around Pacific Northwest.
**'''Chupacabra''' - A small bear size monster who likes to suck a goat's blood dry. First spotted in Puerto Rico where it kills 8 sheeps. It is said that its influcence has spread across the latin America. Allegedly, the idea of the chupacabra was just stolen from the movie Species.
**'''Drop Bear''' - Australian joke: Take a Koala, and pretend it's an ambush predator who kills by jumping on its prey, with a taste for human flesh. While clearly originating as a joke, unlike most "real" cryptids, the concept has been used straight in several contexts in fantasy works. As if Australia's actual dangerous animals weren't enough.
**'''Jackalope'''- A rabbit with antelope horns. Possibly based on sightings of rabbits with Shope papilloma virus, which causes infected hosts to grow horn-like tumors. The most popular version seems to have originated as a 12-year-old taxidermist's idea of a joke.
**'''Jersey Devil''' - Weird monster supposedly lurking in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, thus making it the most interesting thing in the state.
**'''Loch Ness Monster''' - A long necked sea creature that allegedly lives in Loch Ness in the Scottish highlands. Presumably to be Mauisaurus, a pre-historical sea dinosaur who shares the similar long neck appearance.
**'''Mokele-mbembe''' - A weird African swimming beast. Widely believed to be either a rhinoceros or a hippopotamus (the latter of which are responsible for killing more people per year than any other animal in Africa).
**'''Mothman''' - There were a bunch of West Virginia sightings of a "Man with Wings". Later got overhyped as having supernatural powers, and associated in some way with a local bridge collapse when writers looking to cash in got involved. Side note: Most descriptions from the early, pre-overhype encounter match a unusually large crane.
**'''Rods/Sky Fish''' - Extraterrestrial lifeforms that move at an unseen speed that can only be caught by camera. [[Skub|It may or may not be real]], since it might be just elongated visual artifacts appearing in photographic images and video recordings. Other insects like moths are mistakenly caught on camera and assumed to be them. It helps that there were no actual dissections of the creatures, and most of the video about catching it are fake and are pure entertainment. In fiction, notably in [[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure|JoJo]] they were portray as some kind of avian creature with actual limbs and organs that feeds on temperature and has the power to KILL or disable a person by absorb the body heat from their important organs.
**'''Tsuchinoko''' - Also known as "child of hammer", "child of dirt" or "bachi hebi" in Northeastern Japan, is a snake that is 30 and 80 cm long, has a thin head and tail, and a wide girth in between. It was referenced in Kojiki (古事記) "Records of Ancient Matters" meaning it might have existed at some point in ancient Japan. [[skub|Others would argue]] that it could be a type of slug who's features became exaggerated over thousands of years, an exinct snake species or an undiscovered snake species. Whatever the cases, the damn thing is popular in Japan and has been featured in many video games, manga and TV show.
**'''Yeti''' - Like Bigfoot above, but found in the Himalayan mountains.
*'''Grays''' - A stock alien appearance of short, large-headed, large-eyed, generally naked, grey men. Allegedly probe humans, steal cows and make patterns in vegetation while riding around in a saucer shaped spacecraft. Supposedly crashed in Rosswell, New Mexico in 1947, which was covered up by the US Government as a "weather balloon"; more recent declassification suggest it ''was'' a balloon, just an experimental and classified one meant for Cold War era spying and hushed up for fear that the Soviets would learn about it.
**'''Area 51''' - [[Wikipedia:Area 51|An actual military base]] in Nevada that the crashed spacecraft was allegedly taken to. Allegedly home to all sorts of government experiments on the supernatural and/or extraterrestrial. Though the existance of the factual military base existing was always known, the US government didn't officially acknowledge it till 2013. Officially it's used for testing experimental and captured aircraft and thus highly classified. Supposedly, the US government thought that the UFO hysteria was good cover for the then-secret U-2 program, as any spotted aircraft could be explained away by kooks as an alien spacecraft. In 2019, Area 51 mythos took a really weird turn; a million [[weeaboo]]s signed on to [[meme|Storm Area 51]] to "clap some alien cheeks" and "escape with all the alien and [[catgirl]] [[waifu]]s that the government's keeping to themselves." Battle plans included [[Anime|Naruto]] Runners, Chads hyped on Monster Energy Drink, and Anti-Vax Karens. What actually ended up happening was only 200 people showed up to party, though there was a confirmed sighting of at least one Naruto Runner.
**'''Men in Black / Majestic-12''' - Another component that's common to UFO conspiracies is a secret branch of the government dedicated to keeping the public in the dark about the existence of aliens. The urban legend version is significantly scarier and more malevolent than their movie counterparts. The only known evidence of their existence was long since proven to be a forgery.
*'''Jack the Ripper''' - Also known by the London old media as the "Leather Apron". A real life serial killer in London 1[[Khorne|888]]. Since he was never caught, his identity remains a mystery and is therefore held as the greatest serial killer. Known for mutilating his victim in the most precise manner and the mocking letters he wrote to the police (which are still held in Scotland Yard). Since no identity were revealed, he was even suspected to be a female with new nicknames such as "Jill the ripper" added to the long list of nicknames. Since nothing physical is known about the killer, fiction is free to attribute supernatural origin (such as a possessed human or being a monster outright) or that the killer's vileness resulted in transformation into some kind of monster. Making the killer supernatural allows it to be divorced from its time period.
** Various other uncaught serial killers can get this sort of treatment, but to a much lower degree, with the notable exception of the Zodiac Killer, who shared Jack's media savvy.
*'''Kiyotaki tunnel''' - A haunted tunnel in Japan. Said to be built by slaves in 1927. It is said to have an unfortunately length of 444 meter long (4 is a unlucky number in Japan--the word for "4" is a homophone for "death") and it is a famous suicide spot. There were witness who saw the spirit of suicide victim walking towards the tunnel. There are reports where the traffic light outside the tunnel to suddenly change color and cause car accidents. The tunnel made frequent references from horror manga and anime where it was portrayed a tunnel full of tormented spirits, dragging other passing traveler to suffer with them.
*'''Slender Man''' - a fictional character that originated as an Internet meme created by [[Something Awful]] forums user Victor Surge in 2009. It is depicted as resembling a thin, unnaturally tall man with a blank and usually featureless face and wearing a black suit. The Slender Man is commonly said to stalk, abduct, or traumatize people, particularly children. The Slender Man is not tied to any particular story, but appears in many disparate works of fiction, mostly composed online, with the most famous being a series known as ''Marble Hornets''.

==Popular mythology elements used in Fantasy==
*[[Dwarfs]]
*[[Elves]]
*[[Vampires]]
*[[Necromancer|Necromancy]]
*[[Troll]]s
*[[Giant]]s
*[[Minotaur]]
*[[God|Gods/Deities]]
*[[Genie]]
*[[Dragon]]
*[[Orc]]
*[[Monstergirls]]

[[Category:History]]

Religion

2020-01-03T16:22:19Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:24EA:B669:CB67:A273: /* Examples of /tg/ connected fictional religions */

Because it's important to several settings and RPG systems, we have a religion article. Let's try and keep it focused on the directly-related-to-/tg/ stuff and not descend into the pure [[skub]] that can arise in discussions of real-life religions, okay?

==Definition of Religion==
Almost since the inception of the term, scholars have failed to agree on a definition of religion. While there are some belief systems that always count as religions, some have applied the term to various things such as political ideologies, or groups when they reach a certain point. There are however two general definition systems: the sociological/functional and the phenomenological/philosophical.

The two most widely accepted are:
* "a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say things set apart and forbidden - beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church, all those who adhere to them."
* "a comprehensive worldview or 'metaphysical moral vision' that is accepted as binding because it is held to be in itself basically true and just even if all dimensions of it cannot be either fully confirmed or refuted".

As stated before, one common element that every religion which fits the criteria has is humanity's relation to supernatural forces, as all of them have at least one [[God|god]] and/or an afterlife even where there are exceptions; Buddhism doesn't have any gods but has afterlives, and Taoism doesn't have an afterlife but does have a pantheistic concept of a god as a supernatural force.

Like other terms for heavily [[SJW|debated]] [[communism|subjects]], religion and religious have also been used as insults or Snarl Words in social and political discussions (especially from the 20th century and onwards) to ridicule groups openly promoting something the user disagrees with. This snarl creates a caricature of the group to smear them by association with the worst excesses of real-world religious people or the most common criticisms/negative stereotypes of organized religion (like being too preachy, judgmental, irrational, hypocritical, or pressuring everyone to convert).

==Religion vs. Mythology==
While [[Mythology|mythologies]] aren't religions in and of themselves, every religion has a mythology. These involve several criteria such as how life should be lived, what happens to a person after death and relation to the supernatural. [[Skub|Whatever the source]], the mythology almost always predates the religion. As a result, especially since the Fantasy genre deals in supernatural beings and forces, most if not all fantasy settings have religions. Science fiction does to a lesser degree, mostly because during the Golden Age of sci-fi empiricists and secular humanists were attracted to the genre and their views often seeped into their stories. Despite this, given that most real-life societies have had religions playing a role in or since their founding, religions are still found in sci-fi.

Religions involves belief systems and practices, where an adherent can call upon the power/being the religion is focused on to give them aid in [[cleric|various]] [[Paladin|ways]], depending at the very least on the religion and the task in question. Given that religions are about people's place in the world, how it was made, ideas on how life should be lived and what happens after death, they have major implications for societies. Given that people can become [[Exarch|dangerously single-minded]] about a cause, people can be become extremists about their religion, regardless of the fact that [[Heironeous|some]] are more benevolent than [[Asmodeus|others]] and in numerous cases even [[Heresy|if it involves going against the religion's teachings]]; in conjunction with the above this means religious conflicts can become widespread, long-lasting, cause carnage and also involve other elements such as politics.

==How this impacts /tg/==
A few major ways:

* A lot of Fantasy settings are ordinary politheistic, usually close to some admixture of Norse and Greek mythologies. Some of them also have a Top God - one more powerful than all the others and maybe the in-universe creator of everything - who is mostly hands-off in cosmic affairs. The gods of these religions tend to focus on specific areas (gods of [[Paladin|Justice]] and [[Druid|Nature]] are common, for subtly obvious reasons) and frequently want their followers to propagate or promote these things.
* There are quite a few writers of Science Fiction and Fantasy that are of the opinion "Religion Is Bad", albeit this is more common in Sci-Fi than fantasy. As a result those writers model their fictional religions on the - occasionally exaggerated - worst excesses of real world religious people and lift imagery from those religions; popular targets are Christianity, Islam, Scientology or the Aztec. This also comes in flavors of either "The Gods Don't Exist", "The Gods are Incompetent" (more on that below) or "The Gods are all Evil".
* There are also quite a few sincerely religious Science Fiction and Fantasy writers (usually Christian, but not always). These authors usually put more thought into their fictional religion plus its central figure (although they have a tendency to go all "Crystal Dragon Jesus"), and try and have it be at least a somewhat good influence, although religious institutions and leaders are usually hit-and-miss affairs.
** If a work has multiple writers, (as frequently happens with RPG and Wargame settings, and quite a few popular SciFi/Fantasy ones as well) there's a tendency for the writer to try and pull the setting into one of the other two depending on their views. This leads to the theme changing from one side to the other as the story progresses (such as [[World of Warcraft|Warcraft's Light vs Void conflict]]), or swinging back and forth between them.
** Doing the "The Gods are Incompetent" thing (the similar but different "The Gods are Insane" route also falls under this umbrella) can go into any of the three; in a sincere monotheist's (such as Christian) work, it can be a "Take That" to polytheistic religions; in a "Religion is Bad" athiest's, it can be one to religion in general; in a Buddhist-influenced work, it can be a part of the whole "even the Gods are tied up in the Wheel of Karma" concept; and, even if the author is not pushing any religious message in any way, there's a neutral, plot-structural reason to go "Incompetent Gods": it can make the adventurers the Most Competent People Available.
* [[Urban Fantasy]] writers are a special case, since almost all Urban Fantasy is set in something that might be called "the real world with a twist", with all the usual political trouble that implies. Usually, they take one of two routes. The first is "there are many possible explanations" and vague things up as much as possible (Faith being the power that repels [[Vampire]]s rather than than a cross having any actual connection to a deity is a popular one). The second is atheistic and/or [[Imperial Truth|"Religion is Bad" propaganda]] (which is uncommon outside Cosmic Horror, but not unheard of). Some Urban Fantasy works with a clear correct religion exist thanks to the above mentioned sincerely religious authors exist. Typically these are [[Chick Tracts|barely veiled proselytizing]] or [[Twilight|just straight up terrible]], though [[Monster Hunter International|there are some good ones]].

Further, note the "Religion is Bad" and "Religion is Good" brigades will be involved in arguments over the relative morality or "goodness" of various factions and the accuracy of any messages a writer presents.

==Examples of /tg/ connected fictional religions==
* The [[Imperial Truth]]/[[Imperial Cult|Cult]] in [[Warhammer 40,000]] manages to mix features of atheism, Catholicism, and generic fanaticism and xenophobia. Religiosity is mostly explored with humans and no real religions are used (since the Emperor [[The Last Church|violently purged them and those who followed them]] - except for maybe [[Ollanius Pius|one Catholic Perpetual]], and that's before [[Chaos]] entered the picture...). As for the other major factions;
** All Greenskins worship Gork and Mork (jury's out on whether the [[Gretchin Revolutionary Committee]] do), but are too disorganized to have anything like a formal religion, though they do make effigies of Gork and Mork and call on them.
** The T'au creed "The Greater Good" is a philosophy that allows religiosity as long as it doesn't clash with the Greater Good.
** The Eldar Pantheon's religious practices aren't fleshed out save for those of Cegorach and Khaine, via the Harlequins and Aspect Warriors. Apart form these two, with most of their gods out of commission, most Eldar religious worship is of a deistic bent. As for the Ynnari, they have yet to establish teachings or rituals. As for the rest of the Eldar race, the Corsairs are all over the place, the Dark Eldar are selfishly irreligious for the most part and there's rumors of Chaos Eldar.
** While the Necrontyr had religions before certain [[C'tan|star entities]] [[Necrons|roboticizied them]], those aren't fleshed out or detailed. Its also heavily implied the C'tan co-opted the Necrontyr religion beforehand, with the change to Necrons taking the higher though processes of most of them. Any Necrons with any comprehension of faith and religiosity either worship the C'tan or have become irreligious.
** Tyranids have some concept of religiosity, as seen with propagating [[Genestealer]] cults and the Deathleaper understanding the concept of martyrdom, but otherwise display no interest or regard for anything other than their all-consuming extra-galactic hunger.
* Among Dungeons and Dragons settings, [[Planescape]], [[Eberron]], and [[Pathfinder]] are notable for having some coherent things that could be called "Religions", rather then the usual generic Pantheism.
** Most of Planescape's Factions effectively count as religions, to the point they can produce [[Cleric]]s ([[Planescape: Torment#Fall-From-Grace|Atheist ones at that]]). Yes, even the Athar. (Perhaps ''especially'' the Athar.)
** Half of Eberron's religions aren't worship of deities. The [[Blood of Vol]] seeks to unlock the divinity within one's self and rejects the gods (if they even exist) and the [[Path of Inspiration]] seeks to improve their next reincarnation. The Undying Court worships not gods but their undead ancestors that make up their government. The [[Path of Light]], [[Warforged_Mysteries#The_Becoming_God|Becoming God]] and [[Warforged_Mysteries#The_Reforged|Reforged]] all seek to ''create'' a deity. Even some interpretations of the [[Sovereign Host]], like the one most common among dragons, don't worship them as deities. Due to the way divine casting works in Eberron, all of these can produce divine casters.
** There's a handful of religions on [[Golarion]] that aren't merely worship of pantheons. The most prominent (read: Actually has mechanical support) is the [[Prophecies of Kalistrade]], which is basically fantasy [[Star Trek|Ferengi]].
* [[D20 Modern]]'s [[Urban Arcana]], unusually for urban fantasy, has D&D deities bleed into reality alongside the monsters. You are still able to play a <s>cleric</s> "acolyte" of any real world deity despite this.
* [[Star Wars]] is inconsistent on if the [[The Force]] is a religion. The Jedi and the Sith ''could'' both be considered religions as they are considered monastic, but mix in several other traits such as being meritocratic (Jedi) and kraterocratic (Sith) and Lucas himself has axed at least one prototyped book for portraying them too much as a religion. It's also notable that the Sith were former Jedi who left the Jedi path for several reasons including [[Heresy|disagreements over the teachings of that creed]]. Aside from that, religion is nearly always a non-human tradition, something noted in a culture's historical background and never seen implying its extinction, or a scam. The religiously linked "damn" and "hell" are the two real world swear words that exist in-universe, purely because Han Solo used them in the films, and some concept of an "angel" exists because a young Anakin told Padme about them in the prequel trilogy films.
** There are rare exceptions where a religion is fleshed out and explored, and the writing goes various directions for better or worse. A notable example is the aggressive polytheistic religion of the antagonistic Yuuzhan Vong from the EU (which the story gradually revealed was long ago perverted from benevolent roots).
* Very large books could be written about religion and [[World of Darkness]]/Chronicles of Darkness. We'll just cover a few highlights:
** From [[Vampire: The Requiem]], there's the the Lancea et Sanctum, which might be best described as "Christianity for Vampires", and the Circle of the Crone, which is "Pagan Vampires". Both have Vampire miracles on tap (pun intended).
** [[Hunter: The Vigil]] has various religious organizations among the Compacts and Conspiracies.
** [[Mage: The Ascension]] has various religious Traditions, portrayed in that highly-stereotypical and highly-depending-on-the-author way typical of old WoD.

==See also==
* [[Mythology]]

[[Category:Not related]]
[[Category:History]]

Katakros

2020-01-03T15:18:53Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:24EA:B669:CB67:A273:

[[File:Katakros.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Dude gave himself a bulge bigger than most heads.]]
{{Topquote|I take no joy in this. Nor do I despair. It is merely something that must be done. All we ask is payment of the Tithe. These people had their chance! They chose their fate! Perhaps I am wrong though... perhaps I deceive myself. For in truth, there is... some joy in this.|Katakros on his 9 to 5.}}

{{Topquote|Wait till Biggus Dickus hears of this!|Pontius Pilate}}

{{Topquote|Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.|<strike>Semisonic</strike> Marcus Annaeus Seneca}}

Full name Orpheon Katakros, the newest member of the [[Mortarch]]s, Katakros had died and returned again and again, and had survived "The fall of the Storm God's hammer" meaning he had faced Sigmar Himself and was defeated. The other hints were that he died a general defending his birth city, and came back in death as an Emperor, and his promotional material was visually similar to [[Drachenfels]], while some hopefuls thought that there was Tomb Kings influence in the army he led. This also came after the plot focused on Lady Olynder working to free an ancient evil that Sigmar had beef with in the past, with many people thinking that was either Drachenfels or [[Krell]].

All of this could only mean one thing: he was a new character nobody had ever heard about before and is being included in an ''"oh by the way"'' fashion. If he had a voice, it would be Jim Parsons The Big Bang Theory (or for a serious example, Stephen Lang).

==History==
Hailing from the Realm of Beasts, in life he was an incredibly talented tactician and strategist, but not great at making friends due to being a bossy perfectionist and a callous workaholic. It also didn't help that in the army that he served, the vast majority of the upper command structure was made up aristocrats who had been appointed to their positions, and they did not take kindly to this bossy commoner upstart who had somehow risen all the way to become a general. He died for the first time when he made a charge but no one was there to support his autistic ass so he got plucked off his chariot and ripped to pieces by a Ghorgon ([[Awesome|but not before he dealt a fatal blow that later killed it]]). Katakros' manner of death also gave him a disdain for mounts of all kinds, so in undeath he walks everywhere. After being sent to one of the afterlives of shyish he became the general there just in time to witness Nagash's birth into the mortal realms and his subsequent omnoming of all the death gods and afterlives. Katakros managed to defend his afterlife for longer than any other, to the point Nagash had to step in personally to curb stomp. Katakros, seeing the situation was hopeless, offered his services before he was stomped out and Nagash actually said yes, which should say a lot about this boy.

He became the first Bonereaper, which was all fine and dandy until Sigmar invaded. Having been ordered to stop Sigmar by Nagash, Katakros took his forces to engage him despite thinking he could not actually win. After Sigmar smashed through his forces, Katakros, being ''"perhaps the greatest military strategist (living, or dead) the Mortal Realms have ever known"'' figured that he would be able to take Sigmar on in a one-on-one duel, guessing that that his glaive might be able to kill Sigmar because it was made using similar Warpstone methods to [[Fellblade|the weapon that slew Nagash in ages past]]. Naturally, Sigmar concaved the fucking idiot's skull with Ghal Maraz and won. Since this was before Sigmar thought about making the best warriors/leaders into Stormcast, (and apparently he didn't feel like turning ''"perhaps the greatest military strategist (living, or dead) the Mortal Realms have ever known"'' into a Sigmarine later), he threw the general into a Stormvault. Katakros spent his time mulling over tactics, stewing in his rage towards Sigmar and probably [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZa79QGDeo8 bouncing a ball against the opposite wall to pass the time]. Unfortunately, rather than do something sensible like move it someplace Nagash couldn't easily access it, Sigmar trusted the enchantments to hide it from Nagash. Jump forward in time to the present, Lady Olynder opened it up and here he is, ready to start the Tithe.

[[File:Katakros-rito.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Katakros back in the Age of Myth.]]That being said, Katakros is the Mortarch of the Necropolis, and has his own legion, the [[Ossiarch Bonereapers]] (also called the Ossiarch legions). He also commands his own personal legion of 10,000 Bonereapers within the Ossiarch legions, and whenever one of his soldiers dies a new one is built back home and is then sent on a long journey to replace his destroyed soldier, making his army replenishment a logistical nightmare as it could take weeks to years to gain any reinforcements/replacements and a smart enemy could just attack them on the way, preventing them from ever reaching the main force. Unlike most undead characters inhabiting thin bone-bodies that are inevitably broken, Katakros is a soul housed within a fucking massive bone-construct (one that has a ridiculous bulge that would make David Bowie from Labyrinth blush) and also leads a legion of bone constructs, each housing several souls to make them more effective then brittle skeletons or slow-ass zombies (but for some reason still less effective than grave guard, who cost more than mortek guards for 10 points). Apparently [[Nagash]] saw Sigmar's [[Stormcast Eternals|Stormcasts]] and wanted to steal the gimmick for his own in revenge for all those tasty souls he will never own.

Katakros is also described as being "perhaps the greatest military strategist (living, or dead) the Mortal Realms have ever known", which is at odds with his track record seeing as how he fought and lost three times in three major ways. He is also seen as the paragon of Nagash’s dreams for the Mortal Realms; a consummate professional focused solely of the efficient completion of tasks, unfettered by the weight of emotion or free will despite demonstrating a capacity for joy and self-deluding in the above quote.

Also, he looks like a [[Primarch]] cosplaying as an [[Alien|Alien: Covenant Space Engineer]]. Because apparently THAT is a successful enough idea to rip off, even if it does match the alien molded bone look of his skeleton Stormcasts.

Currently Katakros is leading an invasion on the Allpoints, which probably means he's going to run into Archaon, the guy who beat both Sigmar and Nagash. In any case, it's a chance for him to get a really good win for once.

[[Category: Age of Sigmar]]

Lady Olynder

2020-01-03T15:12:08Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:24EA:B669:CB67:A273: /* History */

[[File:Lady Olynder.jpeg|thumb|Ghost Boob]]
{{topquote|Do not resist – death is inevitable. The more quickly you succumb, the sooner your suffering will be over. Come to me, and be mine for evermore…|Lady Olynder, still trying to charm people despite losing her good looks.}}
{{topquote|OOOOOOOOOOOOoooooOOOOOoooo...|Lady Olynder, on basically anything when she's not doing her job.}}

The new girl on the skeletal block, Lady Olynder is the new [[Mortarch|Mortarch of Grief]], and is the leader of the [[Nighthaunt]] Processions. Carrying all the despair in the realms due to her complete and utter apathy to the misery of others in life, she reeeeally hates the living. If she had a voice, it would be Debbie from Addams Family Values.

==History==
In life, she was one of the most beautiful women in the empire Dolorum. But Olynder was also a Gold Digger's Gold Digger, scheming, sleeping and slaying her way to the top. Such was Olynder's charm that she married the son of Dolorum's King before both promptly "disappeared", leaving Olynder in charge. Olynder wore a veil and cried a lot about their loss in public Victoria-style, yet the veil hid her shit-eating grin over how smart she was. Some knights had figured out her evil scheme and planned to overthrow her, but she thwarted them by seducing one of their members, Gharest Malcor, into ratting out his fellow conspirators. Malcor himself would end up assassinated shortly thereafter for being too stupid to realize what happens to anybody Olynder says she's going to marry. As a queen she ruled Dolorum for a few years and among other things stopped honoring Nagash (this could come back to haunt - pun intended - Olynder big time), until the Age of Chaos came-a-knocking.

The forces of Nurgle quickly invaded Dolorum. Olynder cried more crocodile tears for the realm while she was all safe in her tower, partying away like the Masque of the Red Death. Olynder was so selfish that when the forces of Nurgle kicked down the doors to her throne room, she tried to parley with them to save her own life. This was the final straw for everyone's favorite [[Nagash|Skele-Pope]]; Nagash had been watching Olynder, and she'd been pissing him off for a while, so now he was going to make her pay for it. He seized her soul and doomed her to haunt the ruins of her Kingdom for all eternity, feeling all the misery in the Mortal Realms as revenge for the fake tears she cried in life (<s>one of the few times where </s> ''Just another example of how'' the victims of Nagash's special brand of karma indisputably deserved it).

Naggy then proceeded to forget about her, until the Necroquake unleashed the Nighthaunt on the realms. He realized how spooky they were, but they needed direction to be truly efficient. He then hosted a Death equivalent of Dragon's Den to decide on who would be the new Mortarch. Lo and behold, he stumbled upon the ruins of Dolorum, finding that Olynder had organized a hugeass Ghost-Kingdom while he wasn't looking. And so, she became the Mortarch of Grief, marshaling the ghosties into the processions we all know and love. Nagash also gifted her a new army called the Emerald Host, consisting of the ghosts of all the knights who plotted against her in life, now forced to forever serve the woman they hated, and led by Gharest Malcor who'd been turned into a Knight of Shrouds.

Since then Olynder actually proved to be a good general. She defeated the forces of the Chaos Warlord Thur and destroyed the Stormcast defenders at the seige of Morlaix - even defeating their Lord-Celestant in single combat. Despite this, Olynder had a knack for going LEEEEEEEEEEEROOOOY. During a battle against her old for Thur to liberate Underworld of Lyria, this nearly got Olynder killed by the Bloodthrister Khazkhan until Nagash and Arkhan bailed her out.

Nagash decided to give her an adviser and to that end she was married to [[Kurdoss Valentian]], which Nagash also used as a joke at both of their expenses (for her, it's because marrying for power and murdering her husbands was how she earned her punishment). Her biggest achievement happened during the siege of Lethis, where she managed to actually [[Awesome|kill the Celestant-Prime with her hourglass, who until then had proven to be a deus ex machina in every situation, and free an ancient evil]]. What's more, this ancient evil that was locked away is revealed to be Katakros, who would go on to be made leader of the [[Ossiarch Bonereapers]] (though from their track records, Olynder seems like a better general than Katakros).

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File: Olynder Art.jpeg
</gallery>

{{Nighthaunt-Characters}}

Lady Olynder

2020-01-03T15:09:39Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:24EA:B669:CB67:A273: /* History */

[[File:Lady Olynder.jpeg|thumb|Ghost Boob]]
{{topquote|Do not resist – death is inevitable. The more quickly you succumb, the sooner your suffering will be over. Come to me, and be mine for evermore…|Lady Olynder, still trying to charm people despite losing her good looks.}}
{{topquote|OOOOOOOOOOOOoooooOOOOOoooo...|Lady Olynder, on basically anything when she's not doing her job.}}

The new girl on the skeletal block, Lady Olynder is the new [[Mortarch|Mortarch of Grief]], and is the leader of the [[Nighthaunt]] Processions. Carrying all the despair in the realms due to her complete and utter apathy to the misery of others in life, she reeeeally hates the living. If she had a voice, it would be Debbie from Addams Family Values.

==History==
In life, she was one of the most beautiful women in the empire Dolorum. But Olynder was also a Gold Digger's Gold Digger, scheming, sleeping and slaying her way to the top. Such was Olynder's charm that she married the son of Dolorum's King before both promptly "disappeared", leaving Olynder in charge. Olynder wore a veil and cried a lot about their loss in public Victoria-style, yet the veil hid her shit-eating grin over how smart she was. Some knights had figured out her evil scheme and planned to overthrow her, but she thwarted them by seducing one of their members, Gharest Malcor, into ratting out his fellow conspirators. Malcor himself would end up assassinated shortly thereafter for being too stupid to realize what happens to anybody Olynder says she's going to marry. As a queen she ruled Dolorum for a few years and among other things stopped honoring Nagash (this could come back to haunt - pun intended - Olynder big time), until the Age of Chaos came-a-knocking.

The forces of Nurgle quickly invaded Dolorum. Olynder cried more crocodile tears for the realm while she was all safe in her tower, partying away like the Masque of the Red Death. Olynder was so selfish that when the forces of Nurgle kicked down the doors to her throne room, she tried to parley with them to save her own life. This was the final straw for everyone's favorite [[Nagash|Skele-Pope]]; Nagash had been watching Olynder, and she'd been pissing him off for a while, so now he was going to make her pay for it. He seized her soul and doomed her to haunt the ruins of her Kingdom for all eternity, feeling all the misery in the Mortal Realms as revenge for the fake tears she cried in life (<s>one of the few times where </s> ''Just another example of how'' the victims of Nagash's special brand of karma indisputably deserved it).

Naggy then proceeded to forget about her, until the Necroquake unleashed the Nighthaunt on the realms. He realized how spooky they were, but they needed direction to be truly efficient. He then hosted a Death equivalent of Dragon's Den to decide on who would be the new Mortarch. Lo and behold, he stumbled upon the ruins of Dolorum, finding that Olynder had organized a hugeass Ghost-Kingdom while he wasn't looking. And so, she became the Mortarch of Grief, marshaling the ghosties into the processions we all know and love. Nagash also gifted her a new army called the Emerald Host, lead by the Knight of Shrouds Gharest Malcor and consisting of the ghosts of all the knights who plotted against her in life, forced to forever serve the woman they hated.

Since then Olynder actually proved to be a good general. She defeated the forces of the Chaos Warlord Thur and destroyed the Stormcast defenders at the seige of Morlaix - even defeating their Lord-Celestant in single combat. Despite this, Olynder had a knack for going LEEEEEEEEEEEROOOOY. During a battle against her old for Thur to liberate Underworld of Lyria, this nearly got Olynder killed by the Bloodthrister Khazkhan until Nagash and Arkhan bailed her out.

Nagash decided to give her an adviser and to that end she was married to [[Kurdoss Valentian]], which Nagash also used as a joke at both of their expenses (for her, it's because marrying for power and murdering her husbands was how she earned her punishment). Her biggest achievement happened during the siege of Lethis, where she managed to actually [[Awesome|kill the Celestant-Prime with her hourglass, who until then had proven to be a deus ex machina in every situation, and free an ancient evil]]. What's more, this ancient evil that was locked away is revealed to be Katakros, who would go on to be made leader of the [[Ossiarch Bonereapers]] (though from their track records, Olynder seems like a better general than Katakros).

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File: Olynder Art.jpeg
</gallery>

{{Nighthaunt-Characters}}

Lady Olynder

2020-01-03T15:09:26Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:24EA:B669:CB67:A273: /* History */

[[File:Lady Olynder.jpeg|thumb|Ghost Boob]]
{{topquote|Do not resist – death is inevitable. The more quickly you succumb, the sooner your suffering will be over. Come to me, and be mine for evermore…|Lady Olynder, still trying to charm people despite losing her good looks.}}
{{topquote|OOOOOOOOOOOOoooooOOOOOoooo...|Lady Olynder, on basically anything when she's not doing her job.}}

The new girl on the skeletal block, Lady Olynder is the new [[Mortarch|Mortarch of Grief]], and is the leader of the [[Nighthaunt]] Processions. Carrying all the despair in the realms due to her complete and utter apathy to the misery of others in life, she reeeeally hates the living. If she had a voice, it would be Debbie from Addams Family Values.

==History==
In life, she was one of the most beautiful women in the empire Dolorum. But Olynder was also a Gold Digger's Gold Digger, scheming, sleeping and slaying her way to the top. Such was Olynder's charm that she married the son of Dolorum's King before both promptly "disappeared", leaving Olynder in charge. Olynder wore a veil and cried a lot about their loss in public Victoria-style, yet the veil hid her shit-eating grin over how smart she was. Some knights had figured out her evil scheme and planned to overthrow her, but she thwarted them by seducing one of their members, Gharest Malcor, into ratting out his fellow conspirators. Malcor himself would end up assassinated shortly thereafter for being too stupid to realize what happens to anybody Olynder says she's going to marry. As a queen she ruled Dolorum for a few years and among other things stopped honoring Nagash (this could come back to haunt - pun intended - Olynder, big time), until the Age of Chaos came-a-knocking.

The forces of Nurgle quickly invaded Dolorum. Olynder cried more crocodile tears for the realm while she was all safe in her tower, partying away like the Masque of the Red Death. Olynder was so selfish that when the forces of Nurgle kicked down the doors to her throne room, she tried to parley with them to save her own life. This was the final straw for everyone's favorite [[Nagash|Skele-Pope]]; Nagash had been watching Olynder, and she'd been pissing him off for a while, so now he was going to make her pay for it. He seized her soul and doomed her to haunt the ruins of her Kingdom for all eternity, feeling all the misery in the Mortal Realms as revenge for the fake tears she cried in life (<s>one of the few times where </s> ''Just another example of how'' the victims of Nagash's special brand of karma indisputably deserved it).

Naggy then proceeded to forget about her, until the Necroquake unleashed the Nighthaunt on the realms. He realized how spooky they were, but they needed direction to be truly efficient. He then hosted a Death equivalent of Dragon's Den to decide on who would be the new Mortarch. Lo and behold, he stumbled upon the ruins of Dolorum, finding that Olynder had organized a hugeass Ghost-Kingdom while he wasn't looking. And so, she became the Mortarch of Grief, marshaling the ghosties into the processions we all know and love. Nagash also gifted her a new army called the Emerald Host, lead by the Knight of Shrouds Gharest Malcor and consisting of the ghosts of all the knights who plotted against her in life, forced to forever serve the woman they hated.

Since then Olynder actually proved to be a good general. She defeated the forces of the Chaos Warlord Thur and destroyed the Stormcast defenders at the seige of Morlaix - even defeating their Lord-Celestant in single combat. Despite this, Olynder had a knack for going LEEEEEEEEEEEROOOOY. During a battle against her old for Thur to liberate Underworld of Lyria, this nearly got Olynder killed by the Bloodthrister Khazkhan until Nagash and Arkhan bailed her out.

Nagash decided to give her an adviser and to that end she was married to [[Kurdoss Valentian]], which Nagash also used as a joke at both of their expenses (for her, it's because marrying for power and murdering her husbands was how she earned her punishment). Her biggest achievement happened during the siege of Lethis, where she managed to actually [[Awesome|kill the Celestant-Prime with her hourglass, who until then had proven to be a deus ex machina in every situation, and free an ancient evil]]. What's more, this ancient evil that was locked away is revealed to be Katakros, who would go on to be made leader of the [[Ossiarch Bonereapers]] (though from their track records, Olynder seems like a better general than Katakros).

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File: Olynder Art.jpeg
</gallery>

{{Nighthaunt-Characters}}

Star Wars Setting

2020-01-03T07:30:39Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:24EA:B669:CB67:A273: /* Post-Disney */

The sheer number of characters in Star Wars is a massive undertaking, and one that cannot be folded into another page. As such, here is a list of characters who either are influential, [[Awesome]], [[Fail]], or hilariously memey.

==Pre-Disney==
* Luke Skywalker: All-round good guy and idealist, despite being a complete idiot, Luke wishes to learn the ways of the Force to defeat the Emperor and save the galaxy. A Jedi prodigy, he can lift heavy ton space fighters with just his force powers, though he struggles with doubts. Although he starts all brash and teenage and shit, by the conclusion of the trilogy, Luke is well on the way to becoming a wise and powerful Jedi ready to rebuild the Order. Then he ends up training Kylo fucking Ren and becomes a [[Neckbeard|grumpy old man who just wants the Jedi Order to die with him since he's been disillusioned in people not being shitty now that his shitty-feeling self is considered the least shitty person in the universe]] (something many fans, and even '''Mark Hamill himself''' considered out of character for Luke). It takes a direct Force-powered intervention from Leia as well as Yoda's Force ghost telling him "don't worry, we both fucked up and the kids still love our <strike>toys</strike> legends" to get him to nut the fuck up and help stop the First Order by embarrassing Kylo Ren in front of everyone. It got to the point where [[The Last Church|he tried to burn a sacred tree with contained the last books about the Jedi code]]. Yoda appeared as a Force ghost and told Luke the Force weren't limited to buildings or writings, destroying the tree which supposedly contained the last books about the Jedi code and history which turns out to be because Rey had already stolen said books and the destruction of the tree prevented Luke from discovering that fact, ensuring the Jedi will continue regardless of Luke's faith crisis. In the original EU, Luke was '''FAR''' more successful and trained many generations of Jedi including his niece Jaina and surviving nephew Jacen (Jaina's twin who later fell to the Dark Side and killed Luke's wife before his sister got him) as well as his son , destroyed massive remnants of the Empire over and over again, killed the fucking Emperor over and over again, fought off [[Tyranids|extragalactic]] Force-resistant [[Dark Eldar|space Cenobites]] called Yuuzhan Vong including killing their <s>Emperor</s> best fighter, blew up more Death Star-type things, helped defeat yandere not-Yogg-Sothoth called Abeloth (which involved a lot of things including a temporary alliance between '''the Jedi and the Sith'''; a testament to Luke's skill and Abeloth's dangerousnesss that he pulled it off) and hooked up with the Emperor's own hot red-headed assassin - Mara Jade (the wife mentioned above, more on her below) - and had the aforementioed son with her called Ben.

* Han Solo: Dashing [[rogue]] and space cowboy who somehow shoots his way out of debt to the mob, ends up a general, and bags himself a princess. Not a bad series' work. His ship, the Millennium Falcon, deserves a mention too for being as iconic as he is. Unfortunately his actor Harrison Ford always went back and forth on wanting to continue the franchise, mostly because he thoroughly hated Solo and wanted him to die pretty much from day one, only to be thwarted in Empire and again in Jedi by the character's popularity. Ford agreed to return for Episode 7 when Disney finally gave him his wish, having Solo fail to redeem his son Ben and getting a metaphorical and literal lightsaber through the heart for it. In pre-Disney continuity he was once a Swoop (flying motorcycle) racer turned Imperial Officer who shot his superior that was beating a Wookie to death and gained a lifelong friend in said Wookie - Chewbacca. He also had three kids with Leia pre-Disney with two sons called Anakin and Jacen and a daughter called Jaina who had widely different fates; Jaina was prophesied to become the Force-wielding Empress of a benevolent and reformed Empire - though it turned out that was actually her daughter Allana, Anakin was estranged from Han during the Yuuzhan Vong war because a mistake he made indirectly caused Chewie's death though he reconciled before being killed later in the war, Jacen played a pivotal role in defeating the Vong but later went full Dark Side and killed aunt Mara before being killed by Jaina and his actions in the Force accidentally helped free the Lovecraftian Force entity Abeloth. Post-Disney Han's origin is covered in a solo movie named Solo. It's generally considered skub.

* Princess Leia: The regulation piece of lady crumpet in the movies, Princess Leia was a leader in the rebel alliance and (spoiler!) Luke's long lost twin sister. Also both a capable soldier and politician. Her being forced to wear a metal thong by an overweight space slug named Jabba the Hutt has since cemented her role as sex idol to legions of adoring fan boys, while her general [[Awesome|door-kicking deadshot sarcastic asskickery]] made her a feminist icon as well (this was back in the 80's when the two could be the same). With her home planet and entire adoptive family destroyed by the Death Star, she became a General although somehow retained her princesshood (yes, she's now a Disney Princess), and went on to become a full-on Jedi warrior in the pre-Disney EU and had three kids with Han. [[Skub|Not in the new canon though.]] She manages to somehow [[Roboute Guilliman|survive getting shot into space]] using her latent force abilities in TLJ, probably the most ridiculous part of the film. Due to the death of her actress Carrie Fisher (given the amount of cocaine and partying she'd done over the years it was amazing Carrie lived as long as she did) Leia only appears in Episode 9 using altered unused footage from Episodes 7 and 8 along with some dubbed lines, where she's shown training Rey then just dies by fading away.

* C-3P0 and R2-D2: Two robots trapped in a sexless gay marriage who are the only minor characters to have been in all the movies so far, and even in stories like The Old Republic outside of their millennia of existence will usually have an equivalent. C-3P0 is the shiny golden humanoid robot who constantly fusses about keeping the furniture clean and worries that his pies are getting overdone in the oven while R2-D2 is the brash, brave husband figure who swings into action regardless. He looks like a salt shaker next to the Dalek's pepper shakers, although is he more a plucky rabbit to their rabid wild cats. The robots mostly have comedy roles in the movies, since they might threaten to upstage the human actors if they became too useful, though R2 has an electric cattle prod and serves as the party's computer skillmonkey, while C-3P0 saves the day with his mad linguistic skillz at least once per film in the original trilogy. They starred in their own cartoon series that was surprisingly good. After the original trilogy in both pre/post Disney continuity the writers don't seem to know what to do with them, and they just randomly appear sometimes.

* Chewbacca: The original furry in space, the dog you can have a beer with in the space Winnebago. Nothing sexy about him; he is just hairy, huge, knows how to pilot a space ship, fix stuff, fire a gun, and generally get shit done which strangely makes him the coolest furry ever. Best friends with Han, has a family that we can all agree did not appear in the terrible Christmas special that does not exist (he got a much more badass family in the Galactic Battlegrounds games, so go with that). Hates Trandoshans like all Wookies, since Trandoshans are almost always assholes and are particularly assholish to Wookies. In the pre-Disney continuity he was a slave that the then-Imperial Han saved, he helped Han save the galaxy. He was also tough as nails having survived numerous injuries and abuse that would've killed most Wookies, and Wookies are already tougher than humans. His actual death was getting mooned to death by extragalactic space cenobites - as in they used a gravity manipulation device to smash a moon into the planet Vector Prime while he was accidentally trapped on it. He was hailed as a hero across the galaxy (with the boast among Wookies that [[Awesome|Chewbacca was so tough, it took something that can wreck a planet to kill him]]) and the fanbase cried or raged at his death; even the authors who killed him off went on record to say they were sad about his death and only did so for the sake of plot. In the post-Disney continuity he continues to be <s>awesome and</s> generally ignored in endings and the plot overall (ironic that he was the first major character who died in the pre-Disney lore and he's one of the few still alive in post-Disney lore). The prequel trilogy revealed he's REALLY FUCKING OLD thanks to Wookie lifespan.

* Lando Calrissian: Suave, charismatic, and an expert con artist, this guy is the original pirate king in space. He betrays Han and co. when Vader invades his city, later regrets it, and then atones by saving the cast from the Empire as well as the populace of his city at the same time, then helps save Han from the mafia, and finally leading the fleet that blows up the Death Star 2.0. Favorite beverage is Colt 45 Malt Liquor.

* Obi-Wan Kenobi: If, at any point, in any work of fiction, the hero has an old master/father figure who teaches him part of what he knows, makes sure that he will grow up to be a virtuous and decent hero, but ultimately dies fighting a great evil to buy the hero time to escape, then returns as a spirit guide for the hero later, the Internet has probably accused that character of ripping off Obi-wan Kenobi. The prequels show him as a young Jedi and a deuterotagonist to Anakin Skywalker, acting as ''his'' master, teacher, partner, and dear friend before their eventual falling out [[FATAL|ends with Anakin losing most of his major extremities and organs]] and Obi-wan hiding out in a cave waiting to turn into Alec Guinness. In hindsight he was a fucking moron to expect Anakin stay sane with her mother separated forever from him and doomed to slavery in a shithole planet. Certainly this won't torment the kid's thoughts about her, what's that? Tuskens tortured her to death? We are the Jedi, we do not take reve- oh well he went Sith. So much for Jedi and their wisdom. He is a great source of memes within the SW fandom, as well as jokingly referred to as Jesus due to his hairstyle in Episode II.

* Yoda: Ancient wise grand master of the Jedi Order who a tiny green alien is. Never named, his species was. Because of his size and age, most assumed just a harmless old teacher he was, your nice old granddad like. His pulling out a lightsaber and engaging a Sith Lord in combat at the end of ''Attack of the Clones'', one of the most surprising and popular fights of the series is. Became a big franchise mascot he did, despite a surprise for the audience he was meant to be in his first appearance, ruining it for future generations. A unique way of speaking, he has. A very popular target for parody, it has become. Much ketamine, he has taken. Forgive him, Allah cannot. Run over people in his 2001 Honda Civic, he must.

* Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker/"The Chosen One": The black-helmeted face of evil and the most well known villain from Star Wars (and arguably the most recognisable characters in cinema). Has become an iconic and memorable figure due to his menacing, robotic appearance and ultra-deep, wheezy respirator voice. He is [[Meme|(spoiler!)]] secretly Anakin, Luke's fallen Jedi father, thus allowing him to be able to say the most memorable line in the film series, "''I'' am your Father!" Abaddon wishes he could be this sinister. His children eventually manage to rekindle the spark of human decency in his heart, and he redeems himself by giving up his own life to save them and destroy the Emperor. Hates sand. Fun Fact: his portrayal required four actors in the original trilogy: body, voice, face and a stunt double. Single-handedly rescues the entire spin-off film Rogue One with [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okAyvguQucs an '''incredible''' scene at the end].

* Darth Sidious/Sheev "Can't Peeve the Sheev" Palpatine/The Emperor: A creepy old wrinkly dude who sits in his badass evil throne constantly screaming "[[Just as planned]]!" And occasionally frying fools with force lightning. Built a giant planet-destroying weapon, then built another, bigger one as a trap when the first one blew up. He is very clever, managing to scheme and outwit everyone in the prequel trilogy, moving them all into place so he could take over the galaxy (although he still needed a big superweapon anyway to hold onto said power). Chews so much scenery they had to resort to computer-generated imagery. [[Meme|He is the Senate]].

* Admiral Ackbar: Giant tactical fish who has the need to point out obvious traps in memetic fashion. Leads the rebel fleet in the <s>third</s> sixth film. Dies in the eighth.

* Wedge Antilles: The anti-redshirt. Has almost no lines in the original movies but somehow survives all of them, even blowing up the second Death Star with Lando. In the EU he is one of, if not ''the'' best starfighter pilot in the galaxy, and co-founder of the über elite Rogue Squadron along with Luke.

* Padmé Amidala: Darth Vader's waifu who spends most of the prequel trilogy being a hopeless pacifistic idealist [[Derp|(which makes her a hypocrite with all the fight scenes she's in.)]] Get's choked by Vader and dies giving birth to Luke and Leia, which ironically Vader was trying to prevent in the first place after seeing a vision. [[FAIL|Way to go, dumbass]]. Haven't you ''read'' a work of fiction with that kinda prophecy in it before?

* Jar-Jar Binks: Solely exists to fuck up everything (and we do mean EVERYTHING) at the worst possible moment. This guy is so hated by everyone in and out of universe that his actor received severe backlash - including '''death threats''', and he even considered suicide because of it - even though he had nothing to do with the writing while also sympathizing with fans' complaints and Lucas shitcanned his role down into a very brief cameo at the end of Episode 3. He's actually something of a tragic figure representing someone good who tries to act to save the galaxy but ended up ruining it instead. He manages to be less of an annoying fuckup in the CGI Clone Wars series, though only just. The clones that get stuck with him from time to time ''can't stand'' him. There are rumors that he was originally going to be revealed as a villain but because of his poor reception, this idea was scrapped. People who dislike Episode 7 often refer to its director as Jar Jar Abrams. Got a depressing meta style sendoff in the Aftermath book after Disney got the rights, which is a shame since it was hinted at in the Clone Wars series that he would marry a powerful alien queen who thinks he's a sex magnet. No really.

* Wilhuff Tarkin: [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Tywin Lannister]] [[Indrick Boreale|IN SPHESS]]. Ruthless, ambitious, and cold, Grand Moff (Governor) Tarkin is the epitome of all that is Imperial in the SW Universe. His idea of ruling pretty much comes down to [[Konrad Curze|"They can hate me as long as they fear me"]], which is symbolized ultimately by the Death Star. [[Derp|However, he uses the stick far too often and hardly uses the carrot]], and this policy backfires on him horribly when he destroys Alderaan, a Core World and one of the founders of the Old Republic- for instead of cowing the galaxy into submission, it, along with the Battle of Yavin which saw himself and his battle-station destroyed, [[Fail|galvanized half the galaxy into openly declaring for the Alliance]].

* Jango and Boba Fett: Father and son, though the son is actually an unaltered clone of his father. Badass, mostly-silent mercs who get shit done and come from a line of Spartan/Viking/Māori warriors in space called Mandalorians. Sadly, both had very anticlimactic deaths, though Boba survived his in the EU, through the power of being too popular with the audience to kill permanently. (This became canon after Disney made the entire EU non-canon. Rumour has it Boba will be getting his own spin off movie.)

* Jabba the Hutt: Obese slug who is a cross between a Mexican drug cartel kingpin and Mafia crime-boss. He runs his criminal enterprise from an old palace-monastery on Tatooine. A [[/d/]]eviant at heart, likes to fap to hot alien chicks dancing for him until they try to escape, then faps even harder when he feeds said chicks to Rancor. Gets strangled to death by a bikini-wearing Leia with her own chains, because symbolism.

* Thrawn: Star Wars [[Creed]], if Creed was also a philosophical blue-skinned, red-eyed alien who loved art. Thrawn was renowned for being one of the few high-ranking aliens in the Galactic Empire and one of the Emperor's best subjects. He originally served as a member of the Chiss Ascendancy, but after being backstabbed he signed up with the Galactic Empire and worked with Darth Vader - having met him back when the latter was still a Jedi - and even the Emperor himself. In his tactics, Thrawn notably employed his philosophy based around understanding the philosophy and art of his enemies, and was a very capable tactician. Thrawn quickly became very well-liked with fans, to the point many considered him the best thing to come from Star Wars since the original trilogy. Disney even reintroduced Thrawn to the post-Disney canon because he's that popular. He also set up a vassal Empire called "the Empire of the Hand" to combat an alien menace encroaching on Chiss territory that was considered a threat to the Empire; pre-Disney this was the Yuuzhan Vong (AKA the Far Outsiders, AKA the space cenobites who killed Chewbacca by dropping a moon on him), post-Disney it's Vong-knockoffs called the Grysk. Pre-Disney he was killed by the betrayal of one of his closest aides but is alive and well post-Disney. His actual name is the near-unpronounceable Mitth'raw'nuruodo. With his philosophical nature and fetish for art collecting, he's probably a deliberate ripoff of M'Quve from ''Mobile Suit Gundam'', but good luck getting Zahn to admit it.

* Mace Windu: The original only black dude in space, he was the hardest-as-nails Jedi master of the council during the prequel trilogy and the best swordfighter in the Order, hence his unique purple lightsaber. That, and Sam Jackson wanted his own color to stand out. If Anakin hadn't interfered, he would have killed Darth Sidious and none of the original trilogy would have taken place. His subsequent anti-climatic death in the movie is regarded with annoyance by his fans. His mastery of the Force allows him to channel his anger and enjoyment of battle into his combat style without being corrupted by the Dark Side. He can also detect what he calls "shatterpoints", which lets him detect weaknesses to either mess people up in combat or exploit the "for want of a nail" proverb to turn situations to his side. Has a novel, Shatterpoint, which is pretty much Heart of Darkness IN STAR WARS. Was rumoured to be Disney’s wannabe Emperor, Supreme Leader Snoke, before *SPOILERS!* <s>Ben Solo</s> Kylo Ren killed him, so no one really cares now.

* Mara Jade: Sexy redhead Force user and former servant of Emperor Palpatine. Raised as a servant to Emperor Palpatine, Mara trained under him and with his royal guards to become one of several high-level Force-using operatives with the title of "Emperor's Hand." though she used the cover story of being a dancer he liked. A life of hard work gave Mara a liking for challenges, and she completed numerous missions for him. After Palpatine's death, his last command to Mara was to kill Luke Skywalker. Bereft of his patronage, without job skills besides spy and assassin and unable to find Luke, Mara was forced to live paycheck to paycheck in numerous jobs until becoming a smuggler, even having a fake relationship with Lando. When Mara finally met Luke, she tried to kill him but a survival situation forced them to work together. When she finally learned the the truth of her master and killed an evil clone of Luke called Luuke, freeing her from Palpatine's compulsion. Afterwards Mara joined the Jedi Order and worked alongside Luke. Over the years Mara developed a grudging respect for Luke that grew into love - which Luke developed before Mara did despite Luke saying he didn't like fiery women like Mara, and the two eventually married. Then Yuuzhan Vong agent Nom Anor infected Mara with a terminal virus, and she used the Force to keep it at bay. When the Yuuzhan Vong invaded at large she fought the Vong and the virus as much as she could, being cured of the virus around the time her and Luke's son Ben was born. After the Yuuzhan Vong War ended, Mara led the Jedi alongside Luke and fought in wars against various aliens and the re-emergent Sith. In the following poorly-received book series her nephew Jacen turned to the Dark Side and became the Sith Lord Darth Caedus, so Mara confronted him to put a stop to the threat. During the fight, Jacen distracted Mara with an image of her son Ben then killed Mara via cheap shot with a poisoned dart, Mara's last acts in life being to tell Jacen off while using the Force to alert Luke and Ben and say goodbye to them (Mara's death was one of the main reasons the book series was hated by fans). Her last appearance is as a Force ghost sending her love to Luke after giving a warning and tips on how to fight Abeloth. With her being a sexy redhead with a backstory as a spy-cum-assassin for an evil government before joining the good guys, plus her fiery disposition and penchant for catsuits, she's probably a deliberate ripoff of Black Widow from Marvel Comics (ironic now that Disney owns both the Marvel brand and Star Wars franchise).

* Qui-Gon Jin: Liam Neeson as a Jedi. He was the only one smart enough to recognize a Sith plot, and would've uncovered and exposed Palpatine if it weren't for Darth Maul's sword going through his gut. Was the master of Obi-Wan, and tried to teach Anakin the basics from beyond the grave.

* Ahsoka Tano: An orange, female togruta jedi padawan that helps tell the story of growing up. When she was first introduced in the skubtastic Clone Wars movie, she was basically annoying beyond belief and attached to the notoriously reckless Anakin Skywalker. However, she began to grow on fans, eventually becoming a fan favorite Initially, she dressed only a little better than a Dark Eldar wych, raising serious moral questions about a girl her age dressing that way, but this issue was resolved in season 3 of the clone wars. Her character grows from beyond the simplicity of an <s>(un)</s>amusing wisecracker, much like her master, into a wiser, kinder woman, who's actions speak louder than her words. In the final season of the Clone Wars, she leaves her master and the jedi order, and some believe that she unintentionally caused Anakin Skywalker to fall to the Dark side. She reappears in Rebels, where she takes on the wise guide and teacher for Ezra and Kanan, two other jedi who are fighting the Empire. Thought to have died in the second season, she is revealed to have been saved, and was alive even up to Return Of The Jedi.

* CT-7567/Captain Rex: If the Clone Troopers are the equivalent of Guardsmen, then this guy is the equivalent of the likes of [[Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt|Gaunt]] and [[Colonel "Iron Hand" Straken|Straken]]. The defacto second-in-command of the 501st Legion under Anakin Skywalker, he fought in nearly every major engagement during the Clone Wars, leading his men through hellish battles like on Geonosis at the beginning of the war and on Mandalore at the end. He has a strong sense of morality and cares for the lives of both the men under him and the officers above him, which meant that he often came into conflict with asshat commanders like Krell (who treated their troops as little more than disposable cannon fodder). He even managed to face off against dark-side Force users and live- something very few non-Force users are able to accomplish (To get a better picture of what this is like, imagine a sergeant in the guard facing off against a Chaos Space Marine, and living). After the war and his beloved Republic's transformation into the eventually-despised Empire, he and two other clone commanders went into retirement on a backwater world, fishing for worms the size of skyscrapers on an old walker they converted into a mobile home. He was brought out of retirement by a combination of the rebels of Phoenix Squadron, his old friend and commander Ahsoka, and the Empire being their usual backstabbing, overreactive selves, and so resolved to bring down the corrupt regime and restore the nation he had served out of pride (although most clones were programmed to follow the Republic, and specifically the Chancellor, many ended up choosing instead to follow the ideals of the Republic rather than the people in charge, and some even managed to overcome Palpatine's programming via removing the chip he had planted in their heads during the cloning process). To that end, he participated in many Rebel missions, including the climactic one to destroy the second Death Star (yes, he is the old man you see with Han Solo's commando group in ROTJ, and was confirmed by Lucasfilm to have survived the battle)

* Count Dooku: An elegant, charismatic, gentlemanly Sith lord and master fencer who had dreams of liberating the galaxy from Republic control, but didn't expect his partner in crime to be a backstabbing douchebag. Hates Anakin/Vader for not being a gentleman. In the novels he's also an alien-hating human supemacist who believes the Empire's purpose is to establish humanity as dominant in GFFA. He'd do well as a citizen of the Imperium if he just changed which Emperor he revered.

* Darth Maul: Horned Sith only concerned with bloodshed and fighting. He'd do well as a Khornate Champion. Had his legs cut off then was brought back more badass than ever, until he was utterly stomped by the Emperor then gets killed in a duel with an elderly Obi-wan almost 18 years later. Wields a sick-looking double-bladed lightsaber, doesn't actually gets a single line in the first film dubbed in by a different actor, and played by famous martial arts master Ray Park. He was a silent badass in the movie but for some reason he was made very talkative in the animated series. The EU gave him a backstory as the scion of a race of Sith-aligned Force witches that ''The Clone Wars'' later made canon. The director of ''Solo'' picked him out of a hat to be the leader of the nefarious criminal gang Han gets stuck working with.

* General Grievous: An alien cyborg even more fucked up than what Darth Vader would become (being a robot body that was a canister for his eyes, brain, and vital organs), Grievous was the Supreme Commander of the Droid Army during the Prequels and the Clone Wars TV series (both versions), and a sadistic Jedi hunter. His competence is usually portrayed two totally different ways; in the 2D animated TV series (created by the same guy who made [[Samurai Jack|Samurai Jack]]), he is portrayed as an unstoppable killing machine who roflstomps experienced Jedi Masters, and is only bested by Mace "The Ace" Windu. In the CGI series and the third film, he is an [[Stupid Evil|incompetent, frothing loony]] with a record of failure that even Abbadon would laugh at hysterically. Actually has a somewhat-tragic past: he was a great and virtuous hero on his primitive planet, but Dooku arranged for the Separatists to shoot down Grievous' shuttle down and harvested his shredded body to repurpose him into their general/assassin. Dooku also lobotomized Grievous in way that reduced him to a raging killer. When Grievous recovered, Dooku then pinned blame for the shuttle crash on the Jedi and Republic. Hated being mistaken for a droid, being compared to a droid and all Jedi - especially Obi-Wan Kenobi.

* Tsavong Lah: An alien [[Horus|Warmaster]], Lah was a member of the Yuuzhan Vong race and in charge of the Vong military for much of the war against the Star Wars galaxy. His most notable accomplishments were conquering Coruscant, indirectly causing Anakin Solo's death and trying to capture Jacen and Jaina. A skilled tactician but a poor strategist, Tsavong Lah was [[Commander Kubrik Chenkov|a ruthless fanatic who's willing to throw countless lives away to achieve his goals]]. Also took on the Vong Nom Anor as his advisor, despite hating Anor's self-centeredness and lack of piety. At one point Jacen cut off his foot, so he [[Awesome|cloned an extinct super-predator so he could prove he was still a badass by killing it and take one of its feet to use as a prosthetic foot]]. Also got caught up in a plot by the [[Haemonculi|Shaper Caste to control him through his body modifications]]. He also loved his dad - a retired military officer he'd often turn to for advice, to the point that his death made Tsavong mentally unstable. Came to view Jacen Solo as his nemesis, and was eventually killed by him.

* Nom Anor: A Yuuzhvan Vong member of the Intendant caste. After the events of ROTJ, Nom arrived with a Vong advance force as a saboteur to undermine the galaxy in preparation for the Vong invasion. During this time, Nom Anor took on several identities to manipulate various groups and clashed with the Chiss Ascendancy helping soften the galaxy up for the Vong. The capture of some of his agents also clued the Empire in to the coming Vong threat. He was also such a selfish schemer even Thanquol would turn his nose up in disgust and a major [[Troll]]; before revealing his true identity, when negotiating with Leia he often dressed up and acted like Darth Vader just to mess with her. Also notable for being an atheist while the Vong as a whole are characterized by being deeply religious. Before the war, Nom Anor infected Luke's wife Mara with a terminal illness, forcing her to use the Force to stop its progression. When Mara confronted Nom, he tried and failed to kill her before being forced to flee. After losing his position of power, Nom lost his rank and tried to rally the outcast class under the guise of a prophet, only to throw them away when they weren't useful to him. Nom found his way onto the Supreme Overlord's ([[Asdrubael Vect|not that one]]) flagship during the battle to retake Coruscant. When the Supreme Overlord was killed and the ship started falling apart, Nom tried to kill the heroes three times but was always thwarted. When offered the chance to escape with the heroes, Nom realized he'd burned all his bridges, didn't fit in anywhere and was too proud to reconsider his life choices, so Nom chose to stay behind and die on the exploding flagship. Essentially [[Fabius Bile]] as a self-centered alien bureaucrat.

* Stormtroopers: The soldiers of the Galactic Empire. Originally, these soldiers were vat clones of Mandalorian bounty hunter Jango Fett cloned in large numbers, trained from birth in combat and clad in environmentally sealed suits of their famous gleaming white full body armor. The original clonetroopers served the Republic against the Seperatists, and were turned into the stormtroopers after Palpatine's total take-over. After the rebels blew up the gene-banks, the Empire switched to an enlistment system. Since the First Order doesn't have a good dental plan to bring in recruits, they instead resort to [[Schola Progenium|kidnapping or buying children and raising them as soldiers]] to fill their mook quota. They are unwaveringly loyal and obedient to the Empire, ruthless and brutally efficient foes in combat, and incredibly precise shots with their state-of-the-art weapons. Naturally, these qualities all go out the window when they encounter the protagonists, but that's life when you're wearing a [[helmet]].
** These boys comes in literally ''all'' the flavors. Variants based on environments (Snow, Desert, Shore and many more) and roles (Pilots, Heavy, Commando and the elite Death Troopers), ensuring that the Star Wars brand always has a new bunch of cool soldier dudes to make toys off of. When things has to get really dangerous for the heroes, the elite variants are brought in, like the Clone Commandoes, Death Troopers and Sith Troopers.

* Inquisitorius: Dark Siders trained by the Empire. While the Rule of Two prevents additional Sith, it says nothing about other force users under their command. It is not known if Darth Bane expected the Imperial Inquisition or if he would have approved of the Emperor bending the Rule of Two such. Their job is primarily to ferret out the remaining Jedi and other force users, but they are also used for all manner of wet work and internal affairs. Since their first mention ''way'' back in ''The Star Wars Sourcebook'', they have served as enemy force users that while still dire threats could still ''conceivably'' be defeated by the player characters. The source of many prominent antagonists in the expanded universe, including Jerac.

==Post-Disney==
* Rey: Protagonist of the new trilogy. Most people either think she's a sloppily written Mary Sue and wish-fulfillment character for the writers' female-empowerment fetish or that she's a fine protagonist and the former group is just being salty about new things. She hasn't undergone the traditional Hero's Journey to earn her skills, or develop her character, and many see natural talent and an innate well rounded personality as poor story telling in a fairy tale. Her static personality throughout the story is another common complaint. While it was foreshadowed she would have piloting skills with the pilot memorabilia in her home from which the audience was supposed to infer she knew how, Disney had to later specifically point out "she literally plays flight sims anytime she isn't working, that's the shit on her table". But since the memorabilia didn't look like a flight sim, some viewers concluded this was an asspull by Disney. To the credit of the writers however, the foreshadowing implies X-Wing obsession so it makes sense that she royally trashes the Falcon trying to escape TIE Fighters with it (like everyone else who played the old X-Wing video games). She also has fucking god tier Force talent, able to pull off Force techniques that took the previous protagonists years to learn such as the Jedi Mind Trick. The sequel semi-explained this with an actual asspull by suggesting the Force balances itself and with only one remaining trained Force user below a master left alive she pretty much got cheat-coded to be at his level as Light Side opposite...although that ignores the Force users left alive in the Disney EU who have no Dark Side opposites while also relying on information from that same EU (the trippy metaphysical Force entity kind) so it only works if you turn off your brain and give up. Apart from all that, Rey is a scavenger who grew up parent-less in a wreck on a desert planet, earning from the scraps of old Rebel and Imperial machinery. While she's been seen using the Light Side of the Force for the most part, the Dark Side seems to tug a great deal in her. She also has a vision of herself as a Sith with a double-bladed red lightsaber similar to Luke's tree vision on Dagobah. Due to a spate of leaks, numerous details were revealed before the release of the film such as her being Sheev's grandaughter and the fate of her parents; Rey's parents hid her on Jakku because they were being hunted and were killed shortly after leaving. After Rey joins forces with Kylo to defeat Palpatine, she actually dies... only to be brought back to life by <s>Pokémon tears</s> <s>true love's first kiss</s> Kylo Ren using the Force to give his life to save hers, and the two share a kiss before Kylo dies. She ends up on Tatooine and with the last of the Skywalker line dead (by technicality, the Force powers always came from Palpatine so it just means Shmi's bloodline is dead) Rey, while gaining no new personality to speak of, [[Blood Ravens|takes the Skywalker last name as her own]] since she will never know her actual last name now. Ironically, despite being touted as a strong female character, Rey is propped up by the failures of men and saved by men throughout the trilogy until the final movie where she finally gets to kick ass onn her own. Rey remains the only character alive with any Jedi training, which comes purely from old holy books which presumably contain a more pure version of the Jedi teachings before the code overcorrections that every Jedi era has had dating back to the KOTOR Council trying and failing to prevent another Darth Revan.

* Finn: A First Order Stormtrooper (serial code FN-2187) who has doubts about the First Order after a battle where he has to shoot innocent civilians and ends up defecting to the Resistance, allowing him to actually aim worth a damn. Finn ends up carrying ''The Force Awakens'' thanks to the acting talents of John Boyega. He probably would have made a much better main character than Rey because at least ''he'' has a fucking ''reason'' to go on a space adventure and undergoes actual character development. He’s basically Kyle Katarn, only he didn’t get to steal the Death Star plans or become a Jedi. The second movie unfortunately rendered Finn a character without an arc, as discussed below. Had a really cool scene where he fights a former squadmate with a lightsaber, before said [[FAIL|squadmate beat him with a big electric stick.]] He also had a second cool scene where he attempts to fight on a trained dark Jedi (not a Sith) with that same lightsaber before getting badly injured, showing tremendous fucking balls (and implying that Kylo Ren is about on par with a pissed off Stormtrooper with a lightning sick). Revealed to be Force-sensitive in Rise Of Skywalker, and finds an entire division of Stormtroopers on Endor who quit the First Order as a group the same way he did as an individual; the leader of them replaces Rose as his love interest, despite the same movie implying heavily he has an unrequited love for Rey (later in an interview JJ said he was trying to say he was Force-sensitive, while some fans think his knowledge she is Palpatine's grandaughter was what he was supposed to say which meant a "why didn't you tell me" plot would follow). Ends the franchise as the general of the ground forces of the Resistance, a famous galactic hero, and probably going to be trained as a Jedi. So yeah, Finn is canon Kyle Katarn from start to finish.

* BB-8: The R2-D2 replacement and mascot of the new trilogy. Poe's buddy robot, started out as the plot device that the First Order was after in The Force Awakens, saves Finn and Rose's asses twice by taking down prison guards and piloting an AT-ST to attack Stormtroopers in The Last Jedi as well as Poe's in the comic. Saves Rey in Rise and reactivates a small antique droid companion that can speak Common AKA English, giving him his own C-3PO.

* Poe Dameron: An X-Wing pilot and one of the best pilots in the Resistance who gave Finn his nickname. Poe is the son of an ace pilot and an elite Rebel soldier, who was seemingly conceived in an Ewok hut during the Yubyub song and grew up with a holy Force tree in his yard that was a gift from Luke. Gets captured by the First Order but gets rescued by a defecting Finn and they both escape using a TIE Fighter. Assumed dead by Finn after crashing the TIE Fighter, though ends up coming back shooting down an entire squadron of TIE Fighters. Its never really stated why did he leave Finn behind in the crash site, how did he leave the planet or why did he pretty much abandon his mission of trying to find BB-8. As such he's barely in The Force Awakens. This is because the original script George Lucas proposed for Force Awakens used Poe as a means of Finn escaping, whereupon Finn takes it on himself to complete Poe’s last mission and eventually replace Poe in the Resistance. After Poe’s actor lamented that he dies in every movie, Poe was made to survive the crash and Finn gained a fearful coward who becomes a hero subplot, which unfortunately left both characters with nowhere to go for character arcs. Poe is far more important in The Last Jedi, <nowiki>but not in good ways. He disobeys orders and leads an attack on a First Order capital ship which not only results in the destruction of most of the surviving Resistance small fighters, but delays their escape long enough for the First Order flagship (so large it is essentially a giant capital city for the First Order) to catch up with them and massacre the Resistance. Poe then mutinies when the now-comatose Leia’s subordinate Holdo is put in charge of the Resistance (Ackbar was killed before that because his Voice Actor died, leaving Holdo as highest ranking officer) to enact his own plan using Finn...which fails, resulting in the deaths of most of the rest of the Resistance and the loss of their last capital ship. Poe’s counterattack also fails, and by the end its only thanks to Rey and Luke that anyone survives. By the end, there’s barely enough Resistance left to fill up the Millennium Falcon, although the First Order got it just as bad thanks to Holdo’s last act. In short: Poe is Magnus the Red tier of fuckups (for the same reason too, not being trusted with the truth but with even less justification).</nowiki> OR ALTERNATELY : Poe actually scores a massive victory for the Resistance as he destroys a massive dreadnought that would have wiped out a base on the ground and then some with a squadron of a dozen bombers '''and one fighter to protect them''' at the price of said bombers that were so stupidly designed they would basically kamikaze as their payloads are dropped gradually meaning the first explosion would start a chain going all the way up to the bomber itself. So basically, Poe destroyed a massive enemy asset at the price of some worthless ships but he still gets demoted because he had the common sense to not follow the order to retreat '''as the bombers were already hovering over their target and were completely defenseless in the first place and would have been even worse off during a retreat'''. This order makes so little sense, it's safe to assume it was only put in here so Poe could disobey it and the audience would understand he's a hotshot who doesn't respect the hierarchy while he was in the right in terms of tactics and strategy and it's already a miracle he got the raid to succeed. Essentially, claiming Poe fucked up is like saying blowing up a pillbox full of enemy soldiers and loads of ammo stockpiled in it with a single grenade is "fucking up" because you maybe probably possibly could have saved the grenade for later and made even more damage. If Poe hadn't had the dreadnought destroyed, it would have with ease one-shotted their ships and their base if they would have even got there (especially as the First Order could track the resistance and therefore the Dreadnought would've simply followed them and blown them up immediately). Not to mention that the bombers where the worst designed starships to date. No big loss there. In other words, he is the only reason they survived. Revealed to be a former Spice smuggler who had a criminal crew in Rise Of Skywalker, which is the bulk of his character development for most of the movie since he otherwise just banters with Finn and Rey. He gets friendzoned by his ex twice (his abandonment of their crew '''really''' screwed them over and she decides to forgive him for it, so its not like its out of nowhere to not want to shag) and leads initially the small Resistance fleet before the combined forces of the militias and pirate crews and Rebel veterans suddenly show up, meaning he lead the biggest navy in the entire setting and does it well which mostly makes up for the stupidity of the Last Jedi "character arc".

* Maz Kanata: An orange alien who knows a lot about the Force. In her backstory she was a Force-sensitive that’s somewhere in Yoda-tier age, but was never trained as a Jedi and instead used her talents to survive among the “third faction” (Hutts, smugglers, mafias, Mandos) while remaining as friendly to the “light side” factions as Hutts are to the “Dark Side” factions. Apparently also a supreme badass, judging from her brief appearance in TLJ. Definitely fucked Chewbacca and somehow survived. She procured Anakin’s/Luke’s blue lightsaber from the depths of the Bespin gas giant simply because she wanted it, and gave it to Rey in Force Awakens as well as some grandmotherly advice to her and Rey. She appears briefly to give the heroes contact information for a codebreaker in The Last Jedi. Joins the Resistance proper for the final movie, but not actually doing much onscreen other than spending some time with Leia.

* Kylo Ren: A Dark Jedi (not Sith, they technically went extinct with Vader, Sheev, Dooku, and Maul) who is actually the son of Han and Leia, Ben Solo, which the Internet absolutely refused to shut up about after it was leaked. He's mostly based on Jacen Solo from the EU (a son of Han and Leia who became a Jedi then fell to the Dark Side and became a Sith) with his new name likely taken from EU character Kybo Ren and having the same real name as Luke's son from the EU with Mara, Ben Skywalker. He idolizes his grandfather, Darth Vader and wears a black suit and a mask to show this. He wields a unique crossguard lightsaber. People thought he would be a badass after seeing the trailers but after seeing the movie, he turned out to be a half-naked pussy looking like a gay Turkish oil wrestler who very often gets temper tantrums and gets his ass kicked by a teenage girl (though to be fair, if he had been a complete badass, everyone would’ve just complained that he was a rehash of Vader. So, you know, rock and a hard place. Also he only had his ass beat since he was already shot by a bowcaster and stabbed with a lightsaber, so fighting even in spite of that is pretty badass). Kylo's character became significantly more fleshed out in TLJ, ironically making him one of the only characters to have actual development in the whole movie. Between that and Kylo's actor Adam Driver being really bro-tier about the whole situation (he even appeared in a skit as Kylo which also included poking fun at Kylo's emo traits), Kylo has managed to win over many fans, with some citing him as probably the most interesting character in the Sequels. Serves Palpatine before turning on him with Rey and gives his life to heal her, scoring a kiss with her before he dies redeemed as Ben, ala Vader dying as Anakin. This relationship between Rey and Kylo sharply divided the fanbase and created some extreme reactions, the worst cases being some extremely rabid Kylo/Rey shippers who insisted Adam and Daisy Ridey (Rey's actor) become a real-life couple despite both being in separate relationships, '''harassed Daisy Ridley's boyfriend on social media, harassed Adam Driver along with his family (including stalking them and wanting Adam's youngest child to die) and made death threats against JJ Abrams''' (far surpassing practically any other Star Wars backlash, such as any backlash - real or perceived - that Rose Tico's actress got or the backlash over Chewie's death in the Legends).

* Snoke: Supreme Leader of the First Order who speaks to his underlings through a massive hologram. Very little is known about him at the moment. Though many fan theories say that he is Darth Plagueis, the old master of Palpatine who was assumed dead (everyone assumes every new Darksider is him, though, so grain of salt) the powers that be have repeatedly denied the theory (though it's admittedly a better guess than suggesting that Snoke is [[What|Mace Windu, Boba Fett, or a clone of Darth Vader]], which we would like to stress are [[Derp|actual fan theories]])...unfortunately, we will have to wait for an inevitable comic book or novel to explain it, since he [[RAGE|gets killed like a chump by his own servant, Kylo "Emofag" Ren.]] It is possible he may return given that the ring on his finger has inscriptions that translate to various rephrasing of “survive death” that is carved from the stone of Darth Vader's lava castle (yes, you read that right), but that may actually be a nod to Palpatine’s EU resurrections. Turns out to be a genetically engineered pawn of Palpatine's, like he was literally born looking as shriveled and injured as he did and had some kind of fabricated backstory like an organic Blade Runner Replicant.

* General Hux: The First Order's Tarkin equivalent and a moustacheless ginger Hitler in space. Delivers a pretty cool speech, but can't fight to save his life.. The backstory for Hux is his father was an Imperial hero, and Hux wants to be the First Order version of his old man and lead the FO to a final victory. Hux openly dislikes Kylo Ren and has frustration with the Force-users borders on meta at times. Spends most of TLJ as a foil to the edgier and more toyetic bad guys, but he seems to be the only one to have noticed how impractical the Empire/FO's fuckhuge weaponry can be when you're fighting something smaller than a planet and have lost the element of surprise. Becomes Kylo Ren's comic relief ginger prison bitch at the end of TLJ, although he has an interesting scene where he was about to finish off the unconscious Kylo until he woke up. Sent some very simple info to the Resistance in Rise Of Skywalker that set off the movie plot (mostly by making them take the info they already had seriously) and later helped the main characters escape, and was immediately shot for his efforts. He is never mentioned again.

* Captain Phasma: A First Order operative in charge of instructing the new Stormtrooper legions, Phasma serves as the Boba Fett of TFA - which is to say that she does nothing of note other than stand around and look cool until she figuratively and literally gets thrown into the trash in Force Awakens. Lucasfilm have apologized for overadvertising the character in the lead-up to the film since she was just supposed to look cool and do nothing like Boba Fett originally did but the huge presence of her in the marketing implied she was going to be a major character (remember, Jar Jar and generic Battle Droids had far more merch than Maul during the release of Episode 1) and have promised to give Phasma an actual role and backstory for TLJ that will play into Finn's story. (This turned out to be bullshit due to the fucked-up nature of TLJ's production, but the reshoots managed to give her a good showing anyway.) Her backstory was released in a novel where she was a tribal on a planet the Empire stripped into the stone age, who backstabbed her tribe for a stronger tribe, backstabbed her second tribe and brother to rescue a stranded Imperial officer and join the Empire, backstabbed her mentor to become the supreme commander of the Stormtrooper Corps in the First Order, then in the comic series she was shown to have survived the trash compactor when a Resistance bomb blew it up and she entirely disregarded everything (including saving Starkiller Base or Kylo Ren) to backstab and frame one of her subordinates for lowering the shields then promptly hunted him down to “bring him to justice”. So [[Skaven|she’s a spear-wielding backstabber extraordinaire.]] At the present she's got a nasty scar on one eye where her hyper durable helmet was busted in, and fell into a fire on a shattered starship (to be fair the ship wasn't exploding or breached where she was, and aside from that one hole her armor is fine so she's almost certainly showing up again even if not in a movie). Did not appear in the last movie of the trilogy, with JJ saying "One of the things that surprised him the most about TLJ is Phasma just getting killed off" so she's dead until further notice.

* FN-2199/"TR-8R": a First Order Stormtrooper who wields a badass riot baton in combat. Notable only for two reasons; he shouts "Traitor!" at Finn, and then he kicks his punk ass despite the latter wielding a fucking lightsaber. Such is the stuff that memes are made of. Gets a bit of backstory that he and Finn trained and grew up together, hence his outrage at seeing Finn fighting for the opposite side. Even if he goes out like a punk to Han Solo, by all accounts, <s>FN-2199</s> TR-8R is what Phasma '''should''' have been. [https://image.prntscr.com/image/VFRN0EFuQkCz3pkBYGCN2Q.jpg He would make a great commissar].

* Jyn Erso: A former member of the Space Taliban (Rebels who refused to group up with the rest of the Rebels due to their extreme willingness to do evil shit to kill evil assholes) who is captured by the Rebels so they can talk to Space Bin Laden (Saw Gerrara, a character who guest-starred in a few episodes of the cartoon Rebels and pretty much shows up to die in Jyn's movie) about rumors of a planet killer being fueled by Space Iraqi oil crystals (that makes lightsabers work), one that was partially designed by her father. Jyn is angry all of the time because her life sucks, she watches every parental figure in her life die in front of her, most of them over the period of a single day, and the movie hopes this will hide the fact that she really doesn't do much other then flip authority figures the bird. Her name mirrors that of Jan Ors, partner-in-crime of legendary badass Kyle Katarn which is REALLY not as well-received by the fans of the series her movie retconned as Disney thought it would be (to be fair, the old EU had around ten different versions of the Death Star plans being stolen which many fans just figured were combined into the one Leia had, so that doesn't mean Kyle and Jan can't ever be made canon again). Gets killed when Tarkin used the Death Star to destroy the facility in an attempt to stop the Rebels transmitting classified information, but Jyn and Cassian got the Death Star plans beamed into space before that.

* Cassian Andor: A Rebel spy and assassin, Cassian angsts about the fact that he lives in a political thriller about the space mafia VS the space Nazis set mere days before the simple good and evil morality of the original trilogy kicks in. His only friend is a droid, but that's not exactly as unusual in the setting as the movie implies it is. Shares an award with Luke for not getting the girl in the end...kind of; they do share a final hug and possible kiss in the elevator before he died with her getting atomized by a partial-strength shot from the Death Star. The Disney Canon variant of Kyle Katarn, who was an Imperial officer turned Rebel turned Jedi Master, who is so badass he shaves with a lightsaber. A massive waste of character. UPDATE: We're now getting a TV series based on him, so there's at least that?

* K-2S0: What C-3P0 would be if he grew a pair and got a stronger droid body. A reprogrammed Imperial tactical droid and Cassian's only friend. Does that thing where he spits out survival odds in stressful moments. Caught a grenade in mid-air then tossed it back at it's original thrower without even looking, shot Stormtroopers (even took out two by [[Angry Marines|picking up a third stromtrooper and whacking them with him]]), and delivered some great deadpan lines which endeared him the audience - even those growing more jaded to these new movies liked him. So of course he dies first in order to establish that shit gets real during the last twenty minutes of the movie, although he died holding the line so Stormtroopers wouldn't reach Cassian and Jyn and his last act was smashing the control panel with his bare hands so at least he went out as cool as he came in.

* Chirrut Îmwe: <s>Discount Jedi</s> The real star of Rogue One. A blind martial artist who may or may not have force powers, can beat a squad of Stormtroopers with a staff, shoot TIE Fighters out of the air, and could take your girl if he wanted to. Haha, jk, he's totally homo for his bara partner-in-crime with the badass autocannon. Dies in a bombing run, but he doesn't fear death. Even his actor (from the badass "Ip Man" series) admitted that he was shoehorned into the movie in a desperate attempt to make China give a shit about Star Wars (which failed, because China really just doesn't give a shit about the franchise). Chirrut is memorable mostly because he belongs to the "Order Of The Whills", notable because "Whills" were a thing George Lucas kept wanting to use in the original trilogy (immortal beings who were supposed to be telling the story, hence "a long time ago", later the spirits that make up the Force itself, and finally an order of warriors that Leia was supposed to found after Luke's death in a sixth movie before he decided to take a break then do prequels instead).

* Baze Malbus: Chirrut's best mate and self-appointed bodyguard. Has three lines, but comes off as memorable because of his hellgun-looking backpack mounted autocannon with a scanvisor that lets him hold down the trigger and headshot stormtroopers until they are all dead. In early scripts Chirrut was his father figure, in the finished product they're ambiguously gay even though the director intended there to be a "finding peace with the pastor who heard his confession after a very grim life" vibe. Dies shortly after Chirrut, and actually makes a connection with the Force in his final moments. Quite a bit of work went into designing his visual style and his backstory, not a single bit of which ended up in the movie.

* Orson Krennic: Director of the Imperial Military Research Division. Forces Jyn's father into building the Death Star for him, causes the death of Jyn's mother, then proceeds to spend the rest of the movie getting roasted by the more competent Imperial characters because he's a fucking moron with a grudge. He's typical of the average Imperial who doesn't wear Stormtrooper armor in the Expanded Universe as well as Disney canon, notable mainly for giving off "Resident Evil villain" vibes.

* Saw Gerrara: Originally a member of the Space Viet Cong, this guy doesn't fuck around. Torture civilians? Check. Massacre entire patrols of Imperials? Check. In fact, his methods were considered so extreme that even the Rebel Alliance wanted nothing to do with him. Strictly speaking, he's a pre-Disney character as his first appearance on-screen was as part of the Clone Wars TV series; his first episode airing the same month that Disney acquired the franchise, making him one of the few characters to make the transition from the small screen to the big screen. Though he gets deaded within the first 30 minutes of Rogue One and does absolutely nothing of any value other than hinder the protagonists long enough to pad the run time, he has a lot more of his back-story filled out in the Rebels TV series. He was played by actor Forest Whitaker, so at least there's that.

* Sabine Wren: One of the main protagonists from the Star Wars Rebels show. A Mandalorian woman with a flair for art, explosions, and kicking Imperial ass, she is probably one of the most recognizable characters from the animated side of Disney canon. At first, she was a patriotic Imperial, designing weapons for the Emperor and his vassal ruler for Mandalore, Gar Saxon, until Gar decided to test one of her weapons on a group of Mandalorians, leading her to be labeled an oath-breaker by her people and cast out from her home-planet of Krownest by her mom. She then spends the events of the TV-series with her new surrogate family, the crew of the rebel freighter *Ghost*, and eventually recovers an ancient sword revered by her people, leading her to reconcile with her past, her birth family, and her people. Now, after the Battle of Endor, she is on a quest with Ahsoka Tano to find her 'totally-not-boyfriend', the Jedi Ezra Bridger, and Grand Admiral Thrawn, as they disappeared into the Unknown Regions following the events of the series finale.

* Amilyn Holdo: An [[Tumblr|overbearing, purple-haired “Rebel hero”]] who somehow winds up being one of the key leaders of the Resistance, despite displaying no actual military acumen or diplomatic skill what-so-fucking-ever or even feeling the need to wear an uniform, instead wearing a [[what|ballgown]]. If you don't like the direction the Disney canon is going in, this character is your Jar Jar Binks and probably is to you even if you do approve/tolerate it. Her only role was to basically die in style but unfortunately she was pretty forgettable and nobody actually cared when she was atomized, even if it was a really fucking cool death. Tie-in material tried to fix this; the only real requirement for joining the Resistance was "didn’t think Leia was crazy for thinking the First Order was going to perform Star Wars 9/11”, and Holdo was only the captain of a small frigate before her battlefield promotion due to the entire chain of command other than the other frigate commander dying or being incapacitated by a single torpedo blast to the bridge of the Resistance flagship. As a matter of fact, [[skub|her "super-duper secret plan" ends up getting most of the Resistance killed after Finn and Poe fuck it up]], due to the fact that she decided to [[skub|not tell the freshly demoted highest ranking pilot who had just lost the resistance the last of their bombers her plan, causing him to mutiny]], and she only partially redeems herself via [[What|FTL ramming their command ship into the First Order command ship, destroying most of the FO fleet, establishing that any freighter with a hyperdrive is a WMD which kind of breaks the shit out of pretty much any story going forward since the last movie established that a ship can come out of hyperdrive inside orbital shields and the supplemental material establishing a pilot droid can fly hyperdrive-capable fighters meaning almost anyone in the universe can deploy a supernuke anywhere anytime they want and nobody will ever know it was them)]], which is briefly visually spectacular but [[fluff]]-wise highly.... [[skub|take a guess]]. In the original script there was a subplot about there actually being a First Order spy aboard with the audience knowing in advance that there was a plan that spy could have ruined, but in an absolutely stunning display of terrible choices none of it was even filmed and the story was not changed to cut the references to that dropped plot.

* Rose Tico: A maintenance worker who acts as a tagalong for some of the most boring and annoying parts of The Last Jedi. After losing her sister in the beginning of the movie, she catches her idol Finn (who has apparently become something of a celebrity within the Resistance over the course of the week or so since he defected) trying to desert ship in order to warn Rey not to rendezvous as they were being chased by the First Order's fleet since Leia had given her a beacon indicating a rendezvous point (something that is entirely forgotten about for the rest of the movie, since Rey doesn't even use it to meet up with the Resistance at the end). She later went along with Finn to the Gilded Age planet to find the expert capable of helping them deactivate the First Order's tracking system, and despite literally growing up on a planet like that she still thinks its a great idea to just park their fighter on a luxury beach and run straight into a casino full of arms dealers wearing their military uniforms which results in the two being arrested and meeting a random criminal who sells the two out to the First Order because he overhears them literally explain their entire situation, despite the aforementioned "growing up as either a slave or a poor servant, its kind of unclear" backstory which means she should probably know more than the guy who literally only knows life as a Stormtrooper about shit like that. Her lust for Finn's BBC drives her to cockblock his heroic sacrifice on Salt Hoth before confessing his love for him at the worst possible moment in a plot point that will likely go nowhere. Also delivers the worst line in the entirety of the franchise: "[[What|That's how we are going to win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love.]]" Which is even worse because Finn was not fighting a hated foe since he has no hatred towards his enemies and was instead just sacrificing himself for the people he loves. This quantum singularity of [[bullshit]] led to a substantial fraction of TLJ's backlash being directed at her actress despite the fact that she had nothing to do with writing any of it. Was an interesting character- how some heroes could come from unlikely places- that got handed shit writing in a movie that was way too crowded with a huge ensemble to begin with, and almost zero development. In The Rise Of Skywalker the character was redeemed since instead of giving pithy speeches about love and being oppressed she spends her time doing actual ground crew technician work between battles, when characters are meeting to plan their next move she speaks like a high-ranking memeber of the Resistance (by process of elimination, but still), and the most important thing; '''she actually gets to participate in a battle and shoots some motherfuckers''', basically fixing the "her figures don't sell" problem. The plot point of her being in love with Finn is not addressed, like in any way at all, and she has very little screentime so she's pretty much been simultaiously upgraded/downgraded into being the Wedge to Finn's Luke.

* TZ-1719: The leader of a unit of First Order Stormtroopers who, upon being ordered to shoot civilians, all laid down their guns at once despite there being no communication between them to do so. Implied to be Force sensitive, with the accidental subtext being that she simply subconsciously Force-tricked her troops into not being evil anymore. They stole their dropships and escaped to Endor, living a non-tech lifestyle by taming some kind of goat aliens as mounts. She personally took on the name "Jannah". Her primary purpose of the movie is to replace Rose as Finn's love interest since they couldn't decide on hooking Finn up with Rey or not (for problems such as "would it offend racists into not buying merch, would it be seen as sexist to end her journey with a Disney Princess ending of getting a relationship, etc"). Further unfortunate subtext is how TZ is quite literally just Rule 63 Finn, although it fixes the "Finn Problem" that has been pointed out where suddenly Stormtroopers dying can be seen as a tragic loss of a potential hero by adding the idea that "<strike>Kanye was right, slavery is a choice</strike> good characters who end up as Stormtroopers can just choose not to shoot the non-combatants so anyone that doesn't deserves to die like the nameless <strike>loot pinatas</strike> mooks they are. The end of the movie adds <strike>spinoff bait</strike> the implication she is Lando's grandaughter, or at the least he has an idea of who she was taken from as a baby.

* Qi'ra: Han Solo's old girlfriend and partner introduced in ''Solo: A Star Wars Story,'' filling in for a number of older EU characters (don't worry, the Disney Star Wars comics had already given Han an ex other than her anyway). Grew up with Han on Corellia before getting forced into the Crimson Dawn, which is like the Mafia in space except run by Darth Maul instead of the Hutts. Helps Han survive an unobtainium deal gone bad, then backstabs her boss to become her gang's alpha dog and Maul's personal agent. Too bad this will probably never be followed up on outside of tie-in novels thanks to how bad the movie did. Also kinda awkward they made her Maul's Personal Assistant right after Rebels killed him off, meaning that Star Wars fans felt absolutely no curiosity about how the entire thing was going to go.

* L3-37: While K-2S0 brought droid characters to an awesome new high, L3-37 brought them to a new low. While not being as bad as Holdo and Rose, and being far more memorable than the chick, the spy dude, the TIE Fighter pilot dude, and the two Asian dudes from Rogue One (admit it, you don't fucking remember more than two of their names at best), she suffered the most from the reshoots the movie underwent. The /v/-tier name is only the warning label on this crock of shit. A droid that constructed a body for herself from spare parts and wound up as Lando's version of Chewbacca, L3-37 is a [[SJW|woke robot feminist in space by direct admission of the writers, with everything that implies]] while also being a revolutionary leader who gives no fucks about any disgusting meatbags and at the same time is physically romantically involved with Lando while giving romantic advice to other characters and at the same time is all about profit and shooting up the place while using other droids as just pawns in her rampages (did we mention this character REALLY suffered from the reshoots?) Her body is destroyed in an escape attempt but ends up as one of the droid brains running the Millennium Falcon (yes, the same computer C-3P0 complained about in the original trilogy; draw your own conclusions.) Long story short, the feminist/sexbot/droid-supremacist/human loving/spree killer provides constant tonal whiplash. Did we mention that since she began without having a body there was no reason to stick her in the Falcon which is a fate worse than death based on about 1/4 of her characterization, it adds a LOT of disturbing subtext to Lando's fondness for the Falcon and the fact that Han basically just kept it after winning the game despite knowing Lando's lover was trapped forever inside, the implications for the conversations she had with Threepio during Empire Strikes Back, and the fact it was kept abandoned by a criminal on a desert planet for at least a decade means she's probably gone even more insane? Fan reaction is mixed, but only between "worst character ever, would prefer to watch Jar Jar and Holdo star in a sitcom than watch the movie again" and "had potential, was disappointed, still don't like the name".