Non-Playable Canon Entities
So.
Did you know that those Titans and AI Bosses you've been fighting are the actual in-game versions of multiple named deities? And that various Ults / Card Arts give us designs for other mythological entities / creatures? And that the devs can't give a straight fucking answer to save their lives for, so I'm just going to ignore their various contradictions and give every single recognisable figure if it fits the description. Seriously, these jokesters tried to pass off that the Fire Giant wasn't Surt at one point, after already saying it was Surtr multiple times and being the most well-known NPC feature in the game - chalk it up to lack of communication in-studio, I'm doing them a fucking favor anyways.
While I've reserved some of the various other names for the in-lore interludes throughout the summary (e.g. Mordred's design shows up when covering Arthur's backstory), I'll list the ones that don't really otherwise fit anywhere else, here.
Also, as a heads up, while I am a fucking genius and a master of mythological dealings - there are times when I might have had smoke blown up my ass (I've caught enough of them myself to know when some sperg is just playing headcanon). As such, while I'll usually (and quite obviously) indicate when a given depiction is a bit shaky, treat this entire thing with a slight shred of healthy doubt (~2-3% doubt should do you fine - honestly I'm not a fucking moron, I've caught enough errors when dealing with the lore, it's everybody else who's retarded).
In-Game Entities
Titans
Themis (Greek) and Kronos (Greek) - The 'default' Titans across gamemodes from Season 5 onwards, appearing in Conquest and Assault.
These two have been confirmed to be intentional from the getgo, unlike the Titans that preceeded them:
- Themis - The Titan of Divine Order, Fairness and Justice.
Most commonly known nowadays as the blindfolded holder of the Bronze Sword and Scales of Justice, the same imagery seen throughout legal systems across the world. Counterpart to Nemesis on another side of the Primordial family tree, and one of the few Titans that were not imprisoned within Tartarus post-Titanomachia, Themis was the Goddess who would oversee justice in any major conflict first, in a peaceful and grudgeless manner. If she was ignored or overruled however, then her cousin Nemesis would step in, to see to... Divine Retribution.
Overall, focused more on the established laws of civilized society; those with set rules and rulings (Marriage, Money / Trade Disuputes, Calls to Council etc) over perceived sleights or incidents that have no set 'rules' to the way they're initiated (Assault, Murder, Rape etc). The latter would be judged in the afterlife (the Keres salivating at the thought), since the usual penalty for such crimes within the Mortal Realm was death anyways.
Themis got a bit of a touch-up during Season 10, but otherwise, her design is the same. - Kronos - The Titan of the Harvest
Usurper of the Primordials, antagonistic leader of the Titans, father of the first generation of Olympians. Also known as Zeus's abusive dad, and Poseidon / Hades / Hera / Demeter / Hestia's devourer. Overall, a pretty major fucking name in Greek mythology.
See the Classics aside for more detail on Kronos's story.
See the Arena aside for the design of his Roman counterpart, Saturn.
For the Chaos-side Titan from Season 8 onwards, see a later aside on Babylonian Dragons, where I go over all of Tiamat's brood at once.
NOBODY
Possibly Alexiares & Anicetus (Greek) and Perses (Greek) - The two early 'default' Titans after the beta Minotaurs were phased out, still seen as the Titans in Siege.
These two models were designed to not be any outright named entity when they were released in 2013, rather, they were simply conceptual embodiments of Order / Chaos - but that doesn't exclude potential retcon. This has been done before when dealing with the lore of named things (for example, the Old Assault map was outright said not to be Valhalla, just a Norse outpost at Vigridr - and yet is heavily indicated to actually be Valhalla in the Fall of War event), so I won't rule it off the table and I'll leave it up to you.
As for their apparent 'in-Universe' lore (which has absolutely been retconned, it's that long ago), it doesn't describe any known God or Pantheon and it's just easier to give you their introductory summary that they released with, that I've dug up:
- Titan of Chaos - From the primordial forces of Wind and Fire the Titan of Chaos was born. Merely an avatar of the greater forces, he influenced the Gods and humanity alike with his great power. The Titan wants nothing more than the Gods and humanity to use their powers unrestrained. To live free of the tyranny of the Old Order, however chaotic that may be. Many view his followers as heretics. However, the army he has amassed thinks of themselves as freedom fighters, true patriots, and they are fully prepared to lay down their lives for his cause.
- Titan of Order - Once the Titan of Chaos had literally torn a rift through the earths surface with his army of heretics and rogue Gods, the Primordial Forces of Thunder and Lighting spawned the Titan of Order. The Titan's physical manifestation represents order through force, the binding of one’s freedoms for the greater good. She is many, but one, bound to a single cause. She is the embodiment of the Old Order. Her army faithfully believes that terrible things will come if the order of the Gods isn't maintained. They must stop this rogue army of humans and demigods before they upset the balance, and Primordial Forces rip the world apart.
At some point it seems the two may have had flipped-alignment versions (shown further below) however that idea was most likely scrapped either to keep them focused to their design or due to engine limits / time constraints. On the other hand, the names Alexiares & Anicetus and Perses continually pop up in reference to them, and from in-house linked sauces too - to the point these may have been their 'in-post' naming at minimum. While the two personally looks / sound closer to Prometheus and two Oceanids / Nereids to me - I'm not in the business of fanfic, I'm just telling you what I've dug up.
I'll make it clear - I couldn't find outright recognition that the two are Alexiares & Anicetus or Perses, so it's Death of the Author as to if you think they align or not.
- Alexiares and Anicetus were predominantly known as the Gatekeepers of Olympus, in a similar vein to how Cerberus acts for Hades, however were also minor gods of Gods of Sport and Youth. Children of Heracles and his post-death wife Hebe.
In this case it seems Rule 63 is in play, since Alexiares & Anicetus were Heracle's *sons*.I mean look at the size of those divine chests... and those hips ... and their one leg on each side for easy ac-As a more direct addressal of the topic, male twins were heavily the norm within Greek mythology, while female twins were much rare compared to the 'sister groups' conventions. The only really notable set of female twins within Greek mythology is Helen ofSpartaTroy and Clytemnestra of Mycenae, the two lead mortal females within the Epic of Troy, married to the two commanders of the opposing sides. Most other same-gender twin-pairings (Castor & Pollux / The Gemini, Heracles and Iphicles, Sisyphus and Salmoneus; then for the Romans, Romulus and Remus etc) are entirely male-male.wyminfolk BTFO - Perses was a lesser commented on Titan; Patron of Barbarism, Merciless Pillaging and Mindless Destruction.
Mostly known nowadays along with his wife Asteria (Titaness of the sacred isle of Delos, birthplace of Apollo / Artemis) as a parent of Hecate, the Goddess of Sorcery / Witchcraft, Necromancy, Crossroads and Spirits within the Mortal Realm (....or Ghosts!!!!!). A design for Hecate shows up below, where I'll explain her further.
Paradoxically, while representing mindless destruction, he was said to be supremely wise, similar to Atlas's wisdom within the Titans (perhaps as a peace-in-the-eye-of-the-storm schtick).
Zhu Rong (Chinese) and Gong Gong (Chinese) - The two Titans of Chinese Joust and Corrupted Joust (S3 & S7).
Zhu Rong was the chief God of the element of Fire, Patron of the South and the Heavenly Court's Chief Executioner - famous for the legendary days-long conflict from his irritation (and innate elemental opposition) against the Black Water Demon / God / Dragon / Thing, Gong Gong, who was himself sick of being treated as a useless errands boy within the Heavenly Court despite his great upper-God matching strength. Note, each 'Gong' withing Gong Gong is pronounced differently, so it's more like 'Ghong Gkong' but just translates poorly (because Mandarin is a great language to learn, but just a horrible language to speak).
Their conflict was the one that 'shook the heavens', caused the great floods that formed the Eastern Sea (on the previously flat plain of land that was Earth) (or at least, the known Earth to the Ancient Chinese), tilted the entire Chinese continent towards the Eastern Sea, and shook the Heavenly Pillars that supported the sky so much, that Nu Wa had to step in to repair things with the elemental stones (that she created specifically for the emergency, and uses in-game). While the Earthly conflict tilted the Earth towards the South-East, it was the North-Western Heavenly Pillar that was damaged, with Nu Wa replacing it with a Primordial Tortoise's leg (that, or alternatively all of them were smashed up, and she simply fucked up the measurement for the North-Western one); leading to the tilt of the constellations to the North-West, that made the previously 'central' Polaris into the North Star.
In the end, Zhu Rong is the one who remained victorious, and Gong Gong was sent into exhile from the Heavenly Court, often placed in a particularly nasty region of Di Yu (the realm of the Chinese Hells).
Since I don't have an excuse for a Chinese Joust aside yet, as for some neat details about the map;
- Zhu Rong is placed outside the Heavenly Court, which has statues of Guan Yu, acting Heavenly Emperor / most important Chinese God at the time of the map's release. Additionally, the way toward the Heavenly Court has one of its entrance pillars destroyed - the one as if you were entering via the Jungle to the Phoenix - an obvious reference to the legend.
- Gong Gong is placed in the Garden of Peaches of Immortality - the role itself as 'Guardian of the Garden of the Peaches of Immortality' being an insultive joke-job that Sun Wukong initially had, and which works for Gong-Gong's role within his legend. This is also why the 'peaceful peach garden' is oddly the Chaos side of this map. Before Ao Kuang's retro skin was re-introduced for Kukulkan, it was (and still is) also featured as a statue across the pond at Chaos spawn as an easter egg.
While Gong Gong's design is reminiscent of a really big Kara Shishi (the name of the Lion-dog beasts / 'Foo-Dogs', that those general statues are of); the key detail difference is that Shi Shi don't have serpentine tails (or any tails for that matter) and the copper adornments across the statue and around it's head are that identical to what Gong Gong was described with. That, and his torso is also far more humanoid overall than what would be expected of a Shi Shi (who, as the "Lion-dog" translation suggests, are supposed to be a cross between lions and dogs, not fat old men from NTR hentai). Much like Nu Wa / Ao Kuang in-game, Gong Gong is said to freely be able to shift between Serpentine, Draconic and Monstrous-Humanoid at will, so the form does fit the name, even if it is a bit unorthodox.
Finally, all four auspicious beasts are also present - White Tigers and Black Turtles are the buff camps respectively, the Chaos-side Towers are Azure Dragons, while the Order-side Phoenixes are Vermillion Birds.
Oh, and if you never twigged, the entire Chinese Joust map itself is shaped after Hou Yi's bow.
Now you can't unsee it.
Vucub Caquix (Mayan) - The Chaos-side Titan of the Season 9 Slash gamemode.
Father of Cabrakan and Zipacna (after he raped Chimalmat, Goddess of Dormant Volcanoes, cucking a minor Hero God in the process), Vucub Caquix acts as the primary antagonist of the first half of the Mayan Adventures of the Hero Twins, described as a scaly demonic Macaw who mythologically took the place of the Sun, Moon and Stars; presenting himself as a Demiurgical false-creator-God atop the Mayan World Tree, Wacah Chan (stealing away sacrifices and offerings to the real Gods for himself, in his obscene arrogance and narcissism). While he was described as a good friend and ally of the Lords of Xibalba & Ah Puch, he was ultimately not a God - simply an independent yet incredibly powerful primordial demon.
Designwise, he's clearly modelled partially after a Quetzalcoatlus, a dinosaur from the region, that is still today known to have been the largest flying species in Earth's known archeological history (roughly the size of a Giraffe). Said Quetzalcoatlus is named after the neighbouring Aztec God of Wisdom, Quetzalcoatl {Kukulkan in Mayan} - note however that the design for Quetzalcoatl is completely departed from Quetzalcoatlus, much like how Poseidon doesn't look like a Sauroposeidon. The inspiration is likely because Scaled Demon Bird = Dinosaur, which from there Quetzalcoatlus was a convenient secondary regional fit.
Also note the rainbow colouring, which in Ancient Maya mythology was associated with demons and destruction, not luck and fortune. Otherwise, matches Vucub Caquix's design to an absolute T (especially the 'armour') - see the mural-comparison of Caquix to exemplify.
The Minotaur (Greek) - The initial Titans of the beta, later the Siege Minions in Arena.
While The Minotaur was a singular entity (Asterius), the concept relates to the Bull-man hybrids of the same appearance, that in more recent times have been treated less as a singular entity, and a more as a monster-race.
As for the myth behind the Minotaur (singular), tl;dr King Minos of Crete is bestowed a perfect, snow white bull by Poseidon to declare his right of rule, King Minos doesn't sacrifice bull to Poseidon in gratitude because 'holy shit that's a perfect bull why would you just kill it when you could breed it', Poseidon and Aphrodite work together so his Demigod-Queen Pasiphae (Daughter of Helios / the Sun) also thinks 'holy shit that's a perfect bull why would you just kill it when you could breed it' but in a different way. Queen Minos commissions Daedalus (legendary carpenter) to make a fake cow husk, is fucked hard by said bull, Queen of Minos is knocked up, King of Minos is first cuck on record, Minotaur is created. Also because theQueen was a cunt, she secretly cursed King Minos to ejaculate centipedes in any women he tried to have his way with, killing them, and preventing him from ever having any other heir.
King hires Daedalus to construct a maze / labyrinth, Minotaur is thrown in there and fed a constant supply of children - until Theseus comes along to deal with the Minotaur, and Heracles deals with the initial white bull on one of his trials. Minos gets the last laugh, as he's promoted to one of Hades's personal subordinates post-death, while Pasiphae is punished to remain in eternal isolation, in a region of Asphodel near Tartarus.
Interestingly, there's no actual consensus as to which part of the Minotaur is Bull and which is Human - while assumed to be the Head and Legs of a Bull nowadays, many initial depictions had Asterius also as a only-Bull-headed, or a bulky Bull-Centaur with a fully human upper half. The head-leg version is the least accurate, even if it's the most popular now.
See the Arena aside for the statue behind him - another in-game feature.
Jungle Bosses
Possibly Tartarus (Greek) - The Season 10 Conquest Fire Giant
Previously, and for the first 10+ years of the game's lifespan, the title of the Fire Giant was held by.... well, the Fire Giant, Surtr. The development team did get this wrong a few times, but I'm glad they finally corrected themselves in the end. If you want to see all the versions of Surtr while he was doing his Jungle-Boss dayjob, I've 'elevated' his previous Gallery to the Norse Pantheon Gallery .
But then along came Season 10, a hype-as-fuck release with Surtr being added as a playable character, and thus a vacant spot for who exactly the Fire Giant 'is'. Currently I can't find any concept art for the Season 10 Map at all (which is odd, but is probably just a timed NDA), but I have seen two mentions now, that the new guy is apparently Tartarus.
The imagery of the Omega-chain around his neck, the general prisoner-imagery, a similar design to the 'Tartarus Titan's SPL Team Logo, the loosely 'T' shaped horns, a similar design to the design of Tartarus Hades (mentioned in this doc), coupled with the 'shackles of Tartarus' mechanic that appeared during the Y10S3 map that allowed the Titans to move free of their base (and a bug which meant the sound cue for the shackles being broken was identical to the new Fire Giant's death-call) - I can believe it, but it's not something I can fully endorse as FACT.
On the other hand, the names of all it's attacks are still in reference to Ragnarok (unchanged back from when it was Surtr performing them).
This one's up to you if you trust it or not.
Tartarus itself is the Greek Primordial concept of the 'plane' of the Underworld itself. As in, the entire 'reality' of the Underworld.
The realm of Hades (ruled by Hades), is but a small subsection located within the wider plane of Tartarus, much like how Mt. Olympus is located on Gaia / Earth, and is only a small 'region' of it. While Hades's area was somewhat close to the surface, the realm of Tartarus extended much, much further underworld, all the way until the edges of reality / Chaos itself - the parable being that it would take an Anvil nine whole days to fall to the bottommost pit within Tartarus (back when the prevailing theory was that the Earth was flat).
Because obviously I'd work it out for you, that's 32,000-45,000km / 20,000-27,000 miles. Or in comparative terms, about x6-9 deeper than the actual centre of the Earth, or roughly the circumference of the Earth 'deep' (+- 5,000km / 3,000 miles). Colossal in extent to say the least, and note that all of that is underground tunnels and caverns.
Hades was the defacto 'ruler' of Tatarus (the region), as his dominion extended across the entire Underworld region; but there's no accounts of him governing over Tartarus in any way, past sentencing some people to the place, and he is associated very little with it, compared to than his own personal and distinctly different domain of Hades. Other cthonic deities are dotted around the Underworld in relation to Hades and Tartarus - for example, Hypnos's bedchamber is described as closer to the realm of Hades (Theogeny) while Hecate's personal Palace is described as hidden deep within the bowels of Tartarus (Orpheus).
Tartarus (or at least one region of it) was most iconically given as the Titan's final prison, as punishment for the Titanomachia - the ultimate Alcatraz of the Divine, guarded by the Three Hecatoncheires (the fifty-headed, hundred-armed colossuses), known as Aegaeon, Cottus and Gyges. Nothing got in, nothing got out, and it was the ultimate Hell for the most terrible and uncontainable of all divine beings (so famous in fact, that is retained it's notoriety long into the Medieval European period, as a name also with synchronous the Christian Hell). The Titans might have been the main stock of the prisoners, but other named inmates included myths like Ixion, Sisyphus and Tantalus. Another aspect (that at the very minimum gave Tartarus some degree of 'form' past being a conceptual being / place), is that he was the most commonly given father of Typhon (with Gaia / Terra as the mother) - and thus Ancestral Father of most Monsters in Greek Mythology (most Gods coming from the Uranus side of the family tree).
If this is indeed the Primordial being in question, this means that the only un-depicted Protogenoi left would be Primordial Chaos itself and Achlys; since Erebus is more of a post-Primordial being, as Nyx's {Nox's} brother and selfcest-spawn of Chaos, rather than one of the 'Big Original 4' that Chaos, Gaia {Terra}, Tartarus and Eros {Cupid} are.
Tisiphone (Greek) - The Gold Fury from Season 5 onwards.
With the wings of bats and constantly soaked in blood, the Erinyes / Furies {Dirae} were another set sister groupings of Nox's asexually produced self-spawn (sometimes given as Aphrodite's sisters from the blood of Uranus's balls) collectively representing Revenge.
Similar but different to Nemesis's representation of Retribution, while Nemesis overlooked punishment for those trying to evade punishment in life, the Furies played the roles of eternal tormentors in death / the Underworld. Each had their kink embodiment and specific duties, but all of them shared an intense hatred of those who broke promises above all else. Also, they really fucking hated men, and multiple myths go on to record their antagonistic sprees in the mortal realm (from killing individual men, to accidentally falling in love with men and then killing them, to thinking of new and ingenius ways to see that as many men as possible died painful deaths).
Evident paragons of feminism.
The Gold Fury has gone through quite a few renditions in SMITE history.
In it's first ever concept, it was the boss that replaced the initially concepted Kraken Boss, with the switch happening some time during the Closed Beta / Internal Testing - so the Kraken was shown in first gameplay, but the public have never fought it outside of the announcement-event booths. On it's release wih the Conquest map itself, it was nothing but a scaled up default harpy mob (gracefully known as the Big Ass Fury, not even the Gold Fury back then), and from it's surroundings, generally had a Hindu theme. When the default harpy mobs / minor camps were given a design update (into what we have today) in the Open Beta, the Gold Fury was lazily kept as the same 'scaled up Harpy' concept..... but this time.... 'golden'. It wasn't until the Season 2 Conquest rework that it became a unique entity, when at that point it became a much larger and beastial entity separate from the Harpies dotted around the map, fitting it's status as a Jungle Boss. Being the 'mascot' of that version of that version of the Conquest map, it would fly around in the skybox until it was available to kill, at which point it would descend into a Roman-themed pit on the Greek map.
Come Season 5, and the Fury yet again received a model upgrade into what it is now - associating it more with it's reward, and fitting it closer to the new artstyle that SMITE has retained since. While neither stated or even fitting, you 'could' make a reach and say the Primal (Dread) and Oni (Rage) Fury are her sisters, Megaera (Spite / Envy) & Alekto (Rage) respectively, since their etymological naming themes fit their debuffs respectively ...even if they look oddly Mayan / Japanese for some Greek entities. For posterity, Tisiphone herself was the Fury that represented Downfall / Destruction, matching the effect of her Greed debuff.
In all honesty, these just seem like generic designs, over intending to actually be representative of the 3 Furies.
Apophis (Egyptian) - The Clash / Slash 'Jungle' Boss.
Apophis / Apep is the major embodiment / Ultimate Lord of Chaos within the Egyptian Panthon, a colossal serpent made purely of uncut slate and flintstone. In more straightforward terms, Apophis quite literally IS the concept of the Apocalypse embodied (where do you think the word comes from).
Known by the title World Encircler (hold that thought), Apophis was a constant menace for Ra, as he would always lie in wait under the horizon for Ra's trip through the underworld during the night. Many times Ra and Apophis would fight, with Ra essentially having a personal entourage of Gods that would help him deal with Apophis whenever the snake got uppity. Most notably, it was Bastet (Goddess of Cats) whose main job was to constantly keep Apophis at bay during the night, while it was Set(h)'s job to fight alongside Ra (and Ra's paradoxical female version of himself, the Eye of Ra, or Eye or Re - don't question it) whenever Apophis was having an especially good day and managed to overwhelm Bastet - with Set's victories resulting in heavy-metal-cover-art-tier desert thunderstorms, that would obscure the lack of sun during the conflict and clear away once Apophis was defeated.
Apophis's mere movements (to find a new place to strike Ra) was the Ancient Egyptian understanding of Earthquakes, and Apophis's temporary victories were observed as Eclipses (as he'd use the moon as a vehicle to swallow the Sun for a short while).
One of many apocalypse-serpents that stretch across Euro-Levantine Mythologies; ranging from Basmu, to Python, to Jormungandr. This one however... can have arms and legs; as shown within a mural you can see in the Clash map, opposing Set. Additionally, this should imply that Khepri and Geb have anthropomorphic / humanoid formes, however appear in their more 'natural' incarnations.
Niu Mowang (Chinese) - The Jungle Boss of Chinese Joust.
Chinese Joust's Bull Demon King is... ...well... ... ...th-the Bull Demon King (!), Niu Mowang, the prevailing 'main' antagonist within Journey to the West.
Niu Mowang first appeared as Sun Wukong's previous sworn brother and best friend (think of the Triad / Yakuza concept of blood brothers) back when Sun Wukong was down with the cool-kid Demon King gang as the Monkey Demon King.
After Sun Wukong turns on the other 7 Demon Kings during the events of Journey to the West (for being evil) on his path to enlightenment, Niu Mowang acts as the Demon King's defacto leader; not necessarily caring about getting in the way of Tang Sanzang's entourage, but simply leading and attending to the issues faced by his demon-kin. The final conflict of Journey to the West is Niu Mowang attacking Sun Wukong, after Wukong steals his wife's / Princess Iron Fan's / prized Iron Fan and enslaved beats up Mowang's son, Red Boy who is renamed to Shan Cai when enslaved to Guan Yin. After the final blow is struck, the Bull Demon King is arrested by Ne Zha and taken away to face trial at the Jade Palace, in the uppermost court of the Heavenly Court, his punishment presided over by the Jade Emperor / Yu Huang himself.
Yes Wukong is 'the good guy' throughout all this. Chinese ethics just... they.... work on more 'relative-terms' logic.
Zipacna (Mayan) - Siege's Jungle Boss & Wild Juggernauts.
Cabrakan's caiman-esque / more crocodilian brother and representative being of the Earth's Crust in Mayan mythos (next to Cabrakan, who represented Earthquakes). Neither Zipacna and Cabrakan were considered Gods, but instead demon-spawn of the evil macaw higher-ranking Demon and Ally of Xibalba (and ex-Sun/Moon God / Patron of Vainglory) Vucub Caquix and the Patroness of Dormant Volcanoes, Chimalmat.
His initial mention was his dealing with the 40 Mayan Boy-Gods of Alcohol, where, after he jovially brags about his strength with a large stone pillar, the Boy-Gods try to kill him (fearful of him possibly turning on them). The Boy-Gods have him dig his own grave, before planning on crushing him inside it with the pillar he bragged to them with - Zipacna was deceptively intelligent however, and made a encove within the hole, to feign his death when the Gods dropped the pillar down it. Days later, he acts as the moral of the story both for attacking those who haven't attacked you and for celebrating too early and getting drunk, as he erupts from the Earth and kills all of them, dragging their souls down with him to be taken in by the Lords of Xibalba.
In response, the Hero Twins are called in by Huracan and are able to deceive Zipacna with his weakness, his favorite food - pussy Crab. Anecdotes are at play here. Zipacna is lured into a 'canyon', his blind and insatiable hunger for sex food overriding any wit he previously had, and the Twins crush him to death inbetween it (like a Terra Wall-crash), before dropping a mountain on him to confirm his death.
Mirroring this myth, on the Mayan-side of the Siege map's successor (Slash) next to the in-lane Juggernaut spawn, a gigantic 'crab' can be seen at times hidden in a waterfall-canyon (presumably why he was gone in Slash, having been defeated by Xbalanque and Hun'Ahpu).
Does this make the game R-rated? You decide.
Nehebukau (Egyptian) - Slash's Wild Juggernaut.
Given as Geb & Renenutet's son (Earth and Harvest), Serqet's Husband (or son, depending on myth) and Bastet + Sehkmet's bodyguard / protector (so, the bodyguard of Ra's bodyguard). In later myths, occasionally assumed Ra's role as Ruler of the Duat / Underworld while he was gone (ie, while it was day time) and was the representative of the Eye of Ra within the Duat. In SMITE he's referred to as 'Apophis Chosen', however it's as close as naming him outright (like how "Three-Headed-Hound-of-Hades = Cerberus" in all but name).
Initially a feral and evil deity linked with Apophis who was 'chosen' to walk on the surface and act on his behalf during the day, Nehebukau was a legged snake able to breathe fire and was able to gain short-term immortality and invulnerability after consuming 7 other snakes. After being defeated by either Atum or Ra, Nehebukau gained arms, learned humility, and acted as a judge within the Duat + as an assistant to Ra whenever he came by during the night (serving food to both the dead and Ra once they passed his trial, so they could proceed in the afterlife satiated) and worked with Bastet / Sehkmet to deal with Apophis during the day. Despite this, he retained some of his feral side, and was unique in that he would serve on both sides of a given conflict (represented in that case with two heads) instead of 'the righteous' / 'just' / Egyptian side whenever invoked with protective talismans and amulets.
Other In-Game Features
Ku (Polynesian) - Season 6-9's Conquest's 'Totem of Ku' (shocking, I know)
An entity that's widespread throughout Polynesia, Ku is given as a stable member of the Polynesian Primordial Children (alongside Kane and Lono; Kanaloa's place being the disputed one of the 4 / 3) and given as the chief War God of the Pantheon. Due to the nature of Polynesia, the entity has multiple names throughout the megapeninsula - the Hawaiian incarnation of Ku being the same entity can be equated the the names Tu {Maori}, Oro {Tahiti} & Fe'E {Samoa} and uniquely was the foremost Polynesian God which still demands demanded human sacrifice, typically in the form of overlooking two warriors fighting to the death strictly uninterrupted. Which was neatly appropriate for his placement on the Conquest map overlooking the Solo lane.
Ku is given as a father of 4 children (1 son, 3 daughters) - though to name them would start getting into finnicky bullshit as it's not as wholly agreed throughout Polynesia as to who or what they are (so to name just one set of four would be inaccurate to the other sects). The depiction within SMITE is identical to his real totemic depiction within Polynesia - a practice most notably shared between the Ku and the other 2-3 Primordial children (of whom feature in-game in as buildable items - see the Items Aside )
Nut (Egyptian) appears as half the skybox, for Domination (set during the day, so those 'stars' are her too).
Sub-primordial within the Egyptian Pantheon, Nut is quite well known as the tragic Egyptian Goddess of the Nocturnal Sky (generally associated with the stars too, of which were embeded in her), who is bound by duty and as punishment to eternally be separated from her lover, Geb, God of the Earth.
Geb and Nut were the parents of the major Gods of Osiris, Seth, Isis and Nephthys (all 4 of which were incestuous); after a gambit with Khonsu (God of the Moon) enabled Nut to circumvent the ruling of Ra to not have children / create more Gods, by creating a heretical leap-year / leap-day (at least, heretical to Ra's dominion and rule) - which from there, set up much of the Egyptian narrative throughout it's time of practice, as her children got up to their various escapades for and against Ra, or inbetween themselves. While her forme varied (to a woman bent over the Earth, to a Isis-like bird-winged-woman, to just a huge cow), a consistant throughline was that her underside was what made up the visible sky and was what the spatial bodies travelled across during the day, while her back was constantly under assault from Primordial Chaos, burning away like acid (the 'punishment' part of her punishment, as Geb wasn't the one who outright subverted Ra). This, along with her relationship and fate of her children infighting, often left her as a... 'somewhat' tormented Goddess.
Also highly likely to be linked with / identical to the Primordial Cow of Norse mythology (the one that licked an ice block and created the Gods).
Arges, Brontes & Steropes (Greek) - Season 2 buff camps.
While we get the quite obvious designs for multiple monsters taking up the place of minor camps later on (Manticores, Centaurs, Satyrs, Chimeras, Harpies, White Tigers, Dragon Turtles / Black Turtles / Genbu, not!Ent, Aqrabuamela, Naga and Balam throughout various modes) and that I may go into various levels of detail in a different doc on Mythological Races that feature in-game, three of the many named Cyclops of legend are outright named as the 'Large' mobs of the early buff camps, and can still be seen today on the Siege map.
Arges, Brontes & Steropes were notable for being the first of their beings of their mythical race, and were the ones who aided Zeus during Titanomachia - they were the most commonly cited (of the variously cited craftsmen) to be the ones who crafted Zeus's equipment for him (later Poseidon's / Hades's too) after Uranus and then Kronos both sent the three of them sent to Tartarus, for their repulsive appearences. The equipment they crafted was famously Zeus's single-pointed, 3-arced Lightning Bolt, Hades double-pointed Bident / Pitchfork / Staff + 3-arced Cap of Invisibility and finally Poseidon's three-pointed, 3-arced Trident.
As for their specific Divine Patronage (they were a group equivalent to the Titans after all), they surrendered their divine strength to create Zeus's bolt, rendering them as naught but mundane creatures from there on out (Arges represented Flashes, Brontes represented Thunder, and Steropes represented Lightning; all combined to form the Bolt - hence how it could be a Titan slaying weapon - the strength of 3 Gods, plus the power of it being wielded by 1). After their strength was exhausted, they would go on to create the first documented Altar to aid communication and offerings between the Mortal and Divine realm (a staple throughout West-Eurasian culture from then on, even into Abrahamic era) then lived the rest of their days in peace either as lowly shepards who did small bits of commissioned craftswork on the side (compounded with other craftsmen-races, such as the Telkhines or the Dactyls), or as direct personal assistants to a certain young God of Blacksmithing, Hephaestus {Vulcan}.
Well, at least 'peacefully' until Apollo had a spergrage because Zeus used the Bolt to execute either Apollo's boyfriend for being a fag or Apollo's demigod son (aka Asclepius) for being a necromancer because it was treading on Hades toes, and Apollo executed the 3 Cyclops in revenge for making the Bolt. Because Apollo was kinda of a ultrafag. Oh, and yeah, Zeus really did strike motherfuckers down out of nowhere, and some times for no real reason, with aimed Lightning Bolts. Fucking legend.
As for final notes, if you weren't aware, the myth for Cyclops is almost certainly borne from the Greek understanding of fossilised / imported elephant skulls within the Greek peninsula. If you don't understand why they'd come to that conclusion, look up what an elephant's skull looks like, and you'll understand.
Ignore Xing Tian. The only good picture with all 3 Cyclops was from his Adventure-Event.
Possibly The Oneiroi - The Oracle Harpies & Pyromancer.
Patrons of Dreams who are (yet again) one of Nyx's asexual many self-spawn, whom occupied a region inbetween the 'default' region of the Underworld, where the majority of people went to after death (the Meadows of Asphodel; a.k.a. a greyscale, comfy yet inert purgatory filled with Daffodils, but with additional mindwipe beforehand, as a result of being trialed by the River Lethe. Most residents would just be wandering, mindless spirits, but ultimately at peace with their surroundings) and the bedchamber of Hypnos, that was located in the deeper reaches around Tartatus.
The Oneiroi were a group of various unnamed entities, that appear to have been akin to the Nereids or Oceanids, in that, there were many of them, but not enough to outright be a 'race' of their own. Aside from that, the Oneiroi generally lack depiction, but are attested to multiple times and from a variety of accounts.
I want to make this clear, that this one is personal speculation, as they're otherwise some of the only entities in the entirety of the game's history that have no mythological or historical link whatsoever (yes, even the Portal Demons that preceeded the Pyromancer are a race of mythological creatures - just a general image of a Polynesian demon, as oppose to the usual Greek stock of monster-races; later rebranded as Norse Imps).
The designs of the Oracles + Pyromancer share an unignorably huge amount of notes with Thanatos and the Furies; of which the only related entities to them are the Oneiroi (Gods of Dreams) - obscurely given as servants / brothers of Hypnos {or children of Somnus} of whom was Thanatos's twin brother that likewise lingered in the Underworld with the Furies. Mythologically, this makes sense, both oneiromancy (prophecy through dream) and pyromancy (prophecy from fire) were key roles of the Oracles of Ancient Greece - and in their first appearences on a map (Season 5 Conquest) the Oracles appeared to be outside a crypt that could be argued to be Hypnos's bedchamber nearby the arisen Hades, and next to the at-one-point-possibly-intended 'Tartarus' / Fire Giant pit seen in the Ragnarok Hades splash art. Furthermore, the Pyromancer itself could be inferred to be Melinoe, the Oneiros responsible specifically for nightmares, who was given firey imagery in the scarce classical depictions of her throuhout the Medieval / Renaissance era, due to the link between occultic 'visions' and demonic torment. Finally this also fits as to why the Gold Fury appears similar, despite the Fury's masked visage - Alekto's most prominent feature within mythology, was disguising herself as an Oneiromancer during the events of the Trojan War, creating our link. Sure, not Tisiphone, the Gold Fury that actually resembles the Oracle / Pyromancer in-game, but close enough.
All in all, I don't 'need' to make a stretch (trust me, I hate people who reach at straws and call it fact - regardless of the amount of weasel words used in the previous paragraph) - the glove does fit quite well - the question is if we're fitting it on a hand or a fencepost.
I will be clear now, and say that I couldn't find any kind of design notes for them which can confirm or deny any of this, and this is overall my biggest 'reach' simply because of how much of an outlier they represent within the context of the entirety of entities that feature in the game. As is, it's my reasoned speculation as for the closest entities they could be, because I refuse to believe they just came up with some random OC for only these two major Conquest mobs specifically. Yes, for once, I actually have faith in HiRez in this regard.
Oh, and if you were wondering, the symbols on their tassels are just incomprehensible gobbledigook for flair, they're not actual letters spelling anything out. The tassels are the same on both the Pyromancer and the Oracles.
The Kraken (Norse) - Poseidon's Ult.
Interestingly, having absolutely nothing to do with the Greek Pantheon, a Norse squid-cryptid from that was only connected to Poseidon in the modern-era Hollywood hit, Clash of the Titans. Almost completely accepted nowadays to have been sightings of the real life Giant Squid, up to a 10-13m long behemoth which is estimated to usually lurk around 1km below sea level in the oceanic trenches of the world (just around the point in which sunlight no longer reaches, known as the Bathypelagic / Twilight / Midnight Zone), that seems to surface most commonly in the Scandinavian / British North Sea, and would have been a rare but probable sighting to the highly-seafaring Norse. Giant Squid are also violently aggressive hunters, and are whales only other known predator (after Orcas), as to which they share a predator/prey relationship with one another - and so would very likely have attacked any flimsy, wooden, human-filled boats that entered their territory. In literal terms, the Vikings had to deal with Whale-hunters while out pillaging.
In terms of 'The Kraken' itself, one documented incident in 1978 had a Giant Squid that was roughly 4 times larger than any documented Giant Squid specimen attack and notably damage a (steel) US Navy Destroyer in the Atlantic. Going off of shed suction cups and bite marks the motherfucker was 40m+ - twice the total size of a Blue Whale, roughly the same size if you ignore the tentacles - making the iconography of a giant squid Kraken dragging a wooden ship down a /very/ accurate depiction of what an attack would look like from a creature of this size, for a very scared (and very fucked) ship full of sailors in much smaller, much more fragile boats. For a rough benchmark, 10-15m is about a 3-5 storey building, and is as long as the tallest sauropod was tall (currently a tossup contest versus Argentinosaurus, Sauroposeidon and Xinjiangtitan). Due to the fact the reaches of the deep sea are currently less explored and harder to probe than the outer reaches of space, we just don't know the true potential size of the Kraken / Giant Squid, or what else it gets up to otherwise. So yeah, the Kraken you see in game is actually smaller than the real-life counterpart. Much smaller. Just think, as you are reading this, there is a real life Kraken, somewhere in the depths of the ocean, just swimming around and being colossal.
Finally, in terms of ...SMITE!!!, The Kraken was intended to be the Conquest Boss that is now the Fire Giant during the Alpha, then later swapped to be the secondary-boss / Gold Fury, then removed entirely before Beta release - returning later as Poseidons Ult. It did get a model update along with Poseidon, however nobody else really seems to have noticed; so there's little in terms of HD captures. You can see it best up close in Jing Wei's loss screen. I tried to pose the classic one it so it'd flip you off, but sadly it's middle finger is rigged to it's other non-thumb fingers, so just a thumbs-up for now.
Argus Panoptes (Greek) - Hera's Ult.
Traditionally given as a Gigas with 100 eyes dotted all over his body (name literally translating to 'The All-Seeing'), who could sleep in such a way that he would always have most of his eyes still open and watching (a trait scientifically known as Unihemispheric Sleeping, observed mostly in migratory birds or prey fish). Combined with his greater-than-average strength (being a Gigas / Giant), this made him the ideal watchman for the Greek Gods.
While Argus was the one to slay Echidna after Typhonomachia (Zeus defeating Typhon) and in turn redeeming the Gigas race after the Gigantomachia {pronounced gi-gan-to-mach-ia, not gigant-o-mach-ia}; Argus was most well-known for later watching over Io, a Preistess to Hera, that Hera turned into a cow so Zeus wouldn't fuck her. Spoiler alert: Zeus did fuck Io anyways, and that's how many of the non-directly-demigod Hero bloodlines were started (with only 'some' of the accounts having Zeus turning Io back into a human). In the process of fucking Io, Zeus had Hermes {Mercury} murder deal with Argus; which in post-mortem memorial of his service to her, Hera had a pattern of eyes put onto all Peacock's feathers, her patron animal.
While the lore gives him a different story as to how he was created, one should note that he's not Argus the Dog (Odysseus's dog).
The Calydonian Boar (Greek) - Artemis's Ult.
Not to be confused with the much weaker Erymanthian Boar from Heracles's legend, the Legend of the Calydonian Boar essentially makes up the Super Smash Bros of Greek Mythology (and that's a comparison you won't see every day), where a shitfuckton of heroes from all over got together to deal with a uniquely dangerous boar. All because a regional Greek King accidentally forgot to include something to Artemis in his yearly sacrifices, and Artemis decided to respond with a nation-wide genocide. Woman moment.
Yet, because it happened to occur while Heracles was doing his trials, and because most of the heroes were getting on past their prime, nobody nowadays cares about any of them lole
The boar itself was seething hatred and unrelenting rage encapsulated. The *ultimate* ragepig. A colossal, man-sized (~2m tall), quilled, lightning-breathing, deafeningly loud, constantly boar-screaming, humongous, unstable beast that lashed out anything that so much as moved near it, and singlehandedly forced an entire Greek micronation to hide within city walls as it continually rampaged in the countryside nearby. The full destructive force of untamable nature and animalistic death. Possibly based off of a skeleton of a Entelodont / Hellpig species from South Asia (a Prehistoric Carnivorous Pig family), similar to how the Cyclops was almost certainly the reconstruction of an Elephant Skull.
The game really does not do it credit with the goofy boar-chibi design nicknamed Tusky, that stuns people for a 1.1-1.5s and features in various endgame screens, such as being Apollo / Bacchus's boyfriend-for-a-day. It should be closer in scope to a map Titan instead of discount Pumba.
There were over 50 legendary names (between poets) associated with the single hunting party that had to deal with it, along with a small peasant army to boot. Basically a real raid boss before raid bosses were a thing.
Of which we have;
- Jason and good chunk of the leftover Argonauts (looking to get the gang back together one last time after fetching the Golden Fleece)
- Theseus (highly revered hero in Greek history, founder of Athens and general badass, most commonly known for slaying the Minotaur in the Labyrinth)
- Atlanta (legendary Greek huntress, her bow features as an item in-game)
- Castor (but not Pollux)
- Peleus and Phoenix (Achilles's father and mentor respectively)
- Iphicles (Heracles's step-brother)
- Laertes (Odysseus's father)
- Asclepius (Back when he was just a field medic / necromancer, before he became God of Medical Treatment; associated with the twin-serpent iconogrpahy of medicine, with his Rod being another in-game item)
- A fuck ton of other demigods
- And a few Spartans for good measure
Legend has it that the group of past-prime heroes played ACDC music to draw the beast out, sipped Monster Energy White and rode into battle atop sit-on lawnmowers at 6am in the morning.
Oh, and they still very nearly lost, after the boar still shredded through about 1/3rd of the party after they cornered it. Arguably one of the most dangerous monsters in all of Greek mythology in terms of raw kill-potential - definitely up there with Python / Delphyne, the Hydra or Scylla & Charybdis, but not *quite* at Typhon's level.
The Pearl Dragon (Chinese) - The Jade Emperor's Passive-Enhanced 3 and Ult
A minor water deity, that represents the Pearl River itself - the third longest river in China (after the Yangtze and the Yellow River) extending from various tributaries North of Vietnam, to the mouth at Hong Kong (in the southern portion of China). Not necessarily the governing force behind the River (akin to how He Bo governs over the Yellow River), but rather the embodiment of 'the river' itself.
Dragons in Chinese folklore are often incorrectly given grandiose status, due to their correlation to the inaccurate translation between the Western and Mesoamerican concepts of Dragons. Instead, Chinese Dragons are more akin to Greek Water Nymphs - a species of mythological creature that is 'able' to hold a great amount of power / influence, but isn't necessarily magnanimous. After all, the Nymph of the Styx / Styx would be somewhat more powerful than the Nymph of some minor backwater creek. Combine that with the Chinese concept of divine-cultivation rather than the Greek concept of lineage-divinity, and a river being big does not necessarily mean it's powerful. The reason for this potential small-scale is pretty simple - Chinese Dragons are based off of real animals; Chinese Alligators / Tuo / Muddied Dragons, a small non-violent species of crocodilians who were thought to grow longer and more powerful with age and wisdom, and whose hibernation patterns aligned with the rainy season (so the Alligators appearing indicated rains would come, which led to the Classical Chinese assuming the Alligators were the ones bringing them).
And so we arrive at.... an... 'odd' feature to say the least. Because while the motherfucking Divine Supreme Omniscient All-Powerful Auspicious Big-Guy-For-You motherfucking Jade motherfucking Emperor did indeed interact with the Pearl Dragon on one occasion, he has nothing to do with it. The scope-difference of a spec of dust compared to a skyscraper. Ao Kuang outranks the Pearl Dragon. He Bo outranks the Pearl Dragon. Literally everything in the Heavenly Court outranks the Pearl Dragon. The Pearl River doesn't even have a commonly associated overlooking God, like how He Bo overlooks the Yellow River; it's simply the extended domain of either Nanhaishen {Lord of the South China Sea} or Ao Qin {Dragon-King of the Southern Seas}. The Pearl Dragon is so utterly insignificant that the Jade Emperor imprisoned it in a mountain because it took action to save humanity after he forgot about it, then and forgot to give it a release date. He has more important things to attend to. And if he was seen associating with it, questions would start to be asked as to what in the fuck he thinks he's doing, disgracing the Heavenly Court like that.
And yet, it's somehow free of that mountain-prison. And somehow makes up the Jade Emperor's Enhanced 3. And his Ultimate Ability.
It should have been Qinglong; one of the most powerful Dragons in Chinese Mythlogy - Primordial Being and original representative / creator of the concept of East. Not the equivalent of a divine ringworm.
Sorry for the quality, couldn't find a good image with just the Pearl Dragon in isolation. Most of its concept art is with the Jade Emperor, within the Chinese Gallery.
The Raiju (Japanese) - Raijin's 2.
Raijin's friendly companion / pet animal, typically given as the entity responsible for the phenomena of Ball Lightning, a real phenomena that occurs especially in warm, humid, sulphuric and charged climates (Read: Japanese Summers) hurr durr unproven that's not enough proof along with the thousands of other accounts stfu. Raijin would throw things / lightning bolts at his pet to get it to wake up and follow him again (as guys do), much like how one would call your dog while taking it for a walk.
The little wolf-spirit was said to be invisible by default as it snuck around, charging itself during thunderstorms to create ball lightning and other non-thunderbolt lightning-based phenomena. While Raiju's mythical tendancy to hide in bellybuttons is noted on in-game, what isn't noted is that multiple times it was said to have been slain by wary samurai, or struck down from a tree to be reborn later - indicating it was based on a real animal within Japan. Currently thought to have been a species of civet that reached Japan, a species simlar to cats and mongeese - departing from the tradiitonal wolf / dog / badger look of the creature.
While a lot of the Raiju's animations have been cut from the game for resource management, related shows it without it's mostly-transparent texture.
Other In-Game Depictions
Yamata-no-Orochi (Japanese) - Seen in Susano-O's Mastery Card Art.
Literally translated to 'The Demon-Snake of Yamato', an 8-headed, 8-tailed great sea-serpent-dragon - the size of valleys, with forests growing on it's back and burning red eyes, that Susano-O slayed as repentance for bullying his sister into a cave that one time. Not to be confused with various other Orochi's in Japanese mythology, such as Orochimaru not the Naruto one, the actual one.
While Susano-O opted for a more trickery-based way to kill it over direct combat (baiting it out with food in cages, then slicing all the heads off at once as it fed) - it's SMITE's depiction nonetheless. It's corpse made up the current real-life Sacred Treasures of Japan that were legendarily presented to Ameterasu as an apology - namely, the Kusanagi no Tsurugi (Grass-Cutting Sword), Yata no Kagami (Yata Mirror) and the Yasakani no Magatama (Yasakani Bead-Jewel) - each of which are seen in Amaterasu's Shining Heaven skin.
Not to be confused with the Sea Serpents on Susano-O's win screen, who were their own entity in their own right, within the game files. Literally just isolated / non-multiheaded 'Sea Serpents' that existed on the Season 2 Map in Aqueous and Magmeous variants as props, much like the Crabs on the beach. Probably to skip having to model the entirety of Yamata-no-Orochi for a non-playable feature.
Various Yokai (Japanese) - Seen in Danzaburou's Ascension variant Card Art (annotated below +1).
The entire image is an homage to the popular legend of the Hyakki Yagyo [TL: The Hundred Demon Night Parade], where it's said that on occasion, the Commander-chief of the Yokai, a Nurarihyon, would call for a procession of the supernatural, and all the demons and monsters of a locality would pass through the streets to taunt, terrorise and steal away locals. While Kuzenbo, Da-Ji and Danzaburou each act as 'reps / leaders' to Kappa, Kitsune and Tanuki respectively in-lore, the Japanese have quite the plethora of regional mythical monsters (known as Yokai), easily equatable in scope to the Greek-derived or Celtic-derived monsters. All the named monsters here, are of the more common 'species-type' (as opposed to uniquely named entities - like the difference between Shuten Doji and a mere Oni, or the difference between Chiron and a mere Centaur) and thus will be unlikely to show up elsewhere, unless as mobs on some kind of Japanese map.
On the topic of the major named / unique playable Japanese monsters ...SMITE!!! actually has opted to go for comparative literal who's for the most part so far. Kuzenbo and Danzaburou are fucking nobodies compared to the Legendary 3 (4) Great Demons of Japan (Shuten Doji, Da Ji Tamamo-no-Mae, & EITHER Otakemaru OR Sutoku Tenno / Emperor Sutoku), or other major-named creatures like the afforementioned Yamato-no-Orochi, Ibaraki Doji or the Nurarihyon.
Oh, and if you look up 'Kuzenbo', you'll find he straight up doesn't exist. Or, shouldn't, at least. *Kyusenbo* (The Envy of Kyu{shu} / Kyu{shu}'s Jealousy, also a phonetic play on words for Envious Scum / Envious Piece of Shit, since the 'y' is easy to skip, so the word ends up sounding like Kusenbo) is his actual name. No, it's not "Nine-Thousand Beast" either, as they incorrectly stated in his release update show. Still extremely obscure and a local legendary Kappa to the Central West of Kyuushu (basically the equivalent of every flyover state city in America having their own local cryptid / alien abduction story) - but admittedly is / was a thing. imo one of the devs is / was probably a weeb and heard about him on holiday in Japan - given a nearby area to where Kuzenbo was supposedly located is a huge tourist trap for hotsprings today. With that said, Kuzenbo is currently the most obscure playable entity in all of SMITE, and that's unlikely to change any time soon.
Before moving onto brief descriptions, there are a few designs here that the artist just made up - there isn't any mention of a 3-eyed monster in Japanese folklore, and while there's numerous Frog Yokai in Japanese folklore (the Giant Toad / Ogama or the man-faced-frog / Senpoku Kanpoku) none resemble our little fanbearer.
Those aside;
- Gashadokuro - Skeleton Giants - The most prominent yokai in the image aside from Danzaburou, a 60-75ft tall skeletal giant-amalgamate that would stalk / wander finished battlefields, and rip the heads off the near-dead to empower itself, before moving onto attacking and killing random travellers until it's collective wrath for the living faded away. Or in 'realistic' / no-fun-allowed terms, was more likely describing roaming bands of deserter bandits.
Either the product of magic ritual, or manifesting by chance in areas where corpses were not given proper burial (ie battlefields, but also post-epidemics) it's key descriptive feature was it's loose rattling teeth, which would be the only way to avoid one from killing you, since it was invisible to humans and immune to damage until it dissipated and the bones were left behind. Widely attested that one manifested after the Johei Tengyo no Ran Rebellion (the first uprising / 'disturbance' in Japanese History, ~935AD), and one manifested after the famous Battle of Sekigahara (one of the most influential and bloody battles in Japanese History that marked the peak of the Sengoku / Warring States period, ~1600 AD). - Inugami - Dog / Wolf Spirits - Similar in role / concept to Kitsune, albit more 'vengeful' than 'trickster', to the point they would be manufactured manually and used as spiritual weapons by ritualistically brutalising a dog to death to try to get a hateful ghost to spawn from it's remains and haunt an enemy
asian tradition at this point, I know. Was also the basis for which villagers and city-dwellers discriminated against forager-folk (as it would be often assumed that an Inugami would follow isolate people around, bringing bad luck in it's wake), which led to Japan's relatively large rural-hermit population in historic times - and such subcultures as ascetic monks, mountain men and to a logical extent, ninja clans. - Rokurokubi - Well-necks (as in the rope that goes down a well with a bucket on it) - Usually told to be females, but not limited by gender in any way (reason being that most stories were of
drunkmen sleeping with a prostitute and seeing some strange shit), Rokurokubi were relatively mundane yokai outside of their trademark and recognisable extended neck, which could be retracted or extended at will, but would usually push outward while their were unconsicously asleep. There's no fixed origin or characterisation of Rokurokubi (which is odd, considering their widespread and semi-well-known nature), the only consistant theme being that they're often unaware or helpless of the phenomenon. Even the neck itself has no uniform description - the name itself originates from the idea they're like the rope that connects a bucket in a well - however it's more commonly given as serpentine, from the origin theory that they're simply extremely long-lived snakes that have gained human forme without realising, much like how a Kitsune or a Tanuki may result from a long-lived Fox / Racoon Dog. - Chochin Obake - Lantern Ghosts - A common type of Tsukumogami (Object Spirits / Object Gods), where, much like their animal counterparts, either a long-lived object would gain features and sentience and cause mischief, or if an object was mistreated / thrown away with disregard, it would become vengeful against those who wronged it. In this case a paper lantern.
While the imagery is widespread, they were usually just considered harmless to the point of causing a shock for personal enjoyment (aka spooking people). That said, they were still given great caution, as far more malicious spirits would hide near by them and would use them as decoys (or even disguising as one), after which the spooked human put their guard down again, the actual threat would strike swiftly after.
Commonly paired and associated with Onibi (below). - Kasha - Feline Grim Reapers - The feintest and hardest to make out in the image, hidden in front of the Gashadokuro and behind the Rokurokubi; but to the discerning eye, quite clearly a Kasha owing to the silhouette, burning cat eye and the wheel.
Sometimes depicted as a normal Oni (Ogre / Demon), sometimes an extremely old Nekomata (old cat demon), most commonly a wide black and red tiger-giant; always riding or driving a burning chariot. Most accurately described as a Japanese equivalent to the Greek Keres (the more famous Shinigami being the Japanese equivalent to Thanatosand equally edgy / chunni), Kasha would drag the souls of the evil straight toHellYomi / Jigoku for punishment. - Karakasa Obake - Umbrella Ghosts - Another common type of Tsukumogami, also known as Ippon-ashi (One Leg) for their appearence, these yokai would gain a large eye and their stem would shift into a single leg they would hop around with (sometimes with a mouth / hands to boot too). Again, harmless spooksters.
- Tesso - Rat Monks - The destiny of monks that used their respected position to sin.
The easiest western trasliteration being homosexual pedophile pastors. Tesso were said to be the ones that would eat and lead other rodents to chew up scrolls and documents within temples; so information, art and rituals would be lost to history. As such, there was quite an extensive and regular extermination ritual / process within both Shinto an Buddist shrines, as the proliferation of vermin were seen as an extremely bad omen, an indicator that an especially evil Tesso was nearby. - Kitsune - Foxes / Fox Spirits - A significant yokai you've almost certainly heard of - however Kitsune are literally understood as foxes in general. Throughout much of East Asia, but especially to the Japanese, there is no distinction between a Yokai fox and a 'normal' fox - all foxes were supernatural beings, with the ability to shapeshift and perform some level of magic, and were even subclassified into their magical ability and characteristics (good, evil and mischevious each being their own types). Seen mostly as messengers of the Gods (especially Inari, one of the more important Japanese Gods), foxes were (and still generally are) relatively well revered in Japanese society. As a fox grew older it would grow in power, influence and respect within the divine realm and among other Kitsune, thus attaining more tails - with the iconic theoretical maximum of 9.
And one such famously evil fox / Nogitsune with 9 tails, does appear elsewhere in-game, to the point it's known as 'The' 9-Tailed Fox above all others.... - Onibi / Oni-Bi - Ghost Flames - A near-identical Japanese concept to the Western idea of Will-O-Wisp's; Onibi are distinctly blue floating flames, sometimes with the visage of a demonic face appearing in the fire. Similar to Will-O-Wisp's they based off of Fireflies, and likewise if you got too close, your soul would be spirited away.
The only notable differences were that Onibi would not deliberately lead the curious astray (being more static entities), and while Will-O-Wisp's were associated with Fae (whose closest Japanese monster is the Kodama), the Onibi were closer associated with with the mythological concept of Foxflame and thus Kitsune instead. Despite the striking similarities, the two mythological creatures were conceptualised completely separate from one another. - Onamazu / Jishin Namazu - Catfish demons - Given as either a singular major entity, or as a race (much like the Kitsune, all Catfish being potential Namazu), the Onamazu is given as the cause of Earthquakes within Japan. This is is due to how catfish feed - typical bottom feeders, they gracelessly will slam themselves into and use their nose to dig up dirt - and thus feed from the creatures dug up in the floating debris. This behaviour was assumed to be the cause of minor tremors (and the 'sixth sense' that animals have in predicting disasters was noted on more when observing catfish being disturbed shortly before an Earthquake), with a theoretical colossal one located / hidden in the underground region of the Central-East of Japan, where it was guarded by the God Takemikazuchi (lesser Lightning God, Patron of Sumo Wrestling) and constantly pinned down / wrestled into submission with a huge boulder. Despite this, it has extensive ties to Ebisu, God of Money and Fishing; and it's said that the Onamazu was a chaotic agent of
communisticequality - since the poor generally lost little during earthquakes aside from their ramshackle huts, whle the rich would lose everything (houses, business, goods etc).
And because they're there;
- Bakedanuki & Tanuki - Racoon Dog Spirits / Demon Racoon Dogs - Actually ehhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnn..... No. Not right now.
See the relevant aside later on, on our guy Danzaburou and his race of Yokai ;)
- Saci (Brazillian) - Pronounced Sasi, the Saci was originally a native spirit to the Mesoamerican tribes around South-East Brazil, who acts similarly to a genie on the loose - a teleporting forest prankster / nuisance that rides atop small, dusty whirlwinds and who will grant any wish to anyone who can catch him (or his hat). If something mildly annoying happened in one's life, chances are you could blame it on the Saci.
While he was quite assuredly an originally Mesoamrican spirit, after the tribals of the region were genocided and miscegenated with the deliberate intention to destroy and confuse their native cultures, cause infighting and prevent rebellions against the new overseers culturally enriched by the new African slaves within the region, Saci became characterised instead as a mixed-race African child with a red cap (over a pitch-black spirit with crimson-red hair, as he previously known as).
Despite the proximity and similar origin, Saci does not have a counterpart within Voodoo and is firmly a Brazilian entity. Also, as a ward skin, Saci was the first non-item shop entity from a non-playable Pantheon / mythology within SMITE.
Hypnos (Greek) - You know what Thanatos looks like? Well congratulations, that's basically and / or exactly what Hypnos looks like.
Hypnos {Somnus} was the sub-Primordial Greek God of Sleep, Thanatos's twin brother and one of Nyx's asexual self-spawn - the Greeks believing that Sleep and Death were two sides of the same coin, and commonly portrayed Thanatos & Hypnos not only as twin brothers, but as identical twins.
Hypnos had control of half of all lifetime on Earth, and lived / 'lived' / slept in what was essentially a sensory depravation chamber within the deepest reaches of either Erebus / Hades. Hypnos's sensory depravation chamber was made entirely of Ebony (the dark wood type, not the genre) and Hypnos was completely blown out of his mind on heroin 'placated' and surrounded by sophomoric (sleep-inducing) flowers - most iconically poppies which, as your street smarts should know, = heroin. Thanatos meanwhile was constantly out and about, ending lives at the signal of Aisa of the Moirai, if they weren't killed otherwise and taken by the Keres to the shores of the Styx beforehand.
The key difference between the two twins was their approaches to life (pun intended). Both were characterised as ultimately apathetic and sombre, however Hypnos was generally benevolent and helped anybody (who caught him when he was awake), meanwhile Thanatos started off the same, but slowly grew spiteful and scornful of everything alive (because everybody unreasonably hated him for just doing his job, despite him being the peaceful counterpart to the Keres) (and probably because his brother got to be a lazy druggie while Thanatos held a job).
And so, while people would give themselves up to Hypnos willingly, many would try to evade or fight Thanatos - the two most iconic examples being when Heracles beat the living shit out of Thanatos to save two lovers in need (stopping Thanatos from even being able to do his job and accidentally making everyone pseudoimmortal for a short period while Thanatos had to recover); and the other being Sisyphos, who as punishment for cheating his due date, had to roll a boulder up an endless steep hill until the end of time (yeah, that imagery - ya winnin' son?).
Asi (Hindu) - Included here instead of the items section, because it's an actual individual entity, not just an object.
Asi is the sacred primordial sword that features within the Mahabharata, said to be the first sword ever crafted by Brahma so the pious could fight the Devi, and of which all other weapons are modelled after thereafter. Born from a great sacrificial ritual, the creature that manifested as a result of Brahma's offerings assumed the form of Asi, eternally wreathed in flames and from then on would guarantee the holder victory in any battle. In literal terms, it's also the God / Embodiment of Weaponry itself (not to be confused with Shiva, Master of Weaponry / the use of weapons), though it's not given any particular patronage, due to it's serviant role.
Homer (Greek) - Shows up in the standalone initial Lore Comic, Battlefield of the Gods.
A Greek Poet, and penman of both the Iliad and the Odyssey (among others) who was famously 'said' to be a blind. He, alongside Hesiod and Ovid, is one of the major sources of Greek Mythology we have today, with his accounts usually being compared alongside other minor poets to establish the prevailing beliefs of the time.
Owing to the fact that Greek literature has been generally so well-preserved (alongside it's Roman counterpart), his works are in part why there is relatively so much detail known of the Greek mythos and Pantheon compared to others (the opposite in this instance being the Celtic Pantheon - to which all we know is derived mostly from word-of-mouth, inference and circumstantial logic; given their comparative secrecy). Homer's works in of themselves were commented on by other scholars and philosophers of the period, with Homer being one of Plato's greater apparent influences; and as such was / is a huge influence on both modern /lit/, /i/ and eugh /pol/.
Also, his (sadly) constant and worn out comparisons to Homer Simpson is one of the unfunniest jokes in the English language.
Jesus Christ (Christian) - Easter Egg
The Primary Prophet of Christian texts and Saviour of Humanity within the New Testament, the second-to-last prophet within Islamic texts preceeding Muhammad, and currently boiling alive in a cauldron of human feces in Hell within Jewish texts for being the most misguiding false prophet of all time. Overall, a ehhhhhh 'somewhat' important figure to human history.
Jesus has appeared as an ongoing feature, with his infamous Ecce Mono 'restoration' of Jesus usually being 'somewhere' behind a piece of terrain on at least one map in rotation throughout the games history, as a kind of easter-egg hunt. There's also an out-of-universe talkshow featuring some Gods called 'Hey Zeus!', further poking fun at the topic, and a few other times he's been heavily alluded to in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Now you can't complain he's not in-game - because it's never happening otherwise lol, and this is definitely as far as they'll dare push the subject, else some mentally ill retard / member of a fringe abrahamic cult / american (what's the difference between the three, eh?) chase them down and burn LoRez Studios to the ground for BLASFEMIN AGAINST THA LOR'.
Finally, to tie everything together for NPC's, did you know the major NPC stars of the various endgame win/loss scenes have names too?
The Cyclops is called Denton (his previous work history being the Brute Minion design from the Closed Beta), his son is called Miles and the Greek woman is called Cynthia.
Denton got a facelift in Season 3 that applies to all the Win/Loss appearances, however Miles remains in his post-beta rendition. Cynthia on the other hand exists in two forms at once - her older scenes never got updated, so you can still see her either in a yellow dress or in a more Greek-style tunic-dress with a hair braid. Recently too, it appears a new mini-mascot has begun to be phased in in-universe, known as 'Floofs' - however they're yet to make a 3D modelled appearence past their ward skin.
While it might be tempting to say the mighty 'Denton' was among the great named Cyclops of myth (Polyphemeus, Acmonides, Arges, Brontes or Steropes), or Cynthia is SMITE!!!'s depiction of the Greek Goddess of the Moon, Selene {Luna} (who was alternatively called Cynthia, owing to her birth on Mount Cynthus, Delos) ...they're just random names that probably came from an in-house joke and just kinda stuck. No mythological significance, whatsoever.
If you want some reference points; old-Cynthia and Denton appears in Rama's loss screen, nu-Cynthia appears in Xing Tian's loss screen and Miles appears in Kukulkan's loss screen. I made sure to mention loss screens, because it's not like you can reliably get a win screen, let's be honest now Anon. The Calydonian Boar / 'Tusky' also appears as a recurring character, though he exists as an entity in the game in his own right even if he's supposed to be a literal hypermurder ragepig instead of discount Pumba.
Oh, and while I mention Selene - while Artemis and Hecate are each also Goddesses of the Moon / Moonlight in Greek mythology, Selene is better represented as the moon itself; much like how Sol is the Sun.
Denton also has a twitter account called HiRezDenton, but I think they forgot the password... he's not been online in years....just like half of the clan...
Unused In-House Designs
NO FANART. ALL MY NIGGERS HATE FANART AUTISM.
All of these designs were found passively as I collected art, all hailing from sources directly related to, and pertaining to SMITE at some point; either beforehand as part of a portfolio to officially begin work on SMITE (>inb4, only ones I believe related) OR released by the artist almost immediately after they left the studio and would contextually fit the timeframe for when they were worked on (indicating they were intended designs that never made it in - likely because the entity itself never made it in owing to obscurity, or other Gods simply being put in higher priority before them).
As such, consider absolutely none of these designs canon or binding to possible future releases - a major part of these are quite resoundly rejected designs, and some that I'm only including to play it safe but am otherwise unsure on the validity of. Quite a lot however, don't seem to be names that are going to be contadicted any time soon, so if you're like me, and based, you'll find these great as correct-until-proven-otherwise for general universe building because it's not like LoRez are pulling the stops out to represent as many entities as possible in-universe - 'wow', one new design every 2 months, truly... *riveting* universe development.
Admittedly a subjective judgement, but I hope you'll trust my intuition and hyperautismical circumstance-checking.
While (from what I've seen) the artist-experience at HiRez seems to be very leniant and pretty great to work with (explained elsewhere), there does seem to be a pretty restrictive and strangulating in-house NDA on art and designs preventing them from getting out beforehand (with no less than 3 artists with their stuff just wiped clean from the internet, and that I couldn't even scrape any metadata to circumnavigate - fucking annoying) - so regardless of if I'm right or wrong, expect the LoRez response to any of these to be a quite prompt "we ain't acknowledging shit". This is probably also the reason why all of the stuff in the Gallery was so hard to find - it's not the Art or the Marketing team not wanting to release them, it's the Legal team playing it safe. That and the Webdev team being complete fucking mouthbreathing mafia radio controlled niggercattle gorilla retards who can't fucking maintain an archive of their own old site to save their lives.
At the very least, all this is all the afforementioned in the general SMITE artstyle, if you're using these docs as an autistic artistic reference, think of this section as 'valid for design notes until contradicted'.
IF I HAVE TO MAKE THIS ANY MORE CLEAR: NONE OF THIS IS CANON, AND ALL OF IT WILL NEVER BE CONFIRMED
death of the author though, lmfao, let's get on with it
In alphabetical order;
- Ame-No-Uzume (Japanese) - Goddess of the Dawn, Art, Dance and Meditation; and Amaterasu's personal attendant (tl;dr high-ranking serving-girl, common in Eastern cultures). Relatively well known and revered as a Goddess of Priestesses in general, hence her imagery is common within Japanese temples. Most notable for being the entity that actually got Amaterasu out of her allegory of the cave, using the Yata Mirror and Yasakani no Magatama harvested from Yamata-no-Orochi within a ritual dance, so Susano-O could properly apologise to her.
See Amun Ra (just below) as for where I found this.
- Amun-Ra (Egyptian) - The / A secondary Pantheon-head of the Egyptians (after, well, Ra), fulfilling a role functionally identical to Ra for a part of Egypt's history after a religious usurping, and still retained relative importance around the region of Egypt around Thebes. There's really not all that much to say about the entity (since it's basically not!Ra) - however, before gaining importance after the afforementioned rebellion and being fused with Ra, Amun was seen as the Egyptian God of the Wind; portrayed somewhat like a proverbial puppetmaster - invisible, yet pulling strings out of sight (since the wind is functionally invisible force to primitive human understanding). Extraordinarily similar to Shu, another primordial Egyptian wind God (to the point the two were likely conflated in central regions between the Southern Thebes and Northern Heliopolis, the latter being where Shu was venerated) - the major difference appearing to be that while Shu represented dry airs (as a counterpart to the 'moist airs' of his fellow primordial wife, Tefnut), Amun was more of a general 'God of Winds' concept. To draw further comparisons between the two, Shu was married to Tefnut, Egyptian not!Tiamat Goddess of Moist Airs, that would typically blow in from the North / the Mediterranean, while Amun (pre-Amun-Ra) was given to be married to Amunet, Goddess of the Northern Winds and one of the Primordial Ogdoad (another of which features further below). If you can't make the connection, think, what's North of Egypt..
After he became the Pantheon-head of the Egyptians, he still retained an aspect of his wind-based origins, but moved to a more authoritative, Sun God. Again, literally in the position Ra is / was in for a period of Egyptian history.
All designs linked to here are from the LoRez-made chinkshit mobile game, SMITE Blitz (produced by Stoneskin Studios under LoRez / Tencent). While technically these 'belong' in the 'canon' NPC designs.... well I've put them here for a reason. Designs were at times, wildly different from the in-game models (blockier mobile silhouette requirements for mobile aside), and it seems the chinks who worked on this game were given... a little bit too much creative freedom to say the least.
To exemplify perfectly, the Trickster Loki skin you can see in-game within SMITE is the 'usual' crossover skin for SMITE Blitz. Except..... when I say 'crossover skin', that wasn't a 'skin'.... that *was* Loki's default look within Blitz.
Cabrakan was more human-y, Poseidon's Kraken gained a swordfish-y snout and crest while Kumbhakarna was blue with a newly oversized hat that covered his eyes. Forgivingly, you might say they were intended as model-updates to try to be more in-line with mythos, as the game went into development far before many were visually updated (so for example, Hel is an updated version of her Black / White beta version, not her current Yellow / Purple version), and many in-game Gods existed in a near-identical fashion (Zeus / Hades / Bellona / Kali / Vulcan etc were fine, and Khepri / Kukulkan were reasonably as-close-as-possible that you could get in a mobile game).... but it really wasn't indicated that well, if that was the 'intention' of the changed designs.
Blitz was also 2019 release, so we actually got designs for Gods like Gilgamesh waaaaaaaay before they were even mentioned in the game (and is further evidence why I believe there's set phases to the lore, if they had semi-coordinated plans for Babylonians years back)..... exceeeeept Gilgamesh was a blonde twink with angel wings (not even kidding). Many such cases alike, and while some 'touched up' designs were generally better (Ne Zha is a good example, actually looking like a boy and his design fitting his mythos better), an equal few are worse off, and there was clearly a lack of communication beween Titanforge and Stoneskin studios.
Blitz ulimately shut down development in 2019, the same year it launched, never having gained traction.
HOWEVER (!!!).
While a good chunk of the translated designs from MOBA-SMITE are utterly divorced from their previous counterparts, many of them are just confused... because the localization team were absloute fucking dogshit at translating to English lmfao - and as such, many 'appearences' in game that seem like model fuckups, are in a few occurences, completely different Gods that some lorelet chink (who doesn't know fuck about shit about mythology what's the difference from the lorez interns then lol) mistranslated or misequated. If you were already aware of the Blitz designs before reading this here loredoc - well you're actually wrong to think they were all that bad - many just have the wrong name, and we can treat these many designs somewhat more forgivingly.
One of the best such examples, you can see here for this entry! For those of you who played the game during it's short run, or were already aware of it, no doubt you're about to say (or already have said, if you've scrolled down and seen it) something along the lines of "um achshually lorefag, I know better, that's Ra, not Amu-" shut the fuck up faggot. Ra does appear almost identical to his in-game portrayal as a separate entity in the files (see below) - this separate model is referred to as Amun-Ra in the files, and the chink didn't fucking translate the first part properly (or deliberately scuffed it, because ??? or most likely, because they're a chink).
This model is undoubtedly it's own entity, that is not Ra. Yes, assets / animations were borrowed / re-used where inappropriate, and no, that doesn't change that this isn't Ra; unless you want to imply Mystery Nigga #2 / 'Garuda' (mentioned lower) is also Geb because ability icons (who again, existed as his / her own entity). Not to say the chinky devs just lifted everything (most have custom ability icons, skeletons and models), it's just that there's clear examples where corners were cut. There's definitely more of an Asian focus to Blitz (the Chinese and Japanese Pantheons getting loads of new God designs); but at the same time, considering the saturation of Western-based deities in MOBA SMITE - can you blame them for sticking with what they know?
Overall - I'd classify the Blitz designs at least as good enough to note on as unused-designs (take it from me, I wouldn't hold back if they weren't). For the sake of 'canon until contradicted', many of these will likely never make an appearence in SMITE anyways, so they shouldn't trample on Lo-Rez toes too much (hell, some models weren't even formally released in their own right, and will be the first time they've been shown to the wider internet in image form).
In the loosest terms possible these are indeed 'canon' designs, so if you want to headcanon with them or do art of them, it's certainly better than your shitty OC ideas for what a deity looks like (again x2, take it from me, I should know). But just a heads up, I'm not completely fluent in Chinese and I'm only a few steps above scriptkiddie in terms of coding - hence I can only list the stuff I found and the errors I actually caught.
I'm a real jack of all trades, master of none.
...
...
...
Look you fucking try learning conversational mandarin while studying other languages (when you find other languages boring anyways but it's part of your job so you have to) while studying classics while also learning to code and also having a life. Spoiler alert: I skipped on the last one, hence why I'm here typing this up.
As a final note, sorry about all the pixelated nearest-neighbour scaling models and lack of normal mapping - I'd render them properly but my absolute potato computer can't handle it past textures. :(
Oh yeah, yes, these are all mine / rendered / mined by me, except uh... if it's not legally allowed because questionable means of acquisition were involved in areas, then uhhh....... uh... s-somebody else did it and gave them to me. My uh 'friend'... let's call him... 'Timothy' (for his own personal protection)... uh 'found' these for me...
>implying I have friends
What I'm saying is that snitches gets stitches.
...
So yeah, Amun-Ra..... tadaaa!
- Ao Bing (Chinese) - Ao Kuang's third and youngest son, and a major feature within the legend pertaining to Ne Zha, being the one who Ne Zha fights and eventually kills, as Ao Kuang becomes more and more enraged. Well, at least, by Chinese rules. Ne Zha is a pretty major piece of shit by our standards, and while Ao Kuang isn't exactly a saint, he's not a motiveless maou-sama.
To take it from the top, Ao Guang [TL: Vast Pride] (spelt in our case as Ao Kuang), is not a God of 'the' Sea like Poseidon, and instead is more similar to Sun Wukong - a racial leader (Sun Wukong being the Monkey King). Ao Kuang is firstmost the Azure Dragon King, and from there is given title of Ruler of the Eastern Sea, which is his domain as a Dragon King. Ao Kuang is the most powerful in terms of both strength and responsibility of the 4 Dragon Kings, of which as a quartet are known as the Sihai Longwang (his three brothers being Ao Qin, Red Dragon King of the South Sea / South China Sea [TL: Admirable Pride]; Ao Shun, Dark Dragon of the North Sea / Lake Baikal / the Yenisei [TL: Flowing Pride] and Ao Jun, White Dragon King of the West Sea / Chinghai Lake [TL: Regal Pride]) - simply because his domain is the largest. This is what differentiates him and places him above 'normal' Chinese Dragons, whose closest Western comparison are simply Water Nymphs, which should generally get you to the scope of how unimportant Ao Kuang actually is within the Celestial Courts - it's just that 'Dragon King of the Eastern Sea' sounds way more badass than his Greek transliteration of 'Nymph Lord of the Aegean Sea'. There is a 5th Dragon King, the Yellow Dragon of the Chinese Landmass itself, but as a tl;dr it's another form of the Yellow Emperor and isn't in the same vein as the Cardinal Dragon Kings. Yeah, he ranks above Ao Kuang, but fuck off you're Chinese Jesus, not an OG dragon king, you don't count.
Compounded with this, the Dragon Kings aren't exactly playmaker entities - don't forget that in China, Emperor > King, so in line with the Chinese basically being a Mythological Bureucracy, it just places the Dragon Kings as regional rulers under the Jade Emperor. Thus, their role is to overlook and deal with matters in the seas that's beneath the Jade Emperor, ensure that the nearby subdivisions of the Heavenly Court that are responsible for rain, storms and weather are doing their job correctly (a misconception to think they directly 'control' the rains - they manage and lead them, but can't force them, just like how your boss can't force you to do paperwork - only manage, lead and take credit for it). The Dragon King's actual position within the Heavenly Court is to act as the Jailers for prisoners of the Heavenly Court (since, underwater palaces on the ocean floor double up as great prisons for petty crimes in the divine realm at least, until you get to reality-breaking monkey kings... but, well, they get specialised prisons).
WHICH FINALLY LEADS US to the topic at hand - Ao Kuang's multiple encounters with the criminals of the Divine Realm, and in the famous cases where the criminal turns out to be the 'good guy', when Ao Kuang's assumes an antagonistic role. One such troublemaker, being Ne Zha.
I'm gonna give it to you straight - the 'femboy golden-child Ne Zha' in-game isn't anywhere close to the Chinese mythology of 'truant demon-child Ne Zha'.
Ne Zha's soul was originally that of a powerful primordial demon, which the Jade Emperor reincarnated in a mortal body in the hopes it would redeem itself (complete with a good-natured Emperor as a father, and a nearby Sage) - and while it was vastly less antagonistic, and while Ne Zha definitely 'tried', Ne Zha was far from a 'good' boy.
Do you know why Ao Kuang even started terrorising the land to begin with? Because Ne Zha managed to find a way to set the Eastern Sea on fire on top of washing himself in an important river to the sea, which severely fucked with the Qi around Ao Kuang's palace and thus the elemental flow of the sea. You know why Ao Bing [TL's best as 'Third Ao'] went to begin with? Because Ne Zha killed the guy who was just checking in on what was going on, a creature directly assigned by the Jade Emperor to that post. You know why Ao Kuang demanded Ne Zha dead? Because Ne Zha not only killed Ao Bing on sight for trying to resolve the issue subordinately under the Jade Emperor (challenging the rule of the Divine Realm, much like Sun Wukong did), but used Ao Bing's tendons to make a belt for himself to taunt Ao Kuang - then chased down and nearly killed Ao Kuang by ripping the dragon's scales off when he stormed off to the Jade Emperor on what to do bout the matter (causing the other 3 Sihai Longwang to start fighting over who would get to control the East China Sea, as they assumed he was dead - when in fact he was sneaking back in the form of a snake). You know why Ao Kuang sent storms anyways? Because Ne Zha deliberately cheated the process of killing himself in repentance, and from there attacked his own father who was also trying to mediate the situation with Ao Kuang (a big no-no in Chinese cultue). You know why the story is cut short? Because the fucking Jade Emperor himself had to stand in and yank Ne Zha out of the equation to prevent him from 'actually' killing Ao Kuang and starting a draconic war in China - assigning him and his father to a role of Heavenly Adjudicators / Tribunals in dealing with rowdy demons who needed arresting on behalf of the Heavenly Court.
Oh yeah, but Ne Zha is still the hero throughout all this. Chinese logic. The entire story is less like 'Hero defeats Evil Dragon Lord' and more like 'Buerocrats scramble around to crush a guy they think is trying to usurp the throne, unaware the ruler is fine with everything going on'.
But what does this have to do with Ao Bing? Who the fuck even is Ao Bing in the greater scheme of thines? Below, dear reader...
See Amun Ra as for where I found this. Another case of mis-translation, implied to be He Bo in the English release. He Bo appears elsewhere in the game (less off-model, but still off-model) and is implied to be Kang Hui (another name for Gong Gong), who doesn't appear in the game at all. While on the topic of Gong Gong not actually being in-game; neither is Zhu Rong - that model was the mistranslation for Agni. And yes, this model and Kang Hui both share He Bo's voicelines - it's not a case where that alone proves it (as in, they literally link to the same files). Plus, you can't get more direct than reading 敖丙龙王三太子 in the files - Ao Bing, Third Dragon Prince.
Overall however, something about this one seemed off - unlike other fuckups, this didn't appear to be an unfinished or just incorrect translation - this was changed at the last moment for some reason, as much of the code for Ao Bing is labelled for He Bo / Kang Hui - only the model and animations are different, and the tiny amount of documentation (>chink coding) shows two very different periods the files were worked on. First around the time most of the other Gods were worked on, then secondarily about a week before the closed alpha went live. Odd indeed, as you might agree...
After doing some digging, I believe I've found the culprit reason - much like how MOBA SMITE attempted to shamelessly capitalise off of the live action Disney Mulan release (yeah, they did that by the way and the film fucking flopped lol, amazing plan) the changes to the model in question aligns perfectly with the release of a hugely profitable blockbuster hit Chinese adaptation of Ne Zha's legend ('hugely profitable' as in, second biggest Chinese film in history, and is still the highest profiting non-western animation of all time), which has Ao Bing play a central role as a rival. I don't even need to schizotheory for this one - the chinks here quite clearly and deliberately switched out He Bo for Ao Bing at the last minute to attempt to leapfrog off of the film's success, where Ao Bing is a major role.
Shameless.... but hey - we've got a design. And it's not like 'our' Western company is much better in this regard. Let's not forget why Mulan is in the game now.
- Bai Gu Jing (Chinese) - Hailing from the Journey to the West, a lesser-known female demon known as (the) White Bone Spirit.
An undead master shapeshifter and manipulator, filled to the brim with seething malice (basically, think Da Ji crossed with Izanami). After her first encounter (when Sun Wukong scouts ahead of the group)she is outwitted and temporarily killed by Sun Wukong, but Sun Wukong fails to grasp how to correctly banish her. This results is the group of the JttW to split up for a period, as Zhu Bajie / Pigsie takes advantage of the situation to get a petty one-up on Wukong and imply that Sun Wukong / Monkey just killed a woman and reduced her to a skeleton for no reason (as you do).
Bai Gu Jing resurrects herself shortly after the group splits, and they need to call on Wukong again to truly defeat her (the moral being not to distrust your allies, and not to attempt challenges on your own, even if you think you can do them).
Oh, and yes, despite being the 'White Bone Spirit' (known for being a spooky scary skeleton), she's also Chinese, and this was the point in the game's life cycle where they were still trying to run under the CCP's radar. A lot of the stuff regarding CCP censorship is iffy and translates poorly into a Western understanding; in short the CCP is not strictly anti-skeleton, but at the same time rulings are subjective to the point it's dependant on the official who judges on it (with the more specifically ritual-ly / evil-magic stuff being more likely to get the ban hammer than environmental skeletons for atmosphere or medical / biology-based skeleton usage), so the safe thing for most companies is just to avoid the darn spooksters entirely.
For the 'story' behind this design, the artist I found related from was asked to submit only one new God when it came to his rounds. I don't know if the guy had any other creations on the backlog, but regardless, he went with developing his prototype design for Camazotz in the end, and left our prototype BGJ on the drawing board. For this character also, there's fully detailed design notes, referencing animation cycles and even gameplay which would have her as an Assassin revolving around setting proxmity mines on lane minions / jungle mobs and possessing minions themselves, a la a minion-focused Maman Brigitte / Serqet hybrid.
- Possibly Baldr (Norse) - Odin's son with Friggr; Norse God of Light, Purity, True-Sight, Heroism and the overall ideal Norse Hero aka Norse not!Jesus, who was legendarily killed by Loki looking to cause shit.
As the myth goes, the death of Norse not!Jesus Baldr would be the very first event in the chain of prophecies that kick off Ragnarok, and so in an attempt to stop this, Friggr had everything in reality swear to never hurt Baldr, with the sole exception of Mistletoe (which is modernly incorrectly assumed to be because it was deemed 'unimportant', but in reality links to the Norse supersitition that babies / children should never be bound to long-term oaths until they understood what such an oath means, otherwise they would grow spiteful of the oath as they grew up, and thus go out of their way to break it - Mistletoe being seen as an embodiment of such youth).
Loki invariably finds out, and in perfect chaotic irony, has Baldr shot down but his own blind brother, Hodr. Hel agrees she'd let the death be overruled if everyone in reality agreed to let it pass (to everybody's best interest - the question posed being 'Do you want the Apocalypse to happen, Y/N?') - to which Loki, yet again undermines it all. In a disguise of a female frost giant, Loki is the only being in all of reality to oppose Baldr being given a second chance, and so Ragnarok became an inevitability.
The biggest irony? Loki didn't give a fuck about Ragnarok at that point, only the fact Frigg tried to come up with a perfect plan. Never the malicious instigator, always the innocent underminer. He gave slightly more of a malicious fuck once he was caught, then promptly chained to a rock and punished with eternal snake torture for the rest of forseeable future; another possible metaphor that forgiveness prevents spite.
See Coronis as for where I found this. And no, he's not a nig, it's unironically a case of weird lighting / composition; his hair's white, it's his shoulderpads that look like nappy dreads and the skin tone is the refraction of the scene. Also, pronounced Bal-t(h)r, phonetically closer to Bolter than Balder.
- Bennu (Egyptian) - Egyptian Heron-Primordial, and one of the many accredited (possible) creator-deities. Described as the aspect of Ra corresponding closest to Ra's soul, Bennu's specific creation narrative has him self-manifest like a cloud, and soar over the Primordial Sea for years, before landing on the water's surface and declaring creation unto the world - laying an egg, which hatches Ra proper (at which point [creation narrative XYZ]).
One should note he's not Ra's father, it's Ra creating himself. Look, it's just complicated.
See Amun Ra as for where I found this. In-game, was treated more like a Boss (or in MOBA-SMITE, would be more like a Titan for the Egyptian Pantheon), hence the difference in scale.
- Botis (Goetia) - One of the 72 Demons mentioned in the Ars Goetia, one of 5 books within the Lemegeton, a set of complex Medieval texts on European Demonology; advertising explaining heresy from general abrahamic religions, detailing demonic summoning rituals and describing the (72) various major denizens of Hell as well as the extent of their authority and powers / what they could do for you, in exchange for shit like parts of your soul or sacrificed newborns or having to read a constantly derailing loredoc you know the schtick by now. Essentially, Botis is a feature within one of the books of the anti-Bible.
Christfags, you may wish to 'avert thine gaze' for the contained paragraph, because this shit is decisively *not kosher* with your religion. Jooz are fine to read below; not sure about Muzzies, but it's probably not good. tl;dr Use common sense, religionfags.
___
Botis himself is the 17th of the 72 named Demons, a minor Count of Hell which has the power to see anything at any point in time, and offers social aid (ensuring relationships remained secure etc); serving under Agaliarept, who in turn is one of Lucifer's two right-hand men alongside Satanachia yes, the apple btfo anime girl on /g/. To request his aid after invoking him, he would appear as a colossal and grotesque flat-toothed viper. If you have a shred of nervousness, he would consume you wholly there and then - but for those who can stare down the repulsive figure unphased, he'll reveal his 'conventionally demonic' face (in related, on the top of his head) and discuss the terms of his demonic pact, using a razor-sharp sword to strike down those who insult him with completely insufficient offers. For those he's familiar with, only then will he show his 'true form' of a shrouded and winged old demon.
Requires lillies and uranium to summon, on top of the usual chalk + candles commonly associated with demonic invocation.
___
Easily the loosest / most-out-there design I could associate to SMITE, this was vaguely done on commission by an artist around the time they were in contact with the studio (same guy who did Infernal Lord Zeus / Battle Queen Hera).
I will say right now that I'm only ~30% sure said commission was LoRez asking him as an art test before he was give the go-ahead to work for them (since I can't imagine many other clients asking for random religious deities from such an artist, at such a price range, at such a coincedental time, and being so similar to other art-test specification like other artists have done). Veer on ignoring this one for any potential implications, unless you're just here for entities-in-the-SMITE-style.
- Brahma (Hindu) - Brahma is one of the indisputable central figures within Hinduism. While other sects focus more or less on the other two members of the Trimurti (Vishnu / Shiva) and how they influence the grander Universe; Brahma is the being as to which the Universe / reality lives and dies with, and is (depending on sect) treated with such reverence that he is not allowed to be directly named due to his 'Mysteriousness'. Other Gods manipulate the Universe (Vishnu the Maintainer, Shiva the Destroyer), Brahma is the embodiment of the physical Universe itself. In literal terms, once Brahma is destined to die come the Prakritik Maha Pralaya - Hinduism runs out of ideas as to what happens next in it's prophecy / astrology, aside from all things returning to perfect balance and possibly another cycle of Brahma.
Honestly, there's just too damn much to mention to do him justice. tl;dr Zeus-tier name.
Released by an ex-LoRez artist (Ah Puch + Raijin base model) almost immediately after they stopped working for them, conspicuous it's timing.
Came alongside an early design for Shiva - and while Shiva is in the game with his own design now, Shiva was known to be in development hell for absolute ages, and has had files mentioning his name since the Open Beta. It's more than reasonable to assume there's been multiple designs for Shiva as he's been brought up in meetings across the game's history and artstyles, and so finding Brahma next to him is at least logical that he's also been drafted up at some point.
- Chi You (Chinese) - Leader of the Nine Li tribe, uniter of the surrounding Tribes in the Northwesternmost region of China opposition to the Yellow Emperor and the tribal Chinese peoples; later given as a Chinese God of War.
Despite being antagonistic to Chinese Jesus the Yellow Emperor, Chi You is still respected throughout much of Chinese Folk Religion (what with it's huge range of beliefs) simply because of his sheer ability to even be able to challenge and put up a strong fight against the Yellow Emperor, on top of other foes - and in some regions is outright treated as a foundational figure on the level of the Yellow and Flame Emperors. While descriptions vary, he's rarely given as fully humanoid, closer instead to a demon. On top of his monstrous strength, Chi You was commonly given Bull Horns and is said to have wielded muliple weapons at once (some times with extra arms) and famously billowed out a huge amount of smoke to obscure the battlefield in his war against the Flame Emperor, on top of manipulating the winds and weather.
See Amun Ra as for where I found this.
- Coronis (Greek) - Mortal lover of Apollo (one of many) (*many*, many lovers), mother of Asclepius and the mythological source for the constellation Corvus.
Names and methods vary between poet, but to cut things short - Apollo knocks Coronis up and leaves a white crow behind to watch over her, Coronis cheats on him in secret, Coronis is rumbled (usually in some way via the divine realm having some degree of insight), [somebody] kills Coronis and her entire family, Apollo realises he just killed the woman he loved, blames the crow for all of it and coats it's feathers with smoke forevermore so it's forced to show it's shame to all / remind itself daily of what it did. [Somebody] uses [method] is used to save the unborn baby Asclepius (at which point, Asclepius is left to be raised by Chiron the Centaur) and as apology, Apollo uses Coronis's dead body to create the constellation Corvus (the Crow).
Do not ask me where I specifically found this and most of the other pieces linked here {ahem} definitely not a depreciated Undertale tumblr blog for an ex-Lo-Rez employee, which takes about 5 minutes to scroll down with the mouse-button-click-thing at max speed because of all the amount of not!GayIncest Papyrus x Sans x Aster art to reach them {ahem} but regardless; here are multiple pieces of art intended for the short-lived SMITE card game, Hand of the Gods. They key part here is that all these were said to have been used already in the game - however, when I skimmed through the scraped resources for the game - and many of them are nowhere to be seen (?!), especially ones from clearly absent pantheons (the Hindu, Mayan and Celtic Pantheons never made it in) indicating they were present in a closed build to the public, and unknowingly released for the first time by our darling Undertale fujo artist.
Some of the card art was just generic fantasy-stuff and filler cards (for example, Deathbringer had its own art, and Dagaz as a Norse Rune was it's own unique card with relevant art) - however, with how well some of the clear depictions line up with the relevant names, I would make a pretty safe bet and say the card game would have featured minor entities that wouldn't have fit in the main game (especially when other spinoffs like Paladins Strike had it's own character unique to the title). Namely, Coronis here is such a perfect depiction of her that I cannot say this could have been anything other than her - it's as identifiable to her mythological depiction as Zeus is, and is a large part why I believe at least some of these cards were inspired by named entities. I've avoided showing the more questionable ones (eg there's one of a guy stood in the distance with a not!Fafnir dragon that you could extrapolate to be Siegfried), so it doesn't dilute the ones I'm much more sure of.
- Dizang (Chinese) / Jizo (Japanese) - Extremely well known and widely attested Buddist Monk throughout Eastern Asia, and would have been the interstitial Buddha inbetween the Gautama Buddha (the 'usual' guy you think of when you think of 'Buddha') and Maitreya Buddha (the next prophesized incarnation of Buddha) responsible for all life in reality, if it weren't for the fact he vowed to delay his ascension to Buddhadom until he had saved all the sinners within of Hell. Which is probably going to take a few trillion years. Overall, pretty nice guy to be around, a saviour of the damned in a literal sense. Not le Chinese Jesus though - that'd be the Yellow Emperor.
One should note, Chinese Folk Religion and Buddism are not one and the same; however Buddism's influence and major figures are recognised within Chinese Folk (likewise, to the Indians he's known as Ksitigarbha - not Hinduism, just Indian Buddism). One example is that the Buddha / Gautama Buddha is the one to put an end to Sun Wukong's rampage within the Journey to the West, Tang Sanzang (Sun Wukong's teacher and journey-partner within Journey to the West) greatly resembles Dizang / Tsitigarbha to the point the two are commonly correlated with one another - though they are not given as the same entity directly.
Also well known to the Japanese as the entity Jizo, God of Dead Children, Stillborns, Miscarriages and Abortions; whom ventures down to the Japanese Hells daily and takes a few children (as many as possible) to heaven with him to save them from their unfair torment. Extremely common iconography throughout Japan, the small statues of him (known as Jizo's) are widespread across roads, at holy sites and on ground in need of purification (one example being the Sessho-Seki, Da Ji / Tamamo-no Mae's resting place, which has thousands of Jizo statues surrounding it in an attempt to purify her).
See Amun Ra as for where I found this. In-game, was treated more like a Boss (or in MOBA-SMITE, would be more like a Titan for the Chinese Pantheon), hence the difference in scale. While there are many different versions of the same figure between Pantheons (like a Gaia / Terra scenario), the one in-game is definitely of the Chinese Dizang.
- Either Freki or Geri (Norse) - Odin's two pet wolves / bodyguards.
Both Freki and Geri would accompany Odin everywhere (in a similar manner to how Marduk of the Babylonian Pantheon was guarded by Musussu). The key thing here being that they weren't just 'wolves' - they were Ulfhedinn (Wolf-Berzerkers, precursor to Werewolves), shifting between the form of wolves and wolf-men. Other than that, they're given little in terms of actual roles or myths - aside from being the ones who get to eat most of the food Odin is served, as Odin does other things.
Now buckle your fuckle, because I'm transporting you to my modded Persona 3 save, as we experience *Schizotheory Hour* together.
Thought to be a precursor design for Fenrir, after some extensive digging, I believe related was instead supposed to be Freki, which was then altered into Fenrir himself very shortly before release. It perfectly explains multiple 'conundrums' I had in mind when looking into Fenrir's stuff both in terms of development, the gallery and lore in general.
First, it explains Fenrir's gameplay / why Fenrir (oddly) jumps around or uses his claws for anything - despite mythologically iconic for his giant maw and bruiser-like raw strength over all else (no mention of claws) - instead, it's would be far more logically in line with the Ulfhedinn / wolf-berzerker's apparent style to jump on people and shred them up with hand weapons (as you can see with the hand-axes, iconic to berzerkering, on the back of the model's belt). It also explains why Fenrir oddly transitions to his hind legs when attacking, despite never being mentioned to have been bipedal at any point; and it also more suitably fits why he has a moon-howl ability. And, to sum things up, with one that not be apparent - but this mystery-model aligns closer to Odin's initial design, again, fitting Freki / Geri over Fenrir.
Secondly, It also explains why I can't find *anything* on Fenrir's development whatsoever, and why Fenrir seemingly had little promotional material in advance - because 'Fenrir' never was in precursor development, it was a close-to-last-minute change which turned into a stalled release. The model wasn't stated to be Fenrir either - only assumed - so the possibly certainly exists.
Finally, it compounds why Fenrir is a recurring April Fools joke (tl;dr they often pretend he's a new God on April 1st, because he was 'leaked' over a year in advance from his release, making him highly anticipated at the time) - going by my theory, it perfectly explains why he was in development hell for so long compared to other Gods - because unlike Sun Wukong or Ao Kuang (who were remade after being on the live client already, creating Hun Batz and Kukulkan); Freki was internally reworked into Fenrir, and thus his internal release was stalled for ages. To explain the humour - retards in le cummunity {ahem} leddit {ahem} think HiRez is laughing along with them, when in reality they're laughing at le cummunity for being a bunch of retards that thought the God that they saw leaked in datamining was ever released to begin with. Genuinely good twist of humour, if that's the case - it certainly gets this schizo's approval.
>inb4 dev reading this deboonks this
fuck off i don't care im not taking my meds i know you're lauging at them every april fools the unwashed masses dont but i do know i know the hirez niggers glow in the dark and youve gotta run them over just stop fucking gangstalking me lorez ill fucking kyoani you dont push me i swear ill do it
- Freyr / Frey (Norse) - Norse God of Peace, Royalty and Horses; Ruler of Alfheim (Realm of the Light Elves) and Patron God of Sweden which is poetic today, given his legend. Also, Freya's twin brother and Skadi's Son. But Freya isn't necessarily Skadi's daughter..... look it's complicated.
A key figure on the Vanir side of the Aesir-Vanir war (against Odin and his sons) that became the symbol of the retired warrior-king afterwards (with enough strength to slay a frost giant using nothing but a set of deer horns from a nearby carcass). Freyr is one of the foremost Gods of the Norse Pantheon, and during Ragnarok is prophesized to be to one to fight Surtr himself atop his golden mechanical boar that is able to take him wherever he needs to be (made by the same dwarven smiths that made Thor's Mjolnir).
The catch?
Freyr is also a metaphor for engendered weakness during peace, as his foreign jotunn wife takes advantage of the peace to undermine and weaken him, taking every step to non-overtly weaken his previous strength and handing his own semi-sentient sword (enchanted to that it could even fight on its own) to Surtr, so that Surtr can kill Freyr with it during the slaughter of the Gods come Ragnarok. I'm not saying he's the God of getting cucked, I'm saying he's the God of Sweden.
See Amun Ra as for where I found this.
- Hecate (Greek) - Goddess of Witchcraft, Locks, Crossroads and the Dead within the Mortal Realm (Ghosts, Necromancy, etc); as well as one of the three major Goddesses associated with the Moon (alongside Artemis and Luna / Selene - Lunar Phases, Moonlight and the Moon itself between the three respectively).
Easily one of the most prominent non-Olympian Gods within the Greek Pantheon, Hecate borrowed aspects of the Babylonian Ereshkigal (Goddess of the Underworld and the Underworld itself, similar to Hades and Hades; ruler down there alongside her popular husband Nergal, God of Non-Natural / Inflicted Death, Plagues and Mayhem), migrated to the Slavs as Marzanna (Goddess of Dreams / Visions, Winter Death and resultant Rebirth - feature of a Easten European tradition to burn / drown effigies of her come the start of Spring, to represent the death of Winter, and to allow her rebirth next winter) and from there migrated to the Celts as The Morrigan (Phantom Queen of Fate and Instigator of Conflict).
For this one, it was another concept / art-test that was requested by HiRez before the artist in question could start working for them properly. While it's unclear how detailed this got, for 'Gods in the in-canon artstyle', this fits the bill and is the best you can ask for as of now.
- Hodr (Norse) - Inferrably, (given the Norse trend of brother-pairings representing opposing sides of the same concept), Hodr would have been the God of Shadow, Corruption, Blindness, Tragedy and general Anti-Heroes basically Shadow the Hedgehog a milennia before it's time, and that's a comparison you won't see every day.
Much like Loki, a Hodr was an almost taboo God that wasn't commonly venerated, as much as he was simply known of as a result of his legend, so sources on him are relatively scarce - moreso since he wasn't as much of a prominent 'character' in Norse mythology as Loki (who despite his equal lack of worship, has far more in terms of records, given his mythological-popularity). As the myth goes, Hodr was tricked by Loki into using a branch of Mistletoe to kill his twin brother, Baldr (the only thing that could penetrate Baldr's invulnerability); at which point Odin promptly rapes a minor jotunn, which creates Vali, God of Vengence, who is birthed and grows up in less than a day for the sole purpose of executing Hodr and hunting down Loki to be tortured for the rest of time in the ♂snake♂dungeon♂ (at least until he busts out come Ragnarok).
All is not amiss however, as Vali and Hodr are said to reconcile, after Hodr emerges from Helheim with Baldr, post-Ragnarok. The three brothers are some of the very few survivors of the whole 'Apocalypse' debacle.
See Amun Ra as for where I found this.
- Huang Zhong (Chinese) - Notable name from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a military general under Liu Bei as one of the Five Tiger Generals that Guan Yu is a also member of (Guan being the Front Guard and Huang being the Rear Guard, the two apparently being distant friends and rivals).
A well regarded tactician, Huang Zhong is known for at never at any point in his decades-long military career losing an inch of ground to an enemy (though for that to be the case, you do need to understand he was an an early defector from the Cao Cao army, concerned with the power-hungry and tyrranical nature of his leader, on behalf of his people, validating Liu Bei's threat to Cao Cao. Also in part because his commanding officer was planning on having Huang Zhong executed for treason, despite in open conflict with the enemy - essentially creating a self-fulfilling prophecy where Huang had no choice but to defect, when the enemy ironically came to save him)
While Huang has never been venerated as a deity, he is a popular figure within Chinese literature (the Romance of the Three Kingdoms being extremely popular across East Asia - closest I can compare would be something like Lord of the Rings, except with the way the language is structured it's also a poetic and artistic masterpiece on top of the narrative put forth, as many lines (or even words / characters) have additional philosophical and poetic double-meanings that you just can't translate into English) and that didn't exactly stop them with Mulan, and he's certainly more popular / historically accurate.
Made by the same chinaman that did Chaac & many other early default card arts, and released at the same time too - the chingchongman was a huge fan of SMITE it seems, especially at the time. The watermark is his signature, not a brand of any kind.
- Iris (Greek) - Greek Goddess of Rainbows and not!genderbent Hermes {Mercury} a female messenger of the Gods.
The Greek interpretation of Rainbows was of Iris running across the sky with her golden wings to deliver messages between the Divine, the tear left behind being her path. Furthermore, she was the precursor 'main messenger God' before Hermes was born, with the myth of Iris being that her and her sister (Arke) were the messengers on the opposing sides of the Titanomachia. After the Titans lost, Arke was likewise punished along with the Titans she aided; her pearline (iridescent) wings ripped off (later making their way onto Achilles's sandals), but could still sometimes be seen trailing her sister (hence the double-rainbow all the way dude pheonomenon). Also all the harpies in the game (that you genocide every Conquest match as a Jungler) are sisters-from-another-mister, so I'm sure she'd be happy about that.
Otherwise, appears most notably in-mythos as the messenger for the Persephone-Hades incident between Zeus and Demeter.
One should note that messenger-Gods don't just end with Hemes {Mercury}, Iris & Arke; the other major name being Ascalaphus - God of Owls and Messenger of the Underworld. Yes, owls weren't just Athena's thing; the Little Owl was just the symbology (mascot, even) of Athens, which Athena overlooked. The Underworld, ranging from Hades to Hecate have far more of a link to Owls - with Hades's pet man-legged Eagle Owl Ascalaphus and personal messenger being the epitome of it all; a particularly spiteful, vindictive, nasty and observant snitch who would go out of his way to deliver the worst news possible, even when unrequested and out of his authority (most notably being the only one who went out of his way to rat out Persephone eating from the pomegranite, to prevent her from leaving Hades).
- Itsumade (Japanese) - A famous Yokai who is 'technically' correctly called the Kaicho Koto [Phantom Bird], however has come to be named after it's distinct legendary and ominous wail; "Itsumade! Itsumade!" ["When will it end! When will it end!"].
But lorefag... 'when will it end'? That doesn't sound ominous, it sound a sad, melancholic little th-
It's a carrion feeder. And it's mocking the near-dead lining a battlefield, that will likely never have proper burial rites performed for them, before it devours their corpses, dooming them to a painful and restless afterlife. It's not waiting for the bloodshed to end - it's waiting for their lives to end.
Itsumade were described as having a cross between a crow's head and a fleshbare humans face with saw-teeth, a large curved beak, a body that somewhat resembled a snake's, talons the length of blades, and a wingspan of ~5m; and would perch atop nearby the tallest nearby buildings before wailing it's taunt. The most famous myth associated with an Itsumade was in 1334, when one tried to pull it's "Itsumade" schtick atop the Emperor's Visiting Hall, while overlooking the Japanese ex-capital, Kyoto, as a disease ravaged the city and killed hundreds every day (at which point it was unceremoniously shot down with an arrow just to get it to shut the fuck up).
Another art test, this time for one of the artists that does a lot of the various shop-chest designs. While unnamed, it's extremely obvious what it is, or it 'just happens' to match an Itsumade to a T.
- Ju Ling Shen (Chinese) - One of many servants of the Heavenly Court, and semi-prominent Chinese Giant.
Originally attested to as the being that split the Hua Shan, one of the 5 Great Mountains of China, so the Yellow River could flow by unphased (and is responsible for the geological features there, which appear to be a giant's handprints and footprints). Alternately / more famously, is one of the first representative generals of the Heavenly Court sent to quash Sun Wukong's rampage in the initial passages of The Journey to the West (the rampage which ultimately led to Wukong contesting the Jade Emperor himself).
Otherwise, that's basically it. Ju Ling Shen features in lots of minor tales and parables, as a commonly-recurring-minor-character, often doing gruntwork on behalf of the Jade Emperor. Semi-obscure name, pretty much just a Giant. Probably He Bo's drinking buddy or something.
See Amun Ra as for where I found this.
- Kuraokami / Kura-Okami (Japanese) - The colossal Ice Dragon God representing Rain, Sleet and Snow; and one of the innumerable deities that were produced from Kagutsuchi's corpse (technically making him Amaterasu / Susano-O / Tsukuyomi's older brother / nephew depending on if you think a corpse counts as a stage in a family tree).
See Amun Ra as for where I found this. In-game, was treated more like a Boss (or in MOBA-SMITE, would be more like a Titan for the Japanese Pantheon), hence the difference in scale.
- Marduk (Babylonian) - Pantheon-Head of the Babylonians.
The one to slay Tiamat within the Enuma Elish on behalf of An & the Annunaki - henceforth assuming her role as God of the Waters, as well as Harvest & Agriculture / Vegetation, Medicine and sorting disputes within the Mesopotamian Divine Realm - then using her corpse to create mankind and furnish the barren Earth with life (not quite the promordial creator who formed reality like Abzu & Tiamat did, but was the functional creator-God of the Babylonians). Iconically seen with his pet Mushussu, one of Tiamat's Poison Dragons, Marduk was the son of the war-God Enki, and married to Zarpanit, Goddess of Marriage and Fertile Soil.
By the time of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, Marduk was amalgamated with Enlil and Durumzid into the entity known as Bel (which features within the Torah, where a Jew declares Bel was a false God, since it's impossible for a clay statue to move unless the clay statue in question is a Jewish Golem, then it's 100% legit)
See Amun Ra as for where I found this.
- (Musashi) Miyamoto (Japanese) - Extremely famous Kensei [TL: Sword Saint], widely given as the most skilled *samurai* swordsman to ever live.
Most famous for his duel with the other greatest swordsman within the Japanese isles at the time of 1612 AD (Sasaki Kojiro, Master of the Western and Southern region of the Japanese archipelago, compared to Musashi Miyamoto who hailed from the Northern and Eastern regions) - and beat the greatsword / Odachi-using motherfucker to death with nothing but a sharpened driftwood oar he used to sail to their duelling ground at Ganryu-Jima (a small island located at the centre of the Japan) with. Aside from that, started a major swordfighting school based on his style and is a general folk legend... though not exactly a mythological one.
See Amun Ra as for where I found this.
- Neit / Neith (Celtic) - Celtic God of War & Horses. Occasional consort of The Morrigan, to the point you could say he's the closest entity you can get to her husband (even if it is an open relationship on both sides, they very rarely see each other, and the few times they do see each other it's usually hatesex).
Ex-Pantheon-Head of the Irish sect of the Celtic Pantheon, Neit was the Chief of the Fomorian tribe (not Formorian, Fomorian), the first divine group within Celtic record and a weak group of proto-agricultural hunter-foragers. With time, others came into their lands within the Otherworld and were absorbed by the Fomorians, as the Fomorians allowed them in to help work the soil and primitive crops within the Otherworld. This was until an invasive force known as the Nemedians entered the picture (headed by... Nemed, an entity related to the Sky), who demanded a taxation from the passive Fomorians for their co-existence - that only increased to unreasonable levels, until the passive Fomorians started to be killed off in punishment. The Nemedians did treat the land well, but began to hunt the animals of the Otherworld to extinction (as it was a key Fomorian's source of food, as the offerings took a toll on the harvests).
Eventually, the Fomorians were reduced to a shadow of their former selves, down to the double digits (sometimes given as 30 remained, sometimes 70). With their backs to the wall, Neit requested the aid of the Horses, and the remaining Fomorians attacked the Nemedians and drove them away - but not without taking even more dire losses. When the next major group of Gods arrived (the Fir Bolg, regrouped remnants of the Nemedians), the Fomorians were too scarce to even be found at first and the Fir Bolg ruled uncontested for some time; the few remaining Fomorians lay in wait, having children and gathering their forces - these children being the Tuatha de Danann (Neit being The Dagda's uncle). In the final mythological Celtic conflict, the Fomorians and the Tuatha de Danann once again drive off the invasive group and are finally victorious.... but the Fomorians had lost almost everything. Of the thousands of original Fomorians, only Neit remained, alone possibly The Morrigan too, though it's unclear what her origin is as much as she is a force of nature, and is only rarely given as Fomorian. From there, Neit willingly passes on the right to rulership the The Dagda, and thus the core Celtic Pantheon as we know it is born; Neit assuming the role of an advisor and overlooker to the Tuatha de Danann - but very shakily an 'ally', as his allegience to both his nephew and his mistress would often put him on either side of a conflict, for or against the Tuatha de Dannan and the Celtic people.
tl;dr Neit is The Dagda's semi-edgy war hero uncle.
It's unclear as to how much of this legend has overlap with wider overarching Celtism.
- On one hand it may have been the passed along commetary for all of European Celtism; with invasive groups from the West, then East and South representing the different groups.
- On the other hand it may have had Christian influnces 'rewriting' events to better suit the Christian's interests - the most notable 'incorrect' version being the Christianized Irish version, which has an additional two generations beforehand linked to muh Christ / Noah's Ark (Cessairians & Partholonians), is definitely specific to Ireland, and makes the groups more polarised in morality compared to the nuanced reasoning of the 'original' Celtic legend.
- On yet another hand it may be commentary purely on Irish heritage and deliberately biased even then, with the narrative mirroring the {Druids = Fomorians} / {Britons = Nemedians & Bolg} / {Irish = Tuatha de Dannan}. Yes, the Irish's sheer one-sided seethe at the bongs is enough that it's a reasonable assumption they'd rewrite their ancestral Celtic mythology just to have petty one-up on them.
We just don't have enough evidence to make clear of it, since the Celts were averse to record-making, so much of the legendary Succession of the Celtic Gods is word-of-mouth, even today.
Finally, unlike the Egyptian Neith (NRT), our Celtic Neit / Neith here is actually pronounced as you see it.
See Amun Ra as for where I found this.
- Osun / Oshun (Yoruban) - Youban Goddess of Beauty, Love, Honey, Rivers and Freshwater; Shango's (God of Lightning) 3rd and favourite Wife, Yemoja's [Daughter / Niece / Adoptive Daughter], River Goddess of the Oshun River and the youngest major Orisha within the Yoruban Pantheon. Yes, rivers, Yemoja in SMITE is just flat out incorrect - Yemoja has dominion over Lakes and the Sea - not smaller rivers.
Directly given as a real woman at one point (much like Shango), who were each so admired that they were thought to be the mortal forms of the two Gods of the same name; Oshun is typically portrayed as a sweet yet melancholic young woman in the peak of her fertility. Melancholic, since she is in such lovestruck adoration of all things in existence, she's saddened others cannot feel the same way, and thus seeks to 'increase' the amount of love around the world.
During the creation myth of the Yoruba; Oshun was the only female Orisha sent down with Obatala to help create Earth. While the 16 other Male Orisha 'got the job done', each time they would create barren expanses that ultimately weren't worth living in, and so each attempt at the project would fail. It wasn't until they humbled themselves, stopped talking over each other and asked for Oshun's help (at Olodumare's advice), that they finally succeeded in creating a world with beauty, and thus worth living in.
In her other major feature, a plotted divine rebellion leads to a decades-long drought (both instigated by Eshu, and then reported to Olodumare by Eshu, in his usual cop-who-motivates-you-to-break-the-law-so-he-can-arrest-you-for-doing-the-wrong-thing ways), with Olodumare willfully ignoring the pleas of the traitorous Gods, leaving Earth to die. In the end, it was Oshun who took it upon herself to travel through space to reach Orun (tl;dr Yoruban Divine Realm, not!Heaven) in the form of a peacock. In the process of passing by the stars, her feathers were singed off and she arrived to Olodumare as a crippled Vulture, but Olodumare was impressed nonetheless and forgave the wider Orisha, welcoming Oshun back any time she wished. This is also why Vultures are considered sacred animals in Yorubanism, necessary for some rituals to be completed as vectors / messengers to the Divine Realm, and thus are forbidden to be hunted down.
Additionally, is one of the Yoruban Gods that was carried across into Voodoo. Same name, basically the same role, Yoruban Nanchon, Rada-group Iwa.
Personal heads up now - and I'm not fucking around, so listen the fuck up. Imagine me, Lorefag extraordinaire, pointing accusatively at YOU while you read this.
Oshun is fucking adored by new-age religions, easily the most modernly popular God to come out of Sub-Saharan Africa, and has huge presence in feminist and nu-occult circles as it distracts from the brutal reality of females in Sub-Saharan Africa, while being more diverse than those stinky Eurasian Gods / hasn't been deleted from history by the Spanish like the Mesoamerican ones. If you happen across a female SJW - ESPECIALLY if she's black - ~7 times out of 10 she will be deftly aware of this Goddess (moreso than Obatala himself or any other God in the Yoruban Pantheon), and definitely not because Americans / SJWs have no culture of their own to speak of. Use this knowledge I have imparted unto thee wisely, subtley move the conversation over to this topic, 'empathise' with what she says while throwing in a few things you've read here, and use it to appease her / get her off your back without offending the modern-day inquistion officer, thus directing the sauronic gaze of the SJW inquisition elsewhere. Don't be autistic about it and force it, just weave it in. Thank. Me. Later. She'll think your dumb ass is her best fucking friend in the whole wide world.
Another art test released to the public, this is the same concept designer for Mulan, Achilles, Danzaburou and Discordia.
- Possibly Huracan (Maya) - Mayan God of (unsurprisingly) Hurricanes and Storms; one of the Seven Primoridals, and the one who, with Qʼuqʼumatz {Kukulkan}, created most of the things that furnished Earth (of which included humans). Between the two Primordials, they represented the Wind, Rain, War, Fire, Lightning, the Sun and Knowledge... the only issue being that, it's pretty muddled within Mayan sects as to which entity specifically represented what - with psudeonyms / alternate varients of the two Gods each representing all of those aspects at at least one point. Traditionally, the entity associated with the Feathered Serpent Kukulkan is usually the one to represent War and Fire; while the Sovereign Lord Huracan is the one to represent Wind and Rains.... which, as you can see, means the SMITE team might have gotten themselves in quite a pickle by modelswapping Kukulkan to Ao Kuang's old model 'because floating-serpent' (oh yeah, they did that if you weren't aware), now creating issues if they want to another Mayan God of Wind and Tornados (who in actuality, is far more deserving of the title). That's not to say they couldn't find a way to do it, but at the same time, I'd like to see how they do Huracan without a Hurricane, and still get all the elements that Kukulkan missed. Scratch that, lightning hurricanes that can be ignoted into fire whirls sounds fucking awesome.
Alas, this one is purely speculation on my end - but substantiated speculation. I'm not blowing hot air up your ass (like Huracan would).
The mural in question is seen throughout the Mayan Siege map, quite clearly incorporates features of Huracan (on top of the obvious curly wind-line-things, most notably the large Jewel at the top, which is likely the Heart of the Sky), the figure is mirrored by similar murals of Kukulkan (the entity Huracan is most commonly paried with) and is placed above the Mana camp (of which Huracan was heavily associated with magic). Not quite 'mystery statue of a 3-headed-dog that belongs to Hades and guards the underworl-WHO COULD IT BE???', but given the general circumstance, I'd be confident in asserting that this is our earliest non-fixed imagery of the Mayan Primordial to say the least.
- Qinglong (Chinese) - Auspicious / Sacred Beast of the East, Primordial Being within the Chinese Pantheon and the Chief Representative of one of the 5 Fundamental Chinese Elements (Wood).
While Qinglong plays a semi-important role in the Chinese creation narrative (along the 3 other Asupicious Beasts; the Zhuque, Xuanwu and Quilin / Baihu), its mentions mostly trail off from there, assuming a background / observational role rather than interfering with affairs (one such example being that while Qinglong is the Patron of Wood, Goumang is ordaned as the role of God of Wood within the Heavenly Realm).
One thing to note is that Ao Kuang and Qinglong are not the same entity - while they are synchronous and commonly correlated, due to their similar descriptions (Qinglong literally translating to Azure Dragon, Ao Kuang being another Azure Dragon who lives in the East), Qinglong outranks Ao Kuang by an exponential degree. Ao Kuang is the elective Dragon King of the Eastern Sea; Qinglong *is* the metaphysical concept of 'East', and has authority over everything related to it.
See Coronis as for where I found this.
- Sarasvaati (Hindu) - Hindu Goddess of Music, the Arts Language and Knowledge, the Divine Creator of Sanskrit / Indian writing system; Wife of Brahma and member of the Tridevi. Originally a Goddess of the first sacred Indian river (the River Sarasvati, yes, before the Ganges became the defacto sacred River) that flowed through the Kashmir Region / Indus Valley, but has since dried up due to the formation of the Thar Desert.
If you were wondering as to why Hindu Gods appear blue, it's a depiction of their spiritual aura being so limitless that it literally seeps through their skin (the specific colour being known as Dull), inspired from the endless blue of the sky.
See Coronis as for where I found this.
- Stheno (Greek) - Also known as The Red Gorgon, Stheno was Medusa's hotter and far more aggressive sister; who unlike the reclusive Euryale or the territorial Medusa, would actively roam around to find things to petrify (giving her a kill-count way higher than both of her sisters combined). For context's sake, Euryale was known as The Dark Gorgon or The Bellowing Gorgon - hence the sisters had Red / Green / Black-Purple-DarkBlue scales respectively.
While less prominent than Medusa herself, both Stheno and Euryale do feature in Perseus's quest to slay Medusa, as they chase after him post-Medusa-murder; but fail to find him owing to his use of the legendary item, Hades's Helm (of which was Hades' legendary cyclops-forged item, alongside Zeus's Thunderbolt and Poseidon's Trident - seen in SMITE on the top of Hades's hood, between the hood's horns), given to Perseus on loan from the river nymph of the Styx... Styx. While Perseus was completely undetectable with it on, he still ran the risk of glimpsing at the two hunting him, and thus his prolonged but eventual escape was arguably the more dangerous aspect of his quest, compared to slaying Medusa.
Finally (since it's pretty clear there's not much resemblence between the in-game Medusa and our girl here), it's Stheno who is the more accurate of the two in her depiction of a Gorgon. At no point is there any mention of Medusa or the Gorgons being Lamia-types, or looking hideous, and is a modern development owing to the general snake imagery and idea related to petrification. In-game Medusa far more resembles her mother, Echidna, than she does 'Medusa'. The Gorgons were initially nondescript in beauty, but later to described as tragically beautiful; and definitely were supposed to have (albeit nondescript) wings alongside signature snake-hair. Yes, that's not Pegasus you're looking at in the image - those wings are Stheno's.
And because I'm your best friend Anon, I've also pre-emptively done a version with her turned her green and included Medusa's not!Euryale recolour. Possibility of Medusa getting a remodel years down the line aside, I highly doubt she'll be given the full accuracy-treatment, as the Lamia-form is intrinsic to her gameplay / passive / silhouette, and thus agreeably should take priority over comparativey superfluous artistic choices. That said, second down is the more 'accurate' Medusa.
- Tamamo-no-Mae (Japanese) - The Japanese variation of Da Ji, and one of the Three Great Demons of Japan (alongside Shuten Doji and either Sutoku Tenno or Otakemaru). The version of Da Ji within SMITE is in reference to her depiction within Chinese narrative classics, written after her mythological rampage and real-life lifetime - but Da Ji's story doesn't strictly 'end' in China (though she did imitate imperial concubine under the alias Bao Si there for a short while, after her affair with Di Xin and before fleeing for good) (you just can't keep a woman like Da Ji down).
After burning all her bridges in China, the Nine Tailed Fox was commonly accepted to have fled to Japan, where there she seduced another Emperor (Emperor Toba, the predecessor to Emperor Sutoku / Sutoku Tenno) to wreack even more havoc there, under the name Tamamo-no-Mae. Her tail tale ends after burning all her bridges once again (being the cause of Toba's illness, and trying to usurp the nation via his son, Konoe), until she has a final showdown with two samurai on a wind-swept plain at Nasu (very cinematic). This culminates in her final trick, as she was 'slain' - transferring her soul into the infamous Sessho-seki as her body was slain (Sessho-seki = literally TL's to 'Death Rock', though in real life probably in reference to the Carbon Monoxide / Hydrogen Sulphide gas produced from the nearby volcanic hotspring), where her spirit lived on for centuries more, killing everything indiscriminately around her, before being BTFO blessed by a travelling preist and moving onto the next life. From there, some accounts say that instead of returning to the cycle of reincarnation, she instead began to work for the 10 Courts of Jigoku / Di Yu as a divine punisher for the sexually deviant. tl;dr Da Ji tortures rapists, pedophiles and general degenerates in japanese hell as her dayjob nowadays. Don't get any ideas.
For the alternate... 'ending', and as a fun fact, Sessho-seki 'naturally' broke apart quite recently in 2022 ... ... ...
As in, it's speculated that Da Ji / Tamamo-no-Mae is mythologically on the loose again, with it being an apparent in-joke in East-Asia that the old fox had something to do with the weird South Korean sadistic feminist cult that quite literally took over the country from the shadows, across multiple pillars of power without anybody realising, and went as far as the reigning Prime Minister Park Geun-hye to be deposed and imprisoned because of her links to it. Literal secret society consipracy stuff.
Because sometimes, truth can be stranger than fiction....
Or, well... 'Fiction'.
See Amun Ra as for where I found this. >inb4 it's just Da Ji but chinkified; there's a separate model for Da Ji that closer mirrors her Chinese variant complete with nine tails instead of a nine-frilled-fan; Tamamo is her own entity outright in the files. By default she's without tails, but I've included the tail'd version for the most part for posterity in her T-poses.
- Tao Tai (Chinese) - One of the Four Chinese Malevolant Perils, that are in direct opposition to the more famous Auspicious Beasts (Qinglong, Zhuque, Quilin, Xuanwu) - however while the Perils are collectively their evil counterpart (as a group), they don't seem to have any compass / elemental alignment or individual rivals, and are noted on very little relative to their magnitude (possibly due to superstition, possibly due to lack of popularity). These represent the conceptually most evil beings within Chinese mythology, and are the only truly 'unredeemable' souls in all of existence since their actions feed into their own actions - sin feeding into sin, irredemption feeding into irredemption.
While the membership sometimes changes (for example, Gong Gong is occasionally included instead of one of them) the Malevolant Perils included;
- The Hundun - The Chinese concept of initial Primordial Chaos itself (directly comparable to the Greek Chaos, or more accurately, a certain Blind Idiot God), given as a abstract being whose every piece is a conceptual contradiction - tiny blinded eyes, deaf ears, 6 crippled legs and 4 wings incapable of flight, and an otherwise distinctly round featureless egg-shaped body. Everything about it or relating to it contradicts in a conceptual and deliberately-confusing
and definitely not!Eldritchway, but is otherwise an inert and non-interfering entity that simply prefers the evil and malicious in it's own odd, contradicting way. Heavily linked to the 'Great Demon' that the Jade Emperor 'defeated' to earn his right to rulership over the Heavenly Realm, though the comparison is never directly made. - The Taowu - The Sin of Ignorance / Stupidity; a creature who is obsessively determined with conflict, fighting and killing; who will always refuse to listen to (or even try to comprehend) reason. Given as a huge hound with a humans head and a boar's tusks, it razes destruction for the mere sake of destroying things, yet despite it's blind rage and lack of any coherant plan or goal, it cannot be defeated due to it's overwhelming strength, extensive muscle-memory combat-experience and ability to see through any point in time (and thus instinctually avoid any mortal attack without even realising).
Anecdotally the most famous of the 4. - The Qionqi - The Beast of Injustice; usually given as a huge winged Tiger with an ox-like face and a hedgehog's quills & hands. The incompetant grandson of
Chinese Jesusthe Yellow Emperor, Qiongqi eventually became so resentful of the success of those around him, that he would deliberately side with the wrong and the evil. This contrarianism spiralled out of control until he had become the chimeric monster in question, and with an urge to feast on human flesh that constantly motivated him to seek out and interfere with humans. He would deliberately slaughter the rightous, innocent and good (by way of tearing their face off and eating it as they were still alive), and in payment for contrasting the good, the Qionqi would not only spare, but actively aid the evil, so he could feast on the good people trying to stop them.
and finally, our subject;
- The Taotai - The Sin of Gluttony / Greed; sometimes given as a draconic headless Ox with human limbs and tigers claws, sometimes given as Chi You's decapitated head which gained sentience and reformed itself into the description previously mentioned. Either way, in both incarnations the Taotai's signature feature was a huge maw in the place of its head, and taking up the entire frontal portion of the ox-like torso. With no eyes, ears or nose to guide itself (after it ate it's own body parts, when they disracted it from eating), the Taotai would carve a path of utter destruction as it consumed its way through anything in it's path, even resorting to eating the dirt or sand it walked on when nothing else was nearby.
tl;dr Bakasura on steroids.
See Amun Ra as for where I found this.
- The Oak King (Celtic) - Representative Entity of Summer within the Celtic Pantheon - not a God per se, but a major and (uncommonly for Celtism) widely-spread constant throughout many sects of Celtic worship. Very commonly associated with the Green Man (a yet even more prominent figure within Celtism), as the tale goes, the cause of Summer and Winter is the Oak King and Holly King in constant and eternal conflict; slaughtering one come the Solstice of each season, and resurrecting themselves at the following Equinox to grow in power again to repeat ad infinum. Wanna know why you deck the halls with boughs of Holly at Christmas - there you go.
As for what the two were the 'Kings' of, this is in reference to the general 'Courts of Fae' political structure within later Celtic mythology - after the Aos Si were essentially demoted from Gods to major Fae when Christianity genocided those who worshipped different Gods and desecrated their holy grounds brought the lost lambs of God into the peaceful flock of Jesus. It was understood that all Fae generally aligned themselves to one of 7 'Courts'. These being;
- The 4 'Minor' Seasonal Courts of Spring / Summer / Autumn / Winter.
Generally correlating to personalities and mannerisms, each personality-type having a time of year they were most attuned and thus most powerful; those in short being Curious / Kind / Industrious / Nasty respectively. - The 2 Major Courts of the Seelie and Unseelie.
Amalgamating the Spring & Summer Courts / Autumn & Winter Courts into literally the Holy / Unholy, or transliterally (and more accuraately) the Kind-hearted / Cold-hearted. - Finally the uptmost ruling court, of the Aos Si.
Given either as another name for the Tuatha De Danann, or the descendant Tribe of Gods after the Tuatha De Danann. - Technically there's an 8th grouping of the Unaligned / Solitary / Renegade Fae who listened to nobody; but their lack of leadership doesn't put them in the Court system outright. Not necessarily malicious, just antisocial.
The Oak King was head of the Seelie and Summer Courts, the Holly King the head of the Unseelie and Winter Courts. Both under the Head of the Court of the Aos Si, but both of them warring nonetheless.
The entity of the Oak King in of himself is understood to have been the basis of The Apple Tree Man within later British folklore and The Horned God within Wiccan (which actual SMITE fucks up and incorrectly implies is Cennunos, when Cernnunos is simply another early inspiration for The Horned God); however The Oak King was replaced with King Oberon within later Anglo-culture with his role within the Fae Courts (and as such could be said that Oberon is the Arthurian version of The Oak King, given Oberon's mother is Morgan le Fay).
See Amun Ra as for where I found this. Yes, this was not an OC donutsteel God - it's the localization fucking up perhaps in the most major way possibly which I'll explain fully.
In-game, he's called 'Brass' and implied that he's the 'Guardian of Avalon' - pure chinkshit bullshit.
'Brass' in Chinese is Huang Tong, meanwhile 'Oak King' (or more transliterally accurate, Oak-Like Emperor) is Huang Xiang Tong - they literally did not translate the middle word / characters (橡 / Xiang / 橡树 / Xiangshu 'Oak / Oak Tree' pops up multiple times in the code), and built on from there with their own fuckup. While you might want to say 'Guardian of Avalon' is in reference to Oak King = Oberon or that Avalon is mythologically furnished with apple trees, thus = Apple Tree Man; it's not, it's just made up bullshit - there is no Guardian of Avalon and the Arthurians weren't even in the game, only the Celts in the files.
In game, he came paired with his own personal mobs, a la Persephone's flowers - I've scaled them up for clarity; they were smaller in-game and came up to his waist.
In a way, I'm quite glad The Oak King got such a butchered translation - if it weren't the case, I wouldn't even have thought to check the rest of the models for translation errors, and half of this section would have been glossed over.
- The Red Oni & The Blue Oni (Japanese) - From the extremely well-known Japanese folk story of the same name (or alternatively, The Red Oni who Cried). If you're a wee/a/boo you should definitely have heard of these little shits; this is a Humpty-Dumpty / Ring-around-the-Roses tier well-known children's story in Glorious Nippon.
To set the scene (since we've somehow gone this long in the collective doc without mentioning them, anecdotally the modernly most well known non-western monster on Earth), Oni are the Japanese default 'demons' or general human monsters. While the Norse Jotunn best transliterate to 'Trolls' (despite being their own thing entirely), Japanese Oni likewise best translate as Ogres (while still being their own distinct thing). In simplest terms, Oni can be boiled down as simply as unnaturally sturdy humans-with-horns; however they were commonly given as wearing leopard-skin rags as underwear, having hideous faces, malformed / extra / sharpened fingers, coloured skin (usually Red) and were most often equipped with oversized, thick and extremely heavy pure-Iron Clubs (Kanabo - real life ones looking more like very elongated, metal-studded / metal-spiked wooden baseball bats; rare in warfare but fulfilling a similar role to Western Maces as anti-armor). The phrase 'Oni with an Iron Club' (Oninikanabo) itself was the Japanese phrase to describe an impassable / undefeatable object. As a definitive race of creatures, multiple named and unnamed Oni appear in Japanese mythology, often as greedy and prideful creatures who like to torment the weak (perfect for a dashing hero to defeat), as well as having a variety of yokai sub-species related to them (examples including the Onibi, Namahage or Amanojaku). The most well known / powerful Oni of them all being Shuten Doji (and his wife Ibaraki Doji); featuring as a staple of member of Three Great Demons of Japan (with his own associated legendary narrative to boot).
Oni-shit aside, as for the relevant Oni here; story goes, the Red Oni (sometimes a child, sometimes an adult) wants to be friends with some humans in a village, but is fearful of retaliation owing to the Oni race's bad reputation (note that this is an execption, since most Oni in mythology really are just through-and-through scum). The Red Oni's best friend, (the Blue Oni), upon hearing this as the Red Oni cries to itself, attacks a nearby human village and destroys various heavy structures. After the Red Oni wanders over to investigatee the commotion, the Blue Oni flees never to be seen again. The Red Oni is assumed to be a hero, and helps rebuild the village by using it's immense strength to clear the immovable rubble and fix the large structures, and so gains the human's trust; however only after finishing up the works, do the Red Oni realise it was the Blue Oni who attacked the village, and why the Blue Oni ran away (so the villagers wouldn't assume they were connected). Depending on the ending, the Red Oni either begins to cry again after losing it's best friend, or is filled with courage and becomes determined to become just as good friends with the humans in the Blue Oni's place.
Pretty basic - but it is a kids tale.
Finally, to note on this design, the two Oni are paired up with a Palanquin, the Eastern equivalent to a horse-drawn carriage (sometimes pulled by horses, sometimes carried by humans). While there are examples of carriage-demons (such as Oborogurama); this is just an othrwise mundane carriage - except for the wheels, which are Wanyudo / Wa-Nyudo. Wanyudo (translated as Wheel Monks / Wheel Preists) are another relatively well-known Yokai, said to be specifically cruel priests in their former lives, who were tasked with bringing a certain amount of souls of the dead / damned to Jigoku as repentance, while their enlarged head was strung to a wheel and wreathed in eternal fire. The catch? As cruel preists in their former lives, they would usually fall into a vice of sadism and simply attack / kill the living and innocent, inadvertedly extending their punishment and suffering ad infinum.
See Amun Ra as for where I found this. The characters on their shirts is just Kanji for Red / Blue respectively.
- The Sphinx (Egyptian) - Famous guardian-chimera, and overall icon of Egypt.... yet is narratively more famed for her feature in the Greek myth / play of Oedipus.
Given with a womans head, a lion's hindquarters (body+legs) and a set of falcon's wings; the Sphinx has ben characterised in a variety of ways - from a solemn protector, to a malicious and cruel trickster, to a lonely and tragic romantic. One thing stays consistant however; the Sphinx's association with riddles and wordplay. Get the answer wrong and the Sphinx will kill or eat you, get the answer right and she is honorbound to kill herself instead.
While most people know the default riddle, the Sphinx is actually associated with three legendary riddles - which in order are:
- What creature has one voice, goes on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?
The answer, (as any know-it-all 7 year old will arrogantly tell you) being Man - the metaphor being a crawling baby, to a walking man, to a cane-reliant elder. Oedipus famously answers this correctly, and from there, the Sphinx kills herself (either in obligation, shame or grief). The next confirmed riddle of the Sphinx is, - There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and she, in turn, gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?
The answer being Day and Night (in Greek it's even more linguisitcally obvious because of gendered language). You may have heard of this one before if you're into mythology - but very few are aware of the third riddle, because it's one that's already been shown, never been asked, yet has no confirmed answer.
You should know this riddle already, if you're processing the information you're reading and you aren't a filthy speedreader.... - If the Sphinx kills herself after the first riddle is answered correctly, and kills any who fail to answer her riddles, how does Man know of her second riddle?
...well?
>inb4 she just asked two questions before killing herself, because in the original myth, she doesn't - she only asks the one. Yet the second riddle's historical record predates the first. So..... well?
By the same guy who did the art for the comics, released later as an 'old piece' for 'practice before a project'. Since none of his work thereafter is related to mythology, it's clear it was for SMITE. Perhaps you might want to say 'muh out of studio', but he's also the guy who depicted the Jade Emperor's throne half a decade before the Jade Emperor made it into the game, and the one used in the cinematic is identical in silhouette - so his stuff is certainly qualifiable as canon.
The Sphinx pictured likely the Oedipian feature (The Sphinx of Thebes), as she is perched atop a tall plinth and guarding the city she had recently overtaken.
- Thrudr / Thrud (Norse) - Thor and Sif's Daughter, Goddess of Power / Minor War Goddess and Waitress Cupbearer of Valhalla. The most obscure of Thor's children, and the only one who doesn't inherit part of Mjolnir post-Ragnarok; the Valkyrie-girl often taking second place to Modi and Magni (Gods of Wrath and Might respectively). Little exists relating to her, aside from a few marriage proposals Thor had to ...SMITE!!! on her behalf.
Correctly pronounced Hr-O-Ph-Th, though Th-Rud is generally given nowadays.
See Amun Ra as for where I found this.
- Possibly: Veles (Slavic) - One of the chief deities within the Slavic Pantheon, representing Death, Cattle and Trickery.
A nuanced God, while Veles is often given as an antagonistic and scornful entity when interacting with other Slavic Gods (especially his chief counterpart, Perun / not!Thor-but-really-old-and-with-a-longer-haft-hammer), Veles relatively good-hearted and professional when dealing with his patronage, both kindly seeing that the souls of the dead to pass on in rays of sunlight and taking great care in the herds of animals he overlooks. As one of the major Gods within a relatively disorganised Pantheon, Veles was / is commonly associated with a wide array of other entities, most notably including the Leshy / Leshen (his name being pronounced Vel-Lesh), and his conflicts with Perun being mirrored in various other Duo-Chief-Deities of the Slavic Pantheon, such as Belobog+Chernobog.
See Coronis as for where I found this. Also, it's the green one, not the sword-wielder.
- Wenet (Egyptian) - A truly ancient God, hailing initially from the pre-formative Badarian cultures before Ancient Egypt proper (manifest then as the Snake Goddess Unut), Wenet was the Ancient Egyptian Goddess of Rabbits, Hares, Natural Regeneration, Breeding and Running (Wenet literally translating to 'The Swift'). Wenet plays a semi-important role within the Book of the Dead, as the one perched atop Ra's head / the Eye of Ra to speak directly to the Dead (known there by the title of the Lady of the First Hour), as well as being the Patron Goddess of the administrative region around Hermopolis (The 15th Nome of Egypti, similar in concept to an American State today).
While her rabbit-association with the moon is one mirrored throughout many Pantheons (the Egyptians interpreting the dark patches on the moon being the result of rabbits thumping), what's unique to Wenet in pantheonic terms is her kindred association with Snakes. The Egyptians noted on Rabbits and Hares for their speed and rate of multiplication, but also on their hardiness and resilience to the elements and poisons - hence, while she commonly depicted with scrolls (since Hermopolis's Patron God was Thoth), Wenet is also commonly seen with the imagery of a snake alongside her or wrapped around her neck like a scarf (which you can see on our design's headpiece) - likely in part to her initial portrayal as Unut, but also because the Rabbit and the Snake were viewed as two sides of the same coin to the Egyptians (Life and Death), yet both showing regenerative properties in different ways (Rabbits by multiplying / withstanding injuries when hunted, Snakes by shedding skin / healing their tails).
Found from the same chinkyman that gave us Jing Wei, and alongside concepts for a quite obvious future-modern-series Fenrir skin (think Living Alloy Jormungandr) and a dark-elf-hunter-series Izanami skin (think Moonlit Ranger Artemis). While the design is a bit out-there, it hits a fuckton of notes for the Goddess (more than many others in-game), such as the Rabbit-mount being a paraphrase for the Eye of Ra / her mount in the Book of the Dead.
Overall, this is the most ''was intended to be an actual design put into the main game of SMITE'' I've found, and I would consider this as good as canon.
- Yanluo Wang (Chinese) - Chinese Fifth Judge of the Dead {Enma in Japanese, Yama in Buddism}, Yanluo Wang / Yan Luo Wang presides over the most important sentencing-point of the 10 Courts of Hell, in judging the fate of a soul (the Courts and Judges before him being basic processing and questioning, the ones after him basically just act as appeals courts).
Will go into far, far more detail in a later Aside when he invariably gets in, and they fuck up all the mythology, as they're foreshadowing.
Sourced from the game's Open Beta datamine; he was supposed to be one of the release Gods, making him the longest running name on the '''confirmed''' waiting list. Given the oddly skeletal / draconic model (Yanluo Wang is usually a huge, imposing statesman; for an in-game example, a cross between the stature of Zhong Kui and the regality of Yu Huang), it may have been the original design for the God that later became the reworked Ao Kuang (since Ao Kuang used to have Kukulkan's kit and model / skeleton in the beta).
- Zhao Yun (Chinese) - One of the Five Tiger Generals that Guan Yu was a member of, under Liu Bei, within The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. In charge of the Rear Guard of Liu Bei's army, and later served as the Guardian of the West (aka watching over the conquered territories).
A long-term ally and friend of Lui Bei, even before joining his cause; most well known for saving the baby Emperor Gong Si from a surprise attack from Cao Cao (the main antagonist of that portion of the Epic), Zhao Yun both entering and exiting the ambush (while killing many enemies in the process) all without waking the baby up.
See Amun Ra as for where I found this. For contexts sake, we've got Zhao Yun, Huang Zong and Guan Yu across three independant artists; leaving Ma Chao (the Left Guard) and Zhang Fei (the Right Guard) as the only Tiger Generals without a not!Official design.
- Mystery Nigga #1 (Greek)
A statue that first appeared on the Season 5 Conquest map, and has been repeated a few times elsewhere. Since every other statue in the Season 5 map game depicts a Greek God, depending on what side of Order / Chaos they backed on that map (with the exception of a statue for 'Allied', a deceased SMITE esports guy), this one is a clear outlier.
Sky's the limit, the only condition being that it's a Greek God on Order's side. If I had to guess, since a statue of her is definitely mentioned to be present at Olympus in-narrative, this may be Demeter.
- Mystery Nigga #2 (Norse)
The old guy with the horned hat and tattooed shoulder in the back of both images. I genuinely have no clue who this guy is supposed to be, but he's appeared in two pieces of art now from two separate artists, making him the only identifiably recurring in-house God concept across the entire game, aside from some of King Arthur's Knights (who were all done by the same artist, so hold less credibility as an 'in-house design'). Honestly, I can't derive anything - Heimdallr and Loki are indeed destined to kill one another during Ragnarok, but I can't think of any Norse Gods related to their drama.
With the design, I'm tempted to say it might be Njordr, Head of the Vanir (Freya's +Freyr's Dad, and Skadi's ex-husband), but it's pure guesswork. For now, he's just...... well 'someone'.
- Mystery Nigga(s) #3 (Hindu)
This model is implied to be Garuda, Hindu King of the Birds. I can tell you for absolute certain, that it's not, and that we've got yet another mistranslation - and it's an absolute clusterfuck this time, to the point I can't confidently assertain who it actually is.
To begin with, this is an unfinished God - she has no voicelines, and her ability icons were Geb's. No idea how she got in in the state she's in, but she did. Our translation error comes from her description being used to name her - "The Goddess you summoned, King of the Birds", which from there was extrapolated to imply it's Garuda. The correct translation is "The Goddess who summons the Phoenix", with the error being that 'Phoenix' / Fenghuang in Chinese directly translates to 'King of the Birds', and given her gameplay had her summon a Phoenix as a pet to fight for her, the error checks out.
Considering this error, I'd be confident in saying it's Aditi, Hindu Goddess of Space, the Cosmos and the concept of the infinite - fullfilling the general role of a sub0primodrial Mother-Goddess in the Hindu Pantheon (somewhat comparable to Nyx {Nox}) and being the mother of many major Gods - Agni, Indra, Mitra, Vamana etc.
Aditi's mount is a Phoenix, and is unique in that regard within the Hindu Pantheon, isolating any other possibility as to who it is.
But then we have our spanner in the works. There's another model.
Yep - this Goddess had two models, notably different, both named as the same entity, and not a stance-switcher. And Aditi is a singular figure with no secondary aspects or similar relations. On one hand it could be a skin for her - Zeus has a pool-party varient in the files - but this model has a different skeleton which makes that notion unlikely. If it's another God entirely, and we take the first as Aditi, then I'm stumped as for who it's supposed to be, making number 2 the mysery nigga. If they're both linked, then we can't say the first is Aditi, but instead I'd be more confident in saying it may be Ushas and Ratri - Hindu Goddesses of the Day and Night respectively.
Perhaps they're both Aditi. Perhaps one is Aditi and one is Ratri. Perhaps it's a completely different Goddess / set of Goddesses.
In this case your guess is .....almost as good as mine.
- Mystery Nigga #4 (???) -
In Blitz, it appears to have been a model in-development or something, as there's very little code related to it, and only listed as it's intended in-game role of a Juggernaut mob (a shared title across multiple models).
Given my mythological knowledge and it's shared imagery to other features in-game, I'd be tempted to say this is supposed to be Enkidu, the Wild Man, Gilgamesh's ally and the initial antagonist / later side-protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Representative of proto-humanity (possibly even passed down tales of real Neanderthals / Cro Magnons who interacted with early Homo Sapiens) who chose to avoid the flourishing roots of human civilisation, the motif of Enkidu was common - but not directly linked to the Bull-men motifs that Enkidu has become commonly associated with in recent times (that's only a theory of more modern times, which as of yet is unconfirmed - one I personally oppose, as the bull-man motifs are much more likely to represent the tribes to similar deities within the wider region, an easy such example being the Minoans).
On the other hand, there are multiple mentions in the files that Qiongqi, another one of the 4 Chinese Perils was in-game, this time inversely without a model. While it would make sense to put one and one together (model with no name = name with no model), the design is wildly off, and in no way mirrors the description of the Qiongqi - which in this case the Qiongqi, Beast of Injustice, was a winged tiger, with and Ox's snout and a Fox's tail - closer to the conventional image of a chimera than the not!minotaur as you see here.
All in all though, could be fucking anything, go wild faggot because your guess is almost as good as mine.
- Santa (Real Life) - Yes. We have a design.
FACT: Santa deniers will be hung from lamposts after the war. Behead those who insult Santa.
Miscelaneous Names I've seen mentioned in-house
Exactly as it sounds, just any additional names that I've seen mentioned on the radar. These are all the names I've seen mentioned, but otherwise unliked to anything in-game, in-lore or in anything related to playable material and are 'connected' to the game in the loosest sense of the word. Many of these are snippets seen on background whiteboards at LoRez HQ or in other likewise areas - don't treat this as a prediction list, because it's not - it's just here for posterity.
- Norse: Sif
- Greek / Roman: Echidna {Mentioned with Typhon who already features as an item - possible double-release intent?}, Hyperion, Orcus, Terminus, Nereus
- Hindu: Garuda, Shurpanakha / Meenakshi, Chamunda
- Chinese: Qilin
- Mayan: Hunahpu, Ixchup OR Ixchel OR Ixtab {You can only see 'Ix' on the dev whiteboard, I'd lean more Ixchup/Ixchel from what you can see of the 3rd letter - though Ixchup/Ixchel is more commonly given as Ix_C-, which in that case it would have been the more anecdotally famous Ixtab. Ix Chel is in the game now however, so this one might be defunct}
- Egyptian: Khnum, Hathor
- Japanese: Izanagi
- Celtic: The Dagda
- Slavic: The Leshen / Leshy / Veles
- Korean: Ju-Mong {Name's been in the files for a while like Yan Luo Wang or Shiva are / were, but I don't see it happening - possible confusion}
- Additionally, there's been a semi-official statement during a dev Q&A stream that Fujin {Japanese God of the Wind, Raijin's non-identical twin brother} and Oshun {Yoruban Goddess of Beauty, see above} are not on the design radar, due to apparent unpopularity and similarities to other Gods in-game.
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I've seen the internal notes. I know he's on the development radar. You can't hide from him forever Titanforge.
Terminus is inevitable. You don't even have to change a thing. Because you can't improve perfection.
~ ~ ~ Links back: